The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  Silence followed the reference to defeat. Khi’dem paused. Galba wondered if he had overplayed his hand. Galba found that he was hoping the Salamander would sway Atticus. He distrusted his reaction. It was felt rather than reasoned. Perhaps it was another result of his imperfect embrace of the machine. Its origin did not matter. It existed. He was stuck with his unwanted empathy.

  Atticus turned his head away from Khi’dem. He looked in the direction the other had pointed. He seemed to be listening for the song.

  No, Galba thought. He isn’t. You are.

  ‘There is also the colonists’ utility to the mission,’ Khi’dem said.

  Atticus turned back to him. ‘What utility? All I see is the waste of this company’s time and energy in keeping them alive.’

  ‘If you do that, think what it will mean. If they manage to make a home here, they will be bringing stability to this region. We do not know how long we will be on this planet. Would not some degree of pacification be useful?’

  Atticus grunted. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I do not expect this to be a permanent base of operations.’

  ‘No,’ Khi’dem admitted. ‘I hope it will not be.’ He began to walk away. ‘But you must do as you see fit. As must I.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To help.’

  Atticus’s bionic larynx made a short burst of electronic noise. It could have been a growl as easily as a laugh. ‘And you, Raven Guard,’ he said to Ptero. ‘You have been silent. Do you let the Salamanders do all your speaking for you?’

  ‘We have said nothing because we were listening,’ Ptero replied. ‘You judge us, Atticus. You take our measure. As we do yours.’ He and the rest of his reduced squad began following the Salamanders.

  Atticus made the noise again. Galba knew now that it was both a growl and a laugh. ‘You seek to shame us!’ he called to the retreating legionaries. ‘You think honour will not permit us to stand aside while you indulge your sentimentality?’

  ‘They’re right to think so, aren’t they?’ Galba ventured.

  ‘Yes,’ Atticus answered, the monotone cold again, the emotions unreachable, undetectable, ‘they are.’

  Nine

  Salvation in iron

  Ske Vris

  Storms

  The battles on Pythos had been skirmishes before. They had not been real wars. The power imbalance on one side or the other had been too great. The saurians had outnumbered the reconnaissance force. The deforestation had been a mechanical exercise. After the airborne immolation, the few remaining saurians had been no threat to the tanks.

  This time, the battle was real. It would be a true clash of forces. There was something almost joyous in that, Galba thought.

  The initial stage was a lightning advance down the trail from the promontory. The Venerable Atrax, 111th Company’s Contemptor Dreadnought, and two Vindicators, Engine of Fury and Medusan Strength, led the way, the infantry following behind at a run. There was little resistance. The reptiles on the path were blasted apart by the Dreadnought’s twin-linked heavy bolters. Others, too slow to flee, were flattened, then scraped apart by the tanks. The Iron Hands reached the nearest portion of the crowd less than an hour after Khi’dem had carried the day.

  The mechanised assault now was twin-pronged. While Atrax continued up the centre of the trail, the Vindicators moved to either side. The jungle barred the vehicles. It was home to shadows and teeth, and protected its mysteries. The tanks did not care. Each blast from their Demolisher cannons smashed trunks to splinters, toppling the giants, crushing whatever stalked beneath. The cannons were designed to batter down fortress walls. They devastated the jungle. As destructive as each shot was, the fire was also precise. Hitting a trunk at the wrong angle might bring the great tree down on the colonists. Overhead, Iron Flame flew in support, saturating the deeper areas of the jungle with incendiaries, strafing the larger concentrations of saurians with its battle cannon and the twin-linked heavy bolters of its sponsons.

  Galba was near the front of the left-hand column. His sight down the path was blocked by the massive shape of Engine of Fury. His ears were full of engine growl and the slow doom beat of the cannons. Between each enormous pound of the drum, as its echoes shook the glowering sky, there came splintering crashes and animal screams. Pythos had come to fight, and it was being taught the foolishness of its action.

  The din of reptile and artillery was so great, Galba could barely hear the colonists. The song was still there, though, still strong, its triumph untouched by the depredations of the saurians. And now the might of the Legiones Astartes struck the monsters of Pythos, giving truth to the hymn of victory.

  The Vindicators drove between the colonists and the predators. More saurians went down under the massive treads. The cannons fired point-blank at the rampaging monsters, drenching the vegetation in red mist. In the wake of the tanks, the Iron Hands raked the jungle with bolter fire, pushing the reptiles further back, where many more fell under the withering attacks of the Thunderhawk.

  The shock of the initial attack staggered the saurians. A gap opened between the mortals and the hunters. The Iron Hands rushed to fill it. As the advance moved further towards the anomaly, the legionaries formed a ceramite chain along the sides of the trail. Each Space Marine was a link, holding several metres on either side of him. They created an avenue of sanctuary.

  Standing in the hatch of Engine of Fury, Atticus addressed the colonists. He vox-cast his commands on all speakers. When he spoke, he was the machine incarnate, as if Iron Flame and the Vindicators themselves had found their voice.

  ‘Citizens of the Imperium! Your valour does you honour! But now is the hour of your salvation. Follow the route we have created for you. Down that path lies safety. Move now or die where you stand.’

  As he riddled predators with bolter shells, still following the Vindicator, Galba nodded to himself. Atticus’s words were mercy reinforced by discipline and steel. The Iron Hands had come to rescue these people. They would not coddle them. If the colonists wasted the opportunity with foolishness, then they truly were weak and deserved no consideration.

  Galba realised he was having a mental debate with Khi’dem. He silenced the internal voices and focused on the killing.

  The colonists began to move uphill. Atticus urged them on, and they began to run. They streamed between the legionaries. The Salamanders and Raven Guard ran at the head of the crowd, holding off the saurians that abandoned the packs and tried to follow the fleeing prey.

  The mission was the largest planetary deployment of the Veritas Ferrum’s warriors since the Callinedes offensive. Galba glanced back at the unwavering line of legionaries. The 111th Clan-Company of the X Legion was a shadow of its former self. Yet still the company numbered its warriors in the hundreds. Still the fist of Atticus came down with the force of an asteroid strike. The Legion was injured, but the Legion fought on. The Legion was here, now, and its majesty of war was terrible to behold. Galba’s chest swelled with pride. His hearts pumped with the need for combat.

  ‘Now let this planet know our true measure!’ Atticus called. ‘Let it know that we have come! Let it know our wrath! And so let it know fear!’

  The closer the front of the Iron Hands’ advance came to the epicentre of the anomaly, the bigger the crowd grew, and the more ferociously the saurians attacked. As Galba drew near the rock column, the reptilian assault reached such a frenzy that it was as if the jungle had been replaced by a vortex of snapping jaws. Galba was fighting a solid wall of muscle, claws and teeth. Most of the animals were the bipeds that had attacked when the column had first been discovered. But the quadrupeds were here too, as were several other species. There were a few who stood out, hunting as individuals instead of in packs. These were monsters, ten metres tall and twenty metres long. They had long, powerful forelimbs, and a row of bony spikes running from their foreheads, down their spines, and along t
he length of their arms. They shouldered through their smaller kin, using the massive spikes on their elbows to stab rivals out of the way.

  A quadruped charged at Galba, only to shriek and fall writhing to the ground when a spike as long as a chainsword jabbed into its eye. The massive killer made a wide sweep of its arm as it lunged for Galba. He ducked. A row of death passed over his head. The reach of the saurian was so great that the blow connected with the legionary behind Galba. The force of the hit shattered his breastplate. The spikes slammed home through his chest. The warrior gurgled as his lungs and hearts were punctured. The saurian lifted him, impaled, to its mouth. Blunt jaws with teeth the length of Galba’s hand snapped down on the legionary’s torso, severing it in two.

  Shouting inarticulate curses, Galba stitched the creature with bolter shells from belly to neck. Blood slicked the saurian’s torso. The animal roared, deep bass thunder mixed with an outraged shriek of agony. It lunged its head forwards. The forehead spike smashed into Galba’s shoulder. Ceramite cracked. Muscle tore. He was thrown to the ground. The monster raised a clawed foot to crush him. He rolled to the side, firing again. The earth trembled as the saurian stamped. Then Galba’s shots punched up through its lower jaw. The front half of the monster’s head disappeared. Galba thought the shriek would tear the clouds from the sky. The saurian staggered, its claws grasping at the air where its jaws had been. Then it collapsed with a resonant crash.

  Clambering over its body came more of the smaller bipeds. The monsters had been deprived of their easy, plentiful prey, and they were angry. They were coming to kill the Space Marines, to punish them for daring to invade their territory and thwart their desire. Their insensate fury was so focused, he could almost believe evil was possible in an animal.

  The saurians were relentless. As before, their numbers seemed inexhaustible. But the Iron Hands had numbers now, too. And tanks. And a gunship. The incendiaries still fell. The Demolisher cannons boomed. The jungle was shredded and burned. Many reptiles died before they could reach the objects of their hatred. The others were brought down by endless, unwavering bolter fire. The Iron Hands were holding the line. They would do so until the mission was complete.

  Or they ran out of munitions.

  Galba dropped another saurian and checked his ammo clips. He had learned from his first experience here. They all had. They had brought plenty of rounds. But not an infinite supply. Galba had already used half of his. The battle could not go on indefinitely.

  ‘Run!’ Atticus commanded the colonists. He spoke even as his stream of fire decapitated two of the long-necked bipeds nearest him. ‘We do not wait upon your pleasure. Run now and live. Wait, and you show yourselves unworthy of our efforts. Earn our help. If you do not, you will die.’

  The colonists ran. Galba could feel the size of the crowd at his back diminishing. There was movement happening. They were clearing the thousands away from the column, moving them towards safety. The colonists were still singing. The sound, mixed with the snarling and the butchery and the barking of guns, was grotesque. Galba’s admiration for these people evaporated. Their impermeable joy was insane. Were they stupid? Did they have no respect for the battle-brothers fighting and dying on their behalf?

  Who are we saving? he wondered. He stepped back. Massive jaws snapped together a hair’s breadth from the front of his helmet. He shot the quadruped through the eyes. Are these people worth saving?

  He could guess what Khi’dem’s answer would be. The Salamander would say that the act had its own value. It did not matter for whom it was done. If they were defenceless, if they needed help, then yes, they were worth saving.

  To his right, a brace of quadrupeds descended on a legionary. He did not have time to switch from bolter to chainsword before they brought him down with sheer tonnage. They crushed his skull before Engine of Fury fired, blasting them from existence.

  Another brother gone. The loyalist campaign weakened by just that much. In exchange for what? Was there anything these colonists offered in the war that had engulfed the Imperium? How many of their lives warranted one of the Iron Hands?

  An inner voice that sounded like his captain’s said, All of them would be insufficient.

  Yet Atticus was there, fighting for the lives of the mortals with as much purpose and brutal grace as on the Callidora. He had come to agree with Khi’dem. Agree enough. Agree, at least, that protecting what it meant to be the X Legion was worth the losses.

  Back at the base, Galba had been pleased by the decision. But now the song grated. The celebration sounded like mockery. He now preferred the honest savagery of the animals he fought. He channelled his anger through his bolter, into the flesh he destroyed. As he killed another behemoth, he thought of the pride he had felt to see the full might of the company unleashed.

  To fight animals, said a bitter truth.

  These people. Are they worth it?

  Worthy or not, the colonists were herded up the slope. They were too numerous for all of them to take refuge within the base’s walls. The wounded and the weak were protected there, along with the first to arrive. The others gathered on the plateau, their numbers spilling down the slope. But the position was defensible. The Vindicators took up stations below the mortals and pummelled the jungle. Iron Flame flew overwatch. More of the jungle was burned away, and it became possible to hold the upper reaches of the promontory with a relatively small contingent.

  Evening fell, and the bombardment continued. The wildlife of Pythos refused to surrender its prize. Individual saurians, feral rage overwhelming self-preservation, attacked every few minutes. They were annihilated. And they kept coming, gradually eating away at the ammunition supplies.

  Standing next to the armoury, Kanshell watched Atticus speaking with a small group of colonists. They were standing on the landing pad, visible to all. They appeared to be of a warrior caste. They wore rudimentary armour. It was not quite patchwork. Kanshell could see, on the individuals nearby who wore it, evidence of metalwork in the designs of the shoulder guards. Some of the warriors, men and women, carried spears or swords with elaborate engravings. Perhaps there was an officer class, too. One of the party on the landing pad appeared to be a leader. He was powerfully built, and his armour was more ostentatious.

  Kanshell wished that he were close enough to hear the conversation. The crowd before him was too dense to push through. It was mostly made up of Pythos’s new arrivals. There were some Legion serfs mixed in with them, though. Kanshell hoped someone he knew would be close enough to learn what was being decided.

  ‘He is asking us to leave,’ said a woman at Kanshell’s right shoulder.

  The serf twisted, startled.

  The woman, like the other colonists, was very tall and wiry. Her hair was dark, unkempt and thick. Her features were flattened, almost simian, but her face was long, and there was an odd grace to her bearing, as if she were dancing while standing still. Her clothing was hide and fur, the traces of the creatures still easy to see. A necklace of animal teeth hung around her neck. It was strange attire to see on someone who had just arrived in-system. The woman seemed like a primitive, Kanshell thought. She did not look like the member of a culture that could operate void ships. She bowed. The movement was liquid. ‘My name is Ske Vris.’

  ‘Jerune Kanshell.’ He nodded in return. ‘You were mad to come here,’ he said. ‘You should leave.’

  The woman smiled. ‘We cannot. Our ships are gone.’ Her smile was beatific.

  So the rumours that had raced through the compound were true. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘We no longer had need of them.’

  ‘But you see what the conditions on this planet are like! You can’t mean to make this your home.’

  ‘Home,’ Ske Vris repeated. She closed her eyes as she said it again: ‘Home.’ She was savouring the word. She opened her eyes. They shone with a profound joy. Kanshell felt a stab
of envy. The woman standing before him had found her life’s mission, and had answered its call. Kanshell had once thought that he was doing the same. But now uncertainty was his companion through disturbing days and sleepless nights. ‘Where is your home?’ Ske Vris asked.

  Was it Medusa? No, not any longer. The planet of his birth was too distant a memory. ‘The ship,’ he answered. ‘The Veritas Ferrum.’ When he said the name, he startled himself by pronouncing the words as if he were praying.

  ‘How would I convince you to abandon it?’

  ‘You could not.’ The idea was offensive.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But you have never been here before,’ Kanshell protested. Then he hesitated. ‘Have you?’ Could this be a lost people returning to its point of departure?

  ‘No,’ Ske Vris answered. ‘None of my kind has ever set foot here.’

  ‘Then how can this be home?’

  ‘It was foretold.’ The smile again. It bespoke a certainty so absolute, it would be more difficult to uproot than a mountain.

  ‘Why did you not come here before now?’

  ‘The time was not right. Now it is.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We could not begin our journey until we were forced to. War came to the world where we were living and brought an end to it. So we left, glad to be of the generation to see the prophecy fulfilled.’

  Kanshell frowned. Ske Vris’s language of prophecy and foretelling was light years from the orthodoxy of the Imperial Truth. It made him uncomfortable. Partly because he disapproved.

  Partly because he wanted the woman’s serenity.

  He noticed now, scattered about the crowd, colonists wearing hooded robes. As people milled, they lowered their heads if they crossed paths with one of the robed. There was no doubt in Kanshell’s mind: superstition had an active role in this culture. How isolated had this civilisation been? For how long? Had it never been made compliant? Had the Iron Hands encountered one of humanity’s forgotten tribes just as everything teetered on the brink of collapse?