by Paul Kearney
It was dark by then, and a crowd of militiamen were busy within the shadow of the immense Vanaheim barbican. The bright flare of welding torches was glaring here and there, and flatloaders piled high with stone and plasteel girders were parked in a line down the street. The place was a hive of activity.
Calgar unhelmed and nodded at Fennick with a glint of approval. The man did not believe in wasting time.
‘How bad?’ he asked the governor, his gaze ranging over the piled mound of rubble behind the gates.
‘They aimed for the hinges, my lord, and for once, they hit what they were aiming at. The entire surround of the gates has been badly weakened, and the adamantium itself has been holed and split in half a dozen places.
‘There is little we can do for the moment except prop them up and fill in the space behind. Even if we poured liquid rockcrete in now, it would not be hardened for three or four days.’
‘And we do not have that kind of time,’ Calgar said thoughtfully.
‘It was my decision to leave the Vanaheim Gate in working order,’ Fennick said. He sounded like a man drained of all emotion, his fine-boned face as planed and hollow as a skull. ‘The fault is on my shoulders.’
‘It was a good decision,’ Marneus Calgar said. ‘You have drawn them to the strongest part of the defences, and they have been battering at it for five weeks – and taken immense casualties. I might have done the same thing myself.’
Fennick bowed. His thin mouth worked with emotion under his beard, but he said nothing.
‘They know what they have done here today,’ Calgar went on. ‘They know the state of these gates – you may count on it. It will not be long before they attack again, and it will be here. The gate has become a totem for them, an end in itself. I have seen it happen to all kinds of armies, human and xenos alike. When enough blood has been spilled in one spot, the place assumes a significance beyond the strategic. It becomes somehow sacred. They will keep attacking the Vanaheim until they possess it. That is for us both a problem and an opportunity.’
‘We cannot last much longer,’ Fennick said tiredly at last.
‘We must. The orks will not tire, it is not in their nature. They will not stop now until Zalathras falls or they are destroyed. It has become a very simple matter.’
And he felt it himself even as he spoke the words – the simplicity of it. In its way, it was a kind of relief. All his long life he had overseen the movement of armies, the deployment of divisions, brigades, regiments, and the hallowed companies of his own brethren. He had overseen a great realm of far-flung planets with men in their millions willing to do his bidding.
And it had come down to this. This one place, this broken gate, and the half-trained and untrained men who manned the walls around it.
The weariness he had borne within him for so long seemed to lift. There was very little left to think about. Just the brutal logic of the orks. They would attack, and he would defend. There were no longer the resources or opportunities for anything else.
‘I want to talk to you and all the senior officers of your command tonight,’ he told Fennick. ‘In the palace. The orks will not attack again for a while. Even they must regroup and reorganise after a day like today. We will have a brief respite. We must use it.’
He looked up at the looming shadow of the Vanaheim Gate. For him, too, it had assumed a significance beyond the strategic. He had a sudden presentiment that he would die here – he, Marneus Calgar, Lord Macragge, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. Here, on this far-flung border world of little significance.
Thy will be done, he thought.
Just before midnight, the Mayfly came in at last, the little freighter a smoking half-wrecked hulk that settled with something close to a crash on one of the wide streets leading off Dromios Square. Calgar was there within minutes of the landing, in time to see the heavy loader and its precious cargo towed out of the smoke-filled hold of the ship.
He was also there to see Proxis’ prone form wheeled down the ramp.
‘Parsifal, see to him,’ he said tersely, and the Apothecary at once bent over the Ancient’s body, and then had him spirited away to the apothecarion in Alphon Spire.
‘He lives, my lord,’ Parsifal said as he left. The helix on the Apothecary’s shoulder-guard was almost invisible, scraped and dented and covered with clotted ork gore.
‘See that he does.’
Morcault, Lascelle and Brother Valerian stood at the foot of the ramp, a mismatched trio that nonetheless had the air of having come through something together.
‘How much did we get?’ Calgar asked his Librarian.
‘Some four tons, my lord.’
‘Less than we had hoped.’
‘The orks were there in some strength. My lord, I must speak to you privately.’
‘Other casualties, besides Proxis?’
Valerian grimaced. ‘Brothers Comus and Gauros.’
Calgar said nothing. They were being whittled down. Of the twenty-four Space Marines, himself included, who had crashed in the Alexiad and the Rubicon, eleven were still standing. Proxis and Brother Tarsus were gravely injured. The gene-seed of so many had been lost to the Chapter forever, brethren who were some of the best the Chapter had produced. It weighed on him, but his shoulders had carried this burden and others like it for centuries.
‘We were lucky to make it out – Brother Valerian did all he could – as did we all.’ It was Morcault. The old man leaned on his black stick and wisps of his white hair blew around the dressing that circled his temples. He stared up at Marneus Calgar and was no longer intimidated by the Chapter Master’s imposing bulk. He spoke to him as one man to another. How things changed.
Calgar looked at the smoking hulk behind them that was the Mayfly. ‘You did well to navigate through such perilous skies,’ he said quietly. He nodded at Valerian. ‘Brother, you and I shall speak presently. The material you brought out of the quarries is invaluable. It shall be sent to the foundries at once. Morcault, you have my thanks. Will she fly again?’
The old man gave a sad smile. ‘Perhaps. But I doubt I shall be alive to see it.’
The lives of men were so short. This aged man was a mere child compared to the span of years Calgar had seen. He was younger even than Valerian, but his time was almost done. And yet he had risen through that frailty and given good service when it was most needed. He had volunteered himself for it.
Men’s short lives were such a waste. By the time they learned something of life, they were ready to lay it down.
Calgar looked up at the battered ship, weighing other options. Then he stared at Morcault again. There was no fear in the man. He was too aware of his own approaching end. A fearless man was a valuable thing, an asset not to be cast aside.
‘Come with me,’ Calgar said. ‘All of you.’
In the middle hours of the night they assembled in the map room of the palace, high atop Alphon Spire. From there, they could look out and see the districts of the city that were still burning, far below. They glowed through the clouds, and even the rain did little to deaden that light.
Calgar turned from the high balcony to stare at those assembled. Fennick, Boros, Glenck, Lascelle and the half-dozen divisional commanders who were still alive stood in a group. To one side sat old Morcault, stooped over his stick. Then there were his own people. Mathias, Valerian, Orhan, and Brother Antigonus, who had taken over leadership of the squad survivors – six of them left now. Parsifal was still working on Proxis in the apothecarion.
Also present were Kurt Vanaheim, the industrialist whose manufactoria were fuelling the war effort, and Ferdia Rosquin, the banker whose compound was now the forward command post. He looked even more old and withered than Morcault, but he was a senior member of the planetary council.
Calgar felt he should inspire them with a speech, trot out some heady rhetoric about the repulse of t
he ork assault today. But such words came too easily. The silence spoke more eloquently of their position than anything Calgar could say, and he knew it. The city had survived the day, but its fate still hung by a thread.
‘Vanaheim,’ Calgar said at last, ‘how goes it with munitions?’
The burly, dark-haired man consulted a slate. ‘With the palladium brought in from the Ballansyr Quarries, we can go back up to full production. We are running the works day and night, and turning out some twelve thousand heavy shells and fifty thousand rounds of bolter ammunition a day.’
‘How long before we exhaust the raw materials?’
Vanaheim did not look up. ‘Four days, give or take.’
‘What is the state of the reserves?’ Calgar asked Fennick.
The governor needed no slate to consult. He faced Calgar squarely. ‘We have some hundred and fifty thousand rounds of bolter ammunition left, and about a fifth of our original artillery shells.’ He paused. ‘We burned through a lot today – over half our remaining reserves.’
‘What about other heavy weapons?’
Fennick seemed to slump, though he remained standing. ‘There are fewer than a hundred charge packs for the lascannons still remaining in the city. The mortars are down to thirty bombs per tube. Promethium is almost exhausted.’
Calgar nodded. ‘Colonel Boros – today’s casualty list.’
Boros rubbed the stubble on his face. ‘Almost four thousand dead or badly wounded. Civilian casualty figures are still coming in, but they are many times that.’
‘Have we controlled the fires?’
‘Those in the spires have been put out, but we are merely containing some in the southern districts. We do not have the capability to extinguish them. They will have to burn themselves out.’
They were tired. They felt themselves beaten. Calgar could almost smell the defeat off them, and it disgusted him. It was not in his nature or that of his brethren to give in to despair. The Adeptus Astartes died fighting to the end, and in their end they found the reason for their creation.
Battles were fought, wars went by, but the Imperium endured, and the Emperor sat upon His throne in far off Terra, a deathless husk.
It had been thus for millennia. It would remain so, no matter what happened on one far-off planet. Ordinary men did not often feel themselves connected to that larger picture, that greater universe.
And yet ordinary men, too, could die fighting, and die well. It was one of the traits of humanity that had sent them spanning the galaxy. These men before him – most of them, at any rate – they had faced down death at Zalathras, some of them many times. And they stood here now wanting only leadership, direction. Some kind of hope, no matter how slim.
And Calgar would give it to them. He looked at Brother Valerian, and he and the Librarian nodded at one another.
‘We have done well here,’ the Lord of Macragge said. ‘I have seldom seen men fight better. We are near the end of our strength, but that does not mean we cannot prevail here on Zalidar. Weapons and ammunition are only part of what makes an army capable of resistance. The will of men – the determination not to give in – that is what leads to eventual victory.
‘You fight here for your city, your world, your families and all that you hold dear. If the orks make it over the walls or through the gate, then all that is gone. Those who die quickly will be the lucky ones. The non-combatants will be mere foodstuff and slaves for the xenos. The planet will be razed to the ground.
‘There is no negotiation, no reasoning with such foes. They understand only violence, and they will not give in until they are decimated or destroyed. But do not think that we fight them alone, here in Zalathras.’
Calgar had them rapt now. He looked them all over, gauging, weighing up their frailties and strengths, the resolve in their eyes.
‘For we are not alone. We belong to the Imperium of Man, which is the lone light in a sea of darkness. It has burned for tens of thousands of years, and will burn for ten thousand more. We are part of that, brothers in arms, defenders on the wall. All of us, whether we are Adeptus Astartes or militia, soldiers or civilians.
‘We are men, and we stand together in that darkness. We will never give in, for it is not in our nature to admit that final defeat.’
He stopped. He had not meant to give a speech. He had heard too many like it, voiced by friends and brothers who were all dead now. But there were some things that had to be said, which never lost their truth.
‘And we are not forgotten here. The word has gone out. Even as I speak, my brothers are coming to our aid. The Seventh Company of the Ultramarines and their battlefleet is in the warp even now. I do not know when they will be here, but they are coming.
‘Tell your men that as they stand upon the wall tonight. The Adeptus Astartes are on their way. We have only to hold on here a little longer, and there will be deliverance. I give you my word.’
He saw the flush of relief in their faces. Some of them grinned. Others looked as though they might weep.
His own brethren were stony-faced. That was as it should be. Triumph and disaster – they had learned to take both in their stride. They would fight on no matter what the cost, no matter what the odds. It was what they had been born to do.
He had given his word. Marneus Calgar had never yet broken it. The thing was said.
And I will keep it, he thought. I will keep it or die trying.
Twenty
The orks milled about in their camps for five full days after the failed assault of their heavy armour. Their artillery continued to batter the city, and they finally seemed to be trying to zero in on the Vanaheim Gate itself. Their aim was still far from true, but at least one in every ten of the rounds falling came close to or hit their mark. The massive thirty-storey fortress had strong plascrete armour, but shell after shell chipped away at it, and the region around the Vanaheim itself became a blasted wasteland of shattered ruins and deep-delved shellholes as it was hit again and again.
Work on reinforcing the damaged gate went on regardless, and the militia engineers who struggled in the shadow of the barbican took heavy casualties at their labours, whilst the streets leading up to the fortress were littered with burnt-out and blasted vehicles that tried to run the gauntlet and bring building materials up to them.
But the fact remained; the gate was weakened. Fennick had left it unblocked because it would draw the enemy to the strongest defensive point on the circuit of the walls, but now that strategy had been turned on its head. What had been the strongest was now the weakest.
Everywhere else, the walls still stood, one hundred feet high and as many thick. They had taken damage in countless places, but were essentially intact. The men who manned them had been thinned out, however; the entire perimeter, all those rolling miles of battlements, was manned now by fewer than forty thousand exhausted troops, many of whom had undergone nothing more than cursory military training.
Thousands more were deployed in the city itself, to keep order, suppress the gangs in the undercity, fight fires and man the logistics convoys that rattled through the streets day and night. And in the manufactoria which had survived this far, a quarter of a million workers toiled round the clock to keep turning out munitions of all calibres, the blood that kept the beating heart of the city’s defences alive.
Thus did Zalathras enter its sixth week of siege.
Calgar divided his time between the walls and the forward command post, with occasional forays up to the palace to look in on Proxis and Brother Tarsus in the apothecarion. Both Ultramarines had had their power armour removed, and the junction points on their torsos that linked into their suits now had myriad tubes attached, which led to life support machines, some purely human, of necessity, other customised by Brother Parsifal with Brother Orhan’s help.
Brother Tarsus was a fearsome sight, his features melted beyond recognition by
the promethium that had engulfed him. But under the skin he was largely whole, and almost ready to return to duty.
For three days after the Mayfly’s landing, Proxis had remained in the coma in which his own enhanced physiology had placed him. On the fourth, Brother Parsifal brought him out of it. By that time the Ancient’s own recuperative biology, along with Parsifal’s surgery, had repaired the gaping hole in his chest and the catastrophic damage to one of his two hearts.
Calgar was there when he opened his eyes, along with the Apothecary. Proxis stared at the ceiling for a long moment, blinking slowly at the overheads and swallowing. Then he turned to his Chapter Master and recognition filled his gaze.
‘I had the strangest dream,’ he said, in a voice quite unlike himself. And then he blinked again, and his hand reached out to grasp Calgar’s.
‘My lord. I rejoice to see you.’
‘And I you, brother.’
He looked past Calgar, saw Parsifal standing there in his blue and white armour, and raised an eyebrow. ‘I take it this one has been plying his grisly trade.’
‘He has indeed. He saved your life, Proxis.’
Proxis smiled slightly at the Apothecary. ‘Well, it is not for the first time. And I doubt it will be the last.’
‘I grow tired of patching you up, Proxis,’ Parsifal said, coming forward. ‘One of these days I will run out of patience and you will be clean out of luck.’
‘Luck deserts us all, in the end,’ Proxis told him. He looked at Calgar. ‘That is why we are born with brothers who never do.’ His forehead creased with pain.
‘My lord, the mission–’
Calgar tapped the Ancient on the chest. ‘It was a success, though barely.’
‘Who did we lose? I can see it in your eyes.’
‘Brother Comus, and Brother Gauros.’
Proxis’ face gnarled with anger. ‘I failed them, getting myself shot like that – as foolish as a neophyte.’