by Paul Kearney
The beast shouldered into the gateway, looming up to dwarf the Ultramarines who stood before it. Calgar aimed his fire at its head. The storm bolter rounds clinked and spat and bit into the animal, blasting free divots of smoking flesh. One eye was blasted out of its socket. But this seemed only to madden the squiggoth further. With a tremendous thrust it smashed clear through the remnants of the barricade, sending boulders and lumps of masonry flying fifty yards through the air. The barricade disintegrated, became a scattering of mounded rubble. And behind the huge beast the orks set up a triumphant roar.
For the first time, the way into the city was open to them.
‘Brother Orhan,’ Calgar said, ‘It is time. On me, my brothers. Clear the way.’
The orks were streaming by the hundred around the feet of the huge squiggoth, clambering over the shattered gates and the debris that lay behind them. The beast seemed dazed by its achievement and the punishment it had taken. It stood with its blood making steaming puddles around its feet, gargling in its pain, shaking its mutilated head.
Calgar and the Ultramarines split into two lines that went down each side of the street. Still firing with deadly effect into the mob of orks that was pouting around the squiggoth, they went to ground in the ruins.
The tarp was pulled off the large angular shape in the roadway behind them by Lascelle and his men, who then quickly sprinted back down the street several hundred yards before taking up their own firing positions.
A Colossus siege tank stood there, squat and box-shaped, the black maw of its gun pointed directly into the gateway. It had been heavily restored and modified over the past few weeks. The bombard on its platform had been rebuilt for direct fire. Brother Orhan stood on the open deck of the vehicle.
His voice came over the vox. ‘All clear. Firing in three, two, one–’
There was no sound. Just an enormous absence. The Ultramarines were rendered deaf by their auto-senses to protect them, so they did not hear the gargantuan boom that rolled out of the weapon. But they felt the blast-wave. It staggered them, knocking several of them to their knees and blowing others into the sides of nearby buildings.
A great pall of smoke and dust mushroomed up, enveloping the entire Vanaheim gate and hundreds of yards of the walls. The concentric blast-waves travelled out in rippling circles. Even on the battlements high above, the militia were deafened and blinded and thrown around in a dark storm of debris.
As the initial detonation subsided, so the auto-senses of the Ultramarines came back online. Calgar engaged infrared to peer through the murk, and the outlines of the Vanaheim Gate appeared through it. He stood up. Runes were winking amber on his helm display and he was shrouded in dust, a tawny giant that strode forward alone into the gateway.
The squiggoth had been blown to pieces, and there was a line of death and gore reaching out of the gateway for fully five hundred yards. Hundreds of orks had died as the heavy round had ploughed onwards across the battlefield, a mass of shrapnel enlarging the blast radius. A vast smoking crater had been gouged out of the earth, and, all around it, thousands of the enemy were struggling to their feet out of the muck that half buried them, or squealing with the furious anger of their wounds.
Calgar strode alone through the barbican until he stood in the charnel house under the Vanaheim. The interior of the gateway had been heavily damaged, with chunks blown out of the construction, wiring and plasteel reinforcement laid bare. But the Vanaheim still stood.
Calgar looked out over the immense field before him, at the massed formations that were coming to their senses in the aftermath of the blast. He dialled up his suit speakers to maximum.
‘Guilliman!’ he shouted, and the roar of that cry carried for miles over the plain. He raised the Gauntlets of Ultramar above his head and let them crackle with the full surge of his ancient armour’s power.
Now, he thought. Come to me.
Twenty-Three
‘The gate is down,’ Lieutenant Yeager said to Fennick, his face as pale as chalk. He looked again at the vox console as if he could not quite believe what he had just heard.
Fennick walked over to the balcony and looked out. Alphon Spire was over two and half miles from the Vanaheim, but the astonishing boom of the bombard cannon had rattled tables in the map room.
He had known of that strategy, had worked to make it happen, but he had never truly believed that it would prove necessary.
The knowledge that the way into the city was open at last shook him. He had to steady his breathing while he looked out at the plain far below. The orks moved across it in numbers that seemed undiminished, despite the six weeks of slaughter they had endured.
The Ultramarines Seventh Company might be out there, on their way, but how could the city hold out now? It was a matter of hours before they were overwhelmed. Even Marneus Calgar could not hold the Vanaheim against such numbers, not now.
‘Seal the spires,’ Fennick said to Yeager. He turned around, facing the young lieutenant and the other staff members and aides who filled the room. Their talk had stilled; they were all watching him now with something of the same despair in their eyes.
‘I want every blast door closed, every entryway manned by what militia are already here. We will not take any off the walls, but we must secure ourselves inside these structures for as long as possible. It will not be long now, gentlemen. Help is on the way. We have only to hold out another day or two.’
‘What of Lord Macragge?’ one of his aides asked.
‘He has made his choice, and Throne be with him in his fight. But we must look to ourselves now, and make our own choices. Send word to Kalgatt and Minon also – the spires must all be locked down. The orks may breach our walls, but we can still hold out in here, for a while at least.’
The room became busy again, the vox specialists bent over their consoles, other officers running out to gather up the militia who were scattered throughout the hive on policing duties. It would take time to close down such an immense structure with so many people in it.
Fennick closed his eyes. He hoped Marneus Calgar could buy them that time.
This is what Zalidar will become famous for – this is how we will be written into the histories, he thought.
The place where Marneus Calgar died.
He wanted to be down there, fighting with him. How better could a man lay down his life, than in that place, in such mighty company?
Roman Lascelle was down there, the rake and the dandy long burned out of him, and so was Boros, who was Fennick’s closest friend. Even Admiral Glenck had requested a place on the walls today, to play his part in the great drama, to be there when the curtain closed on them all. Fennick had been astonished by the man’s decision. They had shaken hands, their old animosities forgotten.
And I am here, cutting myself off from it, sealing myself in – perhaps to no avail. Is that cowardice?
It would be seen as such, by whoever recorded the events that had happened here. He was sure of that. But he was no coward – he was a man with responsibilities. He could not turn his back on the people he had been appointed to lead and look after. If that looked like cowardice, well then so be it. He would leave it to history to decide.
Boros, he thought. Fight well. Find a good death. And forgive me.
The ork hosts out on the plain had reached the foot of the walls and were now raging there like a tide baffled by sheer cliffs. They raised up their scaling ladders like scaffolding against Zalathras’ defences, but even when slotted together to the maximum height the metal would bear, they were still short of the battlements.
They reared them up anyway, consumed by a feverish lust for killing that it seemed no amount of carnage could sate.
Noon came and went, but such was the volume of smog that hung over the city that it seemed the battle continued in a grey twilight, the sun obscured by the pillars of black billowing smoke that ro
se both within Zalathras and without.
To the men on the walls, firing their lasguns until the barrels glowed, dropping grenades, ducking for cover, hauling away their shattered dead comrades, it seemed that time itself had lost all meaning. Ten minutes was a long time, an hour became an eternity, and to try and look beyond the day itself was an absurd exercise.
There was only the second-to-second struggle to kill the enemy and stay alive, to hope for luck, for some stroke of fortune – a relief army, or a sudden loss of will in the ork attackers.
But the orks did not oblige. Now that the gates were finally down, and they were united under a single warlord, and the infectious fervour of the Waaagh! had swamped what little reasoning they possessed, they came on regardless of tactics and casualties, driven to assault the walls by a black impulse which mastered even that of self-preservation.
In the shadow of the Vanaheim fortress, in the arch of the broken gate, Marneus Calgar stood with twelve of his brethren, and fought the ork tide that tried to flood past into the defenceless city beyond.
The Ultramarines had divided themselves. Calgar, Proxis, Orhan and Mathias fought hand to hand in their superior armour and with their superlative close-combat weapons.
Brother Antigonus and the six remaining members of his squad hung back and blasted the enemy at range, while Brothers Parsifal and Valerian constituted a kind of reserve.
The Apothecary and the Librarian darted in where the need was greatest and then pulled back again, keeping the enemy off balance, saving their brethren from sudden surges and berserk lunges.
Twelve Ultramarines, the finest of their Chapter. And behind the gate, Lieutenant Roman Lascelle and his militia company, busy rearing up new defences, laying booby traps, and contributing a platoon every now and then when Valerian called for it.
But they could not stem that immense flood of hate forever, nor could they fight such an implacable foe without loss.
Even in such a close-packed mill of murder, the Ultramarines were able to work together. When one stumbled, or momentarily left his guard open, then another of his brethren would step in.
Calgar was always at the foremost spot of the defence, alternating between the storm bolters and the power fists of the Gauntlets of Ultramar. He would blast the foe back with a point-blank volley of the storm bolters, allowing Antigonus and his squad to toss some grenades into the throng, which would open them out further.
Momentarily thinned, the orks would then be cut down by withering, heavy bolter fire from Brother Kadare, expertly weaving his bursts between his battle-brothers as they fought. Then Brother Dextus would squeeze out a stream of promethium from his flamer, and the orks would topple, wriggling and burning and smearing the burning chemicals on their fellows.
There would be a lull of a few minutes before the enemy re-formed and came on again. The Ultramarines would change magazines, collect themselves, and once in a while Brother Parsifal would be able to make some swift treatments to the wounds they all now carried.
This went on for hours, until it became almost a kind of murderous routine.
But even the Adeptus Astartes were not immune to fatigue. Their power armour injected them with stimulants and coagulants and analgesics, but such exertions took a toll even on the strongest. And they began to make mistakes.
Marneus Calgar was the focus of the orks’ rage. He stood out, his ancient artificer armour still splendid despite the battering it had received, and the Iron Halo that protected him flamed and flickered above his helm, drawing the strongest and most savage orks like moths to a candle.
Time and time again, Proxis or Orhan saved him from being beaten down and dragged into the maw of the ork mob, and once, when he was knocked off his feet by a great dark-skinned ork chieftain, Brother Mathias stepped over him and beat the creature back with great flaming swings of his crozius arcanum, smashing the ork’s skull into a rag of shattered gore. As the great ork fell, those around him backed off for a few minutes, and Calgar regained his feet, shaking the blood from his fingers.
‘Parsifal, report,’ he said, breathing heavily, his helm display alight with flickering runes and sigils. He kept his eyes on the orks a hundred yards away. They had drawn off, and every time they did, the defenders in the Vanaheim casemates above poured a torrent of fire and a hail of grenades into them. They milled around, the large orks killing some of their lesser kind in their anger and frustration, and firing wildly up at those in the fortress above who were tormenting them.
‘Brother Orhan and Brother Mathias have both received moderate wounds to their limbs, but are still functioning. Brother Jared is dead, but his gene-seed has been retrieved. Brother Herod will need some more treatment before he can rejoin the line.’
‘Get to it. We need every pair of hands. Lieutenant Lascelle.’
‘My lord.’
‘Move your men up. How are the emplacements coming?’
Lascelle’s voice crackled over the vox; the frequencies were all becoming degraded by the chaos of the day, the multiple users, and the endless explosions of heavy ordnance that were going off all around.
‘I have two heavy stubbers, tripod-mounted.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Everything else is already in action on the walls, my lord.’
‘Very well.’
Proxis stepped up to Calgar’s shoulder. The Ancient’s once ornate armour was now scraped and battered down to its essentials, with a scrap of gold and blue on it here and there, and the ugly repair to the breastplate looking like nothing so much as a field dressing made out of ceramite. He checked his power axe. The orks dreaded and craved such weapons, and it had done good service in the past few hours.
‘The day draws on,’ he said. ‘It is past noon.’
‘Already?’ Calgar said.
‘The hours go by so quickly when one is enjoying oneself, I find,’ Proxis said. He was grinning inside his helm, Calgar was sure.
‘Let us hope Captain Ixion does not miss all the festivities,’ the Ancient added.
‘He would never forgive himself,’ Calgar agreed. They looked at one another, two brutal masks splattered with blood and sundered flesh.
‘It is an honour to fight at your side, my lord,’ Proxis said quietly.
‘I would not have it any other way, brother.’
Then the orks surged forward again, and the moment of stillness passed, and the mayhem engulfed them once more.
Proxis died an hour later at the hands of a stunted ork that crept between the legs of its taller kin and stabbed upwards with its short-handled chainsword.
The blow slashed through the knee joint of the Ancient’s superlative armour, and was just enough to distract him as the great ork he was fighting stepped forward and lunged for his throat with a fizzing power sword.
The weapon took Proxis through the chest, slicing through the hastily repaired breastplate and entering his primary heart, splitting the organ in two within his chest. The Ancient went to his knees without a word, the axe falling from his nerveless fingers.
Calgar whirled round and tore the head from the great ork’s shoulders with a sweep of one fist, stifling the cry of grief that wanted to howl out of his own chest. For a few moments after, he lost himself, let all discipline slide from his brain, and became as intent on mindless murder as the creatures who were trying to kill him.
He advanced into the pack of orks in a white silence of howling fury, lifted one from the ground and clubbed half a dozen others to death with the body until it fell apart. Then he opened up with the storm bolters, blasting back dozens of the foe, tearing them up into unrecognisable chunks of steaming meat.
It was Brother Mathias who stopped him from plunging deeper into the ork mob, who cleared a path back to the gateway along with Brother Orhan.
The three of them said no word to each other, but for a while they stood th
ere alone and held the gate in a paroxysm of naked murder, laying about themselves with all the hatred and fury their grief had kindled, until even the orks could take no more and fell back again.
By that time, Brother Parsifal had done his work, and retrieved Proxis’ gene-seed, and his body had been hauled back to the stubber emplacements where the militia cowered.
His body had not been defiled. His armour and weapon, both ancient treasures of the Chapter, were safe – for now at least. But Proxis was gone. He had joined with the Emperor’s Peace at last.
Marneus Calgar stood and spoke no word while his brothers moved up around him and covered the approach to the gate once more, taking cover behind the mounded enemy dead. Mathias and Orhan came to stand with him, saying nothing. There were no words.
Autogun rounds sparked and ricocheted off Calgar’s armour, but he paid them no heed. For a moment, he did not truly care.
‘We are the pilgrims, master,’ he murmured at last, his eye burning inside his helm. ‘For us to go ever farther…’
Farewell, my brother.
Twenty-Four
The long day drew on, and the killing continued in a frenzy that the men on the walls could barely comprehend as possible. Over in the Minon Districts, Lieutenant Janus’ firefighters helped repulse an attempt to scale the walls with rocket-fired grappling hooks.
No sooner had that been thrown back than they had to mount up in their vehicles and speed north to help foil another attack. The orks were probing the entire perimeter of the city now, but still their main effort was reserved for the Vanaheim Gate, and the Ultramarines who defended it.
And there, as evening approached, the Ultramarines fought on.
There were fewer of them now. The orks had managed to flood past Calgar, Mathias and Orhan and barrelled into Antigonus’ squad. In moments it had become one giant melee, and in that confused scrum Brothers Ardius, Tarsus and Herod had died.