Echoes of the Long War

by David Guymer

  The last ork crunched onto the glass-strewn tiles, crisped like meat held too long against the heat.

  Zerberyn disinterred himself from the dented wall and opened a channel.

  ‘Columba, Major.’ He masked the twitch of his lip and swallowed his distaste. ‘Kalkator. Entrance secured. See that the perimeter is held and join me in the control room.’

  ‘A pity our fathers were such adversaries,’ voxed Kalkator. ‘Together, their sons would have been unstoppable.’

  ‘In some other universe, perhaps,’ Zerberyn returned, and then, aware that Bryce was also on the channel, added a poisonous, ‘cousin.’

  That was an explanation that he did not want to have to give. Not now. And not to Marshal Bohemond when they finally rejoined the muster at Phall.

  He scowled.

  First Captain Zerberyn of the Fists Exemplar did not answer to the Black Templars.

  ‘This facility’s data stores had better be worth it.’

  ‘This way, lord captain,’ said Jaskólska smartly, unaware that the warning had been intended for himself.

  Glass ground under her feet as she eased open an interior door and stepped over the greenskin corpse that had been holding it ajar. Zerberyn followed, then Nalis, Borhune, Tosque and Galen. Tarsus remained behind to hold the vestibule, directing the remaining Scions into fire points behind upturned tables and security lockers.

  A short corridor led to a metal staircase. It looked like something that would have been used by lower-grade servants and perhaps as an escape route during emergency drills. Access doors onto exterior walkways stood on each tier, bloody handprints on the emergency release bars. A pair of panicked-looking gretchin came clattering down the escape and straight into two precise blasts from Jaskólska’s hellgun. They rolled down, the sounds of bolter fire ringing back through the stairwell’s metal frame as Zerberyn and the major pushed through another door and into a control room.

  The terminals were still active, continuing with their operators in absentia to plot the blips and curves of an intensely crowded near-orbital space. Empty, bloodstained chairs were set up along curving desks, blinking, chirping workstations facing an armourglass window. The view was of an endless beige plain of desertified pastureland. A railroad cut across it, trailed by a dust road. Both ran from the substation to Princus Praxa. Zerberyn manually operated his helm’s magnification selector. It was no substitute for a pair of magnoculars, but it bought him a blurry three- or four-fold zoom – enough to make out the mottled grey industrial stacks crowding the city’s outer walls. The chimneys pumped out a grimy, ochre smog that hazed almost everything else within it. Even the high adamantium-ceramite walls of the Crusade-era citadel that dominated the settlement’s heart were little more than a gothic, crimson shadow.

  ‘What is that smoke?’

  ‘The people of Prax,’ said Major Bryce, appearing in the door ahead of Columba and Kalkator and a handful of Scions. ‘And a billion more from off-world, brought here to be… rendered.’

  Zerberyn turned from the window as Columba strode past. The veteran-sergeant ignored the panorama entirely, thumped through the glazed metal doors onto the main staircase, and then blazed down the corridor with his bolt pistol to a riot of high-pitched screams. Kalkator joined Zerberyn at the glass. Jaskólska moved warily aside, some deep conditioning of her training causing her to half-raise her hellgun and slip behind a desk. The Iron Warrior disengaged his helmet’s seals and removed it, nose wrinkling as he took it under his arm and gazed across the plain towards the fortress that Perturabo had built. His eyes were pained, distant, his primarch’s glories dust.

  ‘You have seen it?’ said Zerberyn to the major.

  ‘Throne, have I seen it,’ muttered Bryce, hugging his cara­pace as though the armourglass provided no protection against the winds of the plain. ‘The smell of the tanneries stays on you for days, and the screams of the children…’

  ‘You are only human. It is understandable.’

  Bryce nodded, grateful for that. He pointed to a humming stack of cogitator units that stood against the wall behind a clear plastek barrier. ‘The data-cache.’

  ‘I am no priest of Mars, major.’

  ‘I suggest we pull up the unit and take it with us, First Captain.’ Brother Antille walked over, shadowed by the smaller form of Bryce’s vox-officer-cum-adjutant, Sergeant Menthis, and greeted Zerberyn with a curt nod. ‘I can bear the weight, and see it safely loaded aboard the gunship. Once we return to Dantalion Forge-Brother Clathrin can conduct the necessary rites of retrieval.’

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘Everything the orks have done from here will have been automatically stored by the system,’ said Bryce. ‘Thousands of ships take off and land every day, and even more are unloaded from orbit. You’ll be able to learn what the orks are doing from that, I have no doubt.’

  ‘I can tell you what the orks are doing,’ said Kalkator, turning his nailhead stare on Zerberyn, ignoring the Scion utterly. ‘They are feeding an empire.’

  Zerberyn looked again at that crimson pall. As if the thermosphere wept blood. If his transhuman biology had retained the ability for him to be physically sick, then he would have been so. By the Emperor’s wisdom, he was forced to keep his disgust internal; it stewed in his gut, suffused him, a familiar outrage trembling in the marrow of his bones.

  Feed.

  ‘You saw the number of ships in orbit, little cousin,’ said Kalkator. ‘The industry of Prax could be supplying offensives against hundreds of sectors.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘You know what I am suggesting.’

  ‘You did not want to be on this planet. Now you are talking of reconquering it.’

  ‘Orks do not settle, they burn. They took no prisoners on Ostrom or Klostra or on Eidolica. I could not have known that this would be here.’

  ‘There must be ten thousand orks in that city, defending a Fourth Legion citadel. There is no combination of variables that can sum forty men and fewer than thirty Adeptus Astartes into a schema of victory.’

  With a scowl, Kalkator replaced his helm over his head. His armour resealed with a clank of magnetic clamps. The next words he spoke came directly through Zerberyn’s helmet channel.

  ‘Forget the citadel. The fortress is but the surface of a complex of subterranean bunkers that runs beneath the entire city. The entrances are concealed and gene-locked. We can take the citadel, and hold it long enough for our ships to land additional forces to cleanse the planet.’

  Zerberyn closed his eyes and considered. The parameters of the modified mission schematic would recommend utilising the substation’s communications and landing capability to apprise the fleet and call down Thunderhawk extraction to remove the data-cache to safety, and then most likely destroy the facility on their departure. But there was merit to Kalkator’s argument. He opened his eyes and met the warsmith’s glowing, red-lensed stare.

  That horned mask was hiding something, he felt certain, but the Iron Warrior was too altered from his exalted origins, his manner too void of humanity, for him to guess what.

  ‘We need only get into the city,’ said Kalkator.

  Zerberyn’s eyes followed the line of the railroad, across the plain and into Princus Praxa’s bleak industrial heart.

  There was merit.

  He nodded, feeling an adrenal buzz suffuse his muscles as his body prepared itself for the combat promised by that red horizon. It felt good.

  The fightback began now.

  Eighteen

  Terra – the Imperial Palace

  The Praetorian Way was the primary arterial between Anterior Six Gate and the Great Chamber. Fortified senatorial habs and basilicae soared above like mountains, bristling with rusted autocannon turrets and the roosts of angels, their stone faces teared by acid corrosion. Lumen globes mounted on posts lined the way, gli
ttering like an honour guard drawn from the span of the Imperium. Brass filters shaped the light into continents and oceans, each a commemoration to the world of an Army regiment destroyed in defence of Terra. Kilometre after kilometre, they stood vigil against the deepening twilight. Lord High Admiral Lansung had intended to climax his victory march here following the Navy’s triumph at Vesperilles, and over the course of the Siege both loyalists and traitors had exploited the arterial to move their war machines between inner and outer Palace.

  Now it was locked down.

  Barriers and visored enforcers stood on the ramps and slip roads. Like clockwork, a black Adeptus Arbites armoured transport would cruise down the centre lane with exhortations to good order and obedience booming from its loudspeakers.

  It was a rare sight then, if not an unprecedented one, when a squadron of Imperial Fists Land Raiders roared onto the flyway.

  They pulled away from the towers, moving in convoy. The cut light sharpened angular lines to a golden edge. The immense power of their engines rumbled into the angels’ eyries above, and ruffled the forever-twilight of the ornamental canopy of the Night Garden below.

  The Land Raider was a beast of war, one of unique inelegance in the armouries of the Angels of Death, but unrivalled in the execution of its singular function. The bonded layers of its composite armour were as near to impenetrable as the artifice of man could make them, the tank front-loaded with firepower and battlefield superiority. It was the ground-to-ground equivalent of a drop pod or a boarding torpedo, its role to deliver Space Marines into the violent, still-beating heart of battle with crushing force. Its armour, armament and machine temperament suited it equally to rolling over troops, armour and even the fortifications of an enemy in order to gain its target.

  The lead vehicle pulled up before the gilded stone portal of the Senatorum Imperialis.

  Sponson lascannons tracked back and forth over the imposing defensive structure as two more vehicles rolled out alongside it. The fourth and last, an ultra-rare example of the siege-breaking Achilles variant, heaved to a stop behind the other tanks. Its hull-mounted thunderfire cannon and sponson multi-meltas zeroed in on the gate.

  The Imperial Fists were dead. Ardamantua had ended them. But their serfs, the Phalanx, their Chapter houses here on Terra, their armouries, vaults and frozen gene-stocks – all still remained. The Chapter was mustering its strength for one last, defiant shout.

  The Achilles revved its engines, wrecking-ball frame leaning into its forward brakes.

  Its ultimatum was explicit.

  The Lucifer Blacks lieutenant in command of the guard detail appeared in the embrasure window of the guardroom above the gate. His hand was clamped to an earpiece and he was speaking urgently into a wired vox-unit mounted on the guardroom wall.

  Koorland popped the cupola hatch of the Achilles, then stepped off the roof of the tank and onto the road. Chapter serfs in gold tabards, wielding lasrifles and ornamental blades, were pouring out of the troop hatches and running forwards to secure the slowly opening gate. Following them from each transport came an Imperial Fist.

  An Excoriator, a Crimson Fist, a Black Templar and a Fist Exemplar.

  Or as Koorland knew them: Hemisphere, Absolution, Eternity and Daylight.

  They were each proud of their own heritage, of the distinctions that had arisen between them and their brothers over a thousand years. But it was a learned pride. It had been inculcated into them since their rebirth, nurtured by ritual and rote. Now they had been called home, brothers again, and that meant something deeper than words. Each of them wore the brilliant yellow of the Imperial Fists and carried the black fist on their pauldron. Eternity had devoted the full left half of his breastplate to a particularly prominent example and scraps of yellow cerecloth fluttered from the hilt of his longsword.

  They fell in behind Koorland, armed, intense, each the very best that a human being could become, and together five proud sons of Dorn marched on the Great Chamber.

  The Senatorum was in recess.

  Lesser lords in military dress and civilian frippery mingled in an anteroom around refectory tables laden with canapés, sipping on recaff and talking in hushed tones about the prior session’s business. The air trilled with privilege and the clink of glassware. Servitor cherubs hovered under a fresco of the Emperor delivering the Imperial Creed, weaving between columns and vid-capture drones bearing reams of parchment. A steady stream of dignitaries hurried from the ablutorials, hands still wet, and made for the waiting doors to the Great Chamber. A polite chime sounded through the vox-casters set up in the vaults, sounding the recall to session.

  It all stopped as Koorland and the Last Wall strode past.

  The Space Marines towered over the human lords like god-kings out of legend. A few hundred Lucifer Blacks, officers of the Adeptus Arbites and Palace Defence Forces, as well as liveried attachés of the High Lords, watched from various discreet corner rooms and side corridors, but stood off. Whether out of fear of his brothers or hesitation over stepping on another’s jurisdiction, Koorland could not care.

  He turned to face the doors.

  They were vast, oak, inlaid and fretted with silver from which an energy-nullifying protection field hummed. They were also open. Koorland focused his hearing on what lay beyond. His Lyman’s ear cued him to the strains of Ecclesiarch Mesring delivering the commencement blessing.

  ‘Bestia, qui in sapientia.’

  As the Adeptus Astartes’ adherence to the secular Imperial Truth minimised direct contact with the Ecclesiarchy, he knew little of the forms and practices.

  ‘Benedicat serviamus in regens et nos iterum.’

  But even to him, the Ecclesiarch’s address sounded strange.

  ‘Ave Veridus est.’

  There was no time to dwell on it further as the Space Marines passed through the open doors and into the Great Chamber.

  The tiered auditorium was almost empty. Row upon row of flipped-back wooden pews surrounded the central dais and a woolly throng of minor dignitaries milling around their seats. As Koorland was expecting, Ecclesiarch Mesring had the podium. There was an unkemptness to his hair and dress and an almost feral fervour in his eyes as he spoke, his voice coming asynchronously from the vox-casters positioned around the chamber.

  Lord Admiral Lansung and Fabricator General Kubik were the only two presently seated, the pair sniping at one another across the intervening chairs. The others moved around the main platform, stretching their legs and taking sips of purified water, half-listening to the aides, analysts and codifiers that pursued them around the base of the dais.

  It was Lansung who saw Koorland first.

  His face blanched as Hemisphere and Absolution spread out around the standing galleries on the outer edge of the chamber and swung their bolters to cover the dais. As well he might – the fat fool’s politicking had done more to end the Imperial Fists than any ork or Chrome. People began to cry out and went to ground amongst the pews. Daylight and Eternity hung back, spear and sword raised respectively, as Koorland marched down the aisle.

  A huge statue of Rogal Dorn stood to one side. He faced the aisle, the personal guarantor of safety to all delegates to this chamber, but his gaze was turned towards the dais, ever in judgement of the successors to his god-like brothers and father.

  There, Koorland stopped.

  There were other doors into the Great Chamber, other aisles to the dais, but Koorland had studied his battlefield and knew what terrain it had to exploit. His armour shone bright and perfect under the lighting directed onto the statue, and the impact of standing so outfitted before his own primarch, he who was the very symbol of this chamber’s endurance, was wholly deliberate.

  Udin Macht Udo pulled the Ecclesiarch from the podium. He took the lectern bar in both hands and glared into the stage lights over the fan array of vox-pickups. His braided grand admiral’s uniform was lu
minous white and glittered with medals, power and pomposity in bald measure. His scarred face was pink and furious, his maimed eye gleaming like a pearl in oyster flesh.

  ‘This assembly has heard your petition, Koorland, and dismissed it. We legislated the immediate dispersal of your Last Wall to their Chapters. Is this your idea of a coup? Will the Imperial Fists forever be remembered for the failed overthrow of the government of Holy Terra?’

  Koorland took a moment to centre himself and to allow the lords to clamour down.

  Instinctually, he scanned the chamber for Vangorich, an ally, but if the Grand Master was present at all then he was hidden amongst the lesser lords. His battleplate sensors called back no hostile targets. Another reason to prefer the battlefield. The words of Roboute Guilliman came to his mind then, written an age ago, at a time when such a future seemed possible for the then Legiones Astartes.

  ‘Space Marines would excel in peace as they excel in war, for the Emperor has crafted them to excel.’

  And more even than that: he was an Imperial Fist standing his ground.

  ‘My duty is to the defence of Terra, and the persecution of the enemies of Man.’ Koorland did not need a vox-caster array. He did not shout, but his voice, engineered for the infinite warzones of the stars, boomed to every corner of the auditorium. ‘You call yourselves a government, but right now, Udo, what I see before me are enemies of Man.’

  The High Lords’ protestations of shock and outrage served only to emphasise the schism between them. The imposing Provost-Marshal Vernor Zeck was nodding along with Koorland’s words, and sharing a glance with the equally thoughtful Inquisitorial Representatives. On the opposite side of the divide, Mesring cried murder, apostasy and worse. The Lord Commander bared his teeth and laughed.