by Nick Kyme
When they heard the rumble of battle tanks behind them, Va’lin and Dersius moved aside, one to either flank. Zantho was up in the cupola hatch and saluted down at them both as he rode past, now headed for Canticus north and the link up with Kor’ad.
Split from his battle-brothers while the armour column drove by, Va’lin found himself on the same side of the bridge as the Seraphim. When she had finished praying, he offered his open hand to her.
‘Your intervention was timely, Sister. You have mine and my brothers’ thanks.’
She at first looked at Va’lin’s gauntleted hand like it was a viper poised to bite her.
‘I have no diseases,’ said Va’lin, but it appeared his attempt at humour was misplaced for the Seraphim did not even smile. ‘Not that I know of, at least.’
After a few more seconds she simply stared.
When he realised the Sister had no idea what she was supposed to do, Va’lin gripped his own forearm by way of demonstration.
‘Like this,’ he told her.
Understanding, she reciprocated and they greeted one another in the way of warriors.
‘This is the old way,’ Va’lin explained. ‘We are taught it is from the days of the Legion.’
‘By whom?’ asked the Sister, her manner still a little prickly and over-stern. She was genuinely curious, though.
‘Our Chaplains, the keepers of our Chapter’s history and ancient lore.’
‘Do they teach you to burn your bodies in supplication to the dead, also?’
Va’lin cocked his head to the side a fraction and saw the Sister had revealed more of what she knew than she had intended. She had witnessed Sor’ad’s cremation, the Circle of Fire ritual, so must have been watching them in secret. Seeing no benefit in calling her out, Va’lin decided to let it go.
‘You do not trust easily, do you?’ he asked, releasing his grip so he could remove his helmet. ‘I am Brother Va’lin.’
Still unsure of the protocol, the Seraphim removed her own battle-helm.
She was younger than he had expected, and more beautiful. A compassion in her eyes undercut her more obvious zealotry and in that moment Va’lin believed a genuine accord between the Order and the Chapter could be possible.
‘Sister Stephina,’ she told him.
‘You were at the council, one of the canoness’s officers.’
‘I am Preceptor Angerer’s devoted disciple, yes.’ An awkward silence descended, and Stephina looked around at the carnage. The end of the armoured column was in sight and soon they would be back with their respective warriors again.
‘So few of you,’ she said. ‘To take this bridge – you needed more warriors. Only nine…’
‘And now we are eight,’ interrupted another voice.
Va’lin saluted Iaptus immediately. The brother-sergeant approached in an open manner but gave nothing away of his true feelings, despite the fact he too had removed his helm.
‘You have the gratitude of the Wyverns and our Chapter, Sister.’ He did spare a sideways glance in Va’lin’s direction, which promised a reckoning later.
‘Your… brother has already given it,’ Stephina replied. ‘To attempt such a task with so few. I do not know if it is reckless bravery or simple stupidity that drives you.’
The tanks had passed; Stephina’s Seraphim were waiting. She nodded, without needing an answer and boosted up and across the bridge to rejoin her forces, leaving Va’lin and Iaptus alone.
‘Illus is dead,’ Iaptus began before Va’lin could speak.
‘Brother-sergeant, I–’
Iaptus held up his hand to stop Va’lin short. ‘He was slain by Black Legion, enemy warriors we owe a great debt of blood.’ He looked over at the distant form of Sister Stephina. She was gathering her flock, doubtless calling in for extraction. ‘She is right. We are too few, and have been for several weeks. But we also have our duty, the one given to us by Captain Drakgaard. He is not Dac’tyr, he is not Fourth, but he is our general in this war and so we will heed his orders as if they were Vulkan’s himself. And you will heed my orders, Va’lin. Two of our brothers live. One does not. I don’t have the prescience of Librarian Xarko, so I cannot say if the outcome would have been different had you not defied me, but I do know it will not happen a second time.’ He leaned in closer, enhancing his threat and presence. ‘Were we not on the frontline and needed elsewhere, every one of our few, I would have submitted you to Chaplain Elysius for punishment. Some say he has grown soft since he returned from capture, but believe me when I tell you his wrath is undiminished.’
Va’lin bowed his head, ‘Yes, brother-sergeant.’
The heat of Iaptus’s barely contained anger lingered and was slow to fade.
‘Don’t make me brand you with the penitent’s mark, Va’lin. Show me again why you are part of the Wyverns, why Captain Ba’ken and Sergeant Lok recommended you so highly.’
‘I will, brother-sergeant.’
Iaptus held his gaze a moment longer. For Va’lin it was like staring into the mouth of a furnace.
‘I know you will, brother.’
Exfiltration would be momentary. Stephina had called in their transport and was informed it was en route to them at Salvation Bridge. The Seraphim would not join the Salamanders at the heart of Canticus north – they were to redeploy with their Order. According to the plan discussed during the council, they would act as a reserve force for an Adeptus Astartes and an allied Imperial spearhead. The memory of Canoness Angerer’s redeployments returned and for a fleeting second Stephina wondered at their sagacity. She remonstrated herself for her doubt almost instantly, forcing her attention to the present and her Throne-given duty.
Helia, Avensi and Cassia all lived. Several of the chorus did not, having given their lives in service of the Emperor. Would that all Adepta Sororitas could be martyred in such glorious cause. It was that Stephina ever hoped for, that and a holy vision of their saint.
‘Four dead,’ announced Cassia gruffly. Her right eye had a patch over it that concealed the empty socket beneath but not the grievous scarring around it she had carried since the war against the tyranid on Gethseda. Her black armour was flecked with blood, her chainsword bearing the grim evidence of her kills.
‘They are at His side now,’ said Avensi, and muttered a quiet prayer for her Sisters’ souls. Avensi was a zealot, and wore her hair shaved almost to the scalp with votive tattoos inked onto her pate. Whilst she and Cassia offered up their thoughts to the dead, Helia approached Stephina with something else on her mind.
‘What were they like, Sister?’ she asked. Unlike the others, Helia was without scarification or devotional mutilation. Her hair was almost pure white, cropped to her shoulders. It reminded Stephina of chiselled alabaster, for like Helia’s face, it was edged and cut like stone.
‘Who?’ asked Stephina, her eyes searching the horizon for the gunships that would ferry them from the battlefield and back to the Order.
‘The heathens,’ answered Helia, and gestured to the Salamanders. ‘I hear they call themselves fire-born?’
All four Sister Superiors turned to regard the Adeptus Astartes.
‘Unexpected,’ said Stephina, looking back.
Cassia nodded, as if catching on to Stephina’s meaning. ‘They fight hard and with courage. Any warrior who will shed his or her blood alongside me and stand, I regard as an ally.’
‘Their practices, though, are… barbaric,’ said Avensi.
‘What did he say to you, Sister?’ asked Helia.
‘He told me he had no diseases before greeting me in the old way of his Legion.’ Confused silence followed her remarks, so Stephina continued. ‘He also said we do not trust easily, and in that he was right at least.’
‘Well they have earned my allegiance, Sisters,’ declared Cassia. ‘Such brave warriors.’
‘But so few,’ said Stephina, donning her helmet as she looked to the sky where the sound of approaching gunships could be heard.
CHAPTER TWENT
Y-TWO
Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’
So named for the immense stone pillars beneath which were the burial mounds of saints, ecclesiarchs and palatines, the Cairns had ever been a place of solemnity in Canticus. That sense of reverence had been shattered with the arrival of war, and the Cairns was no longer a place of peace anymore. It was a vast area, deep into the southern district and far beyond the fragile territory the Imperials had established with their previous victory.
Surrounded by his honour guard, the Serpentia, and standing amidst these ruins, Drakgaard regarded a holo-map of the region.
‘What do you see, Elysius?’ he asked his Chaplain.
The grey image rotated slowly, hazing in and out of focus as it completed each revolution. It showed contours, structures, even a degree of geological depth. The various reliquaries, tombs and votive shrines Canoness Angerer had described were visible as darker areas on the map, representing fissures and subterranean undercrofts. Some were very deep, and the trail of relic sites went for long periods without interruption.
‘I see a world beneath a world, brother-captain,’ said the Chaplain. ‘Hidden from our sight.’
Word had come back from several of the other battle groups operating within Canticus. The assault on Salvation Bridge had been successful, thanks in no small part to some of Angerer’s Seraphim. In the templum district and adjacent slums, Kor’ad had conducted a successful bombing campaign to link up with Sergeant Zantho’s armoured column. Enemy resistance was staunch but ultimately overcome. Combined, it was the single largest territorial gain the Salamanders had made since arriving on Heletine.
‘Here, though?’ asked Drakgaard. ‘The war rests on this city alone. Victory in Canticus means victory on all of Heletine. I need to understand why that is.’
‘Perhaps the canoness is right,’ offered Elysius. ‘Some ritual significance has drawn the warlord of the Black Legion to the city. By thwarting these plans and killing him, we break his warband and free Heletine of this tyranny. It matters not, brother-captain. All that matters is we prosecute this duty to its bitter conclusion and make the lives lost in payment of it worth something.’
By turning his wrist, Drakgaard altered the bare topographical view and brought up a tactical overlay displaying the current disposition of his forces throughout the Cairns. Such a large region demanded a wide dispersal and Drakgaard had split what remained of his troops and the Cadian survivors into two distinct battle groups. Eighteen pillars, or ‘Cairns’, soared into the smoke-choked air above Canticus. Occasionally, when a strong wind briefly swept away this red-grey miasma, the summits were visible without need of spectral magnification. Seven of the eighteen still had the statues of the pious individuals whose bones were allegedly buried beneath them, along with a swathe of lesser faithful, too numerous and unimportant to mention beyond an engraving on a votive plaque at the base of the pillar.
According to its now scattered population, the pillars were believed to ‘uphold the roof of heaven’ and should they ever fall, the very firmament above Heletine would collapse. Drakgaard wondered if there was any truth to that. Were the heretics attempting to sunder the pillars? Was there a weakening of the veil between reality and the warp in this place, and would this act of destruction bring about a rift between them? Drakgaard was no psyker. His knowledge of such metaphysics, while far superior to the average citizen of the Imperium, was crude compared to the likes of a Chapter Librarian. He knew the pillars were immense in size and despite the war all had endured so far. Perhaps the heretics sought to use other, non-corporeal means to collapse them? Certainly, he had heard of great temples that had stood for millennia crumbling inexplicably when their spiritual link to the Emperor was severed. It would explain the targeted destruction of the relic sites as well as the Adepta Sororitas’s presence on Heletine.
All of the eighteen adhered to a pattern, forming an octakaidecagon with nine pillars each on either side of the Sanctium Vius, or ‘holy road’, a long and expansive processional avenue that ran all the way from the Cairns to the Veloth desert in the east.
Drakgaard’s two battle groups, led by himself and Veteran Sergeant Kadoran, were arrayed either side of this processional, deep into the labyrinthine avenues and sprawling habitation towers that riddled the area. It was tight, fraught with dead ends, choke points and blind zones. In short, it was dangerous territory and likely occupied in some force. Unfortunately that enemy was also currently in hiding. Fortunately, Drakgaard had the means to seek them out, from whatever rock they had crawled under.
‘Targons,’ he addressed a squad of five fire-born clad in hulking Centurion armour. The Targons were borrowed from Fourth Company, nominally the heavier class of Assault Marine compared to the lighter and faster Wyverns. Each armature or rig was equipped with siege drills on both arms, and underslung heavy flamers. Unlike his men, Sergeant Bar’dak’s rig was equipped with meltas instead. All five Targons were armed with hurricane bolters, fitted to the torso. Essentially individual warsuits, the Centurions were effectively worn by the Assault Marines who simply stepped into the up-armoured rig in full battleplate.
At the sound of Captain Drakgaard’s voice, Brother-Sergeant Bar’dak turned. He was slow to do so, the warsuit pilot sacrificing speed and manoeuvrability for superior offensive and defensive capabilities.
‘You are the vanguard, brother-sergeant,’ said Drakgaard, clenching his fist to shut off the hololith. ‘Take us in.’
Bar’dak led the line of warsuits out. Within minutes, their armoured forms were lost amidst smoke and dust. Only the sound of their heavy footfalls as they stomped through the rubble gave away the fact of their existence.
Drakgaard had his Serpentia honour guard and a tactical squad moving up in support. He switched his retinal lens display to tactical view and saw a truncated schematic of the terrain and his units advancing through it rendered as icons over his left eye. He opened up the vox-link.
‘Captain Helfer, you are to stay behind us with the Devastators until we breach this area proper.’
‘Understood, my lord,’ came the swift reply. Helfer was the leader of four squads of elite Kasrkins. They wore heavier armour than Colonel Redgage’s regular troopers and carried rebreather masks along with an array of specialist assault weaponry and hellguns, an enhanced version of the lasgun. Hellguns enjoyed improved armour penetration capability over their standard-issue counterpart, but even with this augmentation they were no match for power armour. Ordinarily cast as storm troopers, the Kasrkins were reduced to a support role until the Targons could establish the level of enemy resistance and root it out. Drakgaard had assured Redgage he would not use his men as bait, or treat their lives cheaply. Against Traitor Space Marines, the Kasrkin were at a disadvantage. Drakgaard wanted to mitigate that first before deploying into the Canticus war zone.
An icon associated with the second battle group flashed up on Drakgaard’s right lens display, rendered in luminous crimson over a transparent background tinged the same only lighter. Veteran Sergeant Kadoran had just given notification of simultaneous deployment of his own troops. As of yet, there was no word from Canoness Angerer. Drakgaard was about to try to raise her on the vox when a final marker blinked up on his display below the first.
‘Sisters are moving in behind us,’ he voxed to Elysius alone. ‘Angerer left it late for confirmation.’
The Chaplain had joined the Serpentia as part of Drakgaard’s command squad.
‘She is still unhappy that you insisted on us going in first.’
‘It is our right,’ Drakgaard replied. ‘I won’t have the glory of this victory stolen from under us by the Ecclesiarchy.’
‘Glory? Is that why we are here, brother-captain?’
‘Now is not the time to try and peer into my immortal soul, Chaplain.’
‘Just so long as you are clear why we are fighting this war.’
‘It is our duty, Elysius.’
‘That is our purpose
, to do our duty, not the reason why we came to Heletine.’
The pain of his injuries was making him irascible, so Drakgaard cut the conversation short before he said something to the Chaplain he would later regret. There was one thing he wished he had voiced aloud, though. A question.
Can we trust them, brother?
Angerer fed the string of rosary pearls between her gauntleted fingers. She paused when she reached the black opal. All those souls she had saved and just this one eluded her. Sensing she was being watched, Angerer glanced up. Laevenius was staring at her.
‘How can you know where?’ asked the scarred warrior. Her Celestians were nearby, waiting patiently for their Sister Superior and canoness outside of the ship. It was one of several corralled together and brimming with Adepta Sororitas. They had touched down at a landing strip at the edge of Canticus, ostensibly to redeploy once the Salamanders and Cadians had made sufficient ingress into the city and engaged the enemy.
‘With faith,’ Angerer replied, letting go of the rosary, ‘and with this.’ She produced a small, brass artefact. When flat it resembled a teardrop, but unfolded across its fragile hinges it was more like a compass. In fact, that is exactly what it was. Setting the brass compass down, Angerer then took a phial of clear liquid from her trappings.
‘Precious little sorrow left,’ she murmured.
Laevenius remained still and stared at the glass bottle as Angerer decanted the last few drops onto the arrow of the compass. Then she waited. The seconds seemed to lengthen, both warriors waiting in silence for the compass to move. It trembled at first then the arrow spun around to settle in one direction. Angerer removed one of her gauntlets, and held her bare hand over the compass so she could feel its emanations against her skin.
‘Not far…’ she said. When she put her gauntlet back on, Laevenius saw a reddening of Angerer’s skin from where the compass had lightly blistered it. Gently, Angerer picked up the compass and handed it to Laevenius. ‘Give this to only your most trusted warrior then get everyone on board. We are leaving immediately.’