by Dan Abnett
Know no fear. The Battle of Calth
( Horus Heresy - 19 )
Dan Abnett
Mustering for war against the orks, the Ultramarines Legion is attacked by the Word Bearers on the planet of Calth, and the forces of Chaos openly reveal their part in the Heresy.
Unaware of the wider Heresy and following the Warmaster’s increasingly cryptic orders, Roboute Guilliman returns to Ultramar to muster his Legion for war against the orks massing in the Veridian system. Without warning, their supposed allies in the Word Bearers Legion launch a devastating invasion of Calth, scattering the Ultramarines’ fleet and slaughtering all who stand in their way. This confirms the worst scenario Guilliman can imagine – Lorgar means to settle their bitter rivalry once and for all. As the traitors summon foul daemonic hosts and all the forces of Chaos, the Ultramarines are drawn into a grim and deadly struggle in which neither side can prevail.
THE HORUS HERESY
It is a time of legend.
The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.
His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.
Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.
Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.
Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.
The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.
The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended. The Age of Darkness has begun.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The XIII Legion ‘Ultramarines’
Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the XIII Legion
Tauro Nicodemus, Tetrarch of Ultramar (Saramanth), Primarch’s Champion
Eikos Lamiad, Tetrarch of Ultramar (Konor), Primarch’s Champion
Justarius, Venerable Dreadnought
Telemechrus, Contemptor Dreadnought
Marius Gage, Chapter Master, 1st Chapter
Remus Ventanus, Captain, 4th Company
Kiuz Selaton, Sergeant, 4th Company
Lyros Sydance, Captain, 4th Company
Archo, Sergeant, 4th Company
Ankrion, Sergeant, 4th Company
Barkha, Sergeant, 4th Company
Naron Vattian, Scout, 4th Company
Saur Damocles, Captain, 6th Company
Domitian, Sergeant, 6th Company
Braellen, 6th Company
Androm, 6th Company
Evexian, Captain, 7th Company
Amant, 7th Company
Lorchas, Captain, 9th Company
Aethon, Captain, 19th Company
Erikon Gaius, Captain, 21st Company
Tylos Rubio, 21st Company
Honoria, Captain, 23rd Company
Teus Sullus, Captain, 39th Company
Greavus, Sergeant, 39th Company
Kaen Atreus, Chapter Master, 6th Chapter
Klord Empion, Chapter Master, 9th Chapter
Vared, Chapter Master, 11th Chapter
Ekritus, Captain, 111th Company
Phrastorex, Captain, 112th Company
Anchise, Sergeant, 112th Company
Sharad Antoli, Chapter Master, 13th Chapter
Taerone, Captain, 135th Company
Aeonid Thiel, Sergeant, 135th Company [marked]
Evido Banzor, Chapter Master, 16th Chapter
Heutonicus, Captain, 161st Company
Jaer, Apothecary, 161st Company
Kerso, 161st Company
Bormarus, 161st Company
Zabo, 161st Company
Anteros, 161st Company
Honorius Luciel, Captain, 209th Company
The XVII Legion ‘Word Bearers’
Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the XVII Legion
Kor Phaeron, The Black Cardinal
Erebus, Dark Apostle
Argel Tal, Gal Vorbak
Essember Zote, Gal Vorbak
Foedral Fell, Commander
Morpal Cxir, Commander
Hol Beloth, Commander
Maloq Kartho, Apostle to Hol Beloth
Sorot Tchure
Ulmor Nul
Cults
The Ushmetar Kaul, ‘The Brotherhood of the Knife’
Criol Fowst, Confided Lieutenant
The Tzenvar Kaul, ‘The Recursive Family’
The Jeharwanate, ‘The Ring’
The Kaul Mandari, ‘The Gene-kin’
Vil Teth, Gene-named
Imperial Personae
Uhl Kehal Hesst, Server of Instrumentation, Mechanicum
Meer Edv Tawren, Magos of Analyticae
Magos Uldort
Arook Serotid, Master of Skitarii
Cyramica, Skitarii
Shipmaster Sazar, Macragge’s Honour
Bohan Zedoff
Representative Macragge’s Honour
Magos Pelot,
Shipmaster Ouon Sanctity of Saramanth
Hommed,
Imperial Army
Colonel Sparzi, Neride 10th
Bowe Hellock, Sergeant, Numinus 61st
Dogent Krank, Numinus 61st
Bale Rane, Numinus 61st
Citizens of Calth
Seneschal Arbute
Oll Persson
Graft, Servitor Menial
Hebet Zybes,
Katt
Neve Rane
‘When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas
we conquered long ago.’
– the philosopharch Nietzsche, circa M2
‘They are dead, they will not live;
they are shades, they will not arise;
to that end you have visited
them with destruction and
wiped out all remembrance of them.’
The Apocrypha Terra, date unknown
TARGET // ACQUISITION
‘The Phase of Acquisition, or preparatory condition, is a vital segment of any successful prosecution. Though a warrior must be prepared to battle reactively without notice or forewarning, it is when he prepares and plans for war, and accommodates the specifics of his adversary into those plans, that he is most successful… This is war as craft or science, as I have remarked before. Often the fight is won before the first shot has been fired, or even before notice of the first shot has been given.’
Guilliman, Notes Towards Martial Codification, 7.3.ii
1
[mark: -136.57.07]
Who are the first to die?
Most commentaries will cite Honorius Luciel (captain, 209th) and seventeen others by the hand of Sorot Tchure on the company deck of the cruiser Samothrace at mark: -00.19.45, but these are not in fact the first combat fatalities.
The fleet tender Campani
le is mob-boarded and taken off the Tarmus Apogee approximately one hundred and thirty-six hours [sidereal] before count start as a preliminary to the Calth assault.
Three thousand seven hundred and nine crew members are executed, including the ship master, the Navigator, the echelon port master, two fabricators from the yards, and a detail from the Neride Regulators 10th serving as deck protection.
Proof of the loss of the Campanile, delivered to Primarch Guilliman around mark: 01:30:00 demonstrates calculation and planning on behalf of the adversary, and establishes what Primarch Guilliman refers to as a ‘preparatory phase of acquisition’, which refutes any claims that the conflict was born out of mistake or misadventure.
This represents a ‘precondition of malice’ on the part of the adversary, and strengthens Primarch Guilliman’s hand in that it removes any compunction to resist or fight back with full military force.
There is no longer any point trying to reason with his brother, because his brother is not, in fact, mistakenly trying to kill him at all.
Lorgar has been planning it all along.
Precise details of the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Campanile are lost and alone in such darkness, on a deceleration arc past the outer moons, one small ship, overweight and wheezing, over three and a half thousand souls because no log record or data canister is recovered from the wreck which had been penetrated by something in the night, made in the night, made out of the night, a void-hard darkness with teeth and eyes, squirting through every airgate and hatch seal and vent tube like pressurised oil though it is assumed that the vessel was overhauled by a fighting ship from the XVII Legion’s fleet and taken with all hands all of them screaming as they were blinded and suffocated, nowhere to flee to, no escape, no door that would open except to bare and airless space, and still the thing made of night filling the Campanile up, every compartment and deckway, every chamber and access, like black storm water flash-flooding an underground habitat, blinding and choking and drowning everything, filling rooms, filling mouths, filling lungs, filling ears, filling stomachs, stewing brains, smothering gunfire, blunting blades, swallowing the screams of the dying and the overcome, stealing the screams away and laughing them back in mocking voices that promised that screams were nothing more than the chamber music of dark monarchs mankind had only just begun to dream of so that its anchorage codes could be used to penetrate the platform yards.
Course irregularities are noticed of the Campanile by Calth System Control at mark: -136.14.12 and again at mark: -135.01.20 and mark: -122.11.35.
Vox contact is recorded as lost at mark: -99.21.59.
Two hours later, Calth System Control marks the Campanile ‘cause for concern’, and the Master of the Port determines that a support intercept should be sent out if nothing further is received by the end of shift. There are one hundred and ninety-two thousand items of shipping traffic in the Veridian System that day because of the fleet conjunction.
The support intercept is not sent out because the Campanile resumes code transmission at mark: -88.10.21.
The crew of the Campanile is listed on the roll of the fallen in the aftermath of the battle, though none are ever seen again / except they were, but not in any form that they could be recognised, apart from their screams.
[mark: -124.24.03]
The first of the fleet advances have hauled their scarred hulls into the arrestor slips and come to full stop in the high anchor station above Numinus City. They are warships that have gone a long way, and killed a great many things, and they wear the insignia and colours of the XVII proudly.
Luciel opens the airgate hatch. His company has been assigned close protection of Numinus High Anchor. He has requested the duty personally.
Tall as one big man on another big man’s shoulders, broad as any three muscle-heavy athletes, his bulk augmented by the massive ceramite plate of gleaming Praetor-pattern armour, Luciel opens the airgate hatch.
The light inside finds him blue and gold. His skull-close helm is in place. Behind the visor slits, Luciel’s eyes react as fast as the optic augmetics in the slit rims. Involuntary combat instincts take over: a new space is revealed, so he must consider it and assess any threats. An airgate compartment, sixty cubic metres, grav supporting decking, self-seal armoured skinning, neutral normalised atmospherics (though Luciel can feel the pressure decay of the air pumps’ end-cycle). There’s a reciprocal airgate hatch at the other end of the gate compartment.
There is a figure in front of the door. It is another Space Marine in full wargear.
Luciel is XIII Legion, an Ultramarine. Blue and gold, clean and sharp. Armour burnished to a silk gleam. The Praetor-pattern is a new variant, locally fabricated at Veridia Forge, not yet a formally accepted mark within the Legiones Astartes.
The other is XVII Legion, a Word Bearer. His pattern is the current Mark IV, the Maximus, built for Imperial supremacy. Its fixed frontal armour and angular helm are familiar.
Its colours are not. Dark crimson, with gunmetal edging. Company symbols and squad brands lacquered in dark shapes, almost undecipherable, as if they have been erased or are yet to be painted. Where is the plasma-etched grey of the old scheme?
The Word Bearer is almost unrecognisable. For a nanosecond, the figure registers to Luciel as an unknown, a threat.
Transhuman responses are already there, unbidden. Adrenaline spikes to heighten an already formidable reaction time. Muscle remembers. Luciel wears his boltgun, an oiled black pit bull of a weapon, in his thigh holster. He can draw, aim and fire in less than a second. The range is six metres, the target unobstructed. There is no chance of missing. Maximus plate, frontally augmented, might stop a mass-reactive shell, so Luciel will fire two and aim for the visor slits. The airgate skin-sleeve is self-repairing, and will survive las-fire damage, but a bolter shot will shred it open, so Luciel also braces for the explosive decompression of a ricochet or a miss-hit. At a simple, subconscious neural urge, boot-sole electromagnets charge to clamp onto the deck plates.
Luciel thinks theoretical, but of course there is no theoretical. There is no tactical precedent for a Space Marine to fight a Space Marine. The idea is nonsense. He thinks practical, and that directs him to the visor slits. He can make a clean kill headshot in less than a second and a half, two rounds for kill insurance, and probably protect the atmospheric integrity of the airgate.
All this, all this decided, unbidden, instinctive, in less than a nanosecond.
The Word Bearer raises his right hand. Moving it where? Moving it towards his primary weapon, a plasma cannon in a pull-to-unlock sheath?
The hand spreads, opens like a flower, palm forward, the light glinting off the tiny mail links.
‘Luciel,’ says the Word Bearer. ‘Brother.’
‘Tchure,’ Luciel replies, his voice a growl over the helmet speaker. ‘Brother,’ he adds.
‘Well met,’ says the warrior of the XVII, stepping forward.
‘A long time,’ says Luciel, coming to meet him. They embrace, forearm guards clattering off backplate panels.
‘Tell me, brother,’ says Luciel. ‘What new things have you learned to kill since last we met?’
2
[mark: -116.50.32]
Aeonid Thiel, Ultramarine, marked for discipline and censure, boards the blue and gold Stormbird on a landing strip two thousand kilometres south of Numinus City. The sun, which is a star named Veridia, is a dot of pearl in the pale sky. A beautiful star, Thiel has heard it said. A beautiful star and a fine world.
Before him, the Dera Caren Lowlands, the district of manufactories and assembly halls, matt metal in the sunlight. The buildings, clean, simple and utilitarian, wisp white vapours into the clear sky through rotating roof vents and cycle chimneys. Areas of forest have been preserved between the finishing concourses where the labour force can rest and mingle between shifts.
In the west, just a cloudy ghost low in the sky, one of the orbital shipyards has just risen like a moon. Thiel knows of eight o
thers. Soon, Calth will rival Macragge’s manufacturing output, perhaps in two or three decades. There is already talk of a projected superorbital plate. Like Terra. Terra has superorbital plates. The master worlds of the Imperium have plates. Calth will join Macragge, Saramanth, Konor, Occluda and Iax as one of the master worlds of the Ultramar sector, and between them, they will govern a vast swathe of the Ultima Segmentum. Calth will be one of the anchor points of the coming civilisation.
Calth is an embodiment of the reward that centuries of warfare have been leading to.
For this reason, Calth must not fall. For its status as part of the dominion of Ultramar, it must not fall. For its shipbuilding capacity and its forge world, it must not fall.
Intelligence has been received from Horus. A theoretical has been identified. It must be a great deal more than a theoretical, Thiel believes, for mustering and conjunction to have been taken this far, unless the new Warmaster is anxious to prove his authority. To mobilise the XIII, the largest of all the Legions, in an essentially singular war effort, that takes balls. To tell Roboute Guilliman, the primarch with the least to prove, how to do his duty, that takes balls of adamantium. To suggest that Guilliman might need help…
Horus is a great man. Thiel is not ashamed to admit that. Thiel has seen him, served with him, admired him. His selection as Warmaster makes reasonable sense. It was only going to be one of three or perhaps four, no matter how other primarchs might deceive themselves. To be the Emperor’s avatar, his proxy? Only Horus, Guilliman, Sanguinius, perhaps Dorn. Any other claims for viability were delusional. Even narrowed down to four, Dorn was too draconian and Sanguinius too ethereal. It was only ever going to be Horus or Guilliman. Horus always had the passion and the charisma. Guilliman was more clinical, considered. Perhaps that tipped it. So did, perhaps, the fact that Guilliman already had responsibilities. An empire, half-built. Ultramar. Administration. Populations. A culture. Guilliman had already evolved beyond the status of warlord, where Horus was still a killer of worlds and a subjugator of adversaries.