‘The Emperor’s protection.’
‘From what? We need protection from you, that’s what we need.’
The conversation was getting loud, even with all the shouts and whoops nearby. Bisset dropped his voice, hoping Guevion would do likewise. ‘You think dropping buildings is going to help your cause?’
Guevion sighed, suddenly a very tired old man. ‘Well…’ he said. ‘Well… I can’t say that was good. No, I can’t. But… Nothing else was making you listen.’
You , Bisset thought. You, you, you . How much of the Mortisian population, he wondered, had this mindset? It was, in its own way, an even more troubling symptom of rebellion than a dozen felled towers. Then, over the noise of the crowd, he heard the rumble of engines and clanking of treads. ‘You have our attention now,’ he said.
Guevion heard what was coming, too. ‘Throne,’ he muttered and stood up. His automatic use of the oath gave Bisset a quick pang of sympathy. He was sorry the old goat was about to die. Guevion scuttled back over the rubble, shouting. The dancing came to a ragged halt. The thunder of approaching Guard grew louder. The rebels grabbed guns and ran for defensive positions. Bisset counted about a hundred people, armed with nothing more impressive than typical Mortisian-make lasrifles. They couldn’t have been the force that had destroyed the Munitorum palace. Whoever had the bigger explosives had moved on in the days since the strike. This lot was just holding a major artery checkpoint and getting drunk. They were going to be slaughtered.
Feeling more than a bit tired and old himself, Bisset stood and worked his way deeper into the ruins, away from the street. No point getting caught in the crossfire. Might as well wait until the Guard had done its duty, and the shooting and the bleeding were over. He’d choose a calm moment to approach a Guardsman who didn’t look too trigger-happy.
The thunder was now the sound of implacable law and unforgiving justice. The stubber rounds, las-fire and cannon shells slammed into the rebel positions before the Imperial Guard came into sight. People screamed. Bodies and debris fountained into the air. Pathetic return fire lanced into the darkness, and then the Emperor’s hammer appeared. Tight ranks of infantry marched ahead of two rows of tanks. The vehicles were three abreast on the road, their flanks almost flush with the building facades. The rear three were Leman Russ battle tanks, and it was their high-explosive rounds that had been punching craters into the ramshackle defences. At first, Bisset thought the first-row vehicles were Hellhounds, but then he spotted the rear-mounted gas chambers. They were Bane Wolves. He scrambled back deeper into the ruins.
The Guardsmen dropped to their knees and let loose another concentrated burst of fire into the rebel lines. Bisset saw more bodies drop, but there was also a steeling of resistance, as if the inevitability of what was coming, through some perverse alchemy, transmuted despair into determination. Then the Guard moved to the side, and the Bane Wolves rolled forward. Bisset saw Guevion illuminated by the fire behind him. He was in the dead centre of the barricades. He had no chance. No one there did. There was no cover from what a Bane Wolf fired. Bisset forced himself to watch, desperately clutching the fact that the defenders were traitors.
The chem cannons opened up, spewing a cloud of gas over the rebels. The gas was the sick green of violent plague and bad death, and its movement was a savage roiling. The screams that reached Bisset’s ears were brief, but unspeakable in their agony. He saw skin liquefy, pouring off bones like candle wax. The screams had a gargling quality as blood boiled in veins and lungs. An entire swath of the street several yards deep was scoured of organic life. The purge was absolute.
The clouds dissipated. Beyond their reach, there were still a handful of rebels. They were routed. In full retreat, they were running down the road away from the Guard, disappearing into the rubble of the palace and down lanes between the buildings that still stood. Bolter and las-fire followed them, cutting more down as they fled. Another couple of minutes , Bisset thought, and this will be over .
There was a flash over his head, and a lascannon shot punched into a Bane Wolf’s gas reservoir. The tank exploded, spreading its angry death for dozens of metres around it. This time, it was the men of the Mortisian Guard whose screams were awful and short, and whose skin was puddling in the road. Bisset’s jaw dropped and he threw himself flat. The Leman Russ’s turret rotated in his direction, and the heavy bolter sponson chugged rounds. The turret hadn’t moved half its arc before a second lascannon beam blasted it from the chassis.
Armoured beings stormed past him. They were terrible, golden angels, and they fell upon the Guard with bolter and chainsword. They savaged the units that had escaped the release of the gas and tore the tanks apart. They were monsters who bore the garb of beauty. They were giants in the service of war turned into art. There were only five of them. There were a hundred times as many Guardsmen, and that was far too few. The battle was even more one-sided than the attack on the rebels had been. Within seconds, hulls had been ripped open, treads yanked from wheels and used as whips, and men scythed into shrieking meat. The Chaos Space Marines stood proudly in the carnage, gods well pleased by their allotment of blood. The surviving rebels emerged from their hiding places. They began to cheer, and the cry was taken up by more and more people pouring into the streets.
In the span of a few seconds, the insurrection on Aighe Mortis had gone, for Bisset, from tragedy to nightmare. Now he had to survive the coming minutes, long enough to tell someone off-planet what he now knew. He glanced behind him. He saw no one. He took one more look at the carnage in the street, then jumped to his feet and ran. Even as he did, he wondered what he thought he was doing. Did he want the enemy to see him? Did he think a mad dash was a smarter escape than a stealthy crawl in the shadows?
He didn’t care. He just wanted space between him and the angels of terror and beauty.
He had covered about a hundred metres when they saw him. The shot came a fraction of a second before the sound of the report. The bolter slug tore a wound in the air just to his right. He started zigzagging. Rounds dug up puffs of debris near his feet. He jerked left, then left again, and this time, the round kissed his cheek. He felt the burn, heard the roar of an angry hornet. He ducked to the right and kept on going.
‘You grazed him,’ Raiel said to Gabrille.
‘I know. Idiot feinted left twice. What kind of strategy is that? He almost ran into my shot.’
Raiel watched the man dwindling in the distance. ‘Maybe give him a couple more.’
Gabrille obliged, then lowered his bolt pistol. ‘That should do,’ he said. ‘Is there a vox for him to use?’
‘They’re scattered about. He’ll find one. He should work for it a little bit, though.’ The Sword’s laughter through his helmet’s grille was a handful of nails and bells. ‘After all, we don’t want it to look too easy.’
In the strategium, Toharan said, ‘With respect, brother-captain, how can there be any question about where duty summons us? The Swords of Epiphany are fomenting insurrection on a planet to which some of us have genetic ties. What could be clearer? We have been made to waste time on this diversionary action here, while the primary target is falling.’
Volos understood what Toharan was saying. He felt the same urge to defend the Chapter’s honour. The Black Dragons had no Chapter world. Or rather, its location and its true name were lost to them. It lived in their legends and collective hopes as Gauntlet, but whether the word stood for the planet, or the test that must be undergone to find it, was unknown. Without that centre and a stable pool for recruitment, the Dragons had been forced to become genetic opportunists, always looking for planets whose environments could produce individuals who were suitable raw material for induction into their ranks. Aighe Mortis, the hive at its most brutal, had given more than one of its sons to the transformation. The planet was not just a useful resource, therefore. The Black Dragons owed it a debt. To lose it to traitors was unthinkable.
But.
‘I don’t think Antag
onis was a diversion,’ Volos said.
Epistolary Rothnove looked up from his examination of the star charts Volos had brought to the war council. The Librarian’s skin was a dark grey, and though he bore no horns, bony growths covered his head, twisting and entwining in patterns that resembled runes. His eyes were lost in shadows beneath his jutting brows. ‘What was it, then?’ he asked.
‘What Nessun did here was designed to cause maximum destruction. He wanted us to deploy an Exterminatus bombardment. If we had cracked the planet in half, all the better. Then we would never have been able to use the xenos site, and discover his true objective.’
Vritras said, ‘You contend, then, that Aighe Mortis is not that objective.’
‘No. Aighe Mortis is the diversion. With the doubtworm, Nessun was attempting to cover his tracks.’ He tapped the chart. With the vision from the dig site still vivid in his mind, it had taken him less than an hour to find a match for the star patterns he had seen. ‘Flebis is the target.’
‘You would have us abandon Aighe Mortis?’ Toharan asked. His tone was accusatory, self-righteous.
‘That would be heresy,’ Massorus warned.
‘I am recommending no such thing,’ Volos answered. ‘I am saying that I think we should proceed to Flebis first, counter Nessun there, then return and liberate Aighe Mortis.’
‘We have an eyewitness report of Swords of Epiphany forces in action,’ Toharan spat. ‘But we should ignore that and let the insurrection grow?’
‘We know of one combat squad. What I fear, brothers, is that we might let ourselves be drawn into combat on Aighe Mortis while a worse threat develops on Flebis. If we move on Aighe Mortis too soon, we could be playing into Nessun’s hands, and ensuring that we do lose the planet.’
‘Is this your opinion alone?’ Toharan asked.
Volos hesitated. He could see where Toharan was going with that question, and he wondered why. He couldn’t understand what had happened to his battle-brother. Toharan had been different since the endgame on Antagonis. There was a brittleness to him, a defensive inflexibility. Volos couldn’t shake the impression that either something vital had been stripped away, or something just as important but toxic had risen to the surface. And now he had asked a question to which he clearly knew the answer, in order to score points in some game whose rules Volos wasn’t even interested in knowing. ‘No,’ Volos told him, giving in to the inevitable. ‘Canoness Setheno concurs.’
‘Are we now turning to the Ecclesiarchy for strategic advice?’ Toharan asked.
Volos refused to rise to the bait. He kept his voice calm. ‘We happen to agree. That’s all.’
‘That isn’t–’ Toharan began, but Vritras cut him off.
‘Thank you, brother-sergeant.’ He walked around the strategium table, arms folded, eyes on the charts. ‘Chaplain?’ he asked without looking up.
‘The taint on Aighe Mortis must be purged without delay.’
‘Librarian?’
‘Flebis concerns me. The circumstances are so unusual, we ignore them at our peril.’
Vritras stopped walking and thought for a few moments more. Then he moved to the command throne and faced his assembled officers. ‘We make for Flebis.’
CHAPTER 11
THE PRICE OF ENTRY
‘Surprise,’ Vritras said, ‘is the hope of fools.’
Armour-piercing rounds, grenades, melta bombs. Cannon fire. The Swords of Epiphany had not been gentle with the door of the vault. It had ignored them. It had not opened, and it had not shattered. It wasn’t even scratched. Nessun ran his hand along the unmarred surface. He was impressed. He could almost enjoy the frustration, if only he weren’t so aware of the relentless slipping away of time. ‘This building is a sorcerer,’ he said, and revelled in the further awe of that realisation. The vault was protecting itself with a shield, but not one that had any technological origin. He could feel the warp energies twisting over the stone. The Swords would have to respond with their own sorcery.
Makaiel had been away from his side, speaking to the master of the augurs. Now he returned. ‘A ship has just transitioned into the system,’ he said.
Nessun didn’t say anything at first. He couldn’t find the words. Something had happened that he considered impossible, and he was torn between excitement over the richness of that paradox and anger at the threat. In the end, he expressed his wonder and rage in one sentence. ‘They’ve found us.’
Makaiel was less interested in the philosophical implications of the arrival. He, or the thing that inhabited him, was so boringly pragmatic. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘you cannot remain here.’
Dull, but almost always right. Nessun grimaced in disappointment. He had so hoped to be present when the vault was opened, when its interior was revealed and the great key was found. But the Sword was correct. There was too much at stake, and he was needed elsewhere. The Flebis vault, in all its cyclopean glory, was still only one step. Nessun nodded. ‘You know what to do here,’ he said. ‘Don’t fail me.’
‘The galaxy will hear our song,’ Makaiel promised.
‘Surprise a foe on ground that is known to him and alien to you,’ Vritras said, ‘and you surprise him with his victory. We do not seek surprise. We are Black Dragons. The enemy shall know of our coming and fear it. Let him prepare. Let him look to his defences. All this will grant him is more time to cower in the shadow of our looming verdict. Does he hear the thunder of our charge? Then he knows the sound of his ending. ‘
The Immolation Maw moved on Flebis. The long-range augurs picked up the Revealed Truth in geostationary orbit over the planetoid. The grand cruiser outweighed the Maw in size, weaponry and armour. The strike cruiser had the advantage of speed and manoeuvrability. But that wasn’t the contest Vritras sought yet. He had Helmsman Maro approach Flebis with the moon between the two ships. The Revealed Truth didn’t appear interested in an engagement either. Its engines were powering up, but it didn’t move from its position, and transport craft were dropping from its bulk towards the moon.
Something small, shuttlecraft-sized, took off from Flebis to rendezvous with the Chaos ship. At the same moment, the Immolation Maw fired its drop pods just beyond the horizon from the Revealed Truth . Second Company descended in its rage.
Earth and sky: Vritras’s assault would hammer the traitor in both his refuges. The attack was a closing talon. As the ground forces deployed in the low hills that marked the horizon line, the Maw , in the hands of Maro, accelerated, grazing Flebis’s thin atmosphere as it made its predator run for the underbelly of the Revealed Truth . The strike cruiser whipped over the line, straightening into a climb for its prey.
A prey that was fleeing. Its engines flaring corona-bright, the corrupted monster pulled away from Flebis. The Immolation Maw ’s turrets opened up, but the salvo was an expression of frustration rather than strategy. The Truth ’s void shields held, and then it was picking up speed, and the choice was pursuit or support of the ground forces. The Maw did not abandon its own. It moved to the Revealed Truth ’s former position. It began its scan of the battlefield. The talon closed over the Swords of Epiphany.
On the ground, the Black Dragons worked their way to the hilltops. Toharan was at Vritras’s right hand. He looked over his captain’s shoulder at the data-slate he was holding. Messages and picts transmitted by the Immolation Maw scrolled across the screen. ‘The enemy betrays himself,’ Vritras said. ‘His ship has fled to the warp.’
Makaiel looked up into the Flebis night. He had received his father’s farewell vox message. He saw a concentrated configuration of stars moving, and knew them as the lights of the Imperial ship. He knew that he and his passenger within were staring at their final hours in the materium. But there was work to be done first, and awe to be spread, and he knew, too, that his father did not abandon his children to be pointless sacrifices. They would not be annihilated by orbital bombardment before they could even set foot in the vault. He watched a swarm of fainter stars close in on the cluster.
The Revealed Truth had left a gift behind. Squadrons of Doomfire bombers, escorted by Swiftdeath fighters, flashed towards the cruiser, and now it was prey.
The hills overlooked a wide plain. It was perfectly flat, obviously engineered. It was a church square before the vault, a little detail wrought on a giant scale by forces that could look at planets as décor to be shaped and arranged at will. At the far end rose the vault, seeming to shoulder aside the lesser mountain peaks that flanked it. In front of the vault were the massed ranks of the Swords of Epiphany. They formed a golden wall in front of the door. Looking through magnoculars, Toharan saw that not all of the traitors were facing out. Some were doing something to the door, waving their hands and moving in harsh, jerking movements that made him think of spiders and dance. A bit forward of the vault’s facade, some rudimentary trenches had been dug. They were clearly the work of a frantic few hours. So the enemy hadn’t been expecting them. Good.
On the plain itself were the wretched of Chaos. Toharan’s lip curled as he took in the slaves and true-believers and renegade Guardsmen. There were thousands of them, clutching rifles and spears and even clubs, and wearing crude rebreathers. Their clothes, whatever uniform or class costume they once had been, were now the expression of the Epiphany cult. Gold was everywhere, on every torn shred, and it was always a gold that was twisted, light-sucking, diseased. There was also a symbol, sewn into the clothing, inked onto flesh, carved into foreheads: a five-pointed star with rays lancing out from the corners. And in the centre, a spiral that seemed to move if Toharan trained the lenses on it for too long. He lowered the magnoculars and picked up his bolter. ‘A lot of open space,’ he said. ‘No cover.’
Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley Page 12