Crusaders of Dorn

by Guy Haley

  He grunted with effort as he sent a wide swing at the genestealer’s injured side. His hammer whistled with the speed of it. The broodlord twisted, barely dodging the blow, but Adelard was ready. Performing a manoeuvre impossible without the fibre-bundle assistance of his armour, he arrested and reversed the swing, sending it in a deadly uppercut again at the broodlord’s head. It impacted cleanly, the weight of the hammer alone enough to smash the skull. Empowered by the disruption field, it annihilated the creature’s head entirely, showering Adelard with gore.

  ‘Rejoice in furious challenge, and avenging strife, whose works with woe embitter human life!’ he roared, as the broodlord fell dead to the floor.

  Adelard looked upon the broken corpse.

  ‘A prayer for the true Emperor of Mankind,’ he muttered.

  Kill counters clicked up in his helmet readout. His warriors did their work well.

  The day was theirs, and with it the Veritas Diras.

  Helbrecht: The Crusader

  Aliens burned. A crescent of fires held bodies blackening, a challenge to the weird walls of the fortress some kilometres distant. Spindly limbs cracked and vile faces, elongated and inhuman, gave a low uncertain glow. The fuel, perhaps, or the air of this strange place – so thin and unwholesome, it was a wonder there was life at all – stayed fire’s assault. Tongues of flame crawled and wicked as they did their work, no blaze from these mortal shells. Ruddy light, gold and amber, red and blue, marshlight, witchlight, not conflagration; as if so far from the Emperor’s lucidity, here on the fringe of all, even fire had lost its ardour.

  Still the aliens burned, if slowly, and fire’s lack could not also be apportioned to the crusade. The Black Templars had fought well.

  High Marshal Helbrecht surveyed his men, initiate and neophyte alike: faces set with doleful mien, their souls as sharp as their swords, whetted for the Emperor’s service. Lines of giants contemplated victory. Motionless, they looked through the pyre’s fell light, their eyes fixed upon the fortress through the flame. Tell them will alone would crack that oddly lambent stone, and they would stare until it cracked. Black and white armour bronze in the fireglow, their unmoving forms were as statues.

  The time of address was upon him, a duty Helbrecht gladly performed. The crusade was his own, called upon his accession, to the Ghoul Stars from whence no expedition had yet returned. His would. Immense pride buoyed his hearts, tempered swiftly by humility.

  This was not his victory.

  He walked into the weirdly chill circle of the fire, turned to face his men. His cloak, so rich, swirled about him. Chained relics rattled upon his plate, parchments whispered out his devotion as they rasped upon plasteel, but the circlet about his head was tight. His badge of office, his reminder: who had raised him so high? The Emperor. Upon whose shoulders had he stood? Upon those of his men.

  This was their victory.

  ‘No statue!’ Helbrecht called out to his men. ‘No statue will here be raised, no memorial to stand as remark upon our triumph! No songs, no poems, nor tales of deeds, so mighty that they astound the ear! No roars of praise, no feasts, no drink nor meat shall we have! No hymns of valour, no sagas of remembrance shall be heard. Frigid winds on blue sands, the inconstant light of poisoned stars. These things shall be our witness.’

  He dipped his head. Wind blew in cool curls from the jagged mountains away to the south, strange aurorae danced in cold skies above, their sickening involutions lending the peaks a height they did not possess. It was hard to look through those cosmic veils. The skies of the rim were endless black, the putrescent glimmer of the Ghoul Stars not enough to part the curtains of the night. And glad was Helbrecht that it was so; beyond their feeble cordon were endless seas of vacuum. No light in those great gulfs of space, excepting the embers of distant galaxies glowing lonely, impossible distant shoals in an ocean that could not be crossed.

  He raised his head again. The muted crackle of fatless alien flesh consumed played chorus to his words.

  ‘These things do not matter. Who cares for baubles? Who cares for fame? Let our presence upon this world be our memorial!’ He gestured to his men with one hand, open palm encompassing them all. Some he had known an age, some barely at all. It was of no account, all were his brothers.

  ‘Let our feet, steel clad, pressed into the soils of this alien land, remark on our passing. Let the bones and ruin we leave behind be our joyful hymnal! What need have we of plaudit and praise? What satisfaction in elevation above the faithful is there, that can best the knowledge of service given? For we serve the Emperor! His eye is upon us. His will is our guide and our master. When we triumph, he is well pleased. When we falter, he aids our recovery. What is the opinion of men, what matters the swift-passing approval of mortal kind, when the Emperor looks upon our deeds? No matter these trinkets of recognition!’

  He slapped at his own chest, his badges of office clattered. ‘No matter the laurels of victory, no matter the glories others may seek. We are Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes, the Angels of Death! And more than this,’ he said, his voice dropping quiet. ‘We are the Black Templars. Victory is its own reward.’

  The Templars took their cue. Their shout was sudden and invigorating, blasting back the sinister silence of the lifeless world. Helbrecht nodded in approval. His eyes locked with many of those before him.

  ‘I would grasp each of your hands in turn, and give you my heartfelt thanks. This is your victory, your day, your might. I called this crusade not because it would be easy, but because it would be hard.’

  More shouts.

  ‘Today you have fought. Today you have won! We stand upon the galactic shore, you and I, travellers halting at stellar strand. One day mankind will call these hollow worlds all his own, one day shall he set himself out across the gulf and bring the word of the Emperor to places unimagined.’ He clenched his fist. ‘Today is not that day. That is not our duty.’ He drew his sword and flung out the point so that it transfixed the highest point of the alien fortress. Atop those sheer walls of glimmering crystal, no doubt they watched him now, readying their uncanny weapons, making their strategies in their unknowable alien minds.

  ‘We have triumphed. But further toil awaits – in yonder castle our foe stand ready. They will not flee, they will not submit. We must smite them all, you and I, and purge this place of their evil now and forever more!’

  No shouts this time, no roars. The metallic snap of weapons being readied, the muted whir of actuators coming to life, the thrum of power packs as they supplied vitality to wargear.

  Helbrecht at their head, the Black Templars walked through the funeral pyres, and towards the alien fortress.

  The Uncanny Crusade

  The Eternal Crusader came screaming out of the warp, as deadly as Dorn’s own spear. Warp energy boiled from its Geller field, fading to nothing in the face of inimical reality. The wound it tore in space and time was healing by the time the Majesty and the Night’s Vigil caught up with their flagship, engines howling under the strain of keeping pace. Slightly ahead of them went seven swift escorts. As soon as they had achieved translation to real space their engine stacks flared, propelling them into a picket line ahead of the flagship. Yet even these swift darts were not a match for the speed of the Eternal Crusader.

  Finally, unhurriedly, the dark grey arrow of the strike cruiser Revenant broke the membrane of realities. Its machine-spirit showed none of the eagerness of the other ten ships, and it hung back from the rest.

  The Majesty was a heavy cruiser, Night’s Vigil a battle-barge. Both gargantuan craft in their own right, they seemed paltry things next to the Eternal Crusader. A reminder of mightier days, the flagship of the Black Templars boasted the capacity to carry more Space Marines than existed in the entire Chapter. That it was so was the Chapter’s honour and their shame.

  The Black Templars vessels were black as night, save where white panels broke up t
heir livery, as stark as mountain snowfields. The forward prow shields of the two battle-barges and elements of their superstructures were so painted. On the Majesty, round bull’s-eyes marked either side of the broad keel vane. Likewise, the escorts were decorated with white prows or command towers. Upon these fields the gothic crosses of the order were displayed, the mark of the first Templar, Sigismund, and all of his successors.

  The Revenant bore grimmer heraldry: crossed scythes and a baleful skull, that of the Death Spectres Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

  The three larger ships fanned outward, escorts hurrying ahead, adopting combat formation as soon as they were clear of the system’s Mandeville point. The Majesty and Night’s Vigil burned their engines hard, barely matching the Eternal Crusader’s speed. Revenant tarried, coasting forward at half power, allowing a gap of one hundred thousand kilometres to open up between it and the Black Templars fleet before its engines ignited and it accelerated to match the others.

  Onward they sailed, towards cold, gaseous worlds orbiting a poisonous sun. Beyond it was the long dark of intergalactic space, a wall of night in which isolated galaxies shone, so distant they were no brighter than stars.

  The Emperor’s Crusade had reached the last strand on the shores of the great void, the supposed capital system of the cythor fiends. The last of the Ghoul Stars.

  The command deck of the Eternal Crusader was as quiet as the bridge of a warship could be. Servitors mumbled repeated instructions to themselves, and ratings and serfs talked in hushed, respectful tones, mindful of their masters’ silence. The Chamber Militant of the Ghoul Stars Crusade Inner Circle stood upon a command dais, offered out over the tiered ranks of deck crew upon a jointed steel arm. With them was Naroosh, fourth captain of the Death Spectres Space Marines Chapter.

  They wore their full wargear. The Adeptus Astartes had their powered battleplate, while the unenhanced Serjeant Majoris Valdric, master of the Chapter’s warrior-serfs, and Shipmaster Baloster wore ornate suits of carapace. All carried swords and pistols. Arming servitors waited silently at the edges of the dais with boltguns and other tools of death. A number of serf crew waited attentively by consoles in the dais railing. A ring of servo-skulls hovered overhead.

  The Inner Circle had their eyes fixed upon the holo-display, a glowing blue ball floating over the operations pit. Three hundred thousand kilometres ahead it showed two dozen cythor fiend ships of various classes, several of which the fleet had been chasing this past month. They had no formation, no common orientation. Their hulls, so recently sleek, bore signs of decrepitude. They floated in the void, decaying vessels in decaying orbits.

  A voice sounded from a servo-skull, conveying the report of a bridge serf in the pit below. ‘Still no sign of anything, Lord Helbrecht. Enemy craft remain without power.’

  ‘This is the ship we fought above the World Crypt.’

  Sword Brother Gulvein pointed with an armoured hand. A serf anticipated his needs and amplified the view in the holo-display. ‘Only three weeks ago it ran before us. It looks as if it has been abandoned a thousand years or more.’

  A different serf spoke, his voice made mechanical by the intermediary of the skull-vox. ‘All auspex readings are negative, my lords. No life signs or energy. Their reactors are dead.’

  Helbrecht rumbled deep in his chest.

  ‘A trap?’ suggested Valdric.

  ‘Let me take a strike team aboard one,’ said Bayard, Emperor’s Champion of the Ghoul Stars Crusade. ‘I will learn the truth of it quickly enough.’

  Helbrecht shook his head. Bayard shifted, his frustration plain for all to see. His armour whined quietly.

  The High Marshal lifted his mechanical arm. His forefinger hissed as it uncurled.

  Baloster moved to an instrument panel mounted upon the dais rail.

  ‘Pick your target, my liege,’ he said.

  ‘That one. Vessel fourteen,’ Helbrecht said.

  Numerals assigned by Baloster blinked around Helbrecht’s chosen ship. ‘Master of Ordnance, have lance battery three target it amidships,’ ordered Baloster.

  ‘As you command.’

  The serf’s voice sounded from the skulls. His shouts could be heard far below as he relayed the shipmaster’s order. Baloster adjusted the holo-field, bringing the chosen target into sharp focus. A strange-looking ship with an undulating hull, it tapered at one end, was bulbous amidships and flattened at the prow. Its fabric was greyish, with a rough texture, the whole being reminiscent of an insect’s paper nest. This fragility was illusory; such vessels had proven difficult to subdue throughout the crusade.

  A half second passed. A gentle tremor, undetectable to all but the superhuman senses of the Adeptus Astartes, joined itself briefly to the perpetual rumbling of the engines. A bright light from the holo-display bathed their faces. A column of energy stabbed out soundlessly from the weapon’s batteries upon the ship’s spine, slightly off centre of the vessel’s heading. The beam struck the middle of the xenos craft and the hull glowed hot. A series of explosions burst along its portside and gases vented from its interior.

  ‘Enough,’ said Helbrecht. The lance cut out.

  The ships’ relative movements, slight though they were, had dragged the lance across the surface, leaving an ugly wound. Impelled by the impact, the ship drifted away.

  ‘Response?’ asked Helbrecht.

  The edges of the breach on the ship glowed a moment. Debris cluttered threat cogitators with munitions false positives. They were discounted quickly, red icons blinking out on the holo-display.

  ‘No response from the xenos ships, my lord,’ said an augur officer through the skulls. ‘No weapons fire. No defensive measures. No sign of course correction. The ship is drifting without power.’

  ‘Again,’ said Helbrecht. ‘Lance batteries one through four. On my mark. Cut it in half.’

  ‘Lance batteries prepared, Lord Helbrecht,’ said the Master of Ordnance.

  ‘Fire.’

  A quiet screech trembled in the air at the discharge of four heavy lances. Their energy beams converged on the centre of the craft, slicing it into two pieces that fell away from one another, the stern out towards deep space, the prow towards another ship.

  ‘Xenos craft destroyed.’

  ‘Time to impact of that fragment?’ asked Helbrecht.

  ‘Forty-nine minutes.’

  ‘The other vessel is taking no evasive action, my lord,’ said Baloster.

  ‘I say again that we board them!’ said Bayard. ‘There is some trick here. Let us undo it with our blades.’

  ‘The planet awaits. There is no resistance as yet,’ said Master of Sanctity Theoderic. ‘I suspect this to be a delaying tactic.’

  ‘Have they fled?’ asked Castellan Ceonulf.

  Baloster consulted his augur teams via vox. ‘There are no signs of other vessels in the system, my lords.’

  ‘That means nothing,’ said Theoderic dismissively. ‘There could be another fleet hiding behind the star, or employing shrouding technologies to cover their retreat.’

  ‘They have not done so before, my lord,’ said Valdric. ‘They have always waited for our attack.’

  ‘These are xenos. They are not above hiding dishonourably if it suits them. This is their last redoubt,’ said Theoderic. ‘My Lord Helbrecht, if this is not an ambush, the situation suggests to me an evacuation.’

  Helbrecht’s lips thinned as he turned over Theoderic’s words in his mind.

  ‘Then do we hurry forward,’ asked Gulvein, ‘in an attempt to catch them before they flee?’

  ‘Can we afford to leave this armada behind us?’ asked Ceonulf. ‘We will expose our rear to a counterattack. All this might be a bluff.’

  ‘We could despatch augur probes – it would be quicker and a lesser risk than boarding,’ said Jurisian, Master of the Forge. ‘If they prove to be crewless an
d truly inert, then we will be free of the task of destroying them until we have dealt with the primary nest.’

  The Inner Circle of the Ghoul Stars Crusade looked to their leader.

  ‘We have wasted enough time,’ said Helbrecht. ‘Obliterate them.’

  ‘Aye, my liege,’ said Baloster. He passed the order on, then bowed to his masters and departed the dais, following the stair down the support arm. Thence he went to the main floor, so he might better deliver the judgment of his lord. Dozens of deck officers and servitors set to work, all talking at once, calculating firing solutions and organising target priorities.

  ‘We should despatch deep probes in any case,’ said Jurisian, ‘and cast out a net of augurs. There is no sense flying into the system blind. This is a strange foe. I shall have the forge prepare autonomous servitor units. Whether they flee or lie in wait, we shall find them. Should I request the astropathic temple perform a scrying?’

  ‘Do it,’ said Helbrecht. ‘As you say, we shall find them and we shall destroy them.’

  ‘Praise be,’ said the others.

  Jurisian took his leave to arrange both matters. One by one, the members of the inner circle set out to prepare their commands for the coming battle, if there was to be one. Helbrecht was silent. He remained alone but for Champion Bayard, who fretted for the fight silently alongside his master, and Captain Naroosh, who stayed to the shadows by the dais’ edge.

  ‘Destroy the ships, find their nest – it is too late, your efforts are aimless,’ said Naroosh, the grim envoy of the Death Spectres.

  Helbrecht remained with his back to Naroosh. Bayard shot the Death Spectre a murderous look, but Naroosh was uncowed.

  ‘Best spend your wrath elsewhere, High Marshal, and leave the thankless task of containment to my brothers. The cythor fiends cannot be vanquished.’