Crusaders of Dorn

by Guy Haley

  Apothecary Hengist–

  Error.

  Apothecary Clovis leads me to my drop pod. My feet are heavy on the deck. Brother and serf alike bow their heads and clasp swords reversed in front of them as I stride past. I am a Chapter Ancient, a living relic. In the honour of my entombing, they see an echo of the Emperor himself. It is an analogy I am not worthy of. I do not deserve such veneration.

  The drop pod is freshly painted, bedecked with seals that will soon burn away. Invictus’s name plate is attached to the front.

  The Eternal Crusader shakes, under the tread of armoured feet, under the fury of ork bombardment, under the pressure of our zeal. This is a full combat drop. An armada of ork vessels assail our flagship outside. We go about our business without fear. The Eternal Crusader is strong and our faith is stronger still. The Emperor protects his son’s sons. Praise be.

  I enter my pod. As the ramps rise, one of our lay preachers shouts out our battle cry: ‘No pity! No remorse! No fear!’ He, like all the serfs, is armed and armoured. The lowliest of them are capable warriors. Such is our way. There is no room for weakness. Any who can bear arms are expected to do so, no matter their station.

  It is silent in the pod. I wait. If it were not for my chronometer, I would not know how long. Time has lost its meaning, like so much else. I do not sleep outside of my hibernation. But I meditate, upon my purpose, upon the Emperor’s will, upon the Endless Crusade, and I give thanks that I am still a part of it.

  Praise be.

  A chime, generated directly in my mind by the sacred technologies of my glorious tomb, announces the setting of the mission chrono. A second time count appears beneath my chronometer. It blinks red three times, counts down to zero, turns green and begins running forward. It is this alone that alerts me to my imminent drop.

  A slight shift in my mass centre. I am moving into the drop chute. There is a burst of noise from the escape thrusters. I feel heavy, my flesh body moves in my amniotic fluid, and for a moment I feel with my old skin. The pain intensifies as I shift.

  Only for a moment.

  Acceleration is constant. I am falling through the atmosphere. They woke us all, Brother Clovis told me. An unusual move. Across Armageddon, seven of my dead brothers are marching to war again. Three crusades have been established. War wracks the entire system and a good part of this sector. The ork invasion here is of a staggering scale.

  I am impatient to join the fight. I have slept too long.

  The drop is short, and ends with terrible force. Again, my body moves within the fluids that protect it. I recall similar drops from my other life, when I was a man of flesh and blood. Then the blow of landing jarred every bone in my body. Now I am protected from the worst of it, numbed to it. I am distant from every sensation, and move as if in a dream. Only the pain is constant, curled around me in my tomb, intimately embracing my shattered body.

  The doors blow outwards. Pale light falls across Invictus’s metal hull. Ahead of me is an ugly ork fortress, an asteroid landed directly on the surface of the world. The land here is dry but not the driest – sub-savannah, low thorny trees and grey grass, all parched. A lush landscape by Armageddon’s standards. All is caked with ash. The Season of Fire has recently drawn to a close. The weather is calming, not that you would guess it. The Season of Shadows has begun.

  It is my task to aid in the rock’s destruction. A worthy task. Battle rages already. I stride into it with great joy in my heart. Praise be!

  ‘Praise be!’ roars Invictus Potens.

  Drop pods fall from the sky all around me, igniting the scrubby vegetation with their braking jets. I am one of the first, the spearhead of the Ash Wastes Crusade second group! Praise be! Fifty-six battle-brothers, forty-nine neophytes. Various armour assets are being landed further out, under Thunderhawk air support. All this and other information scrolls along the edges of my sensorium. Bright flashes and war-lightning show through the ash-tainted sky: the Void Crusade embattled in orbit. As above, so below.

  Cantus Maxim Gloria is with me, emerging from his own drop pod sixty-three metres to my right. He is already firing, mass-reactive shells flaring as they accelerate away from the storm bolter slung under his arm.

  I never knew him as a brother. What his name was is a mystery to me. He is and always will be Cantus Maxim Gloria, and that is how the other brothers see me. Not as Sword Brother Adelard, once-Marshal, but as Invictus Potens.

  Am I Invictus? Or am I still Adelard? I no longer know who I am. It does not matter. Only the will of the Emperor is important. His will is that I serve. Praise be.

  I seek targets of my own as I stride towards Cantus Maxim Gloria. Boxes and circles blink around the rock, highlighting potential threats, mission priorities and points of strategic interest. I determine a mob of screaming xenos, coming at us quickly, to be of the most immediate threat. Invictus continues to walk towards Cantus, but I pivot his torso and my sarcophagus ninety degrees to draw a line upon the aliens. By will alone, I discharge my storm bolter. The recoil of it, so slight on the great arm of my glorious tomb, feels sublime. War is the greatest act of worship, and I perform it gladly for our Lord.

  Several orks are destroyed. The rest scatter for cover.

  More drop pods are coming in to land. Fifteen are on the field. It seems all have made it down. Doors blow open and Black Templars emerge, covered by the storm bolters and deathwind launchers of their insertion craft. Controlled by machine-spirits, these switch back and forth with mechanical swiftness and precision, felling orks as my brothers form up for the assault.

  The rock is seventy-nine point four metres at its highest point, an alien cliff-face dropped on the landscape like a pebble tossed by a careless giant. Steel doors and shutters cover its apertures. They slide back and the wide muzzles of ork guns are pushed out. Orks pour down from ramps and ladders, orks scream atop the battlements along its craggy top. I am surprised at how untouched the landscape appears around it. No scorching of the vegetation, no impact crater. A delicate descent.

  Orks are remarkable creatures, a survivor race. I have fought them in swamps, forests, deserts, hives, snow, the sea and the void. They infest them all equally. Their success makes them all the more despicable. They are brutish, violent, inimical to all order and impervious to sense. I respect them and I hate them. I kill all the enemies of man with satisfaction, but I particularly enjoy killing orks. Praise be.

  ‘We go forwards,’ says Cantus. I let him advance ahead of me, to absorb the fire raining down on us from the walls of the rock. Six Centurions fall in behind us. We are the breaching party. Our brothers lay down suppressive fire where they can. It is not our preferred way of combat and they will be envious of our advance.

  As we approach, I kill many orks with my storm bolter, but do not use my assault cannon, not yet. Its ammunition counter stands at full, a healthy dark green. Thirty thousand rounds are in my hoppers. A goodly number, but I will receive no more until the battle is over. ‘The Emperor rewards with victory he who counts his ammunition’, I recall a Chaplain saying. Which one, I cannot remember. I have known many.

  We approach the gateway. Cantus Maxim Gloria’s seismic hammer rises and comes alive.

  I think back to the briefing. Three crusades, all bearing fresh names for the campaign – Helsreach, left behind by Helbrecht some months ago under Reclusiarch Grimaldus, the freshly instituted Ash Wastes under Marshal Ricard and Marshal Amalrich. Lastly, the Void Crusade, under High Marshal Helbrecht himself. We have arrived late to this war. We must pay for that with the blood of the foe.

  I had never met Helbrecht before yesterday. I have the logos memorandum replay part of his speech.

  ‘A victory is required. Morale demands it. Too many have died in this system already. The orks believe their fortresses inviolable, but worse, the warriors of the Imperium come to think of them that way also. The Salamanders enjoy some early success
, but we too shall prove the case to be contrary. Let the orks taste the wrath of the Black Templars,’ he said. ‘We shall not leave all the glory to the Salamanders! Let strike the true believers, the hammer of the Emperor. The sons of Dorn!’

  I hear he is a man of great temper and exceptional skill at arms. He seems worthy of his position.

  Cantus Maxim Gloria approaches the door to the rock, wide and high. The orks build roughly, and this door is no exception. But it is strong.

  ‘I will provide ingress,’ he booms. ‘Support me.’

  His mighty seismic hammer sets to work, jerking forward, reeling back, bashing at the door relentlessly. The attached meltagun scours into the metal. Centurions join him, their siege drills chewing holes the size of plates, twists of swarf falling around their feet. I imagine the stink of hot metal. Bullets, missiles and many rocks bounce from our armour. I slay where I can, not a great tally here. The angles are poor.

  A bright lance beam hits one of the Centurions, cutting downward through his neck into his body. My brother inside is killed, his Centurion suit locking his corpse in place. I have Invictus step backwards, tilting his torso back. I put myself at risk doing so, but this outrage must be avenged. Invictus’s sophisticated targeting systems pick out the one responsible, a burly ork hefting some incomprehensible energy weapon on a jutting bastion above. For the first time that day, I let the assault cannon speak. The barrels whine and pick up speed. It is operating at optimum efficiency. The rites have been performed diligently.

  A stream of bullets spark from the rock, sending gravel pattering down onto the breaching party. The orks above are driven back, and the assault from above peters out. I cannot see if I have slain the burly gunner. Invictus’s readings are inconclusive.

  The doors burst inwards with a resounding boom, one ripped so roughly from its housing that it forces out a small avalanche of rock. Cantus rips at the remains with his power fist. Then we are inside.

  From that moment on, my assault cannon is not silent.

  We wade through a sea of howling green faces, into a laby­rinth of roughly hewn rock and abominable machines. These mechanisms the Centurions destroy. None can stand before us – our armour is proof against the crude axes and firearms of the orks. Cantus and I smash them down with impunity. We are surrounded, but that is of no consequence. Our mission goal is close.

  Pain is my companion. The pain is constant, all encompassing. Death’s legacy, a reminder that I no longer live, my gift from the Emperor and one I willingly share with these orks. A plasma burst from a xenos weapon ended my last actions as a Space Marine. I remember the heat of it, my flesh burning under my armour – agony, agony, agony searing out my eyes. They never told me, once I had been entombed, how much of me was left. We prayed, we celebrated, but we did not speak of my injuries. I have determined, after five centuries in this armour, that very little of my body survived. One arm. My upper torso. Most of my head. Perhaps my face still sits on my skull. Perhaps not.

  The pain I feel now is nothing to the pain I felt then. But it is with me, always. I let it fuel my anger, I bless the bolts of our gun with it, it launches each blow of Invictus Potens’s fist, lends its fury to the spinning barrels of the assault cannon. This weapon, such a weapon! It clears corridors of greenskins in an eyeblink, leaving their remains to slide from the walls.

  Warning. Ammunition at fifty per cent.

  I check the ammunition counter. It is now orange. Fourteen thousand three hundred and sixty-one rounds left, but I cannot afford to slow down. There are thousands of orks here. I blow them to pieces, crush them underfoot, smash them down. Skulls crack in my giant’s hand. So many of them die, die, die, but always there are more.

  ‘We near the mission point,’ says Cantus. ‘Stand ready.’

  We burst through another armoured door, into a large cavity at the heart of the fortress.

  ‘Here,’ he says, striding forwards. He is authoritative. I wonder who he was when he lived. A marshal perhaps? A castellan? He may have been a simple brother. Death changes a man.

  The Centurions are behind us, walking backwards to cover our vulnerable rear plating. The systems array informs me that there are four of them left; where the other fell I did not see. There are many doors here. All of them are opening. Hundreds of orks swarm within.

  ‘Activating teleport beacon,’ says Cantus. The module mag-locked to his rear armour begins to blink with unhurried blue light. I carry one also, as do the Centurions. Multiple redundancy. We activate them all. It is a signal. Outside, the remainder of the Ash Wastes Crusade will be readying themselves, singing the Pugno Gloriosa Mundi, ready to rush into the rock.

  There are over nine hundred orks in the chamber, according to Invictus’s best estimate. Many are of the larger kind, leaders and specialists. I highlight these and commit their positions to Invictus’s targeting memory.

  ‘Stand firm,’ I say.

  The orks stand, staring at us, roaring at us, making their crude threat displays, but make no move against us, until one, a huge beast, moves out from the crowd and bellows a long challenge. It is taken up by the others, and they charge.

  My assault cannon speaks until it has run out of words. Thereafter I use its red-hot barrels to brand orks with the mark of death. It is a holy mark, but no absolution comes with it, only annihilation.

  A group of orks armed with large explosive charges and crude missiles come shoving through the crowd. I raise Invictus’s storm bolter, but that too is empty. Red mars the green of my systems array – no ammo, overheating, dropping fuel.

  They charge towards Cantus Maxim Gloria. I interpose myself to save him, and doom myself.

  They are all over my tomb, slapping charges to its limbs. One swings its strange rocket hammer at me, but I catch him, engulfing head and shoulders in Invictus’s fist, rendering them into a pulp.

  There is a dim blue glow coming from the centre of the room. Greasy smoke smears the air. Shapes form. Marshal Ricard and Sword Brothers in Terminator armour step out from the light. Our mission is a success. But it is too late for me.

  There is an explosion on Invictus’s lower portions, then another. The ground rushes up at me as he falls. My tomb’s pain arrests me, but it is feeble compared to my own, and is quickly over.

  Warning. Warning. Warning. Systems compromised. Await aid. Fortitude is the ultimate fortress.

  There follows a long list of damaged machinery. Blinking red text and runes. All I see beyond them is the gritty floor. I do not read it. I do not need to read it. There is another explosion, this time upon Invictus’s back. Shortly after, the systems array blinks and goes out, never to come again. I lose my connection with Invictus entirely.

  I am left in the dark with my pain.

  My fluid is pouring out through the crack in my sarcophagus. Invictus is sorely injured, but my brothers will slaughter every ork that stands between they and he, even if the greenskins are a million in number. Invictus will fight again. I, however, will not.

  I pray.

  I realise that I can still hear the sounds of battle, the hymns of my brothers, the triple bark of bolt rounds being expelled, igniting, exploding. I smile, or attempt to. I hear with my own ears for the first time in five centuries – the final time.

  I do not know what to expect next. It strikes me as amusing that I actually expect something more, that I assume the procession of events cannot end. That is why humanity is so indomitable. Even dying, we do not stop. Perhaps, as a race, we die even now, and my situation is analogous in miniature to the situation of every man, woman and child of our species: awaiting the next event, when there is only death.

  I will never know if this is the case or not. I have faith that mankind will prevail. If I have no faith, what do I have? Defeat. I have faith. Even as I die I know victory.

  These are my thoughts: What happens to us when we die? Does the Emperor wai
t for me, whole in spirit as he no longer is in life, to call me to his side and sit with him at the table? Will it simply end? There is no golden light, no sense of impending doom, no terrifying sensation. No comfort either.

  The last of the fluid has gone, exposing my skin to the air. I am aware now, of how little of me there is left, trapped in this glorious tomb. Things tug at my flesh, the pipes and cables of Invictus’s interface. A terrible chill grips me. I struggle with the urge to breathe, but I have no lungs. The oxygen levels in my blood are dipping dangerously low. My skin crawls as my remaining genetic gifts, the Emperor’s holy boon that made me into a Space Marine – broken things now – struggle to keep me alive. Too late, too late. The final journey approaches.

  Consciousness recedes. I have felt little emotion since the day I was entombed. Pride, zeal, courage, honour – all come back to me as I die, and I am grateful to feel them again. The day I was chosen to become a Black Templar. My elevation to Sword Brother. My days as a marshal. The battle on Vellinus, the reaving of the Cemetery Worlds, the misguided Passion of The False Saint Cleon, the hunting of the Ork Wyrd. All ended in blood and death. Brusc, Oberon, Danifer, Theilred, Chardin… So many faces I have known, all going into the black. A million deaths by my hand. If not all were righteous, most were. I can ask for no more than that. Was it not blessed Artemisia who said ‘Better a thousand good men die than one traitor go free’?

  Older memories, long neglected, resurface. Golden light, a man’s laughter. My father, perhaps. A rare moment of peace on my benighted homeworld. He pushes me on a swing, a rope on a tree branch over the only safe water for kilometres. I am shrieking with fright at how high and fast he is pushing me. He pushes harder.