Praxor was unconvinced but chose to keep his misgivings private. He was not Sicarius and did not see battles as his captain did. It was his duty to obey and fight to his utmost, for the Second, for the Chapter and Lord Calgar.
Sicarius picked up his battle-helm from a broken stone tablet nearby, indicating that the tactical briefing was over. He faced Trajan, clasping the crested helm under his arm. Sinking to one knee, he said, ‘Chaplain, bless us as we go to war.’
Behind Sicarius, the other sergeants followed their captain’s example and kneeled before Trajan. Praxor was amongst the last. Agrippen met his pensive gaze before the Dreadnought too bowed, as much as he was able, to the Chaplain.
It was a deadly gambit that Sicarius proposed. The Second had already lost so many.
Praxor’s slain battle-brothers rose foremost into his mind. As the Shieldbearers, they had been at the forefront of countless engagements for company and Chapter but they had never been as badly mauled in any action as they had on Damnos.
I am my captain’s sword, Praxor reminded himself of the oath he had sworn upon elevation to the Second and the rank of sergeant. I am his will and blood, his fury and his courage.
But as Trajan’s shadow fell over him and he closed his eyes to receive benediction, Praxor couldn’t banish his doubts entirely. All of the catechisms and liturgies known to the Chapter couldn’t do that.
After benediction, Sicarius dismissed the other officers. Ahead were the ruins where he planned to make their stand. By the time the Ultramarines had reached them, he reasoned that the storm would have already begun to impede visibility. Once in position, the attack would have to come swiftly.
The Lions were already moving to the centre of the battle line. Daceus was the last to leave.
Sicarius called out, ‘Brother.’
Daceus stopped and turned. Like no other in the Second he wore his veteran status with the pride of a hard-won battle-scar. He had lost his left eye in a previous engagement – a bionic one replaced it – and his left arm was gloved by a formidable power fist, another relic earned during an earlier campaign. His face was a knotwork of scars and scabbed flesh. His laurels and purity seals were as abundant as the chips and grooves in his well-worn armour.
He had always been at Sicarius’s side and the captain trusted Daceus above all others. He also confided in him.
‘Back aboard the Valin’s Revenge, just before planetfall, I was wrong.’
‘Sir?’
‘I said our chance of victory here was almost none. I was wrong.’
Daceus frowned, wondering what had changed.
‘They are automatons, brother. They cannot function properly without leadership. When I struck down the leader of their vanguard, the others capitulated. It affected them, tactically.’
Daceus nodded, remembering. ‘And unlike greenskins, these revenants are all cast into specific roles. One does not simply supplant the other.’
‘Exactly. If I can incapacitate their principal command node, it will send shockwaves throughout their war infrastructure. They will be crippled.’
Daceus’s eye narrowed as he thought about it. ‘An impossible victory.’
‘Attributed to the Second,’ Sicarius concluded for him.
‘Agemman’s position would be tenuous after this.’
Sicarius’s demeanour hardened instantly and he straightened as if insulted. ‘I serve the Chapter and its glory, Daceus, as do we all.’
The veteran-sergeant bowed, reprimanded. ‘Of course, captain. We are the inheritors of Guilliman. His legacy is the torch by which we light the darkness of the galaxy.’
‘You sound like Elianu.’
‘It is one of his sermons, or a part at least.’ Several affirmation runes flashed up on Daceus’s retinal display. ‘The battle company is in position. We move out on your order.’
Sicarius donned his helmet. It clamped to his battle plate with a hiss of pressurisation. His voice was full of grit as it came through the vox-grille. ‘Then make ready. Glory awaits us, brother. Guilliman is watching.’
Chapter Eleven
The water felt cold but it did nothing to revive Adanar as he splashed his face.
He was in the bombed-out ruins of ex-Commander Tarn’s operations chamber. It looked quite different now from how it had been less than a year ago. Much of its superstructure was exposed, like the metal innards of some dying beast. The wounds from the necron gauss-artillery went deep. Parts of the chamber were little more than rubble. Blank map screens, thick with dust, reflected Adanar’s grim face. He had aged twenty years since the invasion, or at least that was how it appeared to him.
Fresh water from the ice caverns below Kellenport’s bedrock was still being pumped into the facility and Adanar stood bent-backed over a dirty basin in the corner of the room. He surveyed it despairingly. Tarn’s old desk was broken, the two halves slumped in the centre where a chunk of debris from the ceiling had cracked it. Occasionally the walls shook – most of the paintings and tapestries had fallen and been crushed underfoot by the incessant necron bombardment. Statues of former nobles and Ark Guard officers, once standing proudly in alcoves around the chamber, lay shattered and discarded. So much for glory now.
An overwhelming weariness overtook him. The weight of it sank Adanar to the ground, one hand limply grasping the edge of the basin when he fell. Fumbling around in his uniform jacket, he found his service pistol and set it down on the floor. Then he unwound the chain from around his wrist and took the locket-charm in the palm of his left hand.
‘How much more must I give?’ he asked.
The two picts inside of his wife and child couldn’t answer.
‘Why didn’t I flee? Why didn’t I send you away?’ The fingers of his right hand brushed against the laspistol’s grip. ‘Say I’ve done enough…’
He was abruptly aware of someone watching from the broken archway into the room. An ashen-faced Corporal Besseque was standing there staring.
‘Commander Sonne?’
‘What is it, Besseque?’
The corporal ventured a few steps into the chamber. ‘Sir, the– Are you all right?’
Adanar growled at him, tucking his possessions away again and getting to his feet. ‘Make your report.’
‘The Space Marines have signalled they are in position.’ He pulled a data-slate from the folds of his padded jacket. Besseque shivered as he did it – the water was still being piped in to the city but the heating was out. It was almost as cold as it was on the wall in the operations chamber. ‘I have the dispositions here. Our defences are ready, sir.’
Adanar ignored the proffered data-slate. ‘What good do you think they will do us, corporal?’
Besseque was genuinely confused. ‘The Space Marines, sir. They are a cause for hope.’
‘They cannot protect us.’ Adanar’s bile was really flowing now. All his grief, his sense of impotence and futility, it came out toxically. ‘We cannot even protect ourselves.’ The chamber was rocked by a close artillery impact outside but both men managed to keep their feet. Adanar slapped the wall where the dust and debris were still rolling downwards. ‘What use are defences if our enemy can merely pass through them? What good are guns if our foes stand up again after we’ve killed them? What use is hope, Besseque, tell me that!’
Another tremor hit the chamber as the necron bombardment increased. A chunk of debris parted from the ceiling and struck Besseque across the forehead, preventing his reply.
As the corporal fell in a heap, Adanar picked himself up and ran to him.
‘Besseque!’
A heavy contusion marred the corporal’s forehead, spreading like a bloom of purple ink across his skin. The cut was only shallow. It left a thin trail of blood but Besseque was dead. An internal haemorrhage had killed him instantly. The data-slate he’d been carrying slipped tamely from his lifeless grasp.
Exasperated, Adanar sat down cross-legged next to the corpse. He laid one hand on Besseque’s still chest. It
was ridiculous. The horrors of the invasion, the bombardment – all the things the corporal had survived only to be killed by a chunk of rock, and not even a large chunk at that.
Adanar threw back his head and laughed. He laughed uproariously until his throat was dry and his eyes stung from the tears. All the while, the room shook and the necron guns thundered.
Adanar met Rancourt on the stairwell. The acting lord governor was shadowed by Sergeant Kador, who looked less than thrilled with his posting.
‘Commander Sonne,’ he said, slightly tremulously, ‘I am glad I’ve found you.’
Adanar moved past him and Rancourt went with him, walking at the commander’s shoulder. ‘What is it?’
‘I have been trying to get a meeting with you. Your aide – Becket, is it? – was supposed to inform you.’
Adanar took the stairs two at a time. They led up to the battlements. He was making it deliberately difficult for the Imperial official. ‘He’s dead.’
Rancourt let out a little gasp. Adanar had to begrudgingly give him credit – he was keeping pace. ‘Dead? The necrons killed him? Are they inside our defences?’
Adanar stopped halfway up the stairs and glared straight ahead. ‘No, acting governor, he’s back there.’ He thumbed over his shoulder. ‘A rock killed him.’
‘A ro– A what?’
Adanar faced him. ‘A piece of debris fell from the ceiling and he died.’
Rancourt peered upwards, as if expecting a similar fate.
‘What did you want?’ Adanar pressed.
When Rancourt saw the undisguised contempt in the commander’s eyes, he reacted. ‘Respect, firstly. I am an agent of the Imperium, the highest authority on this world. And I–’
‘No,’ Adanar replied flatly. ‘You are not.’
Rancourt practically screeched at him, ‘I am the lord governor! I demand–’
Shaking his head, Adanar interjected. ‘You are not. You are acting governor and your authority at this time is meaningless. I will grant you a guard detail, but your demands will not be met.’
Kador’s face darkened further at the news.
Rancourt grasped the commander’s lapels. ‘Let the Adeptus Astartes fight. That is what they were made for. We should make all haste to the Crastia Shipyards and evacuate.’
Adanar looked down at Rancourt’s scrawny fingers. He let the commander go.
‘Secure your evacuation, you mean.’
Rancourt made a plaintive expression. ‘As the lord gov– As the acting lord governor,’ he corrected, ‘I should, by Imperial dictate, be amongst the first, yes. But–’
‘Look around you, Rancourt. Look at the skies. What do you think those tremors are that shake the walls? What are you listening to when the air booms? It’s not thunder, not in any natural sense, anyway.’ Adanar leaned in close. His alcohol breath wafted back at him. ‘The necrons control the skies. They fill it with emerald death. Even if we could reach the Crastia Shipyards, even if they were still standing, we would not get off the ground. Our vessels would be destroyed before they even breached the upper atmosphere.’
Rancourt knew this. Despite his actions to the contrary, he wasn’t a stupid man, just a desperate one. He seemed to shrink with the realisation that Adanar was telling the truth. His voice quivered like a child’s. ‘But I’m afraid…’
At first, Adanar regarded him with disgust – this was the lord governor of Damnos, the one the people looked to for leadership – but then he only felt pity.
‘We all are,’ said the commander and carried on up the stairs.
‘I have never fought beside an Angel before.’
Iulus’s attention was focused on the battlements. His command was the second wall, the one farthest from Kellenport bastion, the heart of the last city on Damnos. The third was well mined and booby-trapped. He credited Commander Sonne – he had drilled his men well. They had marched from the western gate and assumed the positions on and around the walls as Iulus had instructed.
His keen eye for tactical dispositions picked out gunnery nests, heavy stubbers on pintle-mounts, bolter emplacements and lascannon at enfilading points around the wall. The lines of Ark Guard were not thick but they were steady and every man, woman and child capable of doing so carried a lascarbine, autogun or shotgun. The Damnosian armouries were bare. Everything they had was on the walls or in the courtyards and it was pointed at the killing-fields where the necrons would come. He had named the courtyard below Xiphos, on account of the fact he liked the weapon. It was a cutting, thrusting blade and in the Terran dialect meant ‘penetrating light’ or something close to that – he was no expert in translation. There had been overly much darkness and not enough light on Damnos. The name was a fitting one, he decided.
As if only just realising he’d spoken, Iulus raised an eyebrow at Falka. ‘What did you say?’
The trooper was alongside him, part of the Ultramarine’s retinue, his ‘One Hundred’. ‘I said: I’ve never fought beside an Angel before.’
Iulus returned to surveying the defences. ‘I am not an Angel. I am a soldier, like you. Why must you humans constantly over-venerate?’
Falka laughed. It was a deep and wholly honest sound. ‘Me, a soldier? No. I’m a rig-hand, a miner. Have been all my life.’
Iulus looked at him askance. ‘Then you do a convincing impression of a soldier. I had not thought humans capable of such reckless courage as you showed. Do you crave death? I have witnessed men commit suicide in battle in similar circumstances to this.’
Falka shook his head. ‘No. I want to live but think I will probably not, at least not for much longer. I lost… a friend, and I want my death to mean something so that her sacrifice will too.’
Iulus considered that before resuming his vigil.
‘Those studs in your head,’ said Falka a few seconds later. ‘What are they for?’
Iulus touched the tips of the platinum studs with his gauntlet. He was almost reverent. ‘They signify a century’s service to the Chapter.’
Falka whistled. ‘So, you’re over two hundred years old?’
‘Yes, though I have not really thought about it before.’
‘Are you immortal, then?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Long-lived certainly, thanks to the gene-science of the Emperor, but not immortal.’ Iulus kept his gaze ahead, as if drawing inspiration from the silent desolation of the killing-field. ‘Ours is a violent calling. Death is an inevitable fact of our existence. I’m not sure if an Adeptus Astartes’s mortality has ever been put to the test. I cannot think of one who has ever died of old age. That would be a failure of our warrior purpose, I think.’ Iulus angled his neck to look at him. ‘You ask a lot of questions, human.’
‘Just nervous, that’s all,’ Falka replied. ‘We all are.’
Iulus took a moment to look around the battlements and the Courtyard of Xiphos below. Haunted faces came back at him, with hollow eyes and empty hearts. A revelation struck him. The defenders were not merely guns and bodies, they were people and within they had already lost the battle. He had mistaken fatalism for fortitude, acceptance for resolve.
‘Trooper Kolpeck,’ he said, still scanning the frightened crowds. ‘How can I galvanise these men so they will fight for me as you did in the Courtyard of Chronus?’
Falka followed the Ultramarine’s gaze as it swept the walls and ground below.
‘Inspire them,’ he said. ‘Give them something to fight for.’
Now Iulus stared at the trooper, nonplussed. ‘There is no greater honour than to serve the Emperor in battle, and die in His name.’
‘We are a courageous people, proud too, but we have long been without hope.’ Falka rubbed the hard stubble on his chin, seeking the right words. ‘Tell a man enough times that all is lost and his world is doomed, and he’ll start to believe it.’
As if prompted, the image of the Herald of Dismay flickered in the sky over Kellenport.
Heed the edicts of the necrontyr, your doom is at hand.
Your efforts are in vain. Abandon this futile defence, abandon hope and the–
The heinous image vanished, consumed by an explosion that destroyed the invocation node from which it was being broadcast. There were dozens of others erected throughout Damnos but this one was the closest to Kellenport, within sight of its walls. A stunned silence greeted its demise.
Iulus handed the rocket-tube back to one of the conscripts on the battlements. They had precious little ammunition and a part of him, an old part, regretted the waste of materiel, but it was worth it.
‘That’s enough negative propaganda for one war,’ he told Falka. ‘Hand me the vox.’
A trooper carrying a boxy vox-caster scurried over to the cobalt giant who had turned to address the stunned masses. It crackled loudly and there was a squeal of static before Iulus’s voice came through.
‘I am Brother-Sergeant Iulus Fennion, of the Ultramarines Second Company. I am warrior-born, clad in the Emperor’s metal, bearer of his wrath. You have been under the boot of your oppressors for too long. It ends. Here. Now. On these very walls. In this very courtyard. My brothers and I will bleed with you, and through blood will buy back your freedom. Do not surrender this world without a fight. Show these horrors that you wear the Emperor’s metal too. Show them our faith will not be daunted.’
Iulus drew his chainsword. All of Kellenport, the warriors on the walls and in the Courtyard of Xiphos – his battle-brothers included – were listening.
‘Damnos shall not yield.’ His voice grew in stature and power. ‘We shall not yield!’ He thrust the blade aloft and everyone who heard him cheered. Their fear and anxiety, their long-held despair and heart-gnawing grief came out in a cathartic flood of noise. It resounded off the walls and the barricades. It was a call to arms, an affirmation of belief that they all had needed to hear.
‘How was that?’ he asked Falka when the noise had finally subsided.
He took the receiver-cup – a little dumbstruck – and gave it back to the trooper with the vox-caster. ‘Stirring.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 115