‘Still nothing, lord,’ said Telach. ‘It is closed to me.’
‘You said the presence was growing,’ said Rauth. ‘How much time do we have?’
‘Hours,’ he said. ‘Maybe less. Thousands of souls have been fed to it; the veil between the worlds is weak now.’
Rauth took a deep, long breath. The wounds he had sustained were raw still, but their pain was welcome.
‘We need Nethata’s armour,’ insisted Khatir. ‘We need those tanks.’
Imanol nodded slowly.
‘You are right,’ he said. ‘The enemy is numerous; we will not kill them quickly enough.’
Rauth felt fresh frustration boiling within him. The entire campaign had been arranged around the union of forces – the numerous mortals to soak up the bulk of the enemy’s rage, freeing the Iron Hands to strike out at the real danger, the spirits of the arch-enemy that no unmodified human could take on.
‘What does he think, that we made our choices for no reason?’ Rauth thundered, struggling with the urge to lash out and crunch his gauntlets into the fabric of the doors. ‘Does he think we do not suffer? Does he think that we do not absorb our share of pain?’
‘He is weak,’ said Khatir. ‘Let me destroy him – I can deliver you the armour we need.’
‘We do not have time,’ said Telach. ‘He is out on the wasteland, and we are down here – we must assault the spire.’
‘We cannot succeed without them,’ said Imanol.
For a moment, Rauth felt paralysed, hung between two equally unacceptable options. Part of him burned to crack open the gates that very moment, to tear into the spire and burn his way up to the summit, damning the consequences of failure. Another part burned to take vengeance for Nethata’s treachery, to drag the mortals to heel and compel them to do their duty.
For a veteran Iron Hand, raised on a world of cold and shadow and gifted the terrible gene-legacy of his austere primarch, that, in the end, was all there was: wrath and duty. If any other human state had once held sway in his psyche, it was now long forgotten – the slow burn of transformation had done its work, and the last of the weaknesses of the past had gone.
The rest is strength.
‘We will withdraw,’ announced Rauth, and the words were bitter on his synthetic tongue. Once the decision had been made, he felt the first stirrings of full combat readiness pricking across his enhanced nervous system. ‘We will move quickly, back out into the wastes, and take the armour by force. Then we will assault, our numbers restored, and break the spires. We can do it, if we leave now. No hesitation, no restraint.’
Rauth turned his helm towards Telach, and the ceramite curves glinted in the dark.
‘And for the traitor Nethata,’ he said, ‘no mercy. No mercy for any of them. Everything about this world is weak and perverse – when our task is accomplished here, I will scour it. A thousand years, hence the fate of Shardenus will echo throughout the Imperium. Men will look to our actions here and know the price of weakness. This shall be the example. This shall be the demonstration.’
Those last few words came out like an animal growl. He began to move, to stride back down the tunnel towards Nethata’s position. His fury was unabated, and he knew it would burn on throughout the fighting to come. Khatir and Imanol both approved – they understood.
Only Telach remained silent.
‘Wait,’ the Librarian said, holding up a hand.
Rauth almost didn’t listen, but something in the tone of Telach’s voice gave him pause.
‘Listen,’ said Telach.
Rauth stopped, and listened.
Above, far above, something enormous had detonated. Rauth’s enhanced hearing picked up the muffled crashes of gigantic explosions from the far side of the gates. His helm’s auditory filters worked quickly, bringing him detailed information on the location, size and magnitude of the blast.
Auspex data started to flood into his tactical systems – target runes, comm-signal ranges, psychic concentration nodes, power build-ups. The explosions kept on going. They were getting bigger.
He turned to Telach, his fury forgotten for a moment.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
Nethata walked along the ridge towards the first of his armoured columns. His entourage followed closely, holding their lasguns ready and going watchfully. The men had been taken from the remnants of the Ferik’s First Company and were as good as any of the troops still under his direct command. They were seasoned by several campaigns and gifted with the best equipment he could find, but still they went nervously, as if expecting attack at any time.
Nethata didn’t share their trepidation. Five hundred metres away, the huge outline of the Warlord Meritus Castigatio loomed up through the ash, monumental and imposing. Even when stationary and mostly powered down, it was a fearsome prospect. Lopi’s other war engine, the Terribilis Vindicta, stood immobile at the other extreme of his army’s long formation of mechanised units, watching over them protectively.
It was hard to imagine anything taking on such a concentrated collection of firepower. Space Marines were impressive, to be sure, but they weren’t invincible, and Nethata knew that if Rauth had any sense he’d use the opportunity presented by such defiance to behave with a little more respect.
Nethata looked away from the Titan and out over the wasteland. The landscape around him was a picture of devastation. Old, rusting industrial compounds mouldered in the corrosive air, gently worn away by the acids at their base and the toxins in the air. A vast expanse of low-level buildings stretched away north, wreathed in a faint smog of ash and dust, only broken by the immense bulk of the Capitolis spires on the northern horizon.
Nethata knew that he was safer in the sealed confines of Malevolentia. Even with his elaborate environment suit working at full capacity, the poisonous air of Shardenus made its presence felt; without such protection he’d have long since been dead. He liked to inspect his formations in person, though. He’d always done so in the past when he could. A hololith tactical could only tell you so much – you learned more by looking into the eyes of your company commanders, seeing whether they were prepared, assessing their stomach for the coming fight.
For the most part, he’d been reassured by what he’d seen on his impromptu inspection. The Ferik and Galamoth regiments had taken losses in the fighting across the wastelands, but they also knew what had happened to the Harakoni on the walls, and to those units taken by Rauth into the Melamar hives and the tunnels. They knew which commanders were likely to get them killed quickest, and which ones were likely to give them a semblance of proper support.
Nethata reached his destination – a small, semi-derelict control tower overlooking the heart of his carefully arranged army. He kicked the door open and ascended the stairs quickly, eager to get the overview he wanted before returning to Malevolentia for final preparations. It would probably be his one chance to see the entirety of his forces laid out before him.
He reached the top level quickly – an abandoned comms room with broken plexiglass in the panes and a bank of smashed cogitators along one wall – and leaned out over the cracked sill to get his overview.
His tanks were arranged in their battle groups in a long, broken line along the ridge ahead of him. They stretched out in either direction running east-west, their engines idling and sending a film of fresh smog into the already thick air. It was a significant force – over two hundred Leman Russ main battle tanks in varying configurations, backed up with Basilisk artillery pieces and Chimera troop carriers. Sentinel walkers prowled around the fringes, looking fragile under the enormous shadow of the two Warlords. To the south lay the burning Axis hives; to the north was the gigantic Capitolis spire. Everything in between swam with a green-tinged toxic soup, washing over the abandoned buildings like an inland sea.
Nethata let his gaze run down the length of the army, looking out for units out of sequence. For a while, he saw nothing untoward. He was about to go back down the stairs when he saw the first of them star
t to move.
A squadron of Leman Russ battle tanks powered up their engines and lurched forwards, all twelve of them, grinding over a straggling barbed-wire thicket before setting off down the long, broken highway ahead and out into the swirling chemical mist.
Nethata watched them go, momentarily dumbstruck. He hadn’t given an order to advance. He hadn’t given an order to do anything.
‘Heriat,’ he voxed over the comm. ‘Do you know anything about–’
Before he’d finished the question, another unit set off. Then another. Before long, whole sections of the defensive line had broken into movement. Nethata felt a chill run through him. He turned and ran down the stairway, back to where his entourage was waiting for him.
His comm-channel began to fill up with queries. Group commanders of stationary units sent urgent requests for clarification. Group commanders of moving units kept their channels offline. Nethata wasn’t interested in any of them; there was only one man who he wanted to speak to.
‘Commissar-General Slavo Heriat,’ he voxed again. ‘Respond immediately. We have multiple unauthorised movements. Respond immediately.’
Nethata raced along the ridge, back to where Malevolentia had been left. His escort struggled to keep up with him, weighed down by their sealed environment suits and heavy weaponry.
‘Respond, Slavo,’ he ordered, getting testier the longer he was kept waiting. ‘This is–’
He stopped when he entered the chemical facility yard. Malevolentia was gone. One of the walls on the northern edge of the space had been entirely demolished, and tell-tale tracks in the concrete told him exactly where his command vehicle had gone.
A lone Ferik watch officer, swathed in an orange chem-suit, waited for him in the centre of the yard.
‘What is happening here?’ demanded Nethata.
The officer saluted smartly.
‘Your orders, lord,’ he said. ‘Squads detailed to rendezvous with the Iron Hands have begun deployment. I thought–’
It was as if the world had suddenly given way under Nethata’s feet. He felt briefly dizzy, and glanded a quick burst of adrenaquil. He hadn’t needed to do that for a while.
‘When did this happen?’ asked Nethata, his mind racing.
How many units has he taken? How did he organise it? When did he do it?
The watch officer checked his chrono.
‘Ten minutes ago. I assumed these were your orders – the authorisations checked out. Oh, and the Commissar-General left this for you.’
The officer handed something to Nethata, who absently took it. Only when he looked down did he see what it was: Heriat’s bolt pistol.
For a moment, he had absolutely no idea what to do. He stared at the pistol stupidly, his mind locked in a vice of shock.
Heriat. Of all of them. I should have listened. I should have been more careful.
Nethata was still standing there, still too shocked to make any decision, when the explosions went off. Even from so far away, they crashed out across the wasteland like the immense, crushing reports of nova cannons.
Nethata looked up sharply, stung out of his paralysis by the sudden barrage of detonations. To the north, out on the edge of unaided sight, the summit of the Capitolis spire was being ripped apart. The explosions kept on going, lighting up the northern horizon with huge, rolling balls of fire. It wasn’t the tanks – they were still far too far away.
Nethata turned to the watch officer, hardly bothering to hide his surprise.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
Heriat felt the rhythmic drum of Malevolentia’s engines semi-reassuring. The promise of mechanical reliability made his decision feel slightly less capricious, slightly less shabby. Even though he’d known what had to be done for several days, and even though he’d spoken to his selected company commanders over an even longer period of time, when he’d actually come down to it the action had made him feel wretched.
If it had been anyone other than Nethata, he wouldn’t have hesitated. If it had been anyone other than Nethata, he’d have long since had enough of the minor slights, the disregard, the monomania. A lifetime’s friendship wasn’t easily thrown away, though, and in the event it had taken outright treachery to push it over the edge.
Heriat’s life was as full of certainties as other men’s were not. Nethata evidently didn’t view his actions as treasonous. A casual glance at the Guard conduct manuals or the precepts of the Adeptus Terra would have corrected that impression. Rauth was the senior commander on Shardenus; short of an order from the Imperial authorities themselves, all loyalist forces on the planet were bound to follow his orders. It didn’t matter whether those orders were wise or foolish, enlightened or despotic. That was the nature of commands; you followed them.
The Imperium was nothing without discipline. Everything else – loyalty, fervour, duty, friendship, devotion – it was all nothing without the iron fist of control. Humanity, as the Commissariat knew well, was a wayward species. It had to be protected from itself. When it wavered, it had to be corrected. When it doubted, it had to be conditioned. When it faltered, it had to be punished.
Position runes danced across the command console’s forward sensor array. Heriat looked at them carefully. Nearly half of the companies under Nethata’s command had broken rank and followed his orders. That was encouraging. All of those he had approached had been persuaded by his arguments – or his threats. Those he had judged too close to Nethata to accept the possibility of betrayal would now have to examine their options – would they remain behind in a diminished rump of a fighting force, or would they advance with him, fulfilling their duty to the Emperor and to the Guard?
Heriat sat back in his seat and issued the command to release his vox-message to Rauth. Soon the clan commander would know that he still had mortal allies willing to do what was necessary for victory. Heriat himself knew perfectly well what was required of him, as he had been the one who had listened in detail to the increasingly angry missives from the Iron Hands command group over the past few days. He knew where his tanks were to be deployed, and what role they were to play. Valien’s transmissions had been useful in that respect, as had the schematics he’d sent before all comms had died.
Heriat knew perfectly well that the forces under his command, including Malevolentia, would be destroyed within a few hours of coming into range of the Capitolis’s defences. All of this was understood. Nethata and he did not disagree on the practicalities of the situation; it was the principle that was at stake.
And yet, for all his certainty, Heriat did not rest easily in his seat. A perfectly certain man would not have handled things the way he had done. A perfectly certain man would have carried out the ultimate sanction – he would have killed Nethata at the first sign of treachery and taken over command from the very beginning.
The fact that he hadn’t done so was evidence of failure. Heriat had left the bolt pistol for Nethata to find, knowing that he would understand the symbolism.
It wasn’t as if, in all conscience, he’d had any choice. Heriat couldn’t have killed Nethata. Not since the transplant that had saved his life after the action on Goetes IX, staving off the ravages of early-stage skietica and keeping him alive for another fifty years. The price Nethata had paid for that donation, made in a filthy battlefield medicae station under constant fire, had been high – for all the miracles of the chirurgeons’ art, he had been condemned to spend the rest of his life addicted to a cocktail of high-strength glanded narcotics to compensate for what he had given up.
Perhaps all that adrenaquil and tranquilox had begun to affect Nethata’s judgement at last – it would not have been the first time. If so, then Heriat’s sickness had been the cause of Nethata’s sickness, and applying the final sanction would have made his actions even more wretched than they already were.
Heriat felt the sores around his mouth itch painfully, and resisted the urge to scratch. His expression remained stony. The flesh, as Rauth would no doubt have relished
telling him, was weak.
‘Commissar-General, we have sensor readings from the spires,’ came a vox from Malevolentia’s command chamber.
Heriat stirred from his thoughts. The forces under his command were still some way from their final positions.
‘Put them through,’ he said, switching the screen on his console to a forward vid-feed.
Just as he did so, he saw the explosions go off. Even from so far away, they burst through the audio transmitters with a static-fuzzed crash.
Heriat started, stung by the sudden barrage of detonations. Picked out in grainy detail on the pict screens, the summit of the Capitolis spire was being ripped apart. Auspex data started to flood into his tactical systems – target runes, comm-signal ranges, power build-ups. The explosions kept on going, lighting up the northern horizon with huge, rolling balls of fire.
Heriat slumped back in his seat, watching the damage unfold.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
The daemon’s claws ripped through him, tearing up his already tortured flesh and flaying layers of armour like falling leaves. Then, its work done, it dropped him.
With his last flickers of awareness, Valien saw where he was headed. The empty throne rushed up to greet him, replete with the nascent horror that it cradled between its arms.
Before he hit it, he only had time to do two things. The first of those was to scream. The second was to activate the explosive implanted in his chest.
He didn’t feel the explosion. It was so huge, so powerful, so destructive, that he was reduced to atoms in an instant. He didn’t see the enormous pool of fire surge out from his destroyed body, sweeping across the corrupted audience chamber and shattering the immense panes of glass in a rain of silver. He didn’t see the external walls of the spire blow out into the atmosphere, showering burning stone and metal down the long flanks of the upper hive. He didn’t see the secondary incendiaries in the cluster ignite, sparking the inferno that would reduce the entire governor’s complex to rubble and crack open the powerful shields that protected the Capitolis from sensor probes and psychic attack.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 237