by David Guymer
Kavalanera and her three sisters that remained able swiftly overtook Bohemond’s thumping progress. Olug and Brokk bellowed, not far behind. The women flowed across the ogryns and each other, crimson and black, like streams of coloured plasma under the fluctuating control of a multivariate magnetic field, but the prime-ork ignored their power blades as though they were insect stings. Olug barrelled into the great ork’s chest and bounced off. The prime-ork simply walked through him, breaking the ogryn’s hip under its boot, then swatted Brokk contemptuously aside on the edge of its gauntlet. Kavalanera continued to harry. With a growl, the prime-ork drew its gauntlets apart, the fires burning white-green and high, and then thumped them together. There was an implosive clap and a wave of force washed out and knocked the lightly armoured Sisters down.
Koorland heard the change in the thunder of bolter fire. It was missing, cracking along the wall above Koorland’s head. He saw one strike a bracket. The metal plate blew out and the stanchion buckled. The last holding up the gallery.
The whole structure fell away from the wall with a crunch of broken stone.
Bohemond drew sharply up. Asger, too, converging from another angle.
The prime-ork looked up, and the dropped gallery cracked in half over its helmet. Its force field flashed out with a burned stink of ozone and it sank under several tonnes of rock and iron and greenskin dead. Koorland saw the veiled threat of a humanoid shape sprint up one half of the gallery floor and vault up to the prime-ork’s shoulder. Krule. Koorland’s auto-senses were dead, and if they had been unable to track the Assassin before then his eyes had no chance now.
Krule appeared to have a sword in his hand, a long blade that phased in and out of material reality. With silent efficiency, the Assassin buried the weapon in the prime-ork’s neck. The phase blade passed through the prime-ork’s armour as though it just wasn’t there, but either lacked the length to do the same to the greenskin’s throat or found its flesh a tougher prospect.
The prime-ork began to rise, rubble tipping from its shoulders in almighty crashes. It was coated with powder. Bolt-rounds from the kill-team spanked off its unshielded armour.
A vicious twist of the neck sent Krule flying.
The Assassin twisted like an aerial gyro, landed in a roll, drew his executioner pistol and squeezed off bolt-rounds even as he spun. Their effect was no different to those of the Deathwatch.
It was impervious, imperious, and it continued towards Koorland and its beaten brother like an armoured locomotive.
‘Wither before the Emperor’s light, abhorrent,’ cried Bohemond. His ponderous stride bore him into the prime-ork’s path. Tactical Dreadnought armour weighed several tonnes. The vectoral force of a charging Space Marine Terminator was equivalent to being struck by a moving tank, but the prime-ork shunted him aside as though the battleplate was a hollow practice cast.
Asger Warfist slashed across the back of the prime-ork’s legs with similar luck. An up-clip of the giant’s spiked heel left the Wolf Lord on his back.
The last of the Imperial Fists squared himself defiantly. One leg was fully armoured, the other just a knee joint and a boot with some fluid-hydraulic wiring connecting the two to his hip. His torso was a patchwork of missing plates, his gorget ring mangled into a grimace of tortured adamantium. His gun was gone, the arm that would have wielded it useless anyway.
‘Daylight Wall stands forever.’
He lunged for the prime-ork’s groin with his sword. The disruption field was stuttering, caused by power outages from near continuous use, but come the final reckoning that did not matter. The prime-ork took the blow blade-on to its gauntlet palm and trapped it. The monster yanked the relic blade from Koorland’s grip with a strength that was simply irresistible and then, holding it by the blade, struck the grip across its thigh plate. The metal shattered into a dozen pieces.
With a grunt of satisfaction, it cast the last piece aside, planted its boot heel into Koorland’s chest, and shoved him to the floor.
It ground its boot in. Koorland’s solid rib-plate cracked under the weight. His vision turned spotty and black, but his hearing remained sharp.
Its voice was like death from orbit.
‘I am Slaughter.’
After murdering a path through several flights of stairs to reach the broad stone block corridor, Kjarvik’s vox-link with Kill-Team Stalker came back. They were close. He knew that because contact with Clermont, the fleet, or with Thane was still out. At first, his snarled demands for an update were looped back in a growl of static-chopped voices. Then buzzarding cries, barely human in their grief or their anger or both. The second thing Kjarvik knew was that they had failed.
The reasons for that were obvious.
Orks of an especially large breed blocked Umbra’s run on the vast arched gateway at the end of the corridor. They were bulked out in black and white megaplate, appropriately armed for urban combat with powered battle-saws, flamers, and high-volume stubbers.
Under other circumstances, Kjarvik might have doubted his ability to break through such heavy brutes in such numbers, but for once, the luck-spinners spared the Stormcrow a rare smile. The orks had been marching on the gate themselves, too hemmed in now to properly turn and fight the force that struck at their backs.
A blow from Kjarvik’s power fist obliterated a mega-armoured boss from waist to neck. A full magazine of vengeance rounds slowed down another. Blood matted his beard. His braids stuck to his head. Zarrael’s eviscerator was a near-constant meat shriek, white noise above the grunts and the howls and the thunder of heavy firepower. Baldarich’s sword made ribboning flurries of gore. Bohr murdered orks by the dozen with plasma and flame. Phareous’ shield was slick, his bolter still firing. The Iron Snake advanced in a crouch, Atherias walking behind and blazing over his head with bolter and servo-harness. The weapons flashes caused the brilliant purple and gold of his pauldron plate to shine. The Inquisitorial storm troopers made their contribution, pinpoint flurries of las hosing the inevitable gaps that Baldarich and Zarrael’s savagery left behind. Raznick came just behind them, shielding Inquisitor Wienand with his body, whatever neuro-enhancements he had been given allowing him to fire his brace of pistols entirely independently and with astonishing accuracy.
What all of that splendid slaughter told Kjarvik was that they had failed.
The psyker bomb had not worked.
The howl he gave was that of a wolf for its master, and burned his throat like a jawful of winter. He was unsurprised to hear the cries of lamentation from those around him.
‘Push through to the throne room,’ urged Wienand, covering her vox-bead with one hand whilst shooting with her laspistol. ‘Something has gone wrong. I have to see.’
Kjarvik did not need to see. He could already smell the red snow.
With a frenzied gargle, Zarrael tore out an ork’s throat with his bare teeth, dissolved the face of another with a gob of Betcher’s acid, and kicked himself a path to the gate. It was thirty metres high, as dense with imagery as any cave wall on Fenris, but the Flesh Tearer’s wrath cowed its grandeur. It was what lay beyond that put fire under them all.
Kjarvik rushed in behind with a howl, the rest of Kill-Team Umbra at his back, ready to administer the duty for which Koorland had brought them together.
They brought death to the alien.
Once before, Laurentis had witnessed the end of the Imperial Fists. It seemed horribly fitting that he should bear witness again.
He was aware of the Deathwatch and Inquisitorial storm troopers that came in firing through the main doors.
He was aware of the Beast – and it was the Beast, he had no doubt. The titanic ork withdrew its foot from Koorland’s chest, and then, with a rumble of mockery booming from the hollow spaces of its visor, it reached up to unhook its helmet from its gorget. Its flesh was a blackish green, crusted like scar tissue or lignified plant matter.
The look it gave Koorland was at once contemptuous and triumphant. Helmet held underarm, it gave the remaining Space Marines and their efforts a derisive look.
It turned and walked away with a sneer.
Once more mankind handed up its best, and again the caprice of the gods had accepted that sacrifice and repaid it in blood.
Asger Warfist howled after it in futility as the Beast waded back into its bodyguard.
The Space Wolf led Kill-Team Stalker and the Sisters of Silence into the attack, Kill-Team Umbra falling on the assaulting mob from the rear. Laurentis was aware of the battle. Retribution so savage and total that even in the narrow-band focus of grief, Laurentis could not have missed it entirely. His eye was blinkered with sorrowful code. His ears carried the nothing whistle of a fluid-pump that did not beat. His small mechanical body was numb in a way that went beyond what its makers had intended.
Glory to the Ominissiah.
He was aware of Bohemond, on his knees and weeping unashamedly over Koorland’s broken body.
In a way that only one whose sensory apparatus was removed from their largely organic brain could experience, Laurentis was aware of it all. It took place in another reality, a noosphere of data-irrelevancy in which he had no interest and had lost the rites to access. All that felt real at that moment lay within the ruin of human flesh and golden-yellow ceramite draped through Bohemond’s arms.
Koorland had not just been humanity’s great symbol of hope. He had been Laurentis’ friend.
‘He needs an Apothecary,’ said Bohemond. The Black Templar wasn’t really looking at Laurentis at all. Much like himself, the Space Marine existed in his pocket space of grief. Behind them a battle raged.
They were both aware of it.
‘There is none,’ said Laurentis.
He knew more about Space Marine biology than most non-Space Marines could profess. He could pinpoint the secondary heart, the oolitic kidney, the pre-stomach. He knew enough to ask the right questions. Not enough to help his friend in any way. Trying not to think too much about what he did, he prodded Koorland’s purpled throat with a digital manipulator. Sensory feedback flowed back through its synthetic axon fibres. Fluid oedema. Larraman coagulation. Crushed cartilage. Like scrunching one’s finger through packing plastek. The incongruous likeness made him squirm and he withdrew the appendage.
The prime-ork had known exactly what had to be destroyed. To eliminate the one thing its rival could not afford to lose.
‘I think… I think that…’
‘No!’ said Bohemond. ‘No, I will not accept it. The line of Dorn must live on.’
Laurentis deployed his extensors for a second examination, this time preparing a full suite of electro-probes and echo-feelers. More out of due diligence than hope. As he extended his tools, a terrific explosion shook the ceiling, ferocious enough to force him to notice it. He rolled his eyeball up and saw light.
The ceiling was cracked. A second detonation blew a hole in it and brought a cataract of frescoed rubble pieces the size of battle tanks crashing down. Immediately under the downfall, the great dais of the six prime-orks was crushed. Spotlights swiped the throne room’s scarred mosaic, followed by the thunderous reports of heavy bolters and the empty prang of return fire from the ground. The signature, circular roar of turbofan engines angled for vertical lift.
An intense beam shone in Laurentis’ eye as it tracked. He blinked, but in the split-second before, he saw a pair of Deathwatch-black Thunderhawk gunships descending through the breached ceiling. They spat fire. Heavy bolters. Lascannons. Too tight for missiles. Lord Thane stood on the assault ramp, waving the embattled storm troopers and Deathwatch aboard.
With no one else of a mind to step into Koorland’s still-warm boots, Inquisitor Wienand gave the order to retreat.
Laurentis was aware of it.
Barely.
But only when Asger Warfist lifted him up under one arm and Bohemond reverently raised Koorland’s body did he pay it any mind.
They had lost.
The last son of Dorn was dead.
‘The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.’
– the remembrancer Thucydides, pre-M0
Epilogue
Ullanor – orbital
Candles flickered, wavering to the hull-dispersed groan of shield hits. The scent and the ethereal haze of incense swirled around the chamber, in and out, with the soft breath of the air cyclers. The small chapel of Alcazar Remembered was buried deep within the heart of the battle-barge. Reliefs portraying the works of the Emperor and the VII Legion were sparse on the walls. A single, unpainted statue of Rogal Dorn stood behind an altar, flanked by a pair of candelabra and an oil-burner made of plain, simple brass.
The last of the Imperial Fists lay in state. The Chaplaincy serfs had done their best with the damage. His shattered torso had been oiled and bound and hidden under full honours. His relic plate had been reassembled and polished until it shone like gold in heaven. His eyes had been closed. The Fists Exemplar no longer had a Chaplain, but the mortals had risen to fill the void and excelled. Perhaps humanity could prosper without the Space Marines after all, as Koorland had suggested they one day must. The space-time cocoon of a stasis field shimmered like a thermal blanket. It made it appear as though Koorland was resting, but somehow it was easier to believe that he was dead.
In the brief time that Thane had known him, he had never seen his Lord Commander rest.
The chapel had space for two dozen Adeptus Astartes, half that if they were in armour, as Thane was. Bohemond and Issachar stood beside him. The High Marshal was in almost as bad a shape as Koorland. He seemed almost angered by that, each slow, deliberate breath coming hotter than the last. The Excoriator’s armour bore no new scars, tasked with fleet command aboard Punished while Thane and Bohemond were engaged on the planet. Whether or not he was plagued by the same sense of dereliction as Thane, the ancient Chapter Master’s face showed nothing.
If he had been but a little quicker…
If he had been able to re-establish contact with that gunship wing just two minutes earlier…
It should have been Thane that had died. Or Bohemond even.
Anyone, but Koorland.
Thane returned to Koorland’s face. He leaned forward, ignoring the tightening stiffness that pulled on his side and made him want to wince. He looked deep into the set of the Imperial Fist’s jaw.
It was not reproach.
‘He looks peaceful.’
‘He looks angry,’ said Bohemond. ‘The Imperium is but half remade. The Emperor’s vision, Vulkan’s admonition – his work is unfinished.’ Thane thought the words disingenuous, since none had protested Koorland’s mission of revivification more sternly. ‘When we return I will stand before the Golden Throne and call a new Crusade in his name.’
‘From whom?’ said Issachar. ‘From where? And with what ships will you transport them? The Navy, the Mechanicus, the Inquisition – we run low on resources, brother.’ Issachar looked down at Koorland. The Excoriator was reserved where Bohemond was reckless, proud where Thane was modest. He was, it was at times easy to forget, more experienced and decorated in war than either of his junior brothers. ‘We must fortify,’ he said. ‘And prepare for the inevitable. We will break the ork’s back over the walls of Terra, just as our ancestors broke the Arch-Traitor.’
Issachar looked at Bohemond. Bohemond looked at Thane. Thane looked at them both. His thoughts placed Verpall, Cuarrion and Vorkogun, and Euclydeas too if the Soul Drinker still lived, interchangeably in their place.
He would not have the Last Wall repeat the mistakes of the High Lords before them. That would be an affront to Koorland’s memory. Whatever power struggles were to follow, he wanted no part of them. He was a Fist Exemplar above all else.
There was not a system in his body that had not in some way been modified to serve him better in war, and through him, the Imperium. Always the Imperium.
That sense of duty alone was the ambit of his ambition. It was something that perhaps only one of Oriax Dantalion’s descendents could understand.
Mankind was better.
It deserved better.
About the Author
David Guymer is the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned, along with the novella Thorgrim and a plethora of short stories set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Awards for his novel Headtaker.
An extract from Praetorian of Dorn.
‘Bring us onto the line.’
‘Entering the line now.’
‘Transmitting clearance.’
‘Clearance acknowledged.’
‘Hold steady, and make ready for pilot cadre.’
‘Hold steady, aye.’
Lieutenant Maecenas V Hon-II let the voices from the bridge wash across him. He sat on the throne of the second attendant deck officer, feet on the lapis and bronze instrument console, arms crossed across the rippled blue and yellow of his uniform. His eyes were closed, and his chin rested on his chest.
All the command crew knew that this was the most likely position to find Maecenas in when he was on second attendance. They would not bother him, even though anyone else sleeping on watch would have been shackled, electro-whipped and left in the brig for the journey back to Jupiter. Not Maecenas, though; he was of the Consanguinity. Everyone else on the ship was oath or marriage bonded at best. That meant that Maecenas had the right to do as he pleased. After all, in a very real sense, the ship almost belonged to him. Had his uncle, or his first cousin, come onto the ship and told him to take his feet off the console, he would have obeyed, but the polar Shoal-city stations were a long way away in the wrong direction, and getting no closer. So the crew let him sleep through his watch. It was better than him being awake after all.