by Guy Haley
‘The weaponry of the Ordo Reductor is generally apocalyptic in scale,’ said Kane. He chose a deliberately mechanical voice for the meeting, but could not hide his irritation at explaining the obvious to Marison. ‘It takes time to prepare.’
‘I am aware,’ said Marison huffily. ‘We’re all aware of that.’
‘Well,’ said Kane. ‘There are other strategic considerations, of course.’
‘We have nowhere to go,’ said Bolam Haardiker, Paternoval Envoy. ‘They do not need to rush.’ That day he carried his own nuncio system. None of them had their usual servants in attendance.
‘Let them dither!’ said Pentasian. ‘Every moment they waste building their weapons is more time for Lord Guilliman to make his way to Terra and to our rescue. Is that not the case, Lord Dorn?’
‘There is another reason why they are taking their time,’ said Malcador, before Dorn could answer. As Imperial Regent, Malcador was leader of the group. Though his title was more one of ceremony while martial law was in place, he was the only man the primarchs would still defer to. ‘These bombardments, this wasting of life has to have a purpose. Do you think Horus Lupercal, conqueror of half the known galaxy, once most favoured of the Emperor’s sons and appointed Warmaster by Him, has lost his mind?’
‘I had hoped so,’ said General Adreen, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Armies. ‘It would make him easier to beat.’ His comment drew a ripple of gallows laughter from his fellows.
Malcador didn’t laugh. ‘Thus far we have not seen Horus’ infernal allies upon the field. We are fortunate, the Emperor is powerful, and holds back the wickedness of the warp. But every drop of blood spilled on Terra’s soil weakens His grip on the energies of the empyrean.’
‘Daemons,’ said Nemo Zhi-Meng, Choirmaster of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. ‘He speaks of daemons.’
The lords and ladies looked at one another uneasily at his use of the word.
‘These beings exist,’ Haardiker said, his nuncio set smoothly translating the clicks and whispers emanating from his mutant throat into Gothic. ‘We Navigators know them of old. They serve the entities that name themselves as gods.’
‘Well don’t look so surprised,’ said Pentasian sharply to the others. ‘We’ve all heard the reports. We’ve spoken to eye-witnesses. Do not let the name frighten you – they are extra-dimensional xenos, nothing more.’
The primarchs did not correct him. Better that the High Lords thought that way.
‘They could come in… here?’ said Marison, glancing around the vast building.
‘Maybe. Eventually,’ said Malcador gravely. ‘The Emperor’s power is not infinite, and certainly long before the enemy is able to manifest his wicked allies within these walls, His protection will be weakened sufficiently that the barriers between the materium and immaterium will be broken through elsewhere on Terra. Then we will have to face daemonic creatures fighting alongside Traitor legionaries, besides all the misguided masses who follow the Warmaster.’
‘I can’t quite believe it. In all this, you know,’ Sidat Yaseen Tharcher, Chirurgeon General said. ‘Magic. Sorcery.’ It was hard for him. He was a scientist to the core.
‘The dark side of the warp,’ said Malcador. ‘You all understand, I am sure, that the full extent of the truth is still not to be shared beyond the higher echelons of government. We discuss these matters here among ourselves. They are not to be disseminated further.’
They agreed, some more than others.
‘Why did He lie about this?’ said Ossian abruptly.
‘A lie of omission is not the same as outright untruth,’ argued General Adreen.
‘The Emperor’s omissions are not as awful as some say. The warp has changed,’ said Nemo Zhi-Meng. Few shared the reach of his vision, and he was apt at seeing past the surface of things to grasp truths others did not. ‘Powers move in the deeps of the empyrean that were quiet before. Awareness of them gives them strength. His instinct to shield the human race was the correct one – for the same reason we should not spread this news. Knowledge of the false gods gives them strength. It makes them real. In a certain way of looking at it, until recently they did not exist except as whispers, nightmares and half-myths.’
‘We are not here to discuss the motivations of the Emperor,’ said Malcador firmly.
‘True, true,’ said Pentasian. ‘But still.’ He gave a weak smile, wholly out of place on his miserable face. ‘Nightmares, witches, warp entities. All the old legends coming true.’
‘Please, Lord Dorn, present your strategic analysis,’ said Malcador.
Dorn stepped forwards fully into the light. His golden battleplate flashed resplendently, dazzling the High Lords. Although the dais raised the table well above the debating floor, Dorn was of sufficient height that he could meet their eyes when standing on the ground, and when stood next to the table as he was then, he dwarfed them. The brief illusion of the Council’s authority was shattered. Any who witnessed the scene could not doubt who was the true power on Terra; this son of the Emperor, with his brilliant white hair and his golden panoply, was the embodiment of the Imperium.
Dorn cast his eye over the High Lords. Most looked down, afraid. A couple met his gaze with difficulty. ‘There are further problems the Khan’s reconnaissance has brought to light,’ Dorn said. ‘You see these structures here?’
‘Buildings?’ said Demidov. ‘Fortresses?’
‘Siege towers,’ said the Khan.
Murmurs of disbelief went around the twelve.
‘They are immense,’ said Adreen. ‘Is it possible? Will they even function?’ He addressed this last question to Kane.
Kane fell into a contemplative silence. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Nullification of mass by contra-gravity devices and structural binding with integrity fields would enable such large objects to be motivated without becoming unstable. They are tactically impractical, and of limited use, but they could be built.’
‘We have indications of other, similar siege engines under construction in the other camps, but none so far advanced as these. It is clear to us that soon the enemy will make an attempt on the walls by the Helios Gate,’ said Dorn.
‘You are bombarding them, of course?’ said Zhi-Meng.
‘I will come to that. First, enemy landing zones,’ Dorn said, pausing after announcing the subject. A projection of Terra came into being, huge and grey, over the table. ‘The enemy has made planetfall at over three hundred separate locations around the globe.’ The hololith displayed enemy concentrations as blotchy purple. ‘Most of this is speculation. There are no precise figures for enemy numbers. Terra’s orbital network is either destroyed or in enemy hands. These figures are collated from information gathered from other hives where possible. In most cases, it is impossible. Supposition is our only tool.
‘Siege camps.’ Again, Dorn paused. ‘Eight siege camps ring the city, all established behind defence screens. Overhead voids, layered power shields, ion shielding, while their smaller constructs go about protected by atomantic sheaths. Using the camps as a base, the Dark Mechanicum has begun work on a line of contravallation to encircle the entire Eternity Wall. They are under constant bombardment from the Palace, but this will only slow rather than stop them. The shielding prevents our direct targeting of their siege equipment until it is ready, and moving against the walls.
‘Enemy troop strength. We have downed thousands of their landing craft. Nevertheless, several million troops of varying quality are now encamped outside the walls. However, these forces are of little concern. Other landing zones, out of range of the Palace guns, have been set up further back in the Himalazian massif. These landing sites are by necessity far from us, but we can be sure that reinforcements are marching from them already. What intelligence we can gather shows higher quality troops moving from these sites on other Terran cities.
‘Space ports. Horu
s has secured a number of landing fields across Terra. Near the Palace, Damocles space port is under constant attack. For now it holds, but it will fall. As it lies outside the aegis, most of the structures in the Damocles zone have been destroyed, including the Black Ministry. Our warriors have done what they can to compromise Damocles port’s usefulness, but even damaged it will offer the Warmaster a safe landing zone for Titan Legios and other heavy formations close to our main defences.
‘Aerial theatres,’ he continued relentlessly. ‘We have no control of the void. Our fighter forces dwindle with every sortie from the Warmaster’s fleet.
‘Aegis strength. The aegis holds at close to one hundred per cent strength over the central districts and the Sanctum Imperialis, but on the periphery we have less than forty per cent efficacy. This is falling daily. Before long, the outer walls will be open to attack from above, and when that occurs they will be breached.’
‘The shields will hold,’ said Kane.
Dorn looked at the Fabricator General. ‘We face five primarchs. One among them has uncovered and is exploiting weaknesses in the aegis network. My guess would be Perturabo.’
‘Or Kelbor-Hal,’ said Kane.
‘Perturabo was made for tasks such as this,’ said Dorn, staring at the Fabricator General with certainty. ‘The bombardment patterns bear his mark as surely as if he had fashioned them in steel and struck them with his die. The aegis will fail under his attack. The walls will then begin to take bombardment damage. This will happen soon.
‘Palace outworks.’ Dorn returned his gaze from Kane to the hololith, dismissing the Fabricator General’s quibbles. ‘The outworks are close to collapse. Greater than one half of the conscripts and other formations committed to their defence are dead. I will shortly give the order to abandon the third line, and fall back to the second.’
‘The bastions still hold,’ said Adreen.
‘While they do, we can keep the enemy away from the Palace defences. I anticipate the next major attack will come soon in an effort to clear the outwork towers from the field,’ said Dorn. ‘This may be accompanied by the first serious attempt on the Eternity Wall. If it does not come then, it will come soon after.’
‘This is a ritual,’ said Constantin Valdor. He was almost as commanding as the primarchs, but being better known to the Twelve, they were not as afraid of him. While the Emperor’s sons spoke, he kept his own counsel, and that was something Dorn encouraged. In earlier days, when the primarchs waged the Emperor’s war among the stars, Valdor’s voice had great influence on the Senatorum. His silence spoke volumes on the primarchs’ authority now that they ruled in their father’s stead.
Valdor stepped next to Dorn to point at the hololith. ‘Eight camps at varying distance from the Palace. Draw a line from each, and the lines intersect over the Sanctum Imperialis. These desperate attacks by low quality troops against the outworks are not serious attempts. They are sacrifices.’
‘Not long ago, we might have overlooked the possibility,’ said Dorn, ‘but the captain-general has it right. Though the Warmaster erodes our outer perimeters, the strategy is suboptimal.’ He pointed at two siege camps, one directly north of the Sanctum, the other to the south-west. ‘For example, the walls here and here are weakened, yet the enemy establishes his camps kilometres out from those points. It is unmistakably a ritual arrangement.’
‘My lords,’ said Valdor, ‘Horus is taking our choices from us. If we do not attack, we allow them to build their siege works unhindered. If we attack, we add to whatever blood magic they are planning.’
‘But are they truly involved in ritual? How can we know?’ said Marison disbelievingly. ‘Not one of us here is a sorcerer.’
‘I know it is hard to believe,’ said Malcador gently, ‘but by these means, the traitors will bring their creatures against us. The forces we see now are only a fraction of what we will eventually face.’
‘For the time being, there are other problems to occupy us,’ said Dorn. ‘Until three days ago, we were at least being spared the attentions of the Traitor Legions. The Death Guard have put down all over the globe. Their preference for biological and chemical warfare remains as it always was, and the efficacy of these weapons appears accentuated by their recent change. I have notification of plague from every corner of Terra.’
‘What has happened to them? What are these reports of mutants and other abominations in the ranks of the Traitor Legions?’ Ossian inquired.
‘A number of the Legions have given themselves over completely to the so-called gods of the Pantheon,’ said Dorn. ‘The first we heard of these creatures were unstable members of the Word Bearers. We now know these warriors were Space Marines whose bodies were inhabited by warp entities.’
‘Them again,’ said Pentasian. He took a hefty gulp of wine. In the old days, he had only ever drunk water.
‘This practice has spread to other Legions, notably the Sons of Horus,’ said Dorn. ‘Other malformities among the enemy ranks are caused by exposure to the warp, both intentional and incidental, and deliberate mutilation.’
‘We’ve heard all this, but reports about the Death Guard are particularly disturbing,’ Ossian said. ‘Lord Khan’s images and pict-capture from the walls show…’ He peered at a data-slate in front of him. ‘I don’t know what they show. Diseased warriors. Fouled weapons. How can they fight?’
‘The answer lies in the warp,’ said Dorn.
‘I saw them first-hand, as did Sanguinius,’ said the Khan. ‘They are diseased, as you say, but somehow this makes them more durable.’
‘Have we any samples to investigate, corpses, remains?’ asked Demidov. ‘Perhaps Tharcher’s hospitallers might be of help?’
The Khan shook his head. ’Do not ask for such things to be brought into the city. My Apothecaries wished to examine the dead. I was unwilling to take that risk. Any examples close to the walls I ordered burned. They managed to infect me with something,’ he said, and his disbelief was clear to all. ‘The Emperor made us proof against all disease. I have never been ill in my life, until this week. We cannot risk sickness of that potency getting into the general populace.’
Tharcher nodded. He was a precise and reserved man, his ageing face pocked with blister-scars. On initial impressions, he looked nervous but the scope of his intellect was apparent too from his quick movements, and his large eyes held reservoirs of compassion.
‘That is for the best,’ Tharcher said. ‘Even so, the Palace has not been spared. Disease runs rampant through the outer districts already, thanks to Mortarion. It is getting worse.’
‘Although on first examination the Death Guard attack on our outworks appears wasteful of men, their objective was to get close enough to the city to bypass the aegis with their artillery,’ said Dorn. ‘Short bombardments from near range covered by their infantry engaging with our outwork forces, followed by immediate withdrawal. Their aim was to introduce disease vectors into the civilian population.’
‘Of what sort?’ asked Ossian.
‘Diseased corpses, living tissue riddled with bacteria, infected human waste matter, viral agents in suspension that aerosolised on detonation of the munitions,’ said General Adreen. ‘They were inventive.’
‘They succeeded,’ said Tharcher. ‘Our medicae facilities are already overrun. Thousands are sickening. People are dying, and I expect many more deaths soon. Most of these diseases, though severe, are treatable under normal circumstances, but our staff are overstretched and we have insufficient medical stockpiles. Malnutrition is exacerbating the problem.’ He looked to his fellows. ‘Our populace is weak. I have taken the step of quarantining the areas within the walls that have been affected, but in a place such as this, with so many crammed into so small a space, no quarantine can be watertight. I cannot guarantee the core districts will escape disease. For the moment, the enforcers and the militia raised to assist them are shooting quarantine-breake
rs on sight. Unrest is increasing. The sickness will get through.’
‘The people are frightened. Martial law has increased the incidence of rioting,’ said Harr Rantal, Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites. ‘My men are stretched thin. Only an hour ago, there was a concerted effort to break out of the fiduciary subzone of sector twelve. Five hundred and seventy civilians dead, twenty enforcers killed or seriously injured, one arbitrator dead. These events are occurring so frequently they’re in danger of becoming statistics.’
‘Civil unrest and disease must both be brought under control,’ said Dorn. ‘By any means. This picture we provide for you is a grim one, but we have gathered you together again because it is going to worsen. The enemy will begin attacking in earnest. Once that begins, Horus will attempt to break through the Eternity Wall until he is successful. We will hold it as long as we are able, but we shall be forced to fall back to the inner defences.’ Dorn gave them a grave look. ‘Listen to me as I say again this will happen. The civilians have to be moved before then, or they will perish.’
‘What do you wish us to do?’ said Pentasian wearily. ‘If we bring them further in, they will carry their diseases to as yet clean districts. We’ve had this problem before. Do you remember? Our final Council meeting?’ He looked at the other lords, who nodded and muttered their agreement. ‘We struggled to screen them then. We cannot screen them now,’ said Pentasian. ‘They once numbered in the thousands. Now there are millions of refugees within the outer city. We have nowhere left to put them. They can’t all live in here.’ He gestured around the hall.
‘Millions of people, Lord Dorn,’ said Ossian. ‘Leaving aside the time it will take to vet them all, and the men we do not have to do it, we will then have further overcrowding. Every quarter of the city is full of refugees. There is not enough space. Tension will increase. It is bound to.’
‘I trust to you to see it done,’ said Dorn. ‘You have no choice. The other alternatives are to leave the civilians to their fate, or to actively cull them. I assume none of you wish to give either order.’