by Guy Haley
Similar exchanges were repeated as the unit went room to room. The rebels put up no coherent defence. They were easily overcome.
Half an hour later, a line of young rebels came out of the museum’s entrance, hands on their heads. They were ruddy-skinned, flushed with the excitement of combat, but with eyes downcast at their loss. If only they were aware of what their leaders would have taken from them, thought Calgar. He wondered if the deeper lies had set in yet, and how far these boys had been tempted. The promises of Chaos were false. There was no immortality, no freedom from suffering, no easy road to power. Their youth, their health, their vitality – all of it would have been stolen away, replaced with a life-in-death, where the only blessing was an inuring to pain. It began with a sincere desire to do good; it ended with damnation.
He had seen it too many times.
A single Terminator came out behind the boys. Calgar was appalled at how young they were. None were older than twenty, and the youngest looked to be eleven standard years. They were herded down the road and made to kneel twenty metres from the roadblock. The auxilia stood to leave their post and aid their masters, but one of the warriors held up a hand.
‘Stay back!’ he said, his armour transforming his voice to a terrific shout. ‘It is not safe. We have the device. It is biological in nature and unstable.’
The auxilia looked to Calgar. The Lord Defender of Greater Ultramar nodded his head, and they remained on guard.
A few moments later, Julio and his remaining Terminators came out of the building. They escorted nineteen more rebels, these ones adult, and led them to a space away from the others.
Calgar’s vox-bead chimed. He accepted the channel.
‘My lord,’ voxed Julio. ‘The device is a cryo-cask, half a man in height. It is leaking. No one should approach any nearer. My sensorium is registering high levels of biological contaminants in the museum emanating from the cask. My guess is all these boys are infected. Keep the mortals back until we have secured the area.’
Calgar cursed under his breath. Even sloppy little insurgencies like this one seemed to have access to biological weapons. It enraged him that any of the people of Ultramar could fall prey to the manipulations of Mortarion. He tried to blame the privations of the war, but he could blame only himself.
He turned his anger on Calleduus. ‘The building is contaminated. Do you see why I did not want you to go within? Your men would have been exposed. Fortunately, my warriors are completely protected. Can we say the same for yours?’
Calleduus stood ramrod straight, his eyes forward. ‘I restate my objections, my lord – the Ultramarines should not be involving themselves in police actions.’
Calgar turned aside. Calleduus stuck to his convictions. He was an able man, Calgar reminded himself. One mistake did not make someone a failure.
‘This terrorism is part of the war that shakes the realm,’ said Calgar. ‘The Ultramarines will be seen in every theatre, no matter how small. Next time, make sure the situation does not progress so far, and we will not have to have another conversation like this. You are dismissed, vigilator optimare.’
The vigilator optimare bowed and walked away without a word, his cheeks burning with Calgar’s rebuke.
‘Ney, relay these orders,’ commanded Calgar.
‘My lord,’ responded the Ancient.
‘Summon medicae teams and cleansing units. Decontaminate these misguided young men, and have them transferred to the Massalis penal station for assessment and re-education where possible. Every effort is to be made to preserve them. Send those that test well to the penal battalions. Those who do not recant are to be publicly mindwiped and given over to the tech-adepts for servitors.’
Calgar thought a moment. He looked up at the cliffs either side of the pass, and visualised the sparsely populated glens that nestled between the mountains thereabouts. There were not many people in the area, but there were some. All it took was one infected human to kill half a civitas. The Emperor alone knew what was in that flask.
‘Evacuate the population for ten kilometres around this point. Have them all tested. Seal off the district. Station auxilia on all the major roads and place perdition beacons around the boundaries. Second three Land Speeders from the Chapter reserve to assist Vigil Opertii forces in patrolling the area. No one is to enter this part of the mountains until it is safe.’ He looked at the Terminator squad. ‘Julio, guard these children. Once they are dealt with and you are cleansed, call in a Thunderhawk. You are needed in the fleet.’
‘My lord,’ voxed Julio.
‘What about the road?’ said Ney. ‘The unitarchs of Illyricon and Testuae are anxious that it is reopened.’
‘They shall have to wait,’ said Calgar. He seethed inside that a group of failures and juventes could so disrupt the capital planet. He reminded himself that Illyria was but one province on one planet, and that this highway, though the main link between Magna Macragge Civitas and Illyricon, only one route. ‘The risk is too high. We shall reclaim this region when the time is right. Until we have peace, it will have to wait.’ Calgar glanced into Macragge’s flat grey skies, imagining the embattled fleets in the void and the ongoing siege of Ardium. ‘And it may have to wait some time.’
There was a commotion at the rear line where the three Rhinos waited. A Techmarine, his helmet bulky with specialised surveillance and comms equipment, came running.
‘My lord, my lord!’ he shouted. He came to stop and got down on one knee. ‘I have word from the capital. The primarch has sent an astropathic message.’
‘Yes?’ said Calgar. He experienced a curious mix of dread and elation. He had admitted to himself long ago that ceding all control to the primarch was hard. He did not look forward to doing so again.
‘He is at the outer reaches of the system. He is making all speed to Ardium where he intends to break the siege.’
Upon hearing this news, the warriors of Ultramar, both human and transhuman, let out a joyous cheer.
‘Call me a transport,’ said Calgar. ‘I must return. We must make ready to aid him!’
‘My lord, the message is explicit – you are to remain here to guard Macragge. Lord Guilliman wishes to prevent opportunistic attacks on the capital world.’
‘Does he have enough men? Captain Ventris informed us months ago that he intended to break up the crusade.’
‘Captain Ventris is with him, and Captain Sicarius,’ said the Techmarine. ‘The primarch does not need your aid, my lord. He comes with fifteen thousand Space Marines and three sector battlefleets.’
Again the warriors cheered.
‘Mortarion will be surely driven from the system. With our lord Guilliman home, we can take the fight to the enemy!’ shouted Calgar. He raised one of the mighty Gauntlets of Ultramar. ‘All hail Guilliman, Master of Ultramar!’
His triumphant smile hid the hollowness he felt inside.
The primarch returned to find his realm still wracked with war. Objectively, Calgar had performed no better than Calleduus. He let his hand drop, and bade the Land Raider’s doors be opened to him. As he was clambering inside, Julio voxed him.
‘What shall I do with the older prisoners, my lord? Mercy or death?’
Calgar paused in the side hatch of the Land Raider, his hands gripping the lip of the hull unnecessarily hard.
‘Death,’ he said.
Calgar boarded the tank to panicked shouts cut short by the bangs of bolt-rounds annihilating flesh. The sound followed him all the way to the main highway, where faster transport waited.
For the first time in a long time, Marneus Calgar felt like a failure.
Chapter Eighteen
Ardium
A distinct change to the engine’s pitch occurred as they passed into enemy-held territory, and the smooth flight turned choppy. The Overlord’s airframe rattled. Its engines yowled, struggling to process a
ir whose consistency was unnaturally inconstant. A sense of wrongness upset all minds aboard the transport, thickening with every kilometre they flew closer.
‘We approach the heart of darkness,’ said Donas Maxim. Crystal tracks in his psychic hood glowed as they encountered the increased warp activity. Blue luminescence mingled with the transport bay’s dark red combat lights, painting his helm with neon highlights. He was as uncanny as the beasts he was trained to destroy.
‘I think we can all sense it,’ said Captain Felix, looking around at his warriors. They had begun to fidget in the way peculiar to Space Marines, looking to their brothers and checking their equipment over and over again.
‘Not so strongly as I,’ said the Codicier. His words were hard, a shell against the pain. ‘The warp taint is far more powerful than we predicted. We must be careful.’
Maxim was the sole early-pattern Space Marine inside the Overlord’s twinned hulls. Every other was of the Primaris generation. Maxim’s hood and the badges on his ornate blue armour made him bulkier than his own brothers, but every one of the Primaris Space Marines was taller than him, and more powerfully built.
Accompanying Maxim was a single other psychic Space Marine: Gerrundium, a Primaris Lexicanium. The pair of them gave off a calming power, a sense of purpose and confidence that infused the already unshakeable Felix with a resolve as solid as a neutron star, despite the warp taint emanating so powerfully from their target. In contrast, the malevolence around them seemed stronger. Owing to the position of his restraint cage, Felix was athwart the border where the malign and the benign actions of the warp mingled, discomfiting his mind. On the enemy’s side was a dark potency. Upon his skin beneath his armour, it felt like painful static electricity, a crawling of the flesh. It was a call, an urging to action he would rather not take, the kind that afflicts the insane deep into the night and demands something of violence be done – a dark vitality, a turning-in of agency so that it became impotent self-destruction.
‘I can feel it well enough. It pains me,’ said Felix. He wondered at the sensation, logging it for later consideration. He had not felt anything like it before. ‘This is the power that calls the dead from life?’
Gerrundium nodded. ‘Disease alone cannot bring back the fallen, nor turn those who live into walking corpses.’ He sounded flat and passionless, his own coping mechanism against the corruption they neared. ‘That is a physical impossibility, as our Apothecaries and the primarch’s magi attest. Sorcery is the root of the disease. Without the warp, there would be no consequence to infection.’
‘The plague lord delights in the affectation of disease where disease alone is insufficient for his goals,’ said Maxim. ‘Lies are as great a part of their armoury as contradiction. They are the basis of the actions of the enemy. Nurgle represents the duality of life in death and death in life. As with all things of the warp, it is unclean and a trap for the unwary.’
‘You include your own abilities.’
The Codicier grunted. His helmet turned within his protective aegis helm. ‘Our gifts bring great power, but they spring from the same poisoned well as diseases that rot the soul. To drink from it and remain pure is the greatest challenge we face.’
‘We feel this strongly because there is a wicked power at work. It is from the Palace Spire that the corruption emanates,’ added Gerrundium, ‘but we will not know its true nature for certain until we witness it ourselves.’
The Overlord shook. Its armour was massively thick, and its engines prodigiously powerful. The new craft made Thunderhawks look like toys. As with so much the primarch had commissioned, the Overlord hearkened back to older designs of insertion craft, improved by the boundless creativity of Belisarius Cawl. But its technological power could not shelter its occupants completely from threats either mundane or arcane. The movement of the craft changed; no longer was it affected solely by atmospheric anomalies. An explosion sounded close by, its violence muffled by the Overlord’s thick hull. The craft slid sideways before levelling out. Smaller vibrations, rapidly pulsed, chased it upwards.
‘Captain, there is unexpectedly heavy fire coming from the Palace Spire’s mid ranges,’ voxed the pilot. ‘We cannot land at the target point.’
‘Get us as close as you can,’ responded Felix.
‘There is a skypark cluster four hundred metres horizontal, two levels down from the target point and in the next spire.’ The pilot went silent a moment as he consulteda cartograph. ‘The Sighing Spire.’
The pilot exloaded the position. Felix’s cartograph automatically engaged. They headed for a cluster of spire palaces at the very pinnacle of one of Ardium’s great hive cities, their needle points pricking at the belly of the void. Felix saw them as wireframe representations. Ugly, semi-organic growths moved sluggishly over the top, a psychic overlay provided by the primarch’s Concillia Psykana. The shifting web gathered most densely on a cankerous mass in the upper reaches of the tallest tower, once the home of the hive lord.
The target point was close by the needle’s dark heart. Gun batteries blinked red around the site. The pilot’s alternative flashed up, a domed garden extending on an elegant lever from the adjacent spire’s side. Further than Felix would have liked from the target point, but the only practical option in the circumstances.
‘Take us in,’ said Felix.
The craft responded immediately, banking sideways and down. The thunder of anti-aircraft fire intensified, becoming a constant rumble. Felix looked over his warriors again. There were forty of them in the craft, and a further eighty in two accompanying Overlords. The ships were similar to the Corvus Blackstars used by the Inquisition and the Deathwatch. Like the Blackstars, the Overlords possessed twin transport bays with their own assault doors, but they were bigger and even more blessed with advanced technologies. Anti-munitions cannons added a rolling burr to the noise from outside, slinging hypervelocity steel balls at incoming shells and missiles. Those enemy rounds that got through exploded on shimmering energy shields, whose hiccupping buzz as they recharged joined the furious chorus of the embattled ship’s systems.
The Primaris Space Marines aboard the ships were all Ultramarines. At least, they were now – six weeks ago they had been the Unnumbered Sons of Guilliman. They were destined to reinforce the founding Chapter, and the pale grey chevrons partially obscuring their ultimas had been reverently removed. They had temporary squad markings, and had adopted a light blue for their company colour.
This would be their first battle as Ultramarines, led by Felix, an eleventh captain where there should only be ten. They had not even met the Chapter Master. Indeed, Marneus Calgar was ignorant of their assignment to his Chapter, and of their current mission.
Felix pondered how Calgar might feel about the primarch’s unilateral altering of the Codex Astartes. The captain could not help but feel that, in his drive for victory and efficiency, Guilliman had been careless with the feelings of his existing sons. Increasingly, Guilliman looked to the Primaris Space Marines as his first solution. He made no attempt to hide the fact that the days of the older Space Marines were numbered.
Felix’s theorising took his mind away from the coming fight. He refocused his attention on the battle. A clock raced towards zero upon his helm display.
‘Standby for attack!’ he ordered.
‘Brace for impact,’ said the pilot, his voice voxed into every helmet on board.
The ship jinked violently from side to side, accelerating as it did so. Every one of its little voices rose in protest, blending into a raucous machine howl. Explosions boomed from all quarters.
Felix brought up an external vidfeed. A grainy image of a armourglass dome, full of dark shapes, grew rapidly in front of his eyes.
The ship opened fire with its wing-mounted desolator lascannons. The three-barrelled weapons rotated at blurring speed as they fired, their rapid torque helping offset atmospheric lensing, not that beam di
spersion was much of a problem at this range. Banks of meltacannons mounted in the Overlord’s nose opened fire a few seconds later.
Molten holes appeared in the armourglass, and the Overlord burst through the weakened dome, sending molten minerals and shards of metal scattering inward into the gardens.
‘Ready! Now!’ yelled Felix.
‘We march for Macragge!’ roared the Primaris Space Marines.
The gunship thumped down hard, throwing Felix forward in his restraints. The ship rocked back on its landing hydraulics. As it recoiled from the impact, Felix’s harness disengaged and shot back into its housing in the ceiling. Simultaneously, the assault doors blew down with crushing force, flattening whatever was on the other side and admitting a sickly yellow light into the transport bay.
First out were the Primaris Aggressors. They wore battleplate of a similar type to Felix’s, but more massively armoured: the Gravis class. Before they had exited the troop bay, missiles shot from their shoulder-mounted racks, their exhaust filling the craft’s troop compartments.
There were two squads of Aggressors, one for each door. Two squads of Hellblasters followed, the containment chambers on their plasma incinerators glowing bright as they cycled up to fire. Felix and the two Librarians emerged next, along with the temporary company’s Apothecary. After them came four squads of Intercessors, who fanned out, bolt rifles up.
Ardium was a hive world, a designation synonymous with overcrowding and human misery, but this was Ultramar, and the hive worlds in the star-realm of the Ultramarines were kinder than most. Though life was hard and short there, some provision was made for the well-being of their citizens. Ardium had a plethora of domes projecting from its hives, especially on the upper levels, where large-scale bio-habitats recreated those lost from most of the surface. The planet was famed for them, giving the hives there the appearance of gargantuan trees.