Warhawk, p.13
Warhawk, page 13
‘Far from it.’ A long pause, as if he were searching for the right words. ‘I know you respect dreams. The ones that speak truthfully, at least. They will win, I foresee, as long as he is active. The Warmaster cannot rely on much, for our estranged brothers are losing their minds. All save one.’
‘But we are stronger together. At the core.’
‘Under your strategy, maybe.’ A faint, dry chuckle over the comm. ‘Forgive me. This is not about character. It is about what we need to break the hold. The hold that crushes our spirit.’ Even across the interference, Sanguinius could hear the urgency in his brother’s voice. ‘They do not plan, any more. They rush at the barriers set before them, barely knowing where they are, barely knowing their own names. But he is waiting, beyond our reach, as careful as he ever was. When all else is ashes, when we think that nothing worse remains, he will come. And that ends our last hope.’
Sanguinius weighed his own words carefully then. ‘Mortarion has been… changed, brother. He is not what he was when you met on Prospero. Could you stand against him now? Could any of us?’
‘I do not know. But then, if that is your counsel, when the moment comes, and you are called to face one of them, I shall expect you to stand down too. Hand over your spear, make your excuses. Fall back again.’
Sanguinius laughed. ‘We are running short of places to retreat to.’
‘We should never have let it be taken.’
‘You still think that?’
‘The guns are intact, and could be used. They’re landing at will. And we will need a space port ourselves. When Guilliman comes. When we have victory in the cusp of our palms, he will need the swift route down.’
Victory. The Khan was still thinking of victory. How was that possible? Had he, too, gone mad, just like the traitors who raved with joy as they dismantled the home of their own species? It was always possible. He had always flirted with it.
‘In that,’ Sanguinius said, ‘you are at least consistent.’
‘Not something I’ve been accused of often.’
Sanguinius looked up. To the north, fresh spikes of fire punched through the cloud cover. He would have to go now, to do what he had been doing since this thing had started – hold it together, keep the troops fighting for just another day, another hour, another moment.
‘I did not make contact to summon you back,’ he said. ‘Much as it would gladden my heart to have you with us. Rogal always said you’d make your run, sooner or later, and he’s usually right about the rest of us. That’s why he’s organising things.’ He watched the burning lands, the spoil of a once proud galactic civilisation, brought low by its own vices. ‘I made contact because, if you do this, it may be the last time we ever speak. And so I wanted to send you my blessing. I wanted to wish you luck. And I wanted to express the hope that you’ll ram that damned scythe so far down his throat that he’ll never find his stupid rebreather again.’
The Khan laughed hard at that. Even distorted by the poor link, Sanguinius heard that it was the right kind of laugh – not cynical, not knowing, just a brief break in the suffocating tension.
‘We will meet again, my friend,’ the Khan said. ‘We will build all the things we ever dreamed of. Until then, do what you must. Keep them hoping. Hold the walls.’
The link cut. Sanguinius stood for just a little while longer, alone on the parapet, watching his birthworld burn. He looked over his shoulder, to where the great massif of the Inner Palace rose up. In the darkness, against the gathering glow of the many fires, it looked more like an ossuary than a fortress.
‘I plan to,’ he said softly.
And then, with a leap, a clap of wings and a powerful thrust into the skies, he was gone again, spear held ready, streaking towards the next battle that needed him.
They were weak. They were compromised. Their will to fight was gone, their defences were falling open.
It had been so hard over the last seven years. Every gain had been contested, every triumph paid for in blood. Now, though, right at the end, resistance was falling away.
They had ceased to believe, that was the problem. For as long as they had been able to think that something was coming to rescue them, or that their enemies would somehow fall apart of their own accord, they had stood up and fired back. Now, though, they abandoned their posts, they ran down the long chasms between the smoke-filled spires, their nerves shot, their spirit broken.
Not his counterparts in the Legiones Astartes, of course. They still held their positions, still made hard work of it, but even they were missing something. It was as if they fought out of habit, almost – a kind of automatic response. They no longer believed they could alter the result. They were going through the motions. Seeing it out. He had killed so many of them – veterans, company captains, champions of renown. Even as they had diminished, he had grown, adding to a reputation that had been formidable during the years of the Crusade itself.
Indras Archeta, captain of the Third Company, Sons of Horus, reflected on that for a moment. In his left hand he grasped the neck of an Imperial Fists warrior. In his right hand, his beloved longblade, the one that rippled with beauty and whispered truths to him. The warrior’s armour was decorated with veteran honours, telling of a long and storied career, but now he was almost dead. Blood ran from every seal on his armour, trickling across plate that was more dirt than ceramite, punched-through with bolt craters, its power gone.
The Space Marine was trying to say something. Archeta lowered his head a little, prepared to indulge him, since he’d fought well enough. ‘What’s that, eh?’ he asked. ‘Spit it out.’
‘Emperor… damn… your… faithless…’
‘Ah, nothing interesting,’ said Archeta wearily. He let the warrior’s head fall, and severed his neck before it hit the ground. Then he watched the fighter die, slowly, life gushing from the deep wound at his neck, seeping into the chem-saturated earth below.
He looked up. A long procession of armour and infantry rumbled down the avenue ahead of him, flanked on either side by the shattered walls of ruined hab-towers. The vehicles were Legion Land Raiders and Sicarans, their hulls in the sea-green livery of the Legion, in serviceable shape despite the punishing campaign to reach the main incursion points. Their tracks churned up the remains of the choke-point barricades, even as the last batch of krak grenades blew up the pill boxes on the northern edge of the avenue. Tactical squads marched through the debris, going watchfully but confidently. Behind them clunked a big Contemptor, its heavy treads crushing the remnants of yellow battleplate further into the mud.
He had not expected to reach this position for another six hours. It was a confluence between two major thoroughfares, the key to unlocking the next urban zone battlefront, the kind of place a disciplined enemy would fight tooth and nail to hold on to. If the pinnacles at the intersection had not been blasted to pieces, you might almost have been able to clamber up and make out the perimeter walls of the Field of Winged Victory from them.
Maybe the defenders had run out of ammunition. Maybe the main garrisons had already fallen back, exposing this position. Maybe the fighters here had been sacrificed for a front elsewhere. Even so, it shouldn’t have been quite so easy. If he wasn’t careful, the pace of the advance would run ahead of the supply lines and the tanks would grind to a halt for lack of fuel.
Archeta watched his troops file past, marching their way into the heart of the city-palace. From up ahead, all he could hear were screams and explosions. From behind, nothing – a total absence, as if they were erasing everything entirely, wiping the planet clean.
And then, from the north, where a second avenue met the first, more vehicles suddenly rumbled into view, all of them of the XVI Legion too. With a calm efficiency, the lead tanks swivelled on their axes and swung around to join Archeta’s advancing squadrons. A few section commanders shouted out orders, but otherwise it was performed without fuss. A choreographer would have been proud of the way they all integrated, merging strength before ploughing on, driving further west, onward, into the heart of the conurbation.
A Damocles Rhino revved out of the shadows, heading straight for Archeta’s location. At the last minute, the command transport shuddered to a halt, the hatch swung open, and a single warrior emerged. He crunched down to the rubble and strode over to Archeta, clenching his fist and extending it in the Legion salute.
‘Captain!’ he shouted. ‘Here already, eh?’
Archeta watched him approach. The warrior was kitted out much as he was – fine artificer-crafted battleplate, long fur-lined cloak, the Eye of Horus on his breastplate. They were equals, the two of them, as far as rank went, but Azelas Baraxa was captain of the Second Company, just one step closer to the master of the Legion. In another time, given the prodigious tally of throats they had cut for the Warmaster, both of them might have expected to have played a part in the Mournival, but in the aftermath of the disaster at the Saturnine Gate there had been little enthusiasm to revive that old convention. What purpose would it have served, now? The Sons of Horus were the creatures of a living god, the warrior-slaves of an immortal deity. You did not advise a god, and you did not seek to give counsel to an immortal. They had all become just soldiers again, the tools required for the task at hand, with the last of their Crusade-era pretensions swept away.
‘Aye, we’re making good time,’ Archeta said passionlessly.
He didn’t like Baraxa. The Second Company captain was a visionless soul, wedded to how things had been before the great break with Terra. Like so many of the senior Sons of Horus, Baraxa looked on the gifts of the new dispensation with suspicion, clinging to the way things had been on Cthonia when they had all of them claimed not to believe in such things as gods. To maintain that view now was a failure of vision, a conservatism that did them no favours. When Torgaddon had been slain, the position should have gone to someone with similar gifts, a creature of the gods they now fought for, not another Ezekyle-clone, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the inevitable.
Baraxa came to stand beside him. ‘They’re broken, brother,’ he said. ‘The Sanctum is just lying there. Ready to take. And I find I can hardly believe it.’
The captain’s voice rang with enthusiasm. Despite his distaste for the man, Archeta knew what he meant. This was the heart of it, the soul of the old empire. Most of his troops had never set eyes on Terra before, let alone walked down the streets of its ancient capital. The galaxy was full of wonders, millions of them, but nothing truly compared to this place, even in its ruin. At times you would catch yourself, sometimes even in the midst of combat, and remember where you were. You would glance up at the vast buildings around you, the urban profile that was so familiar from a thousand propaganda vid-reels, the carved insignias of the Crusade-era triumphs, the mighty edifices raised to fuel the momentum of that incredible, unrepeatable feat, and wonder how things had ever come this far.
‘It isn’t over yet,’ Archeta said, not willing to get swept up into euphoria. ‘We’re being drawn further in – they still have three primarchs in there, somewhere.’
Baraxa laughed. ‘So cautious.’ He pushed his cloak back, flexed the fingers of his sword-hand gauntlet, gazed down the long avenue towards the mountainous building-clusters ahead. ‘Bastion Ledge has been breached – you knew that? Three fronts, all converging. They can’t handle that.’ He drew in a long breath, as if the air was something that might invigorate him rather than tear at his helm’s overworked tox-filters. ‘Thousands are coming through Mercury Breach alone, every hour now. It’s a flood. The Red Angel is inside, doing what he does best. This is overwhelming. We just need to get there first, now – break the last gate before the World Eaters render it all down to blood-slurry.’
That was indeed the objective. The fragile unity between Legions and factions had already broken. What little cohesion remained was contingent on the target before them all – the hated Emperor, the Deceiver and the Cheater of Birthright. Once He was slaughtered, it would all dissolve again. The XVI Legion, greatest of Legions, the ones who had propelled and sustained this thing from the very start, would have to keep things from collapsing, and to do that they had to be in control of the centre, secure within the very same bunkers that they were now trying to prise apart.
‘Then he’ll need to be back,’ Archeta said.
‘He already is.’
That was a surprise. ‘Abaddon? He’s recovered?’
‘He was fighting the Apothecaries, they told me, making their lives hell until they did enough to get him back to the front. He’s landed at the Eternity Wall, heading for Mercury right now.’ Baraxa clapped Archeta on the upper arm. ‘It’s all we need to finish this. Our leader.’
Archeta bristled. ‘Our leader is on the Vengeful Spirit.’
‘Of course. Of course! But then, down here–’
‘What does that matter? Ezekyle’s just a mortal. Just like us. You should watch where your words take you, Azelas – the Warmaster sees all and hears all.’
Baraxa looked at him for a moment, taken aback. ‘And is beloved by all,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘Hells, brother, what’s chewing at your guts? You should be pleased.’
Yes, what was ailing him? Why was he not exultant, relishing the last push into the heart of hypocrisy? He had never withheld his blade-hand before, never regretted a kill. The closer he got, though, the more ill-humoured he became.
Horus was not with them. Maybe that was it. Archeta had witnessed the primarch fight, once, a long time ago now, and it was hard to imagine anything alive being able to stand up to that. If Horus trod this ground, here, now, the whole thing would be over in hours. Oh, Archeta knew all the cant that the sorcerers spouted about the great ward-shield, how it kept out those with the greatest gifts, but that barrier was in tatters now. If Angron could somehow rampage his way inside it, then surely the Warmaster could.
As long as Horus remained absent, the fissures in his Legion would grow steadily wider. You would have power brokers like Baraxa whose heads had been turned by the dynamic First Captain. Sycar, the new Master of the Justaerin, was said to be Abaddon’s creature too. Maybe Ikari, the much-disliked captain of the Fourth Company, was also. What would they all do, if Horus never emerged at all? Would they start, steadily, to think about where their loyalties truly lay?
Horus still commanded the allegiance of the Legion, that was true. Some had even begun to talk of him, as Archeta did, as a member of the true Pantheon, something elevated far beyond the merely human and worthy of a more strenuous kind of adulation. Beruddin, captain of the Fifth, was of a similar mind. Malabreux, the new leader of the Catulan Reavers, was fervent in the faith. But they were all so new, all so callow. The entire leadership layer of the Legion had been scraped away. The old great names – the Torgaddons, the Kibres, the Ekaddons, the Aximands – they were extinguished. Those that had replaced them, Archeta included, were poor copies, divided among themselves, beginning to doubt and bicker even as the greatest prize of all lay almost within their grasp.
All except Abaddon. He had come through it all, if not unscathed, then still himself, the last link with the heritage of the Luna Wolves. No surprise, then, that he was listened to more than ever, looked up to by both the newborn and the old hands.
Horus had to come soon. He had to snuff this nonsense out. He had to remind the faithful why they were spilling their blood for him. He had to be the Warmaster. He had, in due course, to be the Emperor.
‘Just keen for this to be over,’ Archeta told Baraxa, sheathing his whispering blade and making ready to march again. ‘We’ve destroyed enough. Time to start building again.’
Old dreams
Betrayer
Kurultai
Impossible, though, to imagine anything being built again, not here, not like it had been. By the time Ilya made her way back to Colossi, the scale of the eastern warzone’s disintegration was painfully apparent. The subterranean routes leading out from under the Ultimate Gate were still operational in sections, but there had been raids in many locations, puncturing the vital supply lines and diverting scarce defensive resources away from the surface. The big mag-train contingents she’d commissioned had got through, mostly, but they had been the last ones – any remaining reinforcements or supply-runs would have to be made overground, and that was now insanely dangerous.
She had seen that for herself. When the time had come to leave the Inner Palace and head back to the fringes, Sojuk had become increasingly concerned. Somehow he’d managed to cobble together an escort of three outrider speeders and a backup Chimera for the journey. He’d done it without consulting her, and when she remonstrated with him he could barely look her in the eye.
‘My apologies, szu,’ he’d said. ‘Next time, I shall be sure to.’
She’d had to crack a smile at that. Sojuk was a sly old fox – there would be no next time for any of this.
It had been a hard stretch, once east of the big Imperial formations clustering together at the Ultimate Gate. The bombardment there had already started – you could feel the earth shudder even deep underground. The further you went, the worse it got. The little convoy had needed to break topside for a couple of hours about fifty kilometres north of the Lion’s Gate, and that had been like emerging into a vision of hell. The portal itself was on fire, a huge raging glow that had made the southern horizon throb. Strange cries had echoed across the pummelled wasteland, making the pools of acrid water in the craters ripple.
‘Yaksha,’ Sojuk had spat, driving hard through the filth.
They had been lucky, though – they hadn’t run into any of those horrors directly, or much else in the way of serious opposition. They had needed to skirt wide around a formation of VIII Legion infantry heading west through the ruins, but otherwise the worst they had encountered were bands of cultists and traitor auxiliaries, who could be hit hard and then outrun. As soon as he was able, Sojuk had got them back underground again, right down into the crumbling tunnels that threaded their way east to the tributary fortress-perimeter.
