Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar Read online

  Contents

  The Horus Heresy

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  THE HORUS HERESY

  It is a time of legend.

  Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy.

  The vast armies of the Emperor of Mankind conquer the stars in a Great Crusade - the myriad alien races are to be smashed by his elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

  The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons. Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor, as system after system is brought back under his control. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful champions.

  First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superhuman beings who have led the Space Marine Legions in campaign after campaign. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation, while the Space Marines themselves are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

  Many are the tales told of these legendary beings. From the halls of the Imperial Palace on Terra to the outermost reaches of Ultima Segmentum, their deeds are known to be shaping the very future of the galaxy. But can such souls remain free of doubt and corruption forever?

  Or will the temptation of greater power prove too much for even the most loyal sons of the Emperor?

  The seeds of heresy have already been sown, and the start of the greatest war in the history of mankind is but a few years away...

  Volcanic ash leads to fertile soil, but it also leads to a theoretical misapprehension. Emphasis on the positive outcome can result in the memory's blindness to the orig­inal destruction. If the source of the ash is not taken into consideration, ash may settle over a dead land. The error in the theoretical results in the misapplication of the practical. Exemplum: Consul Gallon's betrayal. In its wake, despite the death of Consul Konor, Macragge is uni­fied. This is because I understood Konor's error, and my own. We underestimated the consequences of frustrating Gallon's ambition. My elevation occurred in a context where ambition was not itself devoted to the service of a greater unifying cause. Gallon had no true cause. He had only the need to preserve the power of a decayed aristoc­racy. My Father gives the Imperium a cause and thus its unbreakable strength. This principle, once applied to all social, cultural, and military formations, ensures a cohe­sion that surpasses the vagaries of individual ambition.

  - Guilliman, On Loyalty, 45.22.xiv

  One

  THOAS • RECLAMATION • SYMBOLISM

  One empire came to Thoas to crush another.

  The empire of order and light arrived in the form of an armada. If the eyes of the other empire had turned to the void, perhaps they would have witnessed the final approach. They would have seen a swarm of blades. Each blade was a ship thousands of yards long. The greatest of them spanned fifteen miles from stem to stem. It was both sword and mountain chain. From the surface of Thoas, it would have appeared as an elongated star, moving with unal­terable purpose with its smaller brothers. A constellation of war filling the night sky.

  But in the second empire, there were no eyes to look upwards, or none to understand what they saw. This was not an empire worthy of the name. Yet it had held a dozen systems. One by one, they had been ripped from its grasping claws. Now the empire unworthy of the name was reduced to its core. Its seat of strength. Its source of contagion.

  It did not see its doom arrive. If it saw, it did not understand. If it understood, it did not care. Such was its nature. That reason alone was enough to warrant its extermination.

  * * *

  Remark 73.44.liv: The visibility of the leader at significant moments of a campaign carries its own signification. It reinforces his interest not just in the goal, but in those sworn to carry it out. The leader who lacks these interests invites and deserves defeat.

  Roboute Guilliman stood at the lectern of the bridge of the Macragge's Honour. Below him, in a tiered space the size of an arena, the level of activity had risen in urgency, but proceeded with no loss of calm. Officers performed their tasks with the same efficiency as the servitors. The bridge hummed with the sound of human machinery, gears meshing smoothly, ready­ing for war.

  Guilliman had been at his station five hours already, ever since the translation to the system. He was here to witness and to be wit­nessed, as was proper. Addendum to 73.44.liv, he thought. Interest cannot be feigned. He would insert the correction to the manu­script later.

  He had watched Thoas grow large in the forward bridge win­dows. He had seen its details resolve themselves as the layers of augur scans built up the composite picture of the target. The for­ward elements of the fleet were now at low anchor, awaiting his command for the next stage of reconnaissance.

  'Another message from Captain Sirras,' said Marius Gage.

  'Reconfirming that his Scouts are ready?' Guilliman said.

  The Chapter Master Primus of the XIII Legion grinned. 'That would be correct.'

  'He's contacting you directly now?'

  'We were together on Septus Twelve in the Osiris Cluster.'

  'In the hive?'

  'Yes,' said Gage. 'We both made it to the surface in time to see the flares of the fleet burning when the Psybrid ships sprung the ambush.'

  'So he presumes this gives him leave to bypass the chain of com­mand?' Guilliman asked. 'The Twenty-second is still without a Chapter Master,' Gage reminded him.

  'I haven't forgotten.' The orks of the Thoas Empire had taken Machon's head in the final stages of the campaign to purge them from the AJetho system. 'There will be a new Chapter Master before we land on Thoas. The current lack does not justify Sirras trying to make an improvisational end run around my timing decisions.'

  'An official reprimand?' Gage asked.

  'No. But inform him that if he contacts you again, the next voice he hears will be mine'

  The old warrior nodded. His features were worn by his centu­ries of campaigning, and had been weathered into wry, intelligent cragginess. He walked a few steps away to vox the captain of the 223rd Company.

  'Wait,' Guilliman said. Remark 73.42.xv: It is the duty of the soldier to accept an order without a rationale being provided, but the absence of a rationale should never be the default condition. 'Let him know the scans are still being collated. He isn't waiting on a whim. He's waiting for a worthwhile target.'

  In the bridge window, another layer of topographical detail was added. The image of Thoas sharpened. Coastlines changed from fractal abstractions to specific geological characterisations. The world was becoming a real place. It was tidally locked by its blue star. Half of the planet burned forever while the other half froze. The Ultramarines fleet was anchored over the region of the ter­minator, where twilight and dawn would never end.

  Guilliman examined the sphere. He frowned. 'Magnification of the northern tropic,' he said.

  The image grew.

  'Increase magnification.'

  There.

  A cordillera ran along a north-to-south-west diagonal down the western region of the largest continental mass. To the east, the land was wrinkled with mountains, canyons and plateaus for close to five hundred miles. To the west was a vast plain that reached almost to the coast before it ran up against a narrower, lower chain of peaks. In the western flank of the cordillera, Guilliman saw lines that were too regular. There were structures there, almost as big as
the mountains in which they nestled.

  'Biomass readings in this sector?' Guilliman asked.

  'A very high concentration of orks, lord,' the Augur Master reported.

  Given the inviting geography of the plain and the easier slopes of the foothills, that was to be expected. 'Compared to the other principal land masses?'

  'Higher,' the officer confirmed.

  'Are you seeing this?' Guilliman said to Gage.

  'I am. Are those human?'

  'Records about Thoas are fragmentary in the extreme. To date I have found only two references to any form of human colonisation.'

  'Those are big,' said Gage. 'This was more than a colony.'

  Guilliman nodded. 'It was a civilisation.' The prospect was pleasing. If there had been human colonies in the other systems reclaimed from the orks, all traces had long since vanished. That such signs would appear on this world, where the final battle against the greenskin empire would take place, was a gift of inestimable value. If the ruins were human. 'Tell Sirras we have a target for him.'

  'Evido Banzor has Scouts ready for a low orbit drop too' Gage said. 'Part of the 166th, under Captain Iasus.'

  'Good. Send them both down. I want their eyes on the ork dis­positions with particular respect to those structures. The Thoas campaign begins there.'

  '"When presented with a choice of beginnings, choose the one with meaning,’" Gage quoted.

  'Remark 45.xxx,' said Guilliman. 'Flatterer.'

  'Merely a manifest truth,' Gage said, his eyes on the traces of immense ruins.

  'Our captain honours us with his presence,' said Meton. His voice was a whisper, inaudible except over the vox. The orks were a long way beyond earshot. The visible ones, at least. Meton was observ­ing proper discipline, taking no chances as the squads made their way up towards the ridge.

  'Theoretical - our captain is merely eager to get his hands dirty with greenskin gore,' Sergeant Phocion said.

  'Practical - your captain would like you both to shut up,' said Eleon Iasus. They were both partly correct. There was no compel­ling necessity for him to have left the Praetorian Trust to accompany the Scouts on their reconnaissance. There was no dereliction of duty either, though. As a sergeant, he had held Phocion's position for decades. And he had cleared his venture with Chapter Master Banzor. Yes, he wanted the feel of Thoas' surface under his boots as soon as possible. There was more, though. Theoretical: there is no such thing as superfluous advance knowledge of the battlefield. Prac­tical: where possible, add first-hand experience to intelligence gathered from a distance. He wanted to see the ruins. He wanted to know what would be the epicentre of the campaign.

  The Scouts of the 166th prowled along the western spines of the Cordillera to the south of the ruins. They maintained vox contact with the squads from the 223rd coming in from the north. Both had come down by Thunderhawk, deposited on ledges a short way down the east-facing slopes. There had been no contact with the enemy. There was nothing to attract the orks here. The mountain­sides were sheer, the valleys narrow and barren. There was nothing to fight over, and no room to fight either. The tectonic upheavals in this region had been so violent, so sudden, and involved so much compression that the chains of the cordillera were as nar­row and sharp as rows of fangs.

  Footing was treacherous. Iasus and the Scouts climbed, working their way up the nearly vertical mountain face. The sharp folds of the granite caught and held shadows. Both of Thoas' moons were full, but the mountains had draped themselves in a dark more profound than night. Even with his enhanced sight and the night-vision lenses, Iasus was blind when his climb took him deep into the vertical crevasses. He climbed by feel, reaching up, digging his gauntleted fingers into the cracks, holding onto jagged protru­sions with certainty they would not crumble beneath his weight. Long before he reached the top, the drop below, a fall from dark into dark, would have been far enough to kill him.

  He was glad he had come. Each foot of the climb instilled a greater sense of Thoas in him. The theoretical knowledge trans­forming into the practical experience.

  The ridge was as sharp and narrow as he had imagined it would be. He stood on the edge of an immense, rocky sawblade. It was difficult to stand.

  'Theoretical,' said Meton. 'If we drive the orks into these moun­tains, we'll smash them.'

  'We'll smash them regardless,' Iasus said. The Scout was correct, though - an army that retreated into the mountains would be devoured by their teeth. And if by some chance the orks survived, if they went any further east, they would reach sunrise, and be cremated.

  Iasus looked down. The orks were all to the west, the clans gath­ered in their hundreds of thousands on the plain near the base of the foothills and on the gradual slopes of the start of the mountains.

  And they infested the ruins.

  Phodon's squad had advanced to a point several thousand yards from the nearest structure. The edges of the ork horde were directly below. The growls and snarls of the brutes rose to the heights like the roar of a violent surf, There were orks on the plain too, but the bulk of their numbers were sticking to the high ground.

  There was no reason to think these greenskins were intelligent enough to understand what force was coming for them, but they were readying for battle. As the Ultramarines had taken apart their empire, they had left no survivors in their wake. The beasts lacked anything but the most rudimentary technology. They had noth­ing resembling interplanetary vox communication. Yet somehow, they knew. Some collective instinct of the species told the green­skins to prepare.

  Iasus turned his attention from the orks to the ruins. He raised magnoculars to his helm lenses. The structures snapped into clearer focus. They were badly damaged. The upper levels had collapsed. Apertures gaped, open to the winds and storms of Thoas. The roofs were gone from the buildings he could see. They were still colossal. They were constructed of huge blocks carved from the mountains. Iasus estimated that each brick was larger than a Thunderhawk. He saw pillars as high as Warhound Titans. They too were monoliths.

  So much had fallen that the original shape of the ruins was dif­ficult to discern. What Iasus could make out looked like terraced pyramids, each the size of a small city. The terraces were narrow in proportion to the levels' soaring height. The effect was less of broad, squat structures, more of towering massiveness. The archi­tecture was aggressive and brutal even in its decay. But it was not alien. Colossal as the scale was, the shape of the vaulted apertures was recognisable. There were smaller doorways in the walls, open­ings where orks had to bend down to pass through.

  'The greenskins did a thorough job,' Phocion said.

  'So will we.' Iasus lowered the magnoculars. This was a human world once. It will be again.'

  Guilliman met with his Chapter Masters in his compartment. Twelve Chapters had come to rout the orks from Thoas. Eleven Masters stood in a precise arc before Guilliman's desk. With them were two captains - Hierax, the senior captain of the leaderless 22nd, and Iasus, who had earned his place at the audience with the knowledge he had brought back from Thoas.

  Thai, Guilliman knew, was what was widely assumed to be the reason for the honour granted to lasus. For the time being, he did nothing to correct that perception.

  Behind the primarch, the crystalflex walls showed the orb of Thoas below the Macragge's Honour. The flagship was at low anchor, in geosynchronous orbit above the great plain at the foot of the cordillera. The ruins were not visible at this altitude. Even so, if Guilliman turned around, his gaze would zero in on their loca­tion in the mountains.

  He gestured to the data-slates on his desk. 'The reports from the Scouts are conclusive,' he said. 'Humans once called Thoas home. They built great cities. That civilisation has fallen, but humans will lay claim to this world once more, and towers will rise again. There is more Thermographic imaging and geologic auguries have revealed the presence of an extensive network of caves beneath the ruins'

  'Do we know how deep they run?' Atreus, Chapter Master of
the Sixth, asked.

  'No,' said Guilliman. 'There are significant radiation blooms in the area too. They made imaging difficult. We know the tunnels are there. Beyond that, we're indulging in conjecture. An unhelp­ful application of the theoretical.'

  He stopped speaking. He observed the two captains. Their stances were perfectly formal, perfectly motionless. The Chapter Masters were more relaxed in their bearing. They understood that this compartment was a space for inquiry and debate, and the free exchange of views. Here was where theoreticals were worked over and modified, demolished and reconfigured. Absolute deference to his authority here was counterproductive. It undermined what he hoped to accomplish.

  Though lasus and Hierax might as well have been statues, Guil­liman could still detect minor variations in their bearings. lasus was content to wait until he was called upon. His stance was one of simple patience. Hierax, on the other hand, was on the verge of an explosion. He was leaning forwards slightly. Awareness of rank and the nature of his position held his tongue. The reason for his presence urged him to speak.

  Guilliman relieved him of the dilemma. 'You have a recom­mendation, Captain Hierax?' he said. Surprise me, he thought. Say something other than what I'm expecting.

  'The ork infestation on Thoas is the worst we've seen in this campaign.'

  'This is the heart of their empire,' Guilliman pointed out.

  'Exactly,' said Hierax. 'We should rip it out at a stroke. There are no humans in those mins. There haven't been for a long time. There is no reason to hold back.'

  'No holding back,' Guilliman echoed, keeping his tone neutral.

  'The Second Destroyers will purge the orks from Thoas within the day.'

  'Along with all other life.'

  'Primarch-' Hierax began.

  'Captain,' Guilliman- interrupted him, 'how expedient were you planning to make this invasion? I assume you imagined keeping Thoas intact, so that eliminates cyclonic torpedoes. Vims bombs, then? Would you go that far?'

  Hierax said nothing at first. His face was closed, so carefully neutral it lacked any expression at all. Like Gage, Hierax joined the XIII Legion on Terra. His rough features bore layers of scars. His face had a geologic history, as if roughened by successive lava flows. The nobility of the Ultramarines shone in his armour. Hie­rax himself embodied the harshness of war. The Destroyers were the necessary violence of the Ultramarines. They represented the moments when the heart was hardened, and the terrible act under­taken. They lived their name. They were the blood spilled by the blades of the Great Crusade. The Destroyers were not its hope, its