Spear of Ultramar Page 10

  ‘All guns, continuous fire,’ Vûrtaq says.

  The Ultramarines barrage arrives as the Warforged is partway through its turn. The strike cruiser’s guns open up, aiming at what looks, in the oculus, like an infinite sea of ships. The Warforged’s anger is as pointless as it is defiant.

  Las and cannon shells blast the strike cruiser’s void shields out of existence and sunder its hull. Vûrtaq says, ‘I made you use your entire fleet against me.’ And he clutches that shred of glory as the flames come for him.

  The region around the defence laser is a cauldron of cannon fire. The Land Raiders of the Mechanicum arrived shortly after the Ultramarines. The cannon is protected by a void shield, and is impervious to the guns of the Predators. Now the Ultramarines tanks face towards the pass, pounding the traitors of Mars. The Land Raiders retaliate with lascannon and graviton guns as they disgorge squads of skitarii. Marching ahead of the armoured carriers are Castellan battle-automata. The hulking figures are faster than the tanks, and move into the lines of the XIII Legion’s heavy armour. Legionaries rush to counter them, and a ring forms with the defence laser at its centre. The ring is a maelstrom of explosions, blood, smouldering machinery and the smell of burning promethium.

  The towering cannon is an exceptional strong point. The Iron Warriors and the Mechanicum intend this weapon to last until the bitter end. It is the primary defence of Siderius. As long as it stands, Guilliman’s faster but more drastic options are closed to him.

  The gun’s controls are in a reinforced underground bunker. A rockcrete ramp descends to its iron doors. Guilliman, Prayto, Gorod and the Invictarus Suzerain squad are punching their way through the Mechanicum defenders. The enemy is able to concentrate forces into the narrow point of the ramp. Skitarii and Castellan automata bar the way. The skitarii are so augmented they are barely human, and they fight with emotionless precision. Yet as Guilliman falls upon them, he sees the micro-tremors of uncertainty take them. They are fighting a primarch, and there can be no preparation adequate to such a battle.

  Prayto unleashes his psychic strength. Warp fire streams from his hands to consume the enemy. As he scythes through the warriors, his face is grimacing and troubled.

  ‘You doubt yourself,’ says Guilliman. He pauses beside the Librarian to fire three quick shots with the Arbitrator, the combi-bolter that serves as his pistol. Three skitarii fall, smoke erupting from the stumps of their necks.

  ‘I must,’ Prayto answers. ‘If I ever stop, never trust me again.’

  Two battle-automata advance in lockstep to the top of the ramp. Their bolt cannons attempt to track targets. One of the Suzerain dies, his body reduced to ash and blood. The other machine tries to finish Guilliman, but he veers around it more quickly than it can track, and slams his power gauntlet, the Hand of Dominion, into its flank. The gauntlet smashes through the armour, and its power surge fuses the mechanism inside. The automaton freezes, crumpling on its left side, then topples.

  The ramp is empty. The doors are clear. Guilliman takes a step down the slope, then pauses, arm raised in warning. The rockcrete vibrates from the huge footsteps of something beyond the door. The Invictarii raise their shields and point their pistols at the doors, the acts so precise and synchronised it is as if they are a single entity. Guilliman aims the Arbitrator, bracing his stance.

  The doors grind open, and a Domitar battle-automaton strides out from the gloom within. Rockets scream from the launcher hood above the war behemoth’s head. The range is short, almost point-blank, and the explosions turn the narrow confines of the ramp into an inferno. Flames wash over the shields of the front rank of the Invictarii, but missiles land behind them too, in their midst, and the blasts smash them against the walls. The Domitar strides into the fireball and smashes at the Ultramarines with its twin graviton hammers. The blows punch craters in the walls and ground. Guilliman fires the Arbitrator into the thorax of the monster and jumps back from a swinging fist. The arm hammer clips him. The mass of his armour and his body is turned against him, and it is as if a meteor has struck him. He flies backwards through the fire, and hits the wall hard enough to embed himself in it.

  Guilliman pulls free, pain cracking through his frame. The Domitar is upon the squad, and one of the Invictarii has taken a direct hit from the graviton weapons. It is Vilmius, who has stood strong by Guilliman’s side since the days of the unification of Macragge. Hero of song, though he has always turned away in embarrassment when overhearing his deeds turned into legend, he has been reduced to a sludge of blood and pulverised organs oozing from a flattened ruin of ceramite. A few jagged shards pointing upwards from the wreck, a trace of pauldron with markings still visible, are the only things that identify him.

  The Domitar fires the missiles again, slightly higher up the ramp, barely keeping out of reach of its own destructive fire, and swings at the squad again. Gorod clutches his side, but he still holds his bolter and is trying to draw the automaton towards him, away from his brothers. But the shells barely damage the monster’s armour.

  The flames rise higher, and come together, taking on coherent form as they intensify. They are under the command of Prayto. He, too, is injured, his armour scorched and split, one of his legs dragging as he moves against the rockcrete wall. His avatar of flame advances on the automaton, enveloping it for a moment, but then rushes on, past the machine and down into the darkness beyond the door. A terrible sound emerges, the shriek of machinery in human form, a scream without emotion or pain, the death cry of ancient circuits misfiring energy. A magos dominus staggers over the threshold, engulfed in unnatural fire. The controller loses his grip on the battle-automaton. The machine hesitates, and Guilliman seizes his chance.

  The primarch rushes the Domitar, charging the Hand of Dominion to the full. The automaton turns, sluggish compared to how it had been moments earlier, though its war programming reacts to the approach of a threat and demands a response. A graviton hammer plunges towards Guilliman. He meets the blow with the closed fist of the Hand of Dominion. Power gauntlet and automaton fist collide. The world flashes burning silver. A cataclysm of forces hurls Guilliman backwards. He lands on his feet and drives his heel into the ramp, killing the backward momentum, ready to attack again even before his eyes clear.

  The automaton is rocking back and forth, wracked by internal destruction. Its weapon was no match for the force unleashed by the power gauntlet. The monstrous energy of the Hand of Dominion turned the graviton current back against its source. The backfire has blown the arm wide open, splaying metal like ribbons of straw. Smoke pours from the ruptured torso. Electrical discharges ladder up and down the hulk, and then it falls inert.

  Guilliman advances through the doorway, followed by the surviving Invictarii. Prayto and Gorod help each other forward to keep up with the Avenging Son. Inside the control centre is a handful of tech-adepts. His lip curled in distaste, Guilliman exterminates the remaining traitors with quick bursts of the Arbitrator.

  Outside the bunker, the battle rages, but not for much longer. The conflict is decided.

  With the defence laser neutralised, Guilliman contacts Shipmaster Netertian on the Ultimus Mundi. The poor quality of the vox tells him that the warp storm is as ferocious as ever. ‘Has there been any report from Captain Hierax?’ Guilliman asks.

  ‘Not for some time, lord primarch. The last message received seemed to indicate his company was moving on Siderius, but it was fragmentary.’

  That is close to good news. Siderius is the origin of the warp disturbance. It is not surprising that the Destroyers should fall silent as they close in on the epicentre.

  A hopeful sign, though, is not a victory.

  ‘Take the squadron into position over Siderius,’ Guilliman says. ‘Send word when you arrive, and I will have new orders for you.’

  As Guilliman marches back up to the surface, he feels Prayto’s eyes on him. ‘The decision and its cost will rest on me,�
�� he says.

  Prayto nods, solemn.

  A city sacrificed to save a world, and perhaps save the Throneworld. It is not a decision Guilliman wishes to make. He will soon have to. He has done what he can on the ground. There is no time to send his companies through the pass as reinforcements. If Hierax has not taken Siderius by the time the squadron is in place for a possible bombardment, the prospect of unacceptable sacrifice will loom.

  End the storm, Hierax, Guilliman thinks. Do what I know you can. Do not let the traitors have this triumph.

  When the Iron Warriors fell back, the collapse was fast. Hierax took his Destroyers in pursuit from the pass, and his legionaries roared with the promise of retribution as they were freed at last from the crush of the mountains, and the hive was open before them. The Iron Warriors’ retreat was organised, but rapid. Though they maintained defensive fire, they seemed more concerned with speed.

  ‘This is more than a retreat,’ Aphovos said when the Destroyers pounded through the city gates the enemy had no time to close. ‘This is flight.’

  Flight. The word has nagged Hierax through the rest of the pursuit, as the Destroyers have followed the Iron Warriors into the depths of the underhive and to the mines below. Flight is out of character. The Iron Warriors do not flee. And these traitors are doing everything in their power to stay ahead of the Destroyers. Some of the corridors and passageways down which the company races are mined, but the traps are improvised, easily overcome, and they delay the Ultramarines very little.

  ‘Like they want us to follow,’ Hierax says. The Ultramarines have come down a long way. They are deep in mining tunnels, in a wide passage running past abandoned equipment and smaller branching routes. Work was progressing here until recently, and the dim, orange glow strips line the stone walls.

  ‘Perhaps they’re leading us away,’ says Kletos, one step behind the captain.

  Hierax looks at Aphovos, who is keeping pace beside him. The Librarian shakes his head. ‘We are getting closer to the warp disturbance. Our target is down this way.’

  ‘They know that,’ Hierax mutters. Perhaps they also know that any attempt to misdirect the Ultramarines would be futile. So what do they intend?

  Hierax runs faster yet. The beat of ceramite boots picks up too. The stamping rhythm is a continuous rumble of thunder. ‘Theoretical,’ he says. ‘The appearance of flight is a lie. It is a prelude to another attack. Practical – catch them before they can trigger it.’

  The tunnel curves to the left, turns down, and then opens up into an enormous chamber. It is as big as an open air mine, a cave more than a kilometre wide and long, its ceiling thirty metres high. The air is close. The temperatures have been climbing steadily, and despite its size the cave is stifling. The Iron Warriors are two-thirds of the way across. Now in the open, Hierax sees their full complement for the first time. So few, he thinks. This small force has held an entire Legion at bay. Amidst his anger, and his desperation to bring the war to a rapid close, he feels a grudging respect for the accomplishment.

  ‘There,’ Aphovos says. He points to a tunnel leading away on the other side of the cave. Though it appears to be descending further, its entrance is from a ledge three metres above the floor of the cave.

  The ledge runs the entire length of the far wall. A place of refuge, Hierax thinks, and he sees the trap. He slams to a halt. ‘Back,’ he orders. ‘Back to the tunnel. We want high ground.’ He scans the ground, and thinks how it might become deadly.

  The Iron Warriors are still on the floor of the cavern. They cannot trigger the trap yet.

  ‘Not this time,’ Hierax mutters. He has seen the danger, and has a small window in which to act. ‘The floor is mined,’ he says to Aphovos as they reach the mouth of the tunnel. ‘One way or another, we cannot cross it.’

  Aphovos’ gaze loses focus. He is looking at something beyond the cavern, beyond reality. When he turns to Hierax again, his face is troubled, but determined. ‘I can still reach the other tunnel.’

  ‘Just you?’

  Aphovos nods. ‘There is a high concentration of warp energy here, and it is unstable. I can reach what I must, but alone. And the consequences…’

  ‘They will be what they must be,’ says Hierax. He extends a hand, and he and Aphovos clasp forearms. They can both sense the approach of fate.

  ‘Rockets,’ Hierax orders on the company vox. ‘Target the floor where it reaches the wall. Fire ahead of the enemy.’ To Aphovos he says, ‘When it begins, do what you must.’

  From command to execution is a matter of moments. Aphovos stands to the left of the tunnel entrance, facing his goal on the other side of the cavern. His hands are raised and motionless, as if frozen in the act of shaping the air. A vibrating halo surrounds him, reality becoming uncertain.

  The Destroyers launch a score of rockets. They streak to all sides of the cave. Half of them fly towards the wall ahead of the Iron Warriors.

  Aphovos vanishes the moment the explosions begin.

  Khrossus hears the scream of rockets. With a snarl, he turns on his heel. Well done, he thinks. His legionaries turn with him to face the end.

  The end is brilliant and molten. It begins at the edges of the cavern, as Khrossus had always planned. Only it comes too soon.

  So be it. And the Ultramarines are mistaken if they think the end has arrived only for the Iron Warriors.

  Aphovos falls through a different tunnel, one that burrows through the materium. Time and space are torn by madness. A darkness with volition claws at his skull. The shades of madness and power seek to embrace him, and he holds them off, barely. His power, long suppressed, unpractised, comes back at him, and begins to rend his being.

  And then he is through. He returns to the materium, staggering away from the rift of his creation, leaving too much of himself behind. His limbs feel distant, responding clumsily to his commands. He feels hollow. He carries a rift within him that gapes deep in his being. He has attempted too much too soon.

  No matter. He is where he must be. He has transported himself to a point partway down the tunnel he sought. From behind, in a great cave, comes an unending chain of explosions. Heat roars over him, the breath of a volcano.

  Ahead, he feels rather than hears chanting. He stumbles forward, gathering his strength for one more attack. There will be no going back, and that is for the best. He does not trust what is trying to take root in his chest. He will defy it, and use the power that put it there against itself. Fire has come in the cavern behind him, and he brings a different fire before him.

  He moves more quickly, called by the horror of the chanting. He felt it first, and now he hears it too. Despite the roar of apocalypse in the cave, the monstrous syllables that have conjured and are fuelling the warp storm fill the tunnel, writhing in spirals from floor to walls to ceiling.

  Aphovos follows the call. His surroundings are a blur. He is consumed by the attack he is gathering, and by the abomination waiting ahead.

  He reaches the chapel of the Word Bearers, and though he is tearing himself asunder, though acting as a psyker again is killing him, he is consumed by the necessity of what he is and what he is doing. There must be weapons like him to combat the likes of what he sees.

  The Word Bearers are a multiplicity and a unity at the same time. Four legionaries surround a fifth at their centre. They stand on a rune that appears to be an eight-pointed star one moment, and a swirling mass of snarling jaws the next. Aphovos sees each individual Word Bearer, yet he cannot mark the division between one traitor and the next. Light and reality curve around them, eroding being. Arms appear to stretch too far, the limbs of one Word Bearer merging with those of the next. All their voices are one, and that one voice is a conduit for the infinite inhuman voices beyond. Above them, a vortex spins, dissolving the difference between the underground chamber and the entirety of the Carchera system.

  The Word Bearers be
come aware of Aphovos. As one, they turn their heads to face him. He is insignificant before the power they have summoned.

  He is also faster.

  Aphovos unleashes the power he has gathered. He tears open the air above the Word Bearers, between them and the mouth of the vortex. A rift cuts across a rift, and the chant is broken. Coherence is lost, and the fury of the warp explodes in the chapel, uncontrolled, uncontrollable. Dissolution and madness fill the space and lash out through the tunnel, a massive blast of energy that dies as it is freed, devouring the beings whose incantations it needs to exist.

  The fury takes Aphovos too. Disintegration is agony, and it is horror.

  It is also victory.

  The rockets trigger the mines. A chain reaction of explosions races around the circumference of the cavern, and across the floor in a dozen diagonals. The floor of the cavern is a thin layer of rock covering an iron disc rigged to self-destruct. Hierax applauds the efficiency of the trap. The surface erupts, cracks and collapses in seconds. There is no chance for anyone standing on the floor of the cavern to escape.

  The surface plunges into the molten hell below and the reason for the great heat of the cave is revealed. The space below is a series of parallel channels filled with molten ore. They are separated by narrow walls, barely a metre wide. The Iron Warriors have undermined a system already strained by having all the channels filled at once, and the barriers between the channels are crumbling. Stone and metal fall into blinding, incandescent red and white, and are dissolved. The traitors fall too.

  The rumbling blasts continue, shaking the walls of the tunnel, the explosions carrying on far beyond the cavern itself, and Hierax understands the full extent of the trap. From somewhere back in the tunnel comes the crumbling roar of a wall giving way, and the tearing of metal. The heat in the tunnel, already searing, becomes lethal. Another reservoir, this one higher up, has broken, and is pouring its liquid iron into the tunnel. The darkness to the rear lights up with a crimson glow, and then it comes, a wave of molten metal five metres high.