The Atonement of Fire Read online

  ‘It does not.’

  ‘They don’t need life support for much longer. All they have to do is keep us from taking the bridge. And they have.’ The tactic was both primitive and effective. A mountain of crushed wreckage blocked the way upwards. There was no way for the Ultramarines to blast their way through hundreds of thousands of tonnes of metal before the Gladiator hurled virus bombs or cyclonic torpedoes at Diavanos.

  ‘They cannot disable their weapons if they mean to use them,’ said Gorod.

  ‘Precisely.’ Guilliman opened a vox-channel to Hierax. ‘Captain, what is your position?’

  ‘Five decks below yours, lord primarch. We saw your breach before we made ours.’

  ‘We cannot go up. So we go down. Make for the torpedo bays. By the most direct route.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Gorod nodded. He grasped the new practical as well. They would melt their way down through the decks to the target.

  Marakus of the Invictus squad placed the first krak grenade. Its incandescent heat turned metal to liquid and ate through the deck. Guilliman stared at the detonation without blinking. It could have been the anger of his gaze dissolving the adamantium and iron.

  Three decks down, Marakus shouted in triumph. ‘The mark of the Destroyers’ passage,’ he said, pointing to a crater in the deck a dozen yards ahead.

  Guilliman took the lead again, dropping through the hole to a corridor scorched black by the bombardments of the Cavascor. It was only a few steps to the next breach, and a deck moaning with the wind of atmosphere escaping though cracks reaching all the way to the wounds in the hull. Guilliman passed the bodies of crew and slaves. There were the corpses of World Eaters too, but no attackers.

  ‘Our passage is strangely uncontested,’ said Gorod.

  ‘The World Eaters are concentrating their strength,’ said Guilliman. ‘All they have to do is maintain control of the weapons until Diavanos is in range. They’ll make their stand in the place they know we will attack.’

  ‘Instead of wasting forces defending regions we may never pass through.’

  ‘I doubt their reasons will be that strategic. They just won’t want to miss the bloodletting.’

  ‘Lord primarch,’ Hierax voxed, from only a single deck away, ‘torpedo bay in sight.’ A sustained burst of fire obscured his next words. The only word Guilliman could make out was ‘entrances’. That was sufficient. Theoretical: more than one access to the bay. Practical: use the initial attack of the Destroyers to create a surprise second front.

  ‘Break them in half, captain,’ Guilliman said. ‘We are moments away.’

  The squad passed the Destroyers’ last breach and kept going. The deck thrummed with the crunching rhythm of bolter shells. Guilliman marched forwards, visualising the essential architecture of Imperial battleships, extrapolating variations based on the layout of the halls he had seen during their descent. A hundred yards past the first breach, Guilliman drove the Hand of Dominion into the deck. The corridor erupted with an azure flash. Layers of metal vaporised under his blows. He hit again and again. Do you hear me, you murderous animals? he thought. I am judgement coming for you.

  The deck gave way completely and Guilliman dropped through. He rose from a crouch, firing the Arbitrator into the surprised World Eaters before him. Armour that had once been bone-white gleamed crimson. Brass spikes studded limbs, helms and pauldrons. Roaring, they charged him with chainaxes coated in dried blood and shredded flesh.

  Guilliman drenched them with their own blood, detonating their skulls with his shells.

  A few hundred yards to Guilliman’s right, Destroyers engaged Destroyers.

  The World Eaters fought a version of themselves held back by self-inflicted shackles. The Ultramarines fought an image of what, without honour and discipline, they might have become. Loyalist and traitor attacked each other with a ferocity born of absolute hatred. Hierax’s squad hit the World Eaters with phosphex bombs, then rushed without pause into the inferno they had created. A cloud of white-green death crawled out of the sternward threshold to the torpedo bay. It ate into the armour of legionaries on both sides. It burned ceramite. It burned flesh. Heraldry dissolved, and the quicksilver flame flowed hungrily over blackened, gnawed, unrecognisable corpses.

  The legionaries of Ultramar and Nuceria fought and killed each other in the midst of the spreading hell. Green flames licking down his pauldrons, Hierax smashed the edge of his chainsword into a World Eater’s gorget. The blade ground through, finding a weak point in the armour. The traitor struck at the captain’s helm with his chainaxe. Hierax roared with pain, but did not waver even as the helmet began to crack. He leaned into the sword. ‘You will bleed for Ultramar!’ he shouted, hunger for vengeance reverberating from his vox-casters. Gristle and bone parted. The World Eater’s head fell backwards, arterial blood spraying wide into the burning green.

  Guilliman and the Invictus Guard stormed into the ­torpedo bay, and into a maw of bestial fury. The Red Butchers howled in mindless wrath. Madness contained within Terminator armour, they charged without hesitation into the hail of bolter shells. The storm from the Arbitrator ­shattered their front ranks, exploding through armour and bone. Beyond feral, blind to everything but the need to kill, the Red Butchers charged over their dead and slammed into the tight formation of the Invictus Guard.

  Guilliman’s jaw was tight with rage as he waded into a maelstrom of pure destruction. These things had once been sworn to the task of spreading and preserving the Emperor’s dream. They had become every worst instinct the dream had come to purge. You were always going to fall, Angron, Guilliman thought, and with a surge of bitter contempt he slammed the Hand of Dominion into the wretches. They were things without thought, flesh-machines of empty fury.

  There was nothing these warriors could do to stop him. But they might, in their berserk charge, slow him down and keep him from his target. Beyond the mass of World Eaters, past fallen gantries and slicks of burning promethium, many of the launch tubes lay open, their ordnance already fired. The largest of the vault-like doors was closed, its approach defended by a Centurion and a Dreadnought. So sealed, it meant the cyclonic torpedo had yet to be fired.

  Guilliman drove the Hand of Dominion through the chest-plate of a Red Butcher. He hurled himself through the Terminators like a battering ram.

  ‘Drakus!’ the Centurion shouted, his voice amplified by his vox-caster. It was hoarse and rattled wetly, as if its owner were swallowing blood. ‘I rejoice to see you burn today!’

  The Centurion commanding the World Eaters stood next to the torpedo door, flanked by a Dreadnought.

  ‘Deranax,’ Gorod voxed to Guilliman. He did not respond to the World Eater’s taunt. ‘His belief in the Great Crusade was once very strong.’

  ‘Then his sin is all the greater,’ Guilliman snarled. He will atone, he thought. He will atone until he is ash.

  The leaping, burning streams of phosphex from the other entrance were devouring the enemy. The Red ­Butchers were falling before the disciplined fire of the Invictus Guard. The tide of battle was against the World Eaters. But Deranax stood in triumph. Guilliman realised the ­torpedo was moments from firing. Diavanos was in range.

  Guilliman’s leap carried him over the heads of a cluster of Red Butchers. He came down with the Hand of Dominion at full charge. The force of his blow sent out a shock wave so destructive it was as a meteor slamming into the enemy. Terminator armour ruptured. Bodies burst into fragments. Shrapnel of bone and ceramite exploded. Guilliman ran through a storm of blood, sending a barrage of combi-bolter shells ahead of him, carving a path through the World Eaters.

  The Contemptor Dreadnought thundered towards him, its heavy bolter roaring, its power claw reaching out. Deranax laughed, then turned to the controls next to the hydraulic arms controlling the vault door.

  Guilliman moved too fast for the Dreadnought to track. He
closed with the monster, clenching the Hand of Dominion, and fired a burst of shells into the helm. The Dreadnought shouted in incoherent wrath. The Hand of Dominion smashed through the Contemptor’s power claw, then hammered the sarcophagus.

  The Dreadnought staggered. Its heavy bolter arm flailed in an attempt to get Guilliman in the line of fire. The ­primarch struck its chest-plate again. The sarcophagus was centuries old. It could withstand a direct hit from an artillery shell. The Hand of Dominion was much older, and was of a far different order of power. And it was wielded by a primarch. The sarcophagus collapsed beneath Guilliman’s blow. He drove the Hand of Dominion through the layers of armour shielding, and into the soft, broken thing that was all that remained of the interred legionary’s body.

  The Dreadnought’s roaring cut off at once.

  The hydraulic arms pulled the vault door open, revealing the torpedo. Deranax held a detonator. ‘Aim at a world and kill a primarch,’ he growled with bloodlust and triumph. There were demolition charges on the casing of the torpedo.

  The Centurion had used Diavanos as a lure, Guilliman realised. Deranax had waited until Guilliman was before him, and now he was going to trigger the cyclonic ­torpedo’s detonation inside the Gladiator. Instead of destroying a planet as his final act of brutality, he would take the Emperor’s­ Avenging Son with him into his funeral pyre.

  Guilliman fired. The shells struck Deranax’s wrist before he could pull the detonator’s trigger. They destroyed the World Eater’s hand but spared the detonator. It flew behind him and howling he lunged for the device. Guilliman seized Deranax with the power gauntlet and smashed him against a wall. He squeezed, channelling the Hand’s power into a crushing grip. The Centurion’s limbs and his immolating design came apart. Guilliman jammed the muzzle of the Aribtrator against Deranax’s helmet.

  The Centurion snarled, dying but undefeated. ‘It all burns in the end,’ he choked out.

  Guilliman pulled the trigger.

  As he turned from the corpse, Iasus voxed from the Cavascor. ‘Lord primarch, have you taken the bridge?’

  ‘It’s unreachable. We have the torpedo bay.’ The Red Butchers and the Destroyers were still fighting. They would until the end, but the end was coming fast.

  After a moment, Iasus said, ‘Lord Guilliman, I must urge your immediate withdrawal. The Gladiator is on a collision course with Diavanos. Thunderhawks are closing with your position. You must breach and evacuate at once.’

  Through the Thunderhawk’s viewing block, Guilliman saw the fiery descent of the Gladiator. He saw the dark blade of the battleship plunge through the atmosphere of Diavanos. He saw it flare red with heat.

  He saw the blinding fireball of impact and the plasma detonation. No cyclonic torpedo cracked the planet open, but the Gladiator hit with the force of an asteroid. A bloom of fire, blinding white, hundreds of kilometres in diameter, lit up the clouds. The atmosphere convulsed, transforming into a furious cauldron, storm upon storm spreading across the world of gossamer towers. A terminal wind swept the continents, scouring Diavanos of its crystalline promise, putting an end to dreams.

  In the strategium of the Ultimus Mundi, Guilliman gazed at the deep augur picts of Diavanos. This is what we have saved, he thought. This is all we have saved of this world. The Gladiator had made planetfall fifty miles from Ecstasia. The blast had razed the capital city. The delicate traceries of the architecture had vanished. Broken angles of glass and iron jutted through the clouds of ash and dust. There was nothing but grey now, grey forever under a sky of dark lead. Ashes fell, as they would for centuries to come.

  ‘Some of the industries in the southern land mass are still viable,’ Gorod said. ‘The population has not slipped below the critical mass. Diavanos will survive.’

  ‘Survive,’ Guilliman repeated. The word was as dry as the ash in the air. ‘Survival is not enough, Drakus. Look at what has been lost. Millennia of culture has been extinguished. Diavanos was a beacon through the Age of Strife. Where is its light now? Mere survival means decline. This will become a place of darkness and ignorance, unless we can kindle a new fire. Only the Imperium can do that. We do not fight just for the survival of the Imperium. We fight for the preservation of a dream.’

  There was no atonement to be found here. There was only determination, and a vow. ‘The Imperium will never be reduced to this darkness,’ he told Gorod. ‘It will be forever worthy of my father. Forever. I will hold it in the light. And if I have to fight forever, I will.’

  About the Author

  David Annandale is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, several stories involving the Grey Knights, including Warden of the Blade and Castellan, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

  An extract from Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar.

  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 stern. 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 Aletho 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.