Spear of Ultramar Read online

  The enemy has three points of attack, all reinforcing each other. So Guilliman will hit all three at once. Maybe this will be fast enough. Maybe the Ultramarines will leave the system before all the sand grains run out. The need is clear, the positions clear, and now so is the strategy he will use.

  Mere minutes have passed since the fleet translated into the materium.

  ‘Fleet-wide vox transmission,’ Guilliman orders. ‘All ships, except for two squadrons, are to follow the lead of Captain Corvo and the Glorious Nova. Captain, take the Nova and the fleet after the enemy vessel. Burn it.’ This is the strike to overwhelm. The enemy is forcing Guilliman to divide his forces, but Guilliman decides the nature of the division. The enemy has hit hard, and amplified his strength, but cannot hide his weakness. That strike cruiser is all the foe has. Horus cannot afford to leave any more behind, not if he wishes to take Terra and do it quickly. The sandglass is running for the Traitor, too.

  ‘Captain Tulian Aquila will make for the space station with the strike cruiser Alalia and escorts,’ Guilliman continues. Aquila has only recently been promoted to Captain of the 77th Company, but his heroism on Calth more than justifies the faith Guilliman places in him now. ‘He is to board the station and render it inoperative, by any means necessary. The third squadron is with me. The Cavascor and the Honour Bound will join the Ultimus Mundi. We make for Carchera.’

  ‘A single company to take out a space station?’ Gorod asks.

  ‘A heavy engagement with ships would be too costly. It is what the enemy wants.’ Throwing ships at a space station is to wage war on the station’s terms, and the mistake Guilliman will not make. ‘The fight must be inside the fort, on its decks, not against its shields and its guns.’

  The commands are given. The fleet responds. The fire ships keep coming, and the mines swarm in, and the salvos from the enemy ships and the other, more distant targets hammer at the XIII Legion vessels. But the fleet responds to the will of its primarch. It maintains a constant, overlapping barrage, an expanding halo of fire that immolates suicide ships and mines. The fleet moves through waves of destruction, riding through fury, taking wounds. More ships are lost, but only a few. More still are damaged, but they remain in the fight, and through burning corridors, shattered decks and breached hulls, their crews keep them going, answering the call of the Avenging Son, no matter how long the lists of casualties become. Guilliman knows his duty, so do his sons, and so does every officer and crew member and serf in the fleet. They will give their lives in service, and do so willingly, out of loyalty to the primarch and everything he embodies. They understand what is at stake. Though they do not sense time broken down to the individual grains of sand, they grasp the urgency of the conflict. They know the fleet must reach Terra, and every command that comes from Guilliman will, if they carry it out, bring the fleet that much closer to the defence of the Emperor. So they do their duty. And the fleet responds.

  Under heavy attack, fighting to break out of a narrow region of the void, the fleet advances, and it does as Guilliman ordered. The formation begins to break into the three prongs. The XIII Legion moves to take the offensive.

  The war is less than an hour old.

  The space station Barbican is a pyramidal structure atop a colossal platform whose guns sweep all quadrants of the void. The bridge is in the peak of the pyramid. Viewports on all sides provide Darhug with a full, panoramic view of everything above the plane of the platform. Vid screens in an inner ring show the approaches of the underbelly of the station. There are no blind spots.

  Darhug sits on a throne on a high column in the centre of the circular chamber of the bridge. Below him, officers, technicians and servitors are at their work stations, ready to enact his will. At his command, the power to devastate fleets is unleashed. As formidable as the station is, he has, as directed by Khrossus, multiplied its power. The Barbican is surrounded by four orbital weapons platforms. They were previously positioned over Carchera, but Khrossus has declared the planet’s ground-based defences to be sufficient. We are not defending the system, he reminded Darhug. We are turning it into a weapon. Now the platforms are slaved to the Barbican, extensions of its destructive reach. Any vessel coming within range will be torn apart by a murderous web of fire created by the orbital platforms’ laser batteries and the guns of the station.

  Come and get us, Darhug thinks. Do the very thing I know you will avoid. He has too much faith in the Ultramarines’ tactical skill to believe they will make this mistake. But he wishes they would. He would like to teach them something of the pain that has been the Iron Warriors’ lot for so long. He has already hurt them, but not enough. The runes pict screen next to the throne summarises the effects of his opening salvos against the XIII Legion’s fleet. He is not satisfied. It would be easy to fault the actions of the Carcherans who are operating the fort and its weapons systems. They are slaves, chosen for their skills and knowledge, but they are still slaves. They are the conquered. It would, then, be easy to blame them, to declare that they had not tried hard enough. But Darhug is tired of illusions. He has had his fill of lies, and if there is something about this struggle in the Carchera system for which he is grateful, it is that it means an end to lies. He expects no more than this. The warsmith still believes that what happens today will have meaning. Darhug just wants the lies to end.

  Every slave on the Barbican has family kept hostage in Siderius. The mortals know the price of betrayal. They know what will happen if they show the slightest hesitation to obey a single one of his commands. Darhug has all the personnel required to attack the Ultramarines. It is when the Ultramarines attack him, and he knows they will, that his forces will be found lacking.

  ‘The fleet bleeds and burns, brother,’ says Vûrtaq. From his position closer to the battle, his scans give him a more detailed picture of what is happening.

  ‘I am pleased to hear it,’ says Darhug. ‘Have we stopped the Ultramarines?’

  ‘No.’ Either Vûrtaq does not hear Darhug’s sarcasm, or he chooses to ignore it. ‘But it is a good start.’

  ‘Better than the end.’

  ‘I like to think the end will be something other than what you think.’

  ‘You mean other than what I know,’ says Darhug. ‘We are a single company against a Legion. The outcome is not in doubt.’

  ‘We will see,’ Vûrtaq says. ‘The odds have been against us before.’

  Not on this scale, Darhug thinks, but Vûrtaq knows this very well. He simply looks to the future differently than Darhug does. The truth is that Darhug feels no grief about what he knows is coming. He has no regret that this is his last day. The bitterness he feels is not about his approaching death. If anything, he suspects it is Vûrtaq who feels greater resentment about the odds, despite his indomitability.

  ‘The fleet is splitting up,’ says Vûrtaq, and a few moments later, Darhug sees the same information appear on the Barbican’s screens.

  ‘You have captured their attention,’ Darhug says. Most of the enemy vessels are changing their headings. They are going to pursue the Iron Warriors ship.

  ‘As the warsmith predicted. And I see you will not be lonely either.’

  Three ships have detached themselves from the main fleet and are making for the space station.

  ‘Lay siege to them without mercy, brother,’ says Vûrtaq. ‘I shall see you again, when our war is done.’

  ‘Farewell, brother.’ It is as close as Darhug comes to contradicting the other captain. He knows Vûrtaq is angry, though in this moment, he is channelling his anger at Horus into an unbreakable determination. He has faith in Khrossus’ plan. So does Darhug. He simply believes the success of the campaign will be measured by something other than survival.

  ‘All weapons, continuous fire on the approaching vessels,’ Darhug orders. He will hit the Ultramarines at a distance as best he can. They will not advance until they are cut to pieces, thou
gh. Their attack will take a different form.

  Legionary Savarran stops beside the throne’s column. His right arm is a crude bionic, the fist opening and closing constantly like a hungry maw. ‘Only three ships,’ he says. ‘They can’t think to take us on like that.’

  ‘They don’t.’ Darhug thinks about how he would capture the Barbican. Despite Khrossus’ larger strategy, Darhug is about to be on the defensive, and he resents the role. ‘They plan to board us,’ he says.

  ‘Let them try.’

  ‘On the contrary. I have no intention of letting them try.’ Only he knows his intentions will not change the facts of the war. He will fight to stop the Ultramarines, but if he were the one to lay siege to the station, he would break through any defence. So will they.

  Darhug is no defeatist. He is a realist. He thinks through the battle to come, and to its probable outcomes. He has, in the end, a single, overriding task. He must kill as many Ultramarines as possible.

  He sees what to do. It does not matter that inevitability is on the side of the Ultramarines. He will negate that advantage. He and his legionaries will bleed the foe, and when the sons of Guilliman believe they finally have the day, Darhug will unleash a reckoning. He permits himself a grim smile. Perhaps Vûrtaq is not so wrong to believe in victory. Darhug looks forward to turning the enemy’s triumph to ash.

  He begins his preparations.

  Flight is inimical to Vûrtaq. To flee is to go against his every instinct. In war, if there is one thing he believes in, it is the eternal advance. To spit in the face of everything an enemy can throw at him and march forward, always forward, until he grinds the foe beneath his boots, that is his credo. Even a tactical retreat is beyond shameful.

  In the command throne of the strike cruiser Warforged, Vûrtaq finds the order he must give now sticks in his throat. The Ultramarines are coming for him and his ship. The spear of the XIII Legion’s fleet thrusts through the fire ships and the minefields. The Iron Warriors took every ship, civilian and military, that remained in the Carchera system, turning them into bombs. There were hundreds of vessels. To look at their initial disposition, at the sphere of death they formed around the Mandeville point, would be to think that nothing could get through them.

  But the warsmith was right. The Ultramarines expected the trap and countered it as soon as they translated into the materium. Vûrtaq would, if he could choose, aim his ship at the XIII Legion, a gladius strike into the heart of the foe’s massive power. But Warsmith Khrossus’ plan is a good one, and Vûrtaq will not undermine it by going against orders.

  The order tastes bitter, but Vûrtaq only hesitates for a second, and he gives it. ‘Defensive fire only,’ he says. ‘We make for Himera at full speed.’

  Beside the command throne, Sergeant Navghar gives voice to Vûrtaq’s displeasure. ‘Do we want them to think we are turning tail and running? Because that is what it looks like to me.’ His wounded larynx makes his voice sound like claws scraping against glass.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they think,’ Vûrtaq snaps back. ‘What matters is that they follow. And they will.’

  ‘This is not our way of war.’

  ‘Then we will make it into our way,’ says Vûrtaq. In speaking these words, he echoes Khrossus. Realising this a moment later, Vûrtaq feels some satisfaction. This knowledge does not reconcile him to the nature of the conflict, but it does give him hope, again, for what it might become.

  ‘Is this what the Warmaster thinks of us?’ Navghar asks.

  ‘What if it is? That is as nothing compared to what I think of him.’

  The sergeant joins Vûrtaq in a burst of angry laughter.

  Khrossus has made abundantly clear the fate that awaits the Grand Company. There will be no return from the Carchera system. Perturabo gave the 134th this mission, but Vûrtaq does not blame his primarch for sacrificing them. Nor is he reluctant to be sacrificed. Bloody, thankless victories verging on the pyrrhic have always been the lot of the Iron Warriors. They are all Vûrtaq has ever known in the service of the Emperor. He is hardly surprised to find that nothing has changed under Horus. The Grand Company will be destroyed while fighting in the name of Horus’ glory, or so the orders would suggest. But Perturabo has chosen the 134th for a reason, and Khrossus, along with his captains, has little faith in Horus’ promises. To fight with Horus is to shatter the greater lies of the Emperor, and on this day the warsmith has devised a plan that will humble the Emperor’s prideful sons. What Vûrtaq has already seen delights him, and the thought of what is to come soothes the anger that comes from even the appearance of a retreat.

  Vûrtaq believes in more. ‘We will show Horus that he is as mistaken as the False Emperor,’ he says. ‘We have always done the impossible. We will do it again. Horus believes that the impossible is that we survive this day. Well, then. Let us fight today, and we shall fight again tomorrow. Iron within!’

  ‘Iron without!’ cries Navghar.

  Within and without, we are unbreakable, Vûrtaq thinks. And we will break you, Guilliman.

  Three

  Final Approach

  ‘We have an approximate region of the warp interference,’ says Prayto. The Librarian has been working closely with the auspex officers and technicians. In the strategium above the bridge, he touches the controls of the pict screen beside the command pulpit. On the planetary map of Carchera, a targeting rune appears over Hive Siderius.

  ‘A geological fortress,’ Guilliman observes, eyeing the terrain. Then he orders the ships to make for a point that would place them at high anchor above Siderius.

  The Ultimus Mundi, the Cavascor and the frigate Honour Bound are nearing their goal when the planet attacks them. The grey-brown, turbulent atmosphere flashes, pulsing with four searing red beams. The clouds reflect the muzzle flares of monstrous orbital guns, and the defence lasers reach for the squadron.

  The beams, powered by plasma reservoirs that could light up a city, rip through the cloud cover. The barrage is a concentrated one, suggesting the guns are close together, and the shots come within seconds of each other. One laser misses its targets completely, its blinding light cutting deep into the night of the void. One hits the Ultimus Mundi just beneath the prow. The void shields save the hull, but the blast overloads them in that quadrant of the ship, and forces their momentary collapse. Another beam strikes the Cavascor a glancing blow on the port side, the worst of the explosion absorbed by the defences. The ship rolls in the shock wave, but stays true to its course as its evasion begins to pick up speed.

  The fourth laser hits the Honour Bound in the lower hull, a short distance to the fore of the engines. Guilliman sees the flash through the viewport of the Ultimus Mundi. He sees the heaving movement of the ship, as if it is suddenly caught in a rising tide, and he knows the shot has struck home.

  ‘Honour Bound, report,’ he commands.

  ‘Lower hull breached, lord primarch,’ Shipmaster Hestaian voxes after a few moments. ‘We have fires on three decks. But we still have power and guidance.’

  All three ships begin evasive manoeuvres, but the change in their trajectories in these crucial moments is, at first, invisible to the mortal eye. The vessels are behemoths of war. Their turns are full of grace and majesty, but they are not agile. The Ultimus Mundi and the Cavascor can take a second hit, though the strike cruiser will be sorely tested. The Honour Bound cannot afford to be hit again.

  The ships move away from the planet, and gradually accelerate away from the region of Siderius, putting it over the horizon. The crews on all three work in the anticipation of sudden, searing destruction. Their salvation is the time it takes for the orbital guns to charge up their titanic energy again. The second salvo does come, but the squadron has won the race. The lasers miss, but not by much. The enemy does not have a third chance. The Siderius region is beyond the curvature of Carchera before the guns can recharge.

  Though
the atmosphere of Carchera is opaque, the topographical scans have revealed the face of the planet, and the shipmasters take their vessels east, over the ocean. Here there is no settlement, and little chance of more defence lasers.

  Guilliman has remained quiet during the manoeuvres. His officers know what must be accomplished. The ships must be preserved, and the squadron must also remain in the near orbit of Carchera. There can be no retreat.

  Guilliman steps back from the pulpit, deeper into the strategium, to speak with Prayto and Gorod.

  ‘This has the earmarks of stalemate,’ says Prayto.

  ‘Which we cannot afford,’ Guilliman says. ‘There is no stalemate in this struggle. Stalemate is victory for the enemy.’

  Gorod winces, uneasy with what he is about to say. ‘We do have the means of breaking the stalemate quickly. We have cyclonic torpedoes.’

  Guilliman’s instinct is to reject Gorod’s suggestion out of hand, but he can see what it has cost the Invictarus commander to raise the idea of such drastic action. Guilliman would be doing him an injustice if he responded in anger, and without thinking through what Gorod has said.

  ‘Carchera is loyalist,’ Prayto says, horrified. ‘You are talking about destroying an Imperial world.’

  ‘Loyalist, but captured,’ says Gorod. He pauses. ‘I agree with you, Titus. I despise what I am saying. But there it is. Do we have to sacrifice one world in order to save Terra, and thus countless others?’

  ‘It is never only one world,’ says Guilliman. ‘It is never only one sacrifice. If we embark down that path, there will always be justification to go further yet, forever in the name of expediency and of the greater good. Drakus, you were right to ask, but no, we cannot do this. We would be turning into what we are fighting. Carchera is loyal. It awaits liberation, not Exterminatus. And its industrial production is valuable.’