Spear of Ultramar Page 9

  Antalcidas ascends the rockfall, staying as close to the cliff face as he can. He must move around the larger boulders instead of destroying them, and this slows him down, but the frenzy of the battle on the slopes ahead and below him conceals his approach. In response to his situation, a flicker of emotion passes through Antalcidas’ consciousness. Though his focus on the mission is unwavering, he experiences something that approaches grim amusement. Before his entombment in this sarcophagus of war, long before the XIII Legion was united with its primarch, he was a warrior of the relentless charge. His path was always from the front, a spear through the heart of the foe. Since the destruction of his flesh, trapped beneath the burning wreckage of a Rhino, and his rebirth as a Dreadnought, he has become the purest essence of his being, no longer a spear but a battering ram, pure destruction forged for the single purpose of being unleashed in the name of the Avenging Son.

  And now the battering ram approaches in stealth.

  The conditions on the battlefield abruptly change. The Mechanicum fire that has been cutting into the Destroyers stops. Free of that attack, the company strikes upwards with all the more ferocity. Antalcidas wills himself to march faster. His brothers are buying him this opportunity at the cost of their lives. The price they have paid is enough. Not one more, he thinks.

  ‘Not one more,’ the voice growls out of his vox-casters.

  He rounds a corner of the cliff, and ahead of him is the fortified position. There are two Predators and a squad of traitors. They will see him now, so let them see him well.

  ‘NOT ONE MORE,’ he roars.

  Let them hear him well. Let them fear him well. And let them die.

  On this day, Antalcidas’ armament is as terrible as it has ever been. He has become a weapon that most of the XIII Legion would prefer to see forbidden from the battlefield. He would not disagree. This kind of ammunition is barbaric. The Destroyers are the shadow cast by the light of the Ultramarines. If Guilliman has become more willing to set the Destroyers loose upon the foes of the Emperor, he does so with caution. Against some enemies, though, on some battlefields, the barbaric weapon is nothing less than justice.

  Antalcidas’ arms are two cannons. One launches the atrocity of phosphex. Its shells land amidst the Iron Warriors, and the devouring sea of green bursts into being. The other shells are rad munitions. They hammer into the armour on the sides of the Predators. The plating is too thick to be more than dented by the explosions, but it is insufficient protection against the radiological horror of the shells. Radiation slashes through the tanks, through the armour of the men inside, burning flesh and liquefying organs. Phosphex is an exaltation of monstrosity, a spectacle of pain, the colour of life itself turned into the most savage corrosion. The rad explosives are the bringers of invisible death. But they are no less painful, no less horrific, no less lingering. Where Antalcidas fights today, nothing can live for centuries to come.

  Antalcidas marches forward, his guns relentless in their drumbeat. More than ever before, he is the walking death. The legionaries before him were once brothers to his Legion. For the crime of treachery, they deserve atrocity. He descends upon them like wrath itself, but the Iron Warriors outnumber him, and the Predators are more powerful than he is.

  Retaliatory fire hits Antalcidas. Bolter shells do little against his armour, but a rocket slams into his left leg. Antalcidas cannot feel pain in his machinic limbs, but the leg no longer responds properly to his will. It drags along the ground.

  There is no cover. There is no retreat. There is only the march forward and the retribution he brings. With a blare of his war horn, Antalcidas closes in, enveloping the Iron Warriors in a storm of liquefying agony.

  The Predators have been slow to respond. Antalcidas pictures the pain of their crews, so crippling it delays the reactions of even the Legiones Astartes. But now they fire. Autocannon shells and las explode against Antalcidas, cratering and melting the armour of his sarcophagus. Energy blasts outwards and arcs in again. The machine of war and the withered flesh it contains convulse. Antalcidas is losing his perceptions of the outside world. He holds on to his duty and to the last thing he must do, which is advance and fire. Always advance and fire.

  He grinds forward another few steps, and the tank cannons hit him again. He halts now. He can no longer move his arms, but he can still fire. Though the world is fading faster, he can tell that the bolters have fallen silent, and there are no more screams. One of the tanks is inert too. There is only the one left. Perhaps there is only the gunner.

  The cannon fires. So does Antalcidas. Two warriors hurl destruction at one another from within their tombs.

  Now comes the greater silence, and the final dark. Antalcidas can at last release his hold on necessary barbarism. He embraces the last sleep, and the end of atrocities.

  There is a sudden, sustained burst of fire from the Iron Warriors’ position above the Ultramarines. Khrossus sees flame, the flash of las, and the telltale green of phosphex tinge the smoke that shrouds the cliff face. Then there is silence. The tanks on the west side of the pass continue to bombard the enemy, but the withdrawal of the Mechanicum and now the absence of half his heavy armour has changed the battlefield. The smoke begins to thin and Khrossus can make out the Destroyers more clearly. In their black armour, with only the pauldrons in blue, they are a dark movement in the murk, a disciplined mass, and they turn as one to charge north up the final barrier that chokes the pass. They march through autocannon and bolter shells, taking casualties, yet too great a force for the Iron Warriors’ remaining guns to stop.

  For all their losses, they outnumber Khrossus’ legionaries by better than three to one.

  Reading the battlefield, and thus reading his warsmith’s thoughts, Sergeant Zennek says, ‘We can hold them off a bit longer.’

  ‘Not long enough.’ What resistance they can still muster at this position will end in rapid annihilation. ‘Legionaries,’ Khrossus voxes, ‘pull back. Make for the redoubt.’ The word is ironic. Every battle-brother knows the truth.

  ‘We are at the endgame, then?’ says Zennek.

  ‘So are they,’ Khrossus promises.

  The first blasts from the defence platforms hit the Barbican. They are the torches igniting Darhug’s funeral pyre, and he has lit them himself. Vûrtaq can dream of victory because he might survive his part of the campaign. Death on the space station, however, is always how things were going to end for Darhug. To choose that moment and, in dying, take an entire company of Ultramarines with him, is a prospect that does not displease him.

  The mortals controlling the firing resolutions of the defence platforms are sobbing in terror as the strikes begin. They have family in Siderius and are willing to give up their lives for even the mirage that their loved ones might see another dawn.

  The las of the defence platforms is ferocious. It is intended to destroy ships. But the Barbican is designed to withstand. It is resisting. Its void shields are powerful, its armour many metres thick. In the end, though, it cannot stand up to the combined barrage indefinitely.

  The Ultramarines captain has disappeared behind the remains of a work station. Darhug searches for him in the smoke, strafing the area with bolt shells. His auto-senses show him the positions of his surviving brothers. The last of these runes are dimming from red to black. In a few moments, he will be a lone Iron Warrior confronting a full company. This, too, does not displease him.

  The captain’s squad will soon be upon him. There is no more time, then. Darhug feels no grief or regret. He has done what he needs to do.

  The station shudders again and again. The las is breaking through. Explosions rock the decks. Fires spread. The destruction of the Barbican has begun in earnest.

  ‘Your task is accomplished,’ Darhug tells the mortals. He aims the barrel of his bolt rifle at them and at the control surfaces. He squeezes the trigger that will seal the fate of every being aboard t
he space station.

  He squeezes, but the rounds go wide. The blast of a frag grenade throws him aside. The mortals and the control banks are unharmed. The grenade, thrown with the accursed precision of the Ultramarines, turns him from the mortals’ assassin into their shield as his body takes the blast.

  The Ultramarines captain has managed to circle around in the smoke with a speed belying his injuries, and he lunges into sight, leaps at Darhug and collides with him, grappling with his bolter. Darhug lets go of his weapon with one hand and snatches his gladius from his belt. He stabs at the Ultramarine’s gorget. The loyalist anticipated his move, and blocks Darhug’s blade with his own.

  There is a stalemate, each legionary holding onto the bolter with one hand, their blades sawing against each other.

  Darhug recognises the epaulettes of his enemy. ‘Aquila,’ he says. They fought side by side once, against the Haartak Triumvirate. ‘Good of you to join me in this sacrifice.’

  ‘There will be no sacrifice today,’ Aquila growls.

  Defence platform las strike home. A giant fist shakes the Barbican. The two Space Marines stagger. Aquila’s wounds take their toll, and one knee buckles.

  ‘This station is my funeral pyre, and so it is yours too,’ says Darhug. With a sharp yank, he pulls the bolter free from Aquila’s grip. He takes a step back and swings the barrel at the captain. Aquila ducks low, beneath the burst of fire, and with a snarl of pain, he leaps up, his right hand a blur as he grabs an object from his belt and slams it into Darhug’s face, fastening it to his helmet.

  The thing covers Darhug’s eyes. He stumbles away. He clutches at the object. His fingers recognise the shape of a melta bomb.

  ‘I see,’ says Darhug. He gives a short bark of bitter laughter. He appreciates the black humour of his fate. Then, with pain of blinding white, he has his funeral pyre.

  Aquila turns from the molten remains of Darhug. The Barbican heaves again. The battle is over, the Iron Warriors are dead, but the bridge is filling with fresh smoke. The orbital defence platforms are still firing, Darhug’s spite reaching from beyond the grave.

  ‘Stop the bombardment,’ Aquila commands the mortals.

  They have been standing motionless, paralysed by fear. The struggle of the giants has broken their ability to think for themselves. As the interior blasts multiply across the station, Aquila knows they are living in the Barbican’s turning point, if it is not already too late.

  The mortals snap back into motion. ‘Yes, lord,’ they answer, and they operate the controls with a determination greater than panic. At last, they have been given an order that makes sense.

  The void burns once, twice, thrice more while the two men work. The Barbican groans, a beast feeling its last breath approach. Then the killing light ends. The void is dark. Secondary blasts rock the halls of the Barbican. The beast cries out at its wounds, but it is not dead yet.

  ‘Alalia,’ Aquila voxes the strike cruiser. ‘We have taken the objective. Approach to begin our extraction.’

  The work on Himera was the first task of the great campaign to be undertaken. The Iron Warriors buried cyclonic torpedoes deep in the mine shafts of the small planet. The weapons were fixed with detonators set to be triggered remotely and simultaneously by a signal sent by the Warforged. Vûrtaq’s task has the same principle as those that Khrossus and Darhug have undertaken. His purpose is to cause great harm to the enemy with a small force. But the warsmith and the other captain are using infantry and heavy armour, and fighting individual companies. Vûrtaq has the strike cruiser. He is attacking an entire fleet.

  There is, in his mission, something so rarely tasted by the Iron Warriors that at first Vûrtaq did not recognise it for what it was. The symptoms are heightened heart rates, a barely suppressible impulse to grin ferociously and a sense of standing taller, filled with enormous power. When the last of the cyclonic torpedoes was put in place, shortly before the arrival of the Ultramarines to the Carchera system, Vûrtaq finally identified his symptoms.

  Glory. He was tasting glory.

  With it, too, was the hint of something just as rare for the IV Legion.

  Hope.

  Vûrtaq does not think that Khrossus shares the hope. He knows that Darhug does not. Given what Darhug must do, the self-immolation that is, in the end, the inevitable conclusion of his battle, Vûrtaq does not blame him for keeping to his perfect fatalism. Maybe there is little that Khrossus can do, as well. But Vûrtaq can see past this mission. He can see past this campaign. He can see the consequences of his attack, and the opportunities they present.

  On the eve of battle, with the Warforged about to leave the orbit of Carchera, Vûrtaq took Khrossus aside before the warsmith departed for the planet’s surface and the fate that awaited him there.

  ‘I don’t think the story of our company needs to end here,’ Vûrtaq said.

  Khrossus frowned. The hard, scarred planes of his face could only express emotion in the most jagged way. He had been wounded so many times, and his injuries treated so quickly, that his face looked like stone that had been hacked into shape with the angry blows of a hatchet. ‘The only way I can see a different ending is if we do not obey our orders, and instead leave Carchera to the Ultramarines. In which case we would end shortly thereafter, in dishonour. Though I know that is not what you mean, captain.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Vûrtaq. ‘You know that is not what I mean.’ He was amazed that Khrossus, with his deep understanding of battlefields, whether they be in the void or planetside, could not see this chance. ‘Think what will happen when we destroy Himera. Even if some of the Ultramarines ships survive, it is unlikely they will be in a good position to give chase, and we will already be under way. We can do this and survive.’

  Khrossus shrugged. He looked more bored than excited by Vûrtaq’s explanation. ‘Then do so, captain,’ he said. ‘Destroy the fleet of the Thirteenth Legion and survive.’

  ‘I will,’ Vûrtaq mutters now.

  ‘Captain,’ says the auspex officer of the Warforged. ‘Readings from the enemy. Ships are pulling away from Himera.’

  ‘How many?’ Perhaps they are manoeuvring with the plan of being better able to surround him.

  ‘Everything we can detect is departing,’ says the officer. ‘It looks like the entire fleet.’

  No, Vûrtaq thinks. The Ultramarines can’t have realised what is awaiting them, but they are behaving as if they have. Cursing, he orders, ‘Detonate.’

  ‘We are not at a confirmed safe distance,’ the officer says.

  ‘You think I don’t know that? If we aren’t, neither are they. Detonate.’

  Vûrtaq looks at the large pict screen display above the auspex officer’s station. It is counting down the distance to presumed safety, to the degree that any distance can be safe when a planet dies. The Warforged’s race was always going to be tight. It is still better than suicide, and Vûrtaq sees that his decision is the correct one. If the Ultramarines have understood the danger and started to pull away before the Warforged came into their sights, then the cruiser is one of the last ships to be sitting above a world-bomb.

  The cyclonic torpedoes explode. The view through the primary oculus shifts from bow to stern. Vûrtaq sees Himera shudder. The surface ripples outwards from four epicentres on the hemisphere. Crevasses race across the globe, glowing molten, until the planet resembles a cracked mosaic. Then everything erupts, a fist suddenly opening, releasing a storm of asteroids streaking out from the blinding core. The disintegrating planet becomes an expanding sphere of rock. Trailing flames like comets, hunks of the crust hurtle towards the ships. The Warforged’s engines are straining to the limit to reach the vessel’s maximum velocity.

  If the cruiser had been any closer, there would have been no chance of avoiding a collision. At this distance, there is enough space between the careening mountains that there is the hope of survival. The
re is no evasion to attempt. The Warforged is far too massive a craft. Its only defences are speed and shielding.

  Not all the Ultramarines vessels pulled away fast enough. There are great light-bursts in the void as the fragments of Himera shatter loyalist ships, breaking them in half, rupturing their plasma drives, crushing them between colliding land masses. Vûrtaq counts four scattered explosions, four sudden breaks of day in eternal night to show that vessels have died.

  That is all. Just four. A heavy cost for a single cruiser to inflict upon an enemy. Nowhere near enough. Not when so much of the fleet remains.

  The broken bones of Himera fly past the Warforged. A rock the size of a hab block glances against the ship’s void shields and bounces away. The warning klaxons sound, though the damage is minor.

  ‘Shut them off,’ Vûrtaq commands. ‘Shipmaster,’ he says, ‘maintain speed. Alter course to loop around and make for the Mandeville point.’ Even as he gives the order, he knows it is a futile one. The Ultramarines have evaded the trap, and they have not forgotten their prey. The wide formation of ships that splayed outwards to escape Himera now begins to close in again. Hundreds of gun barrels are pointed Vûrtaq’s way. He no longer feels the temptation to grin. Darhug was right. Khrossus was right. All they could hope to do was damage the fleet and slow it enough to make a difference.

  Vûrtaq sees the immense power of the Ultramarines fleet heading towards him, and he feels he has done nothing. His lips draw back in a tight snarl. ‘Belay that order,’ he says. There will be no Mandeville point, no survival. ‘Turn us back.’ There is no glory today. There is no hope, except, perhaps, the hope of honour.