Meduson Page 14

  Kratoz stepped back, shocked by Ari'i's words. In a moment he had recovered, his confusion quickly turning to irritation.

  'Another lecture,' snarled the centurion. 'It doesn't matter what you say, the only thing you are going to leave behind on Praestes are corpses.'

  Kratoz spun away, shouting for his men to embark onto the gunship. He followed them up the ramp and paused at the top to look back with a last shake of the head. Ari'i returned to his warriors and ordered the launch bay sealed again.

  As they lined up to board the dropships, he paused at the foot of the ramp.

  'Reconsidering your choices, my lord?' Hema asked, stopping next to him. The old sergeant had tried to insist he could accompany the squad in his Mark III armour but had eventually relented and donned one of the modified sets of battleplate. Even so, Ari'i could tell at a glance that Hema had already started making adjustments, shamelessly thinking he could refine the primarch's work.

  'Perhaps I am victim to a different sort of hubris, Hema,' Ari'i admitted. 'If we fail, Kratoz will level the city anyway.

  What then of our sacrifice? Am I just wasting the wargear and time the primarch gifted us?'

  'That's the problem with legacies, my friend,' said Hema as he started up the ramp. 'You're never around to see which sort you've left.'

  THE STRATEGIC DISPLAY of the Phorcys showed the positions of Ari'i and his Terminators, the signal routed to the battlecruiser via the commsnetwork of the Hearthfire. From a dozen speakers around the strategium the voices of the Salamanders' vox exchanges surrounded Kratoz. He listened intently, torn between wishing failure upon the selfrighteous pyre warden Praetor and admiring Ari'i's bravery and dedication. Not to mention the skill and firepower of his squad, who had already stormed the outer barbican of the citadel and were cutting their way to the power plant housing located near the east wall.

  'Hema, watch your left flank, there are more of those psychotic scum up in that gun tower.'

  'Tracking five power armour thermal plumes on the wall ahead. Engaging with tempest missile fire.'

  'We need a chainfist to get past these security doors. Abanta, cover me while I cut through.'

  On the display the flashing icons of the Salamanders moved closer and closer to the heart of the citadel, but they were massively outnumbered despite their prowess and superior firepower. Every few minutes one of the flashing sensorium returns would wink out, the lifesigns of the warrior no longer detected. Twentythree minutes after arriving on the surface, an energy spike registered on the scanner, denoting a significant explosion.

  'Spearheadcenturion!' Kratoz turned at Khrysaor's uncharacteristically excited exclamation. 'The shield generator. It has been disabled.'

  'Full power to laser batteries,' Kratoz snapped. 'Lock targeting array on the citadel.'

  'While the Salamanders are still inside, spearheadcenturion?'

  'Stand aside, sergeantatarms,' insisted Kratoz, his anger at being countermanded for a third time almost too much to bear. At that moment his ire burned sharply more than fiercely, turning his words to an icy whisper. 'I will lay in the target coordinates myself. Issue the standby for battle readiness.'

  There was no further protest from Khrysaor. He stood back from his panel, allowing the spearheadcenturion to take his place at the weapons targeting controls. Kratoz looked up at the strategic display and listened to the terse conversations across the vox. Two more Terminators had died in the last few seconds, surrounded by a small army of lobotomised psychopaths, leaving only twelve to fight their way into the facility core.

  He looked at Khrysaor with unblinking lenses, hand hovering over the button that would issue the fire command to the gun decks, torpedo bays and laser turrets.

  'The flesh is weak, sergeantatarms. Remember that.'

  'PRESS ON! FIGHT on for Vulkan and the Emperor!'

  Despite his exhortations, Ari'i knew that the battle was lost. The momentum of the initial assault had drifted away and the advance had become bogged down by the sheer quantity of soldiers being thrown into the path of the Terminators. His triplebarrelled autocannon cut a swathe through a heavy gunnery team setting up a lascannon in a doorway to the right, the explosive shells turning the weapon to a mangle piece of metal, the flesh of the gunners splashed across bare ferrocrete. He turned the autocannon onto three World Eater legionaries firing at him from a trench ahead and simultaneously activated the mind impulse unit of the primarchforged battleplate to fire the heavy bolter mounted over his shoulders.

  The Salamanders Terminators strode onwards through a tempest of fire, lasers and bullets deflected by their additional armour plating, shells and mortar bombs showering them with shrapnel and broken ferrocrete as explosions engulfed the advancing squad.

  The killing ground between the outer fortifications and the keep was filled with the living and dead, a carpet of Praestan corpses underfoot as he advanced. Their guns were proving insufficient so the citadel's garrison poured from sallyports and armoured doors with knives, mauls and chainswords. They threw themselves at Ari'i and his warriors, the World Eaters implants buzzing in their temples, oblivious to the fact that their swords and dirks were as effective against his Terminator plate as a gnat's bite. Ari'i's power fist hissed with energy as he smashed aside his foes, sweeping them away in bloodied pieces.

  His suit's sensors flared a high energy warning a moment before something brilliantly white flashed for an instant just a few dozen metres ahead. A gun tower that had been raking machine gun fire across the squad exploded into molten droplets, showering redhot rain onto the defenders and Terminators alike. The shrieks of the unarmoureed soldiers quickly merged with the ongoing cacophony of battle. ,

  'Orbital laser!' Aka'ula shouted as another pale line seared down through thae gate tower of the keep. 'Damn Kratoz, he couldn't even wait until we were dead.'

  Ari'i looked up and saw dark blurs descending towards the ground.

  'Torpedoees,' he muttered, not quite believing Kratoz had finally acted. Even the Terminator suits would be no defence against ordnance designed to breach the hulls of battleships.

  If it spell lied the end for the Salamanders, it also heralded destruction for the World Eaters. Ari'i contented himself with the thought that had he not taken out the shield generator, the Phorcys would be using mass drivers and antiship missiles rather than pinpoint laser strikers. There would be deaths in the city, but far fewer because of the Salamanders'

  actions.

  The quiet, confident voice of Vestar broke through the fog of confusion and disappointment that clouded Ari'i thoughts as he watched the dark smudges growing larger above the citadel.

  'Those aren't torpedoes.'

  Pinpricks of fire became the recognisable flare of retrorockets firing. The torpedoes resolved into drop pods, several dozen of them. As they slaammed into the rockcrete of the killing ground, some petailed open discharging flurries of explosive warheads that slashed bloody holes through the World Eaters' slavesoldiers. Squads of legionary warriors poured from others, bolts, plasma and laser fire adding to the torrent of deadly fire. A second wave of larger craft hit the grcround a few seconds later, their armoured skins shed by explosive charges to reveal Predator tanks, Vindicator siege tanks and a Dreadnought.

  The Salamanders parted to allow the Iron Hands armour to form an attacking lance point directed towards the inner fortifications. Lasers, whirlwind missiles, autocannon shells and a storm of other ordnance converged on the keep, lighting it with dozens of detonations and slicing energy beams.

  A Predator tank slewed to a halt beside Ari'i and he looked up to see the command hatch in the blocky turret flip open. Helmetless, SpearheadCenturion Kratoz emerged from inside the tank. He raised a fist to his forehead and then cupped his hands to shout down over the din of growling engines and the crash of a citadel wall falling under the bombardment.

  'Your flank is secured, push forward, lord praetor. I should not have doubted the strength we gain from righteous conviction. Let
us leave a worthy legacy together. My thanks for setting me back on the right path. Deeds endure!'

  THE NOOSE

  DAVID ANNANDALE

  'YOU ARE MARRED,' Lord Commander Ariston said.

  Theotormon was silent. There was nothing he could say, Ariston thought. Not before that selfevident truth. The captain of the Emperor's Children strike cruiser Tharmas stood in Ariston's quarters aboard the battlebarge Urthona. His flaws were an affront. No doubt conscious of this, Theotormon kept his peace so as not to give further insult.

  Ariston was conscious of the irony in his words. They were surrounded by flaws. His irony was deliberate. He revelled in it. Yet it was a false one, for he was justified in upbraiding Theotormon. The tapestry series that covered his walls had once been exquisite in its flawlessness. It was The Tribute of Europa. Millenniaold, it depicted the birth of the Emperor's Children brought to heel by the Emperor's Thunder Regiments during the Unification Wars on Terra, the nobles of Europa offered up their youth in service to the Emperor. The sequence was a movement from justified defeat to glorious fealty, culminating with the first warriors of the III Legion marching under the banners of the Palatine aquila.

  Or so the tapestries had been. Now they were slashed by an elaborate crosshatch of knife strokes. Nailed to the marble wall behind the hangings were the bodies of remembrancers who had spoken out when the great enlightenment had come upon the Legion. Their flesh had been torn with the tapestries, and their vitae had run down and stained the woven fabric. Thus the art of the enemy bled and died. The destruction of the perfect possessed an even greater perfection.

  But it still wasn't enough, was it? The ordinary, completed flawlessness of the atrocity fell short of the transporting sublimity he sought. The blood had dried and blackened. The suffering was over.

  But the bleeding should not end. The cries should not fall silent. Blind to the truth that had come to Fulgrim, the enemy should know only pain and more pain.

  That would be better; that would be closer to true perfection.

  Theotormon's flaws, on the other hand, were the mundane, unforgivable ones of failure. His flesh and his armour were disfigured by his own hand, but his ship had been scarred by another's.

  'This is the tally of the encounter in the Hamartia System,' Ariston said. 'The battlebarge Callidora destroyed, its escorts, the Infinite Sublime and the Golden Mean, lost as well. And when a full fleet answers the call for help, not only are two more ships lost to mines and the Tharmas damaged, but the enemy escapes. Tell me again, captain, what enemy is this?''The Iron Hands.'

  'The Iron Hands.' Ariston paused, pretending to sort through his memories. 'I was under the impression that we had shattered them at Isstvan. Perhaps I was wrong. They must have been able to field a number of formidable squadrons to hurt us that much.'

  Silence again. Into it fell the distant screams of the tortured. The exploratory desolation of the flesh never ceased aboard the Urthona. There was so much to learn, so much to experience. Mortification's supreme ecstasy beckoned just beyond the horizon of knowledge. The cries were now part of the air of the battlebarge. They rose and fell with the rhythms of lungs, of hearts. They were the sound of the new soul of the Emperor's Children.

  'How large was the squadron?' Ariston pressed.

  'They used a single strike cruiser,' Theotormon said. 'The Veritas Ferrum.'

  His voice was flat. Ariston didn't know if the care with which he kept emotion from his voice was due to shame or anger at being made to answer for the disaster.

  Ariston hoped it was both.

  'One strike cruiser,' he said. 'Which then escaped.'

  Theotormon nodded.

  At the end of another long silence, Ariston repeated, 'You are marred.'

  'I am, lord commander.' Theotormon barely hid his resentment.

  'But from excess comes wisdom,' said Ariston. 'The flaw is the foundation of future perfection.'

  'I do not understand.'

  'Clearly not.' This was why a commander's role was also one of instruction. 'We will extinguish the last sparks of the Iron Hands resistance.' A simple statement of fact. Based on the estimates of the portion of the X Legion to have escaped Isstvan, the squadrons that were accompanying the Urthona were enough on their own to exterminate the Iron Hands.

  'But we will not waste resources in searching the galaxy for the hiding places. They will come and offer themselves up to us for the slaughter. Thanks to you. Thanks to your flaws.'

  'I see.'

  'Do you?'

  'You will put the Tharmas out for bait.'

  Ariston smiled. The razorwire he had threaded through the contours of his lips scratched at his flesh, reopening wounds. The taste of his own blood trickled down his tongue.

  'Are you helpless?' he asked. 'Are you that badly flawed?'

  Theotormon's left fist tightened. 'We can still fight,' he said. 'We have lost half the starboard guns. Our Geller field is unstable. Any jumps we make must be small, and we can't do many.'

  'Hardly bait, then,' Ariston said.

  He was lying. They both knew it. When the fleet coming to the aid of the Callidora had encountered the mine field left by the Veritas Ferrum, not all the ships had been damaged. And some had been hit more severely than the Tharmas.

  The rest of the fleet had pursued the Iron Hands through the immaterium. And lost them. Ariston's squadrons had joined up with the wounded vessels later, and he had singled out the Tharmas for a reason. He would construct the perfect trap for the Iron Hands, and the Tharmas was the perfect bait. It was strong enough that it could put up a convincing fight. But its injuries were such that Ariston thought it very unlikely it could prevail against a strike cruiser or larger ship. That was the prey Ariston sought. Let Theotormon pick off any minor targets that swallowed the lure.

  The lord commander strode to the ornate desk dominating the port side of the chamber. Human limbs were fastened to its legs. He picked up a vellum star chart and showed it to Theotormon. 'Here,' he said, pointing to the Cyzicus System, a short jump from Hamartia. 'You can make it this far, I believe.'

  Theotormon nodded. 'I believe so.'

  'You are fatally marred if you do not. Make for Cyzicus. Then call for our help.'

  'And I call until the enemy appears,' Theotormon said.

  'Yes.'

  'My redemption has a high cost.'

  Ariston frowned at the resentment. 'You are fortunate to have this opportunity,' he said.

  THE DELIUM SYSTEM had a name only because it existed, and for no other reason. It was uninhabited. Its four planets were all gas giants. None of their moons were colonised. And yet, it was a hostile system; Khalybus suspected that he and the ragged fleet he led had found the most hostile corner of it.

  Fleet. He felt a jab of anger when he remembered what that word had meant to the Iron Hands before Isstvan V. It had meant more than a single strike cruiser and a handful of frigates and destroyers, all of them damaged to a greater or lesser degree. He knew he was lucky to have even that much at his disposal. Of his fellow captains with whom he had managed to make contact after the disaster, he was one of the few to have escaped Isstvan with more than a single ship.

  Luck.

  Escape.

  Hateful concepts. They should have no place in the experience of the 85th ClanCompany of the X Legion, or aboard the Bane of Asirnoth. They should have remained abstractions. Things that enemies relied upon, only to be fatally disappointed when the Iron Hands shut down every destiny except total defeat. But he knew luck and escape now, along with other, equally foul terms.

  Defeat. Treachery. Flight.

  Then there was that other concept, the worst of them all: Ferrus Manus is dead.

  Like so many of his brothers, he refused the experience of that one. Though its shadow fell over every moment of his existence, and every decision he made, he shunned it. He would not think about it. None of them could.

  Khalybus had enough to think about on Galeras. The moon was a
study in geological anguish. It was in close orbit around its planet. The gravitational forces of the giant tore and pulled at it. The crust distorted, rising and falling with an ocean's tides. Volcanic eruptions racked the globe, throwing ash plumes hundreds of kilometres into the air. The surface was layers of congealed lava flows. Galeras had no indigenous life forms, but in its constant violence and change, it had its own form of life. Landing on Galeras had been a challenge in itself. The construction of a base was madness.

  Khalybus walked along the outer wall of the madness, inspecting the work. The modular fortification had to be modified if they were going to last more than a day on Galeras's heaving crust. The flesh was weak, yes, always, but sometimes iron could become stronger if it took on some of the characteristics of the flesh. Flexible plasteel seals joined each segment of the walls, given them a degree of flexibility. Khalybus stood motionless, feeling the microquakes send vibrations up from stone, through the walls, and through his boots. Both his legs and his right arm were bionic, and the faint thrum ran along their length.

  The base was on the crest of an isolated hill. Beyond the walls the land dropped away in a steep slope. The ground was uneven yet smooth the succession of flows gave it the contours of melted wax. Ash fell from the sky, an endless blizzard of grey. Visibility was a few hundred metres at best. Though the base's location had been dictated by priorities other than defence, its position was a good one. It would take a very determined and powerful siege to triumph over what was being constructed.