Helsreach (3 page)

I watch them, each in turn, as we make ready for planetfall. Our arming chamber is a cell devoid of decoration, bare of sentiment, alive now with the methodical movements of dead-minded servitors machining our armour into place. The chamber is thick with the scholarly scent of fresh vellum from our armour scrolls, coppery oils from our ritually-cleansed weapons, and the ever-present cloying salty reek of sweating servitors.

I flex my arm, feeling my war plate’s false muscles of cable and fibre buzz with smooth vibration at the cycle of motion. Papyrus scrolls are draped over the angles of my armour, their delicate runic lettering listing the details of battles I could never forget. This paper, of good quality by Imperial standards, is manufactured on board the
Crusader
by serfs who pass the technique down generation to generation. Every role on the ship is vital. Every duty has its own honour.

My tabard, the white of sun-bleached bone, offers a stark contrast to the blacker than black plate beneath. The heraldic cross stands proud on my chest, where Astartes of lesser Chapters wear the Emperor’s aquila. We do not wear His symbol. We
are
His symbol.

My fingers twitch as my gauntlet locks into place. That was not intentional – a nerve-spasm, a pain response. An invasive but familiar coldness settles over my forearm as my gauntlet’s neural linkage spike sinks into my wrist to bond with the bones and true muscles there.

I make a fist with my hand armoured in black ceramite, then release it. Each finger flexes in turn, as if pulling a trigger. Satisfied, its dead eyes flashing with an acknowledgement of a job complete, an arming servitor moves away to bring my second gauntlet.

My brothers go through the same rituals of checking and rechecking. A curious sense of unease descends upon me, but I refuse to give it voice. I watch them now because I believe this is the last time we will go through this ritual together.

I will not be the only one to die upon Armageddon.

Artarion, Priamus, Cador, Nerovar and Bastilan. We are the knights of Squad Grimaldus.

Within his veins, Cador carries the blessed blood of Rogal Dorn with what seems like weary honour. His face is shattered and his body tormented – now half-bionic due to untreatable wounds – but he remains defiant, even indefatigable. He is older than I, older by far. His decades within the Sword Brethren are behind him now; he was released with all honour when his advancing age and increasing bionics left him less than the exemplar he had been before.

Priamus is the rising sun to Cador’s dusk. He is aware of his skills in the unsubtle and undignified way of many young warriors. Without even the ghost of humility, his roars of triumph on the battlefield sound like cries for attention, a braggart’s declarations. A blademaster, he calls himself. Yet he is not mistaken.

Artarion is… Artarion. My shadow, just as I am his. It is rare among our number for any knight to lay aside personal glory, yet Artarion is the one who carries my banner into battle. He has joked more times than I care to remember that he does so only to provide the enemy with a target lock on my location. For all his great courage, he is not a man blessed with a skilful sense of humour. The mangling wound that fouled his face was a sniper shot meant for me. I carry that knowledge with me each time we go to war.

Nerovar is the newest among us. He holds the dubious honour of being the only knight I chose to stand with me, while all others were appointed to fight by my side. The squad required the presence of an Apothecary. In the trials, only Nerovar impressed the rest of us with his quiet endurance. He labours now over his arm-mounted narthecium, blue eyes narrowed as he tests the flickering snap of surgical blades and cutting lasers. A sickening
clack!
sounds as he fires his reductor. The giver of merciful death, the extractor of gene-seed – its impaling component snaps from its housing, then retracts with sinister slowness.

Bastilan is last. Bastilan, always the best and least of us all. A leader but not a commander – an inspiring presence, but not a strategist – forever a sergeant, never fated to rise as a castellan or marshal. He has always said his role as such is all he desires. I pray he speaks the truth, for if he is deceiving us, he hides the lie well behind his dark eyes.

He is the one who speaks to me now. What he says chills my blood.

‘I have heard from Geraint and Lograine of the Sword Brethren,’ he chooses his words carefully, ‘that there is talk of the High Marshal nominating you to lead a crusade.’

And for a moment, everyone stops moving.

The skies over Armageddon were rich and thick with a sick, greyish-yellow cast. Sulphurous cloud cover was nothing new to the population, with their hive walls treated and shielded against the storm season’s downpours of acid rain.

Around each hive-city across the planet’s surface, vast landing fields were cleared, either hurriedly paved with rockcrete or simply ground flat under the treads of hundreds of landscaper trucks. Around Hades Hive, rain scythed down onto the cleared areas and sparked off the dense heat-shimmer of the city’s protective void shields. Across the world, the heavens were in turmoil, weather patterns ravaged by the atmospheric disturbance caused by countless ships breaking cloud cover every day.

Yet at Hades Hive, the storms were especially fierce. Hundreds of troop carriers, their paint already melted to reveal bare, dull metal in places, endured the rainfall as they rested on the landing fields. Some were disgorging columns of men into the hastily-erected campsites that were spreading across the wastelands between the hives, while others sat in silence, awaiting clearance to return to orbit.

Hades itself was little more than industrial scar tissue blighting Armageddon’s face. Despite efforts to repair the city after the last war over half a century before, it still bore a ragged share of memories. Toppled spires, broken domes, shattered cathedrals – this was the skyline after the death of a hive.

A squadron of Thunderhawk gunships pierced the caul of cloud cover. To those manning the battlements of Hades, they were a flock of crows winging down from the darkening sky.

Mordechai Ryken scanned the gunships through his magnoculars. After several seconds of zoom-blur, green reticules locked onto the streaking avian hulls and transcribed an analysis in dim white text alongside the image.

Ryken lowered the viewfinder scope. It hung on a leather cord around his neck, resting on the ochre jacket he wore as part of his uniform. His breath was hot on his face, recycled and filtered through the cheap rebreather mask he wore over his mouth and nose.

The air still tasted like a latrine, though. And it didn’t exactly smell any better. The joys of high sulphur content in the atmosphere. Ryken was still waiting for the day he would be used to it, and he’d been stuck on this rock so far for every day of his thirty-seven years of life.

A way down the battlements, working on getting an anti-air turret operational, a team of his men clustered with a robed tech-priest. The multi-barrelled monstrosity dwarfed the half a dozen soldiers standing in its shadow.

‘Sir?’ one of them voxed. Ryken knew who it was despite the shapeless overcoats they all wore. Only one of them was female.

‘What is it, Vantine?’

‘Those are Astartes gunships, aren’t they?’

‘Good eyes.’ And they were, at that. Vantine would’ve made sniper a long time ago if she could aim worth a damn. Alas, there was more to sniping than just seeing.

‘Which ones?’ she pressed.

‘Does it matter? Astartes are Astartes. Reinforcements are reinforcements.’

‘Yes, but which ones?’

‘Black Templars.’ Ryken took a breath, tonguing a sore cut on his lip as he watched the fleet of Thunderhawks touching down in the distance. ‘Hundreds of them.’

An Imperial Guard column rolled out from Hades to meet the newest arrivals. A command Chimera, flying no shortage of impressive flags, led six Leman Russ battle tanks, their collective passage chewing into the newly laid rockcrete.

Bulky troop landers were still setting down elsewhere on the landing field, the wash from their engines blasting wind and gritty dust in all directions, but General Kurov of the Armageddon Steel Legion did not make personal appearances to greet just anyone.

Despite his advancing age, Kurov cut a straight-backed figure in his grimy uniform of ochre fatigues and black webbing, with flak padding on the torso. No sign of his many medals, not a hint of gold, silver, ribbon, or the other trappings of pomp. Here was the man that had led the Council of Armageddon for decades, and earned the respect of his people by wading knee-deep in the sulphur marshes and bracken forests after the last war, hunting xenos survivors in the infamous Ork Hunter platoons.

He stomped down the ramp, setting his cap to guard his eyes against the heatless, yet annoyingly bright, afternoon sunlight. A team of Guardsmen, each as raggedly attired as their commanding officer, clanged down the ramp after the general. As they moved, misshapen skulls clacked and rattled together from where they hung on belts and bandoliers. Across their chests, they gripped lasguns that hadn’t resembled standard-issue for some time – each bore its own display of modifications and accoutrements.

Kurov marched his ramshackle gang of bodyguards in decent parade order, yet without any conscious effort. He led them to the waiting Thunderhawks, each of which was still emitting a dull machine-whine as their boosters cycled into inactivity.

Eighteen gunships. Kurov knew that from the initial auspex report as the Templars had landed. They sat now in disorganised unmoving ranks, ramps withdrawn and bulkheads sealed. Their undersides, blunt noses and wing edges still showed a glimmer of cooling heat shields with the after-effects of planetfall.

Three Astartes stood before the gunship fleet, still as statues, with no evidence of which vessels they’d disembarked from.

Only one wore a helm. It stared through ruby eye lenses, its faceplate a skull of steel.

‘Are you Kurov?’ one of the Astartes demanded.

‘I am,’ the general replied. ‘It is my h–’

In unison, the three inhuman warriors drew their weapons. Kurov took an involuntary step back, not out of fear but surprise. The knights’ weapons went live in a humming chorus of wakening power cells. Lightning, controlled and rippling, coated the killing edges of the three artefacts.

The first was a giant clad in armour of bronze and gold against black, the surface of his war plate inscribed with retellings of his deeds in miniscule Gothic runes, as well as trinkets, trophies and honour badges of red wax seals and papyrus strips. He clutched a two-handed sword, its blade longer than Kurov was tall, and drove its point into the ground. The knight’s face was shaped by the wars he had fought – square-jawed, scarred, blunt-featured and expressionless.

The second Astartes, clad in plainer black war plate, wore a cloak of dark weave and scarlet lining. His sword in no way matched the grandeur of the first knight’s relic, but the long blade of darkened iron was no less lethal for its simplicity. This knight’s face lacked the expressionless ease of the first. He fought not to sneer as he drove his own sword tip into the ground.

And the last, the knight who still wore his helm, carried no blade. The rockcrete beneath their feet shivered slightly under the pounding of his war-mace thudding onto the ground. The mace’s head, a stylised knightly cross atop Imperial eagle wings, flared in protest, lightning crackling as the metal kissed the ground.

The three knights knelt, heads lowered. All of this happened at once, in the space of no more than three seconds since Kurov last spoke.

‘We are the Emperor’s knights,’ the giant in bronze and gold intoned. ‘We are the warriors of the Eternal Crusade, and the sons of Rogal Dorn. I am Helbrecht, High Marshal of the Black Templars. With me is Bayard, Emperor’s Champion, and Grimaldus, Reclusiarch.’

At their names, both knights nodded in turn.

Helbrecht continued, his voice a growled drawl. ‘Aboard our vessels in orbit are Marshals Ricard and Amalrich. We come to offer you our blades, our service, and the lives of over nine hundred warriors in the defence of your world.’

Kurov stood in silence. Nine hundred Astartes… Entire star systems were conquered with a fraction of that. He had greeted a dozen Astartes commanders in recent weeks, but few had brought such significant strength with them.

‘High Marshal,’ the general said at last. ‘There is a war council forming tonight. You and your warriors are welcome there.’

‘It will be done,’ the High Marshal said.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Kurov replied. ‘Welcome to Armageddon.’

Chapter II

The Abandoned Crusade

Ryken was not smiling.

He’d been a lifelong believer in not shooting the messenger, but today that tradition was in danger of expiring. Behind him loomed an anti-air turret, blanketing them all in its shadow and shielding them from the dim glare of the morning sun. A squad of his men worked on this turret, as they had worked on countless others along the walls in the space of the last two months. It was almost operational. They weren’t techs, by any means, but they knew the basic maintenance rites and calibration rituals.

‘One minute to test fire,’ Vantine said, her voice muffled by her rebreather mask.

And that was when the messenger showed up. It was also when Ryken stopped smiling, despite the fact the messenger was easy on the eyes, as over-starched, narrowed-eyed tactica types went.

‘I want these orders rechecked,’ he demanded – calmly, but a demand nevertheless.

‘With all due respect, sir,’ the messenger straightened her own ochre uniform, ‘these orders come from the Old Man himself. He’s reorganising the disposition of all our forces, and the Steel Legion are honoured to be first in that reappraisal.’

The words stole Ryken’s desire to argue. So it was true, then. The Old Man was back.

‘But Helsreach is half a continent away,’ he tried. ‘We’ve been working on the Hades wall-guns for months.’

‘Thirty seconds to test fire,’ Vantine called.

The messenger, whose name was Cyria Tyro, wasn’t smiling either. In her position as adjutant quintus to General Kurov, grunts and plebeians were forever questioning the orders she relayed, as if she would ever dare alter a single word of the general’s instructions. The other adjutants had no difficulties in this area, she was sure of it. For some unknown reason, these lowborn dregs just simply didn’t take well to her. Perhaps they were jealous of her position? If so, then they were more foolish than she’d have given them credence for.

‘I have long been entrusted with certain aspects of the general’s plans,’ Tyro lied, ‘that frontliners such as yourself are only now being made aware of. I apologise if this is a surprise to you, major, but orders are orders. And these orders come with the highest mandate imaginable.’

‘Are we not even going to defend the damn hive?’

At that moment, Vantine test-fired the turret. The floor beneath their feet shook as four cannon barrels blared their anger up at the empty sky. Ryken swore, though it was drowned out in the ear-ringing thunder of the gun’s echo. Tyro also swore, though unlike Ryken’s general lament, hers was aimed at Vantine and the gun crew.

The major was close to yelling over the ache in his ears. It was fading, but not fast.

‘I said,
are we not even going to defend the damn hive?
’

‘
You
are not,’ Tyro almost pouted, her mouth compressed in restrained irritation. ‘
You
are going to Helsreach with your regiment. Your transports leave tonight. All of the 101
st
Steel Legion is to be aboard and ready for transport by sunset in six point five hours.’

Ryken paused. Six and a half hours to get three thousand men and women into heavy lifter transports, gunships and land trains. It was the kind of bad news that made the major feel the need to be overwhelmingly honest.

‘Colonel Sarren is going to be furious.’

‘Colonel Sarren has dealt with this assignment with grace and solemn devotion to his duty, major. Your commanding officer still has much to teach you in that regard, I see.’

‘Cute. Now tell me
why
it’s us being sent all the way to Helsreach. I thought Insan and the 121
st
were kings of that shitpile.’

‘Colonel Insan had a terminal failure of his augmetic heart infusers this morning. His second officer requested Sarren by name, and General Kurov agreed.’

‘That old bastard’s finally dead? That’ll teach him to lay off the garage-brewed sauce. Ha! All those expensive augmetics he had done, and he keels over six months later. I like that. That’s delicious.’

‘Major! Some respect, if you please.’

Ryken frowned. ‘I don’t like you,’ he told Tyro.

‘How grievous,’ the general’s assistant replied, and there was no mistaking the dark, unamused scowl on her face. ‘For you have been appointed a liaison to aid in dealings with the Astartes and the conscripted militia.’ She looked as if she’d eaten something sour and it was still wriggling on her tongue. ‘So… I will be coming with you.’

A moment of curious kinship passed between them, almost going unspoken. They were being exiled to the same place, after all. Their eyes met in that moment, and the foundations of something like a reluctant friendship almost bloomed between them.

It was broken when Ryken walked away.

‘I still don’t like you.’

‘Hades Hive will not survive the first week.’

The man speaking is ancient, and he looks every hour of his age. What keeps him on his feet is a mixture of minimal rejuvenat chem-surgeries, crude bionics, and a faith in the Emperor founded in hatred for the enemies of Man.

I liked him the moment my visor’s targeting reticules locked onto him. Both piety and hate echo in his every word.

He should not hold rank here – not to the degree he does. He is merely a commissar in the Imperial Guard, and such a title does not tend to make generals, colonels, Astartes captains and Chapter Masters remain in polite silence when it comes to tactical planning. Yet to the humans at this war council, and the citizens of Armageddon, he is the Old Man, a beloved hero of the Second War fifty-seven years ago.

Not just a hero.
The
hero.

His name is Sebastian Yarrick. Even we Astartes must respect that name.

And when he tells us all that Hades Hive will be destroyed within a matter of days, a hundred Imperial commanders, human and Astartes alike, hang on his every word.

I am one of them. This will be my first true command.

Commissar Sebastian Yarrick leans over the edge of a hololithic display table. With his remaining hand – the other arm is nothing but a stump – he keys in coordinates on the numeric datapad, and the hololith projection of Hades Hive widens with flickering impatience to display both of the planet’s hemispheres in insignificant detail.

The Old Man, a gaunt and wizened human of sharp features and skeletally-obvious facial bones, gestures to the blip on the map that represents Hades Hive and its surrounding territories. Wastelands, in the main.

‘Six decades ago,’ he says, ‘the Great Enemy met his defeat at Hades. Our defence here was what won us that war.’

There are general murmurs of assent. The commissar’s voice carries around the expansive chamber through floating skull drones equipped with vox-speakers where their jaws had once been.

I am surrounded by the familiar hum of active power armour, though the scents and faces that meet my eyes are new to me. Standing to my left at a respectful distance, his face raggedly proud around extensive bionics, is Chapter Master Seth of the Flesh Tearers – known to his men as the Guardian of the Rage. He smells of sacred weapon oils, his primarch’s potent blood running beneath his weathered skin, and the spicy, unwholesome reptilian scent of the lizard predator-kings that stalk the jungles of his home world. Seth is flanked by his own officers, each one bareheaded and with faces as pitted and cracked as their master’s. Whatever wars have occupied the Flesh Tearers in recent decades, the conflicts have not been kind to them.

To my left, my liege Helbrecht stands resplendent in his battle armour of black and bronze. Bayard, the Emperor’s Champion, is by his side. Both rest their helmets on the table’s surface, the stern helms distorting the edge of the hololithic display, and give their full attention to the ancient commissar.

I cross my arms over my chest and do the same.

‘Why?’ someone asks. Their voice is low, too low to be human, and carries over the chamber without the need of vox-amplification. A hundred heads turn to regard an Astartes in the bright red-orange of a lesser Chapter, one unknown to me. He steps forward, leaning his knuckles on the table, facing Yarrick from almost twenty metres distance.

‘We recognise Brother-Captain Amaras,’ an Imperial herald announces from his position at Yarrick’s side, smoothing the formal blue robes of his office. He bangs the butt of his staff on the ground three times. ‘Commander of the Angels of Fire.’

Amaras nods in thanks, and fixes Yarrick with his unblinking gaze.

‘Why would the greenskin warlord simply annihilate the greatest battlefield of the last war? Surely our forces should muster at Hades and stand ready to defend against the largest assault.’

Murmurs of agreement ripple throughout the gathered commanders. Emboldened, Amaras smiles at Yarrick.

‘We are the Emperor’s Chosen, mortal. We are His Angels of Death. We have centuries of battle experience compared to these human commanders at your side.’

‘No,’ another voice replies. This one is distorted into a vox-born snarl, filtered through a helm’s speakers. I swallow as the herald bangs the staff another three times.

I had not realised I’d spoken out loud.

‘We recognise Brother-Chaplain Grimaldus,’ he calls out. ‘Reclusiarch of the Black Templars.’

Grimaldus shook his head at the gathered commanders. Over a hundred, human and Astartes, all standing around the huge table in this converted auditorium once used for whatever dreary theatre performances occurred on a manufactory world. A riot of colours, heraldry, symbols of unity, varied uniforms, regimental designations and iconography. General Kurov stood at the commissar’s shoulder, deferring to the Old Man in all things.

‘The xenos do not think as we do,’ Grimaldus said. ‘The greenskins do not come to Armageddon for vengeance, or to seek to bleed us for the defeats they have suffered at Imperial hands in the past. They come for the pleasure of violence.’

Yarrick, a skeleton wreathed in pale flesh and a dark uniform, watched the knight in silence. Amaras pounded his fist onto the table and pointed at the Templar. For a moment of deathly calm, Grimaldus considered drawing his pistol and slaying him where he stood.

‘That lends credence to
my
belief,’ Amaras almost snarled.

‘Not at all. Have you inspected what remains of Hades Hive? It is a ruin. There is nothing to fight over, nothing to defend. The Great Enemy knows this. He will be aware that Imperial forces will put up no more than a token resistance here, and fall back to defend hives that are still worth defending. It is likely the warlord will obliterate Hades from orbit, rather than seek to take it.’

‘We cannot let this hive fall! It is a symbol of mankind’s defiance! With respect, Chaplain–’

‘Enough,’ Yarrick said. ‘Peace, Brother-Captain Amaras. Grimaldus speaks with wisdom.’

Grimaldus inclined his head in thanks.

‘I will not be silenced by a mortal,’ Amaras growled, but the fight was gone from him. Yarrick – the thin, ancient commissar – just stared at the Astartes captain. After several moments, Amaras looked back to the hololithic topography around the hive. Yarrick turned back to the gathered officers, his one human eye stern and his augmetic one whirring in its socket as it refocussed on the faces before him.

‘Hades will not survive the first week,’ he said again, this time shaking his head. ‘We must abandon the hive and spread the forces here to other bastions of strength. This is not the Second War. What is coming in-system now far exceeds what has laid waste to the planet before. The other hives must be reinforced a thousand times over.’ He took a moment to clear his throat, and a cough stole over him, dry and hoarse. When it subsided, the Old Man smiled without even the ghost of humour.

‘Hades will burn. We must make our stand elsewhere.’

At this cue, General Kurov stepped forward with a data-slate.

‘We come to the divisions of command.’ He took a breath, and pressed on. ‘The fleet that will besiege Armageddon is too vast to repel.’

A chorus of jeers rose. Kurov rode them out. Grimaldus, Helbrecht and Bayard were among those that remained absolutely silent.

‘Hear me, friends and brothers,’ Kurov sighed. ‘And hear me well. Those of you who insist this war will be anything more than a conflict of bitter attrition are deceiving yourselves. At current estimates, we have over fifty thousand Astartes in the Armageddon subsector, and thirty times the number of Imperial Guardsmen. And it will still not be enough to secure a clean victory. At our best estimations, Battlefleet Armageddon, the orbital defences, and the Astartes fleets remaining in the void will be able to deny the enemy landing for nine days. These are our
best
estimates.’