Galaxy in Flames (17 page)

If there was one thing at which the World Eaters excelled, it was massacre.

‘D
AMN IT
,’
SPAT
Vipus. ‘We must have hit something on the way in.’

Loken forced his eyes open. A slice of light where the drop-pod had broken open provided the only illumination, but it was enough for him to check that he was still in once piece.

He was battered, but could feel no evidence of anything more than that.

‘Locasta, sound off!’ ordered Vipus. The warriors of Locasta shouted their names, and Loken was relieved to hear that none appeared to have been injured in the impact. He undid the buckle of his grav-harness and rolled to his feet, the drop-pod canted at an unnatural angle. He pulled his bolter from the rack and pushed his way through the narrow opening broken in the side of the drop-pod.

As he emerged into the bright sunshine, he saw that they had struck a projecting pier of stone on one of the towers, the rubble of its destruction scattered around the ruined drop-pod. He circled the wreckage, seeing that they were at least two hundred metres above the ground, wedged amongst the massive battlements of the Sirenhold.

To his left he saw spectacular tomb-spires encrusted with statues, while to his right was the Choral City itself, its magnificent structures bathed in the rosy glow of the sunrise. From this vantage point Loken could see the whole city, the extraordinary stone flower of the palace and the western defenses like scars across the landscape.

Loken could hear gunfire from the direction of the palace and realized that the Emperor’s Children and World Eaters were already fighting the enemy. Gunfire echoed from below, Sons of Horus units fighting in the tangle of shrines and statuary that filled the canyons between the tomb-spires.

‘We need a way down,’ said Loken as Locasta pulled themselves from the wreckage of the drop-pod. Vipus jogged over with his gun at the ready.

‘Bloody ground surveyors must have missed the projections,’ he grumbled.

‘That’s what it looks like,’ agreed Loken, as he saw another drop-pod ricochet from the side of a tomb-spire and careen downwards in a shower of broken statues.

‘Our warriors are dying,’ he said bitterly. ‘Someone’s going to pay for this.’

‘We look spread out,’ said Vipus, glancing down into the Sirenhold. Between the tomb-spires, smaller shrines and temples butted against one another in a complex jigsaw.

Plumes of black smoke and explosions were already rising from the fighting.

‘We need a place to regroup,’ said Loken. He flicked to Torgaddon’s vox-channel. ‘Tarik? Loken here, where are you?’ A burst of static was his only reply. He looked across the Sirenhold and saw one tomb-spire close to the wall, its many levels supported by columns wrought into the shapes of monsters and its top sheared off by the impact of a drop-pod. ‘Damn. If you can hear me, Tarik, make for the spire by the western wall, the one with the smashed top. Regroup there. I’m heading down to you.’

‘Anything?’ asked Vipus.

‘No. The vox is a mess. Something’s interrupting it.’

‘The spires?’

‘It would take more than that,’ said Loken. ‘Come on. Let’s find a way off this damn wall.’

Vipus nodded and turned to his men. ‘Locasta, start looking for a way down.’

Loken leaned over the battlements as Locasta fanned out to obey their leader’s command. Beneath him he could see the diminutive figures of Astartes fighting black-armoured warriors in streaming firefight. He turned away, desperate to find a way down. ‘Here!’ shouted Brother Casto, Locasta’s flamer bearer. ‘A stairway.’

‘Good work,’ said Loken, making his way over to see what Casto had found. Sure enough, hidden behind a tall, eroded statue of an ancient warrior was a dark stairway cut into the sand-coloured stone.

The passageway looked rough and unfinished, the stone pitted and crumbling with age. ‘Move,’ said Vipus. ‘Casto, lead the way.’

‘Yes, captain,’ replied Casto, plunging into the gloom of the passageway. Loken and Vipus followed him, the entrance barely wide enough for their armoured bodies. The stairs descended for roughly ten metres before opening into a wide, low-ceilinged gallery. ‘The wall must be riddled,’ said Vipus. ‘Catacombs,’ said Loken, pointing to niches cut into the walls that held the mouldering remains of skeletons, some still swaddled in tattered cloth.

Casto led them along the gallery, the bodies becoming more numerous the deeper they went, the skeletal remains piled two or three deep.

Vipus snapped around suddenly, bolter up and finger on the trigger. ‘Vipus?’

‘I thought I heard something.’

‘We’re clear behind,’ said Loken. ‘Keep moving and focus. This could—’

‘Movement!’ said Casto, sending a blast of orange-yellow fire from his flamer into the darkness ahead of him.

‘Casto!’ barked Vipus. ‘Report! What do you see?’

Casto paused. ‘I don’t know. Whatever it was, it’s gone now.’

The niches ahead guttered with flames, hungrily devouring the bare bones. Loken could see that there was no enemy up ahead, only Isstvanian dead.

‘There’s nothing there now,’ said Vipus. ‘Stay focused, Locasta, and no jumping at shadows! You are Sons of Horus!’

The squad picked up the pace, shaking thoughts of hidden enemies from their minds, as they moved rapidly past the burning grave-niches.

The gallery opened into a large chamber, Loken guessing that it must have filled the width of the wall. The only light was from the dancing flame at the end of Casto’s flamer, the yellow light picking out the massive stone blocks of a tomb.

Loken saw a sarcophagus of black granite, surrounded by statues of kneeling people with their heads bowed and hands chained before them. Panels set into the walls were covered in carvings where human forms acted out ceremonial scenes of war.

‘Casto, move up,’ said Vipus. ‘Find us a way down.’

Loken approached the sarcophagus, running his hand down its vast length. Its lid was carved to represent a human figure, but he knew that it could not be a literal portrait of the body inside; its face had no features save for a pair of triangular eyes fashioned from chips of coloured glass.

Loken could hear the song from the Sirenhold outside, even through the layers of stone, a single mournful tone that rose and fell, winding its way from the tomb-spires.

‘Warsinger,’ said Loken bitterly. ‘They’re fighting back. We need to get down there.’

T
HE SILVER
-
ARMOURED
palace guards started flying.

Surrounded by burning arcs of white energy, they leapt over the advancing Emperor’s Children, gleaming, leaf shaped blades slicing downwards from wrist-mounted weapons.

Lucius rolled to avoid a hail of blades, the silver guard swooping low to behead two of Squad Quemondil, the charged blades cutting through their armour with horrific ease.

He slid into the water, finding that it only reached his waist. Above him, the halberd-guns of the palace guard were spraying silver fire at the Emperor’s Children, but the Astartes were moving and firing with their customary discipline Even the bizarre sight of the palace’s defenders did not dissuade them from their patterns of movement and covering fire. A body fell into the water next to him, its head blasted away by bolter fire and blood pouring into the water in a scarlet bloom.

Lucius saw that the silver guards were too quick and turned too nimbly for conventional engagement. He would just have to engage them unconventionally.

One of the silver guards dived towards him and Lucius could see the intricate filigree on the man’s armour, the tiny gold threads like veins on the breastplate and greaves and the scrollwork that covered his face.

The guard dived like a seabird, firing a bright blade from his wrist.

Lucius turned the missile aside with his sword and leapt to meet his opponent. The guard twisted in the air, trying to avoid Lucius, but he was too close. Lucius swung his sword and sliced the guard’s arm from his body, his crackling sword searing through the armour. Blood sprayed from the smoldering wound and the guard fell, twisting back towards the water.

Lucius fell with the dead man, splashing back into the lake as the Emperor’s Children finally reached their enemy. Volleys of bolter fire scoured the islands and his warriors advanced relentlessly on the survivors. The palace guards were backing away, forming a tighter and tighter circle. Glass-armoured guards lay dead in heaps and the artificial lake was muddy pink and choked with bodies.

Rylanor’s assault cannon sent fire tearing through the silk-clad guards, whose preternatural speed couldn’t save them as the cannon shells turned the interior of the dome into a killing ground. Another silver guard fell, bolter fire ripping through his armour.

Squad Nasicae joined Lucius and he grinned wolfishly at them, elated at the prospect of fighting more of the silver guards.

‘They’re running,’ said Lucius. ‘Keep them on the back foot. Keep pressing on.’

‘Squad Kaitheron’s reporting from the plaza,’ said Brother Scetherin. ‘The World Eaters are fighting around the temple on the north side.’

‘Still?’

‘Sounds like they’re holding off half the city.’

‘Ha! They can have them. It’s what the World Eaters are good at,’ laughed Lucius, relishing the certain knowledge of his superiority.

Nothing in the galaxy could match that feeling, but already it was fading and he knew he would have to procure yet more opponents to satisfy his hunger for battle.

‘We press on to the throne room,’ he said. ‘Ancient Rylanor, secure our rear. The rest of you, we’re going for Praal. Follow me. If you can’t keep up, go and join the Death Guard!’

His warriors cheered as they followed Lucius into the heart of the palace.

Every one of them wanted to kill Praal and hold his head aloft on the palace battlements so the whole of the Choral City could see. Only Lucius was certain that Praal’s head would be his.

T
HE
A
NDRONIUS
WAS
quiet and tense, its palatial rooms dark and its long, echoing corridors empty of all but menials. The ship’s engines pulsed dimly in the stern, only the rumble of directional thrusters shuddering through the ship. Every station was manned, every blast door was sealed and Tarvitz knew a battle alert when he saw it.

What confused him was the fact that the Isstvanians had no fleet to fight.

The hull groaned and Tarvitz felt a deep rumbling through the metal deck, sensing the motion of the ship before the artificial gravity compensated. Ever since the first wave of the speartip had launched, the vessel had been moving, and Tarvitz knew that his suspicions of something amiss were well-founded.

According to the mission briefings he had read earlier, Fulgrim’s flagship had been assigned the role of launching the second wave once the palace and the Sirenhold had been taken. There was no need to move.

The only reason to move a vessel after a launch was to move into low orbit in preparation for a bombardment. Though he told himself he was being paranoid, Tarvitz knew that he had to see for himself what was going on.

He made his way swiftly through the
Andronius
towards the gun decks, keeping clear of such grand chambers as the Tarselian Amphitheatre and the columned grandeur of the Monument Hall. He kept to the areas of the ship where his presence would go unchallenged, and where those who might recognise him were unlikely to see him.

He had told Rylanor that he wanted to renounce his position of honour in the speartip to replace Captain Odovocar as Eidolon’s senior staff officer, relaying the commander’s orders to the surface, but it would only be a matter of time before his subterfuge was discovered.

Tarvitz descended into the lower reaches of the ship, far from where the Emperor’s Children dwelt in the most magnificent parts of the
Andronius
. The rest of the ship, inhabited by servitors and menials, was more functional and Tarvitz knew he would pass without challenge here.

The darkness closed around Tarvitz and the yawning chasms of the engine structures opened out many hundreds of metres below the gantry on which he stood. Above the engine spaces were the reeking gun decks, where mighty cannons, weapons that could level cities, were housed in massive, armoured revetments.

‘Stand by for ordnance,’ chimed an automated, metallic voice. Tarvitz felt the ship shift again, and this time he could hear the creak of the hull as the planet’s upper atmosphere raised the temperature of the outer hull.

Tarvitz descended an iron staircase at the end of the dark gantry and the vast expanse of the gun deck sprawled before him, a titanic vault that ran the length of the vessel. Huge, hissing cranes fed the guns, lifting tank-sized shells from the magazine decks through blast proof doors. Gunners and loaders sweated with their riggers, each gun serviced by a hundred men who hauled on thick chains and levers in preparation for their firing. Servitors distributed water to the gun crews and Mechanicum adepts maintained vigil on the weapons to ensure they were properly calibrated.

Tarvitz felt his resolve harden and his anger grow at the sight of the guns being made ready. Who were they planning to fire on? With thousands of Astartes on the planet’s surface, bombarding the Choral City was absurd, yet here the guns were, loaded and ready to unleash hell.

He doubted that the men crewing these weapons knew which planet they were in orbit over or even who they would be shooting at. Entire communities flourished below the decks of a starship and it was perfectly possible that these men had no idea who they were about to destroy.

He reached the end of the staircase and set foot on the deck, its high ceiling soaring above him like a mighty cathedral to destructive power. Tarvitz heard footsteps approaching and turned to see a robed adept in the livery of the Mechanicum.

‘Captain,’ inquired the adept, ‘is there something amiss?’

‘No,’ said Tarvitz. ‘I am just here to ensure that everything is proceeding normally.’

‘I can assure you, lord, that preparations for the bombardment are proceeding exactly as planned. The warheads will be launched prior to the deployment of the second wave.’