Galaxy in Flames (21 page)

I
N LATER MOMENTS
they would name it Death’s Tomb, and Loken had never felt such disgust at the sights he saw within it. Even Davin’s moon, where the swamps had vomited up the living dead to attack the Sons of Horus, had not been this bad.

The sound of battle was a hellish music of screaming, rising in terrible crescendos, and the sight was horrendous. Death’s Tomb was brimming with corpses, festering in charnel heaps and bubbling with corruption.

The tomb-spire Loken and the Sons of Horus fought within was larger inside than out, the floor sunken into a pit where the dead had been thrown. The tomb was that of Death itself. A mausoleum of bloodstained black iron carved into swirls and scrollwork dominated the pit, topped with a sculpture of Father Isstvan himself, a massive bearded sky-god who took away the souls of the faithful and cast the rest into the sky to languish with his Lost Children.

A Warsinger perched on Father Isstvan’s black shoulder, screaming a song of death that jarred at Loken’s nerves and sent jangling pain along his limbs. Hundreds of Isstvanian soldiers surrounded the pit, firing from the hip as they ran towards the Astartes, driven forward by the shrieking death song.

‘At them!’ yelled Loken, and before he could draw breath again the enemy was upon them. The Astartes of the spearhead streamed through the many archways leading into the tomb-spire, guns blazing as soon as they saw the enemy swarming towards them. Loken fired a fusillade of shots before the two sides clashed.

More than two thousand Sons of Horus charged into battle and Death’s Tomb became a vast amphitheatre for a great and terrible slaughter, like the arenas of the ancient Romani.

‘Stay close! Back to back, and advance!’ cried Loken, but he could only hope that his fellow warriors could hear him over the vox. The screaming was deafening, every Isstvanian soldier’s mouth jammed open and howling in the shrieking cadences of the Warsinger’s music.

Loken cut a gory crescent through the bodies pressing in on him, Vipus matching him stroke for stroke with his long chainsword. Strategy and weapons meant nothing now. The battle was simply a brutal close quarters fight to the death.

Such a contest could have only one outcome. Loathing filled Loken. Not at the blood and death around him, he had seen much worse before, but at the sheer waste of this war. The people he was killing… their lives could have meant something. They could have accepted the Imperial Truth and helped forge a galaxy where the human race was united and the wisdom of the Emperor ushered them towards a future filled with wonders. Instead they had been betrayed and turned into fanatical killers by a corrupt leader, destined to die for a cause that was a lie.

Good lives wasted. Nothing could be further from the purpose of the Imperium.

‘Torgaddon! Bring the line forwards. Force them back and give the guns some room.’

‘Easier said than done, Garvi!’ replied Torgaddon, his voice punctuated with the sharp crack of breaking bones.

Loken glanced around, saw one of Lachost’s squad dragged down by the mass of enemy warriors and tried to bring his bolter to bear. Bloodied, ruined hands forced his aim down and the battle-brother was lost. He dropped his shoulder and barged forwards, bodies breaking beneath him, but others were on top of him, blades and bullets beating at his armour.

With a roar of anger, Loken ripped his chainsword through an armoured warrior before him, forcing the enemy back for the split second he needed to open up with his bolter. A full-throated volley sent a magazine’s worth of shells into the mass, blasting them apart in a red ruin of shattered faces and broken armour.

He rapidly swapped in a new bolter magazine and fired among the warriors trying to swamp his fellow Sons of Horus. The Astartes used the openings to forge onwards or open up spaces to bring their own weapons up. Others lent their gunfire to the battle-brothers fighting behind them.

The tone of the Warsinger’s screaming changed and Loken felt as though rusty nails were being torn up his spine. He staggered and the enemy were upon him.

‘Torgaddon!’ he shouted over the din. ‘Get the Warsinger!’

‘M
Y APOLOGIES
, W
ARMASTER
,’ began Maloghurst, nervous at interrupting the Warmaster’s concentration on the battle below. ‘There has been a development.’

‘In the city?’ asked Horus without looking up. ‘On the ship,’ replied Maloghurst. Horus looked up in irritation. ‘Explain yourself.’

‘The Prime Iterator, Kyril Sindermann…’

‘Old Kyril?’ said Horus. ‘What of him?’

‘It appears we have misjudged the man’s character, my lord.’

‘In what way, Mal?’ asked Horus. ‘He’s just an old man.’

‘That he is, but he may be a greater threat than anything we have yet faced, my lord,’ said Maloghurst. ‘He is a leader now, an apostle they call him. He—’

‘A leader?’ interrupted Horus, ‘of whom?’

‘Of the people of the fleet, civilians, ships’ crew, and the Lectitio Divinitatus. He has just finished a speech to the fleet calling on them to resist the Legion, saying that we are warmongers and seek to betray the Emperor. We are trying to trace where the signal came from, but it is likely he will be long gone before we find him.’

‘I see,’ said Horus. ‘This problem should have been dealt with before Isstvan.’

‘And we have failed you in this,’ said Maloghurst. ‘The iterator mixed calls for peace with a potent brew of religion and faith.’

‘This should not surprise us,’ said Horus. ‘Sindermann was selected for duty with my fleet precisely because he could convince even the most fractious rabble to do anything. Mix that skill with religious fervor and he is indeed a dangerous man.’

‘They believe the Emperor is divine,’ said Maloghurst, ‘and that we commit blasphemy.’

‘It must be an intoxicating faith,’ mused Horus, ‘and faith can be a very powerful weapon. It appears, Maloghurst, that we have underestimated the potential that even a civilian possesses so long as he has genuine faith in something.’

‘What would you have me do, my lord?’

‘We did not deal with this threat properly,’ said Horus. ‘It should have ceased to exist when Varvarus and those troublesome remembrancers were illuminated. Now it takes my attention when our plan is at its most sensitive stage. The bombardment is imminent.’

Maloghurst bowed his head. ‘Warmaster, Sindermann and his kind will be destroyed.’

‘The next I hear of this will be that they are all dead,’ ordered Horus.

‘It will be done,’ promised Maloghurst.

‘F
OOL
!’
SPAT
P
RAAL
, his voice a disgusted rasp. ‘Have you not seen this world? The wonders you would destroy? This is a city of the gods!’

Lucius rolled to his feet, still stunned from the sonic shockwave that had hurled him from the throne dais, but knowing that the song of death was being sung for him and him alone. He lunged, but Praal batted aside his attack, bringing his spear up in a neat guard.

‘This is the city of my enemies,’ laughed Lucius. ‘That is all that matters to me.’

‘You are deaf to the music of the galaxy. I have heard far more than you,’ said Praal. ‘Perhaps you are to be pitied, for I have listened to the sound of the gods. I have heard their song and they damn this galaxy in their wisdom!’

Lucius laughed in Praal’s face. ‘You think I care? All I want to do is kill you.’

‘The gods have sung what your Imperial Truth will bring to the galaxy,’ shrieked Praal, his musical voice heavy with disdain. ‘It is a future of fear and hatred. I was deaf to the music before they opened me to their song of oblivion. It is my duty to end your Crusade!’

‘You can try,’ said Lucius, ‘but even if you kill us all, more will come: a hundred thousand more, a million, until this planet is dust. Your little rebellion is over; you just don’t know it yet.’

‘No, Astartes,’ replied Praal. ‘I have fulfilled my duty and brought you here, to this cauldron of fates. My work is done! All that remains is to blood myself in the name of Father Isstvan.’

Lucius danced away as Praal attacked once more with the razor-sharp feints of a master warrior, but the swordsman had faced better opponents than this and prevailed. The song of death rippled behind his eyes and he could see every move Praal made before he made it, the song speaking to him on a level he didn’t understand, but instinctively knew was power beyond anything he had touched before.

He launched a flurry of blows at Praal, driving him back with each attack and no matter how skilfully Praal parried his strikes, each one came that little bit closer to wounding him.

The flicker of fear he saw in Praal’s eyes filled him with brutal triumph. The shrieking, musical spear blared one last atonal scream before it finally shattered under the energized edge of Lucius’s sword.

The swordsman pivoted smoothly on his heel and drove his blade, two-handed, into Praal’s golden chest, the sword burning through his armour, ribs and internal organs.

Praal dropped to his knees, still alive, his mouth working dumbly as blood sprayed from the massive wound. Lucius twisted the blade, relishing the cracks as Praal’s ribs snapped.

He put a foot on Praal’s body and pulled the sword clear, standing triumphant over the body of his fallen enemy.

Around him, the Emperor’s Children slew the remaining palace guards, but with Praal dead, the song in his blood diminished and his interest in the fight faded. Lucius turned to the throne itself, already aching for the music to surge through his body once again.

The throne’s back was to him and he couldn’t see who was seated there. A control panel worked furiously before it, like a monstrously complicated clockwork keyboard.

Lucius stepped around the throne and looked into the glassy eyes of a servitor.

Its head was mounted on a skinny body of metal armatures, the complex innards stripped out and replaced with brass clockwork. Chattering metal lines reached from the chest cavity to read the music printed in the books mounted around the throne and the servitor’s hands, elaborate, twenty-fingered constructions of metal and wire, flickered over the control panel.

Without Praal, the music was out of tune and time, its syncopated rhythms falling apart. Lucius knew that this was a poor substitute for what had fuelled his battle with Praal.

Suddenly angry beyond words, Lucius brought his blade down in a glittering arc, shattering the control panel in a shower of orange sparks. The hideous music transformed into a howling death shriek, shaking the stone petals of the palace with its terrible deafening wail before fading like a forgotten dream.

The music of creation ended and all across Isstvan the voices of the gods were silenced.

A
VOLLEY OF
gunfire caught Loken’s attention as he desperately fought the dozens of guards who stabbed at him with their gleaming halberds. Behind him, Torgaddon brought the speartip up into a firing line, and bolter fire battered against the black iron of Death’s mausoleum. The Warsinger was broken like a dying bird against the statue of Father Isstvan.

The Warsinger fell, her final scream tailing off as her shattered form cracked against the ornate carvings of Death’s mausoleum.

‘She’s down!’ said Torgaddon’s voice over the vox, sounding surprised at the ease with which she had been killed.

‘Who have we lost?’ asked Loken, as. the enemy soldiers fell back at the Warsinger’s death, suspecting that there was more to this withdrawal than simply her death. Something fundamental had changed on Isstvan, but he didn’t yet know what.

‘Most of Squad Chaggrat,’ replied Torgaddon, ‘and plenty of others. We won’t know until we get out of here, but there’s something else…’

‘What?’ asked Loken.

‘Lachost says we’ve lost contact with orbit,’ said Torgaddon. ‘There’s no signal. It’s as if the
Vengeful Spirit
isn’t even up there.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Loken, looking around for the familiar sight of Sergeant Lachost.

He saw him at the edge of the charnel pit and marched over to him. Torgaddon and Vipus followed him and Torgaddon said, ‘Impossible or not, it’s what he tells me.’

‘What about the rest of the strike force?’ asked Loken, crouching beside Lachost. ‘What about the palace?’

‘We’re having more luck with them,’ replied Lachost. ‘I managed to get through to Captain Ehrlen of the World Eaters. It sounds like they’re outside the palace. It’s an absolute massacre over there, thousands of civilians dead.’

‘In the name of Terra!’ said Loken, imagining the World Eaters’ predilection for massacre and the rivers of blood that would be flowing through the streets of the Choral City. ‘Have they managed to contact anyone in orbit?’

‘They’ve got their hands full, captain,’ replied Lachost. ‘Even if they’ve managed to raise the
Conqueror
, they’re in no position to relay anything from us. I could barely get anything out of Ehrlen other than that he was killing them with his bare hands.’

‘And the palace?’

‘Nothing, I can’t get through to Captain Lucius of the Emperor’s Children. The palace has been playing hell with communications ever since they went in. There was some kind of music, but nothing else.’

‘Then try the Death Guard. They’ve got the
Dies Irae
with them, we can use it to relay for us,’

‘I’ll try, sir, but it’s not looking hopeful.’

‘This was supposed to be over by now,’ spat Loken. ‘The Choral City isn’t just going to collapse with their leaders dead. Maybe the World Eaters have the right idea. We’re going to have to kill them all. We need the second wave down here now and if we can’t even speak to the Warmaster this is going to be a very long campaign.’

‘I’ll keep trying,’ said Lachost. ‘We need to link up with the rest of the strike force,’ said Loken. ‘We’re cut off here. We need to make for the palace and find the World Eaters or the Emperor’s Children. We’re not doing any good sitting here. All we’re doing is giving the Isstvanians a chance to surround us.’

‘There’re a lot of soldiers between us and the rest of the strike force,’ Torgaddon pointed out.