Galaxy in Flames (36 page)

Horus Aximand would need watching,
Abaddon decided.

T
HE VIEWSCREEN OF
the strategium displayed the blackened, barren rock of Isstvan V.

Where Isstvan III had once been rich and verdant, Isstvan V had always been a mass of tangled igneous rock where no life thrived. Once there had been life, but that had been aeons ago, and its only remnants were scattered basalt cities and fortifications. The people of the Choral City had thought these ruins were home to the evil gods of their religion, who waited there plotting revenge.

Perhaps they were right, mused Horus, thinking of Fulgrim and his complement of Emperor’s Children who were preparing the way for the next phase of the plan.

Isstvan III had been the prologue, but Isstvan V would be the most decisive battle the galaxy had ever seen. The thought made Horus smile as he looked up to see Maloghurst limping painfully towards his throne.

‘What news, Mal?’ asked Horus. ‘Have all surface units returned to their posts?’

‘I have just heard from the
Conqueror
,’ nodded Maloghurst. ‘Angron has returned. He is the last.’

Horus turned back to the gnarled globe of Isstvan V and said, ‘Good. It is no surprise to me that he should be the last to quit the battlefield. So what is the butcher’s bill?’

‘We lost a great many in the landings and more than a few in the palace,’ replied Maloghurst. ‘The Emperor’s Children and the Death Guard were similarly mauled. The World Eaters lost the most. They are barely above half strength.’

‘You do not think this battle was wise,’ said Horus. ‘You cannot hide that from me, Mal.’

‘The battle was costly,’ averred Maloghurst, ‘and it could have been shortened. If efforts had been made to withdraw the Legions before the siege developed then lives and time could have been saved. We do not have an infinite number of Astartes and we certainly do not have infinite time. I do not believe there was any great victory to be won here.’

‘You see only the physical cost, Mal,’ said Horus. ‘You do not see the psychological gains we have made. Abaddon was blooded, the real threats among the rebels have been eliminated and the World Eaters have been brought to a point where they cannot turn back. If there was ever any doubt as to whether this Crusade would succeed, it has been banished by what I have achieved on Isstvan III.’

‘Then what are your orders?’ asked Maloghurst.

Horus turned back to the viewscreen and said, ‘We have tarried here too long and it is time to move onwards. You are right that I allowed myself to be drawn into a war that we did not have time to fight, but I will rectify that error.’

‘Warmaster?’

‘Bomb the city,’ said Horus. ‘Wipe it off the face of the planet.’

L
OKEN COULDN
’
T MOVE
his legs. Every heartbeat was agony in his lungs as the muscles of his chest ground against splinters of bone. He coughed up clots of blood with every breath and he was sure that each one would be his last as the will to live seeped from his body.

Through a crack in the rubble pinning him to the ground, Loken could see the dark grey sky. He saw streaks of fire dropping through the clouds and closed his eyes as he realized that they were the first salvoes of an orbital bombardment.

Death was raining down on the Choral City for the second time, but this time it wouldn’t be anything as exotic as a virus. High explosives would bring the city down and put a final, terrible exclamation mark at the end of the Battle of Isstvan III.

Such a display was typical of the Warmaster.

It was a final epitaph that would leave no one in any doubt as to who had won.

The first orange blooms of fire burst over the city. The ground shook. Buildings collapsed in waves of fire and the streets boiled with flame once more.

The ground shuddered as though in the grip of an earthquake and Loken felt his prison of debris shift. Hard spikes of pain buffeted him as flames burst across the remains of the parliament building.

Then darkness fell at last, and Loken felt nothing else.

A
HUNDRED OF
Tarvitz’s loyalists remained. They were the only survivors of their glorious last stand, and he had gathered them in the remains of the Warsingers’ Temple – Sons of Horus, Emperor’s Children, and even a few lost-looking World Eaters. Tarvitz noticed that there were no Death Guard in their numbers, thinking that perhaps a few had survived Mortarion’s scouring of the trenches, but knowing that they might as well have been on the other side of Isstvan III.

This was the end. They all knew it, but none of them gave voice to that fact.

He knew all their names now. Before, they had just been grime-streaked faces among the endless days and nights of battle, but now they were brothers, men he would die with in honour.

Flashes of explosions bloomed in the city’s north. Shooting stars punched through the dark clouds overhead, scorching holes through which the glimmering stars could be seen. The stars shone down on the Choral City in time to watch the city die.

‘Did we hurt them, captain? asked Solathen. ‘Did this mean anything?’

Tarvitz thought for a moment before replying.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we hurt them here. They’ll remember this.’

A bomb slammed into the Precentor’s Palace, finally blasting what little remained of its great stone flower into flame and shards of granite. The loyalists did not throw themselves into cover or ran for shelter – there was little point.

The Warmaster was bombarding the city, and he was thorough.

He would not let them slip away a second time.

Towers of flame bloomed all across the palace, closing in on them with fiery inevitability.

The battle for the Choral City was over.

T
HE TEMPLE WAS
nearly complete, its high, arched ceiling like a ribcage of black stone beneath which the officers of the new Crusade were gathered. Angron still fumed at the decision to leave Isstvan III before the destruction of the loyalists was complete, while Mortarion was silent and sullen, his Death Guard like a steel barrier between him and the rest of the gathering.

Lord Commander Eidolon, still smarting from the failures his Legion had committed in the eyes of the Warmaster, had several squads of Emperor’s Children accompanying him, but his presence was not welcomed, merely tolerated.

Maloghurst, Abaddon and Aximand represented the Sons of Horus, and beside them stood Erebus. The Warmaster stood before the temple’s altar, its four faces representing what Erebus called the four faces of the gods. Above him, a huge holographic image of Isstvan V dominated the temple.

An area known as the Urgall Depression was highlighted, a giant crater overlooked by the fortress that Fulgrim had prepared for the Warmaster’s forces. Blue blips indicated likely landing sites, routes of attack and retreat. Horus had spent the last hour explaining the details of the operation to his commanders and he was coming to an end.

‘At this very moment seven Legions are coming to destroy us. They will find us at Isstvan V and the battle will be great. But in truth it will not be a battle at all, for we have achieved much since last we gathered. Chaplain Erebus, enlighten us as to matters beyond Isstvan.’

‘All goes well at Signum, my lord,’ said Erebus stepping forward. New tattoos had been inked on his scalp, echoing the sigils carved into the stones of the temple.

‘Sanguinius and the Blood Angels will not trouble us, and Kor Phaeron sends word that the Ultramarines muster at Calth. They suspect nothing and will not be in a position to lend their strength to the loyalist force. Our allies outnumber our enemies.’

‘Then it is done,’ said Horus. ‘The backs of the Emperor’s Legions will be broken at Isstvan V.’

‘And what then?’ asked Aximand.

A strange melancholy had settled upon Horus Aximand since the battles of the Choral City, and he saw Abaddon cast a wary glance in his brother’s direction.

‘When our trap is sprung?’ demanded Aximand. ‘The Emperor will still reign and the Imperium will still answer to him. After Isstvan V, what then?’

‘Then, Little Horus?’ said the Warmaster. ‘Then we strike for Terra.’