Fulgrim (10 page)

Others with greater skill were to fly them into battle, and since the primarch’s plan required absolute, perfect precision for this assault to work, he had kept his concerns to himself until it was too late to do anything about them.

He slammed a palm into the restraint of his grav-harness and pushed himself to his feet, gripping the brass handrail that ran the length of the ceiling.

‘I’m going to the flight deck,’ he said.

‘You going to fly us in?’ asked Caphen. ‘I feel safer already.’

‘No, I just want to see what’s going on.’

Caphen didn’t reply, and Solomon turned towards the cockpit as the aircraft bucked in the air and he felt the hammering of a nearby explosion. He made his way along the companionway and pulled open the door to the flight compartment.

‘How long till we reach the landing zone?’ he shouted over the din.

The co-pilot spared him a glance and shouted, ‘Two minutes!’

Solomon nodded, anxious to speak, but not wanting to distract the pilots from their duties. The night sky beyond the armoured glass of the cockpit was lit up as bright as day with traceries of gunfire and flak, the fleet’s interceptors duelling with the remaining airborne units of the Laer to clear a path for the Legion’s warriors. Ahead, Solomon could see a bright island of light floating in the sky, the temple atoll like a beacon in the darkness.

‘Foolish,’ he said to himself. ‘I would have enforced a blackout.’

The compartment was filled with an eerie red light, and Solomon suddenly found himself thinking of blood. He wondered if it was an omen for the battle to come; then shook off such a gloomy thought. Omens and portents were for weak minds that did not know the truth of the galaxy and feral barbarians who needed a reason for the sun to rise or the rains to fall.

Solomon was beyond such petty superstitions, but he smiled as he realised that his obsessive habit of modifying his battle gear and entreating it to keep him safe before going into battle might be considered superstitious. No, he decided, honouring your battle gear was just sensible, not superstitious.

He crouched down in the doorway, unwilling to return to his seat and perversely fascinated by the web of light and explosions painted on the sky. Even as he watched the intricate ballet of fire into which they flew, a blazing light filled the cockpit as the
Firebird
passed overhead, its greater speed meaning it would be amongst the first of the assault craft to reach the atoll.

Flames still trailed from its wings, and Solomon smiled, knowing it was no accident that the primarch had decreed that this attack should be launched at night. The flickering red glow of the flames was reflected in the crew’s faces, and Solomon was once again seized by the certainty that something terrible was going to happen.

Not just to him, but to his entire Legion.

Solomon’s gut tightened as the Stormbird suddenly veered to one side and he heard the pilots swear. A thudding impact struck the side of the Stormbird, and Solomon felt a sickening lurch as the mighty craft dropped through the sky.

His mind filled with thoughts of the yawning abyss of the world sea below, remembering the battles he had fought beneath its empty darkness and having no wish to revisit that cold, subterranean world.

‘Port engine’s on fire!’ shouted the pilot. ‘Increase power to the starboard engine.’

‘Stabilisers are gone! Compensating!’

‘Cut off the fuel feeds from the wing and get us level!’

Solomon gripped the edge of the door as the Stormbird swung wildly to the side. The crew issued orders to one another and attempted to stabilise their flight. Emergency lights flashed across the command console, and Solomon could hear the warning klaxon of the altimeter. Though he could hear the strain in the pilots’ voices, Solomon also heard their training and discipline as they went through the emergency procedures with determined efficiency.

Eventually the gunship began to level out, though angry lights still blinked and the altimeter klaxon still sounded.

A palpable sense of relief filled the flight compartment and Solomon began to ease his grip on the edge of the door.

‘Well done, people,’ said the pilot, ‘we’re still flying.’

Barely a moment later, the entire left side of the Stormbird erupted in flames. Solomon was hurled to the deck and a seething wall of flame lit up the sky. The glass of the cockpit disintegrated and flames boiled into the gunship.

He felt the heat on his armour, but it could do him no harm, though scads of burning fuel dribbled from the plates of his legs and arms. The roaring of the wind filled his senses as the gunship spun, cold air roaring through the stricken Stormbird and howling in his ears.

Miraculously, the co-pilot was still alive, though his flesh was horribly burned and his skin was on fire. Solomon knew there was nothing to be done for him, and the wounded man’s cries of pain mingled with the wind as they spiralled downwards to destruction.

Solomon saw the black wall of the ocean rushing up to meet him and cold, wet darkness swallowed him as the Stormbird smashed into the water.

S
CREAMING FROM THE
coral towers filled the air, more strident than Julius remembered, and he was struck by the notion that the atoll was shrieking in anger. The last of the Laer defended this place, but if there was any desperation or fear in them, they didn’t show it. These alien warriors fought as hard as any they had killed in this campaign.

The Stormbird had barely touched down when Julius and Lycaon had led the warriors of the First onto the atoll, the monstrously thick plates of their Terminator armour reflecting the firelight of battle.

The sound of screams and gunfire and explosions filled his senses, though his armour protected him from the worst of it. Emperor’s Children spread out around him without needing any orders, and he knew that the exact same scene was being played out at hundreds of other locations throughout the atoll.

Alien gunfire reached out to them, but what had carved through Mark IV plate barely scratched Terminator armour.

If only we had more of these, this war would have been won long ago, thought Julius, but the general issue of Tactical Dreadnought armour had only just begun and only a very few units had the correct training to make use of them.

‘Forward,’ ordered Julius, as his warriors fell into position behind him. The Terminators moved off in a phalanx, bolters and inbuilt heavy weapon systems ripping apart any Laer that stood in their way in a flurry of broken bodies and pulverised coral.

The forces of the Emperor’s Children had surrounded the temple like a closing fist, and would now crush the last of its defenders.

Flames leapt skyward as strafing gunships sawed towers apart with high explosive shells and provided support for the ground troops. Heavier transports were even now inbound with armoured units: Land Raiders, Predators and Vindicators.

Heavy footfalls pounded through the battle, and Julius saw Ancient Rylanor smash through a wall of coral that had served as a barricade to a group of Laer warriors armed with a high-powered energy weapon. A lance of green energy speared into the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus, and Julius cried out as he saw the damage, but the mighty war machine shrugged off the impact. Rylanor picked up the nearest Laer warrior and broke it in two in his monstrous fists as gouts of yellow fire from his underslung weapon burned them from their cover.

Julius and his warriors finished the job, sending a hail of shells tearing through the burning corpses of the aliens.

‘My thanks for your assistance,’ said the Dreadnought. ‘Though it was not needed.’

Sudden orange light bathed the battlefield in a hellish glow as the
Firebird
screamed overhead, Fulgrim’s attack ship taking him to the very heart of the battle, to the temple of the Laer.

‘Come on, Lycaon!’ shouted Julius exultantly. ‘We follow the
Firebird
!’

O
N THE SOUTHERN
spurs of the atoll, Marius Vairosean was finding things much tougher than the captain of the First. Too many of his gunships had been shot down and he knew he was dangerously below the strength the primarch had decreed necessary to seize his objectives. The Laer fought with a hitherto unseen ferocity, their slithering bodies coiling over one another as they rushed to engage his warriors.

A musky fog enveloped the far reaches of coral burrows, and Marius thought he detected a faint reddish tinge to it. Was this some form of gas weapon? If so, it was wasted against the Astartes, for their armour was proof against such primitive weapons.

The screaming of the towers was quieter in this part of the atoll, for which Marius was profoundly grateful. How the Laer could live under such conditions, surrounded by an excess of noise and colour, thankfully confounded him. To understand the ways of the alien was a dark path that he had no intention of following.

‘Support squads forward!’ he ordered. ‘We need to forge a path quickly. Our brothers are depending on us and I won’t have the Third found wanting!’

Astartes carrying heavy weapons took up positions in the ruins of coral towers and a heavy barrage snatched at the fog, the thumping of heavy-calibre shells forming a dense roar in Marius’s skull.

With suppressing fire laid down, he knew it was time to launch an assault while the enemies’ heads were down. Though he disapproved of Solomon’s reckless ways, sometimes you had no choice but to go up the centre.

‘Kollanus squad! Euidicus squad! Front and centre!’

J
ULIUS SMASHED A
Laer warrior to the ground, the energy field wreathing his massive gauntlet ripping through its silver armour and snapping its snake-like body virtually in two. He and his Terminators were punching a hole clean through the defences of the Laer, having only left a single warrior in the care of the Apothecaries. Though the fighting had been hard, the protection offered by Terminator armour was prodigious, and Julius had revelled in the sensation of power it conferred. To walk through the fire unscathed was what it must be like to be a god, though he chided himself for such a ridiculous thought.

The
Firebird
had touched down a kilometre ahead of them, but from the reports he was hearing over the vox, it sounded as though the resistance of the aliens guarding the temple was fierce. The warriors of the First were not fast, but their pace was relentless and with the support of Ancient Rylanor, they were able to push their way through without difficulty.

Indeed, it felt like the Laer resistance was melting away a little too easily the closer they came to the centre of the atoll. The ground had become rockier and steeper, the perfect terrain to defend against an attacker, so why weren’t the Laer making use of it?

‘Lycaon, what does this feel like to you?’ asked Julius, pausing as he clambered over the steep coral and tried to discern a way onwards. The slopes of coral reared above him in an impenetrable barrier, but the Laer ahead of them had somehow retreated, so there must be a way through.

‘It feels like they aren’t trying very hard to stop us,’ answered Lycaon. ‘I haven’t fired my weapon in minutes.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Not that I’m complaining, though.’

‘There’s something not right about this,’ said Julius. ‘It feels wrong.’

‘Then what are your orders, sir?’

The sound of the screaming towers had grown louder the closer they came to the centre of the atoll, and Julius could see that the curving passages that wound their way upwards through the coral to their objective were growing narrower and narrower.

More suited to a being with a serpentine body, he realised.

The sounds of hissing, screaming and battle were close, and melded into such a cacophony that he wondered that the Laer were not driven mad by them.

‘The
Firebird
has to be around here somewhere,’ said Julius. ‘Spread out and find a way through the coral. Our primarch needs us!’

The sounds of battle were like those described in the old poems of ancient Terra: hyperbolic works filled with florid descriptions of combat that were obviously penned by someone who had never seen a war.

Even amid the chaos of a battle, Julius was thinking of poetry and works of literature, and he resolved to keep a tighter rein on his thoughts. Perhaps Solomon was right and he
was
spending too much time with the remembrancers.

‘Captain!’ shouted Lycaon. ‘Over here!’

Julius turned his attention to his equerry, seeing he had found a previously concealed burrow hole that appeared to lead through the porous mass of coral. The passageway beyond was wide, though it would still be cramped for a warrior clad in Terminator armour, and Julius hoped that it led to their objective.

‘Let’s go, First,’ ordered Julius, setting off at the fastest pace his armour would allow.

Keeping his bolter raised, Julius led his men along the darkened pathway through the coral. Echoes of battle distorted weirdly through the passageway and there was a glistening moistness to the tunnel that made Julius think that they were crawling through the innards of some vast beast.

The unbidden thought suddenly worried him. Were the atolls of the Laer alive? Had anyone thought to check?

He pushed the thought from his mind as he realised it was too late to do anything about it anyway, and he pressed onwards, guided by the sounds of fighting and the light of flames.

Eventually, he saw a dark patch ahead that was crisscrossed by tracer fire and knew they had found the exit. He just hoped it was where they were meant to be. The tunnel narrowed and Julius was forced to use the bulk of his armour and the energy of his power fist to break through into the interior of the atoll.

Julius emerged into the end of a wide valley of pink coral with a monstrous, twin-spired temple that penetrated the clouds at its furthest end. The valley’s edge was fringed with hundreds of screaming, jagged spires that curved inwards so that the valley resembled a toothed wound in the coral.

Clouds of flying Laer warriors flocked around the temple’s upper reaches, and in the centre of the valley Julius could see the heroic form of the primarch battling his way forwards with great sweeps of the golden sword,
Fireblade
. Fulgrim’s eagle-winged helmet shone in the darkness, and Julius felt enormous pride at the sight of his lord.