Fulgrim (38 page)

‘The Emperor is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh,’ said Horus. ‘To him we are tools to be used until blunted and then cast aside. Why else would he leave us and the Crusade to retreat to his dungeons beneath Terra? His apotheosis is already underway and it is up to us to stop it.’

‘I dreamed of one day being like him,’ whispered Fulgrim, ‘of standing at his shoulder and feeling his pride and love for me.’

Horus stepped forward, kneeling before him and taking his hands. ‘All men dream, Fulgrim, but not all men dream equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. For men like us, the dreamers of the day, our dreams are ones of hope, of improvement, of change. Perhaps we were once simply weapons, warriors who knew nothing beyond the art of death, but we have grown, my brother! We are so much more than that now, but the Emperor does not see it. He would abandon his greatest achievements to the darkness of a hostile universe. I know this for a fact, Fulgrim, for I did not simply receive this wisdom, I discovered it for myself after a journey that no one could take for me or spare me.’

‘I cannot hear this, Horus,’ cried Fulgrim, surging to his feet as his flesh threw off the paralysis that had thus far held him immobile. He marched towards the mural of the Emperor and shouted. ‘You have no idea what you are asking me to do!’

‘On the contrary,’ replied Horus, rising to follow him. ‘I know exactly what I am asking you to do. I am asking you to stand with me to defend our birthright. This galaxy is ours by right of conquest and blood, but it is to be given away to grubby politicians and clerks. I know you have seen this, and it must make your blood boil as it does mine. Where were those civilians when it was our warriors dying by the thousand? Where were they when we crossed the span of the galaxy to bring illumination to the lost fragments of humanity? I’ll tell you where! They huddled in their dark and dusty halls, and penned diatribes like this!’

Horus reached down to his desk, snatched up a handful of papers and thrust them into Fulgrim’s hands.

‘What are these?’ he asked.

‘Lies,’ said Horus. ‘They call it the
Lectitio Divinitatus
, and it is spreading through the fleets like a virus. It is a cult that deifies the Emperor and openly worships him as a god! Can you believe it? After all we have done to bring the light of science and reason to these pathetic mortals, they invent a false god and turn to him for guidance.’

‘A god?’

‘Aye, Fulgrim, a god,’ said Horus, his anger spilling out in a surge of violence. The Warmaster roared and hammered his fist into the mural, his gauntlet smashing the painted face of the Emperor to shards of cracked stone. Ruptured blocks fell from the wall to crash upon the metal deck, and Fulgrim released the papers he held, watching them flutter to the floor amid the ruin of the mural.

Fulgrim cried out as his world shattered into shards as fragmented as the rubble of the mural, his love for the Emperor torn from his breast and held up for the dirty, useless thing it was.

Horus came to him and cupped his face in his hands, staring into his eyes with an intensity that was almost fanatical.

‘I need you, my brother,’ pleaded Horus. ‘I cannot do this without you, but you must do nothing against your conscience. My brother, my phoenix, my hope, wing your way through the darkness and defy fortune’s spite. Revive from the ashes and rise!’

Fulgrim met his brother’s stare. ‘What would you have me do?’

EIGHTEEN

Deep Orbital

Excision

Separate Ways

T
HE FLIGHT DECK
of Deep Orbital DS191 was a tangled mess of twisted metal and flames. The greenskins had occupied the orbiting defence platform for some time, and their unique brand of engineering had already begun to take root. Great idols of fanged iron behemoths squatted amid piles of wreckage, and machines that looked like crude fighter planes lay scattered and broken throughout the deck.

Solomon took cover from the chattering hail of gunfire spraying from the rude barricade that had been thrown together, ‘constructed’ was too elegant a word for what the greenskins had built, at the end of the flight deck.

Hundreds of roaring aliens had fired randomly, or waved enormous cleavers at the thirty warriors of the Second when they landed on the flight deck from their Thunderhawks. As part of the Emperor’s Children’s assault, missiles had punched holes through the hull of the orbital with the intent of explosively decompressing the flight deck and allowing Solomon’s Astartes to make an uncontested boarding at this supposedly unoccupied section.

The plan had proceeded without any problems until the tide of wreckage had plugged the holes and hundreds of bellowing, fang-toothed greenskin brutes had charged from the shattered wreckage of their fighters and bombers to attack with mindless ferocity. Wild gunfire ripped through the flight deck. Corkscrewing rockets burst amongst the Astartes, and crude powder charges exploded as hurled grenades burst among the charging Emperor’s Children.

‘Whoever said that the greenskins were primitive obviously never had to fight them,’ shouted Gaius Caphen, as another greasy explosion of flame and black smoke erupted nearby, hurling spars of twisted metal into the air.

Solomon had to agree, having fought the greenskin savages on many occasions. It seemed as though there was no star system throughout the galaxy that had not been infested by the vermin of the greenskins.

‘Any sign of our reinforcements?’ he shouted.

‘Not yet,’ returned Caphen. ‘We’re supposed to be getting extra squads from the First and Third, but nothing so far.’

Solomon ducked as a rocket skidded from the knotted pile of metal he sheltered behind, with a deafening clang, and ricocheted straight up, before detonating in a shower of flame and smoke. Burning shrapnel fell in a patter of scorching scads of metal.

‘Don’t worry!’ cried Solomon. ‘Julius and Marius won’t let us down.’

At least they better not, he thought grimly, as he bleakly considered the possibility of being overrun. With the unexpected counter-attack by the aliens, he and his warriors would be trapped on the flight deck unless they could fight their way through hundreds of shouting enemy warriors. Solomon wouldn’t have given the matter a second thought against any other foe, but the greenskin warriors were monstrous brutes whose strength was very nearly the equal of an Astartes warrior. Their central nervous systems were so primitive that they took a great deal of punishment before they lay down and stopped fighting.

A greenskin warrior was not the equal of an Astartes by any means, but they had enough raw aggression to make up for it, and they had numbers on their side.

The Callinedes system was an Imperial collection of worlds under threat from the greenskins, and to begin the liberation of those worlds that had already fallen, the defence orbitals had to be won back.

This was the first stage in the Imperial relief of Callinedes, and would see the reuniting of the Emperor’s Children and the Iron Hands as they assaulted the enemy strongholds on Callinedes IV.

Solomon risked a quick glance over the lip of the smoking metal, as he heard a strident bellow sounding from behind the spars of metal and wreckage that the greenskins were using for cover. Solomon had no knowledge of the greenskin language (or even if they had anything that could be described as language), but the warrior in him recognised the barbaric cadences of a war speech. Whatever passed for greenskin leadership was clearly readying their warriors for an attack. Tribal fetishes and glyph poles hung with grisly trophies bobbed behind the rusted metal and Solomon knew they were in the fight of their lives.

‘Come on, damn you,’ he whispered. Without support from Julius or Marius, he would need to order a retreat to the assault craft and concede defeat, a prospect that had little appeal to his warrior code. ‘Any word yet?’

‘Nothing yet,’ hissed Caphen. ‘They’re not coming are they?’

‘They’ll come,’ promised Solomon as the chanting bellows from ahead suddenly swelled in volume and the crash of metal and iron-shod boots erupted from beyond.

Gaius Caphen and Solomon shared a moment of perfect understanding, and rose to their feet with their bolters at the ready.

‘Looks like they’re going up the centre!’ shouted Caphen.

‘Bastards!’ yelled Solomon. ‘That’s my plan! Second, open fire!’

A torrent of bolter fire reached out to the greenskins, and the front line was scythed down by rippling series of explosions. Sharp, hard detonations echoed from the metal walls of the flight deck as the Astartes fired volley after volley into the charging enemy, but no matter how many fell, it only seemed to spur the survivors to a greater frenzy.

The aliens came in a tide of green flesh, rusted armour and battered leather. Red eyes like furnace coals glittered with feral intelligence, and they bellowed their uncouth war cries like wild beasts. They fired noisy, blazing weapons from the hip or brandished mighty, toothed blades with smoke belching motors. Some wore armour attached with thick leather straps, or simply nailed to their thick hides, while others wore great, horned helmets fringed with thick furs.

A huge brute in wheezing, mechanical exo-armour led the charge, bolter shells sparking and ricocheting from his protective suit. Solomon could see the rippling heat haze of a protective energy field sheathing the monstrous chieftain, though how such a primitive race could manufacture or maintain such technology baffled him.

The bolters of the Second wreaked fearful havoc amongst the aliens, blasting sprays of stinking red blood from great, bloodied craters in green flesh, or blowing limbs clean off in explosions of gore.

‘Ready swords!’ shouted Solomon as he saw that no matter how great the carnage worked upon the charge, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

He put aside his bolter and drew his sword and pistol as the first greenskin warrior smashed its way through the rusted girders, not even bothering to go around. Solomon swayed aside from a blow that would have hacked him in two, and swung his sword in a double-handed grip for his opponent’s neck. His sword bit the full breadth of his hand into the greenskin’s neck, but instead of dropping dead, the greenskin bellowed and savagely clubbed him to the ground.

Solomon rolled to avoid a stamping foot that would surely have crushed his skull, and lashed out once more. This time, his blade hacked through the beast’s ankle, and it collapsed in a thrashing pile of limbs. Still it tried to kill him, but Solomon quickly picked himself up and stomped his boot down on the greenskin’s throat, before putting a pair of bolt shells through its skull.

Gaius Caphen struggled with a greenskin a head taller than him, its great, motorised axe slashing for his head with every stroke. Solomon shot it in the face and ducked as yet another greenskin came at him. All shape to the battle was lost as each warrior fought his own private war, all skill reduced to survival and killing.

It couldn’t end this way. A lifetime of glory and honour couldn’t end at the hands of the greenskins. He had fought side by side with some of the Imperium’s greatest heroes, and there was no way he was going to die fighting a foe as inglorious as these brutes.

Unfortunately, he thought wryly,
they
didn’t seem to know that.

Where in the name of Terra were Julius and Marius?

He saw a pair of his warriors borne to the deck by a pack of howling greenskins, a roaring axe hacking their Mark IV plate to splintered ruins. Another was ripped almost in two by a close range burst from a monstrous rotary cannon that was carried by a greenskin as though it weighed no more than a pistol.

Even as he watched these tragedies play out, a rusted cleaver smote him in the chest and hurled him backwards. His armour split under the impact and he coughed blood, looking up into the snarling, fanged gorge of the greenskin leader. The hissing, wheezing armour enlarged its burly physique, its muscles powered by mighty pistons and roaring bellows.

Solomon rolled aside as the cleaver arced towards him, crying out as splintered ends of bone ground together in his chest. Momentary pain paralysed him, but even as he awaited another attack, he heard the sound of massed bolter fire and the high-pitched whine of a hundred chainswords.

The greenskin before him looked up in response to the sound, and Solomon did not waste his opportunity, unloading his weapon full in its face, pulping its thickly-boned skull in a torrent of explosive shells.

Its metal exo-skeleton kept it on its feet, but suddenly the greenskin force was in disarray as newly arrived Emperor’s Children tore into the battle, delivering point blank shots from bolt pistols, or cutting limbs and heads from bodies with precisely aimed sword blows.

In moments, the fighting was done as the last pockets of greenskin warriors were isolated into smaller and smaller knots of resistance, and were mercilessly gunned down by the new arrivals. Solomon watched the extermination with cold admiration, for the killings were achieved with a perfection he had not seen in some time.

Gaius Caphen, bloodied and battered, but alive, helped him to his feet, and Solomon smiled despite the pain in his cracked ribs.

‘I told you Julius and Marius wouldn’t let us down,’ he said.

Caphen shook his head as the captains who led the relief force marched over towards them. ‘That’s not who came.’

Solomon looked up in confusion as the nearest warrior removed his helm.

‘I heard you could use some help, and thought we’d lend a hand,’ said Saul Tarvitz. Behind Tarvitz, Solomon saw the unmistakable swagger of the swordsman, Lucius.

‘What about the Third and the First?’ he hissed, the fact that his battle-brothers had forsaken the Second more painful than any wound.

Tarvitz shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t know. We were beginning our push to the main control centre and heard your request for support.’

‘It’s a good thing we did,’ said Lucius, his scarred face twisted in amusement. ‘Looks like you needed the help.’