Galaxy in Flames (29 page)

That had been the last anyone had heard of the Death Guard in the Choral City.

Though from the haphazardly aimed artillery shells that landed daily in the traitors’ camps, it was clear that some loyal Death Guard still resisted Mortarion’s efforts to exterminate them.

‘I only hope we live as long,’ said Tarvitz. ‘We’re running low on supplies and ammunition. Soon we’ll start running low on Astartes.’

‘As long as one is alive, captain, we’ll fight,’ promised Loken. ‘Horus picked some unfortunate enemies in you and me. We’ll make him regret ever taking us on.’

‘Then we’ll speak again after Angron’s been sent scurrying,’ said Tarvitz.

‘Until then.’

Loken dropped down into the dome, leaving Tarvitz alone for a moment to look across the blasted city. How long had it been since he had been surrounded by anything other than the nightmarish place the Choral City had become? Two months? Three?

Ashen skies and smoldering ruins surrounded the palace for as far as the eye could see in all directions, the city resembling the kind of hell the Isstvanians themselves might once have believed in.

Tarvitz shook the thought from his mind.

‘There are no hells, no gods, no eternal rewards or punishments,’ he told himself.

L
UCIUS COULD HEAR
the killing. He could read the sound of it as though it were written down before him like sheet music. He knew the difference between the war-cries of a World Eater and those of a Son of Horus, and the variance between the tonal quality of a volley of bolter fire launched to support an attack or to defend an obstacle.

The chapel Saul had tasked him with defending was a strange place to be the site of the Great Crusade’s last stand. Not so long ago it had been the nerve centre of an enemy regime, but now its makeshift defences were the only thing holding off the far superior traitor forces.

‘Sounds like a nasty one,’ said Brother Solathen of Squad Nasicae, hunched down by the sill of the chapel window. ‘They might break through.’

‘Our friend Loken can handle them,’ sneered Lucius. ‘Angron wants to get some more kills. That’s all he wants. Listen? Can you hear that?’

Solathen cocked his head as he listened. Astartes hearing, like most of their senses, was finely honed, but Solathen didn’t seem to recognize Lucius’s point. ‘Hear what, captain?’

‘Chainaxes. But they’re not cutting into ceramite or other chainblades; they’re cutting into stone and steel. The World Eaters can’t get to grips with the Sons of Horus over there, so they’re trying to hack through the barricades.’

Solathen nodded and said, ‘Captain Tarvitz knows what he’s doing. The World Eaters only know one way to fight. We can use that to our advantage.’

Lucius frowned at Solathen’s praise of Saul Tarvitz, aggrieved that his own contributions to the defences appeared to have been overlooked. Hadn’t he killed Vardus Praal? Hadn’t he managed to get his men to safety when the virus bombs and the firestorm had hit?

He turned his bitter expression away and stared through the chapel window across the plaza still stained dark with charred ruins. Amazingly the chapel window was still intact, although its panes had been distorted by the heat of the firestorm, bulging and discoloured with vein-like streaks that reminded Lucius of an enormous insectoid eye.

The chapel itself was more bizarre inside than out, constructed from curved blocks of green stone in looming biological shapes that looked as though a cloud of noxious-looking fumes had suddenly petrified as it billowed upwards. The altar was a great spreading membrane of paler purple stone, like a complex internal organ opened up and pinned for study against the far wall.

‘The World Eaters aren’t the ones you should be worried about, brother,’ continued Lucius idly. ‘It’s us.’

‘Us, captain?’

‘The Emperor’s Children,’ said Lucius. ‘You know how our Legion fights. They’re the dangerous ones out there.’

Most of the surviving loyalist Emperor’s Children were holding the chapel. Tarvitz had taken a force to cover the nearest gate, but several squads were arrayed among the odd organ-like protrusions on the floor below. Squad Nasicae had only four members left, including Lucius himself, and they headed the assault element of the survivors’ force alone with Squads Quemondil and Raetherin.

Tarvitz had deployed Sergeant Kaitheron on the roof of the chapel with his support squad as well as the majority of the Emperor’s Children’s remaining heavy weapons. Astartes from the tactical squads were at the chapel windows or in cover further inside. The rest of Lucius’s troops were stationed in cover outside the chapel, among the barricades of fallen stone slabs they had set up in the early days of the siege.

Two thousand Space Marines, enough for an entire battle zone of the Great Crusade, were defending a single approach to the palace with the Warsingers’ Chapel as the lynchpin of their line.

Movement caught Lucius’s eye and he peered through the distorted window into the blackened buildings across from him. There! A glimpse of gold.

He smiled, knowing full well how the Emperor’s Children fought.

‘Contact!’ he announced to the rest of his force. ‘Third block west, second floor.’

‘On it,’ replied Sergeant Kaitheron, a no-nonsense weapons officer who treated war as a mathematical problem to be solved with angles and weight of fire. Lucius heard the squads moving on the roof, training weapons on the area he had indicated.

‘West front, make ready!’ ordered Lucius. Several of the tactical squads hurried into firing positions along Lucius’s side of the chapel.

The tension was delicious, and Lucius felt a surge of ecstatic sensation crawling along his veins as he heard the song of death building in his blood. A raw, toe-to-toe conflict meant opportunities to exercise perfection in war, but to make it truly memorable it needed these moments of feverish anticipation when the full weight of potential death and glory surged around his body.

‘Got them,’ called Kaitheron from the chapel roof. ‘Emperor’s Children. Major force over several floors. Armour too. Land Raiders and Predators. Lascannon, to the fore! Heavy bolters, cover the open ground mid-range and overlap!’

‘Eidolon,’ said Lucius.

Lucius could see them now, hundreds of Astartes in the purple and gold of the Legion he idolised, gathering in the dead eyes of ruined structures.

‘They’ll get the support into position first,’ said Lucius. ‘Then they’ll use the Land Raiders to bring the troops in. Mid- to close-range the infantry will move in. Hold your fire until then.’

Tracks rumbled as the Land Raiders, resplendent with gilded eagle’s wings and frescoes of war on their armour-plated sides, ground through the shattered ruins of the Choral City. Each was full of Emperor’s Children, the galaxy’s elite, primed by Eidolon and Fulgrim to treat the men they had once called brothers as foes worthy only of extermination.

To Eidolon, the survivors of the first wave were ignorant and mindless, deserving only death, but they had reckoned without Lucius. He licked his lips at the thought of once again facing the warriors of his Legion; warriors worthy of the name. Enemies he could respect.
Or earn the respect of…

Lucius could practically see the enemy squads deploying with such rapid confidence that they looked more like players in a complex parade-ground move than soldiers at war.

He could taste the moment when the battle would really begin.

He wanted it right there and then, but he also knew how much more delicious the taste of battle was when the timing was perfect.

Windows shattered as fire from the tanks ripped through the chapel, kicking up shards of marble and glass.

‘Hold!’ ordered Lucius. Despite everything, his Astartes were still Emperor’s Children and they would not break ranks like undisciplined World Eaters.

He risked a glance through the splintered glass to see the Land Raiders churning up the marble of the plaza. Predator battle tanks followed them, acting as mobile gun platforms that blew great shuddering chunks from the chapel’s battlements. Lascannon fire streaked back and forth, Kaitheron’s men attempting to cripple the advancing vehicles and the Land Raiders’ sponson-mounted weapons trying to pick off the Astartes on the roof.

A Predator tank slewed to a halt as its track was blown off and another vehicle burst into multicoloured flames. Purple-armoured bodies tumbled past the window; corpses served as an appetizer to the great feast of death.

Lucius drew his sword, feeling the music build inside him until he felt he could no longer contain it. The familiar hum of his sword’s energy field became part of the rhythm and he felt himself slipping into the duelist’s dance, the weaving stream of savagery he had perfected over centuries of killing. How many men were in the assault? Certainly a large chunk of Eidolon’s command.

Lucius had fewer men, but this battle was all about winning glory and spectacle.

A tank round shot through a window and burst against the ceiling, showering them in fragments and smoke.

Lucius saw streaks of bolter fire from the palace entrance – Tarvitz was drawing Eidolon in and Eidolon had no choice but to dance to his tune. He heard a musical clang and saw the assault ramps of the Land Raiders slam open and Lucius glimpsed the close-packed armoured bodies within.

‘Go!’ he yelled and the jump packs of the assault units opened up behind him, catapulting the warriors into battle. Lucius followed in their wake, vaulting through the chapel window. Squad Nasicae came after him and the rest of his warriors followed in turn.

Battle: the dance of war. Lucius knew that against an enemy like Eidolon, there would be no time for anything but the most intense applications of his martial perfection. His consciousness shifted and everything was snapped into wondrous focus, every colour becoming bright and dazzling and every sound blaring and discordant along his nerves.

The duelist’s dance took him into the enemy as battle erupted in all its perfectly marshaled chaos around him. Heavy fire streaked down from the roof and Land Raiders twisted on their tracks to bring their guns to bear on the Emperor’s Children charging from the chapel.

The Space Marines outside the chapel charged at the same instant, and Eidolon’s force was attacked from two sides at once.

Lucius ducked blades and bolts, his sword lashing like a serpent’s tongue. Eidolon’s force reeled. Squad Quelmondil battled ferociously with the enemy warriors emerging from the nearest Land Raider. He danced past them, savage joy kicking in his heart and he rolled under a spray of bolter fire to come up and stab his blade through the abdomen of an enemy sergeant.

Death was an end in itself, expressing Lucius’s superiority through the lives he took, but he had a higher purpose. He knew what he had to do, and his strangely distorted senses sought out the glint of gold or the flutter of a banner, anything indicating the presence of one of Fulgrim’s chosen.

Then he saw it; armour trimmed in black instead of gold, a helmet worked into a stern, grimacing skull: Chaplain Charmosian.

The black-armoured warrior stood proud of the top hatch of a Land Raider, directing the battle with sharp chops of his eagle-winged crozius. Lucius grinned manically, setting off through the battle to face Charmosian and slay him in a fight worthy of the Legion’s epics.

‘Charmosian!’ he yelled, his voice sounding like the most vibrant music imaginable. ‘Keeper of the Will! I am Lucius, once your brother, now your nemesis!’

Charmosian turned his skull helmet towards Lucius and said, ‘I know who you are!’

The chaplain clambered from the hatch and stood on top of the Land Raider, daring Lucius to approach him. Charmosian was a battlefield leader and to fulfill that role he needed the respect of the Legion, respect that could only be earned fighting from the front.

He would be a worthy foe, but that wasn’t why Lucius had sought him out.

Lucius leapt onto the Land Raider’s track mounting and charged up its glacis until he was face to face with Charmosian. Bolter fire flew in all directions, but it was irrelevant.

This was the only battle in Lucius’s mind.

‘We taught you too much pride,’ said Charmosian, bringing his lethal crozius around in a strike designed to crush Lucius’s chest. He brought his blade up to deflect the crozius, and the dance entered a new and urgent phase. Charmosian was good, one of the Legion’s best, but Lucius had spent many years training for a fight such as this.

The chaplain’s crozius was too heavy to block full-on, so the swordsman let it slide from his blade as Charmosian swung at him time and time again, frustrating him into putting more strength into his blows. A little longer. A few more moments, and Lucius would have his chance.

He loved the way Charmosian hated him, feeling it as something bright and refreshing.

Lucius could read the pattern of Charmosian’s attacks and laughed as he saw the clumsy intent written over every blow. Charmosian wanted to kill Lucius with one almighty stroke, but his crozius rose too far, held too long inert as the chaplain gathered his strength.

Lucius lunged, his sword sweeping out in a high cut that slashed through the chaplain’s upraised arms. The crozius tumbled to the ground and Charmosian roared in pain as his arms from the elbows down fell with it.

The battle raged around the scene and Lucius let the noise and spectacle of it fill his over-stimulated senses. The battle was around him, and his victory was all that mattered.

‘You know who I am,’ said Lucius. ‘Your last thought is of defeat.’

Charmosian tried to speak but before the words were out Lucius spun his sword in a wide arc and Charmosian’s head was sliced neatly from his shoulders.

Crimson sprayed across the gold of the Land Raider’s hull. Lucius caught the head as it spun through the air and held it high so the whole battlefield could see it.

Around him, thousands of the Emperor’s Children fought to the death as Eidolon’s force, hit from two sides, reeled against the palace defences and fell back. Tarvitz led the counter-strike and Eidolon’s attack was melting away.

He laughed as he saw Eidolon’s command tank, a Land Raider festooned with victory banners, rise up over a knot of rubble as it retreated from the fighting.