Galaxy in Flames (35 page)

Looking at the size of the army arrayed for the final assault, Tarvitz knew that there would be no holding against it.

This was the endgame.

T
ERMINATOR ARMOUR WAS
huge. It made a man into a walking tank, but what it added in protection, it lost in speed. Abaddon was skilful and could fight almost as fast as any other Astartes while clad in its thick plates.

But ‘almost’ wasn’t good enough when life or death was at stake.

Chunks of rubble spilled into the parliament house as Abaddon battered his way back inside, the brutal high-shouldered shape of his Terminator armour wreathed in chalky plaster dust. As Abaddon smashed his way back inside, he passed beneath a sagging portico that supported a vast swathe of sculpted marble statuary above. Loken struck out at one of the cracked pillars supporting the portico, the fluted support smashing apart under the power of the blow.

The parliament filled with dust as the huge slabs above came down on Abaddon, the entire weight of the statuary collapsing on top of the first captain. Loken could hear Abaddon roaring in anger as the stonework thundered down in a flurry of rubble and destruction.

He turned away from the avalanche of debris and fought his way through the billowing clouds of dust towards the centre of the parliament building.

He saw Torgaddon and Horus Aximand upon the central stage.

Torgaddon was on his knees, blood raining from his body and his limbs shattered. Aximand held his sword upraised, ready to deliver the deathblow.

He saw what would happen next even as he screamed at his former brother to stay his hand. Even over the crash of rubble being displaced as Abaddon forced himself free of the collapsed statues, he heard Aximand’s words with a terrible clarity.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Aximand.

And the sword slashed down against Torgaddon’s neck.

T
HE PLASMA BOLT
was like a finger of the sun, reaching down from the guns of the
Dies Irae
and smashing through the wall of the Warsingers’ Temple, the liquid fire boring deep into the ground. With a sound like the city dying, one wall of the temple collapsed as dust and fire filled the air and shards of green stone flew like knives. Warriors melted in the heat blast or died beneath the heaps of stone that collapsed around them.

Tarvitz fell to his knees on the winding stairway that climbed to the upper reaches of the temple. A choking mass of burning ash billowed around him and he fought his way upwards, knowing that hundreds of the last loyalist Space Marines were dead. The sound was appalling, the roar of the collapsing temple stark against the silence of the traitors that surrounded the temple on all sides.

A body fell past him, one of the Luna Wolves, his arm blown off by weapons fire hammering the upper floors.

‘To the roof!’ ordered Tarvitz, not knowing if anyone could hear him over the cacophony of the Titan’s guns. ‘Abandon the nave!’

Tarvitz reached the gallery running the length of the temple, finding it crammed with Space Marines, their Legion colours unrecognisable beneath layers of grime and blood. Such distinctions were irrelevant, Tarvitz realized, for they were one band of brothers fighting for the same cause.

Above this level was the roof, and Tarvitz spotted Sergeant Raetherin, a solid line officer and veteran of the Murder campaign.

‘Sergeant!’ he yelled. ‘Report!’

Raetherin looked up from the window through which he was aiming his bolter. He had caught a glancing blow to the side of his head and his face streamed with blood

‘Not good, captain!’ he replied. ‘We’ve held them this long, but we won’t hold another attack. There’s too many of them and that Titan is going to blow us away any second.’

Tarvitz nodded and risked a glance through a shattered loophole to the ground far below, feeling his hate for these traitors, warriors for whom notions of honour and loyalty were non-existent, swell as he saw the multitude of bodies sprawled around the palace. He knew these dead warriors, having led them in battle these last few months and more than anything, he knew what they represented.

They were the galaxy’s best soldiers, the saviours of the human race and the chosen of the Emperor. Their lives of heroic service and sacrifice had been ended by brute treachery and he had never felt so helpless.

‘No,’ he said, as resolve filled him. ‘No, we will not falter.’

Tarvitz met Raetherin’s eyes and said. ‘The Titan is going to hit the same corner of the temple again, higher up, and then the traitors are going to storm us. Get the men back and make ready for the assault.’

He knew the traitors were just waiting for the temple to fall so they could storm in and kill the loyalists at their leisure. This was not just a battle; it was the Warmaster demonstrating his superiority.

Massive caliber gunfire thundered from the
Dies Irae
, an awesome storm of fire and death that smashed the plaza outside the temple, blasting apart loyalists in great columns of fire.

Infernal heat battered against the temple, and a hot gale blew through the gallery.

‘Is that the best you’ve got?’ he yelled in anger. ‘You’ll never kill us all!’

His warriors looked at him with savage light in their eyes. The words had sounded hollow in his ears, spoken out of rage rather than bravado, but he saw the effect it had and smiled, remembering that he had a duty to these men.

He had a duty to make their last moments mean something.

Suddenly, the air ripped apart as the Titan’s plasma gun fired and white heat filled the gallery, throwing Tarvitz to the floor. Molten fragments of stone sprayed him and warriors fell, broken and burning around him. Blinded and deafened, Tarvitz dragged himself away from the destruction. Hot air boomed back into the vacuum blasted by the plasma and it was like a burning wind of destruction come to scour the loyalists from the face of Isstvan III.

He rolled onto his back, seeing that the bolt had ripped right through the temple roof, leaving a huge glowing-edged hole, like a monstrous bite mark, through one corner of the temple. Fully a third of the temple’s mass had collapsed in a great rockslide of liquefied stone, flooding out like a long tongue of jade.

Tarvitz tried to shake the ringing from his ears and forced his eyes to focus.

Through the miasma of heat, he could hear a war-cry arise from the enemy warriors.

A similar clamour rose from the other side of the temple, where the World Eaters and the Emperor’s Children were arrayed among the ruins of the palace.

The attack was coming.

L
OKEN DROPPED TO
his knees in horror at the sight of Torgaddon’s head parting from his shoulders. The blood fountained slowly, the silver sheen of the sword wreathed in a spray of red.

He screamed his friend’s name, watching as his body crashed to the floor of the stage and smashed the wooden lectern to splinters as it fell. His eyes met those of Horus Aximand and he saw a sorrow that matched his own echoed in this brother’s eyes.

His choler surged, hot and urgent, but his anger was not directed at Horus Aximand, but at the warrior who pulled himself from the rubble behind him. He turned and forced himself to his feet, seeing Abaddon pulling himself from under the collapsed portico. The first captain had extricated himself from beneath slabs of marble that would have crushed even an armoured Astartes, but he was still trapped and immobile from the waist down.

Loken gave vent to an animal cry of loss and rage and ran towards Abaddon. He leapt, driving a knee down onto Abaddon’s arm and pinning it with all his weight and strength to the rubble. Abaddon’s free hand reached up and grabbed Loken’s wrist as Loken drove his chainsword towards Abaddon’s face.

The two warriors froze, locked face to face in a battle that would determine who lived and who died. Loken gritted his teeth and forced his arm down against Abaddon’s grip.

Abaddon looked into Loken’s face and saw the hatred and loss there.

‘There’s hope for you yet, Loken,’ he snarled.

Loken forced the roaring point of the sword down with more strength than he thought could ever inhabit one body. The betrayal of the Astartes – their very essence – flashed through Loken’s mind and he found the target of his hatred embodied in Abaddon’s violent features.

The chainblade’s teeth whirred. Abaddon forced the point down and it ripped into his breastplate. Sparks sprayed as Loken pushed the point onwards, through thick layers of ceramite. The sword juddered, but Loken kept it true.

He knew where it would break through, straight through the bone shield that protected Abaddon’s chest cavity and then into his heart.

Even as he savoured the idea of Abaddon’s death, the first captain smiled and pushed his hand upwards. Astartes battle plate enhanced a warrior’s strength, but Terminator armour boosted it to levels beyond belief, and Abaddon called upon that power to dislodge Loken.

Abaddon surged upwards from the rubble with a roar of anger and slammed his energized fist into Loken’s chest. His armour cracked open and the bone shield protecting his own chest cavity shattered into fragments. He staggered away from Abaddon, managing to keep his feet for a few seconds before his legs gave out and he collapsed to his knees, blood dribbling from his cracked lips in bloody ropes.

Abaddon towered over him and Loken watched numbly as Horus Aximand joined him. Abaddon’s eyes were filled with triumph, Aximand’s with regret. Abaddon took the bloody sword from Aximand’s hand with a smile. ‘This killed Torgaddon and it seems only fitting that I use it to kill you.’

The first captain raised the sword and said, ‘You had your chance, Loken. Think about that while you die.’

Loken met Abaddon’s unforgiving gaze, seeing the madness that lurked behind his eyes like a mob of angry daemons, and waited for death.

But before the blow landed, the parliament building exploded as something vast and colossal, like a primal god of war bestriding the world smashed through the back wall. Loken had a fleeting glimpse of a monstrous iron foot, easily the width of the building itself crashing through the stonework and demolishing the building as it went.

He looked up in time to see a mighty red god, towering and immense striding through the remains of the Choral City, its battlements bristling with weapons and its mighty head twisted in a snarl of merciless anger.

Rubble and debris cascaded from the roof as the
Dies Irae
smashed the parliament building into a splintered ruin of crushed rock, and Loken smiled as the building collapsed around him.

Tremendous impacts smashed the marble floor and the noise of the building’s destruction was like the sweetest music he had ever heard, as he felt the world go black around him.

S
AUL
T
ARVITZ LOOKED
around him at the hundred Space Marines crammed into the tiny square of cover that was all that remained of the Warsingers’ temple. They had sat awaiting the final attack of the traitors for what had seemed like an age, but had been no more than thirty minutes.

‘Why don’t they attack?’ asked Nero Vipus, one of the few Luna Wolves still alive.

‘I don’t know,’ said Tarvitz, ‘but whatever the reason I’m thankful for it.’

Vipus nodded, his face lined with a sadness that had nothing to do with the final battles of the Precentor’s Palace.

‘Still no word from Garviel or Tarik?’ asked Tarvitz, already knowing the answer.

‘No,’ said Vipus, ‘nothing.’

‘I’m sorry, my friend.’

Vipus shook his head. ‘No, I won’t mourn them, not yet. They might have succeeded.’

Tarvitz said nothing, leaving the warrior to his dream and turned his attention once again to the terrifying scale of the Warmaster’s army. Ten thousand traitors stood immobile in the ruins of the Choral City. World Eaters chanted alongside Emperor’s Children while the Sons of Horus and the Death Guard waited in long firing lines.

The colossal form of the
Dies Irae
had thankfully stopped firing, the monstrous Titan marching to tower over the Sirenhold like a brazen fortress.

‘They want to make sure we’re beaten,’ said Tarvitz, ‘to plant a flag on our corpses.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Vipus, ‘but we gave them the fight of their lives did we not?’

‘That we did,’ said Tarvitz, ‘that we did, and even once we’re gone, Garro will tell the Legions of what they’ve done here. The Emperor will send an army bigger than anything the Great Crusade has ever seen.’

Vipus looked out over the Warmaster’s army and said, ‘He’ll have to.’

A
BADDON SURVEYED THE
ruins of the parliament house, its once magnificent structure a heaped pile of shattered stone. His face bled from a dozen cuts and his skin was an ugly, bruised purple, but he was alive.

Beside him, Horus Aximand slumped against a ruined statue, his breathing labored and his shoulder twisted at an unnatural angle. Abaddon had pulled them both from the wreckage of the building, but looking at Aximand’s downcast face, he knew that they had not escaped without scars of a different kind.

But it was done. Loken and Torgaddon were dead.

He had thought to feel savage joy at the idea, but instead he felt only emptiness, a strange void that yawned in his soul like a vessel that could never be filled.

Abaddon dismissed the thought and spoke into the vox. ‘Warmaster,’ he said, ‘it is over.’

‘What have we done, Ezekyle?’ whispered Aximand.

‘What needed to be done,’ said Abaddon. ‘The Warmaster ordered it and we obeyed.’

‘They were our brothers,’ said Aximand and Abaddon was astonished to find tears spilling down his brother’s cheeks.

‘They were traitors to the Warmaster, let that be an end to it.’

Aximand nodded, but Abaddon could see the seed of doubt take root in his expression.

He lifted Aximand and supported him as they made their way towards the waiting stormbird that would take them from this cursed place and back to the
Vengeful Spirit
.

The traitors within the Mournival were dead, but he had not forgotten the look of regret he had seen on Aximand’s face.