Helsreach (34 page)

Names, professions, husbands and wives and children…

‘These are the first colonists.’

‘Yes, Reclusiarch.’

‘The settlers of Helsreach. The founders. This is their charter?’

‘It is. From when the great hive was no more than a village by the shore of the Tempest Ocean. These are the men and women that laid the temple’s first foundations.’

I let my gloved hand come close to the humming stasis field shielding the ancient cloth document. Parchment would have been a rare luxury to the first colonists, with the jungle and its trees so far from here. It stands to reason they would have recorded their achievements on cloth paper.

Thousands of years ago, Imperial peasants walked the ashen soil here and laid the first stone bones of what would become a great basilica to house the devotions of an entire city. Deeds remembered throughout the millennia, with their evidence for all to see.

‘You seem pensive,’ she tells me.

‘What is the book?’

‘The log from a vessel called the
Truth’s Tenacity.
It was the colonisation seeding ship that brought the settlers to Helsreach. The four pillars house a void shield generator system, protecting the tome. This is the Major Altar. Sermons are given here, among the city’s most precious relics.’

I look at the tome’s curled, age-browned pages. Then at the archive banner once more.

Last of all, I replace my helm, coating my senses in the selective vision of targeting sights and filtered sounds.

‘You have my thanks, prioress. I appreciate what you have shown me here.’

‘Am I to expect any more of your kind arriving to bolster us, Astartes?’

I think, for a moment, of Jurisian, bringing the Ordinatus Armageddon overland, uncrewed, at minimal power and of little to no use once it arrives.

‘One more. He returns to join us and fight by our sides.’

‘Then I bid you welcome to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, Reclusiarch. How do you plan to defend this holy place?’

‘We are past the point of retreat now, Sindal. No finesse, no tactics, no long speeches to rally the faint of heart and those that fear the end. I plan to kill until I am killed, because that is all that remains for us here.’

Both the Reclusiarch and the prioress turned at the pounding upon the door.

Grimaldus blink-clicked the rune to bring his vox channels live again, but it wasn’t any of his brothers seeking his attention.

Prioress Sindal waved her hand in a magnanimous gesture, as if there were a crowd to impress. ‘Do come in.’

The great metal-wrought doors rumbled open on clean but heavy hinges. Eight men stood framed by the doors and the austere corridor beyond. Each of them bore a filthy share of blood, mud, soot and oil stains. They carried lasguns with the practiced ease of men who had become utterly familiar with the weapons, and all but two of them wore dirty blue dockworkers’ overalls. One of those that did not was dressed in the robes of a priest, but not the cream and blue weave of the temple’s own residents. He was from off-world.

The leader of the group raised his goggles, letting them clack back on the top of his helmet. He regarded the knight with wide eyes.

‘They said you would be here,’ the storm-trooper said. ‘I beg the many forgivings of this holy place for my intrusion, but I bring news, yes? Do not be angry. The vox is still playing many unamusing games and I could not speak with anyone in any other way.’

‘Speak, Legionnaire,’ said Grimaldus.

‘The beasts, they are coming in great force. Many are not far behind us, and I have heard vox-chatter that Invigilata is leaving the city.’

‘Why would they leave us?’ the prioress asked, horrified.

‘They would quit the city at once,’ Grimaldus admitted, ‘if Princeps Zarha was gone. Mechanicus politics.’

‘She is gone, Reclusiarch,’ Andrej finished. ‘An hour ago, we saw
Stormherald
die.’

Behind the Guardsman, a warrior-maiden in the white power armour of the Order of the Argent Shroud caught her breath, staring at the prioress with her features flushed.

‘Prioress!’

‘Take a breath, Sister Maralin.’

‘We’ve received word from the 101
st
Steel Legion! Invigilata’s Titans are abandoning Helsreach!’

Andrej looked at the newcomer as if she had announced that gravity was a myth. He shook his head slowly, a deep and solemn pity written across his face.

‘You are late, little girl.’

The first wave to break against the walls was not a horde of the enemy.

Close-range vox detected them first, with reports of elements from three Steel Legion regiments engaged in panicked retreat. Grimaldus responded with the temple’s vox-systems, boosted far beyond what the squad-to-squad comms systems were currently capable of.

He gave the order to any Helsreach forces receiving the message to fall back to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, abandoning any further struggle to hold the few remaining sectors in the Ecclesiarchy District. Several lieutenants and captains sent affirmative responses in reply, including a captain of the hive militia still leading over a hundred men.

The fleeing Imperials began to arrive less than an hour later.

Grimaldus stood with Bayard at the gates, looking out into the city. A dark-hulled Baneblade command tank rolled past, guided into the graveyard sector by a platoon of Guardsmen waving directions to the driver. Behind it, a cadre of Leman Russ battle tanks with various turret weapons trundled in loose formation. Mingling between the rolling armour and trailing behind were several hundred Legionnaires, ochre-clad and visibly weary. Wounded were being stretchered by their fellows in serious numbers, and there were plenty of wails and moans calling out over the grind of tank engines.

Two soldiers passed by the watching knights, bearing the writhing body of a junior officer on a cloth stretcher. The man had lost an arm and a leg, at the elbow and knee respectively. His face was a contorted mess of whatever he really looked like, his visage ruined by the pain flowing through him.

One of the stretcher-bearers nodded to Grimaldus as he passed, and muttered a respectful ‘Reclusiarch.’

The Templar nodded back.

‘Fought with them?’ Bayard asked over the vox.

‘Desert Vultures. I was with them when the first walls fell. Good men, all.’

‘Very few left,’ Bayard said, a strange edge to his voice.

Grimaldus turned his skulled face to the Champion. ‘There will be enough. Have faith in your brothers’ blades, Bayard.’

‘I have faith. I am sanguine with my fate, Chaplain.’

‘My rank is Reclusiarch. Use it.’

‘By your will, brother, of course. But we stand vigil over the city’s death with a handful of bleeding humans, Reclusiarch. I am sanguine, but I am also a realist.’

Grimaldus’s vox-snarl drew stares from the soldiers passing nearby. ‘Have faith in the people of this city, Champion. Such condescension is beneath you. We are the last guardians of the relics prized by the first of Armageddon’s colonists. These people are fighting for more than their homes and lives. They are fighting for their ancestors’ honour, on the holiest ground in the entire world. The survivors of this war across the globe will take heart from sacrifices made by the thousands destined to die here. Blood of Dorn, Bayard… the Imperium was
born
in moments such as this.’

The Emperor’s Champion watched him for a long moment, during which Grimaldus found his heart thumping faster. He was angry, and feeling the anger rise was as purgative as his time within the temple’s serene halls. Bayard spoke, his voice sincere despite the crackle of vox-breakage.

‘My voice was one of the few that spoke against your ascension to Mordred’s rank.’

Grimaldus snorted, returning to watching the arriving forces. ‘I would have said the same in your place.’

Seventy soldiers of the Steel Legion 101
st
came together in a battered convoy of Chimera transports. The ramp slammed down as the lead vehicle pulled up to a halt. A squad of Legionnaires disembarked, not a one of them free of bloodstains or bandaging.

‘Leave the Chimeras outside,’ Major Ryken ordered the others. Half of his face was wrapped in grubby cloth bandages, and he leaned heavily on an aide’s shoulder, limping as he walked.

‘Shouldn’t we take them inside?’ Cyria Tyro asked. She looked back over her shoulder at the tanks being abandoned.

‘To hell with them,’ Ryken spat blood as she led him to the two knights. ‘Not enough ammunition in the turrets to make it worthwhile.’

‘Grimaldus,’ she said, looking up at the towering warrior.

‘Hail, Adjutant Quintus Tyro. Major Ryken.’

‘We got cut off from Sarren and the others. The 34
th
, the 101
st
, the 51
st
… They’re all in the central manufactory sectors…’

‘It does not matter.’

‘What?’

‘It does not matter,’ Grimaldus repeated. ‘We are defending the last points of light in Helsreach. Fate brought you to the Temple. Fate sent Sarren elsewhere.’

‘Throne, there are still thousands of the bastards out there.’ He spat pinkish spit again, and Tyro grunted as she took more of his weight. ‘And that’s not the worst of it.’

‘Explain.’

‘Invigilata has gone,’ Tyro said. ‘They left us to die. The enemy still has Titans – and there’s one that you’ll never believe until you look upon it with your own eyes. We saw it march from the Rostorik Ironworks, collapsing habitation towers in its wake.’

‘The 34
th
Armoured rolled out to stop it,’ Ryken winced as he spoke. His bandages were growing more stained, around what was likely an empty eye socket. ‘It flattened most of them in the time it takes a desert jackal to howl at the full moon.’

A curious local expression. Grimaldus nodded, catching the meaning, but Ryken had more to add.

‘
Stormherald
is down.’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘This
Godbreaker
… it killed the Crone, and slew
Stormherald
.’

‘I know.’

‘You know? So where’s the damn Ordinatus? We need it! Nothing else will kill that gigantic clanking… thing.’

‘It is coming. Move inside and see to your wounds. If the end is coming to these walls, you will need to stand ready.’

‘Oh, we’ll all be ready. The bastards took my face, and that made it personal.’

As they moved away, Grimaldus heard Tyro gently teasing the major for his bravado. When they were beyond the gates but still in sight, the Reclusiarch saw the general’s adjutant kiss the major on his unbandaged cheek.

‘Madness,’ the knight whispered.

‘Reclusiarch?’ Bayard asked.

‘Humans,’ Grimaldus replied, his voice soft. ‘They are a mystery to me.’

Chapter XXII

Emperor Ascendant

At last, vox reports began to trickle through to the defenders gathered in the temple’s graveyard district. Across Helsreach, Sarren’s plan, the ‘one hundred bastions of light’, was in effect, with Imperial forces massing in defensive formations around the most vital parts of the city.

Contact was erratic at best, but the fact it even existed was a boost to morale. Every point of focussed defence was holding well, with all divisions breaking down between storm-troopers, Guard infantry, Steel Legion armour units, militia and armed civilians who chose to take to the streets rather than cower in their shelters.

The city was fighting to keep its heart beating, and the orks no longer found themselves advancing against a mobile wave of human resistance. Now the aliens were breaking against a multitude of last stands, hurling themselves against defenders that had nowhere left to run.

Fortunately for the Imperials, enemy scrap-Titans were few in number. With recent engagements such as the Battle of the Rostorik Ironworks, the greenskins’ complement of god-machines had suffered furious losses in the face of Legio Invigilata’s wrath.

Even as Invigilata recalled its last remaining Titans from the city in the wake of
Stormherald’s
death, the Titans were forced to fight their way free of the orks flooding through Helsreach’s unprotected streets. Although several Titans escaped through the broken walls and into the Ash Wastes beyond, the Warlord-class engine
Ironsworn
was brought down by a massed infantry assault in an ambush similar to the one that had laid
Stormherald
low all those weeks before.

The last of the Imperial Navy forces in the city had based themselves at the Azal spaceport, where they continued to mount bombing runs and offer limited air support to the tank battalions ringing the Jaega District’s surface shelters. The fighting here was among the thickest and fiercest seen in the entire siege to date, and the archives which would catalogue the Third War for Armageddon came to consider many of the glorious propaganda falsehoods born here as cold fact. Many of these heroic twists of the truth were due to the writings of one Commissar Falkov, whose memoir, entitled simply ‘
I Was There…
’, would become standard reading for all officers of the Steel Legions in the years after the war.

Although there was absolutely no truth in the tale, Imperial records would state that acting-Commander Helius sacrificed his own life by ramming his Lightning into the heart-reactor of the enemy gargant classified as
Blood Defyla.
The truth was rather more mundane – like Barasath before him, Helius was shot down and torn to pieces shortly after disentangling from his grav-chute on the ground.

The presence of
Godbreaker
was a bane to any Imperial resolve nearby. Although the god-machine appeared a shadow of its former self, bearing a legion of wounds and missing limbs from its death-duel with
Stormherald,
with Invigilata marching away across the badlands the defenders of Helsreach had little in the way of firepower capable of retaliating against the gargant.

After laying waste to the Abraxas Foundry Complex, the mighty enemy engine adopted a random patrol of the city, engaging Imperial forces wherever it chanced upon them.

Imperial records would state that while the Siege of the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant was entering its second day, the alien war machine
Godbreaker
was destroyed on its way to finish the temple defenders once and for all.

This, at least, was perfectly true.

Jurisian watched the mechanical giants stride from the city, stepping through its sundered walls. There were three – the first escapees of Legio Invigilata – and the Master of the Forge stared from the quiet confines of
Oberon’s
command module as the Titans left the burning city behind.

The first was a Reaver-class, a mid-range battle Titan that appeared to have sustained significant damage if the columns of smoke rising from its back were any indication. Its flanking allies were both Warhounds, their ungainly gait rocking their torsos and arm-cannons side to side, step by step across the sands.

The wastelands outside Helsreach’s walls resembled nothing more than a graveyard. Thousands of dead orks lay rotting in the weak sun; killed in Barasath’s initial attack runs or slaughtered in the inevitable inter-tribal battles that arose when these bestial aliens gathered.

Ruined tanks were scattered in abundance, as was the wreckage from countless propeller-driven planes, each one made out of scrap and reduced back to it. The orks’ landing vessels stood abandoned, with every xenos capable of lifting an axe now waging war inside the city. The primitive creatures were here to fight and destroy, or fight and die. They cared nothing for what fate befell their vessels left in the desert. Such forethought and consideration was beyond the mental capacity of most greenskins.

Jurisian made no attempt to hide his presence. There would be little point in making the attempt, for he knew the approaching Titans would be able to read
Oberon’s
energy shadow on their powerful auspex scanners. So he waited, all systems active, as the Invigilata Titans drew near. The ground began to shiver with their closing tread, which Jurisian noted by the twisted metal and bodies across the desert floor shaking in rhythm with the god-machines.

The wounded Reaver came to a halt, its immense joints protesting that it was still forced to remain standing. It was damaged enough that a second’s focus-drift might see the princeps losing control over the engine’s stabilisers. It slowly aimed its remaining weapon arm at the command module, and Jurisian looked up into the yawning maw of a gatling blaster cannon.

With
Oberon’s
shields up, the Master of the Forge would have estimated the Ordinatus could tolerate several minutes of sustained assault even from a weapon as destructive as this Reaver’s main armament. But
Oberon
had no shields. They were one of many secondary systems that Jurisian had lacked the time, expertise and manpower necessary to reengage.

He knew what a gatling blaster was capable of. He’d seen them devastate regiments of tanks, and rip the faces and limbs from enemy Titans.
Oberon’s
armour plating would last no more than a handful of seconds.

The Titan stared down at him in silence, no doubt while the princeps decided how to deal with this unbelievable blasphemy. Hunchbacked and striding with arm-cannons raised in threatening salute, the two Warhounds circled the immobile Ordinatus. Their posturing amused the Forgemaster. How they played at being wolves.

‘Hail,’ he said into a broad range of vox-channels. In truth, he was growing bored of the silence. He was far, far from intimidated.

‘What blasphemy is this?’
crackled the reply through the command module’s internal speakers.
‘What heretic dares defile
Oberon’s
deserved slumber?’

Jurisian leaned back in the control throne, elbows on the armrests and his gloved fingers steepled before his helmed face.

‘I am Jurisian of the Black Templars, Master of the Forge aboard the
Eternal Crusader,
and trained by the Cult Mechanicus for years on the surface of Mars itself. I am also in possession of the Ordinatus Armageddon, after subduing its defences and reawakening its soul, force-binding it to my will. And, lastly, I am summoned to Helsreach to aid wherever I am able. Aid me, or stand aside.’

The delay was significant in duration, and in other circumstances, that would have made it insulting. Jurisian suspected his words were being transmitted to all nearby princeps, almost definitely summoning them to this position.

Half a kilometre away, another Reaver Titan was breaching the city walls, emerging into the Ash Wastes. The knight watched it begin its halting stride in this direction, noting that it was relatively undamaged.

‘You are blaspheming against the Machine-God and its servants.’

‘I am wielding a weapon of war in defence of an Imperial city. Now aid me, or stand aside.’

‘Leave the Ordinatus platform, or be destroyed.’

‘You are not about to open fire on this holiest of artefacts, and I am not empowered by my liege lord to comply with your demands. That brings us to a stalemate. Discuss useful terms, or I will take
Oberon
into the city unprotected, surely to be destroyed without significant Mechanicus support.’

‘Your corpse will be removed from the sacred innards of the Ordinatus Armageddon, and all remnants of your presence will be eradicated from memory.’

As Jurisian drew breath to offer terms, his vox-link flickered into life. Grimaldus, at last.

‘Reclusiarch. I trust the time has finally come?’

‘We are embattled at the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant. How soon can you bring the weapon to us?’

The Master of the Forge looked out of the reinforced windows at the patrolling Titans, then at the city beyond, beneath a smoke-blackened sky. He knew the hive’s layout from studying the hololithics before his exile into the desert.

‘Two hours.’

‘Status of the weapon?’

‘As before.
Oberon
has no void shields, no secondary weapon systems, and suspensor lift capability is limited, hindering speed to a crawl. Alone, I can fire it no more than once every twenty minutes. I need to recharge the fuel cells manually, and regenerate flow from the plasma containment ch–’

‘I will see you in two hours, Jurisian. For Dorn and the Emperor.’

‘By your will, Reclusiarch.’

‘Heed these last words, Forgemaster. Do not bring the weapon too close. The Temple District is naught but fire and ash, and we are surrounded on all sides. Take the shot and flee the city. Pursue Invigilata’s retreating forces, and link up with the Imperial assault along the Hemlock.’

‘You wish me to run?’

‘I wish you to live rather than die in vain, and save a weapon precious to the Imperium.’ Grimaldus broke off for a moment, and the pause was filled with the anger of distant guns. ‘We will be buried here, Jurisian. There is no dishonour that your fate is elsewhere.’

‘Call the primary target, Reclusiarch.’

‘You will see it as you manoeuvre through the Temple District, brother. It is called the
Godbreaker
.’

Four Titans soon barred his path.

Mightiest among them – and the last to arrive – was a Warlord, its armour plating black from paint, not battle-scarring. Its weapons trained down – immense barrels aimed at the Ordinatus platform. The numerological markings along the engine’s carapace marked it out as the
Bane-Sidhe.

‘I am Princeps Amasat of Invigilata, sub-commander of the Crone’s forces and heir to her title in the wake of her demise. Explain this madness immediately.’

Jurisian looked at the city, and thought about his offer carefully before making it. He spoke with confidence, because he knew full well the Mechanicus had little other choice. He was going back into the city, and by the Machine-God, they were going to come with him.

The graveyard – that immense garden of raised stone and buried bone – played home to the storm of disorder that had until recently been raging its way through the Temple District.

The enemy had breached the temple walls at dawn on the second day, only to find that the graveyard was where the real defences stood in readiness. As tanks pounded the walls down and beasts scrabbled over the rubble, thousands of Helsreach’s last defenders waited behind mausoleums, gravestones, ornate tombs of city founders and shrines to treasured saints.

Burning beams of las-fire cobwebbed across the battlefield, slicing the alien beasts down in droves.

At the vanguard, a warrior clad in black and wielding a relic warhammer battled alongside a dwindling handful of his brothers. Every fall of his maul ended with the crunch of another alien life ended. His pistol, long since powered down and empty, dangled from the thick chain binding it to his wrist. Where the fighting was thickest, he wielded it like a flail, lashing it with whip-like force into bestial alien faces to shatter bone.

At his side, two swordsmen moved and spun in lethal unison. Priamus and Bayard, their bladework complementing one another’s perfectly, cutting and impaling with the same techniques, the same footwork, and at times, even in the very same moments.