First Captain Julius Kaesoron surveyed the battlefield.
He had crafted this plan meticulously, though with only a day's warning he knew it could have been better. Daimon, Demeter, and Ruen had apparently not known until a few hours beforehand; none of them seemed to care. Daimon was just glad to be unleashed, Demeter only ever built his plans in rough sketches, and Ruen - particularly of late - rarely had a plan at all.
But no matter; they were all competent, and if they had been members of, say, the Luna Wolves or the Iron Hands - not to speak of the Space Wolves or World Eaters - such tendencies would be typical, and it would be Kaesoron who stood out. The Emperor's light, it seemed, had been turning the Third Legion closer to such a scenario lately; but Kaesoron didn't see any reason to change yet. After all, their ways had led them to greatness. And they would not cease doing so.
"Perfection cries in delight among unending palaces of broken foes." Ignace Karkasky's poems often seemed to oppose the Great Crusade as much as they supported it, but his first Perfection's Cry was more than the ode to the Emperor's Children others saw it as - it was an ode to warfare.
It was an ode to the Crusade. And now, when Horus had turned his back on the Emperor and Karkasky's work had stopped coming in, Kaesoron found some comfort in the past - clearer, simpler days.
Days now gone.
"Brother-Captain?" Perio Wascero asked from beside Kaesoron. Since the daemonic incursion on the Pride, Wascero had become Kaesoron's unofficial left hand, just as Ispequr Davars was his official right.
"It's time, isn't it?"
"Yes, indeed."
Kaesoron spared one last look for Demeter battling in the distance, trying to capture the rebels' primary reactor. He fought like the Phoenician himself, immaculate skill and perfectly unbalanced humours blending into a god of death. Skitarii and Army soldiers flew away from him rather than toppling. When he had zoomed in, Kaesoron had seen an expression on Demeter's face that made him expect tears; but where most warriors' sadness slowed them down and turned their minds to compassion, Demeter's was a weapon. Even as he regretted having to kill those people, Demeter did so all the more efficiently.
But Kaesoron had his own battle to fight.
"Children of the Emperor!" he cried, heading down from the landfill rise.
"Death to his foes!" his Company cried, some charging down nearby hills and others running out of the research station's scattered buildings. They converged on the manufactorum's back; Kaesoron had reason to suspect that, since this was the best-defended area, the moon's leaders would make their last stand within the building. Lascannons pounded into their ranks, and several of the Children fell, but the Space Marines' speed allowed most to get through the killing ground unharmed. Those that were wounded were picked up by those that weren't, brother carrying brother into the eye of the storm.
As expected, just as the Emperor's Children were about to impact the featureless wall, the waste disposal automatically opened. It was right on schedule - two hours after the last opening, which Sergeant Ereluto had reported, and four hours after the one before that, which had been witnessed by Battle-Brother Quasius. The otherwise well-defended manufactorum had a back door in the form of Mechanicum standards. If the waste disposal had not opened, signaling the tech-priests had recognized their weakness, the First Company's chainblades and powerswords would still have forced their way in, though the cannons would have had time to take several more casualties.
Kaesoron rushed in, the Lions of Chemos following. The doors would close in a moment, after all, when the adepts recognized the automated systems were a flaw. Yes, the manufactorum was well-defended, about the only well-defended place on the moon. Kaesoron admitted, personally, that Fulgrim's decision to send four Companies was overkill: though the Mechanicum and Imperial Army were bravely resisting, the battle was more of a massacre.
Well, Fulgrim's desires were Kaesoron's law. "Everyone in?" he vox-asked as the doors began to swing shut.
"Yes," Wascero replied from near the wall. "Half a Company, seven hundred Astartes, at your disposal."
"Well, to the command center, then. Children of the Emperor!"
"Death to his foes!" came the cry of seven hundred battle-hungry throats. Kaesoron's control over his Company was unequalled among the Legion; he paid close attention to its running, even more than to his battle plans. That was why his corps of Sergeants, his personal pride, was considered the best in the Legion; Kaesoron picked them, and encouraged them, carefully. Thus, when Fulgrim had reminded him of his duty to the God-Emperor, Kaesoron had encouraged his Company to fight without regret or mercy. For all that it was unfortunate, these people were traitors.
"Squads Renaekarn and Hasanury, plus the Section 2 Apothecaries, stay here and guard the wounded. I want as few fallen as possible. Everyone else - with me. The rebels' sanctum should be to our east."
Kaesoron broke into a run once more, though this time it was more of a jog. The next minutes were filled with the tedious work of checking corners, making outposts, and moving ceaselessly. Soon enough, scouts began to report back, commenting on the largest defensive concentrations. Like a giant protozoan, the First Company of the Emperor's Children, the Lions of Chemos - at least the portion of them that Kaesoron had taken into this strike, as the other half was putting down resistance elsewhere - crawled through the manufactorum's hallways, absorbing enemy outposts and sending out tendrils of destruction. There were few turrets within the building, probably because it had never been meant for war. The Slodi's moon station was created for those experiments safety said should not be conducted on the planet's surface, and though it had since grown into a community of its own none prepared more than contingency plans for its invasion.
Still, the contingency plans were there, and now they were being expressly used. Kaesoron stood with his back to an adamantine wall, peering out a door into a rotunda and the most heavily defended entrance he'd seen yet.
This was it.
"Squads Wasnus and Kontarratz, prepare for assault. Wascero, get that wall open."
Perio Wascero waved his hand, and fifty Devastators released their fire. The wall guarding the rotunda collapsed. Kaesoron was, for now, on its second floor; below, on the first, the guards scurried around in desperation.
Kaesoron ran at the head of Assault Squads Wasnus and Kontarratz as the rotunda opened before them. The First Captain ran through the railings, landing in a crouch on the first floor, directly before the guards.
He twisted left, slicing one defender in two; then he struck out ahead, spearing a servitor's brain. Retrieving his sword, Kaesoron blocked a skitarii's servo-arm, even as a lasgun blast aimed for his head went wide from Kontarratz's blade.
A single cry began to be whispered by the outnumbered guards as ranks upon ranks of Astartes filed down from above. Kaesoron sliced a plasma gun open, splitting its owner's arm down the bone. His pauldron absorbed a lasgun blast without so much as a tremor.
More and more of the defenders threw their weapons down and their hands up. The head of the Mechanicum contingent, a lumbering tech-priest with cannons for arms, fired point-blank at Battle-Brother Inius Acumarn; but Acumarn was avenged by his Sergeant, Wasnus shooting from an even closer distance than the tech-priest.
The sounds of battle ceased. The Lions of Chemos were victorious.
"Please spare us…" an Army soldier whispered.
Kaesoron ignored him and kicked open the door. It fell, not quite shattering but offering little resistance to an Astarte physiology.
"Surrender!" Kaesoron cried out.
Within, there were huddled masses of refugees, tech-priests tinkering with large cogitator screens, and apparent community leaders playing cards. Every one of them had a dejected expression, and many of the women - and some of the men - were crying. Every single person in the room with weapons threw them down as Kaesoron entered, his legion behind him, angels of death, cold burning in over a thousand eyes. Many threw up their hands as well.
"Please..." a refugee began, but Kaesoron signaled silence.
The order had been to have no mercy, that those who turned away from the Emperor's light deserved death; and the military leaders would be executed without doubt. But what sort of black Crusade would it be if Kaesoron were to massacre civilians? There was no way to accept that, none at all. Now, as the battle-choler left him, he knew what must be done.
He was proud of his operation here - it was well-planned, well-executed, and well-fought. Besides, there had been no direct order to kill everyone - only traitors. Kaesoron sincerely doubted that every one of these weeping, pleading people had personally made the decision to turn on the Imperium of Man.
A quick search identified seventeen of the civilians in the room as major figures in the community, in various fashions. Kaesoron voxed their descriptions to the members of Squads Tasaqus and Elaeran behind him, then ordered the Tacticals to open fire on them and three of the tech-priests present. Kaesoron would take the fourth.
"Magos Naissib," he said, "order your forces to stand down."
Naissib did so, and then the Lions of Chemos opened fire.
Twenty-one bodies hit the floor, Naissib the first to do so. Over a hundred more souls remained.
"Live," Kaesoron said. "And do not repeat your mistake."
Turning, Julius Kaesoron walked out of the chamber with Wascero at his side. Each of their moods was somber; they knew they had done what had been necessary, what had been commanded, yet they took no joy in it.
It was in the rotunda that Kaesoron met Solomon Demeter, the Second Captain looking more choleric than melancholic now.
"How did you get here so quickly?" Kaesoron asked.
"My enemies surrendered," Demeter said, "and I honored the terms! What have you descended to, Kaesoron?"
"Ehm, following the Primarch's orders?!"
"There's a time to take everything literally and then there's a time to understand the underlying meaning. We should not kill surrendering men!"
"Not even if the Primarch ordered it directly?"
With Demeter stuck for words, Kaesoron continued. "This was what we were ordered to do for the Great Crusade. This is what we were ordered to do for the Emperor! War necessitates death, Demeter, you know that. And I only executed the leaders."
"One of which - "
"One of which, like the others, betrayed the Emperor on Terra and his Imperium. We are the Children of the Emperor, Demeter. We needed to bring punishment. And though I agree what I did was wrong, any other course of action would have been even worse. Besides, do you think Daimon or Ruen would not have killed them all?"
"Ruen is a sadist. He's the opposite of everything this Legion should be. Daimon… I'd expect something like this from Daimon, but not you, Kaesoron. Perhaps he would have killed them all, yes. So what?"
"Do not let your kindness take you into treachery, Demeter. This is my operation, and it was successful."
Demeter stormed off without saying anything more. Julius Kaesoron, First Captain of the Emperor's Children, lord of the Lions of Chemos, walked on silently.
"Do you think he was right?" Sergeant San Kontarratz asked.
The First Captain was not angry at the question because it truly was a question, the tone making that clear. "No," he said, "it turned out well enough. It turned out perfectly. If I had executed no one, Fulgrim would have seen it as disobedience, I know that much. And by the Emperor, it would have been disobedience." And unwise, too, treachery had to be punished.
He walked through ruined hallways of the idle manufactorum. There was no scratching here, no worry in the back of his head that daemons were about to burst through the aetheric divide between his realm and theirs. It was liberating, and Kaesoron considered the option of retreating to his own battle-barge, away from the tempting madness of the Pride of the Emperor. It would take him further away from the light that was Fulgrim, though. And he wasn't going to turn away from his Primarch - that would simply be sick.
They were all sick already, though. And though he would not disobey his Primarch and would not cease killing those he needed to in this civil war, as he walked through the manufactorum's idle hallways, remembering the death-screams of twenty-one hardworking men and women, Julius Kaesoron dearly wished he could.