AN : hello, readers. Here is the second part of the Christmas package, after the Iron Hands of the Roboutian Heresy. As you may have guessed, its title is a reference to the famous arc words of the Fallout videogame series, which I have only recently started playing. I really like that post-apocalyptic universe, with all its factions and monsters and horrors (most of which are entirely too human for comfort). It seems to me it could easily be integrated into the Wh40K verse. One would just have to say that instead of happening on Terra, the Great War took place on one of the myriad human worlds lost during the Age of Strife and whose inhabitants believed their planet to be Terra. If the world has a geography close enough, then you can even use the same nations.
But enough about Fallout. This chapter is my first attempt at writing something akin to a 'battle report', i.e. a description of a battle between two armies, knowing their forces and position at the beginning. As a result, it is probably less well written than previous chapters, and I apologize for that. I can only promise that I will get better as I write more of this (and writing battles is a huge part of writing Warhammer 40000 stories, even if I have so far managed to not do it a lot). There will be more stuff like this to come - the battle for Asthenar is the conclusion of the Parecxis campain/story arc, and there is a lot more blood to spill. The next chapter should be a little different, though - there will still be action, but of a different nature.
Also, in the reviews for the last chapter, zander4 gave a profile for Arken the Awakened One in the tabletop. It's quite well designed - if you want to use it to field him in your games, don't hesitate (but ask permission to the other players first). If you have your own ideas for more profiles like that one for the other characters and/or units (for example those introduced in the special chapter Codex Parecxis), please post them in reviews or send them to me in PM. If you have questions about some units, please contact me and I will answer them as soon as I can. If there are enough such profiles, I am thinking about setting up another contest like the one in Roboutian Heresy - Blood Angels, where the writer of the best one will earn a short story of his or her choice.
As always, please review this chapter if you have any commentary or suggestion for what will come next. Next will be a short story, which is almost completed as of the moment I am typing this. It will be the final part of the Christmas package.
Zahariel out.
I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
The word had been given. The advance across the Graveyard had been costly, with the death of the Prophet in Rags taking the support of the psyker lord's circles of wyrds from the forces of Chaos. It was a costly loss, especially since the Coven had then demanded all remaining wild psykers be brought to them immediately, forcing them to mobilize further forces to escort them – but one did not ignore the 'demands' of the Coven.
Countless more ambushes, mines and other traps had also taken their toll – he estimated that his original force had been deprived of several thousand fighters. But at long last, Valemus Galeyard was ready to begin the assault on the western gate of Asthenar, with an army still counting in the tens of thousands at his command. Dekaros had appeared to give him the order to launch the assault minutes ago, before vanishing to return to whatever plots the Lord of Shadows still had going on. Valemus was curious what they were now that the conquest of Parecxis Alpha was reaching its endgame, but he had far more pressing concerns.
The Regent had studied strategy in his youth, but it had been more of a hobby than anything else. The Galeyard House was not usually involved in open warfare – it just wasn't their style. At most, it had been involved in small-scale engagements when things between it and a rival reached a point where intrigue and assassinations were no longer enough. If Valemus survived the war with his position, that would hardly be a handicap. The role of the Regent according to the Accords was precisely to do all in his power to prevent things to come to war. But he supposed that proving his ability in case it did come to this was necessary to reinforce his authority over those he would have to rule in the Forsaken Sons' name, and thus he was grateful for the opportunity granted to him to do so now.
Of course, his role as Regent would only become relevant after the planet was conquered by the Forsaken Sons and the last traces of loyalist resistance eliminated. Once, he would have thought that victory could go to either side : the Sons of Calth were valiant warriors, and they had an army at their command that was both loyal, well-drilled, and without anywhere to run. But he had seen the size of the legion he commanded. He also knew that there were three others out there, and that his was arguably the weakest of them – or at least, it had been before the loyalists' nuke had torn through the Plague Zombies at the south. But unless the Sons of Calth had a lot more such surprises planned and the Forsaken Sons didn't have anything left in reserve – something he doubted immensely – then the end result of the war was obvious. Even if the loyalists somehow managed to defeat the ground forces of the rebels, their fleet would simply flatten the hive-city from orbit. The Sons of Calth commanders probably knew it too, but they wouldn't give up. They were Astartes, and they would never surrender. The humans under their command probably wouldn't either. They had heard about the fate of Talexorn and Nalemos, and Valemus had to admit that death was preferable to that.
The lord of House Galeyard – for he still had the title, until his appointed successor had finished learning all that he would need to know – shook his head to free his mind of wandering thoughts. He stood atop the ruins of what had been the home of a relatively wealthy merchant, surrounded by reinforced steel plates quickly arranged into a commanding bunker. Around him were those he had brought to him to the fated meeting in Santorius' governorial palace : Talek, the bulky thug, Amelia, the seductive assassin, the nameless servitor that had once been Valemus' cousin, and Jar, the unbound psyker. The first three formed a loose triangle around him, ready to defend him from any threat, whether it came from the loyalists or their own ranks.
As for Jar, he was deep in trance, his mind connected to all the commanders of the various forces under the Regent's command. Runes had been inscribed on his face by the sorcerers of the Coven, to channel his power and prevent him from killing himself with wild warp-energy, as well as shield him from daemonic possession. The psyker was speaking an endless stream of reports and information, shifting from one sub-commander to the other while keeping the same emotionless tone, in contrast to his face, frozen in an expression of agonized horror at the strain the operation forced upon his mind.
Valemus himself had ditched his usual formal vestments for an equipment more adapted to the current situation. He was now wearing an antiquated suit of power armor, picked out of the treasure vaults of the Galeyard House and repaired and upgraded by the best Hereteks money could buy. While far from being convenient to move in, and a shadow of the massive armor used by the Legionaries, it offered Valemus a degree of protection unmatched by the wargear of any of the soldiers under his command.
'It's time,' he told Jar as he lowered the oculars he had been using to check the position of some of the most important forces under his command. 'Captain Tarox,' he began before pausing, giving the psyker time to align with this particular sub-commander, 'you may now proceed.'
'Understood, Lord Regent,' answered Tarox.
His words were little more than a growl, but it wasn't as if he actually needed to speak them for them to be transmitted. The thing the Forsaken Sons had given him and the other leaders picked up his thoughts and sent them to this wretched psyker that the Galeyard kept as a pet. It sent all of his tactical observations in a continuous stream – which must certainly be a nightmare for the psyker on the other end to manage – and could send more precise messages if he focused upon it.
The device was a particularly foul kind of daemon trapped inside a flask of warded and reinforced glass, that hung from his belt and had to be fed with a few drops of his own blood every day to keep the link active. According to the Sorcerer who had handed it to him, it created some kind of conduit between him and the psyker. The Astartes had assured him that only words could transit through the link, but Tarox was far from tranquil nonetheless. He may not be the most esoterically-minded signatory of the Accords, but he still knew that words alone had the power to kill, and he was enjoying his current existence – freed from the constant fear of devolving into one of the Breakers – far too much. He may effectively be enslaved to the Forsaken Sons now – they had yet to honor Dekaros' promise of granting him access to the genetic reforging which would truly make him safe from devolution – but the mere fact that he could sleep at night without having to struggle to retain his humanity made it worth it.
And besides, it wasn't as if he had ever truly been loyal to the Imperium. He had joined the PDF because fighting was one of the rare things he was good at, and he had risen through the ranks by surviving longer than others during the Heresy and by showing that he was willing to follow orders from above no matter what they were. Faith in the God-Emperor had never looked appealing to him, and he had sneered when the Ecclesiarchy had risen to prominence on the planet.
Long before the Lord of Shadows had appeared before him in the underhive, the renegade PDF captain had turned his back on both the empire and its ruler. What had the Emperor ever done for any of them ? His men had fought to help keep His peace, and yet they had still been turned into monsters in the end. The so-called Master of Mankind had done nothing for them, betraying His promises of hope and salvation. At least Khorne was honest in what he demanded of his followers.
He shook himself out of his reminiscences. It was time to do what he had been elevated for : bring death and ruin to those who stood against the Forsaken Sons. He turned his gaze from the ramparts to look upon those who had followed him from Santorius to this place : a horde of thousands, looking at him in rapture, spreading out in every direction from where he stood, beyond the reach of their enemies' weapons. It was rare for a leader to stand amidst those under his command, and quite foolish also, but Tarox knew that these – the followers of the Dark Gods in body and soul, mutants and fervent believers all – would turn on him if he showed any hesitation in mingling with them. Besides, he had five Breakers at his side, ready to tear anyone trying something funny to pieces.
Tarox took a deep breath, filling his nostrils with the scent of excitement and bloodlust coming from the army surrounding him, and bellowed :
'In the name of Khorne, CHARGE !'
'Blood for the Blood God !' screamed the mass of unwashed flesh in ten thousand voices as it rushed forward. It was like a tide, splitting around Tarox position as if he were a rock in the middle of a stream. Despite the madness that claimed them, the wretches still had the instinct to stay away from his Breakers. 'Skulls for the Skull Throne !'
They arrived as far as fifty meters from the wall before the carnage began. Mines detonated under their feet, reducing a dozen men and women to pieces with each blast, while the defenders fired at the advancing horde with heavy bolters and gun turrets. They didn't need to aim their shots : with so many targets, it was virtually impossible to miss. Hundreds died in seconds, but the rest of the mutant army kept going, their minds driven into a frenzy by the smell of their kindred's' blood. Eventually, those who were lucky or resilient enough to survive the barrage reached the base of the wall.
The fortification in itself wasn't especially high, but the mutants were especially well equipped either. Most of them were reduced to banging on the wall impotently, shattering their hands against the compacted rock, while others began to climb up using what the Warp had given them instead of hands. Others had managed to build and carry primitive ladders or grappling hooks at the end of makeshift ropes, and they were attempting to set them in position while under continuous fire from above. Few managed to reach the top of the wall, and those who did were immediately dispatched by the Sons of Calth spread out across its length. Save for a miracle happening in the next minutes, none of them would manage to do any kind of significant damage to the enemy.
Tarox gnashed his teeth together at the spectacle. Part of him was enraged at this wasteful expense of his forces, but he had to admit that he ultimately cared little about these wretches, which was probably the reason why they had been chosen for this task in the first place. Tens of thousands more dwelled in Santorius' underhive, ready to follow him or anyone else willing to give a purpose to their bleak existences. He gave them that purpose through the path of Khorne, allowing them to wash away their doubts, fears and self-disgust with the blood spilled on the battlefield. Their deaths, as pointless as they may appear, were actually the most meaningful thing these poor souls had ever accomplished.
No, what truly irked the lord of the Breakers was that he wanted to join in the slaughter. The mutation suppressants were preventing physical degeneration, but not even the Sorcerers of the Coven could remove the touch of the Dark Gods from a soul. He belonged to Khorne, whether he liked it or not, and the God of War had left his mark upon his bloodstained soul. He hungered for battle, to charge too and kill as many as he could until he was slain in turn. It was only by exerting every iota of his will that he, and by extension the rest of the Breakers, remained under cover. That, and the knowledge that the charge was only a diversion, meant to occupy the defenders and force them to waste ammunition while the sinister agents of the Tenebrae Lex were put into position.
Unlike the cowards leading his enemies, Fourth Captain Atorios of the Sons of Calth fought on the front lines, by his comrades' side – whether they were human or Astartes. His power sword had already slain several of the mutants who had managed to reach the battlements, while his bolter remained mag-locked to his thigh, down on its last clip. At the beginning of the charge, he too had emptied his weapon at the enemy, but now was the time to start sparing his ammunition for what would come next. He doubted whatever heretic the Forsaken Sons had seen fit to put in charge of this rabble would have sent his forces to their death without purpose. There was something here that he didn't see yet, a move that was hidden by the thousands of lives thrown at the wall.
'Captain,' came the voice of his sergeant Illius. 'Look over there.'
Atorios followed the direction his brother's chainblade was pointing at. Far behind the mutant horde that was being put out of its collective misery by Imperial guns and blades, a group of silhouettes in defaced Mechanicum robes was arranging itself in an eightfold-star pattern around some device crackling with unholy energies. Despite the distance, Atorios' helmet visor and his own enhanced eyes were perfectly capable of picking up the details, and his lips curled in disgust at the sight. Hereteks, he thought as he recognized the tell-tale signs that the Imperium had come to associate with the word. Former disciples of the Adeptus Mechanicus who had thrown away the tenets of the Machine-God and their loyalty to the Emperor in favor of pursuing daemonic sciences and forbidden knowledge.
'What are they doing ?' he wondered aloud. 'They don't have any …'
The words died on his tongue as a horrible metamorphosis engulfed the eight robed adepts. Flesh and augmetics twisted and extended, tearing apart the vestments and combining with the others, reforming around the focal device in the circle's center. A few seconds later, the Hereteks were gone, and in their place stood a massive and grotesque cannon – too big to have been formed only from the mass of the sacrificed acolytes. Streams of utter, absolute blackness ran along the hideous amalgamation of flesh, metal and warp-stuff, and its end appeared to contain the very fires of Hell. A swirling mass of tentacles supported it, squishing on the ground as they moved it on position. More importantly, it was currently aiming itself at the wall, moving on its own to target the gate that the defenders had sealed as soon as the last squads had gone into hiding within the Graveyard.
Atorios reacted at once. He blink-clicked an icon on his retinal display, his armor opened a vox-link to his reserve squad, and he all but screamed his order as he sent coordinates and pics down the channel :
'Destroy that thing, Neliel !'
The Assault Squad took to the air on wings of fire. Neliel and his battle-brothers jumped from the single high structure which remained in a one-kilometer stretch behind the wall – a tower designed to relay vox-traffic, which had been converted in an observation plate-form. Even with the altitude, though, the sergeant could already see that they were going to fall short of reaching their target with this single jump. They were going to crash – the reunion between an Assault Marine and the ground was, in Neliel's opinion, far too violent an affair to call it a landing – straight in the middle of another traitor force, and would have to fight their way to the daemon engine before it unleashed whatever payload it was capable of.
Despite the urgency of his task and the grim situation of the last free city on the planet, the sergeant smiled. It had been too long since he and his squad had spilled treacherous blood.
'For the Emperor and the Primarch !' he roared as he came down upon the renegades, the Master of Mankind's wrath rendered into ceramite.
Men's bones were shattered by the impact of his arrival, and they pressed away from the rest of the squad, afraid of being crushed without any chance of fighting back. This wasn't cowardice, for these wretches were far too gone to care about their own lives : the unhealthy gleam of zealotry burned in their eyes, and they looked at the Astartes in their mist not with fear but hatred. Neliel recognized these eyes. He had seen them on Calth, when he had faced the cultists that the Seventeenth had brought to the world. It was not courage, nothing as noble as that.
Courage was the exertion of willpower to surmount one's fear, and he had seen plenty of it within the Imperial soldiers who had fought at his side during the Underworld Wars on Calth. But these mortals weren't afraid at all, their minds wiped clean of such emotion by the brainwashing of their overseers and the corruption running through their souls. They cared only about the manner of their death, and about earning the favor of their dark patrons before their souls were torn from their flesh and ushered into the afterlife they thought awaited them beyond the Veil.
Fools, thought the Son of Calth as he began reaping life with every strike of his chainsword. If the Librarians of the Chapter were to be believed, all that awaited the souls of the servants of Ruin was an eternal hell, at the mercy of the daemons they so worshipped.
The rest of his squad came down around him, and together they carved a path through the mass of screaming cultists. The traitors were armed with makeshift weapons and small caliber guns, but it was their number which truly posed a threat to the Assault Marines in their mist. The pathetic attacks directed at the squad had almost no chance of piercing the sacred ceramite of their armor, but through sheer mass, the cultists were preventing them from advancing. It would take precious moments for their jump-packs to cool down from the particularly demanding jump they had just made, and by then the cannon would already have opened fire.
'Faster !' he roared to his squadmates as his chainsword cut something with five arms in two distinct parts. 'In the name of Guilliman, faster !'
The squad redoubled its efforts, and the soil became slick with blood and pulped meat. Every blow was a killing one, with many strikes reaching more than one target amidst the mob surrounding them on all sides. But no matter how many of the cultists they killed, more came to take their place. They were driven on by a man standing at the back of the horde, who was shouting passages from a book he held before his eyes with rabid fervour.
Taking that bastard down would probably have broken the momentum of the cultists – though it was just at likely to send them into a frenzy instead. Unfortunately, the preacher was too far to take down with the bolt pistols carried by the squad – at least, not without giving an opening to the rabble around them.
Too slow, he thought. We aren't going to make it.
As if his thoughts had shaped reality, the glow of the daemon engine's maw started to brighten. From the angle of the cannon, Neliel's enhanced mind could easily trace the trail of the next shot. He may not know what kind of projectile the abomination would use, but it was a certitude that it would hit the wall. Perhaps at the gate, perhaps a bit to the side – it would not matter, both were equally robust, and the heretics may be insane, but they weren't stupid. They wouldn't have deployed this engine if they had not had good reason to think it could breach the loyalists' defenses.
The Assault Marines were still a good fifty meters away from the daemon engine. Time seemed to slow as Neliel considered the possibilities still open to him. In the blink of an eye, he found the only possible path, and took action. With a particularly savage blow, he forced the tide of degenerates back for a fraction of a second. Instead of pressing his advantage, he unclasped a fusion grenade from his belt and pushed down the activation rune, setting it up so that it would detonate on impact. Then, with a prayer to the Emperor on his lips, he hurled the weapon above the cultists and toward the daemon engine.
The grenade flew in a parabolic arc, ending its journey straight into the maw of the daemon engine. It plunged down its throat and detonated inside its grotesque belly with the force of a newborn sun. Warp-twisted mad genius met the fury of cold, unyielding science, and was found wanting. The abomination exploded in a burst of shrapnel and chaotic energy that engulfed several more groups of hereteks who had stood too close to their colleagues' vile creation. For a fraction of a second, as he stared into the ball of hellfire, Neliel thought he could see faces in the inferno – the screaming souls of the Mechanicum renegades, consigned to their fate by the destruction of their combined form.
There was a pause on the battlefield as heretics and Space Marines alike looked at the devastation. A cheer rose on the battlements as the loyalists witnessed the destruction of the most imminent threat to their continued resistance. Simultaneously, a clamour of despair and terror rose from the gathered ranks of traitors still in reserve.
'Now you are just showing off,' commented one of Neliel's squadmates.
'Believe it or not, that wasn't exactly what I was aiming for,' answered the sergeant.
'Well it certainly worked nonetheless. What do we do now ?'
Neliel took a look around him. The cultists were frozen still, looking at the ruination of the daemon engine with slack jaws. But soon, that accursed preacher started speaking again, and they quickly shook off their stupor to return their attention on the Space Marines in their midst. However, the zealotry and hatred in their eyes was now mixed with another emotion : fear, still not of the transhuman killers clad in blue and green, but of their own masters' wrath at their failure. They still sought death at Neliel's squad's blades, but now it was to avoid the fate reserved to them if they survived the battle.
That didn't make them any more of a threat, but Neliel and his brothers could accomplish nothing more by remaining where they were – still dangerously exposed, in the middle of enemy ground.
'We are turning back,' the sergeant announced to the rest of his Assault squad. 'We will cut our way back toward the wall and use the jump-packs to get back on the battlements.'
Valemus swore violently as he watched the Tenebrae Lex's creation torn to pieces. He cursed the incompetence of Kirlgan's horde under his breath, vowing that the renegade priest would pay for his flock's failings. There had only been ten – ten ! – of the Astartes, and the cultists had numbered in the thousands, yet they had been unable to hold them for the five or so minutes it would have taken for the daemon engine to fire at least one shot. It would be him who would have to explain to the leaders of the Tenebrae Lex what had happened to those of their own that they had attached to the army, and he was not looking forward to another meeting with the hereteks.
The cultists weren't even able to stop them from returning to their lines. Even now, he could see the Assault Marines rising again, ineffectual shots trailing uselessly behind their retreating forms. The enemy had inflicted considerable damage to Kirlgan's fanatics, crippled the Tenebrae Lex, and they had not suffered a single loss in doing so. If this continued, he could say farewell to his position as Regent – and quite possibly to his continued existence as well. Dekaros had proved before that he didn't take failure kindly, and the spire-born had little doubt that the Awakened One was no different. He couldn't afford to mess things up here and now.
There were still several options open to him, and he quickly considered them. He could send in the Unbound, but they would endure great losses in taking the wall, and Valemus was under no illusion that the Astartes weren't rated far higher in Arken's esteem that the mortals were. He supposed that made sense from the perspective of the Forsaken Sons' master : Astartes were costly to create, whereas humans were plentiful. That left him with another option, though he would have preferred not to use it so soon – or at all, if he was honest with himself. Some things were disquieting even for him, but if he had a choice between them and the Forsaken Sons' displeasure, he knew what he would choose every time.
He turned to Jar, and commanded the psyker to link with the one who called himself Sir Poteleus, the leader of the Puppeteers. The wild psyker shuddered as he established the connection, his mind reeling from the contact with Poteleus' own psyche. When he spoke, his posture was no longer neutral : he was trembling from the strain of that particular link, fighting off the madness dripping from the Puppeteer's mind. The wards covering his skin were no use, for they were designed to protect his soul from the Empyrean's denizens – and the true horror of Poteleus' kind was that, for all their hideous plans, they were still very human.
'Lord Galeyard,' he said. 'What do you want from us ?'
'I need you to clear the battlements, to give cover to those who will give the rest of the force an opening. Are your tricks up to the task ?'
Despite the fact that the actual Poteleus was far away, Valemus could feel the anger his dismissive order brought into the Puppeteer lord. Good. The wretch unnerved him, and though it was petty to talk down to him while they weren't face to face, it would be well to remind him of where he stood in the hierarchy. The very reason the Puppeteers had come to be what they were, after all, was because they believed themselves to be possessed of rights and privileges far above their station.
Before the coming of the Storm, the members of the cult had been rich men and women, holding important positions in Parecxis' economy. When the madness of the Warp had descended upon the world, they had tried to keep their employees calm, but where others had done so by allowing preachers of the Ecclesiarchy to enter their Manufactoriums, they had instead chosen to drug the poor bastards' food and water. At first, they had simply spiked the supplies with calming agents, but they had grown bolder over time, and reduced their workforce to dead-eyed husks, which had quickly drawn the attention of the world's authorities. Valemus had little in the way of details about what had happened next, but it seemed that a battle had taken place between the forces of the Arbites and the brainwashed minions of the cabal, ending with a cataclysmic chemical explosion that had left the few Puppeteers who had survived horribly scarred and completely mad. They now lived trapped within a delusion that Parecxis had turned against them without reason, and had joined forces with the Forsaken Sons purely to avenge themselves for this perceived betrayal.
The lord of the Galeyard House personally thought that they had only gotten what they deserved. Even for one such as him, robbing other people of their freedom of thought was an abhorrent deed – even the Forsaken Sons didn't seem to go that far. But he had wisely kept that opinion for himself. Dekaros had chosen to take the Puppeteers into the service of the warband, and they had proven their use during the Arrival.
'We will take the walls for you,' Jar finally relayed as Poteleus grudgingly acceded to Valemus' authority over him. 'But the Sons of Calth will probably be immune to the effects of our mist. We have never had an opportunity to experiment on Astartes before.'
'So long as you keep them busy, it is all we need.'
'We will do more than that, I promise you.'
The connection was closed, and Jar's posture became a lot less tense. Valemus, however, couldn't afford to give the psyker time to recover from the unpleasant link.
'Tell Tarox to advance the ram under the cover of the Puppeteers' move,' he ordered. 'Tear open that gate.'
The next wave of the traitors advanced toward the walls in an unhurried, inelegant gait. They wore full isolation suits, the kind worn by medical personnel amid quarantined zones or in radioactive arenas. The face of each was covered in a heavy gas mask, and they bore on their back a pack of tubes, gas containers and other machinery that pulsed into their lungs the exact mix of drugs and gases that kept them alive. The dosage varied for each individual : they had all designed and fabricated their own life-support engine in the days after the explosion that had made the planetary authorities think their cult had been wiped out.
There were thirty of them, each with several humans wearing chokers whose chains were linked to the belt of their masters. To the defenders, those were barely recognizable as humans anymore. They were cadaverously thin, and stared forward with dead, empty eyes as they walked. All of them carried on their back yet more gas containers, and were hunched forward by their weight. To the defenders, it seemed impossible that these wretches had the strength to carry the massive cylinders, yet they kept advancing regardless, keeping pace with their masters. More of the slaves walked without collars, but they weren't as wretched, and carried weapons and pieces of armor over their abused flesh. These were fighters, not beasts of burden, even if they sported the same dead-eyed expression. There were hundreds of them, tightly packed around their masters, forming a wall of flesh.
Already warned by the hereteks' gambit not to let an enemy's distance deter them, the defenders opened fire with long-range rifles, but every shot ricocheted against energy shields which flared with each impact. Several of the slaves fell, but the masters appeared invulnerable to the loyalists' ranged weapons. When they reached a spot about the same distance as the hereteks before them, they stopped, and the slaves carefully put down the containers.
'We could attack them again,' suggested Neliel over the vox, his eagerness plain in his tone. 'Whatever they are planning, me and my squad can stop them.'
'No,' replied Atorios. 'You and your squad will return to the top of the observation tower and remain in reserve until I order you otherwise.'
'Captain, if we do nothing, we are giving them the initiative. Haven't we learned long ago that allowing the slaves of Chaos time to plot is a mistake ?'
Before Atorios could answer to his sergeant that his previous deployment had been a desperate measure, and that without the extended range granted by jumping from the top of the tower he and his squad would be exposed to the traitors' fire for more than a hundred meters without cover of any kind, something caught his attention.
Each of the silhouettes in isolation suits stood amidst a circle of gas containers, and held its arms toward the wall. The slaves activated the opening mechanism of the containers, and plumes of cyan mist began to hiss from them, gathering several meters above the heretics in an opaque cloud that blocked the loyalists' line of fire. Was this the answer of the traitors, pondered Atorios ? To give themselves cover so that they may advance on the wall while preventing the defenders from taking a clear shot ? If so, it was a singularly foolish plan. They had eyes below the mist, with small openings in the wall stuffed with pic-recorders in order to have the best image of their foes' position at all time. They would be able to direct massed fire straight into enemy groups even without a clear line of sight.
No, there had to be more to their plan. Just as the Captain thought this, the cloud of mist began to advance toward the wall, despite the absence of wind. Its advance began slowly, but quickly accelerated, as if it were a solid object accumulating momentum. Something akin to dread dwelled in Atorios as he watched the impenetrable wall of mist come ever closer.
'Gas masks !' he shouted, not bothering with the vox, instead trusting his enhanced lungs to carry his warning to all defenders. 'Brothers, seal your helms ! All of you without a gas mask, get off the wall !'
'Too late,' murmured Poteleus, as the Puppeteer heard the desperate cry of the Space Marine commander. Behind his suit, the burned out remnants of his lips twisted into a smile that belonged only to a corpse in the throes of rigor mortis.
'By Calth's bleached sun,' murmured Atorios in horror as the clouds of gas reached the ramparts.
Despite his warning, many humans had not had time to leave the ramparts. They had been prepared to fight and die here, to give their lives to defend the city – when the command had come to withdraw, many had hesitated. Not long – just a few seconds – but that had been enough. And now, their reluctance to step back before the enemies of Man was costing them everything.
Those who breathed in the Chaotic mist were turning against those who didn't. From what Atorios had seen, there was a moment of struggle after the first inhalation, during which the unfortunate victim tried to resist the poison coursing through his or her respiratory system. But none managed to resist it, and soon they became similar to the slaves outside the walls : staring at the Space Marines with empty eyes and blank expressions, holding and firing their weapons with the same skill that had been drilled into them by the Sons of Calth in preparation for this battle.
'No,' whispered the Captain as several of the mind-controlled soldiers turned their lifeless gazes toward him. 'Throne of Terra, no !'
The soldiers brought their weapons to bear, and before they could fire, instinct and training overcame Atorios' doubts. The captain launched himself at the mind-controlled mortals, and with a single swipe of his word, he severed their necks, sending their heads toppling to the bottom of the walls. He screamed in outrage as he saw the blood spurt from their headless torsos, and cursed the Forsaken Sons and their allies for reducing him to such an extremity.
'Captain,' came a voice over the vox, 'the traitors are advancing a ram toward the gate. It is carried by several of the huge mutants we noticed among their ranks. I think they will be able to pierce through the gate if given enough time.'
Atorios swore violently as he was forced to cut apart yet another loyal servant of the Emperor with his power blade. The plan of the traitors was obvious now : keep them busy with the mist while they tore down the gate. It had been reinforced, but the workers had been pressed by time, and this was no gate of the Imperial Palace, capable of sustaining months of intense cannonade before it gave way. It would fall, and there was nothing the defenders could do to prevent that.
He had no choice.
'Sons of Calth,' he called over the vox. 'Abandon the wall. Withdraw to the next line of defense. To all Imperial forces : do not approach the western front unless you are equipped with a gas mask.'
He shifted frequencies, passing to one only his battle-brothers could hear. The next words were heavy on his tongue, but he understood all too well that, in this matter too, there was no choice at all :
'And once you are on the second line, if you see any of our human soldiers approach without wearing a gas mask … open fire.'
'That's better,' declared Valemus to no one in particular as he watched the carnage on the battlements unfold.
With their own forces turning against them, the Sons of Calth were too busy to attack the Breakers carrying the ram, and they were slowly but surely giving ground, acknowledging the futility of resisting on their current position. Soon, the mutants' surhuman strength and the Warp-forged metal of the siege machine proved superior to the gate, and the twin plates of reinforced steel were torn apart by the blows. They did not fall – their hinges were probably the most robust part of the wall – but there was now an opening in Asthenar's wall. Already the Breakers had abandoned the ram and were forcing their way in, their inner bloodlust no longer contained by anything as minor as a giant wall standing between them and their enemies. They wouldn't make it to contact, of that he was certain – there would be a lot more ground to cover between the wall and the next of the Sons of Calth's many, many lines of defenses and fall-back positions.
Fortunately, there was a force in his army particularly apt to that kind of job. He ordered Jar to open a channel to the leader of the most dangerous element of his host.
'It is time, Lord Lucien,' he declared with far more respect than when addressing the other sub-commanders. Lucien may be technically under his command for this operation, but he was still and Astartes, whereas Valemus was just one mortal. The former sergeant had already been a veteran of the Great Crusade back when he had just been a baby. 'There is a breach in the gate, and our foes are falling back. You and those in your charge may now break the enemy.'
'About time,' muttered Jar, his voice turning to low pitch of Lucien's augmented throat into a ridiculous grumble . 'Not sure I could keep them leashed any longer. The Unbound thirst for blood.'
'And they shall have it,' murmured Valemus as the connection was severed before commanding Jar one more time : 'Give the order to everyone else to advance as they will into the city.'
'We aren't going to be able to keep control of them,' noted Talek, displaying insight that surprised Valemus – no matter how many times the thug proved he wasn't just a mass of muscles and violence, such was his appearance that his master kept forgetting it.
'That was never the plan,' the Galeyard lord explained. 'Lord Arken ordered me and the other forces to break through the wall and disperse our troops into the city to do as they pleased, in order to force the Sons of Calth to do the same to defend the population. I think the Awakened One knows that keeping control of our allies would be almost impossible and planned his strategy accordingly.'
Talek grunted his understanding. Then, suddenly, he launched himself at Valemus and shoved him toward the other side of the room, his physical strength enough to displace even the armored form of his lord. Valemus crashed against the wall, and before he could utter a word of protestation, Talek's head turned into a bloody pulp. A fraction of a second later, the sound of a bolter being fired reached Valemus' ears.
From his position across the ruined street, Veros cursed the fates as the bodyguard took the bolt meant for his master. The Son of Calth did not know how the man had localized him – perhaps he had caught a ray of light reflecting on Veros' bolter, or perhaps the Warp had whispered in his ears to preserve the life of one of its champions.
'Missed,' he announced redundantly over the vox, as he hastily stood from his prone position and started running. 'Get in and finish them !'
Three men emerged from their own hiding places. They were all that remained from Veros' squad – the rest had fallen honourably in the raids and ambushes that had afflicted the traitor forces during their walk through the Graveyard. Each of them carried short-range laser weapons, models which sacrificed range to increased firepower. They had recovered the guns in one of the caches left in the Graveyard – their standard equipment had no chance of piercing through the armor of the heretics' leader. They had watched the advance of the traitors, accumulating intelligence and sending it to their allies behind the wall. They had identified the leader of the renegades, and isolated his position. So far, the mass of traitor forces surrounding him had made any approach impossible, and they had been forced to watch as the wall fell to blasphemous sorcery. Now, however, they had an opening. If they could kill the fallen lord of House Galeyard, the enemy would fall into disarray. Without a clear commander, they would be more vulnerable to the schemes of the city's remaining defenders.
Veros' bolter shot had been their best hope of success – and the last of the Space Marine's ammunition. Now, they could still fulfill their objective – but their chances of surviving the operation had gone from slim to almost non-existent. They didn't care. They had already lived longer than they had thought they would when they had gone to the Graveyard.
The first of them who entered the war room was killed by a creature that, at first glance, was a scribe-servitor. The flesh of its arms suddenly split, revealing energized blades that severed the soldier's head in a single sweep. The second loyalist shot the thing in the head, vaporizing its remaining brain matter alongside most of its skull. There was no doubt that the tech-priests on the side of the renegades could repair it by replacing the skull and placing a new brain within, but for now the construct was immobile.
One second later, the soldier felt something prickle at his chest. He looked down to see a handful of darts standing over his heart. When he looked from where they had come, he saw Amelia, who smiled at him in the two more seconds it took for the cocktail of venoms to make their effect. Agony coursed through his veins, and he fell, dead before he hit the ground.
The third soldier was shot in the head by Valemus himself before he could even point his own weapon toward the traitor leader. Like Talek, his headless body collapsed on the ground, but unlike the bodyguard, there was no blood – his neck had been cauterized by the shot that had killed him. Amelia turned toward her master for an instant, signalling her appreciation of his marksmanship with a wink.
And that was then Veros reached them.
As the Space Marine entered the confined space of the battle, the female assassin jumped toward him, graceful as a great feline, her poisoned nails aimed at the warrior's throat. Faster than Valemius could follow, the Astartes twisted in her direction, and his left arm caught her in the torso with the strength of a raging grox. All air left the murderess' chest in a pathetic shriek of pain, and her trajectory was violently altered.
Amelia crashed against the wall with the sound of breaking body armor, and slumped down on the floor in a whimpering heap. Now that he didn't risk hitting her, Valemus shot in the direction of the Astartes. Like his armor, his weapon was a family relic : it had been fabricated during the Dark Age of Technology, and had been preserved for centuries in stasis before he had chosen to take it with him to the what was quite possibly the first battle the weapon had ever been used in. It was a laser pistol, with three barrels combining to unleash enough firepower to melt a stone wall. He had chosen the weapon because it looked like it could pierce through Astartes' power armor : now he would see if he had been right.
The first shot went wild. The second hit the Son of Calth in the right shoulder, leaving a blackened spot on the ceramite. The third and fourth hit the loyalist straight in the chest, and Valemus smelt burning flesh – the laser had reached beyond the armor. That slowed the Astartes, forcing him to breathe deeply to coax oxygen into his tormented lungs. The heat of the blast had permeated through his fused ribcage and cooked the organs, but he could still force them to function, though he wouldn't be able to speak for weeks at the very least.
Despite his wounds, the Space Marine was still walking, combat knife held tight in his right hand. Valemus' armor incorporated many weapons, some of which would even be enough to take down an Astartes at such close range. Yet the Regent found himself unable to move, fixed in place by the look of pure, undiluted hatred on the Son of Calth's face. He felt as if he was facing the Emperor Himself, risen from His Golden Throne in spite of His wounds to look upon him and punish him for his many, many transgressions.
The sound of engine drew the attention of both Space Marine and heretic lord to the side of the building, through an almost entirely collapsed wall. Their gazes met the rear end of a Thunderhawk, the hatch open to reveal a silhouette clad in cobalt power armour, with a horned helm and holding a staff crackling with Warp energy.
The Son of Calth didn't hesitate. Upon seeing the Sorcerer, he launched himself straight at Valemus, intent on completing his mission before he could be stopped. But he wasn't fast enough. The Sorcerer held his hand up, and the loyalist froze in mid-air. Even his face was locked in an expression of fury. To his own surprise, Valemus discovered that he found out the look to be quite beautiful, in its own way. There was something pure in such dense hatred, even if it was directed at himself. Never before had he seen such depth of emotion, and it wondered him that it was on a Space Marine he was witnessing it – the Astartes were notorious in the Imperium for their stunted emotions.
Slowly, deliberately, the Sorcerer descended from the Thunderhawk, his ceramite boots pounding on the gunship's ramp. Behind him, three huge cylinders were being pushed along on anti-gravs, manned by a small and twisted humanoid that Valemus recognized as the wretch that had checked his credentials before the meeting of future faction leaders, back in Santorius' Governor Palace.
The Chaos Marine walked between Valemus and the Son of Calth, and bowed so that his helm was face to face with the loyalist. Valemus heard words being exchanged, but he couldn't recognize the language. Then the Sorcerer stood straight, and with a casual gesture of the hand, the neck of the Son of Calth twisted and broke with a chilling crunk.
'I thank you for your assistance,' said Valemus while bowing low,' my lord … ?'
'I am Pareneffer,' answered the Sorcerer, finally looking at the mortal. 'You have transmitted to your sub-commanders that they can do as they see fit from now on ?'
'Yes, my lord. I will take command of my own troops and …'
'Enough,' interrupted Pareneffer. 'Your part in the assault is over, Galeyard. There is little more you can do here, and your life is important to the continuation of Arken's plans … though you shouldn't believe yourself irreplaceable. Your armed forces will add little to the war effort at this point – whether the loyalists realize it or not, they had lost this battle long before the first shot was fired. Return to Santorius with your men and wait for further instructions.'
'Is this the will of lord Arken ?' asked Valemus, carefully phrasing his words so as not to appear rebellious.
'It is,' confirmed Pareneffer. 'I was coming here to test my creations,' he gestured toward the cryo-pods, 'and Arken asked me to update your orders while I was at it. Although seeing that my intervention saved your life, I wonder if he had another purpose … Well, it doesn't matter for now. Leave this place, Galeyard. Your part in this war is over, and you have served well.'
'As you wish, my lord,' said Valemus. 'Amelia, how are your wounds ?'
The assassin had managed to stand up, though she clearly had difficulties doing so. She had to lean on the wall to advance, but she indicated to Valemus that she could move – the Regent noted that she used sign language and not her own voice. She probably didn't trust her voice right now, maybe she had a few ribs broken. No matter, as long as she was alive, the medics of House Galeyard would be able to patch them up. There was nothing they could do, however, for Talek. And Jar …
Jar wasn't in any condition to leave, Valemus realized. The psyker was down on all four with his back to the wall, desperately trying to push himself further away from the Sorcerer's cohorts. He was staring straight in their direction with bloodshot, terrified eyes. Carefully, Valemus moved closer to the psyker, drawing his gun as he did so in case he needed to … neutralize Jar quickly. The wretch did not react to his approach at all, his attention entirely focused on the cryo-pods and their handler.
'What's wrong, Jar ?' asked Valemus, as softly as he could. The psyker jerked at his words, before slowly turning his head toward his master – but even then, his gaze kept returning to the pods, and his hands and feet kept trying to push him into the wall.
It took him several tries before he could talk. He was trembling so badly that Valemus worried for a moment he was going to bite off his own tongue before explaining what had spooked him like that. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was even more shaky than usual, and from what little Valemus was able to read from the psyker's general body language, he wasn't in the middle of one of his crises. That was worrying for several reasons the Regent didn't care to list right now.
'Death,' Jar finally said. 'Death and lies, lies, lies ! Falsehoods, blasphemies ! The fates are laughing and the enemy approaches under the shadow of servitude ! The sons of kings will face each other in the ruins of hope, and the eye will burst open to let loose that which lies within ! Burn it, master. Burn it, burn it, burn it now !'
Valemus knew better than to attempt to get a clearer answer. To those who saw into the Warp, everything had significance beyond what the mundane eye could perceive, and everything they said when attempting to describe it was a riddle that only them could truly understand. Instead of trying, he activated one of Jar's injection mechanisms, and watched as the psyker calmed down and slipped into unconsciousness. Only after he confirmed that he hadn't accidentally killed him with an overdose did he turn his gaze back at Pareneffer and the strange devices he had brought aboard the Thunderhawk.
Nothing had ever scared Jar like that, even when the Warp Storm had been raging in all its terrible fury, back at the very beginning, when Neverborn had walked the streets and thousands had died each hour in the streets. Back then, the psyker had laughed and cried and shouted, telling of the horrors which had birthed each of the daemons stalking the shadows of Santorius.
Valemus didn't know what lurked within the sarcophagi. He didn't think he would like it when he learned it, either. At the same time, he couldn't simply act on Jar's words and try to destroy them – mostly because the Sorcerer could kill him even more easily that he had dealt with the would-be assassins. It would probably be best to keep an eye on Pareneffer's moves from now one, and his valuable assets away from whatever the Sorcerer had planned. And for good measure, it would be even better to do exactly as Pareneffer had said and get back to Santorius until the war was over.
As he prepared to leave, he heard the sounds of battle from behind the wall. The Unbound had passed to the other side, and thousands of mortal fighters followed. No doubt that the same scene was repeating itself on the other three fronts. To the south, the Plague Legion would have used its daemonic engines to tear down the walls so that the undying horde could enter. In the north, the Raptors would have attacked the battlements so that the Gene-Lords could use whatever xenotech they had constructed in their hellish city to open a breach. And in the east … Well, the east was commanded by Arken himself. It was very doubtful that it would take longer for the Awakened One to break the wall that it had taken Valemus.
The battle for Asthenar had truly begun.