"Hold the line!" Marius Vairosean exclaimed through the vox-net.
The fighting on Slodi was nontrivial, though not any harder than he'd been led to believe. The Third Company had been deployed according to meticulously crafted plans, fought according to the ideals of the Legion, and now were on the verge of triumph, almost having arrived in the Governor's Palace, where they were to meet up with the 25th and Dasara.
Vairosean knew that sending only two Companies to the heavily defended Slodi while the rest of the Legion idled above wasn't the perfect plan in most situations; yet here, the Primarch had had reason to act thus. Vairosean required redemption, and sending in overwhelming numbers was rather contradictory to the concept.
Besides, even two Companies were enough to ensure Slodi would be conquered. Even half a Company would probably achieve that. Even though Dasara wasn't answering his vox-hails ever since he'd become bogged down in fighting around the captial's outskirts, Vairosean knew victory was assured.
The only question left was, how perfect a victory? Vairosean had so far led a campaign he was, unfortunately, proud of: he'd tried hard to get rid of the emotion, but this war deserved it if any war did. Against many renegade Army regiments, against ceaseless PDF and Mechanicum resistance, against two Titans, the only casualties Third Company had suffered were twenty-five wounded. Not one of Vairosean's subordinates had died.
Dasara, with his unplanned and improvised approach to warfare - modeled, as those of increasingly many Companies' were, on Solomon Demeter's - had lost a full hundred Marines, battle-brothers whose only sin was to serve under such an incompetent and risk-taking Captain.
Well, Vairosean would ensure Dasara changed his ways. If this victory was, indeed, won without the blood of Vairosean's warriors being spilled -
They needed to win it first. "Group Promethium," Vairosean repeated as he sprinted into the palace via an underground passageway, "hold the line! Group Coal will meet up with you in a few minutes. Group Oil, continue your advance. There'll be resistance soon- a supposed ambush in about a hundred meters."
Vairosean, Group Homewood with him, continued to run through the catacombs. They had been spotted by now, though no forces had yet been dispatched against them. To his sides, Vairosean saw statues of the Old Night Builder-Kings of Slodi. Behind them were the elaborate entrances to tombs, locked forever shut - a monument to the hiding of truth and the worship of idols.
A few of the doors were open, monuments to raiders and vandals. For all the flaws of the Builder-Kings, Vairosean's disgust with the open tombs was far greater than with the closed ones.
Gunfire lit up the corridor ahead, after a turn. Vairosean suspected it was an automated turret; to check, he motioned Duasnian to fire a rocket into the apparent source of the fire. The lascannon fell silent, having hit none of the Emperor's Children.
But then the hallway once again filled with the sounds of war, a lasbolt bouncing - for now, harmlessly - off the Third Captain's power armor.
"Children of the Emperor!" Vairosean cried, leading the charge as it rounded the corner.
"Death to his foes!" Group Homewood responded.
After firing three precise shots at the suddenly frightened Imperial Army - they weren't precisely Imperial anymore, but that was the closest designation - Vairosean crashed into them.
"Surrender!" he cried, even as his powersword split a soldier in half.
The defenders never got the chance. The strategists in the palace had horribly underestimated Group Homewood's strength. At the first moment when a normal human, with unaugmented reaction times, could have possibly responded to the Captain's demand the last mortal resister collapsed to the floor.
"Casualties?"
"None," Assault Sergeant Arbiaqurn answered. "No wounded. This was a scouting force; they didn't have enough weaponry to pose a relevant threat."
"Terogil, how long until we're under the Throne Room?"
"Just a moment… um… six hundred meters from my position, two hundred from yours."
"Brother-Sergeant, catch up, please. We run."
The Third Company headed forwards at a breakneck pace once more, though it was nowhere near the maximum for an Astarte. They knocked down two more automated turrets, visible in the infrared despite the overall dark. Then they were standing, two floors below the Throne Room of Slodi, where the governor sat and plotted his counterstrikes.
"Location, Terogil?"
"A hundred meters behind your position, Brother-Captain. Coming… oomph… up."
Being a Devastator certainly slowed Terogil down, but Vairosean was growing annoyed with the Sergeant's lateness. Still, 250% of the Captain's speed was acceptable.
"Open fire upwards," Vairosean instructed.
The Devastators eliminated the ceiling in a crescendo of explosions.
Vairosean was the first through the breach, and he helped the Devastators onto the shaky surface of the first floor. They had erupted into a deserted triumphal hallway, lined with the busts of Imperial heroes; among them, Vairosean was amused to note, were those of the eighteen Primarchs. The loyalists' visages were cloaked, but ten were yet visible- Lupercal, the Crimson King, Guilliman, Sanguinius, Russ, Corax, Mortarion, Jaghatai Khan, the Lord of Iron and a blank face that Vairosean assumed represented Alpharius.
They were rather well-done, actually. It would not do to risk them. "Move forward," Vairosean commanded, "and burn a hole into the throne room."
It was done.
Vairosean was again the first through the gap. The stolen schematics proved to be right once again: Group Homewood was, once more, where Vairosean had planned. The throne room stood nearly empty, with only the governor himself reclining in his seat. He was a middle-aged man, clothed formally, with a mixed expression of resignation and determination on his face.
"You've come to kill me," he said.
"Indeed," Vairosean responded.
"Then do so," the governor said. "Another will replace me. But Slodi will resist to the last."
"Surrender. Spare yourself and your world." Vairosean knew what the governor was playing at: theoretically, his forces were even now surrounding the Throne Room, ready to kill Vairosean as soon as negotiations concluded. In reality, the Third Company had eliminated most of those forces and was methodically surrounding the remnants. But the Captain still hoped the governor would make the sensible choice, for there was no dishonor in logic... not for baseline humans, at least.
"My world will fight no matter what. And myself… I have lived long enough, I think. But our determination is not futile, Space Marine; you have brought overwhelming force, enough to force most planets to surrender outright. I will die knowing we fought against the fury of dark perfection. And we killed your commander."
The governor shoved a hand into his throne and showed Vairosean Dasara's mangled head.
"Gruesome, I know," the governor said, "but it proves a point. Your fleet is mighty, but you will suffer, even if you do win."
"Dasara was not my commander," Vairosean said with disgust, both at the man before him and at the failed Captain.
He shot the governor.
Immediately, the skitarii detachment about to enter the room opened fire, and Vairosean had to twist away from the shells. Some others weren't so quick; Vairosean saw Arbiaqurn hit in the leg. Vairosean gave three precise shots at the tech-priests' cerebrums, but only one of them fell; the others had, apparently, moved their brain matter somewhere else.
But it didn't matter, as the survivors were lit up by a titanic blast from behind moments after Vairosean's shots. The flame billowed out, and Squad Parstene moved in, the Sergeant's plasma cannon on his shoulder. Two Imperial Army units rushed into the melee from the throne's right, but to their left a large force under Vairosean's second-in-command, Isitan Loisekuas, emerged from a colonnade. Vairosean dodged a blade belonging to one of the remaining tech-priests, then sliced the skitarii's servo-arm off with his own sword. The tech-priest tried to swivel his gun, but Vairosean had predicted the movement and poked into the skitarii's shoulder, causing the holding to crack. The skitarii kicked at the Astarte, but it was ineffective, as Vairosean's bolter exploded his ribcage and the brain therein.
Vairosean tensed for the next enemy, but none emerged. The Army ran - calling it a disorganized retreat would be a vast understatement. There were no tech-priests left, indicating any skitarii who'd survived Parstene's attack had done likewise.
"What now, Brother-Captain?" Loisekuas asked.
Vairosean glanced at Captain Dasara's head, its skull now cracked. Dasara had failed disastrously, and it was fortunate Vairosean was there to pick up the pieces. How could one possibly lose a hundred Astartes to this level of resistance? And that was before the engagement which had killed the Captain….
"Casualties?"
"Three wounded. None killed." Apothecaries Tassiditus and Mastados, who'd accompanied Loisekuas in, were scurrying around and taking care of the injured.
"Very well. Loisekuas, stay here with the Devastator Squads, plus the Tacticals of… oh, Naekon and Asaetorto. Everyone else, with me to the war room. Iridius, you have the schematics, right?"
"Yes, Brother-Captain," the Tactical Sergeant replied. "It's another floor up, then a kilometer due north."
"Then north." The Squads Vairosean had selected followed after him, no longer at a run but rather at a quick walk. The wall of the throne room was broken down, revealing a stairway; the Third Captain marched up it, phlegmatic as ever. He did dearly hope the governor's designated successor was there; if not, the campaign would drag on, despite the fact that victory was by now assured, as would be clear even to Slodi's defenders.
The Emperor's Children walked behind Vairosean, silently, implacably. They were the finest warriors humanity had ever had. There were rumors of dark things on the ships, of course, of fratricide and debauchery; but Vairosean did not believe the tales. The Third Legion was above such things.
Vairosean entered the traitors' war room at the head of a column that consisted of, perhaps, two hundred Space Marines; an intimidating sight for an unaugmented human. Perhaps it was telling that the skitarii and other tech-priests in the room simply turned to face Vairosean, some of them even preparing their weapons, whereas the humans' reaction ranged from throwing their hands skywards to falling to their knees weeping. Perhaps they were simply beyond this imperfection.
"Who is the new governor?" Vairosean asked.
"I am," one of the relatively resolute human women replied. "And I surrender."
"I am glad you, at least, saw reason," Vairosean said. "What are the codes?"
The woman told him, and the Captain typed them in. Within minutes, the automated defenses of Slodi were fully offline.
"Your world is fully within the embrace of the Emperor again now," Vairosean said. "You will remain vice-governor for precisely as long as you see it stays that way." The new governor was with the fleet already, a Terran noble. As for the others in the room... well, not all of them would live, but that was for a later hour.
The mop-up and restoration of order would take a few days, but in that moment of surrender the first war of the Unbroken Stars campaign was over.
The Imperium of Man had won.
And Marius Vairosean was redeemed.
