Planetfall, Plus Three Point Four Hours
The World Eater line captain slid to the ground, missing the top half of his skull. His sheared head implants sparked futilely, sending signals to half a brain no longer present. No helmet, Nex thought. Poor choice. He slid back behind a stone plinth as the captain's squad responded with a storm of bolter fire, cratering and chipping the dark rock.
Dust and dirt flew as a squad of Raven Guard Destroyers landed nearby, bolt pistols blazing. One hoisted a missile launcher, humming on its suspensor web. It gave a concussive cough; the customized missile soared out into the midst of the World Eaters and detonated in a shower of radioactive fragments and dust. Legionaries staggered and convulsed in their unbreached armor, collapsing as the deadly energy flooded their systems. Survivors pushed themselves back up, hefted suddenly heavy chainaxes, and stumbled towards the Destroyers. Bolt rounds cracked, cutting into Twelfth Legion Marines.
Nex added his fire to the fight, walking rounds up the line from the back. The squad staggered again under the weight of fire and the continuing rad poisoning. Post-human soldiers collapsed one by one, fearless in their frenzy but ultimately unable to resist the merciless attentions of the Raven Guard. The World Eaters joined their captain upon Isstvan's black soil after taking dozens of shots.
Nex was already gone, moving away without acknowledgment to or from his fellow Legionnaires. The Destroyers disengaged in good order- but not fast enough. An explosion engulfed three of them, sending sprays of dust, dirt, armor and body parts into the air. The other Destroyers launched off with their jump packs, narrowly escaping another artillery shell. They didn't get far; streams of high-velocity shells tore into them. Raven Guard came apart in the air, scattering blood and spall fragments in a macabre rain. The World Eaters Sicaran tank that killed them kept rolling as if nothing had occurred.
More movement in the skies caught Nex's eye as he prowled the edges of the apocalyptic battle. The stars fell; a blizzard of lights, shadow, and movement filled the panorama of the heavens above. The second wave of the Imperium's response to the Warmaster's perfidy had arrived.
Hundreds of orbital landers, gunships, transports descended through the tumultuous skies. They'd only been pinpricks when Nex noticed them, but they grew rapidly with all the speed of a Legion orbital assault.
Four Legions, as Nex recalled. The combined might of so many gathered Astartes would utterly decide matters on Isstvan. Already the forward Raven Guard elements were pulling back, disengaging from the World Eater advance in anticipation of reinforcements. Nex saw tactical and assault squads withdraw under the covering fire of tanks and Land Speeders. Terminators fell back ponderously, hacking their way free of World Eaters with methodical sweeps of their power axes.
The second wave drew closer by the second, ships growing in size constantly. Nex took the opportunity to carve several more notches from the last hour into his armor. The World Eaters had proven… satisfyingly challenging to hunt. He slipped through the black wastes, stepping over ruptured corpses and passing between burning vehicle husks. There were shockingly few wounded; trans-human physiology ensured that most Astartes fought to the bitter last – that only in death did duty end.
Nex found one of the wounded: a half-dead World Eater, missing both his legs and right arm. Despite the wounds when he saw Nex approaching he struggled to raise a bolt pistol from the muck. The Blood-Crow stepped over, pressed down on the hand clutching the pistol with his foot. He drew his knife and kneeling down, pried the cursing World Eater's head back and dug the point in.
He stood up a minute later, glancing around. The battle had fallen into a lull as both factions disengaged and withdrew. Seconds drew into minutes; Raven Guard walking wounded retreated towards their rear staging areas. Across the valley Salamander forces did the same. Only the Iron Hands appeared to still be on the assault, driving forward in some nihilistic fury as they fought and bled against the massed forces of the Emperor's Children.
The four reinforcing Legions were landing behind the initial drop points, already reinforcing their staging points with Astartes discipline and alacrity. Word Bearers, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion. A concentrated force to crush sectors, compressed into the span of kilometers.
Rank after rank of fresh Legion forces serried forth: infantry and vehicles moving in conjunction to form a perimeter around the Urgall Depression. The reinforcements gathered in formations to support-
Nex blinked. Something about the force disposition was… wrong. The others didn't seem to notice, kept moving towards the newcomers in weary relief as they reformed their unit cohesion. Nex was neither a line tactician nor a macro strategist. He'd never possessed the effortless affinity for battle command the way some Shadow Captains did. The way the others described it, he had an affinity for one thing – murder. He'd always recognized its presence: that charged moment an instant before all the arrangements came together to snuff out the life of another being.
And this…
This was murder most exquisite.
Kaedes felt a twinge of admiration for the mind that had orchestrated this masterpiece. He watched a captain in battered Mk III plate leading platoons of Raven Guard in the distance. They headed uphill for the rapid deployment barricades of a joint Word Bearer and Night Lord contingent, all arraigned for battle. The captain raised his hand in greeting, received a similar acknowledgement from a Word Bearer commander in deep crimson armor. The captain took several steps closer, then paused and stiffened. He'd finally realized.
Too late.
The Word Bearer and Night Lord line opened fire as one. The concussive discharge of thousands of bolters packed into so tight a space formed a shockwave of overpressure that blew dust and dirt clear, as if the earth itself recoiled at the treachery. The captain fell, sliced apart by a lascannon beam as heavy weapons and vehicles added their voices to the slaughter. The front ranks of the regrouping Raven Guard practically vanished in a mist of blood, organs, and armor fragments.
All across the Urgall Depression the 'reinforcements' attacked. Already depleted, Raven Guard and Salamander units went down by the hundreds to merciless fire from massed Word Bearer and Night Lord Companies. The Eighth Legion's gunships screamed overhead, dropping chem munitions into triage and aid stations. Iron Warrior heavy artillery pieces shelled human auxiliaries, obliterating entrenched positions with contemptuous ease. Salamander and Iron Hands super-heavies died, rear hulls punctured before they could swing around to confront their betrayers. Alpha Legion infiltrator squads revealed themselves with sinister purpose, modified bolters punching rounds through power armor as they targeted Loyalist leaders.
The other Legions redoubled their assault. Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Death Guard, and World Eaters alike took the opportunity to drive forward in a hammer blow against loyalist Legions caught against a sudden anvil of treachery. The Iron Hands took the initial brunt of the renewed assault, caught well forward in Ferrus' zeal to confront Fulgrim. Angron, Mortarion, Horus himself – returned to the field, leading their Legion elites with all the confidence that victory was inevitable.
Nex paused for a moment; he realized he was witnessing… the remembrancers might have called it a pivotal moment in history, or the end of an era, or the overturning of a galactic order. He saw it in altogether more simple terms; the Imperium had just been murdered.
For another moment, he wished he could bring himself to feel some sense of loss or tragedy about the prospect.
He cocked his head and turned, looking for the closest targets. There was no victory to be found here, no possible way they could win. The sounds of extermination echoed through the air: the staccato cracks of thousands of bolters, hundreds of high-velocity shells, artillery rounds, and whines of plasma discharges. Titan weapons shook the air with each apocalyptic blast. The screams of the dying underlay it all.
A half dozen of the fanatical Legion descended on a nearby tactical squad on jump packs, armed with hand flamers and vicious barbed axes. They bellowed chants in some unknown language as they landed on jets of flame. Axe-rakes rose and fell, reaping through the battered squad. Exhausted of ammunition, the Raven Guard Legionaries laid in with knife and fist. The sergeant cut down one Word Bearer before two others tore him apart with the hooks on their weapons.
Nex moved in; his first pair of shots punctured a jump pack from behind. The next pair went through the Word Bearer's helmet as he turned to meet the unseen attacker. The others responded quickly; Nex rolled aside as sheets of flame engulfed him. His refractor field diverted some of it; the rest of the flamer wash ate away at the edges of his cameleoline cloak and burned out his armor's inset projectors.
He came back up firing. Heavy slugs cracked into armor, penetrating or deflecting as fate or chance dictated. The staggering rounds proved enough of a diversion for the Raven Guard survivors to tackle the Word Bearers and the fight devolved into a series of close quarters grapples; armor of pale granite against sable black. Moving closer, Nex ended things with systematic shots to Word Bearer heads at point blank range.
"Blood-Crow," one of the survivors said. "Our thanks."
He was supposed to say something encouraging during these sorts of things, Corax claimed. "Kill as many as you can before you die."
Close enough.
To his mild surprise the bloodied Legionaries saluted. "Well said, Blood-Crow." They moved off, scavenging munitions from the dead to continue the fight. Nex headed the other way, mindful of his exposure with his damaged cameleoline.
Chaos reigned. The Raven Guard were doomed; no strategic genius was necessary to comprehend that. The extermination devolved into dozens – hundreds – of individual, small-scale battles as the Raven Lord's Legion reverted to training and instinct, separating and splitting to avoid the enemy where they were strong. Unfortunately that proved to be nearly everywhere: a closing noose of ceramite, flesh, and malevolent hatred.
Grounded Raven Guard drop ships vanished in plasma detonations. Others attempted to return to the skies and shredded apart in the weight of tracers and beams from all sides of the Urgall Depression. The sheer, sudden numerical advantage of the Warmaster's forces had utterly swung the balance of calamity.
Kaedes Nex exercised his craft like never before as his Legion sought to drag as many traitors to the grave with them as they could. Though a mature Astartes possessed near eidetic memory he always perceived battles as luminary moments of murder, like a madman experiencing moments of lucidity.
He silenced a bellowing Word Bearers Chaplain with a trio of shots through the throat and skull, then vanished in a cloud of electromagnetic fog.
He ambushed a small Alpha Legion Headhunter squad, rising from the midst of a pile of Raven Guard corpses. Stepping into a grapple, his knife plunged into the trailing Legionary's throat as his other hand seized control of his victim's gun hand. Modified bolter rounds punched through the backs of the other three Alpha Legionnaires, destroying backpack generators and detonating within spines. He ripped the knife free, replaced it with the smoking bolter muzzle, and forced the Legionary's finger down on the trigger. His autosenses blanked at the concussive bang as blood and brain matter coated the side of his faceplate.
A Sons of Horus Centurion leading a chase into a shadowy canyon found his men dropping to sudden coordinated sharpshooter fire as Raven Guard stealth masters appeared from seemingly nowhere, clinging to perches halfway up the rocky crevices. Nex emerged from the shadows, weapon raised. The Centurion lifted his bloody gladius and saluted Nex – an instant before the Fulcrum round tore half his skull away. Nex slid back into the shadows; the Mor Deythan were already gone.
Massed fire lit the sky. He danced backwards, feet finding steady purchase between ruined corpses as he retreated from a group of over half a dozen laughing Legionaries in lightning-streaked midnight blue armor. Fellow murderers, all – Night Lords. He fired both pistols as he went; ammunition was a problem.
His Fulcrums clicked empty.
Ammunition was a big problem.
Nex slammed the pistols back into their holsters. No time to reload. He hooked his boot under some fallen warrior's weapon at his feet, kicked it up before him, and snatched the grip out of the air. A part of his mind hoped it was loaded: this would be short-lived if-
It was. Two Night Lords exploded into steaming offal and melted armor as the melta hissed like an angry serpent. The others dove aside, snapping bolter rounds at him; two glanced away from his refractor field. Another detonated in his plastron. Spalling lacerated his side. He squeezed the trigger again and incinerated another Night Lord; the others leapt in, seeking to prevent more shots from the weapon meant to obliterate tanks.
The Night Haunter's sons tackled Nex, driving him to the ground. Two held his legs down and a third grappled his legs. The Night Lords sergeant approached, clutching a chainglaive. Revving the energized teeth, he lined it up over Nex's hearts.
A low-flying Fire Raptor detonated overhead; one of the wing stabilizers spun down across them like a divine rotary saw. The Night Lords never saw what hit them. The sergeant blinked in sudden shock as his chainglaive – and his forearm – fell away from his body. The stabilizer bisected the Legionary holding down Nex's right arm, kept going, and came to a halt forty meters away embedded in the ground.
Nex snatched the falling chainglaive out of the air with his suddenly free arm. The whirring blade sliced through the sergeant's armored knees without slowing, decapitated the Night Lord holding his legs, and punched down through the chest cavity of the one holding his other arm down. The spinning teeth painted such fascinating arcs of vaporizing blood in the air.
The sergeant died last as Nex swept to his feet, appropriated chainglaive scything up between his legs to spill fat, ropy strands of viscera onto the dark ground. Nex left the corpses and took the chainglaive; it was a good weapon.
He was forced to abandon it minutes later, blade embedded in Cataphractii thigh plate, haft sheared clean through by a power axe. Nex scrambled backwards through the swirling melee he'd found himself caught in; these foes he couldn't stand against. Braying World Eaters in ugly, patchwork Terminator suits rampaged through a multi-Legion fight. Raven Guard, Word Bearers, and Night Lords alike fell to wild swings of their monstrous axes. The ravening berserkers didn't seem to care who they cut down, just that the blood flowed.
Nex had been hoping to avoid getting caught in the midst of such a fight. A vain hope, given the intensity of the extermination – calling it a battle was a gross misstatement. Backing away towards the edge of the melee, suddenly he was the only one left standing, all the others cut down in shocking speed.
Him, and four maddened Terminators.
Inconvenient.
He backpedaled: nothing he had could reliably kill anything in Cataphractii armor. No, that wasn't true. His hands went to his waist pouches. The World Eaters came on, ponderous in their monstrous armor but gaining speed like implacable locomotives, screaming their bloodlust all the while. Nex stretched his left arm out before him, dropped the shroud bomb at his feet.
The howling, broken Legionaries charged into the gray smoke. Nex was already gone, sprinting away. The lead World Eater never noticed the little cylinder he kicked over in his charge.
Ravenous green light flared to life as the phosphex bomb detonated. Proscribed chemical weapons from a dark age, the lambent green flames clung and burned through everything they contacted. Ceramite, metal, flesh, and bone. Not even Tactical Dreadnought Armor was proof against it.
Though they were caught in the center of the blaze, the World Eaters didn't scream. At least, not in pain. Denied their last opportunity to spill blood, they howled their rage until chemical flames consumed lungs and throats. Standing away, Nex watched silhouettes crumple in the inferno, a smile on his face at the glorious carnage. So that was why Corax had never let him use phosphex-
Incredibly, one of the World Eaters stumbled from the ongoing flames. The white and blue had boiled away from his armor, and only one hand still clutched an axe. Only a ragged, charred stump remained of the other hand. Nex raised his Fulcrums.
The target took eight shots before collapsing, armor still ablaze.
The Blood-Crow carved another mark into his armor.
But he couldn't change the greater outcome. Encircled and entrapped, company after company of Raven Guard died, fighting to the last as they attempted to break out. Wounded and low on ammunition, Nex hid away in ruins not of human origin amid the corpses of a Sons of Horus squad. Nightfall approached; the backdrop of the sky grew dark even as the constant weapon discharges filling the Urgall Depression provided abundant lighting.
New streaks of flame filled the sky like meteors. They couldn't be aircraft: too far, too slow, too large. They could only be void ships – or their debris. The overwhelming treachery on Isstvan's black sands must have occurred in the void above as well. Nex stared up into the deepening night. Those were probably remnants of the Legion's fleet sliding out of orbit.
His body ran hot; despite Astartes physiology the last hours had taxed them all beyond measure. He settled himself with the bodies, arranged himself to look like one of the corpses. The Legion… was dead. He'd seen the ruined bodies, so thick upon the ground a Legionary could nearly walk one end of the valley to the other upon them. He had no idea if Lord Corax was still alive. Could Primarchs die? He'd always wondered. Never expected to find out this way. Again, he wondered what it would be like to care. Nex let his Catalepsean Node spool up and slipped into the near-dreams of Astartes half-sleep.
Melchar had broached the subject once after a mission. They'd been on campaign against the Stryg Lords: bloody murder work in asteroid tunnels. Nex was cleaning his gear while a trio of Moritats carried the corpse of another, preparing him for burial.
"You should say something," Melchar said, nodding at the passing Moritats.
It took Kaedes a moment to realize Melchar was addressing him. "Why?"
"You're Moritat-Prime. It's your responsibility."
"My responsibility is to kill the Primarch's targets."
Melchar sighed, then chuckled. "You're a lousy Prime."
Nex didn't disagree. "I never asked for the position."
"No, I don't expect you did." Melchar grinned. "You never wondered why the Raven made you Moritat-Prime?"
Strange question. "I'm good at killing."
"Master of understatement, you are."
Nex blinked.
"Many a remembrancer would sell their firstborn to possess a fraction of the artistry you display when it comes to killing."
Nex blinked again. A compliment? Such things didn't often flow from the Legion.
"But no, that's not why."
"Then what?"
"You kill without passion, without… attachment to the deed. Many claim you're perpetually Sable Branded, but they're wrong."
Nex cocked his head, curious.
"Nobody Sable Branded fights with your tranquility, Blood-Crow." Melchar crossed his arms. "You're the Prime because you don't care. You just need a target and all other considerations fade away."
"So?"
"Killing should be an impersonal thing. Or at least, the Primarch thinks so."
Odd. It always seemed very personal to Nex.
"You can separate it," Melchar continued. "The deed from the reason."
Nex said nothing. He didn't quite understand what Melchar was blathering about. What was there to separate? Targets came and he killed them. Simple.
"Perhaps that's why. You kill with artistry but no soul."
Another curious concept. Soul. The Imperial Truth denied such things, excoriated them as superstitions to be burned away by the pure fire of reason. Or so the remembrancers said. Odd of Melchar to use such a term.
"Killing is killing."
"I suppose it's all the same to you. You don't even care who or what the targets are, do you?"
"Nobody should. They're targets."
"What if it was one of our own? One of our fellow Legions, or even within?" Melchar shrugged. "Unthinkable, I know. Just… call it a theoretical, the way the Ultramarines are so fond of."
Nex set the half-disassembled Fulcrum down. "They'd be targets."
Melchar laughed grimly. "And that's why you're the Prime." He glanced over to where the other Moritats had almost drifted out of sight. "You know what, don't worry about it. I'll say some words for Lankaron."
"Do as you will."
"Right. Just one more question. What do you kill for? Besides orders, I mean. What's your reason, Kaedes? Your purpose?"
Nex had no answer.