Danatheum slew with impunity, Traitor’s Bane taking necron heads with each swipe and thrust. Alongside him, a score of Ravenwing laid down a wall of bolter and plasma fire, killing and re-killing the horde of undead metal warriors over and over. A deafening crescendo of weapons fire echoed from the dark stone walls of the vast cavern they battled within, illuminated by the sickly green strobe light of gauss discharge. Bolter barrels glowed red, such was the rate of fire, and plasma guns threatened to overheat and explode, but with the Dark Angels about to be overrun, the flood of necron reinforcements dried up, their numbers bolstered only by the few reanimating among the ruined shells of their ilk.
‘No survivors,’ Danatheum said grimly. Not that he needed to give voice to his order; black-armoured Space Marines were already picking their way through the inert golden constructs, finishing off any that stirred with a point-blank shot to the head or a combat blade through the skull.
‘At least somebody is seeing some action,’ Ezekiel said, his flickering form drifting from the edge of the subterranean chamber to stand alongside the Grand Master of the Librarius. Danatheum ran a gauntleted hand along the edge of his sword, wiping necron circuitry from the blade and checking it for nicks and imperfections.
‘The orks still refuse to attack?’ Danatheum said, sheathing Traitor’s Bane and turning his attentions to his bolt pistol. ‘There are some among your strike force’s command structure who believe that the greenskins still linger in the void because they’re scared of facing the psychotic blue-armoured Space Marine who beats them to death with his bare hands.’
Ezekiel furrowed his brow. He had not made contact with the Grand Master since he had received the order to divert to Honoria. Somebody else must have told Danatheum about his actions upon making planetfall. That could only have been one brother from among their number.
‘Turmiel,’ Ezekiel said through gritted teeth.
‘I have communed with Lexicanium Turmiel but he mentioned nothing of your savagery. In fact he seemed reticent to talk about you at all,’ Danatheum said, removing the clip from his pistol and replacing it with a fresh one. ‘That boy will go far, mark my words. He can keep secrets almost as well as you can, Ezekiel.’
‘I don’t understand. If it wasn’t Turmiel, then who?’
‘There are other ways of communicating that do not require psychic gifts, brother.’ Danatheum pointed to a servitor marching monotonously through the underground chamber, a long-range vox-unit grafted to its back. ‘Both Master Zadakiel and Chaplain Puriel reached out to me with concerns over your actions. Not just the incident with the ork but your inability to foresee when the Sword of Caliban would emerge from the warp. I am starting to think I erred when I declared you fit to rejoin your brothers.’
‘What I did to the ork was merely to prove a point,’ Ezekiel said. ‘I was showing Brother Balthasar that a Librarian has other means of defeating a foe than solely his mind. If my show of force has instilled fear in the greenskins then that is merely a bonus.’
Four days had passed since the Dark Angels landed on Honoria and in that time the orks had shown no intention of launching their assault. Even the trickle of unfortunate and foolhardy greenskins crashing onto the planet had ceased entirely. Ezekiel had heard the whispers among the ranks of the Fifth Company, that word of his brutality had made it back to the ork fleet and they were now afraid to set foot on the planet because of him. The Dark Angels commanders on Honoria – Ezekiel included – subscribed to another theory, one put forward by Serpicus and the mind-atrophied tech-priest who never left his side: the orks were merely massing numbers. They already had enough forces in orbit to conquer the planet, but they seemed to be waiting until they had an army big enough to not only annihilate the defenders but utterly lay waste to the world. Though they had yet to encounter the ork general leading the invasion, the Dark Angels already knew that they had underestimated not only his tactical acumen but his potential for barbarity too.
‘So how do you explain your misreading of when you would arrive at Honoria? I know you too well, Ezekiel. You either foresee events or you do not. You don’t make errors when it comes to divining the tides of the warp,’ Danatheum said, mag-locking the pistol to his armoured thigh. ‘There is something wrong with you and I demand to know what it is.’
Not for the first time since he had become a Dark Angel, and certainly not for the last, Ezekiel offered up a half-truth to one of his brothers to obscure actuality.
‘I… I have been troubled of late, Grand Master,’ Ezekiel said, inclining his head forwards so that his psychic hood almost entirely covered the projection of his face. ‘Brother Turmiel’s divinations have revealed an ill portent that he chose to share with me. I do not survive the battle on Honoria. I die here.’
‘The boy’s readings are wrong as often as they are right,’ Danatheum scoffed, almost amused. ‘What do your readings tell you, Ezekiel?’
‘I have been unable to foresee what happens on Honoria,’ Ezekiel replied.
‘So even if Turmiel’s prophecy is accurate, what of it? Are you telling me that you fear dying, Ezekiel? Because if you are, then what happened to you on Korsh has left scars much deeper than those that cover your body.’
‘Of course I do not fear death, but nor do I welcome it,’ Ezekiel said, his head flicking up sharply so that his psychic doppelganger looked the Grand Master squarely in the eyes. ‘What troubles me is that I will let down my brother Dark Angels, that I will not be there to stand shoulder to shoulder with them when they need me most.’
‘Do I detect a touch of hubris there, Epistolary? That Fifth Company are doomed to failure unless the great Ezekiel is by their side?’ Danatheum bared his teeth. Ezekiel was not sure whether he was smiling. ‘I think your assault on the ork, the sheer barbarism of it, was a manifestation of your unease. You were overcompensating.’
Ezekiel hesitated briefly. ‘Maybe you are right, Grand Master. I believe that I will not be there for my brothers in the final reckoning so I am making up for it in advance.’ A dark thought occurred to Ezekiel. Perhaps he was overcompensating not for his belief that Turmiel was right – Danatheum’s assertion that the Lexicanium’s predictions were right half the time was a touch generous – but for the loss of his own powers of foresight. Maybe the show of ruthlessness and brutality with the ork was as much for his benefit as it was Balthasar’s.
With the last of the necrons despatched and the cavern secured, the Ravenwing commenced their advance through the next rat run of tunnels.
‘One thing I am certain of is that the orks will attack eventually. If you continue to display the lack of control you’ve been exhibiting so far on your mission then Turmiel’s prophecy will be self-fulfilling. If you are going to die on Honoria, so be it – many a Dark Angel has fallen in less auspicious circumstances – but do not rush to your grave, brother.’ Danatheum followed the black-armoured Dark Angels filing out of the chamber. As he reached the entrance to the narrow tunnel, he turned back to Ezekiel and made the salute of the Lion. ‘May the Lion and the Emperor watch over you.’
Ezekiel returned neither the salute nor the platitude, his aetheric duplicate fading rapidly in the subterranean gloom.
‘Shipmaster Selenaz to all ground forces.’
The voice crackled harshly through the vox-bead in Ezekiel’s ear, rudely snapping him out of his psychic reverie.
‘The ork fleet is on the move and headed your way. Ground invasion imminent,’ she continued. There was an urgency to Selenaz’s tone but it could not be mistaken for panic.
‘Hit them from the rear,’ Zadakiel said, his voice buzzing with distortion. ‘Thin their numbers in the void to give us a fighting chance down here.’
‘Affirmative,’ came the reply from Selenaz. Ezekiel was on the move before the bead in his ear fell silent. Bursting from the windowless chamber housed in the thick walls of Aurelianum that he had used for his communion, Ezekiel headed for the stairway that led to the battlements, a sea of Imperial Guardsmen parting as the towering figure passed through them.
In short order he was atop the walls, the grey skies of Honoria glowing red as countless ork craft burned up upon entry into the upper atmosphere. The great guns were already in action, booming every couple of seconds as they blew the ork craft from the sky, causing black streaks of smoke to appear like tears on the fiery horizon. Had the circumstances been different, Ezekiel would have marvelled at the sheer efficiency of the huge turrets, perhaps even registered that he detected no presence in the warp of any operatives behind those thick armoured walls, but he and his Dark Angels brothers were on a war footing now and his concerns lay elsewhere.
‘Where are they landing, Serpicus?’ Ezekiel said, easily spotting the Techmarine towering above the assortment of Mordians and Vostroyans taking up their positions. Alongside him, Arch Magos Diezen chattered uncontrollably, a mixture of binaric gibberish and High Gothic numbers.
Serpicus looked skywards, augmetic eyes rapidly flicking in all directions. His visage grim, he turned to Ezekiel and spoke a single word.
‘Everywhere.’
The gun designated KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771 by Arch Magos Diezen and his explorator team tracked the rok’s descent, only firing at the optimum moment – the point when its destruction would also take out several similar craft dropping alongside it. Independently of the main guns, the battery of anti-aircraft defences sought out ork flyers and smaller roks, firing on near full auto as the skies became ever more crowded. Cogitator units sprang to life, back-ups installed millennia before as fail-safes called into use to bolster the weapons system’s processing capabilities, such was the volume of targeting data it was gathering.
The flow of data between Aurelianum’s defence turrets was constant, a river of information unseen by all but Serpicus and Diezen, further enhancing each battery’s computational power and streamlining the process of target allocation. Every single ork craft that survived the massive heat and gravitic stresses of entry was fed into the system, the distributed process determining which of the turrets would be responsible for its destruction.
A looted Navy Thunderbolt, repainted red and daubed with iconography indicating its new pilot’s tribal allegiance, became yet another line of binary as its threat was acknowledged by the turret network. In mere nanoseconds its extermination became the task of one of the anti-aircraft arrays slaved to KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771 and a volley of solid shot was fired to bring it down. Whether by accident or design – KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771’s machine-spirit cared not – the barrage clipped the wing of the ork flyer, whipping it into a spin as thick oily smoke spewed from one of its engines. Aware that the craft had not been destroyed, two more of KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771’s guns took aim, their shots also missing as, at the crucial moment, the Thunderbolt slammed against the side of a rapidly descending rok, altering both the speed and direction of its spin.
KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh45/5295331 was the next to try to bring it down, its anti-aircraft missiles well-suited to medium-range threats, but it too failed, both projectiles whizzing harmlessly past the Thunderbolt, unable to compensate for its erratic roll. KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh11/111112, KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh61/030502 and KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh22/987841 all tried in vain to down the craft, by now zig-zagging as well as tail spinning, but the predictions of the massed cogitators were undone by the unpredictability of its descent.
With no turrets able to offer an effective firing solution that would not risk harm to friendly forces or the city itself, the line of code representing the charmed Thunderbolt simply disappeared from the targeting system. KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771 and its networked counterparts forgot it ever existed, all weapons freed up to eliminate the ever-increasing number of greenskins crowding the skies.
Meanwhile, the burning Thunderbolt spun ominously towards the heart of Aurelianum.
Ladbon Antilov was standing at the door of his cell, attempting to pick the lock with the makeshift tools he had bartered from his fellow prisoners, when the vision of the rapidly descending ork flyer overwhelmed him.
‘Back away! Back away!’ he yelled, dropping the eyelet from a Mordian standard-issue boot that he had shaped into a needle and throwing himself against the back wall of the cell. ‘Get away from the bars!’
The other inmates stared at Ladbon like he had gone mad, some even openly mocking him. When the Vostroyan repeated his warning, louder and with more urgency, several of his doubters slowly edged towards the corners of their cells.
The crash was heralded by the whine of dying engines, followed by the deafening thud of the initial impact into the upper floors of the Administratum building. The corkscrew motion of the Thunderbolt’s descent drove it downwards through the levels, its wings and tail shearing off as it drilled through solid masonry before coming to a halt embedded in the roof of the cell block.
Ladbon had closed his eye and covered his mouth and nose with his tunic to prevent dust and debris from blinding or choking him. It was a good minute before the haze started to clear and the same amount of time again before Ladbon was able to see clearly. During that period the only sense he could rely on was his hearing, the moans of the dying and wounded keeping him company in the darkness, but there was another sound too: metal being forced against metal.
With enough light pouring in through the thick cloud of motes, Ladbon could see the damage wrought upon his cell, bars twisted and bent from where building wreckage had clattered against them. One bar had come away from its mountings entirely, the snapped and burred pole driven into the rockcrete floor in the exact spot where Ladbon had been standing when the vision came to him.
With some effort, he removed it from its resting place and placed it into the gap it had left in the front of the cell, forcing the opening wider so that he could slip out of his prison. Breathing in, Ladbon squeezed through the opening, brass buttons tearing away from the fabric of his tunic. Now free of the confines of his cell, he finally realised where the sound of metal grinding on metal was coming from.
Perched perilously atop a mound of rubble, the remains – barely more than the fuselage – of the Thunderbolt rocked from side to side, as the pilot struggled to free itself from the cockpit. Beneath the shattered canopy, the enraged greenskin pushed with both of its meaty hands, occasionally contributing with its forehead, as it tried to free itself from a space never designed to accommodate the frame of an ork.
With a groan of stressed metal and a roar that was equal parts rage and relief, the canopy burst apart from the rest of the cockpit, the blood-soaked ork hauling itself out and groggily turning its head to get its bearings. The few surviving prisoners and guards, either stuck in their cells or looking for an escape route that didn’t involve navigating the debris-choked stairs, froze in abject terror. Ladbon did not.
Reaching back into his cell, Ladbon retrieved the bar he had used to free himself and started up the slope of rubble towards the ork. Though smaller than others he had encountered, the greenskin was no less of a threat – it was perhaps even more dangerous in its present, bloodied state. It bared its red-stained teeth, smiling in anticipation of the kill, and roared again. Then, lowering its head, it charged down the slope, its feet sliding beneath it as the debris shifted underfoot. Ladbon ducked beneath a flurry of blows as it swung blindly with both fists, and drove his makeshift spear up through the greenskin’s protruding chin and out of the top of its skull.
As he had anticipated, the thing did not die instantly, the pain of its fresh wound spurring it on to flail even more wildly. A vicious backhand caught Ladbon between the shoulder blades, sending him face first into shattered masonry. The ork bellowed once more, its savagery drowned by the blood in its throat, and it tore the bar from its head, raising it high ready to drive it down into the prone form of the Vostroyan. Ladbon flipped himself over just in time to witness the ork’s final moments.
As its brain finally registered that it was dead, the ork went limp, its eyes rolling back in their sockets. Gravity took over and it fell forwards, Ladbon barely getting out of its path as it crashed down onto the wreckage.
He lay there for a moment recovering his breath through shattered ribs until a Mordian hove into view above him, proffering a hand. Ladbon took it and raised himself to his feet. He surveyed the ruins of the cell block.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the rest of them out.’
Within the hour, the few survivors were free, pulled through prised-apart cell bars or rescued from under mounds of debris. Those who had managed to walk away relatively unscathed helped those who were bleeding or had broken limbs. Ladbon was the last of them to make it to the top of the slope, clambering over the remains of the Thunderbolt to reach the floor above.
‘Are you coming with us, sir?’ said the Mordian who had helped him earlier. Ladbon was just about to respond in the affirmative when another vision engulfed him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s something else I need to do.’
Retracing his steps as best he could given the path of destruction torn by the errant ork flyer, Ladbon navigated the ruined corridors back to the governor’s office. He already knew what to expect when he got inside, which made the unsullied state of the exterior all the more surprising to him.
He twisted the handle and pushed the door open, the heavy plasteel coming to rest against fallen masonry, leaving an opening barely wider than the one he had slipped through to escape his cell. Once he had stepped over the threshold, the scale of the devastation hidden within became apparent. The entirety of the front wall was strewn across the floor, the tip of a wing sitting proudly amidst the rubble it had created.
Ladbon scrambled over the detritus to the spot where the governor’s desk had once been. There, just as the vision had shown him, was a section of roof, beneath which lay Marita’s father. Though exhausted from his efforts down in the cell block, Ladbon found the strength from somewhere to slide away the heavy block of stone. The governor blinked, the whites of his eyes stark against his dirt-streaked face.
‘I’m here to get you out,’ Ladbon said, lifting some smaller pieces of debris from the governor’s chest and shoulder.
‘No…’ the governor rasped. ‘It’s too late for me…’ He raised his arm weakly and gestured to the lower half of his body, or at least where it should have been. Pools of slowly drying blood emanated from another piece of roof that had crushed both his legs.
Ladbon forced a smile. ‘You’ve survived worse than this, you old warhorse. You told me yourself. You’d be surprised what they can do with augmetics these days.’
The governor smiled thinly, his laughter at the grim humour wet with blood. ‘Marita chose well, Ladbon. You are a good man, to comfort me like this in my dying moments.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like this, I can get you out of here.’
‘I am already dead, captain, but I pray to the God-Emperor that my daughter is not.’ The governor’s voice was barely more than a whisper and fading fast. ‘Go to her… Keep them both safe…’ The governor closed his eyes. He did not open them again.
Ladbon sighed heavily, grimacing at the reaction from his broken ribs. He carefully removed his tunic, reverently placing it over the corpse of Marita’s father.
Standing up, he made his way from the Administratum building determined to fulfil a dead man’s last wish.