Mute died just before dawn.
Marita had split her time between tending to the Vostroyan and aiding the rest of the squad when the fighting was at its fiercest. A new batch of orks had taken position in the building opposite and so the Honorian had hurriedly applied fresh dressings to Mute’s wound before taking up a position at one of the windows. When she returned ten minutes later to check on him, he had stopped breathing, his skin turned the same colour as the bandages before she had wrapped them around his stomach. On the wall beside him, written in blood, were four words scrawled in clumsy Low Gothic.
MY NAME IS JONAS.
Marita did not need to inform the rest of the squad, her face speaking volumes, but his loss only served to spur them on, and they redoubled their efforts to protect their comrades below, the numbers filtering into the street undiminished by the passage of time. None of them knew how the war was going in the rest of the city, but the battle for the relatively tiny piece of it they were fighting over had already cost thousands of lives, the bodies piled so high in the streets they reached the second storey of the factorum they were holed up in.
As the nascent rays of morning light broke over the city, the stalemate showed no signs of being broken. Every time the Vostroyans claimed a few metres of territory, the orks would retake it in short order and vice versa. Fortunately for Allix’s squad, the orks had been unable to dislodge them from their position, any attack from the ground futile and attempts from the buildings opposite thus far repelled.
All of that changed when the orks deployed flame weapons.
Paying no regard to their own kind, a squad of orks entered the far end of the street, long jets of superheated promethium indiscriminately burning anything, or anyone, in their path. Even high above the street, Allix and the others could feel the intense heat as the piles of bodies turned into mass funeral pyres, the screams of the living abruptly cut off as lungs filled with flame and scorching air. In a matter of seconds, all gunfire stopped, panicked Guardsmen and xenos alike desperately trying to escape the narrow confines of the street lest they be consumed by the inferno. Some of the more quick-thinking Vostroyans scrambled up the sides of the buildings, crawling in through broken windows and claiming sanctuary behind their walls. Unfortunately, even the most dull-witted of the orks were capable of mimicry and upon seeing the humans escape the fire, followed suit.
Despite the threat of orks within the factorum, Allix’s squad turned their attention to the most immediate danger. Whooping and laughing as they spewed flame, the advancing orks were completely oblivious to the Vostroyans up above waiting to ambush them. Las-fire dropped the first two the instant they moved into range, a precision shot from Kas rupturing the fuel tank of a third, the ensuing fireball setting off a chain reaction that accounted for the rest.
‘That one’s for Mute,’ he whispered bitterly as he reloaded the heavy bolter.
As the echo from Kas’ shot abated, the Vostroyans became acutely aware of the near silence, the crackle of flames and pop and sizzle of burning fat, the distant sound of combat a stark contrast to the cacophony of the battle that had so recently raged out on the street. For several moments nobody did anything, each of them covering their nose and mouth, the stink of burning flesh all pervasive. The quiet was abruptly broken by small-arms fire, loud and close.
‘That’s coming from inside the building,’ Allix said, looking out of a window and seeing only burning bodies.
As they listened, several lasrifles fired sporadically, answered by ork guns. After a pause, the lasrifles fired again, fewer in number this time. As before, the response came in the form of solid shot. Then silence.
Then the screams of men being butchered alive.
‘We’ve got to help them,’ Marita urged.
‘They’re dead already,’ Dmitri said. ‘If we leave here, we join them. If we stay, perhaps the orks don’t find us. And if they do? They have to get through our barricade first.’ He pointed to the door and the tons of machinery blocking it.
The death-cries of the Guardsmen ended abruptly, mercifully, and for the next few minutes Marita and the Vostroyans believed that their luck had held out, that the orks were too stupid to realise there were more Guardsmen on the top floor of the factorum and had moved on.
Their luck ran out the moment the first ork axe smashed through the door.
The Angel fell.
Weighted down by his armour, it would only be a matter of seconds before Balthasar hit the ground. The fall would not kill him – like all of his brothers he had been trained to land safely from freefalls from even greater heights – but the enemy awaiting him likely would. Tens of thousands of orks, all of whom had witnessed the duel between Space Marine and warboss, awaited him, baying for his blood.
He angled his body mid-fall, twisting so that he would land on his feet, ready to slay as many greenskins as he could before he inevitably succumbed himself. Bereft of both chainsword and bolter, he reached for the combat blade sheathed at his hip.
As the knife cleared the scabbard, halfway through his descent, Balthasar realised that he had stopped falling.
On top of the outer wall, Groblonik roared with pleasure at having slain another of the Dark Angels.
Looking out over the millions of orks making their approach to the captured city, he raised his power fist skywards, his bellow carrying across the thin, cold air. His troops returned the celebration so loudly that the walls of the city shook. Groblonik roared and pumped his fist again. This time the response was not what he was expecting. Instead of jubilation, a murmur of fear spread through the greenskin throng like wildfire. Some of them turned and fled, others halted, pointing towards the sky above Groblonik. The walls of the city still shook.
Furious, Groblonik turned to see what had caused his troops to falter, the cry of anger dying in his throat when he saw it.
Overhead, over the entire city, lightning crackled across the sky turning the clouds purple, orange, blue, green and many other unnatural hues. A fierce wind whipped up accompanied by artillery-like booms of thunder. The walls shook harder.
Keeping his fear in check, Groblonik roared again, this time forming words in the human tongue. ‘Show yourself!’
His nemesis obliged.
Encased in a psychic shield, Ezekiel rose high into the air, until he was over the battlements. Rephial and Balthasar flanked him.
‘You were dead,’ Balthasar said.
‘So I’m told,’ Ezekiel replied. He stared intently at Balthasar, his new augmetic eye blinking.
‘But how?’ Balthasar asked.
‘The how can wait. Right now we have a war to end.’
Atop the wall, some of the orks had overcome their fear and were readying to open fire, but Ezekiel had already foreseen this, issuing forth jets of golden flame from his sword, setting them ablaze before they could take aim. He guided the protective ball of energy over to the battlements and set the three of them down three hundred feet away from the warboss.
‘Keep the rest of them away from us,’ Ezekiel ordered, dropping the psychic shield. ‘This won’t take long.’
Rephial revved his chainsword, his frustration at being away from the battle subsiding with every revolution of the razor-sharp teeth, every greenskin that fell to its bite. Balthasar swung his combat knife in wide arcs, opening the throat of any xenos foolish enough to get too close to him. Ezekiel drew his sword, the blade coming alive with psychic energy, and advanced upon the warboss. The massive ork charged to meet his foe, power fist held aloft just as Ezekiel had foreseen, just as he had foreseen all of this.
The two warriors clashed, the ork’s fist thrown powerfully at the Dark Angel’s head in an attempt to end the duel with a single blow but, armed with the power of foreknowledge, Ezekiel avoided it easily, opening up the warboss’ flank with a swipe of his sword as he ducked under it. Knowing that the ork would follow up with a two-handed sweep of its axe, Ezekiel parried early, the force of his block knocking the greenskin backwards and off-balance. Ezekiel tore a gouge out of the ork’s other flank.
Enraged, the warboss came at Ezekiel with a flurry of blows from both fist and axe. Ezekiel had already seen every one of them, had already fought this battle in his mind, and expended no more energy and effort than he needed to, each punch and swipe avoided by the narrowest of margins. Allowing the actions to play out just as his restored gifts had shown him, Ezekiel waited until the ork was overextended before kicking out, his booted foot connecting squarely with the warboss’ midriff and driving the ork back several metres.
The greenskin looked down at his chest, crying out in pain as two bolt-rounds struck it, tearing away massive gobbets of flesh and pectoral muscle. Ezekiel turned and nodded his thanks to Serpicus, who was still in position on the roof of the inner citadel; felt the initial spark of camaraderie and admiration from the Techmarine when he realised that Rephial had fitted him with an augmetic eye, followed by the wave of dismay and revulsion when he realised that it was a clunky, older pattern recycled from a previous bearer.
Though the ork was ripe for the killing, Ezekiel hesitated briefly just as he had when he saw his vision of the future, but now he understood why he had paused when he could have drawn the duel to a swifter conclusion. Another vision overcame him, albeit briefly.
A building within the city. Vostroyan Imperial Guardsmen sheltered within it. A pregnant Honorian woman too. Orks, dozens of orks, break through the barricades. Nobody is spared.
Capitalising on Ezekiel’s lapse, the ork lashed out, the Librarian avoiding the blow but only barely, sparks flying where axehead met ceramite, barely protecting the fresh surgical wounds below. The Librarian winced, pain suppressants quickly flooding his system.
‘Space Marine Weirdboy not as tough as he thinks,’ the ork general laughed wetly, thick blood spilling over his metal jaw. ‘Not as tough as Groblonik. Groblonik going to–’
In reality, just as in his vision, Ezekiel never did find out what Groblonik was going to do. While the ork was busy grandstanding, the Dark Angel did the last thing the ork was expecting.
He punched it in the face.
The ork’s nose exploded in a shower of blood, cartilage and bone, collapsing under the raw power of the blow. It staggered backwards, partly out of the force of impact, partly out of shock at what had just happened. Ezekiel knew exactly what to do next.
His sword a blur of blue, coruscating energy, Ezekiel separated the ork’s head from its shoulders.
Its eyes widening as it realised the fate that had just befallen it, comprehension reaching its under-evolved brain before the signal telling it to die, its body fell away from its head. Ezekiel grabbed both parts before they could hit the floor and held them out above his own head so that the silenced ork army below could see them. For a moment, all sound stopped, every ork in the vicinity of the city acutely aware of what had just happened and its wider implications. The skies above roiled, lightning playing across the underside of rapidly moving clouds.
Using his psychic abilities to project his voice so that no greenskin on Honoria would fail to hear him, Ezekiel threw down the two parts of the warboss and uttered a single word.
‘Run.’
By the time the warboss’ body and head hit the ground, every single ork had obeyed him.
The greenskins’ spirit broken and their forces routing, the strike team regrouped around Ezekiel, awaiting fresh orders. Each of them bore battle damage, the hours of violent toil among the orks writ large across their faces and armour, their bodies and wargear.
‘Brother Balthasar, take the remainder of the company and wipe this filth from the surface of the planet. Any Mordian or Vostroyan who can stand and fire a weapon goes with you,’ Ezekiel said.
‘Aye, brother,’ Balthasar replied. ‘You heard the Librarian. Leave no xenos alive.’ Battered, bruised, but unwearied from the strains of battle, each of them obeyed, following the first sergeant off the battlements, picking off escaping greenskins as they went.
Rephial went to follow, but Ezekiel held out an arm to bar his passage.
‘Not you, Brother Apothecary. I have need of you and Brother…’ He trailed off, suddenly aware that the red-armoured figure was no longer stood atop the inner citadel. ‘Where did Brother Serpicus go?’
The ork guns had not yet fallen silent before the first of Aurelianum’s forges and manufactorums started up again, the smoke and fumes of industry easy for Serpicus to follow among the familiar scents of the aftermath of battle.
The vox was busy with reports from all across the planet of orks routing en masse, their forces easily mopped up in their disarray. In the void the greenskins’ ships were turning tail and heading out of system, restoring orbital superiority to the Imperial forces. Selenaz had accounted for scores of the fleeing craft and was now preparing to launch orbital bombardments on the densest concentrations of orks at Balthasar’s command.
As he moved swiftly through the streets of the capital, Serpicus assisted the Astra Militarum troops in dealing with stragglers, taking out xenos with a single well-placed shot or snapping their necks with a rotation of his servo-arm. Such was his focus on reaching his destination that he did not break stride.
A trail of dead greenskins in his wake, Serpicus reached the entrance to the forge only to find two of the few remaining skitarii barring his way. Treating them with the same violence and contempt he had shown the orks, Serpicus made his way into the hot, noisy forge despatching the final pair of skitarii, who were guarding the base of the steps leading up to the gantry where Diezen was overseeing the manufacturing process with fascination.
‘This really is remarkable, Serpicus,’ the arch magos said, augmetic eyes widening in wonder as the huge crucible down below tilted on its mechanism, pouring liquid metal into a mould. ‘It’s unlike anything the Adeptus Mechanicus have ever seen before. Self-propelling artillery shells that are fluted and grooved, allowing them to…’ His eyes narrowed, looking over the Techmarine’s shoulders at the two dead skitarii.
‘Please continue, arch magos,’ Serpicus said. ‘I want to know what’s so special about this planet’s archeotech that not only was Mars prepared to invoke the Pact of Kulgotha but also blackmail one of its former students in order to ensure its safety.’
Diezen started to back away. ‘It was my masters on Mars who insisted we secure your aid with the Pact, but they know nothing of the footage. That came to me by–’
The tech-priest was cut off mid-sentence, Serpicus’ servo-arm gripping him by the throat and lifting him out over the railing of the gantry, the heat from the crucible so extreme that the metal soles of Diezen’s feet began to melt.
‘Who else is aware of the footage? Who else knows about it?’ Serpicus snarled.
‘Nobody. It was taken from the remains of a Kastelan by me personally. Not another living soul even knows it exists, let alone has seen it.’
‘So if you die, all knowledge of it dies with you?’
‘Yes. I…’ Diezen’s eyes and mouth opened wide in sudden horrific realisation.
‘Thank you. That’s all I needed to know,’ Serpicus said, the claw of his servo-arm relaxing its grip.
The arch magos made no sound as he fell away, a look that could almost be described as serene passing over his face as he returned to where most of him was made, his purple robes igniting and turning a fiery orange upon contact with the molten liquid.
Allowing the forge to continue its automated process, Serpicus made his way back into the city, pondering the identity of the black-armoured figure in the grainy pict footage and, not for the first time, wondering what secrets the Dark Angels kept, even from their own.
The Vostroyans crouched behind stitcher units and bales of fabric, only taking shots when they got a clear sight of green flesh to conserve power packs and ammunition. The door had not held out for long against the ork axes and blades, but the machinery that Kas had placed in front of it was proving to be a more effective barricade. Even so, the strength of the xenos was such that the first of the huge stitchers had been pushed away allowing more of them to lend their might to the clearance effort.
‘That’s not going to hold for much longer,’ Allix said, firing off a shot that angered as much as wounded the ork it hit. ‘And my last power pack is almost spent.’
‘Me too,’ said Grigori. Dmitri and Marita gave the same response. Kas simply held up the ammo belt that fed into the heavy bolter to show off the eight remaining shells.
The second stitcher was dragged clear giving the orks a firing line into the room. Half a dozen guns opened up, forcing the survivors of Allix’s squad to retreat deeper behind cover.
‘Make every shot count,’ Allix said, emerging from cover to take down one of the orks, ducking back behind the pile of half-completed tunics to avoid being hit by return fire. A third and fourth stitcher were pulled out of the barricade. There were at least twenty orks in the room now with more waiting to file in, their bloodlust raised at the prospect of easy kills.
Marita raised her head and lasrifle just far enough out of cover to get a clear shot and squeezed the firing stud twice. The first las-bolt struck one of the greenskins in the eye, the second – her intended killshot – died in the barrel, her power pack finally spent. She fell back behind the fabric stack, barely avoiding the retaliatory fusillade. Marita threw the now useless lasrifle to the floor in frustration, burying her face in her palms. Trying hard to stifle her sobs, something hard and metallic hit the side of her foot. Taking her hands away from her eyes, Marita looked down to see Ladbon’s sawn-off shotgun, slid over to her by Allix, who was crouched behind cover just across from her.
‘There’s one round left,’ Allix called out above the gunfire. ‘Use it however you see fit.’
More of the stitchers toppled over leaving only the final few between the Vostroyans and certain death at the hands of the greenskins. Another fell, then another, ork fire and battle-cries rising to a crescendo. Marita and the Vostroyans fell back as far as they could, nestling behind the bales of material stacked at the far end of the room. Each of them knew that they were facing their last stand; it was now simply a case of taking as many orks with them as they could.
The last vestiges of the barricade finally gave way, the lead orks charging into the room with no concern for their own welfare. Kas dropped two of them with a single shot, those behind stumbling over the corpses in their desperation to reach the Guardsmen and claim the kills. Kas’ heavy bolter boomed as he tore apart more of the onrushing enemy, but for each one that fell, two more would emerge in its wake.
A mighty roar from the doorway caused both ork and Guardsman to pause momentarily, the shadow of a huge greenskin brute falling ominously over the room. A good head and shoulders taller than the biggest ork any of them had encountered on Honoria, its face was daubed with blue war paint, its upper body naked save for the Space Marine pauldron it bore on its left shoulder, the white icon of the Dark Angels stark against black. Batting away its ilk with massive balled fists, the ork dropped its head and charged.
Dmitri and Grigori emptied their power packs into the behemoth, getting off almost a dozen shots before their guns ran dry, each one a direct hit, each one nothing more than an irritant to the ork. Kas tried next to fell it, his final heavy bolter round also finding its mark, shattering the looted shoulder pad without even knocking the thing off its stride.
Allix leapt from cover, managing two clean shots to the beast’s head before the lasrifle gave out. On it came. In desperation, Allix threw the lasrifle at the ork, only to see it caught in a meaty fist, crushed and tossed aside.
With only metres left for the ork to cover, Allix submitted to the inevitable.
Then the ork’s face was ripped from its skull by a point-blank shot from Ladbon’s shotgun.
In the seconds that followed, Allix was completely deaf, the action unfolding in the room playing out in complete silence.
Two more giant figures appeared in the doorway, diverting the orks’ attention away from the Guardsmen, but instead of merely shoving them out of the way, the pair of newcomers were bent on murder. As the deafness gave way to ringing, Allix became aware of the unmistakable sound of bolter fire and as the ork numbers thinned, caught sight of their saviours.
Dark Angels.
The first of them, the one Allix had seen in the medicae after taking Ladbon’s body there, was revelling in the slaughter, bolter in one hand, chainsword in the other, white armour stained crimson by the blood of his foes. The other, the Librarian, was more measured in his approach, pre-empting every single attack upon his person and despatching orks with the minimum expenditure of effort. Allix had also seen the Librarian before, but could see there was something different about him.
An augmetic eye. An augmetic eye that Allix recognised.
The massacre was brief but viciously effective. Within thirty seconds of entering the room, not a single greenskin was left alive, those mortally wounded that still drew breath ended by the teeth of the Apothecary’s chainsword. Relief etched upon their faces, the Guardsmen emerged from cover, looking at each other, incredulous that they had somehow survived the ork onslaught. Marita, who had not moved since slaying the huge ork, approached the Librarian.
‘Oh, Marita…’ Allix whispered as the Honorian girl walked slowly towards the Dark Angel.
The rear of Marita’s borrowed tunic was stained with blood, the blossom of red spreading from where she had been hit in the chest by a stray ork shot. Staggering the final few steps, she raised her hand up to Ezekiel’s face, brushing her fingers over the augmetic eye.
‘I knew you would keep our child safe, my love,’ she said before collapsing to the floor, dead.
A pained silence descended on the room. Just as it was reaching the point of becoming intolerable, Allix spoke.
‘The baby.’
‘What?’ Ezekiel said, looking down at the corpse then back at Allix.
‘The baby,’ Allix repeated. ‘She… Marita was carrying a baby. It could still be alive.’
Ezekiel crouched down, gently placing his palm over the dead girl’s belly.
‘Rephial,’ Ezekiel said, looking up at the Apothecary. ‘There’s a heartbeat.’
Ezekiel and the Vostroyans waited out on the top floor stairwell, the Guardsmen neither wanting to witness the Apothecary’s procedure or linger in the presence of the dead orks. Kas had carried Jonas’s corpse out with them and it lay at the top of the steps, face covered by one of the unfinished tunics, the big man stood over it like a guard of honour. His burial, when he finally received one, would be unceremonious, dumped in a huge pit along with the tens of thousands of other casualties of the war for Honoria, but while he was still under the care of his comrades, his friends, he would be shown as much respect in death as in life.
Grigori and Dmitri sat on the steps talking quietly, sharing stories of Ladbon, Gaspar and Jonas, giving equal weight to the tales of revelry, shenanigans and carousing as the accounts of heroism, as those with the closest of bonds are wont to do when remembering the dead. In lieu of having glasses to raise, they took their near empty water skins and drank from those instead.
Allix paced nervously around the stairwell, stopping every once in a while to stare at the Librarian blocking the doorway, and at the eye he bore that used to belong to her commanding officer. The very thought of it made Allix shudder.
After what seemed like an aeon, the unmistakable sound of a baby crying issued forth from the top floor of the manufactorum. The Guardsmen breathed a collective sigh of relief, Dmitri and Grigori raising their water skins and draining them. Ezekiel stepped aside to allow a very uneasy looking Rephial out into the stairwell, child held out before him in a massive hand, like he had just discovered a new species but was uncertain as to whether it was hostile or not.
‘What is it?’ Allix asked.
‘I thought that was obvious.’ Rephial looked at the Vostroyan in the same way he had regarded the child. ‘It’s a baby.’
‘I think the Guardsman meant what gender is the child?’ Ezekiel said, his amusement at the Apothecary’s unease forcing a smile onto his lips.
‘Here,’ Rephial said, thrusting the child into the Librarian’s arms. ‘You check.’
The instant the baby was in his grasp, the vision overtook Ezekiel.
The years spent in the schola progenium, always top of her class, always striving to learn more. Her acceptance into the convent, her thirst for knowledge unquenched. Out among the stars, trying to find her way back home. The Black Templars and the necrons. The lost Chapter. The Exorcists. The loyal brother from the Chapter turned. The love of a rogue trader, unrequited. The pits of the Dark City, disloyal to two masters. Decades of service to the ordo, undone in a moment. A homecoming long desired but never expected. The Eye of Terror. The rescue and redemption of one of the Dark Angels’ own.
A most glorious death.
‘It’s a girl,’ Ezekiel said, passing the baby to Allix, who wrapped it in another of the unfinished tunics. ‘Do you know what the mother had planned to call her?’
‘When I spoke with her the other day, she said she wanted to name her after her own mother,’ Allix replied, stroking the child’s head.
‘And what was her mother called?’ Ezekiel asked.
‘Agentha.’