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The Honoured - Extract

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one

[mark: 23.46.32]

When is a lie not merely a lie, Aethon wonders? When do such words fail to capture the enormity of untruths so thunderous in their announcement that, like a black hole, they exert a gravity of their own, causing the light of truth to bend about them?

Steloc Aethon, captain of the 19th Company, ‘The Honoured’.

He is an Ultramarine, a son of Guilliman. He is a son of Calth.

The havoc of Lanshear roars about him. Gunfire. Murder. Desperation. Armoured Word Bearers, their suits the colour of dried blood. Ultramarines, their immaculate plate besmirched with ash and gore. Aethon hears the muted screams of the traitors along with the death cries of his own men, harsh and horrified across the vox. Punctuated by the drum of boltguns, it is a cacophonous symphony of betrayal and despair.

Are the Ultramarines not the light that bends? The Emperor’s light, illuminating the far reaches of his empire, contorted about falsehoods terrible and true. Are the sons of Guilliman forever changed by the wretched unfolding of these great events? Will we stand, like shadows of our former selves, in the brilliance of realisation – as we stand now before the wrath of Veridia?

Within the ceramite confines of his Tactical Dreadnought armour the battle seems removed, even with death but a moment away. The treachery of men Aethon once called kin plays out before him like an impossible dream – his own actions, a whirlwind of murderous necessity, similarly so. The tactical display, targeting reticules and the overlapping vox-streams reporting the carnage beyond seem removed further still. Calth is a world betrayed. A planet brought to its knees. Within hours the bounteous sustenance of agricultural toil has been transformed into a nightmare of disbelief, smoke-shrouded battlefields and global slaughter.

Orders proceed, almost unconsciously, from the captain’s drawn lips. The genhanced muscle of his transhuman body works the massive Terminator suit around. His gauntlets yank back on the trigger of his combi-weapon and gun his chainfist to shrieking annihilation. Aethon’s mind is elsewhere, however. He kills without thinking. His commands are the living, breathing legacy of a lifetime at war.

In such a lifetime, Aethon has experienced his share of shocks and surprises. The Corona Chasmi, the dread wonders of Twelve One-Forty-Two. The greenskins of the Gantessa Deeps…

The orks of that pocket empire had grown huge in their isolation. As the warp storms around it had cleared, the xenos abominations had reached out from the Deeps to claim the Mechanicum-held worlds of the Melior Corpus.

Aethon would have lost his life to one such giant, but for a Word Bearers Chaplain named Kurtha Sedd. It had been on the frozen forge world of Melior-Tertia, sixty-one years before, that the Ultramarines and the Word Bearers had fought side by side. With the XIII and XVII Legions gathered at Calth to take the fight to another encroaching greenskin empire, Aethon had been looking forward to seeing his friend once more. To perhaps repaying the blood debt he owes the Chaplain.

He will not get the chance now.

The atrocities committed on Calth and the unthinkable treachery hiding in the hearts of the Word Bearers is shock and horror enough to make the Corona Chasmi and Twelve One-Forty-Two fade to forgetfulness. The sons of Guilliman will never allow themselves to forget the pain of this betrayal.

Within the soothing darkness of his plate, the captain is a raw wound. With the stunned taking of every Word Bearer’s life, that wound is sprinkled with the salt of unnecessary loss. With every Ultramarine butchered, their failing life signs cascading down his optic overlays like a sizzling memorial, Aethon feels that salt rubbed into his very soul. He aches for the loss of every fallen Ultramarine, as well as the lost legionaries that stand in victory over them. The Legions have become entangled in one another’s tragedy and despite the confusion, the hatred and fury of the battlefield, they are both the victims of some greater catastrophe.

The Ultramarines, even with their drill, their theory and simulation, had been blind to this darkest of possibilities. Something, however, has opened the Word Bearers’ eyes to that which they should not have seen, and Lorgar and his sons have given themselves to the horror of tomorrow, to a vision of fraternal destruction and blood betrayed. Aethon and his Ultramarines now find themselves in such a vision, fighting for their lives.

The captain wants to roar, to curse and grieve. To shake the shock of this atrocity from his being and feel whole once more. But he cannot. While he hurts for the Emperor’s flesh desecrated and his home world betrayed, he cannot allow such weakness to show. His brothers – both Word Bearers and Ultramarines – will hear the adamantine edge of Guilliman’s voice in his own. They will feel the Emperor’s wrath in the thunder of his shot and shell. They will know the certainty of war everlasting.

Aethon feels his hearts slow. Battle and bloodshed seem to ebb about him, as though Calth itself has ceased to turn. Light fades all around. The Veridian star dims and then grows in eye-searing intensity. Like a waxing and waning eclipse, the sun appears to be suffering some cataclysmic event. With its momentary fading, Lanshear is plunged into the twilight of an unexpected dusk. Seconds later, the sky seems on fire with the sickly brilliance of a false dawn. On the horizon, cutting silhouettes through the smoke, wreckage and clashing legionaries, the rays of Veridia feel their sickly way across the battlefield.

I wish the sun unrisen, the mark turned back, the brotherhood unbroken.

Something precious has been lost. The galaxy was to be ours. Humanity was to bring the light of civilisation to benighted worlds and cleanse the stars of races unworthy. A glorious union of worlds won by those who carried the bloodline of the Emperor – a bloodline now tainted by treachery. Must we be reminded of truths long forgotten and measures unbecoming? Must we become the Angels of Death to our own once more? Much I fear of this new dawn untrue, for it brings with it more than a new world. It brings a galaxy redefined, a crusade stalled and a kindred foe.

Aethon leans into a murderous turn. He wills the bulk of his Terminator suit around, feeling the fibre bundles contract and servos following his movements. The helm’s internal display highlights the blue outlines of Ultramarines lost in a sea of crimson plate and darkness. The battlefield is awash with traitor legionaries, their leering helms coalescing from the murk. Green eye-lenses stare hatefully down the length of boltguns. Chainblades chug, then thrash for the strike.

Aethon does not wish to kill any of them. He has only his primarch’s orders, the dire necessity of defence. Thousands of Ultramarines have been slain, but every avenging death takes the Legiones Astartes further from their former union. Aethon does not delude himself with fantasies of control. He has none. Havoc reigns. Death will be the only victor.

As his former allies are redesignated enemy targets, the captain senses a millisecond delay in his combi-weapon, Moricorpus. With bolter and melta barrels gaping at oncoming Word Bearers, the weapon’s spirit registers confusion.

You give me no choice. Do not test my loyalty.

A Word Bearer dies, then another, and another. Aethon’s heart feels numb. His cries of battle are hollow with regret and hoarse with rage. For the first time in his life, the captain feels unsure. It is a seed of doubt, taken root in the pit of his stomach. The Word Bearers seem as sure as madmen can be, throwing themselves at him like deranged beasts. Aethon can’t take solace in insanity. All he has are orders, his primarch’s orders: ‘Defend yourselves by all means at your disposal.’

So defend himself he does.

Steloc Aethon of the 19th turns his weapon on a crimson-armoured killer. He allows Moricorpus its protest before an insistent tug of the trigger punches several rounds into the warrior’s chest. As the legionary crashes to the ground, the captain fells two more. Bolt-rounds spark off his reinforced armour like falling meteorites. Aethon will not find his end in the sights of a traitor. His noble plate will not permit it.

More Word Bearers come at him, shouldering through the dimness and the confusion. The ornate decoration of his rank and the bulk of his suit prove an irresistible attraction to his foes.

‘Protect the captain!’ Aethon hears across the vox-channel, before a volley of bolt-rounds cuts his assailants down from behind. It is an ignominious end for a legionary, but the Word Bearers give them no choice.

Aethon feels the approach of an enemy through his sensors. Turning, he guns the blade of his chainfist. An assault company Word Bearer tries to bury his chainsword in Aethon’s shoulder, and the captain smashes it away. The sword sparks and bounces off Aethon’s heavier weapon, throwing the traitor back. Bringing the chainfist down with a powerful swing, Aethon cleaves the Word Bearer’s hands off at the wrists. As his armoured gauntlets fall to the ground, still clutching the raging chainsword, blood fountains from armoured stumps.

Kicking the Word Bearer back, Aethon returns his grievously injured foe to the throng of advancing traitors. Another chainsword bites into the double-bonded ceramite of his pauldron, and the captain cannot turn fast enough to avoid it. As the blade grinds across his armoured back, Aethon repeats his manoeuvre, striking the sword away with his chainfist before plunging his hand through his enemy’s chest-plate.

As the weapon chews through the screaming Word Bearer’s torso, Aethon heaves the traitor up before him. Using his foe as a living shield, Aethon soaks up a stream of bolter fire. Turning back on the oncoming Word Bearers, he tosses the corpse free and thrusts the barrels of his combi-weapon at his attackers. Plugging bolt-holes through the throats of two Word Bearers, Aethon takes the head clean off the last with a roaring blast of heat from the melta.

The captain hears the battle cry of a deranged Word Bearers sergeant as the traitor runs up the mound of corpses Aethon has created. Jumping at him, the sergeant swings a jammed chainsword above his head. The buckled weapon bounces off Aethon’s plate, but connects with enough force to make him stumble back. Bringing Moricorpus up, Aethon fires, taking the chainsword from the sergeant’s grip and prompting him to draw a bolt pistol. Again, in a shower of sparks, Aethon takes the weapon – and several armoured fingers – from the sergeant’s hand. Bringing the combi-weapon level with his enemy’s head, Aethon watches as the Word Bearer stumbles back over a compatriot’s corpse, finding himself on the ground.

Aethon strides forwards, stamping down on the bolt pistol before the sergeant can reach for it with his other hand. Stepping across the Word Bearer’s body, the captain crushes his gauntlet beneath his heel then brings his boot down on the sergeant’s faceplate, crushing the Mark IV helm into the dust.

Abruptly Aethon’s vision flashes green as blasts of raging plasma smack into his Terminator armour. The captain stumbles back in his scorched suit, the photonic blaze crackling and melting the ceramite, leaving smoking craters in his pauldron and breastplate. Aethon bellows in agony as another shot seethes through the heavy-duty cabling of his plackart. The plasma bubbles through his side with the heat of a star and the captain staggers and howls into the vox.

His warriors smash through their foes with renewed urgency, making to support Aethon. Releasing the trigger of the chainfist mounted on his arm, the captain holds up a gauntlet to his men. He screws up his face and, with teeth gritted, blinks the worst of the pain away.

My body – like my home world – is afflicted. Pain. I embrace it, as Calth must do also. I make it my own. Only the living are privy to the agonies of existence. The failing of the flesh, the spirit ready to break. The searing ache of hearts that beat betrayed. I suffer as Calth suffers. We live still, and that is no small miracle.

As he opens his eyes Aethon finds his optic reticules tracking movement in the fray. With the sickly rays of the sun intensifying once more about them, casting the battlefield in a shadow-cleft haze, the Word Bearers are disengaging from combat. They retreat, spraying bolter fire in their wake, and Aethon assumes that some local victory has been achieved by the Ultramarines fighting across the Lanshear Belt.

As the light grows with an unnatural brilliance, the captain begins to realise that he could not be more wrong.

‘Permission to pursue, captain?’ an Ultramarines veteran sergeant calls, but Aethon barely hears him.

Through the criss-crossing of shadows, Aethon makes out the outline of a lone Word Bearer. Unlike his treacherous brethren, he is a motionless silhouette. Green eye-lenses shine ghoulishly from a crested helm, rivalling the luminescence of his plasma pistol’s fusion core. The pistol’s fat muzzle still smokes with the trailing afterglow of agitated hydrogen. While a cloak marks the Word Bearer out as a centurion of some significance, it is the head of his mighty crozius maul that identifies him as a Chaplain. Having fought side by side with the Word Bearers, Aethon knows that the XVII Legion favour many such spiritual leaders among their ranks.

As he wills Moricorpus up, the blazing agony in his side making the manoeuvre a trial, the Chaplain stares back. Through the bolt-streaked murk and the withdrawing shapes of his brethren, he sights along the length of his arm and the plasma pistol fixed on the captain.

The Word Bearer tilts his helm in curious recognition.

Aethon’s eyes widen. Kurtha Sedd?

Perhaps it is him. Perhaps it isn’t. Through the eye-scalding radiance that reaches through the battlefield haze Aethon can barely tell his men from the enemy, let alone Word Bearer from Word Bearer. But the possibility alone stokes the fires of fury in the captain’s chest. Targeting reticules converge on the Chaplain as his overlaid outline flashes before Aethon’s eyes. His helm display confirms for a second time that the target has been acquired and that the Chaplain is in his weapon’s sights.

Aethon holds him there a second longer. A second too late.

With a glowing green wash of highlighted inscriptions rippling across the Chaplain’s plate and a throng of retreating Word Bearers backing through Aethon’s line of sight, the figure is gone.

‘Permission to pur–’ the sergeant beside him calls again, the last of his words lost to a blast of bolt-fire that follows their enemies into the ghostly distance.

Aethon is about to answer when his vox-link changes channel to receive a priority communication.

‘This is Ventanus, Captain, Fourth,’ the vox-stream crackles.

‘Yes, captain,’ Aethon replies, but as Remus Ventanus’s words run on and echo about his helm he comes to understand that all of the Ultramarines are receiving the message simultaneously.

‘I am making an emergency broadcast on the global vox-cast setting. The surface of Calth is no longer a safe environment. The local star is suffering a flare trauma, and will shortly irradiate Calth to human-lethal levels. It is no longer possible to evacuate the planet. Therefore, if you are a citizen, a member of the Imperial Army, a legionary of the Thirteenth, or any other loyal servant of the Imperium, move with all haste to the arcology or arcology system closest to you. The arcologies may offer sufficient protection to allow us to survive this solar event. We will shelter there until further notice. Do not hesitate. Move directly to the nearest arcology. Arcology location and access information will be appended to this repeat broadcast as a code file. In the name of the Imperium, make haste. Message ends.’

‘Captain?’ the sergeant asks. Like the rest of the Ultramarines standing about him on the battlefield, he looks to Aethon. The captain’s plate dribbles sparks from where it has been breached. He turns to take in the Veridian sun as he has done a thousand times before.

Today will be different. Everything the light touches will perish.

You mongrels. You aberrant wretches, unworthy of the Emperor’s blood.

You’ve slaughtered my brothers, and killed my world…

‘You heard Captain Ventanus,’ Aethon says across the vox. ‘We seek shelter underground from the wrath of the star. Duty awaits us in the darkness. We shall drive the enemy back into the light and scorch his treachery from the surface of Calth. Go now, for I fear we shall not be the only warriors to dare the depths.’

Two

[mark: 24.23.02]

Arkan Dardanus runs. He runs hard, as hard as his powered plate will allow. About him are fields, where dark crops dance in the breeze. The wind is at the veteran’s armoured back – the air pushed forth ahead of the cataclysm unfolding behind. It is madness. It is death.

‘I am the fist,’ Dardanus recites, ‘clenched tight in ceramite, smashing with the force of a Legion. I am the blade, awaiting my foe’s flesh, as keen as the Emperor could make me. I am the bolt, fired from afar – fleet and true, an end to all who stand before the Imperium of Man.’

The words are not his. They belong, like many good words, to his primarch. Their purpose is to combat confusion with clarity, to banish doubt and reinforce a legionary’s purpose. As Dardanus’s hearts thunder in his chest, he feels Guilliman with him, urging him on.

His breath howls about the inside of his helm. The servos and fibre bundles of his suit hiss and sigh with every ground-pulverising step. The agricultural fields stretch endlessly before him. He turns at a run. He cannot afford to stop. Speed is everything. He has even dropped his empty boltgun for the second or two it might buy him. About the Space Marine there are others. Ultramarines stragglers, members of Squad Sephirus. Word Bearers running for their worthless lives.

Behind him the glare is unbearable. His helm display crackles and glazes to static. Where the rays of the poisoned star hit the surface of Calth, flames leap for the sky. A radioactive firestorm tears across the planet, turning the ground to irradiated ash. In silhouette form, Dardanus sees his sergeant and squad running before the light. Some help injured brothers limp before the raging Veridian storm. Others slow to exchange gunfire with spent Word Bearers.

Dardanus feels he is being enclosed in a titanic trap. At his heels comes the heat of the encroaching blaze; before him rise the dark mountains and rocky highlands that mark the perimeter of the vast fields.

He hears gunfire. Sporadic, opportunistic, wild: nothing like the sustained staccato of bolters during battle. There is barely time to think, let alone aim and fire, but this does not stop both Word Bearers and Ultramarines damning themselves with their dalliance. Training and instinct are hard to resist, especially for the sons of Guilliman. The Ultramarines are bred for war. It is not in their nature to run.

But the warriors of Ultramar have never fought a star before, and they recognise the futility of it.

Bolt-rounds cut through the crops, blasting heads from stalks and thudding into the rich earth. The Word Bearers ahead aren’t even trying to hit the Ultramarines, they are merely trying to slow them down. Dardanus has no desire to engage them. He pushes on at full speed, his only desire to reach the arcologies before the Word Bearers arrive in number and deny the Ultramarines entry.

‘All warriors of Ultramar understand what it is to fight and to win,’ Dardanus mouths within his helm. ‘Victory, however, is more than just a state of mind, more than the choice of weapon and foe. It is spatial. It is temporal. It is sensitive to the vagaries of time and place. An Ultramarine must know where and when it is best to fight.’

Across the open vox-channel, Dardanus hears Brother Galen die. The sound breaks his recitations. There is an oath, a scream and then a blast of static as the tainted star claims another battle-brother of Squad Sephirus. Dardanus remembers years of fighting beside Urius Galen in the primarch’s name – the purging of Twelve One-Thirty-One, the crash of the Invictron, hunting xenos abominations on Ceresta Secundus. Within moments his battle-brother is gone. Ceramite, flesh, blood – all that Galen was, claimed by the star.

Scaeron is next to fall; he tarries to vent his fury upon Word Bearers who are equally doomed. Ptolemus is next, the heavy weapons specialist slowed down by the extra bulk of his missile launcher.

As Dardanus stamps through the crops, cutting his own path across the colossal field, he passes Lorgar’s traitors. Some he finds dead, surrounded by corpses in brilliant blue plate. Others he discovers praying for a deliverance that will never come.

Those Word Bearers who are not streaking ahead and making the most of their head start wait for Dardanus and his brothers among the crop stacks and great, itinerant storage skiffs. Dardanus leans out of the path of hurried bolter fire. Brother Phantor, who has kept pace with him for most of the run, is not so lucky, and dies with a bolt-round in his chest.

Running straight into a pair of waiting Word Bearers, Dardanus slams into the first, shouldering the traitor into the side of a tractor scoop. He gauges the stance of the second, ducking beneath the arc of a sacrificial dagger. He does not stop to face the Word Bearer, instead surging on, priming a frag grenade on his belt and allowing it to bounce in the wake of his footsteps. The detonation rocks the farming machinery and shreds the Word Bearers. Dardanus stumbles with the blast but manages to keep his balance, throwing himself once more into a powered run.

Driving his transhuman body to its limit Dardanus hits a harvest track, a byway for the heavier agricultural machinery. The coordinates sent with Captain Ventanus’s final message have guided him towards the nearest arcology complex entrance. He is not the only one with such information, however, and with each pounding step Dardanus is joined by converging legionaries. Ultramarines and Word Bearers run in from all directions, all intent on reaching the underground shelter. Here, on the approach and with the raging fire at their backs, enemy legionaries are heedless of one another.

No time is wasted in the discharge of weaponry or the swing of swords. All that matters is speed.

The same cannot be said for those in the complex itself. In the distance, Dardanus sees a fat tower, an ancient fortification that marks the entrance to the arcology system. Gunfire rages about a cleft nestled in rocky foothills below it, an advertisement to all of the contested location. Here, at the foot of the tower, Word Bearers and Ultramarines battle to secure the position for themselves and their respective Legions.

A stuttering stream of enemy bolter fire forces the veteran to slow. Dardanus can hear Brother Tibor and Brother Solarius gaining behind, with Sergeant Salvatar Sephirus bringing up the rear. Tibor returns merciless fire, his expert marksmanship ripping through one of the Word Bearers even at a run and sending the traitor flailing back into his compatriots.

‘Keep going!’ Sephirus barks, the exertion of the run and the furnace roar of the Veridian lightstorm equally audible across the channel. ‘To tarry is to die.’

‘We’re not going to make it,’ Solarius says, his voice hoarse.

‘We will make it, brother,’ Sephirus shouts back. ‘We will march, run or crawl for Macragge if we have to – for to doubt yourself is to doubt the strength of the primarch. The strength that boils in your blood for the wrongs done to our brethren this day. Now move yourselves, for your Legion, for Guilliman and for your Emperor!’

As rocky foothills turn to carved structures and the gravel track gives way to flagstones, Dardanus sprints for the arcology entrance. Sculpted columns in the cracked rock line the narrowing approach, closing like a gauntlet and funnelling arriving Space Marines down towards the gaping entrance at the base of the tower. Dardanus can hear the armoured boots of Tibor, Solarius and his sergeant behind him.

The entrance is chaos. Ultramarines and Word Bearers make use of what cover they can find, working their way back towards the doorway in tight groups. Bolter fire flies amid the ancient architecture and criss-crosses the entrance approach in furious streams.

Dardanus runs on, pounding his way through the madness. Exhausted, he wants to crash to his armoured knees. While they are still outside, they are vulnerable. With Salvatar Sephirus urging what is left of his squad on, Dardanus and his brothers keep up the pace. They hammer their way down between the columns, just ahead of a similar group of Word Bearers. Streams of bolts cut across the open space while Word Bearers and Ultramarines tangle hand to hand in armoured clashes, pushing each other back and forth through masonry and dilapidated architecture.

Dardanus flinches as a bolt-round glances off the side of his helm. He can see the arcology entrance, a broad, stone arch held by a pair of Word Bearers. Another backs under the archway, retreating from the deadly brilliance of the stellar storm and joining his fell compatriots.

Taking cover within, the traitors send a hail of bolts at anything blue that approaches, but with the unnatural blaze closing, the Word Bearers struggle with their aim and the identification of targets. More than once, Dardanus sees the enemy gun down the silhouettes of their own brethren by mistake. Above them, the thick metal blast door slowly trembles shut, the vault’s automated systems closing off the arcology entrance in response to the unprecedented changes in temperature.

Dardanus hears a grunt across the vox and the sound of a bolt-shell punching through one of his brothers.

‘I’m hit!’ Solarius calls. Dardanus turns. They are so close, but so is the Veridian brilliance, razing its radioactive way towards them. Solarius doesn’t even get chance to slow as a Word Bearer steps out from behind a half-smashed statue of Roboute Guilliman and back-swipes the Ultramarine’s head from his shoulders.

‘Go on!’ Sephirus roars, blasting the Word Bearer aside with the last of his ammunition. Dardanus and Tibor do as they are bid, sprinting for the closing vault door.

Running through a storm of shells, the Space Marines about him have allowed their proximity to the entrance to lull them into a false sense of security. Falling back pillar by pillar and wasting their last moments on desperate, vengeance-fuelled wrangles, Word Bearers and Ultramarines alike underestimate the firestorm fury of Veridia. Dardanus can feel the monstrous heat through the plate on the back of his legs. He will not make the same mistake.

The veteran runs straight at a Word Bearer picking himself up off the ground. An Ultramarines sergeant lies at his feet, one of many armoured bodies strewn about the arcology entrance. The Word Bearer puts a final round from his bolt pistol through the sergeant’s head before turning his weapon on Dardanus.

Dardanus doesn’t even try to engage the traitor, instead using his speed and exhausted momentum to smash his shoulder into the Word Bearer, knocking him back off his feet. Dardanus staggers and tumbles also, but somehow he keeps going, half-running, half-lurching towards the closing vault door. Brother Tibor is right behind him, kicking the bolt pistol from the fallen Word Bearer’s grip.

Dardanus accelerates towards the closing door. The metal is dun and pitted with age but the tainted brightness of the sun is such that its brilliance glares back at him from the blast door’s shuddering surface. At this range even the blinded Word Bearers cannot miss.

‘Let your intentions be as dark and impenetrable as the void,’ Dardanus recites – his primarch’s words on his dry lips. ‘But when you strike, do so like the plummeting meteor – an unstoppable force that rains fire and shakes the enemy to their core.’

Dropping, Dardanus skids down onto the entrance floor. Sparks sizzling from the plate on his leg and elbow, the Ultramarine slides through the corpse-strewn entrance. With bolts blasting above him, Dardanus snatches a boltgun from a dead Word Bearer before rolling in under the thick metal door.

Skidding to a stop and thanking the Emperor for the bolts left in the magazine, Dardanus hammers several rounds into one of the Word Bearers. As another turns his boltgun on him, the Ultramarine blasts the traitor in the throat, sending him stumbling back. The Word Bearer clutches at his neck with one gauntlet and pumps bolt-rounds wildly about the arcology vestibule as he falls. Dardanus rolls across the curvature of his breastplate. The Word Bearer covering the other side of the archway already has the Ultramarine in his sights but his boltgun clunks empty. The Word Bearer drops it and reaches for a pistol. The crimson gauntlet never reaches the grip of the side-holstered weapon, however, as Dardanus puts what is left in his own boltgun up through the traitor’s faceplate.

‘Arcology entrance… cleared of enemy targets,’ Dardanus reports across the vox, barely catching his breath. As Brother Tibor jumps Dardanus’s prone form and takes position by the archway side, the door trembles towards the floor.

‘Make haste, brothers,’ Dardanus hears Salvatar Sephirus call. It is difficult to make the sergeant out against the firestorm glare, as the brilliance of the afflicted sun embraces Lanshear, the fields and the bordering mountains in its blinding annihilation. Approaching warriors are reduced to eclipsed, shadowy suggestions. Brother Tibor puts down any whose burning green eye-lenses identify them as the sons of Lorgar. Several Ultramarines stragglers make it inside, including Brother Vantaro of Squad Sephirus, whom Dardanus had given up for dead.

Crawling through armoured corpses, Dardanus pats down plate to find a spare magazine. Slamming it into the traitor’s boltgun and priming the weapon, Dardanus remains on the ground, taking aim. He can make Salvatar Sephirus out – just. The sergeant is pinned down behind a column by Word Bearers backing towards the arcology entrance. With the boltgun kicking in his grasp, Dardanus cuts the traitors down.

‘Vault entrance clear, sergeant,’ Dardanus reports.

Salvatar Sephirus makes a break for it. All is shadow and light. As the sergeant makes a dash towards the entrance, however, he falls. Out of the furious brilliance steps a throng of Word Bearers. An enemy sergeant steps over Sephirus, whose bolt-ridden pack sparks from where the traitor has blasted him in the back. The Word Bearers sergeant draws his fist to his armoured chest and salutes his Ultramarines opposite in treacherous mockery.

‘Damn you all,’ Sephirus spits as the Word Bearers stand over him, their boltguns pointing down. With his pack shot and power to his plate’s automotive functions cut, the sergeant might as well be lying in a sarcophagus.

As the Word Bearers sergeant turns and stands before the shuddering blast door, the Veridian firestorm raging up behind him like a towering wall of flame, Dardanus holds him in his sights. No words are needed. The Word Bearers have Sephirus – and they want in, exchanging the sergeant’s life for their own. As they point their weapons down at Sephirus in silence, the Ultramarines holding the archway take their cue from Dardanus, holding both their boltguns and their enemies in place. Dardanus hears his sergeant across the vox.

‘There is no victory…’ Salvatar Sephirus says.

‘…without sacrifice,’ Dardanus answers, completing the recital.

‘Dardanus,’ Brother Tibor says. There is no more time. The new dawn is upon them.

‘Sever the hydraulics to the blast door,’ Dardanus orders.

Tibor turns his boltgun on the monstrous pistons, and bolt-rounds shred the baroque piping and archway controls. The Word Bearers sergeant and his men break into a run. As the colossal weight of the vault blast door drags it towards the floor, Dardanus watches both the Word Bearers and his squad sergeant melt into the blaze and brilliance.

‘Burn, you traitorous dogs,’ Dardanus says, ‘in fires of your own making.’

Like a clap of thunder the blast door smashes closed, shaking the rocky vestibule and raining grit and dust down on the Ultramarines. The boom of armoured fists can be heard on the door exterior, accompanied by screams and the furnace-whoosh of Veridia’s ferocious fire. Within the Ultramarines’ helms, the vox-channel cuts to static.

Brother Tibor moves over to Dardanus and helps him up. The Ultramarines stand there. They are numb, in shock. The betrayal, the star, the death of Sephirus. They give each other the blankness of their helm lenses. Something unspoken passes between the squad members. Dardanus nods slowly. As the longest serving battle-brother in the squad, it is down to him to lead. There is expectation; there is protocol.

In the distance, deeper in the arcology tunnels, the Ultramarines can hear the furious exchange of bolter fire – legionaries both crimson and blue, who reached the arcology complex before them.

‘Tibor,’ Dardanus says, ‘try and raise our brothers. All channels. Captain Ventanus. Aethon of the Nineteenth. Anyone. An officer to whom we can pledge our strength.’

‘Aye, brother.’ Tibor doesn’t mean to address Dardanus with such deference but it feels natural the moment the words pass his lips.

‘Vantaro,’ Dardanus says, above the roar of the stellar storm against the blast door. ‘Welcome back, brother. Move on into the outer complex. I need numbers. Who’s trying to take control of this section and can we do anything about it?’

Brother Vantaro salutes him, before pounding away down the statue-lined vestibule.

‘Brothers,’ Dardanus says, addressing the remaining Ultramarines, passing his gaze across their myriad squad and company designations. ‘Ammunition is sparse. Collect magazines from sons of Guilliman who have given all they could.’ He pauses. ‘And search the traitors too.’

As the Ultramarines fall to the task, the blast door booms. Tibor and Dardanus exchange glances. Dardanus does not know how, but seemingly someone is alive out in the radioactive maelstrom roaring beyond the door. As the Ultramarines aim their boltguns at the door, Tibor reaches out, placing his gauntlet against the metal. A second quake prompts him to draw back.

‘Get back,’ Dardanus orders. ‘Secure the entrance.’ The Ultramarines take their positions about the blast door, making use of bolt-scarred architecture as cover.

As Dardanus steps back, his boltgun aimed at the thick metal of the colossal door, the impossible happens. With an excruciating scrape, the blast door begins to creep up, allowing crackling brilliance and roaring flame to roll in through the widening gap. Dardanus stares as the door rises, inch by inch, admitting the inferno of the poisoned star. It is hard to believe anything could survive the absolute annihilation and wrath of Veridia. Dardanus promises himself that the interloper – if an enemy – will not survive the wrath of the Ultramarines.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2015.
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ISBN 978-1-78251-312-4

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