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Unification – Extract

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Unification

Chris Wraight

Another world, falling like rotten fruit from the low branches. One by one, they all land in the gape of the Crusade’s embrace.

Vorx can’t even pronounce this one’s name properly – Oura’Nuoama, or something – it was named by aliens. These xenos have mouths like flutes. Wings too, gossamer things that catch the orange light of the swollen sun. And they have guns and particle-beams, and atmospheric ships hovering on blush-blue downdrafts as they swivel to burn the air apart.

Wings. What affectation, thinks Vorx. What decadence.

The planet will fall very soon. Its palaces of frosted glass are broken; its seas now foam with the wine-coloured blood of the slain. Heavy attack platforms squat in the world’s airs, blackened and leaking smoke. Already the terraformers are moving in from low orbit, bringing down their city-sized chem-units to sizzle the oceans away and burn out the toxins in the air.

They are only toxins, mind, for human lungs. The xenos breathed in this filth quite happily for centuries, and now the surviving ones can only watch as the Crusade fleets turn their cherished biosphere into a hostile place of charred rocks and boiled-down seas.

Their spirit is broken, thinks Vorx. Their neck is snapped.

Soon they will be a memory only, save for the technical records kept by the Mechanicum and, secretly, by himself.

Such was the threat posed by Oura’Nuoama, at least as gauged by Terra’s distant generals, that two Legions were sent to snuff it out. The first, in greater numbers, was the Death Guard, well known throughout the growing Imperium for their resistance to poison and strangeness. The second, the smaller contingent, was the Blood Angels, a more palatable choice, admired by the right people and feared by the wrong ones. Everyone on Terra loves the Blood Angels, it is believed.

Vorx, as ever, made careful study of the numbers before deployment. The Death Guard had sent its Third Great Company under Venarus Graganda, currently standing at 11,450 warriors, of which he himself was Captain of the Second Cohort, a force of 678 fighters. The Blood Angels Legion, spread out across a wider array of engagements, could only spare two Chapters, amounting to a little more than two thousand Space Marines. That could have been seen as insulting, or it could have been the best result possible under trying conditions – Vorx can guess how his primarch took it.

But they are all fighting now, all down on the surface, cracking the last of the bones under their muddy boots. The sky has turned a deep red, discoloured by the terraformers’ world-engines activating, and the Blood Angels look like dark ghosts in the nimbus. The Death Guard are everywhere, clambering up long defiles with their ivory battleplate streaked and blotched. Two kilometres to the west, where the Last City’s pinnacle rears up in smoke and flame, a tank squadron is making an impressive mess of some intricately wrought siege gates. There are a few flyers pummelling at high-ranged artillery points, but this is now, as ever, about infantry closing the noose. They advance slowly, mercilessly, letting their armour take particle-beam hits, gradually coming into range to open up with bolter and blade. There is no hurry. Slowness allows fear to breed, to spread into and cripple the enemy, so that by the time they crest the ramparts, the xenos are already half beaten.

Allies advance on Vorx’s right flank. Their armour is dark in the swirls of choking fyceline, limned with gold that glints with every new mortar starburst.

Vorx thinks this is stupid. His own battleplate is as grimy as the churned-up earth below them. He is virtually invisible against the terrain, allowing it to cake him with filth, to cover him and hide him. The Blood Angels have attempted to keep the worst of it from engulfing them. Their heraldry is still proudly distinct, picked out in inlaid bronze or painted in clear, glittering lines. They go into battle in the open, confident of repelling anything that confronts them. Perhaps that is their home world speaking – Vorx has heard it is a place of plains, of open skies, not like the misty swamps he grew up in.

Their captain is called Camanio. The two of them have exchanged few words since launching the assault, but now they are marching almost neck and neck. Vorx can see that Camanio is making assessments of his own. That is as it should be – soon the joint spearhead will be breaking through those tottering walls, and all need to know the quality of those they fight alongside.

The Blood Angel ducks fractionally, allowing a particle-beam to shriek past his right pauldron. He looses a single shot from his own weapon – a Volkite serpenta with a chased barrel – and a distant explosion confirms another kill.

‘Fine shot,’ Vorx grunts, feeling, uncharacteristically, as if some contact between them should be established.

Camanio bows as he trudges, hauling himself through the knee-deep mud and searching for the next target. Something in his gestures gives away distaste. He would rather be moving freely, charging in close, and his impatience is like a musk around him.

Vorx does not fire yet. He has his close weapon held ready – a heavy gladius, notched from repeated use and not yet re-honed by the armourers.

‘Damned stinking world,’ Camanio grunts.

Vorx had not even registered a stink, unless Camanio means the ones they brought with them – the spilled promethium, the chemical tang of the heavy weapons. They haven’t even deployed phosphex here, or the biological agents that they used to such good effect on Promada IV.

The walls inch closer, flickering with ill-aimed defensive fire. ‘It will fall soon enough,’ Vorx says, attempting to forge a link again. He does not know why he does this. It feels important, perhaps, to counter the disdain that leaks from the sons of Baal.

Any potential reply is cut off by a sudden flash of greenish light over towards the eastern flank of the assault, where a formation of bound Knights has pinned back the last remnants of the xenos’ heavy armour. All turn for a moment to look, for they know what that detonation must mean – they can taste the sour note of the teleport beacon’s warp-locus and feel the sudden drop in temperature.

The primarch is there, there, less than a kilometre away, surrounded by his Deathshroud in their hulking, frost-encrusted plate. Even at a distance, his presence is absurdly dominating, slewing the entire battle about its axis. His dun-grey cloak whirls about him as he strides into contact, gilded with the last traces of translation energy. He is tall, lean, pale, an outline of gaunt strength. Vorx finds himself pausing, absorbed, before glancing back at Camanio.

The Blood Angel is wearing his helm, and so his expression is hidden. Vorx hears the faint crackle-hum of a vox-bead in use and guesses he is saying something to his squad.

‘Magnificent,’ Vorx offers, trying a third and last time to build a bridge between them. ‘The primarch accompanies us. We are honoured indeed.’

Then Camanio turns, properly, shifting his weight onto his front foot, which sinks into the sucking mire. He comes closer. ‘My warriors are asking me, how can anyone follow that skin-and-bones wretch and call him “primarch”? I do not know what to tell them.’

Vorx does not react, stunned. Camanio is already moving again. He is advancing, pushing on towards the joint objective. His words ring in Vorx’s ears – aristocratic, the casual contempt slithering from them. For a moment, Vorx considers taking the blade to him, crashing him to the ground and wrenching those words back out from that over-proud mouth.

His warriors advance on all sides, unaware. They trudge just as they always have, uncomplaining, efficient, closing on the goal. They have the task ahead of them, one now witnessed by the primarch himself.

Skin-and-bones wretch.

Vorx moves again, anger swilling like hot oil in his veins. He picks up the pace, determined to remain close to Camanio when the walls are breached.

I do not know what to tell them.

The ignorance, Vorx thinks darkly. The ignorance.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Lords of Silence in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Johan Grenier.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-389-5

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