Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

‘Theoretical?’ Phrastorex asks.

Ekritus is utterly cold and focused.

‘A major orbital incident. Accident or attack. Considerable fleet loss, considerable loss of support infrastructure, catastrophic collateral damage suffered on the surface due to the orbital destruction…’

He pauses and looks at Phrastorex.

‘The starport’s gone. All comms are out. No link to the fleet. No link to other surface units beyond anything we can establish. No data feed. No estimation of the type or extent of the situation.’

‘Practical?’ Phrastorex asks.

‘Obvious,’ replies Ekritus.

It is? thinks Phrastorex.

‘We form up. Everything we have. Your company and mine, the Army, the Mechanicum, the XVII. Everything that’s this side of the river and still intact. We form up, and we pull it back east into the Sharud Province. All hell’s falling out of the sky and this world is turning, Phrastorex. If we sit here wide-eyed, we could end up in a debris bombardment. Or worse. Let’s salvage everything we can from this muster point and pull it east, out of harm’s way, so it remains intact and battle ready.’

‘What if this is an attack?’ asks Phrastorex.

‘Then we’ll be battle ready!’ Ekritus barks.

Phrastorex nods. His instinct is to run towards the danger. To know no fear and advance into hell, but he knows the younger captain is right. They have a duty to preserve what they’ve got and re-form. The primarch will be expecting no less. Between them, he and Ekritus and the captains of the Word Bearers companies in the valley command an armed force that could crush a world. They have a duty to move it out of harm’s way into a holding position, so that it’s ready and able to do whatever Guilliman needs it to do.

‘Start leading the disposition out through the forest,’ Ekritus begins. ‘I’ll link up with the Word Bearers and the Army and–’

‘No,’ says Phrastorex firmly. ‘You lead the march. Get the men behind you, literally. Show them the way. I’ll order the XVII around, the Mechanicum too. Go. Go!’

Ekritus holds up an armoured fist.

‘We march for Macragge,’ he says.

Phrastorex punches the fist with his mailed knuckles.

‘Always,’ he agrees.

He starts away down the slope, through the ranks of his own men and Ekritus’s cobalt-blue warriors. Behind him, he hears Ekritus, Anchise and the other officers of both companies calling the men to order, getting them mobile. The aftershocks keep coming. Light-flash and thunder rattles the sky.

He sees 23rd squad.

‘With me!’ he yells. They fall in with him, moving fast. Phrastorex wants an escort. If he’s going to order around Word Bearers officers and Army stuffed shirts, he needs an honour company to emphasise his authority.

‘What’s the order, captain?’ asks Battle-brother Karends.

‘The job right now is to salvage and preserve as much of this fighting strength as we can,’ says Phrastorex. Ultramarines units are moving past them on both flanks, heading in the opposite direction. Down on the floodplain, tank engines have hit start-up. Lights are coming on. Phrastorex is surprised how impressed he is by the Word Bearers’ response time. Maybe he needs to revise his opinion of the wretched XVII.

He sees figures in red armour. They’re advancing up the hill. Word Bearers, moving already. That’s good. Maybe they won’t be so hard to persuade.

Phrastorex raises a hand, calling out to the nearest Word Bearers officer.

A boltgun fires.

Battle-brother Karends explodes at the waist and collapses.

The second bolt blows the fingers off Phrastorex’s raised hand.

Coming uphill at the hindquarters of the Ultramarines companies, the Word Bearers form a line. They’re advancing through the dry, ferny brush, weapons raised, firing at will.

Phrastorex has fallen to one knee. His ruined hand hurts, but the wounds have already clotted. He tries to draw his weapon with his left hand. His mind is where the real pain lies. Sheer incredulity has almost crippled him for a second. There is no theoretical, there is no comprehensible practical. They’re being fired on. They’re being fired on by the Legiones Astartes XVII Word Bearers. They’re being fired on by their own kind.

He’s got his gun in his sound hand. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with it. Even under fire, the notion of firing back at Space Marines is abhorrent.

Phrastorex looks up. Bolter rounds are exploding in the ranks of the Ultramarines, blowing blue armour plate apart, throwing men into the air. Plasma beams, searing like blatant lies, rip through his company. Ultramarines fall, shot in the back, in the legs, split open, sliced in half. Men topple face down, the backs of their Praetor helms caved in and smoking.

It’s a massacre. It’s a slaughter. In seconds, before the main strength of the men can even turn in surprise, the ferny slope is littered with dead and dying. The leaves of the nodding fern brush are jewelled with blood. The trees shiver and hiss in disgust. The ground heaves as though it cannot bear to touch the proof of such infamy, as though it wants to shake the Ultramarines dead off itself so it is not implicated.

Heavier guns open fire. Lascannons. Graviton guns. Meltas. Storm bolters.

Rotary autocannons wither the rows of men in the forest space, shredding the brush cover into a green haze, spattering tree trunks with blood and chips of blue metal. Splintered trees collapse alongside splintered men.

The brothers in the squad accompanying the captain are mown down around him. A broken fragment of armour, outflung from a toppling Ultramarine, gashes Phrastorex’s right eye socket, damaging the optics. The impact snaps his head sideways.

It snaps him awake, out of his stupor, out of his shocked daze.

He rises, aiming his weapon.

The crimson Space Marines are advancing towards him, up the blood-soaked slope. He can hear them chanting. Their weapons are blazing.

‘You bastards!’ he yells as a headshot slays him.

At the top of the slope, in the deeper forest, Ekritus turns as he hears the gunfire.

He doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

Around him, other men turn and stand, dumbfounded. They watch the slaughter unfolding as though it is some trick or illusion that will be explained later.

Men in the stunned formation around Ekritus start getting hit. Heads snap back. Carapaces explode. Brothers are flung backwards. Others sag, life leaking out of them.

Ekritus shakes, too stunned to make a decision. What he’s seeing is impossible. Impossible.

He sees Phrastorex, far below.

He sees him rise, gun in hand. In the wrong hand.

Then he sees him smashed backwards, headshot. Dead.

Ekritus roars in fury. He starts down the slope, into the hail of gunfire. Anchise grabs him and stops him.

‘No,’ the sergeant shouts. ‘No!’

He shakes Ekritus and turns him.

Titans advance through the forest to their right. Trees crash down, uprooted or snapped by the massive fighting engines. War horns boom. Ekritus smells the stink of void shields.

The Titans begin to shoot.

Sergeant Hellock shouts orders. No one is listening.

Bale Rane stands, open-mouthed, dazed by the overload of shock. Men run in all directions. Fireballs scream down out of the blood-clotted sky and explode all around them. Rane tenses and ducks as the pieces of orbital debris swoop over and hit. A kitchen tent explodes on the far side of the parade ground. The medicae section is thrown into the air as though mines have been triggered beneath it.

Each blast makes Rane flinch, but his eyes never leave the main wonder. A ship just crashed about thirty kilometres west of them. A whole ship. It’s sitting there now like a newly raised mountain range, broken, smoking. Ripples of explosions fire-cracker across its fractured hull.