Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

Hol Beloth is ambitious. He wishes to be more than a commander and more than a conduit. Such status has been promised to him by Erebus and Maloq Kartho and other, unnamed shadows that stand beside them sometimes and mutter in the twilight. He will be invested. He will be greater than even the Gal Vorbak. But he must prove himself, though he has proved himself in war a thousand times before.

This is a new form of war. This is a warfare that has never been unleashed openly before. Beloth must achieve his objectives, and perform his duties well. He must prove that he can command and control men and un-men alike.

He is hungry for power. Erebus and Kor Phaeron were always the greatest adepts, since the earliest days, but now the primarch seems to have exceeded them. His essence is frightening. Lorgar is transcendent. It is not simply the power, it is the fluid subtlety with which he employs it. Just being near Lorgar is a privilege. Being apart from, like here on Calth... it feels like the sun has gone out.

Hol Beloth believes that Erebus and Kor Phaeron are painfully aware of the way they have fallen behind. He believes they watch the primarch and crib from him, borrowing tricks and talents they have learned by observation, and then deploying them with stiff, crude proficiency. They are not adept any more. They are struggling to keep up with Lorgar’s mastery.

It is as though they are borrowing from another place, while Lorgar has become one with that place.

Hol Beloth intends to ascend to a place beside his primarch. He will burn Lanshear for the right to do so.

Numinus City is mortally wounded. Actinic light shivers along the skyline. Criol Fowst knows that the blessed dark masters of the XVII are already loosening the interstices of Calth. They are displacing it; they are rocking it in its clasp like a thief twisting a jewel out of its setting. Hoar frosts keep forming then thawing on the walls and roofs of the city. Fires gutter and die for no reason, and then reignite spontaneously. Twice, Fowst has looked up and seen, through the smoke cover, patterns of stars that do not belong to Calth or the Veridian System; patterns of stars, indeed, that he has never seen before, but which seem so familiar they make him weep for joy.

He rallies his men. The Ushmetar Kaul are dedicated. They have already gutted the Army encampments along the south bend of the river and left them in flames. They have killed thousands. Fowst has inspected the heaped dead. Almost a division of men went into the river in a thrashing attempt to escape, and were cut down by cannon and rifle. Their bodies, those which have not washed away downstream, have formed several new jetties at the water’s edge; slipway ramps of corpses jutting out into the stained current.

Where there is resistance, the Brotherhood does not flinch. They walk into return fire, soaking up the hits. It is a process of gleeful sacrifice that leads to overwhelm. Some of his men are strapped up with explosives, and walk in amongst the masses of the fleeing enemy to find their ascension.

In the ransacked encampments of the Numinus 61st, the Brotherhood has found crates of rifles, las-weapons, new issue Illuminators ready for distribution. The Ushmetar Kaul took them, ditching their old pieces in favour of the powerful new firearms. Fowst has one. It is tough and lightweight, with virtually no kick. It has a folding wire stock that he can clip back out of the way. He has killed six men with it already.

He is an educated man. The irony is not lost on him.

Orders are coming from the Legion. The spaceport must be secured, and then the outlying palaces on the plains.

Fowst wonders about the planet’s southern hemisphere, primarily ocean and more sparsely inhabited. He believes it is about to have more comprehensive fury meted out upon it. Great power, both ritual and actual, has been unsheathed today. But the task at hand will take much more than that.

The Samothrace steers in through the slip gates of the Zetsun Verid Yard. Behind it, Calth’s main shipyard is burning. No one challenges the Samothrace. It’s a vessel of the XIII fleet, running for cover, and besides, the vox is choked and the noosphere is dead.

No one aboard the Zetsun Verid Yard questions the fact that the yard structure has remained untouched either. Too small? Overlooked? Yet it is a vital specialist facility, and yards around it have been targeted and obliterated.

The ship docks between the two fast escorts sheltering in the yard space.

‘How long?’ Kor Phaeron asks the senior magos of his shadow techpriests.

‘Three hours, provided we are not interrupted, majir,’ the priest replies.

‘They will not be interrupted,’ says Sorot Tchure.

Kor Phaeron is breathing hard. He seems desiccated and frail inside his armour, as though he is drawing off great quantities of his own vitality. Space has worn thin around him.

Calth is his operation, far more than it is Lorgar’s. Kor Phaeron has planned this for his primarch meticulously, and executed it with the aid of Erebus. The punishment and annihilation of the XIII is its principal aim; the humiliation and execution of the wretched Roboute Guilliman. But it is also an advancement, another step on the spiral path of the Great Ritual. It will allow their beloved primarch to progress.

Sorot Tchure is aware of his commander’s burden. There is no room for failure. There is a priceless and vital military objective to be won, but even that pales into nothing beside the greater intent.

He will support his commander every step of the way. It has been Sorot Tchure’s privilege to be one of Kor Phaeron’s senior assault leaders for several years. The novelty of their Legion’s transmutation has simply deepened his commitment to their cause. They were always driven by faith in a higher power. Now they are inspired by proof of that power. It has invested them all. It has answered them. It has blessed them. It has revealed to them the truths that underpin all mysteries of creation.

And the greatest truths are these: the Emperor of Terra is no god, as they once believed. He is a small and pitiful spark in the blackness of the cosmos, and in no way deserving of their devotion. He rebuked the Word Bearers for their faith, and he was right to do so: he was probably afraid of what the real gods would do when they saw him being worshipped.

The faith of the Word Bearers was misplaced. It was mis-assigned. They were looking for a god, and they found merely a false idol, hungry for adoration.

Now they have found a power in the heavens worthy of their faith.

The docking clamps seal the airgate hatches open. As he did during the first act of the ritual, Sorot Tchure leads the way through.

In a star formation, led by the barge Destiny’s Hand, seventeen ships of the XVII fleet enter low orbit and prosecute the southern hemisphere.

As they descend, the ships snipe and barrage at the local orbitals, destroying two yards outright and crippling a third. Attempts to block their advance are met with dogged fury. The frigate Janiverse is killed by multiple main lance blasts as it attempts to disrupt the planetary assault formation. The carriers Steinhart and Courage of Konor are driven back, and then crippled in a direct confrontation. The Steinhart suffers a critical power failure, loses all vital support mechanisms, and slides into a ragged, thousand-year death orbit of the sun with its crew ice-locked at their posts. The Courage of Konor, void-holed twice by broadsides and struggling to pull clear of the advancing formation, is caught a third time by cannonfire. Hull plates fail. The keel fractures. A meson beam ruptures the carrier’s exposed reactor core, and it immolates, dropping away into the atmosphere.