Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

‘I apologise for the delay,’ says Tchure.

Kor Phaeron shakes his head, raising a claw hand, still reading.

‘The magi have explained it,’ he says. ‘Our devastation of the Calth noospherics was more fundamental than we hoped. There is a lot to rebuild. Another ten minutes, as I understand it.’

‘I will be happy when you are securely back aboard your ship, master,’ says Tchure.

Now Kor Phaeron looks up. He smiles.

‘Your care is noted. But I am safe here, Sorot.’

He looks frailer than ever. A halo of filthy empyrean light flickers around him. Tchure can see flashes of his bones through his skin, like sporadic X-rays. Kor Phaeron is maintaining a vast degree of warpcraft.

‘Come, Sorot,’ he says. ‘Read with me, for a moment.’

Sorot Tchure steps to the console and looks at the open book. He notes the intricate beauty of the handwriting. There is barely a hint of blank paper on the pages.

‘He uses a stylus. And ink,’ says Kor Phaeron, as if marvelling. ‘In this day and age. A stylus. Of course, I have the rubricators do the same thing.’

‘I understand that–’

Kor Phaeron looks at him.

‘What, Sorot?’

‘I was going to say, master, that I understand Guilliman also uses a stylus.’

‘Indeed. Who told you that?’

‘Luciel.’

‘The one you killed?’

‘The first sacrifice, yes.’

‘He was your friend.’

‘That is why the death had value,’ says Tchure.

‘Yes, I believe that Roboute Guilliman uses a stylus,’ says Kor Phaeron. ‘He writes. A lot of words, as I have been told. Not a great deal of content, however. He writes… a treatise. On warfare. On combat mechanics. On the theory of fighting. Childish concerns. The man clearly has no soul or character. And no interest in the metaphysical subjects that challenge those of more considerable intellect. Our beloved primarch already knows all there is to know about killing. He has no need or reason to write it down. The principles are simple. That is why he is able to go beyond records of gross practicality, and invest his time and energy in consideration of the great mysteries. The workings of this universe, and others. The nature of existence.’

Kor Phaeron looks at him.

‘You know, Lorgar simply records what is dictated to him? What is whispered to him and him alone?’

‘By the gods?’ asks Tchure.

‘By the powers of eight,’ replies Kor Phaeron. ‘By the speakers of the void and the voices of the abyss. By the Primordial Annihilator, out of the throat of the warp.’

There is a call from outside. The magi have finished their work.

Kor Phaeron closes the book and rises to his feet.

‘Let us put their good work to use, shall we?’ he asks.

The Zetsun Verid Yard systems come on-line, restarted by the shadow Mechanicum. A data-engine resumes operation. Sensing that the planetary weapons grid is inactive, and that the inactivity has been caused by the inexplicable loss of the data-engine hub located aboard Calth Veridian Anchor, the engine automatically obeys protocol and assumes control, taking up the slack reins of the grid system. Zetsun Verid contains one of the advanced engine hubs capable of substituting, in an emergency, for the primary orbital hub.

The Calth weapons grid goes back on-line. Its manifold reignites.

Kor Phaeron observes the work, observes how the scrapcode of the Octed is firmly established in the noospheric architecture. He determines his target, and the magi hurry to set and lock the coordinates.

All the orbiting weapons platforms, as well as several ground-based stations including the polar weapon pits, activate and begin to track as their power reservoirs come up to yield.

It takes approximately ten minutes before authority lights flicker green along the master control room’s main console.

‘Target resolution achieved,’ reports the senior magos, scrapcode binaric chattering behind his meatvoice.

‘You may fire when ready,’ says Kor Phaeron.

There is a glimmer. A flash. Beams of coherent energy, beams of staggering magnitude, rip from Calth and from its orbital stations.

Calth has a weapons grid capable of keeping at bay an entire expedition fleet or primary battlegroup. Only the most devious and ingenious treachery has circumvented it today.

The weapons grid begins to discharge. Calth begins to kill the neighbouring planets in the Veridian system.

It starts with a massive asteroid world that orbits the system beyond the circuit of Calth’s moons. The asteroid, called Alamasta, is the main remnant of a planet that once occupied that orbital slot. It is now a rock the size of a major satellite.

It is no longer called Alamasta. It is known as Veridia Forge. It is the system’s principal Mechanicum station, and the most significant manufacturing venue in six systems.

Veridia Forge is helpless, its systems crashed by the same scrapcode that brought the Calth grid down.

It has no shields, no responsive weaponry, and no means of evasion.

It takes four prolonged strikes from the weapons grid. The first two burn away surface rock and immolate rockcrete bastions or adamantine bulwarks. The third voids the main fabricatory to space, and combusts the forge world’s reactor power systems.

The fourth causes Veridia Forge to explode like a newborn star.

For the next eighteen minutes, Calth has no nightside.

Ventanus throws the speeder into reverse thrust. The auspex is smashed and useless. He only saw the gun-carriage when he cleared the corner.

The speeder reverses down the slipway with a violence that lurches Ventanus and Selaton forward in their seats. Cannonfire is already chasing them. Rapid fire from the grav-compensated carriage, a quad-weapon monster, shreds the barns and storeblocks around them. Cargofabs and payload warehouses explode or disintegrate. Rockcrete walls shiver and exhale dust as shots pummel through them. Window ports burst out.

‘Not that way either,’ says Ventanus.

‘Agreed,’ says Selaton. He’s got the autocannon across his knees, and he’s checking the munitions feed. There’s not much left in the hopper.

Ventanus swings left, and they race down a dank rockcrete underpass, zip between two huge aerospace manufactories, and skirt the perimeter of a burning excise facility. There are bodies everywhere. Civilians, Army, and far too many Ultramarines for Ventanus to be even slightly sanguine about. Men are dead with their weapons still sheathed or covered. Men cut down without the opportunity to face their deaths.

Heaps of cobalt-blue armour – limp corpses inside scuffed plate – line the roadways and arterials. Some have been stacked against fences and walls like firewood. Some have been cut open and emptied. A few have been nailed to posts, or against the sheet-metal sides of buildings.

Some appear to have been butchered or… eaten.

Ventanus doesn’t understand this. He presumes they are victims of some explosive weapon type new to the arsenal of the XVII. Theoretical. That’s the best case theoretical. Ventanus hopes it turns out to be the practical too. The theoretical alternatives are too indecent to consider. The Word Bearers are allied with some species of carnivorous xenoform. The Word Bearers are indulging in some ritual cannibalism…

Ventanus doesn’t need much more of a reason to make war to the death against the Word Bearers. The injury they have done to Calth and to the XIII, that is cause enough. Their treachery, that is cause enough. Their relentless, merciless prosecution of attack, beyond any measure of honour, that is enough.