Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

Blue smoke wreathes the air, and there’s a stink of fycelene from the artillery emplacements.

He has hope. For the first time since the day began, Ventanus has decent, proper hope in his heart.

Ventanus enters the sub-basement. He can feel the soft heat of the working machines. Mechanicum magi stand around, observing, monitoring. A few work at exposed circuit integrators, making final adjustments.

Tawren stands in the stack room, connected to the chattering data-engine by an MIU umbilical. She looks serene.

She glances at him as he approaches, but is too busy reconfiguring a data-transfer structure in her head to speak.

Sullus glances at Ventanus.

‘4th Company just relieved us,’ Ventanus tells him.

‘So she said,’ Sullus replies, nodding towards the server. ‘She’s constructing a tactical overview. I don’t understand the details, but I gather she’s collecting and collating strategic data from every system and information source she can link to.’

‘Across the planet? Orbital?’ asks Ventanus.

‘Not yet, captain,’ says Cyramica, the server’s aide. ‘For now, it is just on a local, continental level. Because it was dormant and isolated, the data-engine was not infected with pernicious scrapcode. The server is extending her reach one step at a time, maintaining code-protected cordons, so that she does not contaminate herself by infected data-transfer. There is also some doubt that this engine will be powerful enough to coordinate a full, global noosphere.’

Ventanus nods. He appreciates the way the Mechanicum have of never sugar-coating any news.

‘What about taking control of the planetary weapons grid?’ asks Sullus.

‘No,’ replies Cyramica bluntly. ‘The active grid is under enemy control, and it is infected with their invasive scrapcode. All the server can do is gather data in passive mode. The engine is not powerful enough to wrest grid control from the enemy-operated data-engines, and even if it were, such a process would require active MIU function, which would allow the scrapcode a viable cross-infection route. As was demonstrated today, we do not have a code-protection cordon or “killcode” powerful enough to eliminate and cleanse the scrapcode.’

‘So Tawren’s forced to remain passive?’ asks Ventanus.

‘To protect the integrity of what we have here,’ says Cyramica.

‘But she can assemble and compile tactical data for us?’

‘Extensively. Her magi are already assembling the first databriefs.’

Ventanus looks at Sullus. ‘She can prep us with material to formulate proper theoreticals. We can then use the vox to coordinate the practicals.’

‘Any coordinated reprisal is going to be bloody welcome,’ says Sydance, walking into the chamber. He wrenches off his bloodstained helm and grins at Ventanus. ‘Thought you were dead, Remus,’ he says.

‘Hoped you might be,’ Ventanus replies.

‘Hope all you like,’ says Sydance.

They embrace with a clatter of armour.

‘There’s always a thirteenth eldar, Lyros,’ says Ventanus.

‘Twelve, only ever twelve,’ Sydance replies.

He breaks the bearhug and grins at Sullus.

‘Good to see you standing, Teus,’ he says.

‘We march for Macragge,’ Sullus replies stiffly.

‘You march where the hell you like,’ says Sydance. ‘I’m marching straight for Lorgar’s throat today. I’ve seen...’

He hesitates, and wrinkles his mouth in distaste.

‘Men are dead and gone, brothers,’ he says quietly, his smile behind a cloud. ‘I’ll spare you the list for now, but so many. Friends, warriors, heroes. The catalogue of the fallen will make you weep. Weep. The bastards slaughtered us. Unguarded. In our sleep. Surprise attack is an honourable tradition of war, but not from a supposed friend. Ah, I’m sure you saw plenty on your way from the port, Remus.’

‘I did.’

‘I will make an ocean of blood,’ says Sydance. ‘An ocean. I will soak the soil in the blood of these bastards. I will bleed them beyond the limits of their clotting factor. I will leave their heads on spikes.’

‘Vengeance, yes,’ Sullus nods. ‘Quite. We should however formulate a solid theoretical.’

‘Screw theoreticals!’ Sydance growls. ‘This is one occasion when we are excused our usual approach to war as a science. This is war as art. This is war as emotion.’

‘Yes,’ says Sullus. ‘Let us paint our faces and charge the enemy guns. They only outnumber us four-fold, after all. The few of us that remain will die, but at least we’ll have died expressing our anger. So that makes it all right.’

Sydance makes a contemptuous sound.

‘I’m with Sydance,’ says Ventanus, but quickly raises a warning finger before Sullus can object. ‘With one caveat. Given our losses, given our enemy’s numerical and technical superiority, I think our spirit, our rage for vengeance, our furious need for restitution... those things may be the only qualities that give us an advantage. They have made the mistake of hurting us instead of killing us. We are more dangerous. We will use the hurt.’

He looks at Sydance.

‘But there is always a thirteenth eldar.’

Sydance laughs.

Sullus is unable to cover a tiny smile.

‘We must cover our backs,’ Ventanus says. ‘We must channel our rage, and temper it with strategy. We must use every weapon: fury, vengeance, intelligence. Fury is our practical. Intelligence is our theoretical. Neither works alone. We would disgrace Guilliman in this hour if we forgot that. Information is victory.’

He turns to Cyramica.

‘Please, inform the server I wish to begin vox transmissions. I need the best signal encryption she can give me, and any source modifiers. Anything she can do to disguise our position.’

Cyramica nods.

Flanked by Sydance and Sullus, Ventanus walks into the vox-caster room. He takes up the speaker horn.

It’s darker above ground than beneath it.

The open air is a poison fog, and the dense blackness moves hard on a wind that pushes through the Ourosene Hills.

Brother Braellen doesn’t believe it’s a natural wind. A natural weather pattern. During a break in the gunfire, he heard Sergeant Domitian speculate that it was atmospheric displacement: major pressure and air patterns thrown into upheaval by orbital bombardment.

There’s certainly a line of firestorm glow around the lip of the southern sky.

6th Company, supported by the Army and stragglers from two other Ultramarines companies at the Ourosene muster, has pulled back from the devastated ground camp areas, and taken up position defending the surface tower of one of the northern arcologies.

Braellen hasn’t seen inside the arcologies, but he knows they are huge sub-ground complexes. Some of them are habs. This one, apparently. There are hundreds of thousands of citizen workers down there, and the 6th is the only thing stopping the enemy from getting at them.

The surface tower is a small fortress, a significant fortified structure that covers and defends the mouth of the arcology system. Its sublevels contain entrances to the main underground arterial, to walkways and cargo-freight systems, and even maglev rail lines, all feeding the huge subterranean complex.

The tower is a good place to make a stand.

The enemy has been coming up the pass all day. Brotherhood cultists at the fore, then Word Bearers, then armour. The cultists seem mindless, frenzied. They are drumming and chanting nonsense. Heedless of their own lives, they rush the walls and gates, and are cut down. Some are wired to explode, and detonate themselves against the walls in the hope of bringing them over.