Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

Erebus realises he is bleeding from the mouth. He wipes the blood away.

‘Begin,’ he says.

Sorot Tchure watches Kor Phaeron’s face as he receives the message from the surface. There is glee. The time is at hand.

The bulk coordinates are already set. At a simple nod from Kor Phaeron, Tchure instructs the magi at their control consoles. The entire planetary weapons grid is retrained on a single new target.

Kor Phaeron’s eagerness is evident. He has played with the grid, annihilating battleships, orbitals and moons, but quickly wearied of the sport. A pure purpose awaits.

The Word Bearers affect a communion with the stars. The suns of the heavens hold deep meaning for them. The strata of their Legion’s organisation are named after solar symbols. Through superhuman effort, Erebus and Kor Phaeron have transformed the entire planet of Calth into a solar temple, an altar on which to make their final tribute.

Erebus has worn the skin of reality thin, and opened the membrane enclosing the Immaterium. The altar is anointed.

Kor Phaeron steps forward and places his left hand upon the master control.

He presses it.

The weapons grid begins to fire. Concentrated and coherent energy. Shoals of missiles. Destructive beams. Warheads of antimatter sheathed in heavy metals. The rays and beams will take almost eight minutes to reach their target. The hard projectiles will take considerably longer. But they will all hit in turn, and continue to strike again and again and again as the merciless bombardment continues.

The target is the blue-white star of the Veridian system.

Kor Phaeron begins to murder the sun.

‘We feared you had perished,’ says Marius Gage.

Guilliman has just walked onto the auxiliary bridge of the Macragge’s Honour with his battered kill squad escort.

‘What does not kill me,’ replies Guilliman, ‘is not trying hard enough.’

He makes them smile. He’s good at that. But they can all read the change in him. He was never a man you could warm to. He was too hard, too driven, too austere. Now he is wounded. Wounded like an animal might be wounded. Wounded in a way that makes that animal dangerous.

‘Voided without a helm,’ Guilliman says. ‘Primarch biology helped, but the atmospheric envelope was my true saviour.’

‘What...’ Gage begins.

‘What was that thing?’ Guilliman finishes. Everyone is staring, everyone listening.

‘Should this be a conversation we finish in private?’ asks Gage.

Guilliman shakes his head.

‘As I understand it from Thiel,’ he says, gesturing to the sergeant at his side, ‘you have all spent hours fighting your way through this ship against other fiends like it. It has cost you. I can see it has cost you, Marius.’

Gage is suddenly painfully aware of his truncated arm.

‘I can’t see any point in hiding the truth from anybody here,’ says Guilliman. ‘You have all served Ultramar today with more than duty might have reason to expect. And the day is not done. It seems unlikely that we will win anything, or even survive, but I would dearly like to wound our treacherous foe before we die.’

The primarch looks around the room. His armour is sheened and sticky with filth. His face is dirty, and there is blood in his hair.

‘Let us share what we know, and build some strategy. I welcome theoreticals from anybody at this stage. Anything will be considered.’

He walks over to the strategium.

‘We can use the word daemon, I think. A warp entity manifested and destroyed the bridge. You have fought others. Daemon is as good a word as any. It was Lorgar, or at least...’

He pauses, and looks back at them.

‘I don’t know where Lorgar is. I don’t know if my brother was ever in this system in the flesh, but it was his voice and his presence that visited me, and it was him that transformed. It was no trick. Lorgar and his Legion have consorted with the powers of the warp. They have forged an unholy covenant. It has twisted them. It has started a war.’

Guilliman sighs.

‘I don’t know how to fight them. I know how to fight most things. I can even work out how to fight warriors of the Legiones Astartes, though the notion seems heretical. Like Thiel here, I can think the unthinkable, and make theoreticals out of the blasphemous. But daemons? It seems to me, with the Council of Nikaea, that we voluntarily rid ourselves of the one weapon we might have had against the warp. We could dearly use the Librarius now.’

His warriors nod in silent agreement.

‘We should petition for their reinstatement,’ he adds, ‘if we ever get the chance. We cannot do it now. There is no time, no means. But if any of us survive this, know that the edict must be overturned.’

He pauses, thoughtful.

‘It is almost as though,’ he muses, ‘someone knew. Nikaea disarmed us. It is as though our enemy knew what was coming, and orchestrated events so that we would voluntarily cast aside our only practical weapon the moment before it was needed.’

There is a murmur of quiet dismay.

‘We are all being used,’ Guilliman says, lifting his eyes and looking at Gage. ‘All of us. Even Lorgar. When he tried to kill me, to rip me into space, I could feel the pain in him. I have never been close to him, but there is a fraternal link. I could feel his horror. His agony at the way fate had twisted on us all.’

‘He said Horus–’ Gage begins.

‘I know what he said,’ replies Guilliman.

‘He said others were already dead. At Isstvan,’ Gage presses. ‘Manus. Vulkan. Corax.’

‘If that is true,’ says Empion, ‘it is a tragedy beyond belief.’

‘Three sons. Three primarchs, the loss is appalling,’ agrees Guilliman. ‘Four, if you count Lorgar. Five, if what he says of Horus is true. And others, he said, had turned...’

Guilliman takes a deep breath.

‘Corax and Vulkan I will mourn dearly. Manus I will miss most of all.’

Gage knows what his primarch means. In all tactical simulations, Guilliman shows particular favour for certain of his brothers. He refers to them as the dauntless few, the ones he can most truly depend upon to do what they were made to do. Dorn and his Legion are one. Ill-tempered, argumentative Russ is another. Sanguinius is a third. Guilliman admires the Khan greatly, but the White Scars are neither predictable nor trustworthy. Ferrus Manus and the Iron Hands were always the fourth of the dauntless few. With any one of those key four – Dorn, Russ, Manus or Sanguinius – Guilliman always claimed he could win any war. Outright. Against any foe. Even in extremis, the Ultramarines could compact with any one of those four allies and take down any foe. It was primary theoretical. In any doomsday scenario that faced the Imperium, Guilliman could play it out to a practical win provided he could rely on one of those four. And of them, Manus was the key. Implacable. Unshakeable. If he was at your side, he would never break.

Now, it seems, he is gone. Gone. Dead. Brother. Friend. Warrior. Leader. Ultramar’s most stalwart ally.

Guilliman breaks the bleak silence.

‘Show me tactical. The nearspace combat. Someone said there was a vox from the surface finally?’

‘From Leptius Numinus, lord,’ says the Master of Vox.

‘Who was it?’

‘Captain Ventanus,’ says Gage. ‘We had a good signal for a while, and were getting a vital datafeed, but the vox cut off suddenly about an hour ago. A violent interrupt.’

‘I don’t need to ask if you’re trying to re-establish the link?’ says Guilliman.

‘You do not, lord,’ replies the Master of Vox.

Guilliman turns to Empion.