Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

4th Company moves underground.

The fighting group built around the elements of 4th Company retraces Ventanus’s steps through the sub-branch of the arcology, along the safe route built in colonial times by the early governors.

Despite subsidence from shock-damaged earth, which has split or slumped the tunnels in places, the passageways are intact and commodious. They offer an arterial that can take even the largest fighting vehicles.

Long stretches of the tunnel system are partially flooded, with still more water sluicing down through broken pipes and drains, and running through clefts and cracks in the roof. The rain is getting in wherever it can. Men wade, up to their waists. Tanks and carriers glide, pressing through the silty black water like reptiles, their slow-moving hulls stirring up little, flowing wakes.

Ventanus moves along at the front, with Vattian and the scouts. He leads the way, standard in hand.

Two hours after they leave the palace, the data and vox links are finally restored, thanks to Magos Uldort’s unstinting efforts. From the datalink, Ventanus learns that several strikeforces are closing to conjunct with him at the port zone, including a major taskforce punching down from Sharud Province, the assembled remains of the 111th and 112th under the command of a sergeant called Anchise. On another day, in another history, Anchise’s efforts to rally, compose, turn, and redirect his forces would become the stuff of instruction text and legend.

Today, on Calth, it is just another story of a man’s last hours alive.

Ventanus hopes that Anchise’s force arrives in time to render support. He doubts it will. The 4th is moving fast, and it cannot afford to wait or hesitate. Even if Anchise, or any of the other projected support units, make it through, there are still no guarantees. The port zone is in enemy hands. Numinus Port is a burning ruin, and Lanshear and the foundries have been overrun by the predatory hosts of Hol Beloth.

Beloth circles from the south. Foedral Fell approaches from the north-west. Ventanus wonders how much longer Uldort’s valuable datalink can remain active.

They have passed below the Shield Wall, and are drawing close to the service linkage where they will be obliged to surface, and move in the open.

Ventanus stops briefly to talk to his unit leaders: Cyramica, commanding the skitarii strength; Colonel Sparzi of the Army; Sydance and the company sergeants, Vattian of the scout force.

He has the battered golden standard in his hands as he talks to them. There are no orders, and no feeble efforts at oratory. He tells them how it is, and what has to be done. He tells them the practical, and he tells them what he expects from them.

They say nothing. They nod.

That’s all he needs.

They have what they need. They have their target. They have their practical.

They are ready.

It took the primarch about ten minutes to determine the target. Ten minutes. Thiel watched him work it out. Guilliman did it by eye, by observation, by consulting the reams of notes and scraps and stylus jottings he had scattered over the strategium.

He had the resolution long before the datalink from Leptius was re-established.

‘It has to be a functioning facility,’ he reasoned. ‘It has to have a data-engine rating of at least, what, 46nCog? It needs to have an active datalink, which we can probably detect using back-trace. The Word Bearers have done such a good job of destroying platform facilities, it makes it easier to spot the ones they’ve deliberately left alone.’

He pointed to the display.

Zetsun Verid Yard.

Then the practical had to be decided. Shipmaster Hommed recommended a ranged bombardment: primary spinals, lances. The Macragge’s Honour certainly has firepower enough. Gage seconded the suggestion. But if they didn’t make a direct kill with the first salvo, there was a real danger that the enemy could retaliate with the grid and finish the flagship.

Empion was all for close attack: flagship power to yield, shields up, throw off the enemy cruisers suckling around them and go for the yard. Blow it out of nearspace. Ram it, if necessary.

Except, the moment they moved, the moment they even rated a power condition, the Macragge’s Honour would become a target. The flagship could move rapidly, and with devastating effect, but faster than the weapons grid could be retrained and discharged? That was even supposing nothing got in their way, like a drive issue, or an enemy ship.

So Empion’s plan had also been dismissed, and Gage’s alternative considered: put all power into the teleport system. Transfer a kill squad, maybe two if the power lasted, direct to the Zetsun Verid. Do it the old way.

‘I will lead it, of course,’ said Guilliman.

‘I hardly think so,’ retorted Gage. Almost everybody present physically recoiled from the look the primarch shot his Chapter Master.

‘Very well,’ said Gage.

‘Damn it, Marius,’ growled Guilliman. ‘If not now, when?’

The first kill squad of fifty Ultramarines, led by Guilliman, Heutonicus and Thiel, assembles in the flagship’s teleportation terminal. If enough power remains, a second squad led by Empion will follow them.

The helms of Heutonicus and the section leaders are painted red to match Thiel’s.

Guilliman’s cleaned and polished wargear makes him look more like a vengeful martial god than ever. There are golden wings spread across his helm’s faceplate. His left fist is a massive power claw, and his right holds a superb bolter weapon, decorated to match his armour.

There is a stink of ozone in the chamber, a metallic tang rising from the heavy, matt-grey platform of the teleport system. Coolant vapour rolls like mist in the yellow light. Guilliman takes a cue from his squad leaders, then signals to the Magi of Portation behind their lead-lined screens.

Power builds. It builds to a painful pitch.

Like a storm, about to break and unload its fury.

Sullus can hear the rain beating on the roof. He watches the magos, Uldort, working in communion with the data-engine. It is as though she is in a trance. Data chatters and whirrs. Her hands make haptic motions across invisible touchpads.

Sullus hurts. He never told Ventanus or any of the others quite how much he had been damaged. He can feel bones grinding, refusing to mend despite the fever heat of biological repair throbbing through his body.

Pain, death, he doesn’t fear any of that. Only failure.

His helmet link bleeps. He gets up, picks up his sword and his boltgun, and limps up the passageway to the west entrance.

In the rain, the ruined grounds and collapsed frontage of the palace seem even more dismal. Water streams and patters down from the shattered roof, dripping on grand tiles and mosaics, cascading down inlaid staircases, turning fallen drapes and tapestries into lank shrouds.

He limps out onto the rubble. Rain drums on his armour. The sun, a toxic blue, burns malignantly through the cloud cover.

Arook Serotid is waiting for him.

‘They are here,’ says the master of skitarii.

Sullus looks out into the rain. Beyond the crumpled walls, beyond the earthwork ditch, beyond the ragged bridge, the enemy has assembled. They have come silently out of the downpour. They are not chanting. The black ranks of the brotherhoods line the ditch in rows a hundred deep, but behind them are the shapes of war machines, and the ominous gleam of red armour.

Behind that mass, there are larger shapes still. Giant things, obscured by rain, horned and hunched.

There are even more than Sullus imagined. Foedral Fell’s assault force numbers in the tens of thousands.