Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

He does not flinch.

Not for a second.

The guildhall shakes. Titans are firing at it.

‘I need an update,’ Ventanus yells into the vox as blizzards of glass and masonry swirl around him.

He’s stayed on the surface to command the repulse. Selaton has ridden down into the armoured bunker with Tawren. All data and vox-links from Leptius Numinus shut down about five minutes ago. The palace has fallen. The only feed Ventanus has is close-range comms with his company.

‘The server has activated the engine,’ Selaton voxes back. ‘She is connecting. Connecting to the MIU.’

‘Is it working?’ Ventanus demands.

‘I don’t know what it looks like if it is working,’ Selaton replies.

‘I can guarantee it looks better than this!’ Ventanus responds.

Armour loyal to the Word Bearers is pushing relentlessly along the transit, covering their positions with a hail of shells and bulk las. Smoke and rain have cut visibility to almost nothing. Fabricatory buildings on the far side of the road have collapsed in welters of flame and stone. Two Reaver Titans, weapons mounts glowing from relentless discharge, are approaching through the smoke at full stride.

Cyramica is dead. Lorchas is dead. Sparzi is probably dead too. Ventanus can’t find Greavus or Sydance. The company line is broken. The 4th has done all it can.

It cannot match the overwhelming strength of Hol Beloth’s offensive.

‘The server has launched the killcode,’ Selaton reports. ‘She is launching it into the grid system. She is preparing for a purge.’

Ventanus ducks as Titan fire hurls a Land Raider into the air a few dozen metres ahead of him. It lands, burning, buckled, hitting the torn ground so loudly it sounds as though the sky is caving in.

The sky is caving in, of course. Blue-white fire crackles above the rain. Solar flares are searing Calth’s upper atmosphere, irradiating the stricken world, triggering massive, unnatural aurora displays as energetic charged particles strike the thermosphere. Light and colour jump and twist around Ventanus: light from the explosions, light from the agonised sky.

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Ventanus voxes back. ‘That’s good?’

‘Yes, captain,’ Selaton responds, ‘but it’s useless without control. She can’t take control of the grid until enemy control is taken away. And that hasn’t happened. She is telling me that hasn’t happened.’

A Gal Vorbak beast looms at Ventanus through the murk, swinging a power axe. He wears no helmet. His face is... not human.

Ventanus meets the charge and plants his blade across the haft of the axe, blocking the swing. They struggle. Ventanus is forced back by the killer’s bruising power. The locked weapons break apart, and Ventanus ducks hard to avoid the scything chop that follows.

Ventanus recovers quickly, ramming his blade upwards. His sword-tip glances off the Gal Vorbak’s axe, deflects into the enemy’s mouth, and skewers his head.

The Gal Vorbak doesn’t die. Not fast enough. He laughs around the blade impaling his mouth. Black blood pumps out over the sword hilt and Ventanus’s hand and arm. The Gal Vorbak puts his axe deep into Ventanus’s side.

Then he obliges, and dies.

Ventanus sinks to one knee.

‘A-anything?’ he voxes.

‘Captain? Are you all right?’ Selaton replies.

‘Is there anything yet?’

‘Your voice sounds strange.’

‘Selaton, has she got it yet?’ Ventanus growls.

‘No, sir. Enemy control is still in place.’

The Titans are close now. The last Shadowsword remaining with the 4th fires and damages one of the striding giants, but they reply together and turn the superheavy tank into a vast conflagration that levels the city blocks behind it.

Nothing else is coming. None of the support that they hoped might arrive to stand with them. None of the reinforcements.

Their hope was a good hope, but it was not strong enough.

The XVII Legion has won the Battle of Calth.

The Satric Plateau is bathed in aurora light. The local star spews energy across the entire Veridian System.

Erebus watches.

Rain is falling. The rain is blood. The daemons scream.

The storm breaks.

Kor Phaeron greets Guilliman with a beam of smoke-light, a column of wretched darkness that bursts from the palm of his right hand and smashes the XIII primarch into the chamber wall.

Guilliman gets back up, but he is shaken. The wall is crumpled where he struck it.

Kor Phaeron cries out, a bark of straining effort, and manufactures another ray of smoke-light. Guilliman is charging, but the beam slams him back into the bulkhead with a kinetic slap so powerful that it rings out with a deafening sonic boom.

Guilliman staggers up, falls, and then half rises, clenching his power fist. The ceramite of his breastplate is cracked. Guilliman coughs, and blood drips from his mouth. He tries to stand.

Kor Phaeron blasts him again, this time with a weird, negative electricity that crackles around Guilliman and causes him to seize in violent spasms.

Guilliman is left on his hands and knees, his cobalt-blue plating scorched, his head bowed, his whole form smouldering as the superheated armour burns his skin.

The Word Bearer draws his athame and steps forward.

Kor Phaeron can see a choice, and it delights him. He can end the life of the great Guilliman. A personal kill is so much more valuable than a distant or mass killing.

With his own hand, he can murder Roboute Guilliman.

Or, with his own hand, he can turn him.

Just as the Warmaster was turned.

Erebus did it. So Kor Phaeron can do it.

Guilliman is hurt, weak, vulnerable. The bite of the athame will free Guilliman’s sanity while he is in such a state, slice away his inhibitions. The painful burn of the athame wound will fester in him, and ultimately, through the lens of delirium, reveal the Primordial Truth in all its hellish glory.

They came to Calth to kill Guilliman and his perfect warriors. How much more will it mean to return to the court of Lorgar and Horus Lupercal with Guilliman as a willing and pliant ally?

Guilliman, crowned with horns. Guilliman, invested in the iridescent cloak of daemonhood.

Kor Phaeron stoops beside the crumpled primarch. Guilliman’s breathing is fast and ragged. His armour smokes, discoloured, and his blood pools beneath him.

‘There is so much you don’t understand,’ says Kor Phaeron. ‘The truth will shock you, Roboute. I’m sorry, it will. But you will learn to accommodate it. I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. To help you understand. To grow in appreciation.’

‘Get away from me,’ Guilliman gasps.

‘Too late. Embrace this.’

Thiel is too far away to stop it. Locked in the unyielding fight raging on the opposite side of the control chamber, Thiel glimpses what he knows is likely to be the final few seconds of Roboute Guilliman’s life.

He tries to break through, screaming out his rage and frustration. The Word Bearers have driven Guilliman’s kill squad back, slaying most of them. Thiel and the others fight to reach their primarch’s side, but they cannot. There are too many of the enemy. And these are the enemy elite.

Three warriors obstruct Aeonid Thiel. One is Sorot Tchure. Tchure blocks every strike and thrust Thiel makes, as surely as a practice cage set on maximum extremity level.

Kor Phaeron puts the blade of the athame to Guilliman’s throat.

The upper storeys of the guildhall collapse. Ventanus finds Sydance, Greavus and the remnants of their squads, and backs across the outer concourse. The severity of his wound is making him shuffle, his gait uneven.