Hero of the Imperium, page 76
‘Emperor on Earth!’ I said, my bowels spasming. The man, if man he still was, was a giant, towering over us all. My months as the Guard liaison to the Reclaimers had left me familiar with the superhuman stature of the Astartes and with a healthy respect for the strength and durability of the armour they wore, but this was no paladin of the Emperor’s will; quite the opposite. His armour was blood red and black, like the uniforms of the cultists still dying in droves around us, and chased with vile designs in burnished orichalcum. He carried a bolt pistol holstered at his belt, but apparently distained to use it. His hands, encased in massive gauntlets, gripped a curious weapon, like a battleaxe, but surrounded with whirling metal teeth like my own trusty chainsword.
‘You swear by the corpse god?’ The thing’s voice was gutteral, from a throat constricted with rage, and so deeply resonant that I felt it reverberate through my very bones. ‘Your skull will grace the throne of the true power!’
‘Big red thing, five rounds rapid fire!’ Dyzun ordered, remarkably calmly under the circumstances, and the troopers snapped out of their astonishment to comply. But the twisted parody of a Marine was fast, at least as agile as one of the true heroes he aped, and leapt aside, avoiding most of it. The few las bolts which struck his armour scored it, adding to the pockmarks already inflicted by the luckless second squad, and I felt vindictive laughter resonating through my bones.
As ill luck would have it, his leap carried him over the heads of most of the troopers, to land almost at my feet. I felt a bolt of sheer terror arc through me as the metal-clad giant tilted his head forward to look down at where I stood, and swung his chain axe with lightning speed. Which was his first mistake. Had he made any other attack he might well have killed me where I stood, still paralysed with fear, but the whining chain blades triggered my duellist’s reflexes and I parried the blow with my own gently-humming chainsword without a second’s hesitation. That snapped me out of it, you can be sure, and I began to fight for my life in deadly earnest.
‘Is that the best you can do?’ I taunted him, sure that in his arrogance he had expected an easy kill, and hoping to goad him into making a mistake. Not that I had any serious hope of besting him in a prolonged fight, of course; my unaugmented muscles would tire quickly, even without the strength-sapping cold, and his already superhuman endurance would be boosted by the power armour he wore. But if I could keep him pinned long enough for the troopers with me to line up a good shot and somehow disengage before they took it, I hoped I could wipe the smile off his face… if he still had one under that grotesque helmet.
I slashed at his chest, raising a shower of sparks from the abused ceramite. ‘I thought the acolytes of Khorne were supposed to be warriors, not a bunch of pansies.’
‘I’ll feed you your own entrails!’ the giant roared, slashing down again with his cumbersome weapon. This time I deflected it so that it struck his own leg, raising another shower of golden sparks and a cheer from the surrounding troopers.
‘Like I’ve never heard that before,’ I sneered, following through and getting right under his guard. I rolled in the snow, making as much distance as I could, seeing him turn out of the corner of my eye and raising the axe again.
He never completed the motion. The actinic light of Jurgen’s melta stabbed the darkness, vaporising the middle of his chest, and he stumbled, dropping slowly to his knees. I scrambled hurriedly to my feet, having no desire to be crushed to death under all that falling metal, and holstered my weapons.
‘Thank you, Jurgen,’ I said, brushing the accumulated snow from my greatcoat.
‘You’re welcome, sir.’ My aide lowered the cumbersome weapon as our defeated enemy slumped to the permafrost with a sound like an accident in a bell foundry. ‘Will there be anything else?’
‘Now you come to mention it,’ I said, conscious of the rapt attention of the troopers surrounding us and straightening my cap with all the insouciance I could muster, ‘I think now would be a good time for that tea.’
Editorial Note:
There were other engagements, equally hard-fought, across most of Adumbria, although naturally Cain doesn’t think they’re worth more than the most casual of references. Indeed, the attack on the regimental headquarters in which he was involved was arguably a minor sideshow to the main battle for Glacier Peak, in which the bulk of the regiment and the local PDF garrison acquitted themselves most creditably.
So once again we must rely on other sources to fill the gaps, and once again Tincrowser’s populist account does a workmanlike job of sketching in the bigger picture.
From Sablist in Skitterfall: a brief history of the Chaos incursion by Dagblat Tincrowser, 957 M41.
To the surprise of many, Skitterfall itself saw relatively little action during this first incursion. In retrospect, this was almost certainly due to the presence of the warships in orbit above it, which would have made any direct approach almost suicidal. Indeed, the Cobra squadron and the triumphant Escapade made short work of the two remaining starships before either had the opportunity to flee back into deep space. But the damage had been done and several thousand enemy soldiers had landed by the time their transports had been repulsed.
The overall strategy of these raids, if there even was one, has been the subject of much speculation over the last twenty years. In very few cases did the enemy mass in sufficient numbers to pose a serious threat, and it seems most likely that they were there simply to allow their masters aboard the main fleet to gauge the strength of the resistance they were to expect when they arrived in force. Any damage they were able to inflict by these hit and run tactics would have been a welcome bonus, of course, and it cannot be denied that the psychological effect of their arrival was considerable; the panic and civil disorder in many of the major population centres certainly increased for a time, although this was followed by a period of relative calm, the populace no doubt reflecting that the worst of their fears had now come to pass.
As has previously been noted, relatively few of the enemy landed in Skitterfall itself, the defences around the starport proving a formidable deterrent for those few who tried. Indeed, so strong was the resistance here that the few shuttles which made it through were forced to land in the suburbs, far from the city centre, where the local PDF, ably assisted by the Valhallan tanks and Kastaforean infantry elements of the Imperial Guard, were able to repulse them in pretty short order. Rumours at the time of patriotic citizens forming ad hoc militia units to meet the threat can now, with the wisdom of hindsight, be seen for the wishful thinking they undoubtedly were, but such tales undoubtedly played a part in boosting the resolve of the civilian population to resist the invader.
The largest battles of the first incursion occurred in the most unlikely of places: the town of Glacier Peak on the coldside and an area of wilderness on the hotside of note only for the fact that the Tallarn element of the relieving task force had established their headquarters there in the remains of an old botanical testing station.82 Given that Glacier Peak was the headquarters of the Valhallan 597th, it seems probable that part of the reason for the incursion was an attempt to inflict damage on the two Guard regiments most isolated from their fellows. If that was indeed the case, the traitors were to be sorely disappointed.
The Tallarn 229th were to prove their reputation for the mastery of desert warfare was richly merited, driving off and slaughtering their attackers with almost contemptuous ease. In this they were undoubtedly assisted by their familiarity with the harsh environment they found themselves in, as the heretics were to find the conditions there debilitating in the extreme. Indeed, one contemporary account suggests that almost as many were to die of dehydration and heatstroke as at the hands and weapons of the Guardsmen.
The same could be said of the contingent which attacked the coldside, many of them succumbing to the freezing temperatures as readily as to the martial zeal of the Valhallans, who, as natives of an ice world, found them no handicap. The town of Glacier Peak offered many refuges from the killing cold, however, and the struggle there became one of prolonged attrition, driving the invaders out street by street, building by building. And, despite the best efforts of the Guard troopers, many civilians were to suffer and die in the crossfire. Their sacrifice was not to be in vain, however, as at length the last of the heretic scum were hunted down as they attempted to flee the town on foot, braving the freezing temperatures of the wilderness. This, above all else, points to their sheer desperation, as there was undoubtedly no shelter to be found there.
FOURTEEN
‘Things can always get worse.’
– Valhallan proverb
‘Well, that was unexpected.’ Zyvan nodded gravely in the centre of the hololith. His head, about a quarter life size, was surrounded by others, orbiting around him like the moons of a gas giant: the commanders of the other Guard regiments, their commissars, Malden, Kolbe and a couple of other faces I didn’t recognise but who probably had something to do with the PDF. To my vague relief there was no sign of Vinzand, so things would probably go a little more smoothly; no doubt Zyvan felt we were getting into things no civilian, however exalted, needed to know. I noted the absence of the lady Dimarco with slightly mixed feelings, she was decorative enough and her presence would have been a welcome distraction from the collection of military men, but her corrosive personality went a long way towards negating that.
And talking of corrosive personalities, Beije was there, along with Asmar of course, trying desperately to look as though he understood what was going on. Well, I supposed I could always amuse myself by needling him if things got too tedious.
‘Are you absolutely positive about this?’ True to form, Beije couldn’t resist sticking his nose in, heedless of the opinions of anyone else in the conference link. ‘Not that I doubt Commissar Cain’s veracity for a moment,’ his tone quite clearly implying the opposite, ‘but I’m sure I’m not the only one here who finds this story a little hard to swallow.’
Asmar nodded in agreement, although most of the others remained stone-faced and a few visibly bristled, especially the CO of the Valhallan tankies and his commissar. ‘I know he has something of a swashbuckling reputation,’ Beije prattled on, cheerfully oblivious to the reception he was getting, ‘but the idea of any man defeating a member of the Traitor Legions in single combat has to be difficult to credit.’
‘Indeed it would be,’ I responded, ‘if that were the case. But I can hardly take the credit for the actions of others.’ Not if there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to get away with it, anyway. ‘I simply exchanged a couple of blows with the fellow. The kill was made by my aide and a couple of squads of our troopers. Who, incidentally,’ I added to Zyvan, ‘I would like to recommend for commendations.’
I was rewarded by a projection field full of nodding heads and benign smiles. That was the trick which had always worked best for me: appearing to be modest about my supposed heroism. Now the legend would grow out of all proportion, until half the troopers on the planet would indeed be convinced that I’d bested a tainted superman in a contest of blades. The only exceptions, of course, were Asmar and Beije.
‘Are we even convinced that it was one of the accursed traitors?’ Beije asked, worrying at the argument like a kroot with a bone, completely unable to grasp that the more he tried to undermine my supposed achievement the more he consolidated the fact in everyone else’s mind. ‘It could just have been one of the cultists of unusual stature.’
‘Pretty convinced,’ Zyvan said dryly, the image in the hololith changing to show the corpse of the dead Chaos Marine. I didn’t need to see the expressions on the assembled faces at that point, as the collective intake of breath was perfectly audible. There was absolutely no chance of mistaking that monstrous corpse for anything else. After a moment the image returned to the mass of heads. ‘We’ve positively identified him as a member of the World Eaters Legion.’
‘Are we to infer, then, that the next stage of the attack will be carried out by a Traitor Legion?’ Kolbe asked, managing to keep his voice steady with an effort someone less adept than I was at reading people would have found hard to spot.
Zyvan shook his head. ‘With Chaos, of course, nothing is certain, but I doubt it. Were that the case, we would be facing a far greater fleet and the World Eaters would be proclaiming themselves openly rather than hiding behind the banner of the Ravagers.’
‘Not very big on subtlety, Khorne cultists,’ I chipped in helpfully, underlining the fact that with the possible exception of Zyvan, I probably had more experience of facing the various factions of Chaos than anyone else on the planet.
Kasteen looked at me curiously. ‘I thought you said they worshipped something called Slaynish?’
‘The heretics we’ve been fighting so far seem to be Slaaneshi cultists,’ I said, emphasising the correct pronunciation almost imperceptibly. ‘Which is odd, to say the least.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Beije asked impatiently. ‘A heretic’s a heretic. We should just kill the lot of them and let the Emperor sort them out.’
‘I quite agree,’ I said, enjoying the brief flicker of astonishment and uncertainty which crossed his face. ‘But it may not be as simple as that.’
‘Quite.’ Zyvan nodded. ‘What Commissar Cain is aware of, and some of you appear not to be, is that Chaos is not a single, unified enemy. Not very often, anyway, thank the Emperor.’ The few in the conference circuit who knew what he was talking about looked visibly perturbed, no doubt visualising the Gothic War or the last Black Crusade. (Perhaps mercifully, none of us was even able to guess at the magnitude of the next one, lurking a mere sixty years or so in our collective futures.)
‘Quite,’ I said. I addressed Zyvan directly again. ‘I assume everyone here has the necessary security clearance to be discussing this?’ Of course they would, or he would never have raised the subject, but he enjoyed a bit of melodrama as much as I did and nodded gravely.
‘You may continue,’ he said.
Well, that was a bit of a shock, I’d been looking forward to dozing through the meeting, rousing myself just long enough to tease Beije if the opportunity arose, but I’ve never been averse to being the centre of attention, so I nodded as though I’d been expecting something of the kind.
‘There are four principal Ruinous Powers,’ I began, ‘at least as far as we know. Heretics worship them as gods, and of all the warp entities so far discovered, only they are strong enough to challenge the Emperor Himself for dominion of the immaterium.’
‘Challenge the Emperor?’ Beije was outraged. ‘The very idea is blasphemy!’ He leaned forward, apparently reaching for the controls of his pictcaster. ‘I’ll listen to no more of this heretical twaddle.’ His face vanished from the collection of disembodied heads floating in the hololith. Asmar’s remained, but looked far from happy.
‘The rest of you may care to note,’ I said, concealing my amusement with some difficulty, ‘that I said “challenge”, not “defeat”. That would indeed be heresy, and is, of course, utterly unthinkable.’ Most of the heads nodded gravely. ‘The precise nature of these powers is a subject to be studied and considered by those far wiser than I,83 but the salient point is that all four are essentially rivals. They may make temporary alliances from time to time, but in the end they all seek complete dominion for themselves alone.’ That I knew from personal experience; the sorceress Emeli, who for some reason kept invading my dreams of late, had been part of a Slaaneshi cult locked in a deadly struggle with a Nurglite faction for control of Slawkenberg. ‘And none are more deadly rivals than Khorne and Slaanesh,’ I concluded. ‘If they’re acting in concert here it would be almost unprecedented.’
‘Completely so,’ Zyvan confirmed. ‘The only examples ever recorded are during events like a Black Crusade, when adherents of all four factions are somehow able to put their differences aside. Fortunately, they start stabbing each other in the back sooner or later, and the whole thing falls apart.’
‘This is hardly on the scale of a Black Crusade,’ one of the Kastaforean commissars pointed out mildly. I’d spent a bit of time in his company aboard the Emperor’s Benificence, and felt the lad might have a reasonable future in front of him. He wasn’t an overt Emperor-botherer, liked his ale and a hand of cards, and had a pretty good idea of when to be looking the other way instead of jumping on every minor infraction his troopers committed. ‘More of a Black Skirmish.’
‘Precisely,’ I said, smiling at the witticism until a few of the others decided they’d better too. ‘Which leaves us with two possibilities that I can see. One of which is that there’s something on Adumbria both factions want to get their hands on.’
‘What might that be?’ Kolbe asked, looking understandably perturbed at the idea. It must be bad enough coming to terms with the fact that one of the Ruinous Powers is taking a special interest in your homeworld, never mind two.
‘Who knows?’ Zyvan said. ‘Adumbria’s been settled for millennia. That’s a lot of time for someone to hide or lose a powerful artefact. Or it might be something that’s been here even longer than the Imperium.’ I suppressed a shudder at that thought, being reminded rather too forcibly of the necron tombs I’d stumbled across on Interitus and Simia Orichalcae. Still, I reminded myself forcibly, the metal monstrosities weren’t the only source of archeotech, and it was possible some long-lost hoard of the stuff remained buried away somewhere on this peculiar planet.
‘What about the other possibility?’ Kasteen asked.
‘The Khornates are here to prevent the Slaaneshi from doing something that’ll tilt the balance of power between them,’ I said.
