Helsreach Read online

  In the calm that followed, the streets gave birth to an atmosphere that was somewhere between serene and funereal. A very different warrior greeted Maghernus this time. The towering figure was far from the regal, impassive statue that merely acknowledged his existence with a nod.

  The Reclusiarch’s armour still set his teeth on edge, its active hum making his eyes water if he stood too close. But Maghernus knew machines, even if he didn’t know ancient artefacts of war, and he could hear the faults in the war plate now. Its once-smooth, angry purr had a waspish edge to its tone now, and intermittent clicks told of something internal no longer running at full function. The joints of the battered armour no longer snarled with tensing fibre-cable muscles – they growled, as if reluctant to move.

  Five weeks. Five weeks of fighting, night and day, in the same suit of armour, with the dock assault rising as the most punishing week yet. It was a miracle the armour still functioned at all.

  The tabard was ripped and stained grey-green with alien blood. The scrolls that had adorned the warrior’s shoulders were gone, with only snapped chains showing they were ever held there at all. The armour itself was still impressive in its violent potential and faceless inhumanity, but where it had been blacker than black before the war, most of the blackness remaining was from scorch marks and laser burns marking the armour like bruises and claw wounds. Much of the war plate was revealed in a dull, unpolished grey now that the paint was lost to a thousand weapon chops and glancing gunshots.

  Somehow, it had the inelegant presence of a rifle or tank churned out of an Armageddon factory: plain, simple, but utterly brutal.

  The other Templars looked no better. The one who bore the Reclusiarch’s standard now bore battle damage akin to his leader. The banner itself was a ragged ruin, little more than scraps hanging from the pole. The one with the white helm was barely able to stand, supported by two of the others. The voice that rasped from his mouth grille was a wordless, hacking cough.

  And rather than humanise them, rather than reveal the warriors beneath the trappings and the knightly war gear, this damage instead stole what little personality had ever been in evidence to human eyes. How could any men, even ones shaped by genetic forges on a distant world, withstand so much punishment and survive? How could they stand before others of their own species and seem so utterly unlike them?

  ‘Hello, Reclusiarch,’ said Andrej. He carried his hellgun, uncharged now, resting on his shoulder. He thought this made him look rakish and casual, and he was right. He looked that way to the dockworkers, at least.

  Grimaldus’s voice didn’t growl or boom – it intoned, a low and bleak and grim drawl. It was all too easy to imagine this man back aboard a great, gothic warship, speaking a sermon to his brothers in the endless cold of void travel.

  ‘You have the thanks of the Black Templars, storm-trooper. And you, dockworkers of Helsreach.’

  ‘It was good timing, I think,’ Andrej continued, a vague nod and the same smile showing he thought nothing of conversations with badly-wounded towering inhuman warriors surrounded by slaughtered aliens. ‘But the docks, they are not looking good. I am hearing no orders anymore. So I see you, noble sirs, and I am wondering: perhaps they can give me orders.’

  There was a pause, but not a silent one. The city was never silent, offering up a background chorus of gunfire rattles and the crump of distant explosions.

  ‘All units are called to the shelter blocks. Guard, militia, Astartes. All.’

  ‘Even without my captain’s voice, we have followed that path. But there is more, sir.’

  ‘Speak.’ Grimaldus looked away now, the silver skull that served as his face glaring in the direction of a burning commerce district several streets away.

  ‘One of your knights fell at the docks. We have hidden his body from the enemy jackals. The etchings on his armour named him as Anastus.’

  The white-helmed Astartes spoke, his voice emerging like a man speaking through a mouthful of gruel.

  ‘Anastus died… as we deployed… last night. Life signs faded fast. Warrior’s death.’

  Grimaldus nodded, his attention restored to the humans.

  ‘What is your name?’ the Reclusiarch asked the storm-trooper.

  ‘Trooper Andrej, 703rd Steel Legion Storm-trooper Division, sir.’

  ‘And yours?’ he asked the next man in line, taking every name until the last, whom he recognised without needing to ask. ‘Dockmaster Tomaz Maghernus,’ the knight grunted, finally. ‘It is good to see you on the field. Courage such as yours belongs at the vanguard.’

  Maghernus’s skin crawled, not with distaste but raw awkwardness. How does one reply to such a thing? To say he was honoured? To admit that every muscle in his body ached and he regretted ever volunteering for this madness?

  ‘Thank you, Reclusiarch,’ he managed.

  ‘I will remember your names and deeds this day. All of you. Helsreach may burn, but this war is not lost. Every one of your names will be etched into the black stone pillars of the Valiant Hall aboard the Eternal Crusader.’

  Andrej nodded. ‘I am very honoured, Reclusiarch, as are these handsome and fine gentlemen with me. But if you could tell my captain about this, I would be even happier.’

  The harsh sound emitted from the Reclusiarch’s vox-speakers was somewhere between a bark and a snarl. It took Maghernus several moments to realise it had been a laugh.

  ‘It will be done, Trooper Andrej. You have my word.’

  ‘I am hopeful this will also impress the lady I intend to marry.’

  Grimaldus wasn’t sure how to reply to that. He settled for ‘Yes. Good.’

  ‘Such optimism! But yes, I must find her first. Where do we move now, sir?’

  ‘West. The shelters in Sulfa Commercia. The alien dogs are taunting us.’ The Reclusiarch gestured with his massive hammer, the weapon’s power field deactivated for now. Between warehouses and manufactories, distant domes were aflame.

  ‘See them. Already, they burn.’

  Priamus didn’t look where the others did. His attention was lifted higher, to the smog-thick skies.

  ‘What’s that?’ He gestured skyward, to a ball of flame trailing down. ‘It can’t be what it looks like.’

  ‘It is,’ Grimaldus replied, unable to look away from the sight.

  ‘Ayah!’ Andrej cheered as several similar objects appeared, blazing earthward, leading fiery contrails like comets.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Maghernus, caught off-guard by the storm-trooper’s capering and the knights’ reverence.

  ‘Drop-pods,’ said the Reclusiarch. His silver skull turned amber with the reflection of the burning tank hulls nearby. ‘Astartes drop-pods.’

  CHAPTER XVII

  Into the Fires of Battle, Unto the Anvil of War

  The Sulfa Commercia district had been a bastion of militia reserves and a strongpoint for the docks’ anti-air defences.

  The few turrets that remained atop buildings, both automated and manned, fell silent. Around them, the district burned. Above them, ork fighters and bombers dropped their payloads with abandon, barely held in check even when the defence turrets were operational.

  Sulfa Commercia, as a trading hub for the western docks that was always densely populated in times of peace, was home to a particularly large concentration of above-ground storm shelters, most of which were already broken by the besieging orks. The enemy advance was at a standstill in this section of the dockyards, not because of Imperial resistance, but because there was so much blood to shed, and so much to destroy. To leave the area devoid of life and in utter ruin meant the aliens had to linger here, slaying with wild joy in their feral eyes.

  When writing of the siege in a personal journal some years after the war, Major Lacus of the 61st Steel Legion lamented the ‘unbelievable loss of life’ that occurred with the dock breaches, citing the destruction of the Sulfa Commercia as ‘among the bloodiest events in the Helsreach siege, which no man, no tank battalion, no legion of
Titans could have dreamed of preventing’.

  The trading concourse resembled little of its former grandeur. While warehouses were less in evidence here, the houses of the wealthy mercantile families of Helsreach burned just as well, and those citizens that had elected to remain in their homes rather than seek out the subterranean municipal shelters now fell to the same fate as the civilians trapped in the cracked-open storm shelters. The aliens descended without mercy, and no contingent of house guards, no matter how well-trained they were, were capable of defending their lords’ estates against the xenos tide that swarmed the docks districts.

  The most notable defence – one that captured the spirit of defiance surging throughout the hive’s stunted propaganda machine – was not, as might be suspected, the one that inflicted greatest harm upon the enemy. The estate defence that did the most damage numerically-speaking was performed by the House Farwellian Constabulary, employed for seven generations by the noble Farwell bloodline. Their extended survival wasn’t quite the soul-lifting story that Commissar Falkov and Colonel Sarren were seeking, as the esteemed House Farwell were, in truth, considered decadent pigs in the public eye, and its various scions were no strangers to political scandal, financial investigation, and rumours of trade double-dealing. In short, they performed so well in this district war because they had shrewdly cheated their way to immense wealth, and had a standing army of six hundred soldiers at their beck and call.

  A standing army that, it was noted in Imperial records, the Farwells refused to lend to the defence of the docks or the city’s militia.

  This sizable force was also their bane. As words flashed through the orkish ranks that there was a nexus of defence formed at the House Farwell compound, the aliens stormed it en masse, ending the tenacious resistance – and the bloodline itself.

  The most notable defence, as stated, was a far cry from this exercise in doomed selfishness. House Tarracine, with only five off-world mercenaries hired as protection, defended their modest estate through a series of guerrilla strikes and automated security traps for nineteen hours. Although their home was destroyed by the invaders, seven family members emerged unscathed in the days after the dock battle, leaving them in a relatively strong position for the rebuilding of the city, with Lord Helius Tarracine’s four daughters suddenly pursued with great vigour by weakened and heirless noble bloodlines.

  At shelter CC/46, one of the few shelters still intact as the second day of the dock war stretched on, annihilation was averted at the very last moment.

  The first drop-pod came down with a thunderbolt’s force, striking into the roadway leading to the front doors of the sanctuary dome. The ork rabble that had been clamouring in the street was thrown into disarray, and several of the beasts were incinerated in the pod’s retro burst or crushed beneath its hammering weight.

  The pod’s sides blasted open, slamming down into descent ramps which pulverised the beasts that had recovered enough to start beating their axe blades against the green hull.

  Across the docks, several more pods rained down, their arrival mirroring the destruction unleashed by the first.

  With bolters raised, crashing out round after round, and flamers breathing dragon’s breath in hissing gouts of chemical fire, the Salamanders joined their Templar brothers in defence of Hive Helsreach.

  ‘We are seventy in number,’ he says to me. Seven squads.

  His name is V’reth, a sergeant of the Salamanders’ 6th Company. Before I speak, he says something both humbling and unexpectedly respectful. ‘I am honoured to fight at your side, Reclusiarch Grimaldus.’

  This confession throws me, and I am not certain I keep my surprise from my voice when I reply.

  ‘The Templars are in your debt. But tell me, brother, why you have come?’

  Around us, my knights and V’reth’s warriors stalk among the dead and the dying, slaying wounded orks with sword thrusts to exposed throats. The storm-trooper and his dockworkers follow suit, using the bayonets of their rifles.

  V’reth disengages his helm’s seals and lifts it clear. Even having served with the Salamanders before, it is difficult to look upon one of the sons of Nocturne and feel nothing at all. The gene-seed of their primarch reacts to their home world’s viciously radioactive surface. The pigmentation of V’reth’s skin is the same charcoal-black as every unhelmeted warrior of the Chapter I’ve ever seen. His eyes lack pupils and irises. Instead, V’reth stares out at the world around us through orbs of ember red, as if blood has filled his eye sockets and discoloured his eyes in the process.

  His true voice is a low, aural embodiment of the igneous rock that leaves the surface of his home world dark, barren and grey. It is all too easy to see how these warriors come from a world of lava rivers and volcanic mountain ranges that turn the sky black.

  ‘We were the last of the Salamanders in orbit. The Lord of the Fire-born called us to him, and we obeyed.’

  I am familiar with the title. I have heard their Chapter Master referred to by this name many times before.

  ‘Master Tu’Shan, may the Emperor continue to favour him, fights far from here, brother. The Salamanders bleed the enemy many leagues to the east, and the Hemlock river runs black with alien blood.’

  V’reth inclines his head in a solemn nod, and his red-eyed gaze rises to take in the shelter dome at the end of this very street.

  ‘This is so, and it gladdens me to know my brothers fight well enough to earn such words from you, Reclusiarch. The Lord of the Fire-born makes his stand with the war engines of Legios Ignatum and Invigilata.’

  ‘So answer my question, for time is not our ally. Helsreach burns. Will you stay? Will you fight with us?’

  ‘We will not stay. We cannot stay.’

  I bite back the wrath that rises from disappointment, and the Salamander continues, ‘We are the seventy warriors chosen to make planetfall here and stand with you until the docks are held. My lord and master heard of the assured civilian devastation in the fall of this city’s coastal districts.’

  ‘Few messages reach the ears of our allies elsewhere in the world. Few messages from them reach us.’

  ‘The Salamanders were not blind to your plight, honoured Reclusiarch. Master Tu’Shan heard. We are his blade, his will, to ensure the survival of the city’s most innocent souls.’

  ‘And then you will leave.’

  ‘And then we will leave. Our fight is along the banks of the Hemlock. Our glory is there.’

  This gesture alone is enough to earn my eternal gratitude. For the first time in decades, emotion steals the words I wish to voice. This is all we needed. This is salvation.

  We can hurt them now.

  I remove my own helm, breathing in the first taste of Helsreach’s sulphuric air in… weeks. Months.

  V’reth inhales deeply, doing the same.

  ‘This city,’ he smiles, teeth white against his onyx features, ‘it smells like home.’

  The heated wind feels good on my skin. I offer my hand to V’reth, and he grips my wrist – an alliance between warriors.

  ‘Thank you,’ I tell him, meeting his inhuman eyes.

  ‘If you are needed elsewhere,’ V’reth matches my gaze with his own, ‘then go to your duty, honoured Reclusiarch. We stand with you, for now. And together, we will not let these docks fall.’

  ‘First, tell me of the orbital war. What news of the Crusader?’

  ‘The deadlock remains. It grieves me to say this, but it is so. We are shattering the enemy, battle by battle, but it is like hurling fire at stone. Little is achieved against such an overwhelming foe. It will take weeks before your High Marshal dares a full assault to reclaim the heavens. He is a shrewd warrior. My brothers and I were honoured to serve with him in the fleet.’

  To hear his words is like a lifeline. A connection to existence beyond the broken walls of this accursed city. I press him for more.

  ‘What of Tempestus Hive? They suffered as we did.’

  ‘Fallen. Lost to the enemy, it
s forces in retreat. The last word from any remnant of command structure was that the city was being abandoned, and its retreating survivors were making their way overland to connect with the Guard regiments serving alongside my lord and master.’

  Scattered defence forces and Guard units, crossing hundreds of kilometres of wasteland. Such tenacity was to be admired.

  This world will never recover, that much is clear. Fatalism may not be bred into my bones, but there is no valour in living a lie. What we do here is defiance – the selling of life as dearly as possible. We are not fighting to win, but waging war out of spite.

  This Salamander, brother though he may be, has a destiny beyond this city. I relent to it.

  ‘Coordinate the dispersal of squads with Sergeant Bastilan. Focus your efforts on the westernmost districts, where the bulk of storm shelters are to be found. Bastilan will provide you with the required vox frequencies to connect with the storm-troopers leading the civilian defences. Do not expect clarity in communications. Many of the city’s vox-relay towers have fallen.’

  ‘It will be done, Reclusiarch.’

  ‘For the Emperor.’ I release V’reth’s wrist. His reply is a curious one, betraying his Chapter’s unique focus.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ he says, ‘and His people.’

  Jurisian, Master of the Forge and knight of the Emperor, threw his head back and laughed. He had not laughed in many years, for he was not a soul given to humour. What he was seeing now however struck him as immensely funny. So he laughed, without meaning to.

  The sound echoed throughout the immense chamber, resounding off metal-reinforced walls of stone and the hulking adamantium shape that stretched for fifty metres into the darkness.

  The Ordinatus Armageddon. Oberon.

  Jurisian’s armour had been the only sound in the chamber for hours, the overlaid ceramite plating clacking and whirring as he moved around the great weapon. He’d circled it several dozen times, staring, scanning, taking in every detail with his own eyes and his war plate’s auspex sensors.