Helsreach Read online

  ‘I no longer carry one.’

  She looks up at me, as if the reflection of my skull visage was no longer clear enough for her purposes.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘It was lost. Destroyed in battle.’

  ‘Is that not a dark omen?’

  ‘I am still alive three years after its destruction. I still do the Emperor’s work, and still follow the word of Dorn even after its loss. The omen cannot be that dark.’

  She looks at me for some time. I am used to humans staring at me in awkward silence; used to their attempts to watch without betraying that they are watching. But this direct stare is something else, and it takes a moment to realise why.

  ‘You are judging me.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Remove your helm, please.’

  ‘Tell me why I should.’ My voice is not pitched to petulance, merely curiosity. I had not expected her to ask such a thing.

  ‘Because I would like to look upon the face of the man I am speaking with, and because I wish to anoint you with the Waters of Elucidation.’

  I could refuse. Of course I could refuse.

  But I do not.

  ‘A moment, please.’ I disengage my helm’s seals, and breathe in my first taste of the crisp, cool air within the temple. The fresh water before me. The sweat of the refugees. The scorched ceramite of my armour.

  ‘You have beautiful eyes,’ she tells me. ‘Innocent, but cautious. The eyes of a child, or a new father. Seeing the world around you as if for the first time. Kneel, if you would? I cannot reach all the way up there.’

  I do not kneel. She is not my liege lord, and to abase myself in such a way would violate all decorum. Instead, I lower my head, bringing my face closer to her. The joints of her pristine armour give the smooth purr of clean mechanics as she reaches up. I feel her fingertip draw a cross upon my forehead in cold water.

  ‘There,’ she says, refastening her gauntlets. ‘May you find the answers you seek in this house of the God-Emperor. You are blessed, and may tread the sacred floor of the inner sanctum without guilt.’

  She is already moving away, her milky eyes squinting. ‘Come. I have something to show you.’

  The prioress leads me to the centre of the chamber, where a stone table holds an open book. Four columns of polished marble rise at the table’s cardinal points, all the way to the ceiling. Upon one of the columns hangs a tattered banner unlike any I have ever seen before.

  ‘Hold.’

  ‘What is it? Ah, the first archive.’ She gestures to the sheets of ragged cloth hanging from the war banner poles. Each once-white, now-grey sheet shows a list of names in faded ink.

  Names, professions, husbands and wives and children…

  ‘These are the first colonists.’

  ‘Yes, Reclusiarch.’

  ‘The settlers of Helsreach. The founders. This is their charter?’

  ‘It is. From when the great hive was no more than a village by the shore of the Tempest Ocean. These are the men and women that laid the temple’s first foundations.’

  I let my gloved hand come close to the humming stasis field shielding the ancient cloth document. Parchment would have been a rare luxury to the first colonists, with the jungle and its trees so far from here. It stands to reason they would have recorded their achievements on cloth paper.

  Thousands of years ago, Imperial peasants walked the ashen soil here and laid the first stone bones of what would become a great basilica to house the devotions of an entire city. Deeds remembered throughout the millennia, with their evidence for all to see.

  ‘You seem pensive,’ she tells me.

  ‘What is the book?’

  ‘The log from a vessel called the Truth’s Tenacity. It was the colonisation seeding ship that brought the settlers to Helsreach. The four pillars house a void shield generator system, protecting the tome. This is the Major Altar. Sermons are given here, among the city’s most precious relics.’

  I look at the tome’s curled, age-browned pages. Then at the archive banner once more.

  Last of all, I replace my helm, coating my senses in the selective vision of targeting sights and filtered sounds.

  ‘You have my thanks, prioress. I appreciate what you have shown me here.’

  ‘Am I to expect any more of your kind arriving to bolster us, Astartes?’

  I think, for a moment, of Jurisian, bringing the Ordinatus Armageddon overland, uncrewed, at minimal power and of little to no use once it arrives.

  ‘One more. He returns to join us and fight by our sides.’

  ‘Then I bid you welcome to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, Reclusiarch. How do you plan to defend this holy place?’

  ‘We are past the point of retreat now, Sindal. No finesse, no tactics, no long speeches to rally the faint of heart and those that fear the end. I plan to kill until I am killed, because that is all that remains for us here.’

  Both the Reclusiarch and the prioress turned at the pounding upon the door.

  Grimaldus blink-clicked the rune to bring his vox channels live again, but it wasn’t any of his brothers seeking his attention.

  Prioress Sindal waved her hand in a magnanimous gesture, as if there were a crowd to impress. ‘Do come in.’

  The great metal-wrought doors rumbled open on clean but heavy hinges. Eight men stood framed by the doors and the austere corridor beyond. Each of them bore a filthy share of blood, mud, soot and oil stains. They carried lasguns with the practiced ease of men who had become utterly familiar with the weapons, and all but two of them wore dirty blue dockworkers’ overalls. One of those that did not was dressed in the robes of a priest, but not the cream and blue weave of the temple’s own residents. He was from off-world.

  The leader of the group raised his goggles, letting them clack back on the top of his helmet. He regarded the knight with wide eyes.

  ‘They said you would be here,’ the storm-trooper said. ‘I beg the many forgivings of this holy place for my intrusion, but I bring news, yes? Do not be angry. The vox is still playing many unamusing games and I could not speak with anyone in any other way.’

  ‘Speak, Legionnaire,’ said Grimaldus.

  ‘The beasts, they are coming in great force. Many are not far behind us, and I have heard vox-chatter that Invigilata is leaving the city.’

  ‘Why would they leave us?’ the prioress asked, horrified.

  ‘They would quit the city at once,’ Grimaldus admitted, ‘if Princeps Zarha was gone. Mechanicus politics.’

  ‘She is gone, Reclusiarch,’ Andrej finished. ‘An hour ago, we saw Stormherald die.’

  Behind the Guardsman, a warrior-maiden in the white power armour of the Order of the Argent Shroud caught her breath, staring at the prioress with her features flushed.

  ‘Prioress!’

  ‘Take a breath, Sister Maralin.’

  ‘We’ve received word from the 101st Steel Legion! Invigilata’s Titans are abandoning Helsreach!’

  Andrej looked at the newcomer as if she had announced that gravity was a myth. He shook his head slowly, a deep and solemn pity written across his face.

  ‘You are late, little girl.’

  The first wave to break against the walls was not a horde of the enemy.

  Close-range vox detected them first, with reports of elements from three Steel Legion regiments engaged in panicked retreat. Grimaldus responded with the temple’s vox-systems, boosted far beyond what the squad-to-squad comms systems were currently capable of.

  He gave the order to any Helsreach forces receiving the message to fall back to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, abandoning any further struggle to hold the few remaining sectors in the Ecclesiarchy District. Several lieutenants and captains sent affirmative responses in reply, including a captain of the hive militia still leading over a hundred men.

  The fleeing Imperials began to arrive less than an hour later.

  Grimaldus stood with Bayard at the gates, looking out into the city. A dark-hulled Baneblade command ta
nk rolled past, guided into the graveyard sector by a platoon of Guardsmen waving directions to the driver. Behind it, a cadre of Leman Russ battle tanks with various turret weapons trundled in loose formation. Mingling between the rolling armour and trailing behind were several hundred Legionnaires, ochre-clad and visibly weary. Wounded were being stretchered by their fellows in serious numbers, and there were plenty of wails and moans calling out over the grind of tank engines.

  Two soldiers passed by the watching knights, bearing the writhing body of a junior officer on a cloth stretcher. The man had lost an arm and a leg, at the elbow and knee respectively. His face was a contorted mess of whatever he really looked like, his visage ruined by the pain flowing through him.

  One of the stretcher-bearers nodded to Grimaldus as he passed, and muttered a respectful ‘Reclusiarch.’

  The Templar nodded back.

  ‘Fought with them?’ Bayard asked over the vox.

  ‘Desert Vultures. I was with them when the first walls fell. Good men, all.’

  ‘Very few left,’ Bayard said, a strange edge to his voice.

  Grimaldus turned his skulled face to the Champion. ‘There will be enough. Have faith in your brothers’ blades, Bayard.’

  ‘I have faith. I am sanguine with my fate, Chaplain.’

  ‘My rank is Reclusiarch. Use it.’

  ‘By your will, brother, of course. But we stand vigil over the city’s death with a handful of bleeding humans, Reclusiarch. I am sanguine, but I am also a realist.’

  Grimaldus’s vox-snarl drew stares from the soldiers passing nearby. ‘Have faith in the people of this city, Champion. Such condescension is beneath you. We are the last guardians of the relics prized by the first of Armageddon’s colonists. These people are fighting for more than their homes and lives. They are fighting for their ancestors’ honour, on the holiest ground in the entire world. The survivors of this war across the globe will take heart from sacrifices made by the thousands destined to die here. Blood of Dorn, Bayard… the Imperium was born in moments such as this.’

  The Emperor’s Champion watched him for a long moment, during which Grimaldus found his heart thumping faster. He was angry, and feeling the anger rise was as purgative as his time within the temple’s serene halls. Bayard spoke, his voice sincere despite the crackle of vox-breakage.

  ‘My voice was one of the few that spoke against your ascension to Mordred’s rank.’

  Grimaldus snorted, returning to watching the arriving forces. ‘I would have said the same in your place.’

  Seventy soldiers of the Steel Legion 101st came together in a battered convoy of Chimera transports. The ramp slammed down as the lead vehicle pulled up to a halt. A squad of Legionnaires disembarked, not a one of them free of bloodstains or bandaging.

  ‘Leave the Chimeras outside,’ Major Ryken ordered the others. Half of his face was wrapped in grubby cloth bandages, and he leaned heavily on an aide’s shoulder, limping as he walked.

  ‘Shouldn’t we take them inside?’ Cyria Tyro asked. She looked back over her shoulder at the tanks being abandoned.

  ‘To hell with them,’ Ryken spat blood as she led him to the two knights. ‘Not enough ammunition in the turrets to make it worthwhile.’

  ‘Grimaldus,’ she said, looking up at the towering warrior.

  ‘Hail, Adjutant Quintus Tyro. Major Ryken.’

  ‘We got cut off from Sarren and the others. The 34th, the 101st, the 51st… They’re all in the central manufactory sectors…’

  ‘It does not matter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It does not matter,’ Grimaldus repeated. ‘We are defending the last points of light in Helsreach. Fate brought you to the Temple. Fate sent Sarren elsewhere.’

  ‘Throne, there are still thousands of the bastards out there.’ He spat pinkish spit again, and Tyro grunted as she took more of his weight. ‘And that’s not the worst of it.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Invigilata has gone,’ Tyro said. ‘They left us to die. The enemy still has Titans – and there’s one that you’ll never believe until you look upon it with your own eyes. We saw it march from the Rostorik Ironworks, collapsing habitation towers in its wake.’

  ‘The 34th Armoured rolled out to stop it,’ Ryken winced as he spoke. His bandages were growing more stained, around what was likely an empty eye socket. ‘It flattened most of them in the time it takes a desert jackal to howl at the full moon.’

  A curious local expression. Grimaldus nodded, catching the meaning, but Ryken had more to add.

  ‘Stormherald is down.’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This Godbreaker… it killed the Crone, and slew Stormherald.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know? So where’s the damn Ordinatus? We need it! Nothing else will kill that gigantic clanking… thing.’

  ‘It is coming. Move inside and see to your wounds. If the end is coming to these walls, you will need to stand ready.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll all be ready. The bastards took my face, and that made it personal.’

  As they moved away, Grimaldus heard Tyro gently teasing the major for his bravado. When they were beyond the gates but still in sight, the Reclusiarch saw the general’s adjutant kiss the major on his unbandaged cheek.

  ‘Madness,’ the knight whispered.

  ‘Reclusiarch?’ Bayard asked.

  ‘Humans,’ Grimaldus replied, his voice soft. ‘They are a mystery to me.’

  CHAPTER XXII

  Emperor Ascendant

  At last, vox reports began to trickle through to the defenders gathered in the temple’s graveyard district. Across Helsreach, Sarren’s plan, the ‘one hundred bastions of light’, was in effect, with Imperial forces massing in defensive formations around the most vital parts of the city.

  Contact was erratic at best, but the fact it even existed was a boost to morale. Every point of focussed defence was holding well, with all divisions breaking down between storm-troopers, Guard infantry, Steel Legion armour units, militia and armed civilians who chose to take to the streets rather than cower in their shelters.

  The city was fighting to keep its heart beating, and the orks no longer found themselves advancing against a mobile wave of human resistance. Now the aliens were breaking against a multitude of last stands, hurling themselves against defenders that had nowhere left to run.

  Fortunately for the Imperials, enemy scrap-Titans were few in number. With recent engagements such as the Battle of the Rostorik Ironworks, the greenskins’ complement of god-machines had suffered furious losses in the face of Legio Invigilata’s wrath.

  Even as Invigilata recalled its last remaining Titans from the city in the wake of Stormherald’s death, the Titans were forced to fight their way free of the orks flooding through Helsreach’s unprotected streets. Although several Titans escaped through the broken walls and into the Ash Wastes beyond, the Warlord-class engine Ironsworn was brought down by a massed infantry assault in an ambush similar to the one that had laid Stormherald low all those weeks before.

  The last of the Imperial Navy forces in the city had based themselves at the Azal spaceport, where they continued to mount bombing runs and offer limited air support to the tank battalions ringing the Jaega District’s surface shelters. The fighting here was among the thickest and fiercest seen in the entire siege to date, and the archives which would catalogue the Third War for Armageddon came to consider many of the glorious propaganda falsehoods born here as cold fact. Many of these heroic twists of the truth were due to the writings of one Commissar Falkov, whose memoir, entitled simply ‘I Was There…’, would become standard reading for all officers of the Steel Legions in the years after the war.

  Although there was absolutely no truth in the tale, Imperial records would state that acting-Commander Helius sacrificed his own life by ramming his Lightning into the heart-reactor of the enemy gargant classified as Blood Defyla. The truth was rather more mundane – like Barasath before him, Helius
was shot down and torn to pieces shortly after disentangling from his grav-chute on the ground.

  The presence of Godbreaker was a bane to any Imperial resolve nearby. Although the god-machine appeared a shadow of its former self, bearing a legion of wounds and missing limbs from its death-duel with Stormherald, with Invigilata marching away across the badlands the defenders of Helsreach had little in the way of firepower capable of retaliating against the gargant.

  After laying waste to the Abraxas Foundry Complex, the mighty enemy engine adopted a random patrol of the city, engaging Imperial forces wherever it chanced upon them.

  Imperial records would state that while the Siege of the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant was entering its second day, the alien war machine Godbreaker was destroyed on its way to finish the temple defenders once and for all.

  This, at least, was perfectly true.

  Jurisian watched the mechanical giants stride from the city, stepping through its sundered walls. There were three – the first escapees of Legio Invigilata – and the Master of the Forge stared from the quiet confines of Oberon’s command module as the Titans left the burning city behind.

  The first was a Reaver-class, a mid-range battle Titan that appeared to have sustained significant damage if the columns of smoke rising from its back were any indication. Its flanking allies were both Warhounds, their ungainly gait rocking their torsos and arm-cannons side to side, step by step across the sands.

  The wastelands outside Helsreach’s walls resembled nothing more than a graveyard. Thousands of dead orks lay rotting in the weak sun; killed in Barasath’s initial attack runs or slaughtered in the inevitable inter-tribal battles that arose when these bestial aliens gathered.

  Ruined tanks were scattered in abundance, as was the wreckage from countless propeller-driven planes, each one made out of scrap and reduced back to it. The orks’ landing vessels stood abandoned, with every xenos capable of lifting an axe now waging war inside the city. The primitive creatures were here to fight and destroy, or fight and die. They cared nothing for what fate befell their vessels left in the desert. Such forethought and consideration was beyond the mental capacity of most greenskins.