The Path of Heaven Page 7

  Soon the fighting reached the Inner Dock Gates, six aquila-crowned maws, gothic-arched, each one large enough to take an escort-class void ship deep within the precincts of the Keystone’s innards. They were all burning now, their soaring pillars cracked and their outer blast bulwarks underlit red by repeated mortar-strikes. As the V Legion closed in on their target, the full weight of the installed infantry defence was loosed against them – Emperor’s Children Tactical squads, reinforced by mortal battalions taken from Traitor Army regiments, supported by their own hastily landed tank groups and armoured walkers. Lapis-crowned Devastator squads took up vantage points on either side of the Gates and swiftly turned them into scrap-choked kill zones. Battle-hardened III Legion infantry groups crunched their way into close contact with the advance units of the brotherhoods, and a front of hand-to-hand combat broke out under the very shadow of the looming portals. Amid the whine and boom of the artillery barrage, the older weapons of blade and bolter reaped their toll in a vicious, eternal symmetry of murder.

  The V Legion gained the most traction here, pushing towards the entrance halls into the Keystone itself, seizing gun-point after gun-point and turning the cannons against the defenders set further back. Phalanxes of Land Raiders thundered down the centre of the battlefield, crunching over the corpses of the vanquished and running down those fleeing the vortex of slaughter. In their wake, ever more infantry poured into the breaches, searing with flame what had not already been obliterated by lascannon fire. Assault squads soared across the smouldering killing planes, their jump packs whining on a shimmering heat-haze, before the warriors slammed to earth, lashing out with chainsword and bolt pistol.

  And yet, just as the vanguard looked to gain the first of the Inner Dock Gates, hoarfrost spears slammed down, riven from the skin of reality and twisted into the physical forms of lightning and stormwind. Deck-plates were pulverised. Radial shock waves boomed across the battlefield, hurling warriors from their feet and sending armoured walkers staggering. Forks of snaking aether-residue blazed out and green-edged clouds of plasma bloomed against the fires.

  Purple-and-gold warriors strode from the heart of the unnatural storm, moving purposefully and without haste, slowly fanning out, making no attempt to avoid the ranks of armour grinding their way to their positions.

  The newcomers bore the ancient livery of Chemos, though in more ornate patterns than their Tactical brethren, and their plate shimmered from the retch-inducing stink of the warp. Each warrior held a pendulous organ gun shackled by linked chains and glistening cables. As one, the baroque mutants of the Kakophoni reached their allotted positions, lowered the muzzle of their devices, picked their targets and fired.

  What emerged did not deserve the name sound.

  There were no words in the tongues of mortal men adequate to describe what could now be unleashed by Fulgrim’s disciples, for the instruments of hypersensation created more than just auditory hell. Acting in concert, massed sonic blasts smeared across the artificial atmosphere of the void port in reality-distorting waves of molecular annihilation. The advancing V Legion outrider squads were thrown back, flung clear of the exploding cover all around them. Troops too close were obliterated instantly, disappearing in spiralling whirls of blood and armour-flecks. Landing plates cracked, tilting crazily as grav compensators whined, straining to fight the terrifying forces raging across them.

  Advancing armour formations shuddered to a halt, lodging amid what shelter remained and launching everything they had at the Kakophoni spearhead. Second-wave Tactical squads advanced behind the uncertain tank cover, their helms automatically dampening the mutilating levels of distortion washing over the battlefield. Even that was not enough when the sonic weapons scored direct hits, in which case power armour was ripped clean apart, warriors stunned into a bloody coma even as their helm lenses imploded and internal organs ruptured.

  The Emperor’s Children Assault squads launched a counter-attack, protected by the voracious screen of psychosonics radiating out before them. The White Scars were driven back, losing numbers across ground only newly won, their advance blunted by the hell-shock of such unnatural weaponry. More aether-spears smacked into the ruptured rockcrete and adamantium, each one smashing itself apart to reveal a fresh wave of elite warriors.

  From the greatest rift of all strode the glittering outline of the Soul-Severed, his armour blazing with after-light from the realm immaterial, his thunder hammer shimmering, his golden helm a miasma of dancing illumination.

  Lord Commander Eidolon, the proudest of his proud breed, turned his pitiless helm across the ruined detritus of the tank advance, opened his agonised throat and screamed.

  The devastation surpassed anything unleashed by his brothers. Reality split open, seared from its foundations by the release of physics-defying warp harmonics. Eidolon had grown since his resurrection, his might augmented to match his ancient arrogance. The brutal shock wave tore out, driving a path of annihilation through whatever stood in its way, bisecting the hulls of stranded tanks, cracking armour, smashing skulls and bursting blood vessels. The entire deck level reeled, casting warriors from their feet and causing grav-speeders to plough into the plunging metal. Palls of smoke swelled up from the carnage, underlit with racing fires and shredded by follow-up blasts.

  The assault might have foundered then. Faced with such elemental ruin, the beachhead might have crumbled into nothing, hammered back to the ingress points and hurled into the burning void beyond. However, the forward push had won the V Legion enough time to bring Lance of Heaven within teleportation range. Even as Eidolon laid waste to the docks, the immense profile of the battleship loomed up from the fires beyond, its gunnery banks thundering against the swarm of enemy craft about it, its prow yet bearing the white and gold.

  More shafts of other-light coiled and spat, this time amid the ranks of the beleaguered White Scars. Columns of pure aether-essence roared into existence, each one silhouetting the form of a warrior within. These were greater in stature than any yet, standing tall in pearl-white armour embellished with swirls of gold and red. One by one, they took their place, wielding power glaives whose hooked blades of purest silver burned with electric-blue light. Their ivory plate gleamed in defiance of the blood and muck around them, and was adorned with the tribal marks of Lost Chogoris and decorated with fluttering prayer-scrolls.

  As they emerged from their cocoons of fire, the massed legionaries of the ordu thrust their tulwars into the burning atmosphere – a glittering sea of steel.

  ‘Khagan!’ they roared. ‘Ordu gamana Jaghatai!’

  The greatest of the new arrivals, resplendent in his ornate, gold-chased dragon-helm, said nothing, but angled his fire-wreathed blade into the heart of the maelstrom. About him materialised the zadyin arga of the horde, those whom the Imperium had named Stormseers, the bringers of the tempest. They hoisted their skull-staves against the tumult, and the sound-tortured storm was rent asunder as the two cataclysms slammed into one another. Amid those ranks of bone-white psykers marched one who was set apart, whose armour was crimson and whose gauntlets ran with black-edged flame. About him the tearing winds blew strongest, and when he lifted his arms to contest the sound-madness, the explosion of countervailing warp-mastery levelled the terrain for fifty metres.

  With his final strength gathered, the dragon-helm finally spoke. Even as the hurricane of noise poured across the battlefield, his voice pierced the cacophony, as sharp and clear as the sapphire skies of the Altak.

  ‘You have sight of the enemy,’ he said, breaking into the heavy charge that would carry him to the lord commander. ‘His neck is bared – now sever it.’

  Five

  Cario remained motionless, frozen with cold fury. Shards of armourglass tumbled around him, bouncing and skittering amid the tempest of the Stormbird’s passing.

  Eventually one of his squad managed to locate the bridge’s atmospheric seals. The raging storm of oxyg
en cut out, leaving nothing but vacuum in its place. The last of the body parts and cogitator housings thudded, silently, back to the deck.

  He slowly let his sword arm relax. Haiman walked over to him. The warrior looked as if he had barely taken a scratch, which was more or less how he looked after every contest. ‘I expected more of them,’ he voxed over the internal channel.

  Cario drew in a long breath, then nodded. He stirred himself, sheathing his sabre. ‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘Why go to the trouble of taking these ships, if not to keep them?’

  He walked over to the few auspex lenses that still functioned, arranged at the edge of the command throne platform. Tactical displays were still flickering across the dark screens, picking out the trail of the bulk carriers amid a swirl of war vessels. The general pattern was evident enough – the White Scars, heavily outnumbered and outfought, were pulling back to their frigates and making for the Mandeville point. They had lost swathes of gunships in the withdrawal, but both warships had managed to stay intact.

  It was only as Cario watched the points of light slide across the crystal that the first twinge of unease struck him.

  ‘These haulers were powering for warp jump,’ he murmured, remembering his opponent’s words.

  Haiman nodded. ‘I sent Vorainn to deactivate the sequence.’

  The beat of the engines had been growing in volume ever since they had arrived on the bulk carrier. Towards the end, it had sounded like no preparatory sequence he had ever heard. Now, in the vacuum, it was impossible to gauge if it had kept on rising.

  Why go to the trouble of taking these ships…

  He turned on his heel, staring back up through the broken jaws of the observation dome. The vast hulls of the other bulk carriers were still visible, barely touched by the extreme violence unleashed about them. The Emperor’s Children were on every bridge. The battles to reach them had been swift.

  …if not to keep them?

  Cario started moving. Six members of the boarding party still lived. ‘All with me,’ he commanded. ‘Contact Vorainn. Get him back up here.’

  The squad followed immediately, and they began to move swiftly back the way they had come. As they passed through the atmosphere seals at the rear of the bridge and back into the pressurised zones, the whine of the engines surged back into hearing. It was deafening, and throttled, like a mad beast caged in the depths and raging for release.

  ‘Priority signal, all kill squads – withdraw! Withdraw to the void.’

  He started to run. As he did so, Vorainn emerged from one of the many side chambers and joined them in the sprint.

  ‘How long?’ asked Cario.

  ‘Seconds,’ replied Vorainn, calmly.

  Cario cursed. They were a long way from the hangars, and in any case the White Scars would not have left their boarding craft waiting there to be taken – they would have been either retrieved already or destroyed. He ran harder, picturing the path he had taken to get to the bridge, recalling every aspect of it.

  There would be saviour pods. Close by, for the bridge crew.

  As he went, the floor shuddered. The noise of the engines transmuted from a throaty grind into something akin to a shriek, resounding from the high chamber ceiling.

  Cario reached an intersection with a transverse corridor – one leading right along the path he had taken to reach the bridge, the other leading left into unknown regions.

  He went left. As he did so, the first explosion went off, smashing the walls in behind them. Urelias was caught in the blast and crushed between two colliding wall sections. The rest of them picked up speed, racing along the imploding corridors as flames spurted from between blown-clear panels.

  Echoing booms rang out, overlapping with one another. Cario had an uncomfortable image of all those munitions nestled deep in the holds.

  ‘Saviour pod arrays,’ reported Vorainn.

  As soon as the words left his lips, the ceiling above him collapsed, smashed downwards by a bloom of fiery plasma. He and three others were lost in the wreckage, sent plunging down into the ship’s depths as the floor dissolved into burning flotsam.

  Cario and Haiman, alone now, could only attempt to out-sprint the engulfing carnage, racing to stay ahead of the rolling tide of destruction. Beams snapped and bent, hazy amid the shake of extreme heat. The inferno surged after them, snapping at their heels.

  They broke into a narrow chamber marked by a long row of capsules embedded in the far wall. Most were smashed, either by the explosions taking place all round them, or perhaps by those who had primed the engines to cycle so wildly out of control.

  Cario and Haiman sped along the row, scanning for intact units. By the time they reached the end of the series, it was clear what remained – a single one-man pod, already burnished with the first flickers of flame. In a few seconds, as the ship entered the last stages of meltdown, it too would be gone.

  Cario snatched a quick look at his fellow warrior.

  Haiman drew his sword and placed it in the fraternity’s salute position. ‘Children of the Emperor,’ he said, dryly.

  Cario returned the salute. ‘Death to His foes.’

  Then he was scrambling through the pod’s airlock and activating the docking clamps. From the outside, even as the bulk carrier’s environment was turning into liquid fire, Haiman worked to prime the release locks manually, ensuring a clean escape for his prefector.

  Cario pulled the restraint chains about him, activated the blast sequence and sent the launch command.

  The pod’s engines kicked into life, flooding the chamber behind him with plasma. Cario thought, for a microsecond, that he heard Haiman’s cries of agony, before the hull-plate doors slammed open and the pod was hurled into the void.

  The speed was crushing, as fast as a boarding torpedo but less controlled. For a few seconds, Cario was completely disorientated as the tiny ball of adamantium flew crazily into the abyss. Through the circular real-view portal he had fleeting impressions of huge fires wheeling the void, broken by the silhouettes of broken warships.

  Slowly, he brought the spin under control, using the pod’s scarcely functional thruster array. He took a deep breath, trying to get his bearings. A vast wall of rust-red metal ran away from him, rapidly shrinking as the pod powered clear of its old housings. He saw the icons of the Memnos Combine and the marks of old Imperial shipping lane guilds, all punctured by pinpoints of leaking plasma.

  Then the Terce Falion exploded.

  The impact was immediate – a rolling wave of immolated metal racing out from the epicentre, blocking out all else in a vortex of spinning debris. Cario had time to brace himself against the restraint cage before the bow-wave smashed into the pod, sending it careening again, buffeted between searing plumes of superheated gases.

  Though Cario could not have known it, every bulk carrier in the convoy had been rigged to explode at the same moment, turning the entire train of massive vessels into miniature suns. Space itself seemed to ignite, to rage, to transmute into a burgeoning storm of heat and light and tearing speed. All he could see through the wheeling real-viewer were tumbling masses of red and orange. The cargo ships had been enormous, far bigger even than the mightiest Legion battleships, and their death-throes were like the ending of worlds.

  By the time the worst of the tumult had blown itself out, Cario’s pod had been hurled far from the core of the battlesphere, its viewers cracked and its thrusters burned out. Though its heavy plating had absorbed the worst of the shock waves, warning runes were already flickering along the inside of the narrow chamber, picking out the many ways in which the structure had been compromised.

  ‘Suzerain,’ he voxed, wondering if the ship still lived.

  For a while, nothing but hissing answered the comm-burst. Then, after several more attempts, the link crackled open.

  ‘We have your position, prefector,’ came Harkian’s
voice.

  Cario let his head sink heavily back against the metal collar of the inner cage. ‘Status. What of the frigates?’

  ‘One destroyed. The other damaged.’

  Cario smiled coldly. He knew, knew, that the steel-armoured warrior would have made it back to the surviving one. ‘What was its ident?’

  ‘The Kaljian, lord.’

  ‘Did we retain any of the haulers?’

  ‘Negative. Three ships lost in the explosions. Casualty figures are still being–’

  ‘Kaljian. Record the name, and tell every scryer we have to cast for its marker in the aether. Let it be known that there is a debt of honour to all fraternities that will only be satisfied by its destruction. Summon the Apothecaries and tell them to devise agonies.’

  There was a hesitation at the other end. ‘It will be done, lord.’

  ‘I will see him again!’ Cario cried out loud, though no longer speaking to Harkian. The saviour pod rotated onwards, carried by momentum.

  He was intact. His blade was intact.

  The enemy had been bested, but not yet killed. That could not be allowed to remain the case – all things had to be made complete before he could give in to the whispers of the Legion’s destiny.

  He half saw the many-horned vision of his dreams then, stronger now, lascivious, confident. It would be strengthened by this, using every setback to make the case for sublimity.

  Cario closed his eyes. He entered the combat-meditation designed to drain his anger and restore the cool command of the duellist. He rehearsed what he had done, and where he had erred, and determined to learn from it, to become more incisive, more controlled, ever more perfect.