Lucius turned the missile aside with his sword and leapt to meet his opponent. The guard twisted in the air, trying to avoid Lucius, but he was too close. Lucius swung his sword and sliced the guard's arm from his body, his crackling sword searing through the armour. Blood sprayed from the smouldering wound and the guard fell, twisting back towards the water.
Lucius fell with the dead man, splashing back into the lake as the Emperor's Children finally reached their enemy. Volleys of bolter fire scoured the islands and his warriors advanced relentlessly on the survivors. The palace guards were backing away, forming a tighter and tighter circle. Glass-armoured guards lay dead in heaps and the artificial lake was mddy pink and choked with bodies.
Rylanor's assault cannon sent fire tearing through the silk-clad guards, whose preternatural speed couldn't save them as the cannon shells turned the interior of the dome into a killing ground. Another silver guard fell, bolter fire ripВping through his armour.
Squad Nasicae joined Lucius and he grinned wolfishly at them, elated at the prospect of fighting more of the silver guards.
They're running,’ said Lucius. 'Keep them on the back foot. Keep pressing on.'
'Squad Kaitheron's reporting from the plaza,’ said Brother Scetherin. The World Eaters are fighting around the temple on the north side,’
'Still?'
'Sounds like they're holding off half the city,’
'Ha! They can have them. It's what the World Eaters are good at,’ laughed Lucius, relishing the certain knowledge of his superiority.
Nothing in the galaxy could match that feeling, but already it was fading and he knew he would have to procure yet more opponents to satisfy his hunger for battle.
'We press on to the throne room,’ he said. 'Ancient Rylanor, secure our rear. The rest of you, we're going for Praal. Follow me. If you can't keep up, go and join the Death Guard!'
His warriors cheered as they followed Lucius into the heart of the palace.
Every one of them wanted to kill Praal and hold his head aloft on the palace battlements so the whole of the Choral City could see. Only Lucius was certain that Praal's head would
be his.
The Andronius was quiet and tense, its palatial rooms dark and its long, echoing corridors empty
of all but menials. The ship's engines pulsed dimly in the stern, only the rumble of directional thrusters shuddering through the ship. Every staВtion was manned, every blast door was sealed and Tarvitz knew a battle alert when he saw it.
What confused him was the fact that the Isstvani-ans had no fleet to fight.
The hull groaned and Tarvitz felt a deep rumbling through the metal deck, sensing the motion of the ship before the artificial gravity compensated. Ever since the first wave of the speartip had launched, the vessel had been moving, and Tarvitz knew that his suspicions of something amiss were well-founded.
According to the mission briefings he had read earlier, Fulgrim's flagship had been assigned the role of launching the second wave once the palace and the Sirenhold had been taken. There was no need to move.
The only reason to move a vessel after a launch was to move into low orbit in preparation for a bombardment. Though he told himself he was being paranoid, Tarvitz knew that he had to see for himself what was going on.
He made his way swiftly through the Andronius towards the gun decks, keeping clear of such grand chambers as the Tarselian Amphitheatre and the columned grandeur of the Monument Hall. He kept to the areas of the ship where his presence would go unchallenged, and where those who might recognise him were unlikely to see him.
He had told Rylanor that he wanted to renounce his position of honour in the speartip to replace Captain Odovocar as Eidolon's senior staff officer, relaying the commander's orders to the surface, but it would only be a matter of time before his subВterfuge was discovered.
Tarvitz descended into the lower reaches of the ship, far from where the Emperor's Children dwelt in the most magnificent parts of the Andronius. The rest of the ship, inhabited by servitors and menials, was more functional and Tarvitz knew he would pass without challenge here.
The darkness closed around Tarvitz and the yawnВing chasms of the engine structures opened out many hundreds of metres below the gantry on which he stood. Above the engine spaces were the reeking gun decks, where mighty cannons, weapons that could level cities, were housed in massive, armoured revetments.
'Stand by for ordnance,’ chimed an automated, metallic voice. Tarvitz felt the ship shift again, and this time he could hear the creak of the hull as the planet's upper atmosphere raised the temperature of the outer hull.
Tarvitz descended an iron staircase at the end of the dark gantry and the vast expanse of the gun deck sprawled before him, a titanic vault that ran the length of the vessel. Huge, hissing cranes fed the guns, lifting tank-sized shells from the magazine decks through blast proof doors. Gunners and loaders sweated with their riggers, each gun
serviced by a hundred men who hauled on thick chains and levers in preparation for their firing. Servitors distributed water to the gun crews and Mechanicum adepts maintained vigil on the weapons to ensure they were properly calibrated.
Tarvitz felt his resolve harden and his anger grow at the sight of the guns being made ready. Who were they planning to fire on? With thousands of Astartes on the planet's surface, bombarding the Choral City was absurd, yet here the guns were, loaded and ready to unleash hell.
He doubted that the men crewing these weapons knew which planet they were in orbit over or even who they would be shooting at. Entire communiВties flourished below the decks of a starship and it was perfectly possible that these men had no idea who they were about to destroy.
He reached the end of the staircase and set foot on the deck, its high ceiling soaring above him like a mighty cathedral to destructive power. Tarvitz heard footsteps approaching and turned to see a robed adept in the livery of the Mechanicum.
'Captain,’ inquired the adept, 'is there something amiss?'
'No,’ said Tarvitz. 'I am just here to ensure that everything is proceeding normally,’
'I can assure you, lord, that preparations for the bombardment are proceeding exactly as planned. The warheads will be launched prior to the deployВment of the second wave,’
Warheads?' asked Tarvitz.
'Yes, captain,’ said the adept. 'All bombardment cannons are loaded with airbursting warheads loaded with virus bombs as specified in our order of battle,’
Virus bombs,’ said Tarvitz, fighting to hold back his revulsion at what the adept was telling him.
'Is everything all right, captain?' asked the adept, noticing the change in his expression.
'I'm fine,’ Tarvitz lied, feeling as if his legs would give way any second. 'You can return to your duties,’
The adept nodded and set off towards one of the guns.
Virus bombs…
Weapons so terrible and forbidden that only the Warmaster himself, and the Emperor before him, could ever sanction their use.
Each warhead would unleash the life eater virus, a rampant organism that destroyed life in all its forms and wiped out every shred of organic matter on the surface of a planet within hours. The magniВtude of this new knowledge, and its implications, staggered Tarvitz and he felt his breath coming in short, painful gasps as he attempted to reconcile what he knew with what he had just learned.
His Legion was preparing to kill the planet below and he knew with sudden clarity that it could not be alone in this. To saturate a planet with enough virus warheads to destroy all life would take many ships and with a sick jolt of horВror, he knew that such an order could only have come from the Warmaster.
For reasons Tarvitz could not even begin to guess at the Warmaster had chosen to betray fully a third of his warriors, exterminating them in one fell swoop.
'I have to warn them,’ he hissed, turning and runВning for the embarkation deck.
NINE
The power of a god
Regrouping
Honour brothers