Why?' asked Lucius. 'Saul, what's happening?'
We're going to be hit. Something big. A vims strike,’
'The Isstvanians?'
'No,’ said Tarvitz sadly. We are betrayed by our
own,’ Lucius hesitated. The Warmaster? Saul, what are
you-'
We've been sent down here to die, Lucius. Fulgrim chose those who were not part of their grand plan,’
'Saul, that's insane!' cried Lucius. Why would our primarch do such a thing?'
'I do not know, but he would not have done this without the Warmaster's command,’ said Tarvitz. This is but the first stage in some larger plan. I do n ot know its purpose, but we have to try and stop
it-Lucius shook his head, his features twisted in petulant bitterness. 'No. The primarch wouldn't send me to die, not after all the battles I fought for him. Look at what I've become. I was one of Ful-grim's chosen! I've never faltered, never questioned! I would have followed Fulgrim into hell!'
'But I wouldn't, Lucius,’ said Tarvitz, 'and you are my friend. I'm sorry, but we don't have time for this. We have to get the warning out and then find shelter. I'll take word to the World Eaters, you raise the Sons of Horus and Death Guard. Don't go into the details, just tell them that there is a virus strike inbound and to find whatever shelter they can,’
Tarvitz looked at the reassuring solidity of the Precentor's Palace and said, 'There must be cataВcombs or deep places beneath the palace. If we can reach them we may survive this. This city is going to die, Lucius, but I'll be damned if I am going to die with it,’
Til get a vox-officer up here,’ said Lucius, a steel anger in his voice.
'Good. We don't have much time, Lucius, the bombs will be launched any moment,’
This is rebellion,’ said Lucius.
'Ves,’ said Tarvitz, 'it is,’
Beneath his ritualistic scars, Lucius was still the perfect soldier he had always been, a talisman whose confidence could infect the men around him, and Tarvitz knew he could rely on him. The swordsman nodded and said, 'Go, find Captain Ehrlen. I'll raise the other Legions and get our warВriors into cover. I will speak with you again.'
'Until then,’ said Tarvitz.
Lucius turned to Nasicae, barked an order, and ran back towards the palace dome. Tarvitz folВlowed, looking down on the northern plaza and glimpsing the seething battle there, hearing the screams and the sound of chainblades.
He looked up at the late morning sky. Clouds were gathering.
Any moment, falling virus bombs would bore through those clouds.
The bombs would fall all over Isstvan III and bilВlions of people would die.
Among the trenches and bunkers that sprawled to the west of the Choral City, men and Astartes died in storms of mud and fire. The Dies Irae shuddered with the weight of fire it laid down. Moderati Cas-sar felt it all, as though the immense, multi-barrelled Vulcan bolter were in his own hand. The Titan had suffered many wounds, its legs scarred by missile detonations and furrows scored in its mighty torso by bunker-mounted cannons.
Cassar felt them all, but a multitude of wounds could not slow down the Dies Irae or turn it from its
course. Destruction was its purpose and death was the punishment it brought down on the heads of the Emperor's enemies.
Cassar's heart swelled. He had never felt so close to his Emperor, at one with the God-Machine, a fragment of the Emperor's own strength instilled in the Dies Irae.
Aruken, pull to starboard!' ordered Princeps Tur-net from the command chair. Avoid those bunkers or they'll foul the port leg.'
The Dies Irae swung to the side, its immense foot taking the roofs from a tangle of bunkers and shatВtering artillery emplacements as it crashed forwards. A scrum of Isstvanian soldiers scrambled from the ruins, setting up heavy weapons to pour fire into the Titan as it towered over them.
The Isstvanians were well-drilled and well-armed, and though the majority of their weapons weren't the equal of a lasgun, trenches were a great leveller and a man with a rifle was a man with a rifle when the gunfire started.
The Death Guard slaughtered thousands of them as they bludgeoned their way through the trenches, but the Isstvanians were more numerous and they hadn't run. Instead they had fallen back trench by trench, rolling away from the relentless advance of the Death Guard.
The Isstvanians, with their drab green-grey helmets and mud-spattered flak-suits, were hard to pick out against the mud and rabble with the naked eye, but the sensors on the Dies Irae
projected a sharp-edged image onto Cassar's retina that picked them out in wondrously clear detail.
Cassar fired a blast of massive-calibre shells, watching as columns of mud and bodies sprayed into the air like splashes in water. The Isstvanians disappeared, destroyed by the hand of the Emperor. 'Enemy forces massing to the port forward quadВrant,' said Moderati Aruken.
To Cassar his voice felt distant, though he was just across the command bridge of the Titan.
The Death Guard can handle them,’ replied Tur-net. 'Concentrate on the artillery. That can hurt us.' Below Cassar, the gunmetal forms of the Death Guard glinted around the bunkers as two squads of them threw grenades through the gun ports and kicked down the doors, spraying the IsstvaniВans who still lived inside with bolter fire or incinerating them with sheets of fire from their flamers. From the head of the Dies Irae, the Death Guard looked like a swarm of beetles, with the carapaces of their power armour scuttling through the trenches.
A few Death Guard lay where they had fallen, cut down by artillery fire or the massed guns of the Isst-vanian troops, but they were few compared to the Isstvanian corpses strewn at every intersection of trenches. Metre by metre the defenders were being driven towards the northernmost extent of the trenches, and when they reached the white marble of a tall Basilica with a spire shaped like a trident, they would be trapped and slaughtered.
Cassar shifted the weapon arm of the Dies Irae to a im at a booming artillery position some five hunВdred metres away, as it belched tongues of flame a nd threw explosive shells towards the Death Guard lines.
'Princeps!' called Cassar. 'Enemy artillery moving up on the eastern quadrant.'
Turnet didn't answer him, too intent on someВthing being said to him on his personal command channel. The princeps nodded at whatever order he had just received and shouted, 'Halt! Aruken, cease the stride pattern. Cassar, shut off the ammunition feed.'
Cassar instinctively switched off the cycling of the weapon that thundered from the Titan's arm and the shock forced his consciousness back to the command bridge. He no longer looked through the eyes of the Dies Irae, but was back with his fellow officers.
'Princeps?' asked Cassar, scanning the readouts. 'Is there a malfunction? If there is, I'm not seeing it. The primary systems are reading fine.'
'It's not a malfunction,’ replied Turnet sharply. Cassar looked up from information scrolling across his vision in unfocused columns.
'Moderati Cassar,’ barked Turnet. 'How's our weapon temperature?'
'Acceptable,’ said Cassar. 'I was going to push it on that artillery,’
'Close up the coolant ducts and seal the magazine feeds as soon as possible,’
'Princeps?' said Cassar in confusion. 'That will leave us unarmed,’
'I know that,’ replied Turnet, as though to a simВpleton. 'Do it. Aruken, I need us sealed,’
'Sealed, sir?' asked Aruken, sounding as confused as Cassar felt.
'Yes, sealed. We have to be airtight from top to bottom,’ said Turnet, opening a channel to the rest of the mighty war machine's crew.