Dark Imperium Page 15

  Ventris watched a small wheeled transport speed across the plaza towards the construction line, throwing up a plume of settled dust that drifted back down as it passed. ‘They are… disquieted by the fate of some of their peers.’

  ‘Only those who rule poorly have anything to fear,’ said Guilliman.

  ‘It is, naturally, the more autocratic rulers who oppose your rescinding of their independence.’

  ‘Then they only delay the inevitable,’ said Guilliman. ‘They will fall into line and ask politely for mercy, or they will be executed.’ He watched a giant earthshaper grind an outcropping of rock flat in an instant, belching out a fine spray of pulverised stone. A furnace on its trailer puffed smoke as it baked the harvested material into rockcrete powder. The stone would soon be returned to the plain in this new form by the foundation teams. 108/Beta-Kalapus-9.2 world was so barren. He pitied the Space Marines he would station here, but places like the Pit of Raukos needed guarding. Countless baseline humans and transhumans suffered to maintain the watch upon the Imperium’s new, terrifying borders.

  ‘I should never have set the Five Hundred free,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘My lord?’ said Ventris.

  ‘I should not have done it,’ repeated Guilliman, gesturing expressively as he spoke. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was following the Emperor’s wishes, letting men rule the affairs of men.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘After I implemented the Codex Astartes and split the Legion, I thought it impossible for a force of one thousand battle-brothers to effectively govern such a large realm and perform their primary duty as guardians of the Imperium. My Legion was gone, and I did not want the Chapter that continued their traditions to become insular. They would have been distracted, perhaps never left Ultramar, had they Five Hundred Worlds to govern.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Ventris. ‘Perhaps we could have managed, my lord. I think your decision was wise.’

  ‘Was it wise?’ said Guilliman. He abruptly began walking again, turning around the rear of the crawler to where the untouched plains began.

  In that direction, there was little evidence of the battle or of construction. Away from the industry of change, 108/Beta-Kalapus-9.2 looked as it probably had done for millions of years: cold, flat and mostly lifeless. Like Mars in the time before man. The temperature had dropped a few degrees in the last century. What did that mean to a place like this? A little more frost, a little less light. Without intervention, the sun would eventually go out and 108/Beta-Kalapus-9.2 would freeze completely. There would be no one to care.

  ‘I am no longer convinced,’ continued Guilliman. ‘One of my sons, a man much like you as it happens, once warned me against pride. I thought I had avoided its vices, but there are many kinds of pride, and it had a part to play in my decision to shrink Ultramar. You see, I wanted the Ultramarines to be out there, among the stars. I wanted their legacy to continue.’ He stopped again, sweeping his gaze across the desert’s low, mournful hills. ‘Does that make me selfish, my son?’

  Ventris did not know what to say. The primarch continued.

  ‘There was a more practical consideration. I did not wish to set the precedent of Chapters of Space Marines ruling large portions of the Imperium. What good would it have been to remove the use of Legions from potential tyrants, only to turn the legionaries into tyrants themselves? By His actions, the Emperor made it clear that governorship of the Imperium was to be undertaken by mortal men, not by the Adeptus Astartes. If the Ultramarines were left masters of the Five Hundred worlds, it opened a potential avenue of corruption. I would not have the existence of Ultramar be the spur to the creation of a thousand small empires, because I could not trust the Adeptus Astartes to replicate what we have at home. Warriors make poor lords. The likes of the Empire of Iron was the more likely outcome than a crop of new Ultramars.’

  The reference to the Iron Warriors’ short-lived Heresy-era realm was lost on Ventris, but he kept his silence while the primarch continued to speak.

  Guilliman looked to the sky. Past the veils of dust, the atmosphere was so thin that the brightest stars shone in the day and the lights of ships in orbit were clearly visible. ‘And yet I return to life and find the entire Imperium a prison for its people. By avoiding one problem, I created another. If I had left Ultramar intact, more worlds would have been havens from such pain and remained centres of reason. A bigger beacon burns brighter. I should have left it whole, as an example of what can be.’

  The primarch turned to his son. ‘You are so many generations removed from the original founding. You remain true to the Imperium. The dedication of the Ultramarines is a testament to the spirit of Ultramar and the will of the Emperor. It would have been better had more worlds been in your keeping. You must understand why I did what I did. I watched half my brothers fall to Chaos, and became determined that no one should ever hold the power of a Legion again. I became obsessed with the potential misuse of a few hundred thousand Space Marines, and in doing so I forgot about the petty self-interest of lesser men. This is I, whose preoccupation was to hurry the Great Crusade to an end so that I could get on with the business of peace!’ He laughed at himself. ‘Perhaps I would have failed there. These rulers who deny my seal and my right to revoke our treaties, they are not evil – they are perhaps not even stupid. They are simply limited as all men are limited.’

  Guilliman fell silent, then smiled sadly. ‘Does it shock you, my son, to learn a primarch can err?’

  Ventris looked uncomfortable. ‘My heart says yes, but that primarchs can be mistaken is an obvious conclusion when the argument is reasoned through, my lord,’ said Ventris. ‘Your admission does nothing to lessen my respect for you. We of the Ultramarines remain human, despite our transformation. We make mistakes. As a son grows, he learns that his father is not infallible, whether he is glorious or humble.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if I am human at all,’ said Guilliman thoughtfully. ‘In any meaningful sense.’

  ‘If you were not, you would not care for the fate of other men.’

  ‘Many of my brothers did not. Maybe it is an affectation?’

  ‘Humanity is not measured on form alone, but by deeds, my lord,’ said Ventris. ‘A mortal man may be inhuman towards other men, yet I have seen xenos behave with honour and fairness when we offer them nothing but hate.’

  Guilliman appraised the fourth captain carefully. ‘You impress me, Captain Ventris. I have heard much about your deeds. I did not expect you to be so thoughtful.’

  ‘Your teachings persist, my lord,’ said Ventris modestly. ‘We strive to be more than warriors, but wise men also who would rule fairly, for the good of the greatest number.’

  ‘Yet the day when my sons shall set aside their weapons seems impossible now,’ the primarch replied. ‘That was always my intention. After the Great Crusade, you were all to become administrators and statesmen!’ He laughed again. ‘It seems so naive. Look at this.’ He gestured to the baleful light of the Pit smeared by the dusty air.

  An explosion rumbled out from the hills where the walls had closed the valley. A slope collapsed, leaving a blank stone cliff. Before the detritus had finished rolling out from the base, servitor excavators were clearing the rubble, and scaffolds being wheeled into position for the artisans who would carve the bedrock into statues.

  ‘How are your Primaris brothers faring?’ said Guilliman, returning to matters of war.

  ‘They are a wonder, my lord, and Lord Calgar sends his personal thanks that you provided them to us so quickly. Ultramar is stronger for their presence, in battle and in other ways. Wherever they go, they bring great heart to our warriors. Whether they are Ultramarines, reinforcements for other Chapters or new Primaris foundings, they are your sons at heart. Some of them remember the days when you walked among us – to hear some of their stories is remarkable. Additionally, their presence has helped with several cases of dissension from t
he planetary commanders of Greater Ultramar. They speak so eloquently of the ancient days, and of the unity of the old Ultramar, that several governments saw that their opposition to reunification was not to the taste of their peoples. Peaceful means do not elude us in all disputed cases.’

  ‘This is a war. All weapons are valid, Captain Ventris. Propaganda is one, and what I have done is still propaganda, even if it is the truth.’

  ‘Your frankness is a credit.’

  ‘There have been too many lies,’ said Guilliman.

  ‘And this work here, my lord, this is also a weapon?’

  ‘A triumph is a statement. I ape the exultation of Horus at Ullanor maybe, but such displays are important. This crusade is over. It should be disbanded properly. We have no lasting victory – the Imperium teeters on the brink still – but I will make the Indomitus Crusade seem like one.’ Guilliman turned back to the plain being rapidly transformed to gleaming martial ground. ‘I know why you have come to me, captain. I cannot return home, not yet. The Indomitus Crusade must be ended in good order, its constituent parts divided and commanded well. I cannot hasten through this process. The people of the galaxy cannot see me running home the moment Ultramar is in danger.

  ‘Soon I will ask so much of them. For generations they have oiled the machines of war with their blood. They have wet the harvest ground with their tears. They have sent their children to die in the Imperial armies. This is but the least I shall be forced to ask of them in the coming centuries. What I have won here is just the beginning. To conclude this endless war will require sacrifice from everyone – man, woman and child. I need to show them we can win, that I am in control. I cannot do that if I leave now.’

  ‘What of Mortarion, my lord?’ asked Ventris. ‘He threatens Ultramar itself.’

  ‘Ultramar is not the Imperium,’ said Guilliman softly. ‘If it were, perhaps none of this would ever have happened. But it has. Ultramar is crucial to my plans, but I cannot be seen to favour my own home over the worlds of every other sector. Fear not, captain – I will return. I will drive my brother away from Ultramar, and I swear that when I leave to free the rest of the Imperium, the realm will be better organised, better fortified and better able to deal with whatever may come in the future. But that time is not yet. Tell Lord Calgar to hold the line. I trust him to ensure Macragge will still be there when I come home.’

  Ventris bowed. ‘I shall have your response sent immediately–’

  Guilliman held up his hand. His earpiece was buzzing.

  ‘Captain Felix,’ he said, ‘can you not encourage our guests to wait a little longer?’

  ‘It is not for their sake that I interrupt you, my lord,’ voxed Felix. ‘There is a priority request from the palace. Master-Astropath Losenti has received a message from Archmagos Cawl.’

  ‘I will attend immediately. Make my apologies to the architects. Have the plans of the Chapter fortress sent to my scriptorium. I will examine them tonight.’ He turned to the Fourth Captain. ‘Forgive me, Ventris, but I must leave. It appears I am in demand today.’

  Roboute Guilliman sent a message to his personal shuttle, commanding the crew to make ready for flight, and departed, leaving Captain Ventris alone to watch a battleground transformed into symbol of Imperial might.

  Chapter Eleven

  Espandor Remembered

  Varens dreamed. He was back in the trenches of Espandor, as he had been every time he had slept on his journey to Iax on the ward-ship, and every night since.

  Espandor was always so real in these dreams that he thought he was there again. The ankle-deep stagnant water stank just as bad as it had at the front. The sky was just as dark. The rising and falling drone of flies was just as monotonous. The fear was just as real.

  He and Bolus were on the Reach line. The broken city of Konor’s Reach was behind them and miles of shattered trees were in front of them, mist wrapped tight about them like a funeral shroud trapping maggots to a corpse. Death was everywhere. This was the War of the Flies, the Creeping Doom offensive. The war had been going on for over a century. The campaign on Espandor was but one of many enemy actions plaguing Ultramar. To Varens, it was the only one that mattered.

  Greasy rain pelted them, not acid enough to burn the skin, but over time enough to degrade a uniform’s fabric and cause boots to disintegrate. Feet exposed to the mud rotted. Compromised bioseals in their masks let in disease. The enemy had a myriad ways to kill a man. The rain was only one. The mist, laced with infection and chemical poison, was another. It was thin enough today that Varens and Bolus risked leaving their respirators and goggles up for a while. Intense claustrophobia afflicted many of the troops on the line.

  Varens twitched at a tickling sensation on his back. A moment later he felt it again, coming up over his shoulder and onto his neck, then brushing his ear. His skin crawled and he swatted at his head without thinking, mashing a fat fly against his helmet. With a grimace, he wiped the mess off onto his filthy uniform, adding pale, pussy smears to the crust covering his biogloves.

  ‘Even in the damn rain the flies don’t let up,’ said Bolus. ‘If there’s one thing I hate about this war, it’s the bloody flies,’ he added, waving more of them away from his face. ‘Suppose that’s why they call it the War of the Flies.’ He grinned.

  The warriors either side of Bolus and Varens had tight faces, white with fear. One of them attempted to smile; the rest of them remained glazed.

  ‘Cheerful bunch,’ muttered Bolus.

  ‘Go easy on them, acting sergeant,’ said Varens. Another fly buzzed too close to his face. He blew out at it, disrupting its drunken, lazy flight.

  ‘I’ll go easy on you before I go easy on them.’

  ‘They’re in for a hard ride, then,’ said Varens. ‘I’d rather face the enemy than another scolding from you.’

  Their exchange was inflated purposefully with bravado, but what they intended to be wry and sardonic came across as forced, and it had little effect on the morale of the new recruits. All their other squad members were new. Casualties were high. Of Varens’ last squad, only six were left, and they’d been split and incorporated into fresh units to stiffen the resolve of the fresh meat.

  ‘Fresh meat goes off quick in this war.’ That’s what Bolus had said about them. That didn’t make the rookies smile either.

  This had happened so many times, Varens was close to losing count. He didn’t bother to repaint his unit markings any more, not that they could be seen under the mud and filth of Espandor’s battlefields anyway.

  He rotated his shoulder. The tickle returned with the hint of a sting. Another fly, probably, looking for weaknesses in his double-thickness uniform. The damn things were bloodsuckers, all of them.

  A civilised cardinal world with broad expanses of wilderness, Espandor had been a place of cool forests. With human settlement restricted to the cities of the western continent and the lesser agri-complexes scattered across its warmer zones, the planet’s woods and oceans had been left in a near pristine state. Or so the pre-mission edifications had depicted Espandor before Varens arrived, six interminable years ago now. He had only ever known it as a sea of mud, a moribund place plagued by the dead who came shambling from the wastelands of shattered trees every seven hours, regular as manufactoria shift changes.

  Several of the larger cities were gone, and trench lines surrounded the remaining three civitae. Their hinterlands were seas of mud, the patchwork of forests and argicolae levelled to provide fields of fire. The assaults of the dead were therefore severely hampered. The dead were slow, and the Ultramar Auxilias’ guns many. The enemy’s diseases were rife, the population was a shadow of what it had been and the planet had ceased to be a productive part of Ultramar in any way, but if Espandor was sick, at least it was still alive.

  ‘Still Imperial, still Ultramarian, still living. Fight for it with every breath in the primarch’s name, for th
at is the will of the Emperor,’ Varens whispered to himself. After that, he had no more time for prayer, for the seventh-hour klaxon blared, and the enemy came lurching out of the mist.

  ‘Here comes today’s batch!’ shouted their lieutenant, his amplified voice distorted by the voxmitters attached to his comms operator’s pack. ‘Hold the line. Prepare to fire on my mark.’

  ‘Respirators on, men. Goggles down.’ said Bolus. He snapped his equipment into place over his mouth by way of example. His next words were muffled. ‘Make sure the seal’s tight on your body suit. Don’t get their filth on you.’

  Varens got down off the firing step to help a panicking young soldier who was failing to get his gear set right on his face.

  ‘Your clip’s twisted, that’s all,’ said Varens. He tugged off one dirty glove – not with his teeth, never that – and adjusted the balaclava around the soldier’s face, wiping rain from the trooper’s face and untwisting his strapping.

  ‘With goggles and respirator on, there should be no exposed skin, and so the Emperor protects,’ he said, setting the youth’s mask in place, and then his own. ‘Whisper your thanks to your battlegear, trooper. It will keep you alive.’

  The young man nodded too hard. His eyes were wide with fear behind the yellow plastek of his combat goggles. Varens slapped his shoulder plate and moved on. The mortal warriors of Ultramar were better equipped than most Astra Militarum regiments. Without this equipment they would lose half their number to sickness after every fight.

  Varens checked his part of the squad over, patting backs and steadying nerves. When he was satisfied, he climbed out of the sucking quagmire of the trench and took up position on the firing step again, resting his lasgun on the sodden wood of the parapet.

  The tickling sting in his back became an annoying itch, but he barely noticed it. The time had come to fight.

  Slowly, the enemy emerged from the fog through the driving rain. Their silhouettes were human, their gait anything but: a shambling, jerky walk that betrayed their nature from afar.