Dark Imperium Page 5

  Since his resurrection, he did not feel the need to sleep often. His personal physicians could not tell him if this was a genuine physical change or a psychological effect of his traumatic awakening. Both the mind and body of a primarch were so far beyond understanding that any medicae was next to useless. Only Archmagos Cawl, that insane polymath, might begin to comprehend how his body functioned.

  Whatever the cause of his sleeplessness, after ten thousand years in stasis, Roboute Guilliman thought he had slept enough.

  Fulgrim’s poisoned blade had come close to ending him. Were it not for the actions of his men hurrying him into a stasis hold, Guilliman would have died. As it was, his absence had been costly to the Imperium. So much had been lost because of his miscalculation. He had vowed never to underestimate his twisted brothers again.

  What happened in the aftermath of Thessala had become myth. Like so much of Guilliman’s life history, the truth of his death was shrouded in the impenetrable embellishment of repeated telling; he had found no less than twenty-six divergent versions of the event in the Ultramarines librariums alone.

  What was certain was that he had been as good as dead. Most of his fleet had been destroyed, and the moons of Thessala were blighted wastelands to this day. He did not know what had become of those of his sons who had fought alongside him. In most cases, their names had been lost to time. Aeonid Thiel, for example – Guilliman could not discern what had happened to him. Back on Macragge, he had discovered the second captain’s name on worn honour plaques in a chapel buried deep under the gothic accretions that had smothered the Fortress of Hera’s original form. These suggested that Thiel had survived the battle, but Guilliman did not know for how long. He did not know how he had borne the loss of his primarch. Did he rise above it, or was his life one tormented by guilt?

  Guilliman did not know which Apothecary had saved him, or who was in command of the Chapter when the Gauntlet of Power broke free of Fulgrim’s trap. In the archives of the Aurora Chapter and the Novamarines there were fragmentary accounts of what had happened to their lords and captains at Thessala, but little concerning the Ultramarines.

  It was certain that he had been saved, just as it was certain that his sons had paid a heavy price for his blundering into Fulgrim’s web. He had woken nearly ten thousand years later to another battle in the same war.

  He had been given a chance to put things right.

  He ran through those first moments of awakening again.

  He had come to in the Temple of Correction, clad in unfamiliar armour, surrounded on all sides by his sons battling the servants of the Great Enemy. Wrenched from one conflict to another ninety centuries apart, there had been a moment when he could have fallen, when his confusion threatened to leave him vulnerable to the Heretic Astartes of the Black Legion.

  The Black Legion – even the names of the enemy were unfamiliar in these terrible times.

  Everything had changed, and war was everywhere. Yet war he knew, so war was what he prosecuted with greater zeal than ever before. It was a constant in a universe thrown out of true. In his darkest moments, Guilliman thought he could well have died and been condemned to the hell of some primitive cult. But he did not believe such things, and he did not believe he deserved such punishment.

  In a sense of heightened awareness, serene within his own expansive mind, Roboute Guilliman took stock. Today, the hammer blow would fall. The war was far from done, but after one hundred and twelve years of hard campaigning, the Indomitus Crusade neared its logical conclusion. He had battled to reach Terra. He had spoken with his father. He had made his decision as to what must be done.

  He had turned the Imperium over to a state of complete and total war. New fleets had been constructed and whole populations recruited into the armed forces. Archmagos Belisarius Cawl had been good to the oaths he had made before the primarch’s death, and he had spent the millennia of Guilliman’s long sleep fashioning legions of new, improved warriors: the Primaris Space Marines. From their ranks, dozens of new Space Marine Chapters had been founded. All across the besieged Imperium, Guilliman’s crusade had fought, speeding from one crisis to another, even crossing the Great Rift that had split the galaxy in twain to reach the lost sectors of Imperium Nihilus. Everywhere it went, the Indomitus Crusade brought relief and reinforcements to the beleaguered worlds of mankind. More than that, the crusade brought hope, and the impossible truth that a son of the Emperor strode the stars again.

  That phase was over. The Great Rift still split the sky, but the enemy had been dealt a grievous blow. Several traitor fleets had been shattered and daemonic legions banished back to the warp. Many worlds had been taken back, and many others purged of corruption. With the Imperium shored up, the time of the great armada was done. A change in strategy was called for.

  What happened at the Pit of Raukos in a few hours would dictate that strategy.

  So much had to fall into place for victory to be assured. Guilliman revised plans long in the making, thinking through counter moves to multiple potential enemy actions. He found it hard to find time to think deeply when he was not in his Chamber of Reflection. There had been so many demands on his attention since he had been revived. This small, cubic room – four metres by four metres by four metres – was the only place he might bring all his prodigious powers to bear on a single issue.

  Today, that issue was victory at Raukos.

  A metallic voice broke his concentration. ‘My lord, we are approaching 108/Beta-Kalapus-9.2.’

  Guilliman’s eyes opened upon a plain space lit in a soothing blue light. The hideous gothic extravagance that typified human art in this era was absent. He filled his lungs with blood-warm air, held his breath, then blew it out in a long, controlled exhalation, letting a little of his tension go with it.

  He stood and rotated his neck, wincing at the awkward stretch of skin at his throat.

  The wound still hurt. Primarchs did not scar easily, but Fulgrim had left him a fine one. A thick rope of a scar crossed his throat from side to side. Slightly off true, it sloped just enough for the raised end to catch annoyingly on his armour seals, no matter how many times he had them adjusted.

  ‘Give me an exact estimated time of arrival,’ asked Guilliman.

  There was a short wait while the pickled brains of dead men searched for the answer to the question.

  ‘Four hours, thirty-six minutes, nine seconds, primarch.’

  ‘Inform Captains Felix and Sicarius that I am rested. Tell the command deck to expect my presence shortly. Summon my arming servitors and master of arms. I will go to them now.’

  ‘As you wish, primarch,’ said the voice.

  Guilliman reached out. The meditation chamber was small enough for him to be able to touch the door mechanism without taking a step. His fingers brushed a blank steel sheet. The embedded sensors recognised his unique energy signature, and the door swung open.

  Guilliman stepped out of the room into his private chambers. A whole spire upon the Macragge’s Honour was his, as it had been long ago, for Guilliman’s quarters had been left practically untouched. This Gloriana-class battleship had been his flagship throughout the Great Crusade. At the beginning of the Heresy, he had ordered it to pursue the Infidus Imperator, the flagship of his traitor brother Lorgar. Guilliman had thought the Macragge’s Honour lost in this pursuit, but it was not, the battleship finally limping home long after the primarch had died. Upon its return, his quarters had been preserved as Guilliman had left them.

  A Gloriana-class battleship was designed for a Legion of old, a formation a hundred times the size of a contemporary Space Marine Chapter’s thousand warriors. The official complement was hundreds of Adeptus Astartes, but it had been rare for so many to be aboard the Macragge’s Honour at once before Guilliman’s return. Under the reborn primarch, the Ultramarines flagship had again rung to the march of armoured superhumans as it had in ages past,
but for the ten millennia before that, the halls of the Macragge’s Honour had been underused, and there had been no need to employ the primarch’s old chambers.

  The Ultramarines ever were a practical breed, but sentimentality was in their make-up, and reverence added invisible locks to their father’s quarters. Not one of the Chapter Masters that followed Guilliman had ever taken up residence there, though they had every right to, and the primarch’s palace had become a shrine. Beyond ceremonies commemorating their primarch’s life, the rooms had remained sealed.

  In the main, Guilliman’s palace had been carefully maintained, but entropy wormed its fingers into the complex’s fabric nonetheless, dulling metal and rotting cloth. Even now, refitted and occupied for the century of the Indomitus Crusade, Roboute Guilliman still caught the scent of neglect beneath the oily smell of ship’s air.

  He passed through state rooms and down corridors whose doors opened on opulent guest chambers. This area was currently unoccupied, and he passed no one save for a scattering of maintenance servitors. His household servants had little business on these levels when he had no guests, and Guilliman demanded solitude when not attending to his many duties.

  By grand staircase and express lift, he made his way to his arming chambers.

  There were but a handful alive now who remembered the Great Heresy War. The teeming multitudes of the Imperium had no inkling of the dream Horus’ betrayal had killed. Few beings lived that would have noted the changes the Avenging Son of Ultramar had undergone. His patrician’s face was lined, more with cares than with years, and sunken in on itself a touch, especially around the cheeks. He was still handsome, if not beautiful, for all the Emperor’s sons had been made to be perfect in thought and form. But though his features had a fineness a sculptor would struggle to capture, his was an eroded handsomeness, worn at the edges like a mountain’s crags. His golden hair had thinned a little, and at the temples were a few strands of grey. Pale brown circles gathered under his eyes when he grew tired, and there was tightness in his jaw, a legacy of the internal pain he had borne since his resurrection.

  Part of this discomfort – and it was constantly with him – was physical, an ineradicable effect of Fulgrim’s poisons. But there was also a sense of an absence in his gene-forged body that made itself known often as a dull ache. Guilliman called it emotional pain. After all he had seen in this new age, he remained loath to name it spiritual in nature. He was too enamoured of reason to truly believe his soul had been injured.

  In contrast to the upper levels, the lower decks of the palace spire were full of activity. Human servants bustled to and fro. Servitors clumped by bearing heavy burdens. A pair of tech-priests broke off their conversations and bowed as he strode past them. Men clad in a variation of Ultramar’s Praecental Guard uniform stood to attention as he approached his arming chamber doors. The doors hissed open, and he passed within.

  ‘Arming chamber’ did no justice to Guilliman’s collection of weaponry. Part museum, part armoury, it was a complex in its own right. The Grand Hall of Armament was its centrepiece, housing not only his personal wargear but xenos trophies and ancient designs of human weaponry. A huge window filled one wall. The central panels were taken up by a stained glass map of the old Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, commissioned by the primarch at the ship’s refit. A mezzanine crammed with more devices of war ran around the three sides of the room not occupied by the window.

  An honour guard of empty suits lined the central aisle, examples of every sort of power armour worn by the Ultramarines in their long history. There were three dozen of them all told, with many variants of every mark, from lightweight scout armours to enormous prototype Terminator suits constructed at the height of the Great Crusade.

  Guilliman passed the last podiums, where stood numerous iterations of Belisarius Cawl’s new Mark X power armour, all designed for differing combat roles. Between them stood more men from the Praecental Guard’s Naval Division, their energy pikes dipping in salute as he passed.

  From the Grand Hall of Armament, Guilliman went into his personal arming rooms. Serfs and servitors stood waiting for him, a pair of tech-priests at their head. The pieces of the Armour of Fate were neatly arrayed upon a malachite slab covered with blue velvet. The suit was of Archmagos Cawl’s design, like so much else, and superior to the Armour of Reason Guilliman had worn in his previous life, and which now resided in the reliquaries of Macragge.

  The Victrix Guard were there to greet him. Captain Cato Sicarius led them.

  ‘My lord,’ said Sicarius. The Victrix Guard got down on bended knee.

  ‘Rise,’ commanded the primarch. He entered an outsized arming frame and took off his robe. The man he handed it to was almost lost in its folds as he took it.

  Guilliman already wore a dark grey bodyglove, its surface marked with the dull silver of inactive circuits. They gathered in complicated whorls where the metal interface ports that studded his body poked through the glove.

  ‘You are ready, my lord?’ asked the senior of the tech-priests, his voice emanating from voxmitters embedded in his back.

  ‘Arm me,’ commanded the primarch.

  Guilliman held out his hands. At the orders of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the arming team began to assemble the armour around their lord. It was so massive that dedicated servitors equipped with industrial-grade augmetics were required to move each piece. The boots were brought forward first in soft-gripped cargo pincers. They alone weighed hundreds of kilograms.

  ‘Captain Sicarius, report to me,’ said Guilliman.

  Sicarius approached the arming cage with the easy swagger of a master swordsman. Captain of the Second Company, Master of the Watch, Grand Duke of Talassar, Knight Champion of Macragge and High Suzerain of Ultramar, his titles fitted his ego.

  As always, he rested his hand on the pommel of his sheathed broadsword. Guilliman only recalled seeing Sicarius’ right hand off the blade a couple of times. Despite his many honours, the captain had been headstrong. His stubbornness reminded Guilliman a little of Thiel, and the primarch had spent considerable time forming Sicarius into something other than merely an exemplary warrior.

  ‘My lord,’ said Sicarius. ‘The enemy is gathering in strength around the third planet of the system. Elements of the Word Bearers, Black Legion, Iron Warriors and various renegade forces act in concert. They noted our presence as soon as we departed the Mandeville point, but have not moved from the planet to intercept. The Word Bearers are the greatest contingent.’

  ‘Good,’ said Guilliman. There were ancient grudges between the Ultramarines and the Word Bearers. ‘A chance to spill the blood of Lorgar’s get is always welcome. Their presence is unsurprising. Only those fanatics would undertake the construction of something like this orbital. How is the enemy’s disposition?’

  ‘They are fragmented, and lack our organisation, my lord,’ said Sicarius. ‘There are enough to put up a creditable defence. It depends – as it always does with these heretics – whether they have a strong leader. If not, they will be easily dealt with.’

  Guilliman frowned as an interface spike buried itself in a neural socket. ‘We must be swift, before their sorcerers bring forth daemons to aid them.’

  ‘By our strategos’ calculations, this flotilla represents a significant proportion of the enemy’s strength in this sector,’ said Sicarius. ‘It is their interpretation that this group have assembled to protect the orbital fane. If they gather here so that we may destroy them more easily, we should not complain.’

  ‘I admire your optimism.’

  Servants with powerdrivers for hands bolted Guilliman’s greaves to his legs while the tech-priests muttered benedictions of protection and smooth operation.

  ‘Order The New Dawn to turn about,’ said Guilliman. ‘Have four cruiser groups break off from our formation to escort it. Captain Diameos is to lead them in reinforcing our rearguard. The rearguard wi
ll hold position five million kilometres rearward. I want picket groups on regular sweeps around the edge of the system, and full deep-void augur scans every five minutes looking for warp-exit signatures. Check the Mandeville point, gravipauses and every area in this system where gravitic interplay might allow an emergency ingress. The traitors are becoming desperate. We must be wary of reinforcements of traitors and daemons.’

  ‘As you command, Lord Guilliman.’

  ‘This system is critical, Sicarius. I will not lose it. Send word to Dominus GiFellivo that I want him and the higher-tier command of his battle congregation, together with Prime Hermeticon Cordus-Rho, to attend upon me the moment the battle is over.’ He avoided the term ‘Taghmata’. The military organisation of the Adeptus Mechanicus had changed radically since the days of the old Mechanicum. ‘Together. Make that absolutely clear. I will not entertain their petty rivalries any longer. The Dominus is to aid the Prime Hermeticon or they will answer to me directly. Make that understood. We must work quickly once the third world is taken, with no dissension.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Have there been any developments while I rested?’

  Sicarius smiled slightly. Guilliman’s attention to detail was exacting. He had been meditating for thirty-two minutes only.

  ‘All relevant information has been inputted to your personal datafeeds, my lord. There is nothing of note to report, either from within this system or elsewhere, though proximity to the Pit of Raukos makes astrotelepathy problematic.’

  ‘Nothing relayed from the outer fleets or our other armadas?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Then all is well,’ said Guilliman. His armourers had clad him as far as his waist. Their activity lessened a moment as diagnostic handsets were plugged into his armour’s interface ports to check the function of the lower assembly. The legs tensed as their fibre bundles contracted. The handsets chirruped affirmatively, and the arming commenced anew.