‘Three hours, provided we are not interrupted, majir,’ the priest replies.
‘They will not be interrupted,’ says Sorot Tchure.
Kor Phaeron is breathing hard. He seems desiccated and frail inside his armour, as though he is drawing off great quantities of his own vitality. Space has worn thin around him.
Calth is his operation, far more than it is Lorgar’s. Kor Phaeron has planned this for his primarch meticulously, and executed it with the aid of Erebus. The punishment and annihilation of the XIII is its principal aim; the humiliation and execution of the wretched Roboute Guilliman. But it is also an advancement, another step on the spiral path of the Great Ritual. It will allow their beloved primarch to progress.
Sorot Tchure is aware of his commander’s burden. There is no room for failure. There is a priceless and vital military objective to be won, but even that pales into nothing beside the greater intent.
He will support his commander every step of the way. It has been Sorot Tchure’s privilege to be one of Kor Phaeron’s senior assault leaders for several years. The novelty of their Legion’s transmutation has simply deepened his commitment to their cause. They were always driven by faith in a higher power. Now they are inspired by proof of that power. It has invested them all. It has answered them. It has blessed them. It has revealed to them the truths that underpin all mysteries of creation.
And the greatest truths are these: the Emperor of Terra is no god, as they once believed. He is a small and pitiful spark in the blackness of the cosmos, and in no way deserving of their devotion. He rebuked the Word Bearers for their faith, and he was right to do so: he was probably afraid of what the real gods would do when they saw him being worshipped.
The faith of the Word Bearers was misplaced. It was mis-assigned. They were looking for a god, and they found merely a false idol, hungry for adoration.
Now they have found a power in the heavens worthy of their faith.
The docking clamps seal the airgate hatches open. As he did during the first act of the ritual, Sorot Tchure leads the way through.
3
In a star formation, led by the barge Destiny’s Hand, seventeen ships of the XVII fleet enter low orbit and prosecute the southern hemisphere.
As they descend, the ships snipe and barrage at the local orbitals, destroying two yards outright and crippling a third. Attempts to block their advance are met with dogged fury. The frigate Janiverse is killed by multiple main lance blasts as it attempts to disrupt the planetary assault formation. The carriers Steinhart and Courage of Konor are driven back, and then crippled in a direct confrontation. The Steinhart suffers a critical power failure, loses all vital support mechanisms, and slides into a ragged, thousand-year death orbit of the sun with its crew ice-locked at their posts. The Courage of Konor, void-holed twice by broadsides and struggling to pull clear of the advancing formation, is caught a third time by cannonfire. Hull plates fail. The keel fractures. A meson beam ruptures the carrier’s exposed reactor core, and it immolates, dropping away into the atmosphere.
It becomes, therefore, the second capital-class ship to hit Calth.
Its plunge is not stately and slow like the dying fall of the grand cruiser Antrodamicus. The Courage of Konor is a plenilunar ball of white fire, consumed by fluorescent radiation from bow to stern. It falls like a meteor, turning and spinning. It strikes the cold, open ocean near the planet’s southern pole.
The impact is akin to an extinction event meteor strike. The atmosphere buckles for five hundred kilometres in all directions as the released heat and light squirt outwards in a distorted, epipolic flash. Trillions of tonnes of ocean water are vaporised instantly, and trillions more are upflung in an ejection cone. Tectonic damage occurs. The consequential tidal wave, a rolling wall of black water, hits the continental coast six minutes later and wipes out the littoral to a distance of four kilometres inland.
It is merely a prelude, collateral damage that forms a savage precursor to the assault proper.
The assault formation descends to the lowest possible operational altitude, their sizzling void shields squeaking and howling against the thin upper atmosphere. Ventral lance batteries and bombardment cannon begin to fire.
The systematic destruction begins.
There is no finesse involved. The northern hemisphere is dense with strategic targets and population centres that need to be targeted and secured. The northern hemisphere is also where most of the XVII ground forces could be landed prior to the hostilities without raising questions.
The southern hemisphere can, largely, be decimated.
The Hand’s formation does just that. Magma bombs blitz the bleak antipodean continents, scouring them with hellish firestorms. Lance fire turns seawater into steam, and rips oceans from their beds. Meson convertors and ion beamers dislocate the ancient tectonic patterns, buckle the crust, and send seismic spasms through the mantle. Smoke, ash and ejected matter stain the atmosphere. Steam clouds the polar latitudes.
Forests burn. Jungles scorch. Rivers vanish. Glaciers melt. Mountains collapse. Marshlands desiccate. Deserts fuse into glass.
Millions die in the scattered southern cities.
Guilliman watches.
His stylus has snapped in his hand. He calls for another. The console in front of him is piled with notes and sketched plans.
The magi of the Mechanicum, those who were not crippled or killed or driven insane by the first outrage, have begun to reboot the flagship’s crippled systems. Limited vox has been restored. Guilliman has motive power, shields and weapons.
But even the mighty Macragge’s Honour cannot take on the XVII fleet alone. The Ultramar fleet elements are scattered. There is no way to coordinate them.
There is no way to coordinate them fast enough to counter and check the planetary assault.
Calth is burning. Calth, jewel of Veridia, one of the great worlds of the Five Hundred, is violated, perhaps beyond any hope of recovery.
Guilliman turns his back. He cannot watch.
‘Is it still on repeat?’ he asks.
‘My lord?’ Gage responds.
‘My declaration? My message to my brother?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ says Marius Gage. ‘It is on constant repeat via what little comms capability we have.’
The primarch nods.
‘Should I… cancel it?’ the First Master asks.
Guilliman doesn’t reply. Aides have delivered more data to his bridge position. Lacking cogitator function and active grids, he has had scribes and rubricators stationed on all observation decks, recording data by hand on slate and paper. Runners bring all documents to him every four minutes. The heap of information is growing.
The primarch has noticed something. He has noticed some detail amongst all the others. He scoops it up. Other papers and info-tiles slither to the deck, disturbed.
‘What is it?’ asks Gage.
The world is trembling. On the far side of the globe, the planetary bombardment is under way, scourging the other hemisphere. The trauma, transmitted as a subterranean micro-shock and an atmospheric flicker of overpressure, can be felt even here.
Here. Numinus starport. Enormous sections of its sprawl are still on fire. The drumming of heavy artillery is coming from the city. Formations of attack craft rush overhead every few minutes, roaring bright coals of afterburner heat. Smoke has blackened the sky, apart from the bright pinpricks of debris burning up, of ship-fire up in space, of dying orbital yards combusting.