‘Translation complete, Dreadnought-Marshal. We have arrived in the Klostra System,’ called out Shipmaster Ericus.
The vision slit of Magneric’s Dreadnought blazed, and it stood tall, pushed upright by actuators and hydraulics. Magneric was awake in an instant.
The Dreadnought-Marshal stumped around, the shoulders of the machine that housed his ruined body swaying. Relics of his earlier life rattled on the walker’s armour.
‘All hands to combat stations. Initiate full auspex scan. Open hails, send out our challenge. We shall not hide from them, call out their doom!’ His voice boomed from his vox-speakers, brash as a Titan’s war-horn.
‘My lord, I am receiving a large amount of transmissions—’ began the ship’s Master Divulgatus from the craft’s long vox-desks.
‘Excellent!’ roared Magneric. His power fist rotated in anticipation of the coming fight. ‘All brothers, prepare for battle. Master Egredorum, prepare our transports. Track the source of the enemy’s transmissions, we engage immediately.’
‘But, my lord!’ protested the Master Divulgatus. ‘The transmissions are not those of the traitors, they are all ork.’
‘I have multiple enemy contacts, half a million kilometre range and closing,’ spoke the Master Augurum at the auspex array. ‘Again, all ork energy signatures.’
Castellan Ralstan stepped forward to stand at the elbow of Magneric. ‘Half a million kilometres?’
‘It is at extreme range, my lord, but there are large numbers of them.’
‘Marshal Magneric?’ said the castellan.
Magneric let out a frustrated growl. ‘How many times must our quarry slip through our fingers? Orks! I was informed that the Klostra System was the base of Kalkator’s Great Company. Who shall atone for this failure in intelligence?’
‘My lord, if I may,’ said the Master Augurum, ‘the auspex array is picking up residual vox-echo here, reflected from the system’s radiation belts. There was a traitor presence on the planet until only a few days ago. No civilian messaging, all of it is Fourth Legion battle-cant.’
‘Then it is over,’ said Ralstan regretfully. ‘The orks have done our duty for us. To our next crusade, brothers.’
‘No!’ bellowed Magneric, his torso spinning dangerously fast. The huge block of his sarcophagus leaned over, bringing the machine’s glass eye level with the face of his second-in-command. ‘It cannot be so, the Emperor has marked out Kalkator to die by my fist and my fist alone! I feel it. We departed Ostrom hot on the heels of Kalkator’s dogs. If there is no longer sign of battle here, then they must have departed. Send for Honoured Navigator Pholax. I will speak with him as to their likely destination. In the meantime, have more power diverted to the auspex arrays. If by some small chance the greenskins have cheated us of our vengeance, I will be sure of it before moving on.’
‘And the greenskins themselves, Magneric?’
‘You would have us fear a few thousand orks?’ Magneric boomed.
‘A few hundred thousand, my lord,’ corrected Ralstan. He held out his hand towards the massive doors leading to Magneric’s inner sanctum. ‘Perhaps we might continue this discussion on strategy in private?’
‘Very well,’ grumbled Magneric.
The command deck shook to the tread of his armoured feet. They went within Magneric’s chamber. The doors hissed shut, and immediately they were isolated from the command deck Magneric rounded on Ralstan.
‘You challenge my judgement? I, Magneric, hero of the Heresy? I, who remain in command despite my entombing? Who kept my own name when interred, when all others give up theirs?’
‘Marshal,’ said Ralstan calmly. ‘It is my role to challenge you, as you well know.’
‘“Nothing worthwhile is done without challenge, best to overcome it before plans are enacted,”’ quoted Magneric.
‘So said Sigismund,’ said Ralstan.
‘I do not quote our founder in support of your case, but against it!’ said Magneric. ‘Our plan was agreed, your opportunity to object has passed.’
‘Perhaps. But lately you have taken against my naysaying, whenever performed.’ Ralstan paced the empty expanse of the chamber. It had been stripped of everything, right back to the metal of the understructure, to accommodate the huge sepulchre the Dreadnought occupied when resting. Magneric refused to go to the forge-tombs, wishing to remain close to the centre of command at all times. ‘I must again protest against your decision not to heed the High Marshal’s order to return. The Last Wall has been invoked, and we should lend our strength to it, not spend our time harrying these traitors. There are greater issues at stake.’
‘Our way is not that of the wall! Sigismund’s oath is paramount. We are crusaders, not wall troops.’
‘This is different, my lord.’
‘It is not! We have the Iron Warriors at bay, we cannot allow them to dig themselves in, or we shall never pry them from their hiding place. We have to strike now. When they are finished, we shall embark upon this new crusade.’
‘Magneric, your feelings are blinding you,’ pleaded Ralstan. ‘Vengeance is noble when enacted for the good of the Emperor. You seek vengeance for your own sake. You should rest. Frater Astrotechnicus Baldon told me that you are six months overdue a maintenance sleep.’
‘So you speak for the scullions of Mars now!’ boomed Magneric.
‘You do our Brother-Techmarine dishonour to speak of him so.’
‘And yet you question my honour!’
‘I speak as your friend, your pupil, your admirer, my lord,’ said Ralstan. Magneric’s choler was becoming increasingly hard to douse, and Ralstan had to fight to hide his own ire. ‘Your tomb was never intended to remain active for so long a time.’
Magneric’s massive power fist came up and pointed threateningly. ‘You undermine me, Castellan. Do not do so again.’
‘At least speak with Chaplain Aladucos. If you will not hearken to me, listen to him.’
Magneric turned awkwardly, the short legs of the Dreadnought stamping clangorously on the deck. ‘When I have Kalkator’s severed head in my fist, when I have squeezed his treacherous brain into a paste, then I shall rest. Not before! By the Emperor, no matter what you or the others say, I have sworn my oath and I will honour it!’
The doors opened wide, and Magneric stamped back onto the bridge. Ralstan sighed with dissatisfaction, and followed.
Dzelenic IV had once had a name of its own. Now, it was marked upon the stellar charts of the Imperium by system and number alone. Kalkator was among the few who remembered what its inhabitants had called it, for he had witnessed its destruction.
A landscape of utter desolation slid beneath the keels of the Iron Warriors Thunderhawks, the Meratara in the lead. They flew over a dry ocean basin subsumed into the wasteland of dunes that stretched from pole to pole. The seas were long since gone, stripped away by titanic weapons during the war against the False Emperor. Kalkator remembered it as a pleasant world, civilised and green. The forces of Terra had put paid to that.
The exposed ocean floor took a step up, marking the position of the ancient coast. The Thunderhawks swung around to the south, following the grim cliffs, footed only by a sea of dust. Savage storms blew up in what remained of the planet’s atmosphere, turning the air orange with a perpetual haze.
City ruins sprouted from the dunes, emerging suddenly from the blurred sky, the only signs that anything living had ever been there at all. The long rectangles of docking piers extruded far out into the vanished sea, still visible beneath their shrouds of sand.
‘North here, to the landing fields,’ ordered Kalkator.
‘As you command, warsmith,’ confirmed the pilot, Lerontus.
A space port dominated the plain behind the city. Flat, dull grey landing aprons were swept clear by the ceaseless wind. A dry river bed wound past it towards a range of hills, exposed as the vein of a flayed corpse. Craters marred the ground, distinguishable only by their infill of windblown sand. Further cliffs edged the plain, the product of millions of years of geological processes that had been halted in an instant of fire.