‘We need only get into the city,’ said Kalkator.
Zerberyn’s eyes followed the line of the railroad, across the plain and into Princus Praxa’s bleak industrial heart.
There was merit.
He nodded, feeling an adrenal buzz suffuse his muscles as his body prepared itself for the combat promised by that red horizon. It felt good.
The fightback began now.
Eighteen
The Praetorian Way was the primary arterial between Anterior Six Gate and the Great Chamber. Fortified senatorial habs and basilicae soared above like mountains, bristling with rusted autocannon turrets and the roosts of angels, their stone faces teared by acid corrosion. Lumen globes mounted on posts lined the way, glittering like an honour guard drawn from the span of the Imperium. Brass filters shaped the light into continents and oceans, each a commemoration to the world of an Army regiment destroyed in defence of Terra. Kilometre after kilometre, they stood vigil against the deepening twilight. Lord High Admiral Lansung had intended to climax his victory march here following the Navy’s triumph at Vesperilles, and over the course of the Siege both loyalists and traitors had exploited the arterial to move their war machines between inner and outer Palace.
Now it was locked down.
Barriers and visored enforcers stood on the ramps and slip roads. Like clockwork, a black Adeptus Arbites armoured transport would cruise down the centre lane with exhortations to good order and obedience booming from its loudspeakers.
It was a rare sight then, if not an unprecedented one, when a squadron of Imperial Fists Land Raiders roared onto the flyway.
They pulled away from the towers, moving in convoy. The cut light sharpened angular lines to a golden edge. The immense power of their engines rumbled into the angels’ eyries above, and ruffled the forever-twilight of the ornamental canopy of the Night Garden below.
The Land Raider was a beast of war, one of unique inelegance in the armouries of the Angels of Death, but unrivalled in the execution of its singular function. The bonded layers of its composite armour were as near to impenetrable as the artifice of man could make them, the tank front-loaded with firepower and battlefield superiority. It was the ground-to-ground equivalent of a drop pod or a boarding torpedo, its role to deliver Space Marines into the violent, still-beating heart of battle with crushing force. Its armour, armament and machine temperament suited it equally to rolling over troops, armour and even the fortifications of an enemy in order to gain its target.
The lead vehicle pulled up before the gilded stone portal of the Senatorum Imperialis.
Sponson lascannons tracked back and forth over the imposing defensive structure as two more vehicles rolled out alongside it. The fourth and last, an ultra-rare example of the siege-breaking Achilles variant, heaved to a stop behind the other tanks. Its hull-mounted thunderfire cannon and sponson multi-meltas zeroed in on the gate.
The Imperial Fists were dead. Ardamantua had ended them. But their serfs, the Phalanx, their Chapter houses here on Terra, their armouries, vaults and frozen gene-stocks — all still remained. The Chapter was mustering its strength for one last, defiant shout.
The Achilles revved its engines, wrecking-ball frame leaning into its forward brakes.
Its ultimatum was explicit.
The Lucifer Blacks lieutenant in command of the guard detail appeared in the embrasure window of the guardroom above the gate. His hand was clamped to an earpiece and he was speaking urgently into a wired vox-unit mounted on the guardroom wall.
Koorland popped the cupola hatch of the Achilles, then stepped off the roof of the tank and onto the road. Chapter serfs in gold tabards, wielding lasrifles and ornamental blades, were pouring out of the troop hatches and running forwards to secure the slowly opening gate. Following them from each transport came an Imperial Fist.
An Excoriator, a Crimson Fist, a Black Templar and a Fist Exemplar.
Or as Koorland knew them: Hemisphere, Absolution, Eternity and Daylight.
They were each proud of their own heritage, of the distinctions that had arisen between them and their brothers over a thousand years. But it was a learned pride. It had been inculcated into them since their rebirth, nurtured by ritual and rote. Now they had been called home, brothers again, and that meant something deeper than words. Each of them wore the brilliant yellow of the Imperial Fists and carried the black fist on their pauldron. Eternity had devoted the full left half of his breastplate to a particularly prominent example and scraps of yellow cerecloth fluttered from the hilt of his longsword.
They fell in behind Koorland, armed, intense, each the very best that a human being could become, and together five proud sons of Dorn marched on the Great Chamber.
The Senatorum was in recess.
Lesser lords in military dress and civilian frippery mingled in an anteroom around refectory tables laden with canapés, sipping on recaff and talking in hushed tones about the prior session’s business. The air trilled with privilege and the clink of glassware. Servitor cherubs hovered under a fresco of the Emperor delivering the Imperial Creed, weaving between columns and vid-capture drones bearing reams of parchment. A steady stream of dignitaries hurried from the ablutorials, hands still wet, and made for the waiting doors to the Great Chamber. A polite chime sounded through the vox-casters set up in the vaults, sounding the recall to session.
It all stopped as Koorland and the Last Wall strode past.
The Space Marines towered over the human lords like god-kings out of legend. A few hundred Lucifer Blacks, officers of the Adeptus Arbites and Palace Defence Forces, as well as liveried attachés of the High Lords, watched from various discreet corner rooms and side corridors, but stood off. Whether out of fear of his brothers or hesitation over stepping on another’s jurisdiction, Koorland could not care.
He turned to face the doors.
They were vast, oak, inlaid and fretted with silver from which an energy-nullifying protection field hummed. They were also open. Koorland focused his hearing on what lay beyond. His Lyman’s ear cued him to the strains of Ecclesiarch Mesring delivering the commencement blessing.
‘Bestia, qui in sapientia.’
As the Adeptus Astartes’ adherence to the secular Imperial Truth minimised direct contact with the Ecclesiarchy, he knew little of the forms and practices.
‘Benedicat serviamus in regens et nos iterum.’
But even to him, the Ecclesiarch’s address sounded strange.
‘Ave Veridus est.’
There was no time to dwell on it further as the Space Marines passed through the open doors and into the Great Chamber.
The tiered auditorium was almost empty. Row upon row of flipped-back wooden pews surrounded the central dais and a woolly throng of minor dignitaries milling around their seats. As Koorland was expecting, Ecclesiarch Mesring had the podium. There was an unkemptness to his hair and dress and an almost feral fervour in his eyes as he spoke, his voice coming asynchronously from the vox-casters positioned around the chamber.
Lord Admiral Lansung and Fabricator General Kubik were the only two presently seated, the pair sniping at one another across the intervening chairs. The others moved around the main platform, stretching their legs and taking sips of purified water, half-listening to the aides, analysts and codifiers that pursued them around the base of the dais.
It was Lansung who saw Koorland first.
His face blanched as Hemisphere and Absolution spread out around the standing galleries on the outer edge of the chamber and swung their bolters to cover the dais. As well he might — the fat fool’s politicking had done more to end the Imperial Fists than any ork or Chrome. People began to cry out and went to ground amongst the pews. Daylight and Eternity hung back, spear and sword raised respectively, as Koorland marched down the aisle.