The Eternal Crusader - Guy Haley Page 5

  The briefing lasted throughout the night, the final groups of generals only dispersing when Armageddon’s pallid sun pushed its rays through the choking air outside. Helbrecht and Bayard were among the last to leave, exiting the amphitheatre to an external walkway curling around a war-scarred starscraper. Already it was uncomfortably hot. Bayard and Helbrecht walked together towards the landing fields and Helbrecht’s Thunderhawk.

  ‘Such a man as Yarrick is a lesson to us all,’ said Helbrecht.

  ‘There is a light about him, brother.’

  ‘You can see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bayard simply. Helbrecht did not press him on it. What the Emperor chose to reveal to his Champion was only for them to know.

  They proceeded on several hundred more paces, their ceramite boots grinding the windblown ash dirtying the walkway into fine dust, both deep in solitary thought. A hundred kilometres of urban sprawl stretched away beneath them, the unrepaired damage of fifty years ago hazed by smog.

  Bayard broke the silence. ‘When we landed, and we offered our services to General Kurov on the landing field, you spoke of nine hundred battle-brothers, and Amalrich and Ricard in orbit when they are not. Why?’

  ‘A necessary deception, brother.’

  Bayard looked at the ground as they walked, idly flicking his targeting reticule from one skittering piece of grit to the next. ‘They hear the number, and it gives them hope?’ he ventured.

  ‘It does. But there is a more practical consideration than morale,’ said Helbrecht. ‘With nine hundred battle-brothers, we possess one of the largest Space Marine contingents in the system. With four hundred, we do not.’

  ‘And so another commander might think he has more legitimate claim to the admiralship of the combined Adeptus Astartes fleets.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Helbrecht. ‘Never forget, we are the chosen sons of the Emperor, Bayard. Of all the Adeptus Astartes, only we have ever seen fit to acknowledge the truth of the Emperor’s divinity – no Chapter but we of the Adeptus Astartes has ever done this. The others are fools to deny our lord as a god. They take no notice that our faith is rewarded, and that we are the Emperor’s right hand. It is fitting and just that I take command of the assembled fleets. Let the unbelievers wail and complain. They will follow me still, because they know in their hearts that I am the best choice for overall void commander, divinely appointed or not. And I am the Emperor’s elect, even if they do not care to admit it. What I told the commanders is not a falsehood. Amalrich and Ricard will be in orbit soon enough, and they shall rain down upon the orks as avenging angels. I have pledged nine hundred of our brothers to this war. Nine hundred Black Templars are what the defenders of Armageddon will receive. I keep my oaths.’

  ‘Meanwhile, Grimaldus goes to Helsreach as our emissary.’

  ‘Yes. And as our promise. Let none say the Black Templars stint in blood. Parol has a viable plan. We will stay to aid him in delaying the ork invasion. When the fleet enacts its fighting withdrawal, we shall examine the situation, and depart for Fergax to fetch our brothers from there when occasion allows.’

  ‘I do not understand why you are telling me this, my liege.’

  ‘As the Emperor’s Champion, Bayard, you are a knight of the Inner Circle. You are entitled to know.’

  ‘What does it matter if I know or not? My visions grow stronger – they have outgrown my dreams to plague my waking moments. I am to die soon. This sharing of knowledge does neither of us any good.’

  Helbrecht halted and placed his artificial hand upon Bayard’s pauldron. ‘Until you relinquish the black sword in death, brother, you are a lord of this Chapter. Do not abandon yourself to your fate so readily. You have much to give, and your death might lie years away. We all die, Bayard. Give what you can while you can. The Emperor chose you – that is why you stand in council with us. Bury your misgivings. Not only your hand but your words are guided by the greatest of powers, and they are heeded.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Bayard fell silent.

  ‘There is something else that troubles you, Champion?’

  ‘You know your warriors well, my liege. I cannot hide my innermost thoughts from you.’

  ‘Speak.’

  ‘It is this. I know my fate, and although I do not wish to throw my life away, the wait for my life’s…’ He searched for the correct word. ‘…resolution is hard on me. I have this great honour at my side.’ He gripped the hilt of the black sword swinging from its hanger on his belt. ‘I would dearly love to use it. Grimaldus was right in that. Why must we wait? Defence, waiting… Neither have ever been our Chapter’s way.’

  ‘Champion Bayard, you will have your chance soon enough,’ Helbrecht answered assuredly. Such confidence, such surety of purpose. Bayard admired him greatly, which is why he took what Helbrecht had to say next remarkably well. ‘You are to remain behind with Reclusiarch Grimaldus and Forgemaster Jurisian.’

  ‘My liege, I… I do not know what to say.’

  ‘You do not know what I expect you to say,’ corrected Helbrecht. ‘Do you accept the honour without argument as you should, or protest your wish to remain at my side as Grimaldus did? I know which path you would find shameful. I know you of old, Bayard. The Chapter is everything to you. This is why the Emperor has blessed you. You will not disobey me. It is unthinkable to you even. But you do not like my decision.’

  Bayard made no attempt to hide it. ‘No, my liege. I do not.’

  ‘You do not like it because you too do not wish to die in defence, when every fibre of our being rages for advance. And you do not like it because you dislike Grimaldus. You opposed his appointment. I care not for these petty feelings. He wrestles with the acceptance of a great legacy, and you see fault in him. He tests himself, Bayard – he is a cautious man as you rightly said and will not rashly hold himself to the measure of his antecedent, no matter that he is obviously worthy. I tell you this – as surely as the Emperor commanded that I be High Marshal, Grimaldus is worthy of the burden placed upon his shoulders. His only flaw is that he is as yet unaware of his suitability. And yet you needle, you complain, you see his reticence as weakness. How does this befit the Champion of the Emperor, to doubt his greatest warrior-priest?’

  Beneath his helm, Bayard’s face went pale. ‘I… I… My liege!’ he protested. ‘I had not the thought to disobey my lord,’ Bayard fell to his knees with a crash, his armour joints growling as it compensated for the unexpected movement. Bayard bowed his head.

  ‘Yes, you did. Grimaldus is conflicted, but his actions in there reflected poorly on us. You would not bring the same minor dishonour upon me.’ Helbrecht grasped Bayard’s arm and pulled him upright. ‘On your feet, Champion. You bear a black sword, second only in sacredness to the blade I wear. You are a chosen of the Emperor, a champion of the elect. Humility is not for the likes of us.’

  Bayard stood.

  ‘I command you to go with Grimaldus, so go with him, my brother, with no ill will and with iron righteousness in your soul. Do so with no doubt in your heart, and with honour foremost in your mind. You carry the legacy of Sigismund himself in your right hand. Do not dishonour it. Do not dishonour me.’

  ‘Yes, my liege.’

  Helbrecht held out his hand. Bayard bowed from the waist, took it in both his own and kissed the armoured fingers.

  ‘I return to the Eternal Crusader. May the Emperor bring you a worthy death, Champion Bayard. Do not sell yourself cheaply.’

  They walked the remaining distance to the landing fields in quiet discussion of tactics and shared glories of the past, periods of silence more common than those of words.

  When they reached the field, Helbrecht’s transport was preparing for the journey to low orbit, the building whine of its engines loud in the dawn. There Helbrecht left Bayard with a stern blessing.

  ‘Die well, Champion.’

  Bayard let out a shaky breath. His destiny was set. As much as his impatience nipped at his heels, demanding he run fast towards his glorious en
d, now it was in motion he felt the electric touch of apprehension.

  He watched Helbrecht depart, knowing that he would never see his lord again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  First Actions

  A day before the long-range battle with the orks was joined, Admiral Parol’s battlegroup came in from the outer reaches of the system. His ship, the Apocalypse-class His Will, bore damage all over its hull. Others limped, trailing clouds of discharge from wounded engines. These were the halest, the more badly damaged having retreated to the Naval base at St Jowen’s Dock which, other than a limited assault, the orks had thankfully bypassed in their rush to the system capital.

  When the damage to His Will became apparent and news of the loss of its sister Triumph spread to the waiting fleet, the mood on the ships became sombre.

  The orks came closer. When the largest of their craft resolved into diamond chips of light, the gathered Imperial fleet opened fire. Every vessel turned, bringing their powerful broadsides to bear. There were four great Imperial Navy battleships alone, all capable of reducing a continent to rubble. Their decks shook for hour after hour as they cast their shells at the approaching ork horde. Still they came on. For a day and a night the void twinkled with the light of a million false stars and miniature novae as the ork fleet flew into the opening Imperial bombardment.

  And then, with disorienting suddenness, the ork ships were upon the fleet. For days they had been an imminent threat, and yet distant. Then an endless armada of scrap-cruisers and modified space hulks filled the void as far as the human eye could see. The actuality of their arrival hardened hearts and resolved wavering souls. There could be no retreat from this. Cowardice would avail a man of nothing.

  Hurling crude missiles before them, the ork fleet moved in to attack with all the subtlety of a landslide.

  The Third War for Armageddon began in earnest.

  ‘Correct bombardment drift!’ bellowed Helbrecht. ‘Omega Marines vessel Notoriety, pull back. You are being pushed off course by discharge reaction and drifting forwards of your attack group. I repeat, pull back! Raptors attack wing gamma, hold steady!’ Helbrecht gave orders to the assembled might of a score of Chapters, their strike cruisers and battle-barges deferring to his judgement. The Imperial fleet was a wall, the orks a besieging horde of savages.

  There were no tactics here, no manoeuvres. The Space Marine fleet far outnumbered Battlefleet Armageddon’s capital ships, but their craft were made for planetary assault and not best suited to ship warfare. Wave after wave of badly wrought ork cruisers came at them, casting a hail of missiles in front. Beyond, seven space hulks waited. The Space Marines were capable of laying down punishing salvos of fire, but their bombardment cannons lacked the precision of Navy guns.

  Each hulk was followed by a trail of heavily armed asteroid fortresses, dragged on in the hulks’ gravitic wake, preventing attack to their rear. Parol’s early attempts to exploit this weakness had been comprehensively beaten back. Should the hulks have closed, they ran the risk of being annihilated by the battle-barges’ bombardment cannons; instead, their cruisers bore the brunt of the shelling, catching the rounds on their shields as they incessantly probed for weakness.

  Strike cruisers cut back and forth as fast as they could in interdiction, intercepting breakaway squadrons of orkish craft getting too close to the world. All the while, the battle-barges’ guns spat fury at the invaders. Arranged in a giant box thousands of kilometres across, they made a fortress into which no ork vessel might come without being targeted by multiple Imperial ships. Initially, this proved successful, but Armageddon’s orbital defence network fared badly. Spread across the planet’s low orbits, it was being isolated and destroyed. One of the major forts was burning already. Another had ceased firing after three ork cruisers crash-landed into it, disgorging a horde of howling monsters. As they fell silent, the intensity of the Imperial bombardment slackened, and the orks drew closer to Armageddon.

  ‘We’ve another message from Armageddon High Anchor Station, my liege,’ reported a vox-officer. There were dozens like him, human servants of the Chapter arrayed in stepped banks at their consoles, outnumbered by servitors in the same ratio that they outnumbered the Adeptus Astartes. Their voices were a racket, a hundred competing, each one the carrier of urgent news.

  ‘Acknowledge request for aid, Armageddon High Anchor. Iron Champions Third Company inbound.’ Helbrecht looked to the line of hulks waiting in the distance. The Eternal Crusader shook as another Space Marine escort craft exploded into an expanding cloud of vaporised metal. ‘They wait. Why? What is the status of the ork hulks?’

  ‘No firing solutions on the hulks, my lord. They remain out of effective range of our lance batteries,’ said Shipmaster Baloster.

  ‘They are sacrificing their ships,’ said Helbrecht. ‘This mess they’re creating is a far more effective shield than any energy field. Inform me when debris saturation exceeds fifteen hundred tonnes per cubic kilometre.’

  ‘Yes, my liege,’ said Baloster.

  ‘My liege!’ A frantic shout from one of the operations desks was heard. Helbrecht leaned on the railing of his command dais to look at the serf who had spoken.

  ‘Battle-barge Victus is taking heavy damage, my liege,’ said a vox-serf.

  Helbrecht took a data-slate from an attendant. The image of the Flesh Tearers flagship displayed upon it was so covered in damage indicator runes that the hull was obscured. ‘Tell them to fall back. Strike group Calisthenis, move around to escort them away.’

  The Eternal Crusader shuddered as a barrage of orkish cannon rounds pounded against its side. A ship caught Helbrecht’s eye.

  ‘Which ship is that? There’s a vessel crossing their departure vector. Get me a clearer image! This damned display’s too crowded.’

  His servants dutifully focused the main holograph on the ship he indicated. A wireframe ghost sailed through the air, blinking red. In the oculus display, a real-time true-pict showed the craft wallowing hopelessly out of formation. Trails of multicoloured plasmas leaked from its venting ports in a desperate attempt to forestall reactor death. A soapy flash marked the collapse of its last void shield, and fire bloomed all along its length as scrap missiles and gravity-weapon-hurled rocks battered at it hard.

  ‘Celestial Lions cruiser Lavi, my liege. It is about to be overwhelmed.’

  ‘Emperor, it’s going to fly right into the Victus!’ said Baloster.

  ‘Pull up! Pull up! Lavi, pull up!’ shouted Helbrecht. His orders were repeated a dozen times by human and cyborg throats. A garbled message burbled through in response, but no words could be teased from it.

  They heard though, at least they heard. The Celestial Lions vessel fired all its manoeuvring jets; it turned painfully slowly, inching away from the Victus’s flight vector. Helbrecht clenched his bionic fist, praying they would make it, but their helmsman lost control. The engines pivoted up and over as the Lavi went into a slow tumble. Victus attempted evasive manoeuvres, itself still taking plenty of fire from ork cruisers sensing a kill. The Victus rolled ponderously to the side, but the Lavi was by now little better than a runaway and was on a direct collision course. The Celestial Lions ship slammed into the Flesh Tearers Victus, dragging its hull diagonally up across the battle-barge’s long, battle-scarred neck.

  The oculus display flash-burned images of destruction into their retinas as the bottom was torn out of the Lavi.

  ‘Blood of the Saints! Victus, Victus! Chapter Master Seth, do you hear me? Do you hear me? Hail him!’

  The two ships sailed past one another, trailing clouds of debris. The keel line of the Lavi was gone, its lower decks a tangled web of bent spars and curled plating.

  An image of Gabriel Seth fizzed into existence at the corner of a holo display. ‘I hear you, High Marshal. We still have power and engines, but Victus has been badly damaged. I am almost entirely without weapons.’

  ‘Stand ready for escort, Chapter Master. Help is inbound. Get out of here.’
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  ‘Get aid to the Lavi! Now!’ shouted a voice. Helbrecht turned his attention to see the ship fall into the gravitic trap of the world below, fire boiling out of its underside.

  ‘Four hours to impact. They have an orbit, but it decays, my liege.’

  ‘Augur team, see if anyone is alive. Calculate a rescue plan if possible. Every dead Space Marine is a small victory for the orks.’

  His deck officers saluted. Nobody said anything about the three thousand mortal lives aboard the ship.

  ‘Maintain bombardment,’ Helbrecht ordered. ‘They will run out of ships eventually. I want–’

  A titanic detonation bloomed across the lower portion of the oculus, racing up the display until it consumed the room. The Chapter-serfs flinched; so bright was the representation, it seemed for a moment that the Eternal Crusader had taken a critical hit itself. Atomised metal and lives turned into a physical blow blasting outwards into the fleet. The Eternal Crusader rolled with the shockwave of the explosion, thrusters jetting as it fought to maintain position.

  The babble of orders and reports across the command deck reached a frantic level.

  ‘The Laudator, my liege. The Laudator has been destroyed.’

  A battle-barge of the Celebrants. An incalculable loss to the Imperium at large, and a disaster for Armageddon’s defence.

  The Laudator had been with the Victus. Helbrecht ran searching eyes all over the displays. A ragged hole had opened up in the kill box. Immediately, several large, ugly ork ships started a run for the breach.

  ‘My lord! Long range augur sensors show multiple power signatures on the hulks,’ reported Baloster.

  ‘They play their hand. They are coming. We shall make them pay in blood for every ork whose feet dirty Armageddon! Praise be!’ he roared.

  ‘Praise be!’ shouted his men.

  All the while the space hulks drew closer.

  The next six hours were a frantic blur of split-second decisions. Helbrecht kept up a steady stream of orders as the orks burst through the line. As much as they tried to maintain the wall of fire, with ork ships swarming all around them, the vessels of the Adeptus Astartes were soon fully occupied trying to keep themselves from being destroyed. At the end of those hours, the hulks of Warlord Ghazghkull’s invasion forced their way into Helbrecht’s formation.