In the Destroyer squads his eccentricities had gone unnoticed, largely because nobody wanted to think about what the Destroyers did on the battlefield, much less what they did when they were off-duty. Or so it had been the case before the Warmaster rebelled and their Primarch, Perturabo, had declared for Horus. The Destroyer squads, reluctantly employed even by the Lord of Iron’s grim sons, had enjoyed a reevaluation by commanders whose priorities and rules of engagement had been radically altered. This was how his work on the battlefield had been noticed, and how he had been elevated to the newly expanded ranks of the First Company.
He had yet to learn whether his new rank would provide the personal freedoms he had grown used to. What was to be his first deployment within his Tactical Dreadnought Armour was mere hours away. The Big Show. He didn’t know who had first started calling it that, but it was the accepted euphemism aboard the strike cruiser. Despite the last nine years of open rebellion, Legion loyalty tests, and bloody purges, nobody in his Grand Company seemed ready to call it what it was: the invasion of Terra itself.
Nobody had come looking for him yet.
He enjoyed his isolation, especially before and after major operations. His personal chamber, hidden deep within the spaces normally abandoned by anyone except the unluckiest naval ratings or most paranoid ferals, was completely sealed off from light. He lay on the smooth tile floor, concentrating on the scalding water that showered over his naked, outstretched form, and breathed deeply the steam. None of the other Astartes knew about his meditation chamber, and his mortal servants could not physically bear to enter when it was in use.
He lost his physical self in the dense, hot vapor and scalding waters. He was free to think about any one single thing with no distraction, or to escape into a timeless oblivion without thought or self.
He did not need anyone to alert him that the time was near, however. Through the deck he felt the telltale vibrations in his back. The only thing of such magnitude that could disturb his silent reverie in this section of the ship were the firing rites of the macro-cannons.
He needed to join his new squad.
But Terra and the Warmaster need not exist for just a while longer.
+++++++++
Halfway through the arming process he realized that his servants were not engaging in their usual noisome verbal checklists and banter. There were four of them, an old man, his two sons, and the eldest son’s wife. The old man’s grandson, who normally played quietly in the antechamber, was also not there, another feature of their usual routine he realized was missing.
“What is it?” He asked, turning to the old man who was fidgeting with the torque settings on his air ratchet as his younger son guided one of his pauldrons into place using a servo-arm mounted into the ceiling.
“Nothing, my lord.” The old man answered quickly.
“Is it important?” He asked. As a Destroyer he had spent much more time with his mortal servants than with his brother Astartes. He was not so far removed from them that he could not sense the subtleties of their moods.
“Only to us, my lord.” The old man replied with a grim smile.
“The boy?” He guessed, and noted the careful mask of nameless servitude slip from their faces momentarily.
“Yes, my lord.” The old man replied slowly, pausing from affixing the shoulder pad to the Terminator suit. “He has been removed for selection trials.”
“He will be fine.” He rolled his shoulder to test the connexion. As the neural links warmed up he could feel the son’s hands still absently gripping the edges of the plate. “He need only survive the implantation process. This operation will cause enough casualties that the Legion will not be careless with the lives of pre-screened candidates.”
“This
operation...” The old man sighed, holding a hand to his head and leaning against the arming chamber wall wearily. His daughter-in-law took his arm to support him.
He looked at the distressed mortals for a long while, then opened his weapons locker himself and grabbed the nearest two weapons without much thought and trundled toward the bulkhead access.
+++++++++
His Grand Company, the 49th, long rumoured to be a dumping ground for misfits and wild cards too loyal and useful to simply liquidate, had many individualistic and squad level traditions. But arriving in the squad bay he noted that he could no longer tell who each member was with a simple visual anymore. As per orders, all personal markings had been removed from their armour and the squad icons had been stripped and replaced with standard IV Legion markings. He had not decorated his new
TDA yet, so it hadn’t been a bother to him, but the order had caused some grumbling among the older veterans.
“Ready for the Big Show, new guy?” The sergeant asked him as he stood in the hatchway, the last of the squad to arrive.
“Yes.” He replied, running his seventh internal diagnostic since he had left his arming chamber.
“Old habits?” The sergeant’s helmet nodded in the direction of his hands,.
“Eh?” He followed the sergeant’s gaze and realized that he had armed himself with dual plasma destroyers instead of the more usual sidearm/melee weapon combination. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Are you certain your head is on straight?” The sergeant asked, and he through his black carapace felt the sergeant accessing his armour’s network and running an evaluation on his physical state.
“Would it matter if it wasn’t?” He asked, hefting the two plasma weapons and looking around the room for extra ammunition. The usually spartan squad bay was crammed with boxes of various types of expendable supplies, and he busied himself with reconfiguring his supply rig.
“I suppose not.” The sergeant conceded. “I’ve heard they’ve emptied out the apothecarion.”
“Time, sergeant.” The squad Second called out, a heartbeat before the ready rune appeared in the vision of each of the squad, calling them for company assembly on the flight deck.
+++++++++
He had never seen the Grand Company fully assembled before. Not like this, anyway. Usually he stood with the Destroyer squads to the rear during parade, and his concept of the Grand Company as a unified whole was mostly the backsides of power packs and the distant drone of the Warsmith in his turned down vox. He had never needed a briefing or a morale talk in the Destroyer squads; his mission had always been the same. Only the terrain had ever changed, and over the years he had realized there wasn’t even much variation of that despite having a whole galaxy to subdue.
From his new position flanking the Warsmith and facing the rest of the Grand Company he saw things much differently. The Apothecarion had indeed been emptied, and the Armoury too, as well as the more ceremonial naval postings on the strike cruiser. Every Astartes physically able to walk had been put into a suit of power armour, and those that could not had been physically reduced for Dreadnought deployment, as well as other makeshift siege engines filling that role. Not one Astartes would remain aboard; everyone had a part to play in the Big Show down on Terra. Nearly 2000 space marines were arrayed before him, and even though they gave their attention to the Warsmith he felt as if they gazed upon him personally. It was an odd feeling, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.
“You heard the Primarch’s broadcast, and I have nothing to add to it.” The Warsmith said. “We are going to be in the thick of it. Rally to the Grand Company standard and move forward. If your boat comes down too far from the rally point, head toward the beacon signal at the first opportunity, otherwise find someone who looks like they know what they are doing and follow them. At all times move
forward. Get to your assault boats, we drop in fifteen.
Iron Within!”
“
Iron Without!” The flight deck rang with the response of hundreds of space marines slamming a fist to their chest, and then the tramping of armoured boots as they fell out and headed for their transports.
+++++++++
He had learned many tricks in his time in service, and one of them was to plug into the crew chief channels and use them to backdoor into the assault boat’s outer cameras. It was a simple trick, and he idly wondered if anyone else was doing it as the dataflow resolved into a viewable image.
He got his first live glimpse of Terra itself. He had known what to expect, but his imagination had not provided him adequate preparation for the fierce battle that still raged in orbit.
It was if the stars themselves had caught fire and were crashing through the atmosphere.
+++++++++
The primary order to move forward at all costs now seemed to him absurd. His assault boat, despite being in the main drop and launching at the same time as the Warsmith’s, had quickly become lost in the floating maze of fire and death that was Terra’s near orbit. He did not even know what sector or even continent he was on, and the vox was so crammed with blaring beacons, confused vox traffic, and competing jamming signals that it was useless for anything but local squad level communication, and sometimes not even that.
His assault chalk’s only good fortune was that their boat’s pilot had somehow identified and managed to land among a concentration of IV Legion. There seemed to be no forward, however. There was nought but a sea of Iron Warriors surrounding him, moving indeterminately among the field of mounded rubble. The assault boat had barely enough room to land and drop its ramp, and after trudging less than fifty meters on Terra’s surface the density of their brother Iron Warriors became so thick that movement in any direction quickly became impossible.
His sergeant had removed his helmet and was yelling angrily at anyone and everyone around him, but nobody seemed to have any idea what was going on. The sky was filled with smoke, explosions, and the racing and dodging forms of various aircraft, some of which occasionally dropped bombs or made strafing runs around his position. Each time one of the flyers came in low there was a hail of bolter shells as the thousands of frustrated space marines loosed their fury heavenward, and more than one flyer broke apart and crashed into the teeming ranks below.
The noise was constant, the multiple barrages and artillery going in every direction combined to form a backdrop of rolling thunder. Eventually he shut off his external pick-ups to try and drown out the sound, but he could still feel the distant thunder in his bones. His helmetless sergeant seemed to be frozen in an eternal, angry scream as they milled about, and he wondered how long it would be until the man was irrevocably deafened by the noisome fury.
+++++++++
It had been perhaps days, though at least many hours, and finally some momentum in a given direction developed. He took one last look at the shrapnel riddled hulk that was the remains of his assault boat, then turned to trudge along with the mass of Iron Warriors. In his Terminator suit he could see over the heads of the ranks of space marines in front of him, but for a long while the only thing revealed to him was the heads of the ranks of space marines in front of them.
Gradually he became aware of an incline. Tracers and lasbolts zipped and careened over the top of it, and occasionally artillery blasts blew chunks of masonry and space marines into the air to shower upon the heads of those still churning their way upward. When it came his turn to crest the ridge he simply brought his plasma destroyers forward and loosed random suppressing fire in the general direction to his front.
This whole world seemed to be made of broken masonry and jagged trees of rebar. Wherever he had come down, it had once been a densely urbanized area. For as far as he could see, there was nothing but collapsed buildings stretching to the horizon. The only features of terrain were the undulating remains of toppled towers and the foundations they had broken away from. Enormous pits like wounds in the earth revealed the tumbled and broken sublayers. Smoke and fire was the only sky, and both roiled out from the landscape into towering columns to join the hell that was beneath his feet to the hell that was above. To avoid disorientation, for it was sometimes hard to tell where one thing began and another ended, he concentrated on the helmets and backpacks of those marching before him.
All he had was a direction to move.
Forward became his whole purpose to exist.
+++++++++
The autoreactive lenses of his helmet blacked out momentarily, and when his vision returned the fiery mushroom cloud filled it entirely. He was well familiar with nuclear weapons, having detonated a number of low yield devices himself during his time in the Destroyer squads. He automatically lowered his center of gravity and leaned slightly forward with his forearms in front of his face as best as he could manage in his cumbersome Terminator suit. The destructive winds tore over the landscape and despite his best effort he found himself thrown into the Iron Warriors of the ranks behind him. Or was it before him? He no longer knew.
His chronometer was fried, as were several of his more delicate electronic subsystems. The most vital systems of his Terminator armour were hardened against electro-magnetic pulse effects, as were even the basic space marine power armours. His weapons were no longer in his hands, but as he scrambled to find his feet again he came to be standing with a power sword. He had no idea to which of the corpses around him it had belonged, or if he had wrested it from the hands of one of the Iron Warriors that still moved around him, but it had an active power source and was well balanced; he was not going to give it up. Somewhere, he hoped, his plasma destroyers were doing someone else some good too.
There was still a crush of space marines around him, but there was a little more room to move.
There was also still somehow a direction that those around him regarded as “forward,” and so he once again joined the mass of movement.
He no longer had visual or vox contact with any of his squad or anyone else who had come down on his assault boat.
+++++++++
He didn’t know which side the Warlord Titan belonged to. It didn’t seem to matter, so long as its terrifying strides did not bring it any closer to him. The terrible violence of the background noise was so overwhelming that the firing of its apocalyptic lasers did not stand out. There was a static charge in the air, he was sure it was somehow related to the titan’s presence, but he didn’t know in what way.
Eventually it no longer loomed over head, though he could feel the earth shaking vibrations of its ponderous movement for hours. He could only move forward. He couldn’t look at or even think about anything to the left or right, and backwards had ceased to exist as a concept.
+++++++++
There was much more room now, and he was glad for it. He had been on Terra perhaps weeks, at least days, and the entire time until now had only known the shoulder to shoulder, plastron to back pack, agonizingly slow pace of the movement
Forward.
He stopped and worked his elbows around to loosen the kinks in his bones and in his armour.
There was a confusion in the movement around him, and he noted with astonishment that those surrounding him were moving in directions other than Forward for the first time in what seemed an eternity.
Confused, he looked to his left and to his right, unsure of what to make of the smooth sided constructs that stood so strangely upright in this mad world of uneven and broken terrain.
Walls.
He stood in a broken gap in a defensive curtain.
He was in the middle of an insane and desperate melee.
The space marines to his front, in between himself and the sacred
Forward, were a bright and provocative colour. His iron clad brothers of the IV Legion had breached this wall but were being pushed back by a fierce counter-attack.
He then knew a rage unlike anything he had ever experienced before, and pushed past his stalled brothers, breaking into a headlong run
Forward. In a dozen juggernaut paces he was surrounded wholly by the brightly coloured enemy space marines, but still he drove
Forward. He lashed about him with his power sword, cutting deep into those who stood before him until he was once again surrounded, pushed close and trapped on all sides by the crush of bodies.
His power sword was upraised, but he could not move to swing it effectively. His off hand was pinned to his side by the shoulder pad of an enemy. He could do nothing more than yell incoherently into the hate-filled faces of those pressed tightly into the death filled gap.
And still he struggled
Forward, one foot and then the other. The servos of his Terminator suit whined and ground, and he smelled electricity and smoke and blood, but he knew nothing but rage and the desire to move
Forward.
And suddenly, he was running free again. Like a tidal surge finally breaking a sea wall, the tide of iron poured past the kill box of the breached defensive curtain and into the artillery positions and redoubts supporting it.
+++++++++
He was standing alone. How could such a thing exist in a place like that? There was no longer any sky or horizon, only a choking pall of dust and smoke. When had he taken off his helmet, and why?
The silence was perhaps the most frightening thing he had experienced in his lifetime walking Terra’s surface.
Another figure lurched out of the darkness, stumbling heavily. Not an Iron Warrior, not in
that colour. The space marine moved clumsily and painfully, laboring under the broken and dead power pack upon his back.
“Why?”
He didn’t know which of them had said it, but he suspected it was the other from the hate-filled expression and accusing eyes.
He lashed out with his sword, slicing cleanly through the space marine’s throat without decapitating him. The enemy had not had the strength to avoid the blow, and simply sank to his knees as his life’s blood gushed out of his neck.
He watched as the hateful expression turned to anguish. It was not a personal anguish, he noted. One might expect that of a murdered man in any other circumstance. This enemy grieved more deeply, selflessly, and it struck something deep inside of him.
“WHY!” The word gurgled and bubbled out of his mouth, drowned by blood and the world weariness of the doomed.
Moved by an impulse, he knelt beside the dying space marine. He used his free hand to guide the enemy from his knees to a prone position on his back. He watched grimly as the enemy mouthed the word through bloody, numb lips once last time as the light faded from steel grey eyes.
He realized he had no answer for the corpse.
+++++++++
He lay in his new isolation chamber, letting the scalding water wash over his naked, outstretched form and breathed deeply the steam. The strike cruiser was gone. Not destroyed, not captured, just
gone; nothing was known of it. He could not remember leaving Terra, or even most of what had happened there. He hadn’t learned of the Warmaster’s death until weeks after his escape, but he had somehow managed to find his Warsmith and what was left of his Grand Company. Nobody he talked to seemed to know where they were going. Nobody he talked to seemed to know
anything. But that did not bother him; it did not seem to matter anymore.
“
First Captain.” The small vox set into the wall summoned him. His new isolation chamber did not need to be hidden like the last one, but he did sometimes wish he was still just a simple murderer in a Destroyer squad once more.
He knew he needed to see to the First Company and its many, many new recruits.
But the Primarch and the Warsmith need not exist for just a while longer.
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