Sybaris and the Roaring Blades / Righteous Blades

[MolotovKraken]

‘Provisional identification has been made of the enemy elements depicted in the visual images, and conventional wisdom is that there are three principal constituents to the enemy forces. ’Hilts displayed a grainy image that might at first glance have been that of an Imperial Guard army after a long and costly battle. And in some ways,that was exactly what they were. ‘Once upon a time these wretches were known as the Righteous Blades, ’Hilts explained. ‘Long ago, before the days of the Horus Heresy during the era of the Great Crusade, the Righteous Blades were one of the most decorated and respected infantry units in all the Imperium. Vassals to Fulgrim and his Emperor’s Children of the Legiones Astartes, the Righteous Blades fought on countless worlds in the name of mankind’s Emperor, and won several victories. ’Hilts paused to glare at the figures in the grainy image before continuing. ‘But when the Emperor’s Children were led by the Warmaster Horus in turning traitor and dedicating themselves to the Dark Gods of Chaos, the Righteous Blades followed behind. The Imperium lost a proud band of warriors that day, but the Righteous Blades lost their souls, becoming sense-addicted acolytes. ’The display cycled, and the rag-tag human army was replaced by a handful of massive figures in power armour.‘ And if those are the Roaring Blades, it stands to reason that these Emperor-forsaken heretics are the Emperor’s Children themselves.’ Hilts explained. He pressed a control stud, and the surveillance image of figures in power armour was replaced by a crisper image of a towering figure, clearly taken in a different setting entirely and from a much closer vantagepoint. ‘Now, this is the arch-traitor Sybaris of the Emperor’s Children Legion. Study his features and learn them well. ’In the image, Sybaris’s armour was enamelled with garish hues, eye-watering purple and squint-inducing gold, and encrusted with garish decoration and filigree like a tree choked with vines run amok. What flesh that could be seen within the armour was pale white, and studded with piercings, needles and rings of all varieties. The eyes which gazed out of that white skull seemed deadened and numb, the pupils so wide and dilated that scarcely any iris was visible. These were eyes that had seen too much and never quite recovered. It was a condition that was like the opposite of blindness – rather than milky orbs that could see nothing, these were blackeyes that could see everything, and could never look away. ‘There are reports that Sybaris’s warband has been sighted in this sector of space, and if so then it is possible that the Emperor’s Children on Vernalis may be under his direct command. If Sybaris is on Vernalis, locating and destroying him will be one of the primary objectives of Task Force Gauntlet.’ Sergeant Hilts paused for a moment before continuing. ‘But it isn’t just Traitor Guardsmen and Chaos Space Marines that we must account for. It also appears possible that daemons have been incarnated on the surface. ’The display cycled again, and now displayed lithe figures glimpsed only fleetingly, moving so fast that they were seen as little more than blurs of purple-tinged corpse-white flesh. ‘It has been speculated that these could be further debased elements of the Roaring Blades, perhaps mutated beyond recognition as human by prolonged and constant exposure to the warp. But it is conceivable that they might be incarnate lesser daemons of some stripe, which might account for their apparent speed. It isn’t considered a very likely scenario, but it’s one we’ll have to take into account. In any case, the most likely conclusion based on the evidence at hand is that there are members of the Roaring Blades Traitor Guard on the surface of Vernalis, either in connection with or under the command of some number of Chaos Space Marines of the Emperor’s Children Legion, and that the possibility exists of daemonic incarnation. ’He paused, his gaze scanning the faces of his squad. ‘What we don’t know is how many Roaring Blades and Emperor’s Children are on the planet, how they arrived on Vernalis and what they intend to accomplish in their invasion. There is no evidence of space-faring craft in orbit above the planet, and orbital surveys have found no sign of landings anywhere on the surface. Further, it appears that the indigenous Planetary Defence Forces have been completely routed. There is no indication that any organised resistance remains on Vernalis. We should consider this captured territory, and proceed accordingly.’

 

[MolotovKraken]

The forward-most of the Roaring Blades, a gaunt-faced and skeletal figure who might once have been a woman, took two shots to the chest from Scout du Queste’s bolt pistol and kept right on coming. A third shot seared into the Roaring Blade’s shoulder, but did not stop the heretic’s forward momentum. Throat open and howling a deafening shriek, the Roaring Blade swung along jagged-edged sabre in a killing-stroke aimed at Jean-Robur’s head. He was able to block the attack with his own blade, but the force of the impact jarred his arm to the shoulder, setting his teeth buzzing in his skull. Though the Roaring Blade wore ragged battle-armour which had deflected some of Jean-Robur’s shots, at least one of the three bolts that Jean-Robur had fired had bored into the Roaring Blade’s flesh itself. But even with one of its arms blown away below the elbow, the injury was not slowing the Roaring Blade down – if anything, it seemed to draw strength from the injuries, even pleasure. The cracked and dirt-caked lips of the renegade pulled back in a sickening parody of a smile as Scout du Queste forced it back with a shove of his own sword against the jagged sabre. The Roaring Blade’s shriek turned into something that was almost a song, eyes wide and ecstatic, the rising and falling of its hoarse and croaking voice like the tones of some insane hymn to dark daemonic powers. Even with his Lyman’s ear to filter out the din, Jean-Robur felt the Roaring Blade’s song like a knife in the brain, lunatic harmonics that hinted at inhuman intelligences from beyond the veil of the material world. He ignored the noise as best he could, shooting his bolt pistol from the hip, the shot catching the Roaring Blade in the abdomen. Then he thrust forwards with his sword. Even while blood and viscera pored from the fourth and newest wound in its body, the heretic all-but-swooned in ecstasy, and when it battered aside Scout du Queste’s thrust it was with even more force and speed than before.

There were nearly a thousand of the Roaring Blades pouring over the hills towards the column of 10th Company Scouts. The Traitor Guard got their name from their predilection for close combat with bladed weapons of all kinds, and for the fearsome clamour they made in the ecstasy of battle, and the howls they made as they raced towards the Scouts certainly lived up to the name. The Roaring Blades were so corrupted by their worship of Slaanesh that they found pleasure in all sensation, the more intense the sensory input the greater the pleasure, and so sought out pain as the ultimate indulgence. It was believed by Imperial intelligence that the nervous systems of the Roaring Blades had been altered by their masters in the Emperor’s Children, so that their bodies now reacted in the same way to pain that a normal human body reacted to adrenaline. As a result, if a Roaring Blade received injuries on the field of battle, even fatal ones, they would actually be strengthened as a result, becoming ever more ferocious and deadly, right up to the point when they finally collapsed from their wounds. Most of the Roaring Blades were armed only with sabres and scimitars, but a few here and there were equipped with lasrifles and shotguns of antique Imperial make, no doubt scavenged from the bodies of the Traitor Guard’s fallen enemies. Had the Roaring Blades kept their distance and attempted simply to exchange fire with Captain Taelos and his Scouts with ranged weaponry, the twenty Imperial Fists in the column would doubtless have made short work of them, even given the Roaring Blades’ superior numbers. But heedless of any personal risk to themselves or the potential casualties they would incur, the Roaring Blades instead rushed headlong towards the Scouts and their commanders, swords waving in their hands and yelling themselves hoarse as they charged mindlessly towards their enemies. It was a tactic of desperation, or so it seemed to Captain Taelos at first, to simply throw superior numbers against the enemy, to bury a better-armed and better-equipped opponent in mounds of your own dead. But as the Roaring Blades ploughed ahead despite the first shots of bolt-fire which exploded in arms and heads and chests like red blossoms, and Captain Taelos saw first hand the effects of the Roaring Blades’ rewired nervous systems, he was forced to admit that perhaps there was less desperation in the tactic than he had supposed. For every Roaring Blade who was dropped by a direct shot from a bolt pistol to the head, or left incapable of advancing when well-placed bolt-fire blew their legs out from under them, there were five more who charged on, ignoring the gaping wounds in their trunks and arms.

. Though the bull of a Roaring Blade was the largest, he was not the swiftest, and the traitors on either side reached Zatori’s position first. The two Roaring Blades scarcely had time to address an attack when Zatori had cut them down, his combat blade slicing the legs out from under one and taking an arm off the other. They went tumbling to the ground, their blood seeping out onto the grey stones underfoot. But there was still the largest of the three to contend with, and he promised to be more of a challenge than his fellows. Bellowing like an enraged grox, the Roaring Blade spun his two sabres like the teeth of gears swinging ever towards each other but never colliding. Zatori could feel the wind of the blades’ movement just as he could scent the sour stench of the Roaring Blade’s breath as the bull bellowed on. Zatori stood with his weight balanced over both his feet, his sword still held across the line of his body. But as the Roaring Blade closed the distance to him, scissoring the two sabres together at the Scout’s head, Zatori suddenly slid his front foot forwards without moving his back foot from its position. His torso dropped lower as his feet spread wider apart, and the two sabres of the Roaring Blade whistled harmlessly over Zatori’s head. In that same moment, Zatori swung the tip of his combat blade from left to right with all his strength, pulling the blade’s edge across the Roaring Blade’s forearms in a powerful cutting stroke. The force of the stroke after sliding into the splits forced Zatori off-balance, as he had anticipated, and he controlled his fall so that he dropped back down on his hindquarters onto the flinty ground. But even as Zatoriwas scrambling back to his feet, the two sabres of the Roaring Blade clattered to the shale, along with a pair of severed hands. Zatori looked up into the face of the bull, and saw that the Roaring Blade was awash in ecstasy as the pain of his injuries was transformed by his rerouted nerves into pleasure.

The Roaring Blades were a motley mix of sizes and types, men and women of all imaginable skin colours and facial features, as though they had been selected at random from a hundred different inhabited worlds. And for all that Veteran-Sergeant Hilts knew, that was precisely how they had been assembled. In his experience Chaos cults were insidious, creeping their way into the hearts of civilisations like worms boring their way through the flesh of a fruit, seeking the dark core where they could breed and spread, eventually infecting the whole from the inside out. He had seen it on countless worlds in his centuries of service to the Chapter, as the Imperial Fists had time and again been involved in the attempt to scour the taint of heresy from one world or another. The clothing, skin and hair of the Roaring Blades were coated with a fine powder of grey dust, the same shade as the flint and shale under foot. But even through this patina of grey one could glimpse the hues of purpleand gold that their ragged uniforms once had been, now dingy and tattered. Most of the Roaring Blades had their bodies and heads completely shorn of any hair, many of them with piercings and elaborate tattoos marking across their soiled flesh, and their wide eyes had the same black stare as Hilts had seen looking out from the faces of Emperor’s Children, pupils so large that no iris could be seen, eyes that had seen and experienced too much and could now never look away again.

 

[MolotovKraken]

The veteran-sergeant danced back, turning his own blade in a tight arc around the Roaring Blade’s scimitar, turning the point away, and then lunged forwards a thrust of his own. His sword skewered the renegade through the shoulder, but the enemy only smiled, luxuriating in the sensation of the cut, and swung his scimitar one-handed at Hilts’s side. Using the sword which was still stuck deep in the Roaring Blade’s shoulder as a fulcrum, Hilts levered him to the side, causing the Roaring Blade’s swing to go wide. Then, as the Roaring Blade toppled off balance and fell sprawling onto his side, Hilts yanked the blade of his sword out of the enemy’s chest, then speared downwards with his sword, driving the point deep into the Roaring Blade’s head from ear to ear. Hilts planted a booted foot on the Roaring Blade’s face, bracing the enemy’s head while he yanked his sword free once more. Then he turned to face the next enemy to rush towards him. These Roaring Blades might once have been as human as any of the inhabitants of the Imperium that the Imperial Fists were sworn to protect, but Hilts did not recognise any kinship with the creatures who lay dead at his feet. These wretches had long ago surrendered their humanity in exchange for the favour of the Dark Gods of Chaos, and they would get no mercy from Veteran-Sergeant Hilts, nor from any under his command. The Imperial Fists made short work of the thousand Roaring Blades, but their victory was only temporary. As the Scouts regrouped, another wave of Traitor Guard came pouring over the surrounding hills, more than a thousand of them in all. Only this time the enemy did not simply hurl themselves against the Imperial Fists, but approached with more caution, targeting those areas where their fallen brethren had been able to inflict the most damage and disruption.

When Scout s’Tonan looked back to the rise of the hill for the sniper, he could see that the Roaring Blade had shouldered his weapon and was now rushing down to join his fellow cultists in close combat with the Scouts. Most likely the lasrifle’s power cells had drained before the sniper had been able to take another shot.

But there was still the Roaring Blade before him to contend with. Tall and lank, looking like a skeleton that had been coated in a thin covering of skin and leather, or perhaps like some kind of ragged scarecrow, the Roaring Blade wielded a long, curved sabre in a two-handed grip. His skull-like head was tilted back slightly, his chapped lips open in a wide circle, and from his thin throat a disconcertingly loud sound echoed, the kind of bellowing roar that had given the Traitor Guard their name. But despite the fact that he resembled a barely animated skeleton, and had his face tilted back towards the heavens, the sound issuing from his raw throat seemingly enough to drain the scarecrow of all his strength, he was fiendishly quick with his blade, and so far had rebuffed all of Jean-Robur’s attempts to land a killing blow.

After the last of the Roaring Blades was put down, Veteran-Sergeant Hilts paused to inspect one of the fallen enemy’s lasrifles, and it was revealed that the firearm was an antique that’d had only enough charge in its power cells for two or three shots before it was completely drained. The lasrifle was of use now only as a cudgel or club, its usefulness as a ranged weapon completely lost. Hilts broke the lasrifle in half with a single footfall of his booted foot. ‘A few hundred infantry armed only with blades and depleted weapons? This can’t be meant as a serious threat, can it?’ Captain Taelos glanced at three lifeless bodies in gold, which were laid out side-by-side at the bottom of the valley. ‘Threat enough to cost the Chapter three neophytes,’ the captain answered, ‘but not much more than that. ’Veteran-Sergeant Derex, whose Squad Ursus was now only seven Scouts strong, scanned the horizon, his bolter still in his hands. ‘The reports were that the Chaotic forces had overrun this world, and wiped out the PDF to a man.

The figures he had seen through the magnoculars had once been Space Marines, Taelos knew, though it was difficult now to see the resemblance, whether with their armour or with the bodies within. Emblazoned somewhere on each of the suits of armour was a ring surmounted by a cross topped with a crescent – the symbol of the Pleasure Lord, Slaanesh. Taken together with the colouration and barbaric decoration displayed by the figures, the dedication to Slaanesh indicated that these were renegades of the Emperor’s Children Legion. And the sonic weaponry they carried meant they were Noise Marines, slaves of Slaanesh who hungered for any and all manner of visceral sensation.‘ The rest appear to be of the same Traitor Guard we encountered en route to the Bastion,’ Taelos continued, ‘though these Roaring Blade sappear considerably better armed.’

Even the weak and untrained eye of an unaugmented human, if any of the refugees had been brave enough to stand beside their defenders, could have seen the thousand or more Roaring Blades who were even now stepping onto the lower slopes of the mountain Bastion, and the half-dozen or so Noise Marines who marched at their head. With a roar like the voice of hell itself a blast from a Noise Marine’s sonic weapon lanced into the side of the mountain only handspans from where Zatori stood. Scout Zatori raised the plasma gun, taking aim with a prayer on his lips. ‘Oh Dorn, dawn of our being, be with us, illuminate us. ’The blindingly bright bolt of plasma shot through the open air, narrowly missing the Noise Marine but completely disintegrating the head and shoulders of a Roaring Blade standing a metre or so to the left. The siege of the Bastion had begun.

Taking only a slight second to sight the target Valen had spotted and to aim, Zatori squeezed the firing stud on the plasma gun’s grip and sent another blinding bolt of plasma lancing out towards the Noise Marine, a massive figure in power armour enamelled in bright pink and garish gold. At that exact instant, though, the Noise Marine fired his sonic weapon at the barricades, waves of devastating harmonics so loud they could be seen as a visible rippling in mid air. Zatori fell back behind cover as quickly as he was able, letting the plasma gun swing on its tether while he clamped his hands over his ears, but even missing the brunt of the sonic blast he was still hammered enough that his brain felt as though it were vibrating out of his skull, his teeth buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.

The sonic weapons used by most of the Noise Marines were deadly enough on their own, capable of unleashing waves of destructive harmonics at their targets. But the larger variety were even more devastating, focusing a throbbing bass note into an ever-climbing crescendo that could literally shake a target to death inside their own skin and skull.

 

[MolotovKraken]

A pair of Roaring Blades were surging up the southern ramp, and Zatori potted them both in quick succession with plasma bolts.‘…Hilts… overrun by incursion from below…’ came the voice of Veteran-Sergeant Hilts, the vox-comm laced with static. ‘Roaring Blades infiltrating catacombs… Will send reinforcements… when able…’‘Belay that,’ cut in the voice of Captain Taelos, only slightly garbled by static. ‘My team and I are already en route. Hilts, you and your team deal with the incursion from below. Zatori, hold out. We’re almost to you. ’Zatori nodded, for no reason, then checked himself. ‘Acknowledged,’ he voxed in reply. There were a dozen Roaring Blades encroaching on the southern ramp, howling their ear-splitting song, and a Noise Marine following close behind. Zatori chanced a quick glance at the indicator on the stock of the plasma gun. He could fire it twice more, perhaps three times, but then the coils would begin to overheat, and he would be in imminent danger of a blowback and explosion.

The Noise Marine was about to fire his sonic weapon as the plasma gun hurtled end over end through the air towards him. Zatori barely had the chance to begin to fall back behind the barricades when the plasma gun erupted in a blinding ball of expanding plasma, engulfing the Noise Marine and the Roaring Blades entirely. The heat from the explosion singed the eyebrows from Zatori’s face before he could get to cover, and the sound of the blast was so loud it eclipsed even the deafening roar of the Chaos army.

Zatori danced back a pace as the Roaring Blade advanced, howling his insane song of praise to the Despoiler. Not for the first time was Zatori glad that his hearing had not yet completely recovered from the effects of the plasma gun’s explosion.

Scout made sure no other Roaring Blades would be following behind. The invaders who had already made it into the catacombs had retreated ahead of Hilts’s bolter-fire all the way up to the dead-end at the far end of the passageway. Even over the chatter of his bolter Hilts could hear the echoing howls and roars of the heretics, and the whistle and whine of their weapons as they fired blindly around the curve of the passageway at his position. A short distance off lay the bodies of the three Vernalian nobles who had allowed the Roaring Blades into the subterranean passageways in the first place, by removing parts of the barricades that Hilts’s Scouts had put in place. Hilts was sorry to have saved the three wretches from the excruciators of the Inquisition. Heretics such as these did not deserve the Emperor’s mercy that he had bestowed upon them. But he hadn’t the luxury to provide them the justice they so richly deserved.

There were moments when it seemed to Scout Zatori that the night would never end, and that the Roaring Blades who slipped in their twos and threes through the gap were without number. Through the narrow opening in the hatch could be heard the constant cacophony of heavy-weapons fire as the Thunderhawk poured turbolaser fire and ordnance down on the besieging force, and the Emperor’s Children and the Roaring Blades returned with whatever weapons they had at their disposal. But as the first light of dawn came streaming through the gap, the number of Roaring Blades slowed to a trickle. And it seemed to Zatori that the last few that he and his squad mates had cut down hadn’t had much fight left in them, and had made their way through the gap in search of refuge, trying to escape the firestorm outside, and not out of any serious attempt to invade the bastion.

Then he came to the sealed-off tunnel through which the enemy had gained access to the Bastion, and found that Veteran-Sergeant Hilts and Scouts Fulgencio and Rhomec had been successful in sealing it off. No more Roaring Blades would be making their way into the Bastion from those tunnels. And though he found Scout Rhomec’s lifeless body a short distance away, he still had not found Hilts or Fulgencio.

A teeming mass of figures came surging out of the black clouds to the north and south, making straight for the Bastion. It was an army of Chaos. But unlike any the Scouts had ever seen before. There were thousands upon thousands of Roaring Blades, waving their sabres and scimitars overhead, howling at the top of their lungs. There were Chaos Space Marines in their dozens, wielding massive sonic weaponry and singing unholy hymns to their dark masters. Daemons, little more than purple-tinged corpse-white streaks, dashed this way and that, moving almost faster than the eye could see. The warband was so large that it dwarfed the besieging force that the Imperial Fists had withstood in the previous day and night. This was an army devoted to Slaanesh, marching straight towards the Bastion, with the petrochem lifeblood of the planet burning to soot and ash in their wake. ‘Wait,’ Veteran-Sergeant Karn said, narrowing his gaze. He unclipped the magnoculars from his waist and raised them to his eyes. ‘So I was right. ’He lowered the magnoculars and turned to Captain Taelos, who still sat propped against the hatch’s jamb. ‘What is it, brother-sergeant?’ ‘I’ve spotted their leader, captain,’ Karn replied. ‘It is the arch-traitor Sybaris himself.’

He looked out to the east, where the thousands of the enemy were marching ever closer to the Bastion, the black smoke of the burning sea roiling behind them. If they retreated inside the Bastion and closed the hatch, the forces of Sybaris would make short work of it, burning and blasting their way in with little trouble. But with the numbers of Roaring Blades, Emperor’s Children and daemons now advancing on them a strategy such as they employed in the night, locking down the open hatch to create a narrow defile and then picking off the enemy as they approached, was simply not feasible. There were simply too many enemies that could be thrown into the breach, and with only six Imperial Fists on hand to stand against them it was only a matter of time before Taelos and his Scouts were overrun.

 

[MolotovKraken]

‘Dorn, be with us,’ Taelos said, and looked up to see a flight of Thunderhawk gunships streaking across the sky overhead, the black-fist icon of the Imperial Fists emblazoned on them. ‘Captain Lysander transmitting!’ came a voice crackling over the vox.‘Brothers respond! ’From the black clouds which gathered overhead a hail of drop-pods came plummeting down, too fast for Sybaris’s forces to hit with anti-aircraft fire, retro-rockets blooming like newborn stars as the pods gradually slowed their descent.

His suspicions had been correct, then. Captain Lysander had left Taelos and the Scouts of the 10thCompany on Vernalis as bait, to lure the main body of Sybaris’s warband out of hiding. And the force that had attacked Quernum had clearly been a diversion, too small a force to have been the full warband that had overrun Vernalis.

But held in the balance were the lives of the Vernalian civilians who had survived the final assault by the forces of Chaos, huddled with the mountain Bastion. The Imperial Fists had sacrificed their own, but in the end victory had been theirs. There was no way of knowing whether the arch-traitor Sybaris had been among the fallen on the grey dunes of Vernalis, or if he had once again slipped through the Imperial Fists’ fingers. But the fact that the warband had been thoroughly routed was not in doubt. By the time Task Force Gauntlet had finished its relentless attacks, there had not even been enough enemy elements left standing to trouble the handful of Scouts who’d waited the battle’s end in the Bastion, much less the hundreds of fully armed and able-bodied Space Marines of the 1st and 5th Companies who had descended from on high.

 

[MolotovKraken]

If any among Task Force Gauntlet recalled that the Emperor’s Children had before their fall to heresy been the most devoted warriors of the Imperium, brilliant strategists and supremely efficient combatants, none of them were willing to mention the fact aloud.

Why?’ the veteran-sergeant said in outraged disbelief, narrowing his gaze at the three Vernalians. ‘What madness is this?’ Over fed Peregrine lowered his eyes to the ground, while dour Furion merely scowled, but Ofidia glared at the veteran-sergeant with undisguised malice. ‘Our Lord, the Prince of Pleasure, the Despoiler Himself, is come to cleanse Vernalis of the stain of Imperial dominion,’ Ofidia said haughtily, her head held high. ‘We give ourselves to Him freely, and will deliver the petrochem riches of this world for His holy uses. ’Hilts tightened his jaw, repelled by what he heard.‘ It was you who summoned the Ruinous Powers to this world, wasn’t it?’ he said, though he already suspected the answer.‘ Lickspittle,’ Furion sneered, ‘gambolling fool for your parasitic “Emperor”. We entreated our Lord to dispatch His holy warriors to come to our aid. Too long has the mineral wealth of this world gone to prop up your dying Imperium. Now that wealth will service the undying glory of the Prince of Lust!’ Hilts glanced at Scout du Queste, who was looking with disbelief on the three members of a secret cult of Slaanesh.‘What happened?’ the veteran-sergeant prompted. ‘Did your plans go awry when you failed to shut down the planetary defences?’ At this Peregrine raised his arm and shook a thick-fingered fist in rage. ‘The fools in the Planetary Defence Forces sooner died than reveal the access codes. But it is no matter. Once we have sacrificed the remaining members of the population huddled in the chambers above us to Slaanesh, we will quit the Bastion and the Holy Warriors of the Emperor’s Children will level this mountain to the ground.’

Dorn had been charged by the Emperor Himself with fortifying the Imperial Palace on Holy Terra. But you have not yet been told how this led inexorably to a great schism within the ranks of the Legions. Among his many worthy attributes, Primarch Rogal Dorn was always truthful, no matter the circumstances. And when Horus once proclaimed that Perturabo of the Iron Warriors was the greatest master of siege warfare in the Crusade, Primarch Fulgrim of the Emperor’s Children called upon Dorn, asking in jest whether even the defences of the Imperial Palace which Dorn had constructed were proof against the Iron Warriors. Dorn, truthful to a fault, answered that his defences were proof against any assault, so long as the fortifications were intact and well manned. Hearing this, Perturabo flew into a rage, hurling imprecations and a stream of unfounded accusations at Dorn. ‘The wedge thus driven between the primarchs grew ever wider, with neither Legion again serving in the same campaign. And when Horus led his treacherous vanguard against the Emperor, Perturabo and Fulgrim were at his heels, while Dorn and his Imperial Fists remained steadfast at the side of the Emperor. Now the Iron Warriors and the Emperor’s Children serve the ruinous powers, and would seek to despoil all the works of man, while the Imperial Fists stand resolute in the Imperium’s defence. But as Rogal Dorn himself taught us, there is no place that an Imperial Fist cannot fortify and defend against all enemies, including the galaxy itself!’

 

[MolotovKraken]

‘Do you think he suspects?’ Peregrine said, as soon as the echoes of Taelos’s footfalls disappeared down the hall. Furion only shook his head in disgust, but Ofidia turned to the corpulent noble, her smile replaced with an angry scowl. ‘If he suspected, you fool,’ Ofidia hissed in anger, ‘we would all be dead. So stay quiet and keep your wits about you. We will not have long to wait now.’

‘This is intolerable,’ shouted the man in robes the colour of a Vernalian sunrise, the fiery reds and garish yellows offset by the cool blue of the luminescent tattoo inked upon his forehead. Delmar Peregrine’s family crest depicted a raptor in flight, but there was little of the hunter about the man. Corpulent, what muscle he might once have possessed had long since run to fat, the flesh of his fingers verging like the petrochem tide around the edges of the too-small rings he wore, threatening to swallow them whole. ‘Our homes lie in ruins, the malefactors still walk freely over the land and we’re kept prisoners here in the Bastion by those who should be our salvation?’ Captain Taelos took a deep breath in through his nostrils and held it for a moment, finding his still calm centre and trying not to laugh. If the Vernalian’s misplaced outrage was not so aggravating then it might have been comical. ‘You are the ruling elite of Vernalis,’ Taelos finally said, his tone level and low but with a hint of iron beneath the words. ‘And I am charged with defending you. ’‘You must forgive Delmar, Captain Taelos,’said the woman in the purple gown, who came to lay a slender hand on Peregrine’s round shoulder. Meribet Ofidia’s family crest was a golden medallion hung on a chain around her neck, depicting a serpent coiled around the trunk of a tree.‘ His holdings in the north were the worst hit of all in the recent unpleasantness, and we have yet to have word of the fate of his sisters and their families.’Ofidia smiled like a hungry serpent, teeth white against lips the colour of blood, while Peregrine glowered darkly at her, eyes shadowed beneath his thick and bushy brows. ‘I sympathise,’ Captain Taelos said, nodding slightly in Ofidia’s direction, his eyes cutting back towards Peregrine.

‘These must be trying circumstances for you’ – he paused, and then added – ‘and for your people. ’It was a calculated addition, as he had yet to hear any mention by the threeself-proclaimed ‘leaders’ of the people they ostensibly were leading. The three Vernalian nobles seemed far more wrapped up in their own immediate concerns, in one way or another. ‘But you must understand that while some level of threat remains, you are all perfectly safe now, and that the sergeants and squads under my command will do whatever is necessary to scour any remaining taint of Chaos from your world. ’The serpentine Ofidia’s smile faltered, if only for a moment, and Taelosdetected the briefest flash of annoyance on her painted features.‘If that is true,’said Septimus Furion from the shadows at the far end of the chamber, ‘then why have two-thirds of your… of your Scouts, as you say… why have two-thirds been sent elsewhere on Vernalis? If any threat remains to the security of the Bastion and we who harbour within, should the full force available to you not be stationed here in our defence? Or do you simply leave enough guns here to keep us prisoner? This hardly seemsthe sort of task typically given to Space Marines. ’The third Vernalian noble wore a tunic and trousers crafted of a velvetdyed a blue so dark it was almost black, the colour of a moonless Vernalian night. Picked out in gold thread across Furion’s breast was his family crest, depicting a small land-mammal reared up on its hind legs, with its forelimbs held out defensively before it. The man had small close-set eyes, and though he was so thin as to appear that he seldom ate at all, when not speaking Furion sucked at his teeth habitually as if he had food stuck between them. Perhaps he was too busy looking dour and unhappy to everfind time to eat, Taelos mused. Was it simply Furion’s sour disposition, then, that made it seem that he was raising objections which he himself didn’t seem to share? It appeared to Taelos that Furion didn’t care a whit where the Imperial Fists went or what they did. It was almost as if Furion was objecting simply because it was expected of him. Captain Taelos turned to address Furion, who had remained sitting at the end of the table that dominated the centre of the chamber since Taelos had entered. As the captain spoke, Ofidia and Peregrine crossed the floor to seat themselves at a pair of empty chairs beside him.

As Taelos spoke he studied the expressions of the three Vernalian nobles. Was it possible that Furion’s frown deepened when the captain mentioned changes to the defensive arrangements of the Bastion, or that Ofidia had darted a quick glance in Furion’s direction at that same instant? ‘We are most gratified by your assurances, captain,’ Ofidia said through her widening smile, the gold of her medallion flashing brightly against the rich purple of her gown. ‘I know that, with you, we are in capable hands. ’Captain Taelos felt that there was something subtly wrong, but could not put a finger on what precisely it might be. Something in Ofidia’s too-easy smile, perhaps, or in Furion’s obligatory objections? Or was it simply that Taelos was still uncertain in diplomatic missions after his failure on Nimbosa, the last time he was required to sheath his blade and holster his bolter and use mere words as his only weapons?