Praetorian of Dorn Read online

  Sigismund paused, suddenly feeling the weight of his sword in his hand. The silence of the passage pressed around him even as his assault team moved up next to him.

  ‘Pull them back,’ he said into the vox.

  ‘My... lord...?’ came the voice of the officer, a burst of static chopping through the words.

  ‘All assault forces, pull them back to our ships, now.’

  The static rose again. ‘...confirm...’

  Sigismund turned to Rann. ‘Pull back to the gunships, immediate full withdrawal.’

  Rann nodded, and the vox clicked as though he were about to speak. Static shrieked and boiled across the channel. Sigismund felt his sword rise, pulled up by a cold instinct running under his skin.

  Green eyes lit in the dark. The air buzzed as armour activated. Lightning shivered down claws and blades as hulking figures stepped from the dark. Plasma lanced down the corridor. Sigismund was moving, sword already a blur as he ran to meet the enemy. Rann was calling out for a shield-wall, and the dark was gone, as fire and the roar of the ambush tore the silence apart.

  Trans-Neptunian region

  The Alpha Legion attack fleet spun from the dark. Two hundred warships, each of them falling end over end, like a swirl of dry leaves blowing through the night. In their path Pluto loomed, its face sparkling with the flash of weapons and the streak of engine fires, as warships engaged in battle. If an eye or sensor had looked out from one of the ships in that engagement, they would have seen only the open abyss of the interstellar gulf. The shine and wink of distant stars would have seemed bright and cold. What light there was might have caught a drift of dust, or the edge of a lump of ice-bound rock. Looking deeper it might have seen a glimmer of movement, and noted the thin light snagging on a sharp edge of something jagged and vast, arching slowly closer.

  Then the first engine fired, bright and true in the black, and then another and another. And the tumbling mass of ships were no longer falling, but spinning into formation, engines roaring to full life, void shields snapping into place, weapons turning to find targets as a battlefleet hundreds strong fell out of the dark at the edge of the sun’s light.

  The Imperial Fists fleet saw them. Already engaged with the intruders who had closed on Pluto, now they were facing a second, and vastly more deadly, enemy. Signals snapped between Sigismund’s warships. Snatches of confused shouts and static flooded the vox. Orders barked back and forth. Ships already engaging the intruder fleet began to turn, to meet this new threat.

  The battle-barge Alpha fired its first volley. A full payload of torpedoes launched from its prow. A mountain range of guns on its back hurled fire across the dark. Bombardment cannons punched shells out, one after another, building-sized breeches ringing as they slammed open to swallow the next shell. The rest of the Alpha Legion fleet spoke a second later. Fire raced ahead of the ships as they bore down on where the Imperial Fists vessels had moved to engage the first wave of intruders, on the edge of Pluto’s orbit.

  The first ship to die was the Judgement’s Intercession. It was an old ship, a dark-hulled grand cruiser, with scars from hundreds of battles that had failed to claim it. Macro shells exploded across its void shields. They crumpled, bursting like the skin of a soap bubble. Lance beams stabbed through the clouds of debris and struck the Intercession along the length of its gun-decks. Blocks of armour melted. The grand cruiser fired back, half blinded by the cloak of boiling gas wreathing its hull. Batteries howled into the inferno. Shells struck the shields on the oncoming Alpha Legion fleet. Then the second volley hit. The Judgement’s Intercession exploded, cleaving in two as though struck by a god’s axe.

  The Alpha Legion fleet fired in concert, ships pouring their volleys together, cutting into the engaged Imperial Fists formation. The defenders of the First Sphere of Sol began to die. Those nearest the newly appeared Alpha Legion fleet vanished as deluges of energy and explosions struck them. Shields and armour crumpled. Reactors breached and spheres of white plasma burst into being, racing out like hungry suns.

  Ten Imperial Fists ships were already stains of light and debris when the first salvoes of torpedoes hit. Haywire warheads detonated against the hull of the battle cruiser Arcadian, darkening its sensors and shields. Three double-stage warheads hit seconds later, sliding past the Arcadian’s silent defence turrets and slamming into its central mass. Melta charges reduced its armour to white-hot liquid an instant before the secondary charges sent the molten metal lancing into the ship’s guts. Pressure waves rippled through the corridors, blowing out hatches and crushing crew even as it stole the air from their lungs. The ship slewed sidewise, nose dropping from its path of flight as it burned from its core outwards.

  The Imperial Fists ships came around, raking fire at every target within reach of their guns. A battered intruder was caught between the guns of four frigates and torn apart by macro cannon fire. A pair of Alpha Legion gunboats tried to cut into the engine wake of a squadron of light cruisers, and ended in a splash of plasma and hull fragments.

  Within the ships that had been boarded, the Imperial Fists made their way back to their gunships. The Alpha Legion emerged from the dark to cut them off. The Imperial Fists fought on, pushing through explosions and gunfire, armour and boarding shields shedding sparks with each step.

  Then the twelve fireships hidden amongst the intruders exploded. Hulls packed with munitions and plasma reservoirs became expanding stars of blue-and-white light. Waves of energy engulfed ships, smothering their shields and swallowing their hulls. Heat blasted through cracks in armour. Human crew roasted at their stations. Oil and fuel ignited, and the fires raced on, tearing air from the lungs of the living, blowing through hatches and billowing through vents. Blackened ships emerged from the inferno, weeping burning atmosphere and sloughing armour.

  As the bulk of the Imperial Fists ships rolled amongst the blaze, the Acre battle-group thrust from where it had been holding close to Pluto’s outer orbit. Held back in case any of the intruder fleet broke through, the ships now kindled their engines to full burn and turned to meet the new enemy coming from the dark.

  The battlesphere was now a stretched ellipse, reaching from the edge of Pluto’s orbit into the gulf beyond. Nearest to the planet, the bulk of the Imperial Fists fleet was tangled amongst the ships that had first approached, while the Acre battle-group raced to cut off the main Alpha Legion fleet before it could join the fight.

  Spreads of torpedoes and nova shells kicked free of the Acre battle-group as it closed with the Alpha Legion fleet. Vast explosions flared as the shells detonated. Waves of energy broke across shields and hulls. The battle-group accelerated into the attack. At the front of the formation were the Warrior of an Unknown Sky, Storm Wrought and Victory’s Son. They fired in synchronised volleys. A torrent of shells poured from their gun-decks. Explosions wreathed the Alpha, blue, orange and pink curtains billowing out from its side as the volleys slammed into its shields.

  High in the command castle of the battle-barge, Silonius watched the confusion created by their assault spread and multiply in sculpted light and glowing markers. The battlesphere was a tangled mess. Hundreds of burning brawls between ships littered the holo-projection.

  The Imperial Fists were scattered across the void, some dying, many damaged, the remainder trying to find a target to fire on. Some of them were doing a lot of damage. Even as he watched, a trio of small ships cut across the nose of one of his vessels and broke its back with coordinated gunfire. The battle-group that had moved out to meet the Alpha and its sisters were still together, but their target had dissolved before them, scattering into dozens of small squadrons like shrapnel flung from a bomb blast. Wherever the Imperial Fists tried to apply strength the Alpha Legion moved in contradictory directions, lashing out with opportunist blasts of fire. It looked without shape, order or pattern; it looked like slaughter and disaster.

  Silonius noted every detail and saw t
hat everything was as it needed to be. He opened the signals channel to Hydra moon communication control.

  ‘Lord Alpharius, secondary phase is complete. Imperial Fists ships are fully engaged. Our own force strength has degraded by twenty per cent. Our numerical advantage is estimated at two hundred per cent. We are approaching range of the moon fortress guns. We await your word.’

  ‘Proceed,’ said the voice of the primarch.

  ‘By your will.’

  Alpha Legion ships turned from their courses and bore down on the orbits of Pluto. Kerberos was their first target. The fortress moon’s guns opened up. The blackness of space vanished. Plasma annihilators and turbo lasers drained reactors and breathed star-hot fury at the closing ships. Shields flared and cut out, blinking away one after another. The Alpha Legion held course. They were known as a Legion of stealth and guile, but they were still a Legion, and in that moment they rode into the mouth of the guns like the Angels of Death they were crafted to be.

  Building-sized shells slammed into Kerberos, shattering its void shields and toppling gun towers. Dust shook from passage ceilings beneath the moon’s crust. Kerberos’ fire intensified, and the first Alpha Legion ship died, battered to flakes of metal and pools of gas. A beam of las-fire caught the strike cruiser Silver Serpent and carved the weapons and bridge from its back. It pitched over, bleeding into the atmosphere. A rolling volley struck it in mid turn and ripped its spine open.

  But the rest of the fleet was close enough.

  Boarding torpedoes flew from prow launch tubes. Gunships boosted free of launch bays, spiralling as they danced through the flash and surge of explosions. Teleportation chambers flooded with ghost light, as hundreds of Terminators vanished and hurtled through the warp. The Alpha Legion ships flipped over and burned away from the teeth of Kerberos, as their scattered payload struck home.

  The Imperial Fists had prepared for a boarding assault on the fortress moon. They had prepared with a thoroughness that was bred into their nature. Inside Kerberos was a labyrinth of passages, blast doors and kill chambers. Teleport jammers had turned the warp into a jagged tangle of currents. A company of Imperial Fists – the 404th, the Lords of the Long Watch – garrisoned the fortress moon beside thousands of auxiliaries and battle-servitors. All were ready and waiting as the Alpha Legion assault began.

  The Lernaean Terminators struck first, appearing in pillars of light, armour breathing warp mist and smoke. Many were out of position. Some materialised within the fabric of the fortress, and shock waves roared out as overlapping matter collapsed in a scream of paradox. But many struck true. Five hundred of the Legion elite, clad in adamantium, they were the brutal edge of a Legion known for subterfuge, but still made for slaughter.

  Blizzards of gunfire met them, rattling from their armour, strobing shadow over guns and blades. They fired back. Plasma streams, bolt-rounds, melta-beams, flame and cannon shot ripped through blast shields, poured down corridors and pulped bodies. The Lernaeans advanced, striding in time with the roar of their gunfire. Their targets were the moon’s defence turrets. Sections of the defence network blinked out, as servitor and sensor clusters were ripped apart.

  The boarding torpedoes slammed into Kerberos. Their snouts exploded, boring holes through the moon’s skin as assault hatches unfurled. Warriors charged out, blazing and hacking through anything that moved. Across the moon, death laughed through the passages and outer chambers. In the primary docking trunk a demi-company of Alpha Legion met twenty of the Imperial Fists garrison. Thirty legionaries fell in the first second as heavy weaponry scythed through them. Units placed behind the Alpha Legion force cut them off and crushed them between two gun-lines.

  But for every invader who fell, the Alpha Legion’s fangs sank deeper into Kerberos.

  The squads already inside the station triggered the signal beacons they carried. Out in the void a wave of gunships locked on to the signals and homed in. Stormbirds and Storm Eagles spiralled into captured hangars or wounds blown in the surface. Each of them carried a handful of legionnaires, but their true cargo were Techmarines, forge masters and servitor thralls. They moved with speed, machine cant buzzing between them as they made for captured fire-control centres and key system nodes. All of them had a single purpose and order passed to them by Silonius from the primarch himself.

  ‘Turn the guns of Kerberos. Make them ours.’

  Four

  Imperial Fists frigate Unbreakable Truth

  Trans-Neptunian region – Pluto approach

  The fires of battle grew in Archamus’ eye as he strode through the machine decks. The projection of Pluto flickered and shone in the left eyepiece of his helm. Behind him Kestros and Andromeda followed, their voices silenced by the command he had just given.

  ‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked.

  ‘No, lord,’ said Kestros.

  ‘No, no questions,’ said Andromeda, her voice surprisingly steady considering she was almost running to keep up with their progress through the ship, as it closed on the orbits of Pluto. ‘In the circumstances there are very few options, given that I doubt you would advocate fleeing.’

  Kestros growled.

  ‘I thought not,’ she said.

  ‘My strike point?’ asked Kestros. ‘Hydra is a small moon, but still a moon. If this is to work we cannot be hunting through the whole fortress.’

  ‘The central communication centre,’ said Andromeda, without hesitation. ‘They will have taken or destroyed the means for our forces to sense or speak to one another. We start there.’

  They reached a junction. A squad of warriors armed with boarding shields met them and fell in beside Archamus without a word.

  ‘When you have...’ The name he was going to say caught against his teeth. He stopped in his stride and turned to look at Kestros, who had halted as well. ‘When you have the target confirmed, send the signal. I will be ready at the core reactor controls.’

  ‘And then you will become the destroyer, praetorian,’ said Andromeda, and he saw that the expression on her face had lost all traces of her bite and bile.

  ‘You may remain on board the Unbreakable Truth, mistress,’ he said, ‘for all the safety that may afford you.’

  She laughed, the sound high and clear.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Surviving this is unlikely to be the better option of those available. And besides, work undone is a tragedy.’

  Archamus nodded once. ‘As you will it, daughter of Luna.’

  ‘Thank you, son of Dorn.’

  ‘Will it succeed?’ asked Kestros as Archamus began to turn, and he saw that the sergeant’s jaw was set, his eyes focused on some distant point before them.

  ‘I do not know,’ he said. Around him the ship quivered as it cut through the void. Machine noise buzzed down the passage. The sound of running feet rang on the deck as servitors hurried to their tasks. ‘But I do know that it is what we must do. If any in Lord Sigismund’s fleet have heard our warning, they cannot reach Hydra in time. We alone know who is here, and are able to strike.’

  He held Kestros’ gaze for a moment before turning and striding down the corridor, his lone squad following in his wake. Before him the doors to the teleportation chambers clanked open. Kestros and Andromeda remained looking after him for a second, before the doors closed.

  Storage Vault 278, Hydra moon fortress

  Plutonian orbit

  Red light blinked across Myzmadra’s eyes as she came through the door. The crew serf at the opposite door turned fast and collected a volkite blast in the chest. Flame raced through his body, ash blurring the pulsing light. She was already at the next door. Morhan and the rest of the auxiliary squad were behind her. The hatch in front of her was sealed shut, the keypad stubbornly blinking failure at each attempt to open it. A glance at it told her that she could fire every weapon at it that they had and do no more than distress the surface.

/>   ‘Primary, this is Rho-Two,’ she said into the vox. ‘Entry into the vault is deadlocked. I repeat. Entry to target hangar is deadlocked.’

  ‘Code override is not possible,’ replied a voice across the vox, and she recognised the texture of Hekaron’s voice, growling from the communication control centre on the other side of the moon. ‘There is an auxiliary squad inside the chamber. Patching you through to vox-hailers inside the hatch. They have had no orders or external contact since the beginning of the mission. Make it sound good.’

  ‘Confirm,’ she said. ‘Make the link.’

  The vox-bead spat static in her ear.

  ‘This is auxiliary squad Aries,’ she shouted, panting breath into the words. Beyond the hatch her voice would be booming from vox speakers, into the hangar bay. ‘Open this hatch. Enemy is inside station and closing. We have Senior Astropath Nureen with us. We need access now. The enemy are inside the fortress and closing. I repeat, open this hatch.’

  The static boiled up in her ear again, but no reply came. She frowned and began again.

  ‘This is–’

  The hatch in front of her trembled, as mag bolts released. She fought down a thrill of surprise as the door hinged outwards. A metre-thick layer of adamantium and plasteel slid outwards, and inwardly she reflected that it would need a turbo laser to bore through it. That, or more time and patience than she had. She braced to push it as a crack appeared around the door. She leapt through the gap. She saw a figure fall in a tangle of limbs, and then she was through, weapon raised and firing as she ran. Her shot hit an auxiliary in the face and burned through his head. Behind her the rest of the squad poured through the hatch, and the other three auxiliaries died before they could fire a shot.

  She stopped after ten strides. The chamber extended away from her, echoing and empty. Structural pillars rose from the floor to meet the vaulted ceiling. Scuffed hazard stripes marked the edge of the floor. Pools of dirty light fell from grates set high above and at the edges. Lifter hoists hung from rails overhead, bunches of chain hanging from them.