Legion of the Damned

Like a poor marksman, the Blood God will have missed his target and his followers would have failed him. Certus- Minor will not be some deadrock, bathed in slaughter and left behind by the Cholercaust like a cautionary tale. The cemetery worlders will live and the Imperium shall know it. The continued beating of mortal hearts shall give other worlds hope. They shall know that the Cholercaust can be beaten. It will put fire in their bellies and belief in their hearts. Perhaps we will not stop the Blood Crusade here. Perhaps we will not survive. But if we fail, we do so in the hope that others – both mortal and immortal – will succeed. Let that be our legacy.’

Brother Micah comes up behind us with the Fifth Company’s Chaplain. Shadrath gives me the dread gaze of his half-skull helm.

‘Brother Novah has word from the commander of the Apotheon. The defence monitor has engaged the enemy. She reports a vast Chaos fleet – vessels without number. The Blood God’s warriors and minions. Their landing is under way. The Cholercaust is here.’

‘The pontifex?’ I ask.

Micah and Chaplain Shadrath part. Behind them is a Sister of Battle in cobalt plate, a boltgun in her slender gauntlets and a pair of bolt pistols at her hip. Palatine Sapphira of the Order of the August Vigil.

‘Pontifex Oliphant is safe,’ Sapphira tells me. ‘He is down in Umberto II’s vault with as many of his remaining priests and attendants as we could accommodate.’

‘A kindness,’ I return.

‘The pontifex told me of your plan,’ the Sister reveals. ‘A kindness on your own part, corpus- captain – if a macabre one. My Sisters thought your interest in the Certusians lay only in feeding them as fodder to the enemy.’

‘I’m happy to disappoint them.’

‘The vault door is thick and crafted from adamantium. It should resist all but the most determined assault. I have garrisoned the vault with a squad of my Sisters, under a trustworthy subordinate. I offer myself and the rest of my mission in defence of the city, where the holy work of the God-Emperor might be done.’

I hold out my gauntlet and take her own.

‘You are most welcome, Sister,’ I tell her. ‘We are honoured to share the burden with you.’

Shadrath steps forwards, looking up into the sky.

‘Chaplain?’

Carefully, he takes off his half-skull helmet, revealing his face. It is the first time I have gazed upon his features. The shock of white hair, the unsmiling mouth and the implacable lines of almost elemental determination are the primarch’s own. Like Demetrius Katafalque before him, Shadrath had been blessed with the features of the Emperor’s truest Angel. I follow his gaze to see the flash of gunfire in the sky overhead, the searing burn of the Apotheon’s mighty lance.

‘Let’s to our posts,’ Chaplain Shadrath rumbles, his eyes still on the deep expanse of the heavens above. ‘Rogal Dorn waits for us at the Eternity Gate.’

We nod and walk slowly away, with the Chaplain’s words still ringing in our ears. We are silent, for we have no words to better them.

PART FOUR Deus Ex Damnation…

Chapter Eighteen Cholercaust

Roaring.

The distant darkness gave up the rage-fuelled cacophony of murderous intention. The Blood God’s disciples honoured him with their bombast. The stomach-curdling din of barbarism and animal fury. The Cholercaust had arrived and it wanted the cemetery world to know. A deafening barrage of ferocity, made up of personal, if mindless, expressions of individual hatred. Unsettling, in sheer volume alone.

In a demonstration of steadfastness – the kind Kersh reasoned the Charnel Guard and remaining Certusians would need to see – the Scourge stood atop the ichor-splattered battlement. Once again the Imperial forces would try to hold the rubble-mound perimeter, falling back concentrically as the need arose. With the cemetery worlders – vulnerable men, women and children – buried beneath the bordering necroplex, the narrow alleys, stairs and cloisters of the city could play their part if needed. And, if it came to it, the imposing architecture of the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum had been established as a final fall-back position. Kersh couldn’t hope to win against the Blood God’s unstoppable host, but the Excoriator planned on putting off the eventuality for as long as possible. The Fifth Company would sell their lives dearly and fight for as long as they could.

There was still a dim possibility that Epistolary Melmoch’s appeal had reached out across the stars to a brother-Chapter. The Scourge rested his gauntlet on the angular edges of his gladius pommel. He had not entirely given up on the slim possibility that their kin could arrive to turn the tide. He hadn’t burdened his Fifth Company brothers with such damning hope, though suspected it already beat in the hearts of each and every one. Regardless of such mortal folly, the howling tsunami of hate surging across the burial grounds at them was theirs alone.

The dread expectation was palpable. With his enhanced hearing the Scourge could hear the creak of Certusian fingers against triggers, the rapid beating of hearts in serf-manned gun emplacements, and the deep and determined breathing of Excoriators in their battle-helms. Then he saw it. The first offerings of the darkness. Chaos martyrs. The Cholercaust meat shield. Bodies moved through the necroplex, racing towards Obsequa City, the battlement perimeter and certain death.

The Scourge swore. He recognised them immediately. Blood-crazed cemetery worlders. Victims of the gall- fever that had swept the planet in the wake of the Keeler Comet. Husbands, mothers, children. Certusians all. Drawn to Obsequa City like a plague of moths irresistibly summoned to a flame. Kersh felt their urge to kill across the graves. He felt the Charnel Guard and surviving members of the hastily created Certusian militia tighten at the sight of their kindred: neighbours, friends, family. He felt the bile rising within him, his hatred for the servants of darkness and their barbarous tactics. Over the vox-channel, the corpus-captain heard similar confirmations from along the line. The Thunderhawk Impunitas, circling high above the city, also reported incoming targets. Peering up into the sky, the corpus-captain watched the stars blink. He got the impression of an ungainly daemon-flock, thunderbolting above them on leathery wings.

Kersh looked back down at the havoc storming its way across the burial grounds towards them. He hated himself for the order he was about to give. He could not afford to waste their hardest-hitting ammunition on such cannon-fodder, yet couldn’t allow the masses to swamp the battlement in expectation of hand-to-hand combat alone.

‘All battle-brothers and Sisters on the perimeter to hold fire,’ he commanded across the channel. ‘Heavy weapons to hold fire. Guardsmen and militia to fire at will.’

Shots were hesitant at first, sporadic bolts of light flung across the expanse followed by brief chatters of auto- and stub-fire. The busy landscape of the necroscape impeded the advance of the blood-mental Certusians in a way that it hadn’t done so with the many-limbed spawn-swarm of the immaterial incursion. Crazies and cemetery world killers found it difficult to charge at the front line when hampered by the expanse of tombstones, statues and funeral architecture that was the necroplex. This made the howling madmen easier targets, even for the ceremonial Charnel Guard and ill-trained militia, and before long the perimeter lit up the night with a streaming lightshow of near-continuous las-fire. Auto-fire ripped through bodies clambering over grave markers and graven obstacles. Stub-round-riddled torsos lay draped over decorative stone sarcophagi, and lunatics joined the corpse-carpet of