Helsreach

past.

CHAPTER VIII Oberon

D

omoska muttered the

Litany of Focus as she looked through the sight of her lasrifle. She blinked behind her sunglare goggles, then raised them to look through the gunsight again without the tinted lenses darkening her vision.

'Uh, Andrej?' she called over her shoulder.

The two soldiers were at their modest camp on the perimeter of D-16's boundaries. Sat on the desert sands, cleaning their rifles, the fact they were away from the main base also set them apart from the other forty-eight Steel Legionnaires assigned to this pointless, suicidal duty.

Andrej didn't look up from his lap, where he was wiping laspistol power cell packs with an oily rag.

'What is it now, eh? I'm busy, okay?'

'Is that a gunship?'

'What are you talking about, eh?' Andrej was from Armageddon Prime, on the far side of the world. His accent always made Domoska grin. Almost everything he said sounded like a question.

'That,' she pointed into the sky, close to the horizon. Nothing was visible to the naked eye, and Andrej groped on the coat laid out on the ground, reaching for his detached gunsight.

'Listen, okay, I am trying to respect the spirit of my weapon, yes? What is this you want? I see no gunship.' He stared through his sight, squinting.

'A few degrees above the horizon.'

'Oh, hey, yes that is a gunship, okay? You must report it at once.'

'This is Domoska, at Boundary Three. Contact, contact, contact. Imperial gunship inbound.'

'That is the Black Templars, yes? They are from Helsreach. I know this. I listen to my briefings. I do not sleep, like you.'

'Be quiet,' she murmured, waiting for confirmation over the vox.

'I will be the one with so many medals, I think. You have nothing, eh?'

'Be quiet!'

'Acknowledged,' the reply finally came. Andrej took that as his cue to speak again.

'I hope they are saying we may return to the city, okay? That would be good news. High walls! Titans! We might even survive this war, eh?'

Neither of them had ever seen a Thunderhawk gunship before. As it came in on howling thrusters, slowing down and hovering over the almost abandoned facility of empty warehouses and storage bunkers, Domoska had a sinking sensation in her stomach.

'This can't be good.' She bit her lower lip.

'I do not agree, you know? This is Astartes business. It will be good. Good for us, bad for the enemy.' She just looked at him.

'What? It will be good. You will see, eh? I am always right.'

S

torm-trooper

C

aptain

Insa Rashevska glanced at the soldiers on either side of her as the gunship's front ramp lowered on hissing hydraulics.

One thought had been rattling around her mind in the five minutes since Domoska had voxed in the sighting, and that was a very simple, clear:

Why in the hells are the Astartes here?

She was about to get her answer.

'Should we… salute?' one of her men asked from his position at Rashevska's side. 'Is that what you're supposed to do?'

'I don't know,' she replied. 'Just stand at attention.'

The gang ramp clanged as boots descended. A human - from the Legion, no less - and two Templars.

Both Astartes wore the black of their Chapter. One was draped in a tabard showing personal heraldry, and his helm showed an ornate death mask as the faceplate. The other wore much bulkier armour, with additional layers of ablative plating, and the war plate whirred and clanked as its false- muscles moved.

'Captain,' the Legion officer said. 'I'm Adjutant Quintus Tyro, seconded to Hive Helsreach from the Lord General's command staff. With me are Reclusiarch Grimaldus and Master of the Forge Jurisian, of the Black Templars Chapter.'

Rashevska made the sign of the aquila, trying not to show her unease in the presence of the towering warriors. Four machine-arms, their servo-joints grinding, unlocked from Jurisian's thrumming back-mounted power pack. Their metal claws clicked open and snapped closed while the arms themselves extended as if stretching.

'Greetings,' Jurisian rumbled.

'Captain,' Grimaldus said.

'We have come to enter the installation,' Cyria Tyro smiled.

Rashevska said nothing for almost ten seconds. When she did speak, it was with a stunned and disbelieving laugh.

'Forgive me, is this a joke?'

'Far from it,' Grimaldus said, striding past her.

On the surface, D-16 West wasn't a particularly grand site. Rising from the wasteland's sandy soil were a cluster of buildings, all of which were solidly built and armoured - almost bunker-like in their squat construction. 'All were empty, save for those now occupied by the small Steel Legion force stationed here. In those buildings, bedrolls and equipment were arranged in an order that spoke of discipline. Two expansive landing platforms, easily big enough for the bulky Mechanicus cruisers that could even carry Titans, were half-buried in sand, as the desert slowly reclaimed the facility.

The only architecture of significant interest was a roadway over a hundred metres in width that led into the ground beneath the surface complex. Whatever colossal doors had once opened into the underground complex were long buried beneath the wasteland's shifting tides. It would only be a handful of decades before the last evidence of the roadway itself was covered over.

One of the bunker buildings contained nothing but a series of elevators. The bulkhead doors to each lift were sealed, and the machinery lining the walls and connected to the shafts was all powered down. Keypads with runic buttons of various colours were installed on the wall next to each closed door.

'There is no power here,' the Reclusiarch said as he looked around. 'They left this place entirely devoid of energy?' That would make reactivation - if this installation was even ever meant to be reactivated - an incredibly difficult operation.