II

THEN THEY WERE running, even as Cullis was collapsing around them. Portions of the city were giving way under the chain of incendiaries planted by the Iron Warrior. Out in the slums, great cracks were opening up in the ground, pulling in vast tracts of sump-ash. Distant landmen drove their hauler-trucks in crazy arcs to avoid the growing fissures. On the horizon behind them, the super-rigs and megaliths of other Bastion cities burned.

Out on the landing platform the air hazed. Ash and flesh-smoke baked on the hot breeze. Girders and gantries groaned in protest as they buckled and fell in the expanding conflagration below.

They were fleeing across the exit strip that led to the deck where Vorkellen’s ship was still anchored when a fuel hopper burst and sent a plume of fire and force into the air.

Several of the civilians were thrown off the narrow companionway and plummeted screaming.

Leading, Arcadese turned to see another group crushed by a collapsed comms tower. They died without uttering a sound.

Heka’tan was missing. Just a few more metres to the ship and he’d lost the Salamander. Vorkellen, too, was nowhere to be seen. Smoke and fire dirtied the view.

The Ultramarine waved the few survivors on. ‘Into the ship.’ He seized one of the iterator’s cronies by the arm as he hurried past. The scrivener had a cut to his forehead and looked dazed. ‘Wait for us,’ Arcadese told him. After the scrivener had nodded feebly, the Ultramarine let him go and went back into the smoke cloud.

‘Heka’tan!’ The pall was thick, getting thicker. Arcadese wished he still had his battle-helm; the task of finding his battle-brother was made more difficult without it.

Below the belt of charcoal-grey, the Ultramarine saw four grasping fingers. They were black, like onyx.

Arcadese cried, ‘Hold on!’ and rushed to the ragged lip of the companionway. He thrust his hand down but Heka’tan slipped and fell another half-metre. Gripping a twisted metal rebar, he looked up at the Ultramarine. There was blood on his face and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

‘Save him.’ He had to shout above the roar of the flames boiling below.

Arcadese’s gaze flitted to Vorkellen, who was also stranded and clinging on desperately. The iterator peered down intermittently, white-faced and clammy.

The Ultramarine shook his head and reached harder, farther. ‘You first. Reach up.’

‘Protect the weak,’ Heka’tan told him. ‘No matter who that is.’

In no mood to debate, Arcadese growled, ‘Reach up. Now!’

Still holding on with one hand, Heka’tan swung up the other and stretched. Their fingertips could almost touch.

‘A little more…’

‘It’s too far. Get out while you can.’

Arcadese shook his head. ‘We are so close…’ he said. His face was wrenched with effort. He leaned and found purchase on Heka’tan’s fingers…

…just as the Salamander’s hand began to tremble. As the nerve tremor took hold it shook Arcadese’s grip free. Heka’tan was flailing now. The explosions, the smoke and fire – he was reliving Isstvan all over again.

‘Steady yourself… I can’t…’ Arcadese snatched at Heka’tan’s shaking hand, but was unable to get a grip. ‘Steady yourself, brother.’

Their eyes met, the reflection of the destruction trapped in the Salamander’s locked there forever.

‘Let me go,’ he said, lowering his quivering hand. His voice was calm, his mind decided.

Arcadese raged, gesturing frantically. ‘I can lift you. What are you doing?’

‘Going to join my brothers.’ He let go.

Bellowing denial and utterly powerless, the Ultramarine watched Heka’tan plummet for a few metres until he was swallowed by the explosions. Arcadese thumped the companionway, splitting the rockcrete. Nearby, Vorkellen was screaming.

‘Don’t let me die, please don’t let me die…’

Bereft of all pity, of any feeling, his organic flesh as inured as his augmetic implants, Arcadese grabbed the iterator’s wrist and dragged him up.

Just a few seconds later, a column of fire erupted skywards from where Vorkellen had been swinging. The human staggered to his feet. He was weeping uncontrollably. Arcadese picked him up and threw him over his shoulder.

Then he ran as the world of Bastion submitted to its death throes behind him.

III

FROM THE SHUTTLE hold, Arcadese looked down upon the ruination of a world. Cooking off in the wake of the incendiaries, Bastion’s thermo-nuclear stockpiles were tearing the planet apart.

Long chains of fire stitched the world’s surface like its seams had been unpicked and were slowly being burned apart. Continents cracked and mountains sank. The oceans boiled to gas and the cities were consumed. Billions would look to the artificial nuclear sunrise, their retinas seared away in seconds, the skin of their bodies flaking like parchment only to become as ash on the wind. And even that was ephemeral, torn apart and scattered to oblivion by the blast wave that followed.

A small armada of ships had managed to achieve orbit; others had been swallowed up in the chaos, failing to achieve loft and put enough distance between themselves and the rapidly unfolding cataclysm.

They were headed for the Imperial starship at anchor on the edge of the system. Arcadese had already voxed a warning to its captain but no attack had come from any vessel affiliated with the Warmaster. The work here was done. The Iron Warrior had achieved his mission. Whatever the purpose of the schematics Heka’tan had described, it would not be discovered until it was too late. The message was sent. Horus wanted the galaxy to know, he had used Bastion as an example.

Ally with the Imperium and die.

Neutral planets would go down on bended knee for the Warmaster now, the threat of reprisals too real and absolute for them to ignore.

Heka’tan had believed in the possibility of a peaceful solution. Despite everything, he dared to hope that the Traitors would adhere to the rules of engagement.

Now, the Salamander was dead, slain like so many of his Legion.

Arcadese muttered an oath for the Nocturnean beneath his breath. ‘You will not be forgotten, brother,’ he promised. ‘You shall have vengeance.’

The one responsible would be brought to account. Arcadese might have no place on the front line, but he could do that for a fallen brother. He could do that for all the forgotten sons of the Imperium.

THE LAST REMEMBRANCER

John French

‘In an age of darkness the truth must die’

– Words of a forgotten scholar of ancient Terra

THEY MURDERED THE intruder ship on the edge of the Solar System. It spun through space, a kilometre-long barb of crenellated metal, trailing the burning vapours of its death like the tatters of a shroud. Like lions running down a crippled prey two golden-hulled strike vessels bracketed the dying ship. Each was a blunt slab of burnished armour thrust through space on cones of star-hot fire. They carried weapons that could level cities and held companies of the finest warriors. Their purpose was to kill any enemy who dared to enter the realm they guarded.

This star system was the seat of the Emperor of Mankind, the heart of an Imperium betrayed by its brightest son. There could be no mercy in this place. The ship had appeared without warning and without the correct identification signals. Its only future was to die in sight of the sun that had lit the birth of humanity.

Explosions flared across the intruder ship’s hull, its skin splitting with ragged wounds that spilled dying crew and molten metal into the void. The two hunters silenced their guns and spat boarding torpedoes into the intruder’s flanks. The first armoured dart punctured the ship’s command decks, its assault ramps exploding open and disgorging amber-yellow armoured warriors in a roar of fire.