Seeing what had been done to Prandium, Remus understood completely.

This was no honourable war, this was butchery and destruction embodied. The primarch’s great work could surely never have contemplated war with so terrible a face.

The World Eaters had dropped on Prandium after a punishing saturation bombardment that levelled most of its great cities and set the world ablaze from pole to pole. In truth, there was little worth saving. Millions of people were dead and the detonations of volatile munitions had polluted the atmosphere and seas for millennia to come.

Yet Prandium was still valuable. Its orbital track passed close to the coreward jump-point, meaning that whoever controlled Prandium could control entry to Ultramar. Even if Prandium was reduced to a barren, lifeless rock, it was still a world of Ultramar, and nowhere trod by Roboute Guilliman would be surrendered without a fight.

Coming so soon after the devastation wrought on Calth’s sun, it seemed to Remus that their worlds were being torn apart piece by piece. Like an ancient, crumbling standard removed from its stasis vault in the Fortress of Hera, the warp and weft of Ultramar’s fabric was coming undone. Alone among the many savage assaults tearing at the Ultramarines empire, the invasion of Talassar had been repulsed. Driven on by their apparent success, Mortarion’s warriors had over-extended their forces and been left dangerously exposed when they finally hurled themselves at the mountain fastness of Castra Tanagra.

Elements of the 4th, 9th and 45th Companies had garrisoned the fortress, and as the Death Guard attacked, the encircling horns of the 49th, 34th, 20th and 1st Companies drew in and completed the destruction. It had been an uplifting moment, yet Remus could not see how something similar could be done here.

Surrounding the plotter, their faces grim and carved from granite, were the captains of fourteen of the Ultramarines battle companies, together with their lieutenants, senior sergeants and savants. Battle-logisters pumped information into the plotter, real-time strategic data that depicted a world torn apart by war.

A world dying before their very eyes.

‘Fifth Company manoeuvring into position,’ said Captain Honoria of the 23rd. ‘Seventeenth moving in support.’

‘Enemy forces engaging the Twenty-fifth,’ said Urath of the 39th.

‘Eastern flank of Adapolis is folding,’ commented Evexian of the 7th. ‘They’ll break through in a matter of hours. I’m ordering the Forty-third and the Thirty-seventh to fall back.’

‘Are the Thirteenth and Twenty-eighth in position to meet the northern push?’ asked Remus.

‘They are,’ confirmed Honoria. ‘World Eaters Third, Fifth and Ninth are pushing hard at the borders of Zaragossa Province. If we don’t send in reinforcements, we could lose the entire western flank.’

Remus circled the plotter with his hands behind his back, looking for some flaw in Angron’s battle plan. As senior captain in the grand strategium, he had overall command of Ultramarines forces on Prandium, a level of command he had never before held, but the primarch himself had made the appointment.

Why had he been chosen? There were others in the grand strategium with more experience. Since Talassar, Remus and the 4th Company had fought dozens of smaller actions, each time emerging victorious, but each of them had been a company-level engagement, with no more than a few thousand warriors at his command.

This was another strata of warfare entirely. To command the defences of an entire world was something that Remus had, of course, trained for but never actually done. The primarch’s teachings were indelibly etched on his mind: options, variables, parameters, action paths, outcome responses and a thousand detailed plans covering every possible eventuality of war.

It had worked on Talassar, and Remus had to trust that it would work here.

He stepped up to the tactical plotter and took in the strategic overview in a heartbeat. The motion of armies, divisions and cohorts – a thousand elements of planetary warfare – was a spider’s web of furious advances, flank marches, brutal battles and encirclements. At Pardusia, the 19th Company had been all but destroyed, and the World Eaters had powered north through the wastelands of what had once been ornamental pasturelands where wild horses had roamed freely and rare flora, virtually extinct in Ultramar, had again bloomed in glorious bursts of kaleidoscopic colour.

The assembled captains glared at him, resentful at sending their brothers to die following orders that broke the cohesion of the Ultramarines defence lines. Arcs and lines of blue snaked across the map at random, each one an isolated bastion of Ultramarines, Defence Auxilia and requisitioned Imperial Army units.

‘What are your orders, Captain Ventanus?’ demanded Captain Honoria.

Remus stared at the map, feeding the current situation through the filters of the primarch’s work. Orders presented themselves to him, but they made no sense. He checked his conclusions again, knowing they were correct, but checking them anyway.

‘Order the Twenty-fifth and the Seventh to realign their frontage,’ ordered Ventanus. ‘The Seventeenth is to halt and hold position.’

‘But the Fifth,’ protested Urath. ‘They’ll be cut off without the Seventeenth covering their flank.’

‘Do it,’ said Remus.

‘You will condemn those warriors to die needlessly,’ said Honoria, gripping the side of the plotter tightly. ‘I cannot stand by and watch you lose this world and our Legion’s best and bravest with such insanity.’

‘Are you questioning my orders?’ asked Ventanus.

‘You’re damn right I am,’ snapped Honoria, before remembering himself. The captain of the 23rd took a deep breath. ‘I know what you did on Calth, Remus. Damn it, we all respect you for that, and I know you have the primarch’s ear. He has his eye on you for great things, I know that, but this is madness. Surely you must see that?’

‘Question my orders and you question the primarch,’ said Remus softly. ‘Is that really a stance you wish to take, Honoria?’

‘I question nothing, Remus,’ said Honoria guardedly. He swept his hand out to encompass the disastrous tactical situation on the projection of Prandium. ‘But how can those manoeuvres halt the World Eaters? The Red Angel’s butchers are gutting Prandium, and you are helping them to do it.’

Remus held his tongue. For all that he agreed with Honoria’s sentiments, he had to trust that the primarch knew what he was doing. To try and understand the workings of a mind crafted by the genetic mastery of the Emperor was as close to unattainable as it was possible to be. The leaps of imagination, intuition and logic the primarch of the Ultramarines could make were unreachable to anyone save another primarch. And even then, Remus doubted any of Roboute Guilliman’s brothers could match his grand strategic vision.

Yet what he had devised and passed down to them would only work if every cog in the machine was turning in the same direction. Honoria, for all his courage and honour, was twisting the machine’s workings. And that couldn’t be allowed. Not now.

‘You are relieved of command, Honoria,’ said Remus. ‘Remove yourself from this post and have your lieutenant step up.’

‘Ventanus, wait–’ began Evexian.

‘You wish to align with Honoria?’ said Remus.

‘No, Captain Ventanus,’ said Evexian with a curt bow. ‘But even you must admit that your orders appear somewhat… contradictory. You know this, I can see it in your eyes.’

‘All I need to know is that my orders bear the authority of the primarch,’ said Remus. ‘Do any of you believe you know better than our progenitor? Can any of you say that you have a better grasp of the nuances of war than our sire?’

Silence provided Remus with all the answer he needed.

‘Then carry out my orders,’ he said.