PRANDIUM BURNED. SMALLER Ultramarines icons winked out as they were destroyed, and the angry red icons of the World Eaters slowly broke apart like ripples of blood. No part of Prandium was left unscathed. The beautiful wild woods of the southern provinces were ashen, atomic wastelands, the crystal mountains of the east irradiated with toxic fallout that would take thousands of years to dissipate. Glorious cities of soaring gold and silver marble had fallen to ruin, pounded to rubble by orbital barrages that wiped them from the face of the world as if they had never existed.
What had begun as a worldwide conflict had degenerated into a thousand or more scrappy brushfire wars waged between isolated battle groups. Ultramarines forces fought within a few miles of one another, but might as well have been on different worlds for all the support they could provide to one another.
Remus felt as though he was sinking fast, already regretting his decision to remove Honoria from the command echelons of the grand strategium. Hadn’t he spoken of the value of a naysmith with Barkha? Didn’t every leader need a voice of dissent at his ear to force him to question his decisions?
He searched the tactical plot for any sign of hope, wondering where he had gone wrong. What could he have done differently? What aspect of his primarch’s teachings had he failed to heed? He had reacted to every development with a rigorous application of the new doctrines, yet Prandium was on the verge of being lost forever.
‘Push the Thirteenth forward,’ he said, as automatic memory called up yet more of the primarch’s lessons. ‘Bolster the Seventeenth, and order the Eleventh to reform to flank the World Eaters advancing on Thardonis. Advance to contact and pin them in place.’
‘So ordered,’ replied Urath.
‘Order the Eighth Battle Group to withdraw to the borders of Ixian Province. Mechanicum units to cover and pioneers to establish temporary fortifications,’ said Remus as yet more tactical variables fed into his precise recall. A pattern emerged, and Remus began to appreciate just how tenuous the World Eaters position was. It had cost blood and lives to bring them to this point, but only now did Remus see how delicately balanced this grand strategy had been.
‘To win the greatest victory, one must take the greatest risks,’ the primarch had told him on the rad-wastes of Calth.
‘You never take risks,’ countered Remus.
‘Not that you would know,’ replied Guilliman.
As the myriad situational variables displayed on the plotter flooded into the processing centres of Remus’s consciousness, the answers and manoeuvres required leapt to the forefront of his brain. He had heard it said that the greatest generals were those who made the fewest mistakes, but that was nonsense of the highest order. The greatest generals were those who planned for every eventuality and knew exactlyhow their foes would fight. Seeing the breathtaking beauty and complexity of the stratagems unfolding in his mind, he knew without a doubt that Roboute Guilliman was just such a general.
The words virtually said themselves, using him as their conduit to life.
‘Order Battlegroup Ultima to realign its frontage along the River Axiana,’ he said. ‘Ninth and Twenty-fifth to alter the direction of their advance. North-east to grid reference six-nine-alpha/eight-three-delta.’
The captains followed his orders without question, but Remus wasn’t done. Orders poured from him, each one spat like a poisoned dart into the heart of the enemy commander. His subordinates could barely keep up with him as he sent manoeuvre orders into the field with breathtaking rapidity. Confusion lit every face, but as the worldwide stance of the Ultramarines armies began to realign and enact Remus’s orders, he watched those same faces transform into expressions of wonderment.
In the centre of the Praxos Territories, a cluster of red icons, representing one of the main World Eater battlegroups, now found itself surrounded on all sides as previously isolated Ultramarines units merged and swung around like closing gates to trap it within a deadly killing zone. Within minutes those icons were winking out as the combined firepower of three Ultramarines battle companies flensed the region with artillery, massed bolters and overlapping fields of fire from cunningly positioned Devastators.
All across Prandium, World Eater cohorts were suddenly surrounded and cut off from one another as their hot-blooded aggression pushed them straight into the Ultramarines guns. The effect was akin to a million dominos ranked up in seemingly random patterns that tumbled together to create a masterpiece of kinetic energy at work. Ultramarines companies that had been in full retreat swung around to link with their brothers to seal the World Eaters in deadly traps from which there was no escape.
Like the most graceful ballet, the Ultramarines danced to the tune of Remus’s commands, working together in flawless harmony: an elegantly and perfectly designed killing machine. One by one, the red icons of the invaders winked out, while those of the Ultramarines remained a steady blue. Casualty indicators began dropping, until eventually falling to zero. And the World Eaters continued to die.
Within an hour, the battles were over and Prandium was saved.
‘I don’t believe it,’ whispered Urath as reports of secure battlefields chimed in from all across the ravaged world.
‘It doesn’t seem possible,’ breathed Evexian. ‘So fast, so merciless.’
In truth, Remus was having a hard time believing the end had come so swiftly. It was one thing to have trust in the primarch’s vision for his great work, quite another to see it in action.
‘What’s our operational effectiveness level?’ asked Remus.
His captains hurried to collate the information, filtering in reports from the field, casualty reports, ammo expenditure levels and unit degradation ratios. Reports streamed across the plotter, a few in red, fewer in orange, but the majority in a healthy green. Urath summed up the incoming flow of information, but Remus needed no interpretation of the data, the visual results were clear enough.
‘Seventy-seven per cent of units in the field report immediate battlefield effectiveness,’ said Urath. ‘Eight per cent are at minimum or unsafe levels of readiness, and a further thirteen per cent are at dangerous threshold levels of unit effectiveness. Only two per cent are combat ineffective.’
‘If I hadn’t seen it for myself…’ said Evexian, voicing the thoughts of them all.
‘And this all came from the primarch’s work?’ said Urath.
‘Did you ever doubt it?’ asked Remus.
‘Damn me, but I wondered for a moment, Remus,’ replied Urath, wiping the sweat from his brow. ‘Reprimand me if you must, but I feared Prandium was lost. Along with much of the Legion.’
‘Prandium might as well be lost,’ said Evexian bitterly. ‘Look at what those murderous bastards did to the Fair Maiden of Ultramar. How could any planet recover from such an ordeal?’
‘Worlds of Ultramar are stronger than most, Evexian,’ said Remus, letting out a long breath and smiling at the victory he had just won. ‘Prandium can recover from this and bloom even more beautiful than before. Trust me, it would take more than Angron’s butchers to snuff out her radiance.’
Engagement 228
‘I DON’T LIKE this,’ said Sergeant Barkha. ‘Feels like we’re flying in a rations can. I could spit through this fuselage.’
‘You can spit acid,’ Remus reminded him. ‘There aren’t many hulls or fuselages you couldn’tput a hole in with your saliva.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do, but I wouldn’t worry. The Thunderhawk is just a stopgap design. It won’t be around for long.’
‘Good,’ said Barkha, looking around the crude, factory-stamped interior of the rolling gunship. Its metal ribs were exposed and the wiring guts of the aircraft were visible in tag-tied bundles of cabling that snaked from one end of the boxy fuselage to the other. Ultramar was far from the centres of Mechanicum forge-worlds, and the XIII Legion had only recently taken delivery of a fleet of the new gunships. It irked Remus to see the hasty work, the shoddy specifications and unprofessional workmanship that had gone into the design and construction of the aircraft.