Of Honour and Iron, page 1
Backlist
Space Marine Conquests
THE DEVASTATION OF BAAL
A Blood Angels novel by Guy Haley
ASHES OF PROSPERO
A Space Wolves novel by Gav Thorpe
WAR OF SECRETS
A Dark Angels novel by Phil Kelly
More tales of the Ultramarines from Black Library
DARK IMPERIUM
A novel by Guy Haley
CALGAR’S FURY
A novel by Paul Kearney
BLADES OF DAMOCLES
A Space Marine Battles novel by Phil Kelly
THE PLAGUES OF ORATH
A Space Marine Battles novel
Steve Lyons, Cavan Scott & Graeme Lyon
DAMNOS
A Space Marine Battles novel
Nick Kyme
ULTRAMARINES
A Legends of the Dark Millennium anthology
Various authors
THE CHRONICLES OF URIEL VENTRIS: VOLUME 1
THE CHRONICLES OF URIEL VENTRIS: VOLUME 2
Graham McNeill
More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library
The Beast Arises
1: I AM SLAUGHTER
2: PREDATOR, PREY
3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS
4: THE LAST WALL
5: THRONEWORLD
6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR
7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN
8: THE BEAST MUST DIE
9: WATCHERS IN DEATH
10: THE LAST SON OF DORN
11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR
12: THE BEHEADING
Space Marine Battles
WAR OF THE FANG
A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang
THE WORLD ENGINE
An Astral Knights novel
DAMNOS
An Ultramarines collection
DAMOCLES
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare
OVERFIEND
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master
ARMAGEDDON
Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire
Legends of the Dark Millennium
ASTRA MILITARUM
An Astra Militarum collection
ULTRAMARINES
An Ultramarines collection
FARSIGHT
A Tau Empire novella
SONS OF CORAX
A Raven Guard collection
SPACE WOLVES
A Space Wolves collection
Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter twenty
Chapter twenty-one
Chapter twenty-two
Chapter twenty-three
Chapter twenty-four
Chapter twenty-five
Chapter twenty-six
Chapter twenty-seven
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter twenty-nine
Chapter thirty
Chapter thirty-one
Chapter thirty-two
Chapter thirty-three
Chapter thirty-four
Chapter thirty-five
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Carcharodons: Outer Dark’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.
Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ULTRAMARINES
ROBOUTE GUILLIMAN, Primarch of the Ultramarines
NUMITOR, Lord Executioner and Captain of the Eighth Company
HELIOS, Chaplain of the Eighth Company
THERON, Assault Squad Sergeant of the Eighth Company
SENECA, Battle-brother, Intercessor Squad
ARISTON, Battle-brother, Intercessor Squad
NICANOR, Battle-brother, Intercessor Squad
KYROS, Battle-brother, Intercessor Squad
CAPRICO, Battle-brother, Intercessor Squad
MELOS, Battle-brother, Inceptor Squad
IASON, Battle-brother, Inceptor Squad
RAYHELM, Shipmistress of the Light of Iax
GENESIS CHAPTER
JOVIAN, Apothecary of the Seventh Company
FLAVIUS, Tactical Squad Sergeant of the Seventh Company
GRAITUS, Veteran Battle-brother of the Seventh Company
HESIOD, Epistolary of the Seventh Company
RASK, Marksman, Newfound Expeditionary Auxilia
IRON WARRIORS
BOLARAPHON, Warsmith of the Dru’Kashyl Warband
BENIAH, Lieutenant of the Dru’Kashyl Warband
ZIKON, Lieutenant of the Dru’Kashyl Warband
FURAX, Squad Sergeant of the Dru’Kashyl Warband
TYBALD, Apothecary of the Dru’Kashyl Warband
DARK MECHANICUS
HYZRA, Pirate Queen and Shipmistress of the Damnatio Memorae
ZOSIME, Conscript Pilot
In times of war, the law is silent.
THE THIRTY-FIRST MILLENNIUM
THE IMPERIUM OF MANKIND
IN THE ASHES OF BETRAYAL
The Siege of Terra is over. Horus Lupercal lies dead and the embers of his assault on the Throneworld have begun to cool. Those Legions that had assailed the walls of the Imperial Palace beneath the arch-traitor’s banner have broken, withdrawing back in defeat across a shattered Imperium. With the Master of Mankind resigned to His throne on Terra, His sons ride back into the stars in pursuit, the Emperor’s vengeful hand that would scour their traitorous kindred from the galaxy.
Foremost among them is Roboute Guilliman, the Avenging Son – Thirteenth Lord and Master of the Five Hundred Worlds. By his hand he wielded the XIII Legion in the Emperor’s Great Crusade and in Horus’ rebellion that followed it, and by his works are his sons and all others loyal to the Golden Throne divided. The Ultramarines and their fellow Legions are broken, separated into individual Chapters by the dictate of his Codex Astartes, so that no single warrior will again marshal a force great enough to plunge the Imperium into strife, as Horus did.
Now the Ultramarines – a Legion that previously boasted hundreds of thousands of humanity’s finest warriors – number but a thousand souls as they strike against the retreating Traitor Legions. Though their numbers have changed, their very nature irrevocably altered in the wake of the Second Founding and the implementation of the Codex, one thing has remained constant: the will of their primarch, guiding them forwards in their crusade for retribution.
Marius Gage, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, left the war-torn surface of his Chapter’s current campaign and, leaving the campaign itself in the hands of his sub-commanders, returned to orbit to speak with his gene sire.
Standing in the hold of his Thunderhawk, Gage’s artificer power armour ground and sparked from a dozen points, its priceless surfaces pitted by mass-reactive cratering and the gouges of broken chain teeth. Oath papers that hours before had trailed as ribbons of creamy, meticulously inked parchment were now tattered spurs of ash clotted around broken wax seals, where they still remained at all. The armour’s outer shell of cobalt lacquer, once warm and clean as an untouched ocean, was scorched down to the bare dull grey of the ceramite beneath, visible in rare patches through all of the blood.
Gage’s passage through the Macragge’s Honour was long despite the swiftness of his pace, manoeuvring through the flagship’s byzantine labyrinth that dwarfed a city in both scale and grandeur. Though he passed hundreds of comrades and servants as he walked, he returned their salutes and signs of deference with a steely silence. He had not torn himself from an active warzone on a whim, and his words were saved for none other than his father.
The primarch’s sanctum was a temple built to information. Data, facts and analysis of every conceivable kind were arrayed around the chamber in every available medium, from the most advanced hololithic projections and cogitative prognosticators to the sweeping panes of crystalflex revealing the void beyond, and the world where the Ultramarines had come to make war against those with whom they had once built the Imperium of Man.
Guilliman was alone, leaving the coordination of the fleet to his admirals as he devoted his mind to absorbing the ever-shifting reality of war across an entire star system and shaping it to his will. If he had noticed Gage’s approach he made no sign of it, though the Chapter Master knew that he must have. Nothing escaped the primarch, especially one of his gore-drenched sons clad in broken, grinding armour.
‘I did not recall you from the surface, Chapter Master,’ Guilliman said, flicking up eyes of stunning blue that halted Marius in his tracks. ‘What do you have for me?’
Gage stepped forward, holding out a fistful of coarse grey material. The primarch stepped out from the sphere of information orbiting his desk and took it, letting it unfold from his hand into a tattered standard woven from iron thread. Spartan and blunt, the pennant’s only decoration was a border of golden hazard striping, rendered incomplete by burns and tears. At its centre an austere metal skull stared back at Guilliman, forged from a single plate of reinforced iron.
‘Theatricality has never been your strong suit, Marius.’
‘We stormed the keep at dawn,’ said the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. ‘A maddening siege, the Fourth truly crafts the most venomous of labyrinths. But we triumphed. At great cost, we triumphed.’
Guilliman watched his son, knowing him well enough to know that he would not have departed from a contested combat zone to tell him this alone. The primarch waited expectantly, his mind already taking every subtle cue given by his Chapter Master and combining it with the battlefield appraisals he constantly absorbed to extrapolate what Gage would say before he even spoke the words.
‘We have secured a single stronghold,’ said Gage.
‘Yes, I know this.’
‘One of twelve,’ continued Gage. ‘Grand General Cijard personally led his corps against another and they were burned down to the last man. The Iterian two hundred and thirty-fourth has amassed eighty-five per cent casualties just holding their position along the eastern landmass, and we have yet to close within five square kilometres of their polar station without being driven back by artillery bombardment and aerial countermeasures. Even drop pod assault has faltered there. The Fourth is dug in, and has every advantage in numbers, materiel and terrain.’
‘And so,’ said Guilliman finally, ‘what do you suggest, my Chapter Master?’
Gage hesitated, his expression neutral but tense. He knew the path that his next words would lead him along, and it was the last one he wanted to choose. Gage strained to banish the apprehension from his voice, but failed to quell it entirely.
‘I believe that we should consider the strategic deployment of extermination-level munitions from orbit.’
Silence lingered in the chamber. The chattering of cogitators and whir of tactical projectors seemed to fade away, drawn back into the walls. For a time – moments that stretched as though they were hours – the primarch and his closest son simply looked upon each other.
‘This is a garden world,’ remarked Guilliman at last, looking not back at the hololiths but over Gage’s shoulder towards the crystalflex vista revealing the planet in the void. ‘Such a rare thing, if not in terms of resources then as a symbol. That even after so much has been lost, and so much has been destroyed, there is still hope remaining for us all. And you stand here, proposing to create one more wasteland, when far too many exist already?’
‘The Fourth is present throughout this system and the adjoining ones,’ said Gage. ‘We will bleed ourselves white to win this world, leaving us unable to retake the others. The use of such weapons should always be considered the last resort, but if it means the difference between a victory that retains the operational capacity of our forces and a pyrrhic one that ravages us, then in this case, their viability should be considered.’
‘Was I wrong to hold you here, my son?’ said Guilliman, a thin smile being all he could muster. ‘Should I have given you command of the Nemesis Chapter, so that you might salt the earth of every world where our enemies draw breath and challenge us?’
‘No, primarch.’ Gage averted his eyes, scars both old and newly earned twitching along the patchwork of his face. ‘I merely suggest that we evaluate all options, and weigh the cost of battle here against our wider efforts.’
Marius gestured to a hololith, blinking as it updated from the reports on the surface. The pair watched as the contested regions of the gently turning sphere remained scarlet as the entrenched Iron Warriors repelled the assault of Ultramarines and Imperial Army troops.
‘The invasion stands poised at a critical juncture,’ said Gage. ‘We can dislodge the opposition and achieve victory, you have no son who doubts this. But that undertaking will cost us months, and materiel, and lives. Many lives. We all know our destiny, to die on the field of battle for Macragge and the Imperium, but the sacrifice of those that would die here could be put to use in the next war, and the next.’
‘Be careful, Marius,’ said Guilliman softly. ‘Your base of logic weakens by straying into conjecture.’
‘Then I shall adhere to logic, sire.’ Gage paused to clear his throat. ‘The most efficient use of our forces is to purge this world from orbit, rendering it lifeless and incapable of prosecuting further harm upon this system. Such action shall fracture the Fourth’s opposition and grant us the freedom to cleanse the rest of the region through more careful means in the timeframe that would have been spent pacifying this planet alone.’
Gage turned his eyes from the projection to his father. ‘We cannot save every world, father. It must never be decided lightly, but some worlds must be protected, others liberated, and few – very few – must be destroyed. Sometimes saving the Imperium means killing parts so that the whole might endure.’
Guilliman stepped past Marius, stopping before the view out into the void. Senses perfected by his father and creator, the Master of Mankind, pored over every detail, from the tiny motes of shattered ships and orbital defences ringing the planet, to the sweeping plains and verdant continents beneath, dotted by the fires of raging battles that twinkled like distant stars.
‘That is not the Imperium my father built,’ said Guilliman, the words thundering not from the volume of his voice, but with the finality of his own conviction. ‘And in His stead, it shall not be the one I safeguard. We shall not repeat the mistakes of the past, using the tools that have rendered so many worlds, and so many civilisations, as dust and echoes. I will not have the Ultramarines stand sentinel over a graveyard and declare peace. Tell me, Marius, do you remember Thoas?’
Gage gave a slow nod. ‘You know that I do, father.’
Guilliman mirrored the nod, his patrician features creasing in the slightest of frowns. ‘Then you must also know my disappointment, that the memory of the war there is known to you and yet the lesson it taught us seems forgotten.’
‘Many things have changed since then, my lord,’ said Gage quietly. ‘We stand in a different galaxy than the one we remember.’
The Avenging Son looked back at Marius. ‘Not everything has changed. I am here, my son, and I shall help you remember. I will stand beside you, and sweep the traitors from where they believe themselves invulnerable.’
