Defenders of Mankind by David Annandale & Guy Haley

Author:David Annandale & Guy Haley
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781849708593
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2015-03-10T07:00:00+00:00

Note:

The majority of this novel takes place in 887.M39, two thousand years before the present year of 998.M41.

Chapter 1

Memories of Honourum

Serenity entered the mind and hearts of Mantillio Galt. The whispered prayers of the chapel serfs receded to be replaced by the sough of soft wind. The buzz of the tattooing needle faded. The rapid prick, prick, prick of it on his skin was kissed away by cold mountain air. His perception of the battle-barge’s Grand Chapel became uncertain. His eyes were closed, all he saw was the fleshy dark behind his eyelids, but the sense of it, the weight of years and prayer, grew lesser and replaced by an impression of open spaces. He was hanging between the physical and the metaphysical; a disquieting sensation of being neither here nor there. He reminded himself that he was aboard Novum in Honourum , in transit through the warp. He lacked the dubious witch-gifts that would allow him to sense it, but at these times, halfway into his meditative state, he felt he could almost see it.

He quashed his anxiety.

‘Glorious is the Emperor, mankind manifest as one, he shall light the way.’ He quoted the Codex Astartes, and concentrated on his breathing.

The scents and sounds of home called to him, but he would not go there, not yet. For the Flesh Remembrance to take, for it to be bright with truth and glorious for the Emperor’s eyes when his time came, first he must relive the incident which the tattoo would commemorate.

The material world flickered, and went away entirely.

Fire. Fire blazing in the fluted corridors of the eldar craft. The osseous plastics of the alien vessel burned ferociously. Blue-tinted flame washed against his battleplate; blue from bone licking at the blue-and-bone of his Chapter’s heraldry. The temperature indicators of his sensorium were far into the red; without his power armour he would be burned alive. Even now, he sweated from the heat.

The roar of the fire was deafening. Flickering movement had him raise his bolt pistol rapidly, his power sword ready. Nothing, nothing but fire and burning psychoplastics.

Most of the eldar pirates were dead, their slender forms shattered by bolter fire. Gaudy corpses draped the platforms of the chamber, some already aflame. Reports from Novum in Honourum had the remaining three eldar vessels fleeing, strike cruiser Ceaseless Vigilance and Battlefleet Trident’s four escort craft in hot pursuit. They would not catch the fleeter xenos craft, but Galt was confident they would not return to trouble the Orin Gap. Ten fragile alien spaceships were wrecks. It had been a costly victory; Corvo’s Hammer wallowed in the void, heavily damaged. And it had not been won yet.

‘Form up on me,’ he ordered his squad of Sternguard veterans. Four remained. They ceased their checking of the dead, and gathered around their captain, ever alert. Firelight danced over their armours’ ornate decorations.

Galt nodded towards the large door at the head of the chamber. Delicate galleries framed it, drawing the eye towards its curved symmetries. The

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