Mortarion: The Pale King (The Horus Heresy Primarchs Book 15) by David Annandale

Author:David Annandale [Annandale, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2022-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

Beyond the access chamber were wide avenues and more labyrinthine corridors, always moving up, and always filled with the Order’s soldiers, fruitlessly hurling themselves forward to be slaughtered. The XIV Legion’s progress was good, but it was not enough. The day was gone. There remained only the night to bring an end to the reign of the Order in Protarkos.

Mortarion and the Deathshroud had routed another ambush when both Barrazin and Tersus voxed in that they too had found and purged access chambers.

‘Do either of your chambers have routes heading downward?’ Mortarion asked.

‘Yes,’ said Barrazin. ‘There are grav-lift platforms here, large enough to hold hundreds at once. They were in use when we arrived, and were about to send another contingent down.’

‘That sounds like they’re desperate to keep us away from the generators,’ said Tersus.

‘Their desperation points us towards victory,’ said Mortarion. ‘First Captain Barrazin, gather your company’s forces and head down. Destroy the generators. Plunge your scythe into the heart of the enemy.’

‘So ordered, Lord Mortarion.’

Mortarion kept moving. This hall was another that sloped steeply upwards. He climbed, and the walls of the corridor were crusted with grime. The air inside the hive was foetid, dense with bodies and misery.

Mortarion thought about another climb, through a different kind of toxic air.

He thought about Barbarus and Galaspar.

The differences were great. Galaspar was an industrial waste. It had been ruined by its inhabitants. It wasn’t a world whose hostility to human life was innate. And the Order was a human evil. The charnel lords of Barbarus had played with mortals like gods. The leaders of the Order could not boast of such things. There was nothing godlike about them, except perhaps their arrogance. Other than in their numbers, they were weak.

So why compare them?

Because of the tyranny. The total oppression, and the assumption of ownership. The Order and the Overlords had the same view of the inhabitants of their respective planets. The downtrodden were there to be used at the masters’ pleasure, and that was the sum total of meaning of their existence.

And there was more. He had not freed Barbarus. The Emperor had finished the task for him.

Galaspar would be different. Galaspar was his choice. He had seen the need to intervene, and he had come here. He would destroy this tyranny. Though it was human, it was as absolute as the horror that had reigned on Barbarus.

This was the task he would complete. This was the act that would be his.

A thousand legionaries of the First Great Company mustered in the access chamber. It took less than an hour for them to gather. Barrazin was still made impatient by the wait. It was time that wasn’t being used to push forward. It was time being given to the Order to organise a better defence.

There was room on the two grav-lift platforms for five hundred of them to make the descent at one time. Barrazin stepped onto the northern platform. He kicked aside some dead-trooper sludge and signalled for the drop to begin.

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