Plague War (Dark Imperium: Warhammer 40,000 Book 2) by Guy Haley

Author:Guy Haley [Haley, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2021-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

THE EMPEROR PROTECTS

Mathieu made his way through the streets of Tyros. Tall, steep-sided towers were favoured by the Parmenians, and made up the bulk of the city’s architecture. They were all the same height and design, so tightly packed the city looked like a bed of nails from the air.

Open spaces made by the enemy broke the pattern. Around bomb sites and lance strikes, destruction ordered itself in concentric rings of graduated severity. At the middle nothing stood. Fractured ground was broken through to sub levels, pipes and transit ways peeking shyly from the rubble. Next was a flattened area carpeted with pulverised rockcrete fused into glass. Ringing the flatness was a maze of shattered structures where the angles of walls and structural members bent by force defied navigation. A step up led to the next circle of taller walls leaning in disarray, and lastly around the damage were towers hollowed out by fire, their exteriors colourful with heat bloom.

The city’s grid of streets was interrupted. Broken facades slumped into the roads in unstable fans of ferrocrete. To allow foot traffic, narrow pathways snaked through the rubble, carved haphazardly, debris kept off by sheets of corrugated plasteel bolted into place and nets sprayed from industrial webbers. The damage was worst around the breach of the Hecatone portwall. There the skyline was sculpted ragged for half a mile within the city. Artillery carved straight lanes through tower after tower, opening up queer passages and strange, vitrified alleyways that led nowhere.

Navigating Tyros was no longer easy. Flat, straight roads had been turned into paths as tricky as any mountain way. Mathieu could have had his pilot land in the centre of town, but he had instead ordered that he be set upon one of the Keleton-ward towers, furthest from the arriving Imperial troops.

Despite Mathieu’s sly departure from the fleet, news of his mission would get to the regent. Mathieu had a limited time to work. He expected Guilliman to be furious. He would bear whatever punishment was given him. His duty trumped all other concerns.

He had to find the girl from his vision.

There were many people on the streets, drawn out by the roar of craft coming in from orbit. News travelled fast through the cramped underground shelters. The siege was broken, the word said. The primarch was coming. The Tyreans came from their hiding places in the cellars and transit network to greet their saviours, slowly, slowly, and then in a flood.

Mathieu’s ears were alive for news of the girl. He was not disappointed. Knots of excited people pushed past him, swapping rumours. They were jubilant, happy. Deliverance was theirs.

‘She stopped the sickness!’ said a chattering woman. Like many of those abroad, she had painted a skull mask on her face in powdered rockcrete and soot. Mathieu had seen this before, in other places. It was a token of faith with the Emperor, that the wearer would not accept the diseased unlife of the enemy, but stated their intention to seek a clean end in service to the Master of Mankind.

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