The Honoured by Rob Sanders

Author:Rob Sanders
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2015-10-22T12:14:41+00:00

eight

[mark: 134.09.33]

Orestrian Urcus sees the bodies first. There are innocents every­where, citizens of Calth who had taken refuge in the arcology complex just as the Ultramarines had, and as the Word Bearers had. Their corpses lie broken and twisted on the complex floor, the vaulting spatters and pools of gore about them like a remembrancer’s nightmare daubed on canvas. People have been blasted apart with bolt-rounds and torn to ragged shreds by chainblades. Some have had their throats slit, while others have simply been brained and broken by the butts of boltguns and armoured fists.

As Squad Urcus and their sergeant take in the slaughter, they see evidence of citizens gunned down in their cots whilst trying to escape or hide. Some of the corpses have been mutilated with symbols carved into their flesh, while others evince the bloody mess of uneven combat. It is a demonstration of what happens when a genetically engineered warrior of the Emperor – powerful and armoured – visits his wrath upon the forms of mere humans.

‘This is abominable,’ Brother Eurotas growls across the vox.

‘Those monsters…’ Pontus adds.

‘Let’s finish our sweep,’ Urcus tells them, but the sergeant is no less disturbed by the bloody scene. While Kurtha Sedd’s Word Bearers have seemingly retreated into the shadows, others have been sent back to the outer complexes to hit the vulnerable and the wounded. This is the reality of fighting an underworld war, cavern by cavern, at such close quarters, Urcus reasons, trying to bring some kind of sense to the slaughter.

Pushing on into the arcology system, the Ultramarines had protected the rag-tag collections of terrified citizenry from the horror of front-line battle. In doing so, even with sentries and a defensible position, they had left the camp vulnerable to attack, the Word Bearers having sworn to make the Ultramarines suffer in whatever depraved fashion they could. An attack in retaliation for losing the command nexus.

The sergeant tries to find comfort in his primarch’s teachings.

In every victory resides a future defeat; in every survivor, the potential for death anew. For like the galaxy, war is an endless spiral of violence visited and visited upon. All are part of such a spiralling descent into carnage and some are even engineered for it. Fight not its irresistible pull. Fight on into inevitability. For a galactic singularity awaits us there. The unification of mankind, as the Emperor intends it – where humanity reigns supreme among the stars, as one and finally free from the myriad threat of its enemies.

Urcus trudges through the butchery, his armoured footfalls spreading gore and sending bolt-casings clinking across the floor. He considers whether the Emperor had had such slaughter in mind. Had he seen in his son Lorgar such a threat? Had he considered the possibility that a day would come when one of his own Legions might be one of those myriad threats?

‘Be ready,’ Urcus tells his much-reduced squad of Cataphractii Terminators across the vox. ‘Our foe might still be here.’

The Ultramarines move warily through the outer complex, making the best use of cover they can.

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