Roboute Guilliman wrote two words at the top of the right-hand page: words of treachery, words of salvation. Words to herald a new beginning.

Imperium Secundus.

Engagement 94

HIS NAME WAS Remus Ventanus of the Ultramarines 4th Company, and he was a traitor.

This sat ill with him, but there was little he could do to change it. The orders came directly from the primarch, and if there was one thing drilled into Ultramarines from the earliest days of their training it was that orders were always obeyed, no matter what.

Intermittent flashes lit the mountains of Talassar with a scratchy, pale glow as bright streamers of fire dropped burning traceries like phosphor tears across the night sky. The retreat from Castra Publius had been long and gruelling, made more so by the relentless, dogged pursuit of their attackers. Like razorfins with the scent of blood in the water, the warriors of Mortarion never gave up, never let up the pressure and never, ever, stopped attacking once battle had been joined.

It was a trait Remus had once admired.

He had no idea how the war across the rest of Talassar went. All he knew was what the planners in the grand strategium fed him through his helmet, but they jealously guarded their secrets and were miserly when it came to distributing information.

Eighteenth Company had held Castra Publius to the last man, long enough for the remainder of the Ultramarines to escape, falling back to pre-prepared positions raised by helots, Talassar Defence Pioneers and the monstrous construction engines of the Mechanicum. Those engines were proving key to their strategy, and Remus was grateful the primarch had seen fit to demand a permanent presence of the Martian priesthood on each world of Ultramar before the Red Planet had fallen to the Warmaster’s allies.

Remus pushed himself to his feet and lifted his bolter from the rocks beside him. He ran through the readiness checks and snapped home the safety, the action so ingrained it was automatic. Just like everything a warrior of the XIII Legion did. He clamped the weapon to his thigh and looked out over the landscape around him.

The mountains of Talassar snaked across the planet’s single continent like a buckled spine, each vertebra a gnarled peak and each gap a series of corrugated valleys with hairline fractures that penetrated deep into the rock to form hidden valleys, dead-end grabens and narrow gorges whose floors never saw sunlight. It was terrain to favour the defenders, and every scenario of invasion relied upon the mountainous bulwark and its linked fortresses.

What those scenarios hadn’t counted on was a foe as implacable as the Death Guard.

An angled wall of compacted rubble and rapid-setting rockcrete sealed this particular valley with a series of fortified redoubts and strongpoints. Remus was no stranger to the speed and completeness with which the Mechanicum could sculpt landscapes, yet the sight before him was still incredible.

The valley had grown wider and deeper, its flanks blasted, excavated, drilled and dug out to form the linked series of earthworks that spanned its width. He and the 4th Company had deployed from here less than half a day ago, when the valley floor had been smooth and empty, and the black, volcanic walls were coloured by hardy lichen and projecting evergreen firs. All that was gone; the once verdant highland valley now resembled a quarry that had been worked for decades. Talassar Auxilia units manned artfully wrought redoubts formed from pre-stressed slabs, and Ultramarines heavy guns occupied revetments that hadn’t been there ten hours ago.

It had been a hard retreat, with the forward units of the Death Guard harrying them every step of the way. Remus had balked at the idea of allowing the enemy to maintain the initiative, but the new doctrine required them to give ground.

Gathered in carefully placed groups, the three thousand Legiones Astartes of the 4th Company took their rest behind the high wall, and Remus threaded his way through them. He shivered as he passed beneath the shadow of one of the Mechanicum’s construction engines. It towered over him, longer and wider than the Gallery of Swords on Macragge; and set the earth trembling with the low bass note of its mighty engine core. Its enormous bulk was a dusty ochre colour, studded with weapon mounts, striped with hazard chevrons and stamped with monochrome representations of the Cog Mechanicum.

His warriors were deployed behind the wall, each squad placed exactly according to the new tactical doctrines recently put in place. As part of a radical shake-up of the way the Legion was organised, a series of new regulations and orders of battle had come down from the Fortress of Hera, imposing strict guidelines upon how each warrior and squad operated within the Legion as a whole. It felt strange to devolve command autonomy to a set of predetermined strictures, but if there was anyone who could devise a tactical doctrine to meet any foe and any situation, it was Roboute Guilliman.

He saw Sergeant Barkha at the steps leading to the fighting platform, listening to the reports from the 4th Company Scouts on the cliffs above. Of all the warriors of the Ultramarines, these warriors had the toughest time adapting to imposed rules, but such was the comprehensive nature of their new operating procedures that even the 4th Company’s irascible Head Scout, Naron Vattian, was finding it near impossible to find fault with them.

‘Any sign yet, sergeant?’ asked Remus.

Barkha turned and hammered his fist to his chest, the pre-Unity salute. It felt strange to see his sergeant make such a gesture, but Remus supposed it was more appropriate than the aquila, given that they were now traitors.

‘Lots of activity around Castra Publius, but no sign yet that they’re on their way,’ said Barkha, his hands now ramrod straight at his side, as though he stood on a parade ground instead of a battlefield.

‘We’re not on Macragge, sergeant,’ said Remus. ‘No need for such arch formality.’

Barkha nodded, but his stance remained unchanged.

‘Standards, captain,’ replied the sergeant. ‘Just because we’re on a war footing is no reason to let them slip. That’s how this mess began after all. Standards slipped. Won’t happen on my watch.’

‘Is that a rebuke?’ said Remus, wiping the coarse black dust of the mountains from the azure surfaces of his battle-plate.

‘No, sir,’ replied Barkha, staring at a point over his right shoulder. ‘Simply a fact.’

‘You’re absolutely right, sergeant,’ said Remus. ‘If only the Warmaster had been attended by a naysmith like you, then this could all have been avoided.’

‘I was being serious, captain,’ said Barkha.

‘So was I,’ replied Remus, climbing the steps to the ramparts and casting his gaze down the mountains. Barkha dutifully followed him and stood at his side, ready to enact whatever order he gave. Though Remus couldn’t see them, he knew Death Guard units were probing the lower valleys, seeking the weakness in the Ultramarines defence line.

‘I’m no engineer, but even I can see we won’t hold this wall,’ said Barkha.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘They’ve built the wall too far out. The narrowest part of the valley is behind us.’

‘And?’

‘That’s made the wall too long,’ said Barkha, as though unable to comprehend how his captain couldn’t see what was so obvious to him. ‘We don’t have enough warriors or heavy guns to repel a serious assault.’

Barkha gestured over his shoulder. ‘Yaelen’s Gorge is to the south, but it’s too narrow to move heavy armour at any speed. Castra Maestor blocks the Helican Stairs to the north. This is the only viable route through our line, and the Death Guard will see that swiftly enough.’

‘All of what you say is true, sergeant,’ said Remus. ‘Do you have a point?’