They dig in. The starship, all twelve kilometres of it, continues to move, sliding backwards, cutting a groove in the planet’s crust five hundred metres deep. The keel splits the earth like a giant ploughshare, turning it up on either side of the immense furrow. Soil and subsoil rip open. The furrow rips across arterial highways and a memorial park. It hits the curtain wall, annihilating it. Still sliding, the Antrodamicus demolishes a path through the teeming city of Kalkas Fortalice, a path two and half kilometres wide. Meteoric debris is still slicing down from the sky all around it, bombarding the city and the landscape. The starship’s impact is lifting a wall of dust higher than the Watchtower, a smog of particulates from atomised buildings.
The planet’s crust is shaking, a long, drawn-out vibration of the most apocalyptic sort. There is a tearing, screeching shriek in the air as hull and city grind each other apart.
Now stress fractures win. The Antrodamicus starts to crumple. Its entire mass lands, belly down, splitting its massive frame across the waist and the prow. Hull skin rips. Command towers and masts buckle and topple. The remnants of the drydock cage, wrapping it like a garland, slough off.
Internal explosions begin to riddle it. Upper plating sections blow out. Ribs are exposed, backlit by nuclear coals in the starship’s stricken heart.
It is still moving. It is still grinding backwards, disintegrating, ploughing the city in half, uprooting hab towers and hive stacks, flattening steeples and palaces. The quake-shock of the impact is levelling parts of Kalkas Fortalice that the ship hasn’t even touched.
The orbital Watchtower shivers as the mounting vibrations begin to overwhelm its structural integrity. Pieces of it start to splinter and fall off. It begins to sway, like a tree in a typhoon wind.
When the sliding tail-end of the starship finally reaches it and rams it down, it is starting to fall anyway.
The Antrodamicus ploughs it into the ground so hard that no trace of its proud structure remains whatsoever.
At Barrtor, they can feel the earth quaking under their plasteel boots. Aftershock. Calth’s tectonic system shivering from the appalling blow. The forest is thrashing, shaking loose leaves.
‘Theoretical?’ Phrastorex asks.
Ekritus is utterly cold and focused.
‘A major orbital incident. Accident or attack. Considerable fleet loss, considerable loss of support infrastructure, catastrophic collateral damage suffered on the surface due to the orbital destruction…’
He pauses and looks at Phrastorex.
‘The starport’s gone. All comms are out. No link to the fleet. No link to other surface units beyond anything we can establish. No data feed. No estimation of the type or extent of the situation.’
‘Practical?’ Phrastorex asks.
‘Obvious,’ replies Ekritus.
It is? thinks Phrastorex.
‘We form up. Everything we have. Your company and mine, the Army, the Mechanicum, the XVII. Everything that’s this side of the river and still intact. We form up, and we pull it back east into the Sharud Province. All hell’s falling out of the sky and this world is turning, Phrastorex. If we sit here wide-eyed, we could end up in a debris bombardment. Or worse. Let’s salvage everything we can from this muster point and pull it east, out of harm’s way, so it remains intact and battle ready.’
‘What if this is an attack?’ asks Phrastorex.
‘Then we’ll be battle ready!’ Ekritus barks.
Phrastorex nods. His instinct is to run towards the danger. To know no fear and advance into hell, but he knows the younger captain is right. They have a duty to preserve what they’ve got and re-form. The primarch will be expecting no less. Between them, he and Ekritus and the captains of the Word Bearers companies in the valley command an armed force that could crush a world. They have a duty to move it out of harm’s way into a holding position, so that it’s ready and able to do whatever Guilliman needs it to do.
‘Start leading the disposition out through the forest,’ Ekritus begins. ‘I’ll link up with the Word Bearers and the Army and–’
‘No,’ says Phrastorex firmly. ‘You lead the march. Get the men behind you, literally. Show them the way. I’ll order the XVII around, the Mechanicum too. Go. Go!’
Ekritus holds up an armoured fist.
‘We march for Macragge,’ he says.
Phrastorex punches the fist with his mailed knuckles.
‘Always,’ he agrees.
He starts away down the slope, through the ranks of his own men and Ekritus’s cobalt-blue warriors. Behind him, he hears Ekritus, Anchise and the other officers of both companies calling the men to order, getting them mobile. The aftershocks keep coming. Light-flash and thunder rattles the sky.
He sees 23rd squad.
‘With me!’ he yells. They fall in with him, moving fast. Phrastorex wants an escort. If he’s going to order around Word Bearers officers and Army stuffed shirts, he needs an honour company to emphasise his authority.
‘What’s the order, captain?’ asks Battle-brother Karends.
‘The job right now is to salvage and preserve as much of this fighting strength as we can,’ says Phrastorex. Ultramarines units are moving past them on both flanks, heading in the opposite direction. Down on the floodplain, tank engines have hit start-up. Lights are coming on. Phrastorex is surprised how impressed he is by the Word Bearers’ response time. Maybe he needs to revise his opinion of the wretched XVII.
He sees figures in red armour. They’re advancing up the hill. Word Bearers, moving already. That’s good. Maybe they won’t be so hard to persuade.
Phrastorex raises a hand, calling out to the nearest Word Bearers officer.
A boltgun fires.
Battle-brother Karends explodes at the waist and collapses.
The second bolt blows the fingers off Phrastorex’s raised hand.
Coming uphill at the hindquarters of the Ultramarines companies, the Word Bearers form a line. They’re advancing through the dry, ferny brush, weapons raised, firing at will.
Phrastorex has fallen to one knee. His ruined hand hurts, but the wounds have already clotted. He tries to draw his weapon with his left hand. His mind is where the real pain lies. Sheer incredulity has almost crippled him for a second. There is no theoretical, there is no comprehensible practical. They’re being fired on. They’re being fired on by the Legiones Astartes XVII Word Bearers. They’re being fired on by their own kind.
He’s got his gun in his sound hand. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with it. Even under fire, the notion of firing back at Space Marines is abhorrent.
Phrastorex looks up. Bolter rounds are exploding in the ranks of the Ultramarines, blowing blue armour plate apart, throwing men into the air. Plasma beams, searing like blatant lies, rip through his company. Ultramarines fall, shot in the back, in the legs, split open, sliced in half. Men topple face down, the backs of their Praetor helms caved in and smoking.
It’s a massacre. It’s a slaughter. In seconds, before the main strength of the men can even turn in surprise, the ferny slope is littered with dead and dying. The leaves of the nodding fern brush are jewelled with blood. The trees shiver and hiss in disgust. The ground heaves as though it cannot bear to touch the proof of such infamy, as though it wants to shake the Ultramarines dead off itself so it is not implicated.
Heavier guns open fire. Lascannons. Graviton guns. Meltas. Storm bolters.
Rotary autocannons wither the rows of men in the forest space, shredding the brush cover into a green haze, spattering tree trunks with blood and chips of blue metal. Splintered trees collapse alongside splintered men.