like a cloud of angry insects. As the first of the mass transports detached from the cruisers and
began sinking slowly through the atmosphere, it was these Imperial Navy craft that were its first line
of defence.
As the atmosphere was broken, vast bay doors on the descending transports would retract, and
flights of Valkyries would emerge like circling buzzards, descending towards the surface of the
40
planet in advance of the wallowing mass transport ship. Thunderbolts and Lightning fighters would
scream from the still-descending transport to ensure air superiority. The Valkyries would sweep low
over the ground and the first Elysians to step foot on the world would rappel swiftly from the
gunships to secure the landing zone.
A wide perimeter would be quickly secured, the rapidly deployed Elysians establishing strong
points along their line with quickly dug-in heavy weapons.
More troops would rappel to the surface and smaller, breakaway transports would detach from
the massive bulk of the main ships on the descent, dropping in heavier support to bolster the
perimeter defences: rapidly moving Sentinel walkers and Chimera infantry transports bearing cargos
of specialist Elysians.
Havorn had no doubt that the landing was proceeding smoothly and as planned, and a glance at
the data-slates being updated every few seconds with fresh information confirmed this. The
perimeter had been established well within the usual expected time-frame, and Sentinels were
already scouting beyond the landing zone, seeking out possible threats invisible from the air.
The pict-image flickered again, but it was clear that the last of the mass transports had landed.
Dust rose around the ships as their immense weight was lowered onto the earth. Havorn could
imagine the rumbling beneath the feet of the men already on the ground as the ships landed and their
titanic cargo-doors dropped open.
He raised a hand to his long, greying moustache. Landings were always stressful; the mass
transport ships were such tempting targets. He was pleased, though somewhat surprised, not to have
had any sightings of the enemy. That was a blessing. A shudder of revulsion ran through him as he
thought of the foe that his soldiers would soon be facing.
Chaos Space Marines, the most dangerous and hated of foes: traitors and betrayers who had
turned their backs on the light of the Emperor and sold their souls to devils and eternal damnation.
The Space Marines, were the most elite warriors of the Imperium, each genetically modified to
become giants among men, perfect machines of death with bodies created to withstand wounds that
would kill a lesser man ten times over. In every respect they were superior to regular warriors. They
were stronger, tougher and faster. Add to that the awesome protective and strength enhancing
properties of their power armour, their unparalleled training and the best weapons that the adepts of
Mars could construct, and you had the most powerful fighting force in the galaxy, and the most
dangerous.
The Space Marines were meant to be the warrior elite of humanity that brought stability to the
galaxy with bolter and sword in the name of the God-Emperor of mankind. But more than half of
their number had turned their backs on the Emperor, embracing the sentient darkness and malice of
the Empyrean.
The Elysians were soon to face these accursed traitors on this dead-end planet. His men would
be fighting the genetically modified monsters, the results of a deadly experiment gone horribly
wrong when they turned upon the Emperor. Havorn had fought alongside loyalist Adeptus Astartes
many times, and their involvement in those wars had ensured that tens of thousands of Imperial
Guardsmen had lived, but he would never trust them as he would trust any of his men.
Why are we on this accursed planet? he fumed, his face impassive. He was not one to question
orders from the Lord General Militant, but he resented being left in the dark as to the reasons.
Still, it mattered little. The enemy was here, and wherever it raised his treasonous head, the
snake must be cut down. It was just that Havorn knew that this world must be of some hidden
importance for the 133rd and the 72nd, in their entireties, to have been drawn off from the Ghandas
Crusade to retake it: important, but not important enough, it seemed, to have drawn one of the
loyalist Space Marine Chapters to the world.
Tanakreg was a backwater planet dominated by black, acidic seas. There were only two main
land-masses on the world, and only one of those was inhabited. An inhospitable and desolate land
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dominated by salt plains and high ranges of mountains, it seemed to Havorn to be a planet that the
hated forces of Chaos could damn well keep if they wanted it so much.
The Planetary Defence Forces had been overwhelmed contemptuously quickly, a fighting force
of two hundred thousand soldiers, defeated within days by a force that could not have been more
than three thousand. But those three thousand were Astartes, he reminded himself, and he surmised
that traitors on Tanakreg had aided them. It sickened him that people could turn on their own like
that.
“Brigadier-general,” said Colonel Boerl, “the perimeter is secured and primary bulk transports
landed. The secondary perimeter is being established and will be operational at any moment.”
“Thank you, colonel,” said Havorn. He turned to the representative of the Mechanicus.
“Techno-Magos Darioq, you may order your own transports to descend, if you wish,” he said.
“Thank you, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,” replied the magos in his mechanical
monotone. “I will leave you now to return to my ship, to oversee the landing.”
Gyro-stabilisers hummed as the magos turned to leave. His footsteps were slow and heavy,
clanking loudly on the metal-grilled floor plates of the command station aboard the battleship.
Clearly, his legs were either augmented or had been completely replaced with bionics in order to
bear the colossal weight of the harness. Mechadendrites floated freely around him, and a small,
wheeled contraption, joined to the Tech-Adept by ribbed cables and wiring, trailed behind him. The
floating servo-skull hovered in the room briefly before following its master from the command
station.
“A word, before you leave, Tech-Adept,” said Havorn. The red-robed, towering figure turned
around slowly.
“Yes, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn?”
“I am intrigued: what is it about Tanakreg that interests the Mechanicus so? It is rare to see such
a gathering of Martian power.”
“The Adeptus Mechanicus supports the armies of the Emperor in all endeavours, Brigadier-
General Ishmael Havorn. The Adeptus Mechanicus wishes to support the battle against the enemy
on this planet c6.7.32.”
“You bring with you a force the likes of which I have never seen on a battlefield before: why is
it that this place, of all the planets in the galaxy, is of such particular interest to the Mechanicus?”
“The Adeptus Mechanicus supports the armies of the Emperor in all endeavours, Brigadier-
General Ishmael Havorn. The Adeptus Mechanicus wishes to support the battle against the enemy
on this planet c6.7.32.”
“That does not explain a thing and you damn well know it,” said Havorn, his voice rising. “What
I am asking is why?”
“The Adeptus Mechanicus supports—” began the techno-magos, but the brigadier-general cut
him off.
“Enough! Leave my command station and my ship, and see to your damned landings.”
“Thank you, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,” said the techno-magos.
The brigadier-general’s face was hard as the Adeptus Mechanicus priest left. Then he swore
loudly and colourfully.
The Chaos infested, polluted atmosphere was killing him. The foul smoke from the infernal
machines spewed into the skies, and Varnus’s breath was heavy and wet with fluid. Several times he
had thought he had felt things crawling within his lungs, and he had hawked and coughed until
blood had run from his tortured throat. Then the cursed, black-clad overseers had inflicted pain on
him, stabbing him with their needle claws, and he had writhed with agony.
His eyes were weeping constantly, and a painful, mottled rash had developed around his neck
and wrists. The eight-pointed metal star beneath the skin of his forehead pained him, and he
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imagined that the hateful thing was fusing to his skull, becoming a part of him. The thought was
sickening.
The broken bones of his arm and leg had healed well, however, and though they still pained him,
he had almost regained his full range of movement.
He wiped the back of his mortar encrusted hand across his eyes as another layer of immense
stone blocks slammed into place, the sound booming out over the rained city of Shinar. The tower
was being erected at a ferocious pace, one layer of the huge bricks at a time. Giant, insect-like
cranes swung around and lowered their cables to the ground to grasp the next round of blocks in
their barbed claws, belching smoke and dripping oil.
Varnus stared into the booth of the closest crane with his sleep deprived, exhausted eyes. The
pilot of the machine may once have been human, but was far from that now. It hung suspended
within its cabin prison by dozens of taut wires and cables hooked painfully through its skin with
vicious barbs. Ribbed pipes extended from its eye sockets and from its throat. Its legs had atrophied
to a point that they were little more than withered stubs protruding from its torso, and with long,
skeletally thin fingers it plucked at the wires suspending it. He tore his eyes away from the foul
sight.
A sharp note sounded across the worksite, and black-garbed overseers prodded thousands of
slaves forwards, off the scaffolds and onto the top of the stone slabs. Varnus and Pierlo stepped onto
the wall of the round tower, and waited for the mortar hose to swing in their direction.
Other slave teams within the shaft of the Chaos tower toiled far below. Though the tower was
only around thirty metres from ground level, the inside of it had been drilled down into the core of
the earth twice that distance, and Varnus felt a surge of vertigo pull at him. Every time he looked
over that edge, he had an impulse to hurl himself over, but he resisted these urges. He would fight
death for as long as he was able: he wanted to be alive to see the Chaos forces utterly destroyed. He
believed fervently that help would come to deliver Tanakreg from this hated foe.
Other slaves had not been able to stop themselves leaping from the walls of the tower, but it
gained them little. The chains that linked around the slave’s necks were bolted to the scaffolds at
intervals and those slaves that slipped, or hurled themselves off the edge, seeking an escape from
their hellish existence, ended up dangling against the inside wall of the tower. Normally, they would
drag a handful of other slaves with them. It was not usually enough to kill them. The only chance a
slave had was to throw himself with as much force as he could muster and pray that his neck
snapped. Still, if he survived, the punishments at the needle-clawed hands of the overseers were
severe, and meted out not only to the instigator, but to all those who were dragged over the edge
with him. Such was the fear of these punishments, that any slave that looked as if he might try to
end it all was restrained by his fellow captives and forced to continue with his servitude.
The thick weight of the mortar hose swung into position above Varnus with much hissing and
steaming of pistons, and Pierlo and he reached up, pulling the hose across so that it hovered above
the middle of the stone block. Thick, gruel-like mortar began to emerge in congealed lumps from the
end of the hose, slowly at first, then faster, piling in the centre of the stone block. A deep pile of the
foul substance was deposited before the hose, clanking and steaming, swung away from them to a
pair of neighbouring slaves. Varnus and Pierlo dropped to their knees to spread the mortar evenly
across the surface of the stone with their hands.
The mortar that held the stones in place smelt foul and was a sickly shade of pink. Varnus tried
not to look too closely at the disgusting substance after he had found human teeth in it some time
earlier.
That was where the dead of Shinar ended up, he had realised with horror. They were ground up
into a thick paste, bones and all, and turned into this foul blood-mortar.
He was smeared in the stuff, from head to toe, and he tasted the hateful, metallic tang of it on his
tongue, and smelt its repugnant stink in his nostrils.
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A Discord hovered nearby as the slaves worked, its tentacles hanging limply as it blared a
hellish cacophony of sound from its grilled speaker. An evil collection of voices chanted something
in a language that Varnus hoped never to understand amidst the garbled, daemonic sounds, bellows
and sibilant whispers that blasted from the infernal thing. Varnus, he imagined a voice whispering
sometimes amidst that din, his quietly spoken name almost hidden beneath the garbled, Chaotic
roars and screams. Not a moment went by when the slave’s eardrums were not assaulted by the
insane sound. Kill him, he heard a reasoned voice say, in amongst the jumbled shrieks, horrified
moaning, ceaseless chanting and the drone of static that was emerging from the Discord.
Varnus and Pierlo finished smearing the blood-mortar across the top of the stone slab just as
another sharp note rang out, and they hurriedly stepped back onto the scaffold. Shrieks of agony
rang out from those slaves that had been deemed too slow as they were disciplined by the overseers.
The slaves held onto the metal spars of the scaffold as it shook. The outside wall of the tower
was not perfectly smooth, but rather was slightly stepped, each block overlapping the one below by
half a hand-span. After every twenty layers of stones were laid, the mechanical scaffold would
climb those narrow steps, pistons steaming as the spiderlike legs of the framework pulled it further
up the growing structure. It was an ingenious creation, Varnus had been forced to admit, though he
hated it to the core of his being.
Varnus squatted atop the shuddering structure, holding on tight. Pierlo grinned at him, his eyes
lit up feverishly. He guessed the man was losing his mind, for he almost seemed to be enjoying the
