Saul Tarvitz's first sight of the Choral City was the magnificent stone orchid shape of the Precentor's Palace. In any other situation, he would have gladly spent some time studying it, but not now. He barely registered it.
He stepped out from his damaged Thunderhawk gunship onto the roof of one of the palace wings, while the spectacular dome soared high above him. He had controlled the Thunderhawk only after the vox-communication had gone down for good. Before that, someone had been controlling it remotely, which he was thankful for and would have been deeply worried about if he had ever had to fly a Thunderhawk again.
Smoke rose into the air from the fierce battles inside the palace corridors, and the terrible sound of screaming echoed from the square to the north, along with the heavy, powerful smell of freshly spilt blood and what seemed to be acid of some kind.
Tarvitz took everything in at a single glance. A heavy thought hit him hard: at any moment, this entire place would be completely wiped out. In any other situation, this would have been a funny moment. Despite the imminent rain of death, Tarvitz was still a Space Marine of the Emperor's Children and could appreciate such marvellous architecture.
He saw Space Marines moving across the roof toward him, easily identifying them as his brothers from the 3rd Legion. His heart leapt to see Nasicae Squad with Captain Lucius at the front, his power sword still smoking from the heat of the battle and the blood he had spilt.
"Tarvitz!" Lucius called out, and Tarvitz could hear an even bigger swagger in the swordsman's stride. "I thought you'd never make it! Were you jealous of my kills?"
"Lucius, what is the situation?" Tarvitz asked quickly, ignoring his enormous ego.
"The palace is completely ours, and Governor Praal is dead, killed by my own hand! No doubt you can smell the World Eaters down below; they are never happy unless everything around them smells like blood. The rest of the city is cut off from us. We cannot contact anyone."
Lucius pointed toward the far western side of the city, where the massive, mountain-like shape of the Warlord Titan Dies Irae was firing its giant guns at the helpless Isstvanian soldiers out of sight down in the streets.
"Though it looks like the Death Guard will soon run out of things to kill."
"We have to contact the rest of the strike force right now," Tarvitz said urgently. "The Sons of Horus and the Death Guard. Get a squad working on the communications. Get someone up to the highest ground possible."
"Why?" Lucius asked, finally stopping. "Saul, what is happening?"
"We are about to be hit by an attack. Something massive... A virus bombardment."
"What?"
Lucius was confused. A virus bombardment was a serious threat, and he understood his brother's urgency. But just like Garro, Tarvitz, and any other Space Marine, his brain refused to draw the most obvious conclusion and looked for alternatives.
"Is it the Isstvanians?"
"No," Tarvitz said with deep sadness. "We have been betrayed by our own side."
Lucius froze. He hesitated to speak it out loud and give voice to that fact.
"The Warmaster? Saul, what are you saying--"
"We were sent down to this planet's surface just to die, Lucius. Our Primarch Fulgrim chose to sacrifice the warriors who were not part of their secret, grand plan and use this battle as a way to thin our numbers before killing us in one fell swoop."
"Saul, that is insane!" Lucius cried out, his voice sharp with disbelief. "Why would our own primarch do such a horrible thing?"
"I do not know, but he would never have done this without Warmaster Horus's direct command. This is only the first stage in a much larger conspiracy. I do not know what its ultimate purpose is, but we have to try and survive it."
Although he said that, Tarvitz knew that there was no getting out of there. If his suspicion and the stranger's words were true, then the Warmaster wouldn't allow them to get out or flee. He would surely die there.
Lucius shook his head, his face twisting into an angry, childish frown.
"No. The primarch would never send me to die, not after all the glorious battles I have fought and won for him. Look at what I have achieved. I was one of Fulgrim's absolute chosen warriors! I have never failed him, and I have never questioned an order! I would have followed Fulgrim straight into hell!"
"But I would not follow him there, Lucius," Tarvitz said firmly, "and you are my friend. I am sorry, but we do not have any time to argue about this. We have to get the warning out to the troops and then find deep shelter. I will go carry the word to the World Eaters in the plaza. You must reach the Sons of Horus and the Death Guard on the vox. Don't go into all the complicated details, just tell them that the virus bombardment is coming in right now and to find whatever deep cover they can."
Tarvitz looked at the massive, solid walls of the Precentor's Palace.
"There must be deep tunnels, catacombs, or blast bunkers underneath this palace. If we can reach them, we might actually live through this. This entire city is going to die, Lucius, but I am absolutely not going to sit here and die with it."
...
Lucius turned silent for a moment. He couldn't believe it. He had given everything to appease his Primarch, his gene-father. His words weren't a lie; he would have truly followed his Primarch into hell, but they also weren't entirely true. There was a reason why Lucius was chosen by the traitors to be down on Isstvan III instead of being part of the coup.
"I'll get a communications officer up to this roof immediately," Lucius said, a cold, steel anger taking over his previously boastful tone.
"Good. We don't have much time at all, Lucius. The bombs are going to be launched from orbit any second now."
"This is open rebellion," Lucius muttered.
"Yes," Tarvitz replied. "It is."
Lucius' dedication to swordsmanship led him to scar himself, leaving grotesque patterns on his face and chest. These scars symbolised his victories, and as time wore on, he came to associate pain and glory ever more closely.
Tarvitz believed that beneath the ritual cuts and scars on his face, Lucius was still the flawless, perfect soldier he had always been. He was a natural leader whose absolute confidence could instantly rub off on the warriors around him, and Tarvitz knew he could fully rely on him to get the job done.
The master swordsman nodded his head and said.
"Go, and find Captain Ehrlen of the World Eaters. I will contact the other Legions and order our warriors into hard cover. I will speak with you again."
"Until then," Tarvitz said.
Lucius turned around to face his elite Nasicae squad, barked a quick command, and ran back toward the main palace dome. Tarvitz followed right behind him for a moment, looking over the edge down into the northern plaza. He caught a glimpse of the violent, messy battle raging below, hearing the desperate screams of the crowds and the loud, revving sounds of spinning chainblades.
He looked to the west, where the Dies Irae seemed to have stopped firing for a moment and where the Death Guard were supposed to be. He couldn't make out the biggest fighting down there, but they had to be somewhere.
He looked up at the late morning sky. Massive, dark clouds were beginning to form. At any single moment, the falling virus bombs would tear straight through those grey clouds...
The biological weapons would rain down across the entirety of Isstvan III, and billions of living people were about to die in terrible torture.
.
Among the many trenches and concrete bunkers that stretched out to the west of the Choral City, mortal soldiers and Space Marines died together in massive storms of flying mud and exploding prometheum. The Dies Irae violently shuddered with the monstrous weight of the heavy fire it was laying down across the plains.
Moderati Cassar felt every bit of the kinetic feedback through his neural links, as though the immense, multi-barrelled Vulcan mega-bolter were directly attached to his own physical hand.
The giant war machine had already suffered many small patches of damage during the compliance assault, since it was the largest target; deep missile detonations scarred its massive legs, and jagged furrows were scored into its armoured torso by hidden, bunker-mounted cannons, where the attacks managed to bypass the void shields.
Cassar felt every single impact, but a multitude of wounds could not slow down the unstoppable advance of the Dies Irae or turn it from its predetermined course.
Complete destruction of the enemy was its command from the Warmaster, and that's what it would. A violent death was the punishment it brought down on the heads of the Emperor's enemies.
Cassar's heart swelled with intense pride. He had never felt so close to his Emperor as he did right now, feeling completely at one with the God-Machine, as if a fragment of the Emperor's own divine strength had been directly instilled into the iron bones of the Dies Irae and approved of his actions.
Yes, that had to be it.
"Aruken, pull to starboard!" Princeps Turnet ordered sharply from the high command chair on the bridge. "Avoid those bunkers, or they'll foul the port leg's stride."
The Dies Irae swung heavily to the side, its immense metal foot completely crushing the roofs off a tangled network of concrete bunkers and shattering defensive artillery emplacements as it crashed forward.
A panicked crowd of Isstvanian rebel soldiers scrambled out from the smoking ruins, desperately setting up heavy weapons to pour a wall of gunfire into the Titan as it towered directly over them.
The Isstvanians were well-drilled and well-armed. Though the majority of their standard rifles weren't the equal of a Space Marine's weapon, the muddy trench lines were a great equaliser of men during a war, and a soldier with a rifle was still a deadly threat when the gunfire started to accumulate.
The Death Guard had systematically slaughtered thousands of the mortal rebels as they bludgeoned their way through the trenches. Still, the Isstvanians were simply more numerous, and they hadn't broken into a rout yet. Instead, they fell back stubbornly, trench by trench, rolling away from the relentless, mechanical advance of the XIV Legion.
The Isstvanian troops, wearing drab green-grey helmets and mud-spattered flak-suits, were incredibly hard to pick out against the dark mud and ruined buildings with the naked eye. However, the high-tech sensors on the head of the Dies Irae projected a sharp-edged thermal image directly onto Cassar's retinas, picking out every target in wondrously clear, glowing detail.
Cassar fired a massive blast of heavy-calibre shells, watching as columns of wet mud and shattered bodies sprayed high into the air like splashes in water. The Isstvanians vanished from his displays, completely destroyed by what he felt was the hand of the Emperor.
"Enemy forces massing to the port forward quadrant," Moderati Jonah Aruken reported.
"The Death Guard can handle them," Turnet replied coldly. "Concentrate our fire on the artillery batteries. That is the only thing that can hurt us."
Down below Cassar's viewpoint, the gun-metal and bone-white forms of the Death Guard glinted around the concrete bunkers. Two tactical squads of the legion threw frag grenades straight through the narrow gun ports and violently kicked down the reinforced doors, spraying the surviving Isstvanians inside with heavy bolter fire or completely incinerating them with sheets of liquid flame from their flamers.
From the high vantage point of the Dies Irae's head, the moving Death Guard looked like a swarm of white beetles, with the hard carapaces of their power armour scuttling rapidly through the maze of trenches.
However, this was the very reason they did not notice what was going on below among the Death Guard. They might have seen some of the Death Guard moving like insects down below, but what they didn't see, which surprised Cassar, were the dead Astartes.
A few Death Guard Astartes lay perfectly still where they had died, cut down by heavy artillery fire or the massed guns of the Isstvanian troops. But their casualties were incredibly few compared to the thousands of Isstvanian corpses... far too few.
So, where were they? Cassar didn't dare ask that question; it was of no consequence to their situation. The fewer Death Guard Astartes died, the better for them.
Meter by meter, the Isstvanian defenders were being driven toward the northernmost edge of the trenches. When they finally reached the white marble walls of a tall Basilica with its spire, they would be completely trapped and slaughtered.
Cassar shifted the massive weapon arm of the Dies Irae to aim directly at a still active and bothersome artillery position some five hundred meters away, which was spewing explosive shells toward the advancing Death Guard lines.
The advancement had slowed down considerably. And the Moderati seemed to realise this.
"Princeps!" Cassar called out. "Enemy artillery moving up on the eastern quadrant."
"More on the northern quadrant," Moderati Jonah Aruken said. "This doesn't fit with the strike patterns of the Death Guard. What is going on?"
Turnet didn't answer him immediately. At this moment, he was getting a private transmission over his personal command channel. The princeps nodded grimly at whatever order he had just received from orbit.
He opened his eyes and suddenly shouted, "Halt! Aruken, cease the stride pattern. Cassar, shut off the ammunition feed."
Cassar instinctively switched off the firing cycle of the weapon that was thundering from the Titan's massive arm. The sudden shock of the system disconnecting violently forced his consciousness back to the physical command bridge.
He no longer looked through the sensory means of the Dies Irae; he was back in his own body, sitting with his fellow officers. He turned to his Princeps.
"Princeps?" Cassar asked, quickly scanning the glowing monitors. "Is there a malfunction? If there is, I'm not seeing it. The primary systems are all reading fine."
"It's not a malfunction," Turnet replied sharply.
Cassar looked up from the tactical information scrolling across his vision in unfocused, blurry columns. He was experienced and knew how things worked. If the Princeps ordered a complete halt, then something had to have happened. So he had already checked everything he could to be of use to his Princeps, and they could then continue their mission.
"Moderati Cassar," Turnet barked. "How's our weapon temperature?"
"Acceptable. I was just about to push it to eliminate that artillery battery."
"Close up the coolant ducts and seal the magazine feeds as soon as possible."
"Princeps? T-That will leave us entirely unarmed in the middle of a combat zone."
Cassar was completely confused. Were they standing down? Why? They had their orders from the Warmaster. Why would they stand down now?
"I know that," Turnet replied as though speaking to a simpleton. "Do it. Aruken, I need us completely sealed."
"Sealed, sir?" Aruken asked, his voice sounding just as confused as Cassar felt.
"Yes, sealed. We have to be completely airtight from top to bottom."
Turnet then opened a wide channel to the rest of the mighty war machine's crew. He spoke urgently, but kept his composure. He was far too experienced to allow any situation to shock him, but whatever he had just heard from orbit had shaken him.
"All crew, this is Princeps Turnet. Adopt emergency biohazard posts, right now. The bulkheads are being sealed. Shut off the reactor vents and be prepared for power down."
"Princeps," Aruken said urgently, leaning forward. "Is it a biological weapon? Atomics?"
"The Isstvanians have a weapon we didn't know about," Turnet replied.
But Cassar could easily tell by the tightening of the princeps' jaw that he was lying. He had known the man for years now and had served under him faithfully, coming to understand him on a very deep level. It was this that allowed them to be so effective in battle.
"They're launching it soon. We have to lock down, or we'll be caught in it," Turnet said.
Cassar looked back down at the trenches through the Titan's external optics. The loyalist Death Guard, who were supposed to still be fiercely advancing through the muddy trenches and bunker ruins... were nowhere to be seen.
Still, they had to be down there somewhere, right?
"But princeps, should we not notify the Astartes--"
"You have your orders, Moderati Cassar," Turnet shouted, his voice leaving no room for argument, "and you will follow them. Seal us up, every vent, every hatch, or we die."
Cassar willed the mechanical systems of the Dies Irae to shut its heavy external hatches and seal all its entranceways. His own reluctance and worry made the automated safety procedures feel sluggish and faulty.
Down on the ground below, he suddenly glimpsed some of the white-and-green warriors of the Death Guard who had completely given up their grind through the Choral City's defences.
Had they also heard about the Isstvanians launch of whatever weapon the Princeps spoke of? Cassar hoped so, for he would hate to see them die needlessly.
As the bloody battle had come to an almost complete stop on the ground, everything, even the mighty Dies Irae, fell completely silent.