บท 108: Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Golgotha Campaign (Part II: The Siege of Gorm-2)
Location: The Chamber of Luna onboard the Vengeful Spirit
Date: 894.158.M30
It was tradition among the elite of the XVI Legion that before every single battle that Horus Lupercali personally directed that they would conduct a secret and sacred ritual in the heart of the Vengeful Spirit.
The ritual could not happen every single instance that Horus led them. There were many ambushes that required immediate action with no time for solemn contemplation. They didn't enact this tradition because they thought it was necessary for victory, nor because they felt some sort of compulsion that they did not understand. The Lunar Templars were guardians of humanity, the tip of the spear that the Emperor used against his enemies, but they were first and foremost a brotherhood.
True brotherhood was not something simply spoken of and forgotten. It was forged both on the battlefield and in the mundane, everyday actions of its members. The Lunar Templars knew this, and knew how important it was for their senior members to be of one heart and mind when it came tol decisions both tactical and moral.
In a secret sanctum deep within the pride of Horus' Crusader Fleet, there was a simple, sparsely decorated room. The only things in the room was a large slab of heavily pockmarked grey-white rock, three times as tall as an astartes and just as wide that stood at the back of the room, a semi-circle small and simple rug for each Astartes that faced the stone with two bowls laid out next to one another, and finally the banners of the XVI decorating the walls, taken from the site of glorious victories the legion had earned in the years spent fighting the enemies of humanity. Some were in a better state than others, but none could deny the storied history they all had. From the sand-swept dunes of Algareix to the irradiated ruins of Norumbega, the banners had been retired of duty for the sole purpose of being in this room in order to remind its occupants that they only rose as far as they did by the support of those who had come before.
In unison, Horus and his Inner Circle took their assigned spots on their rugs in front of the chunk of rock that bore the distinctive hue of Luna. There was a rug for each of them, and they took their spots with the grace of those who had done so many times. For a moment they all knelt, facing towards the center of the room and at one another.
With an invisible signal, the newest of their group rose and turned around to face their piece of Luna, palm touching the rock, almost as if he was trying to sense a tremor deep within.
"I am Boros Kurn, member of the Inner Circle." he intoned, staring straight into the rock as he did so. "I am fated to assist in the massacre of my brothers, to lead those with a burning heart for punishment down a dark path and see a world torn apart by madness and grief. This is my doom."
A hand was placed on his shoulder. Who it was varied from time to time, but always Boros knew he would find one there, pulling him back from the Abyss.
"It is not so, brother." the voice said. "I am Hastur Sejanus, and I shall never let the darkness take you. Together, we shall break your fate, and we will stand triumphant as brothers in life and death. Step back into the light!"
Boros rose and his outstretched palm closed into a fist, crushing the rock beneath it and adding yet another small pockmark to its surface. He returned back to his rug where he took a paste from one of the two bowls and mixed it with the powdered rock in his hand. When the mixture had the proper consistency, he applied the substance to one half of his face, symbolizing the two sides of the Lunar Templars legion. One side radiated light and was a proud part of the Imperium in all its glory. The other was in shadow, indicating the brutal way in which the XVI Legion waged war as well as the dark side of their spirits that they all possessed.
It was Seejanus' turn now, and like Kurn, he stood at the rock with an outstretched hand resting on the chunk of Luna.
"I am Hastur Sejanus, member of the Inner Circle." he said. "I am fated to die. I shall be brought low by treachery of the meanest kind and my death shall break my father. He shall drown their world in blood over my demise and it shall send him further down a dark path. This is my doom."
Once more, a hand appeared on the shoulder of the Astartes, giving them a lifeline amidst the telling of their tale of woe.
"It is not so, brother." The words were always the same, though often said by different people. Horus didn't want them getting into a routine and relying only on one person for support. "I am Corin Calistar, and I shall never let the darkness take you. Together, we shall break your fate, and we will stand triumphant as brothers in life and death. Step back into the light!"
Once Hastur Sejanus took his fistful of rock and ground it up into a paste that he painted his face with, Corin took his turn at the rock.
"I am Corin Calistar, member of the Inner Circle." he said. "I was fated to die on a nameless world, one of the countless that would perish helping Horus Lupercal take his prize. Even then, when our Emperor defied fate and I was blessed to be a part of his Librarius, even when I was there with him in the very heart of Luna, I could not save him. I lay broken and useless on the floor as our father died. I am a miserable, broken thing and I shall die in ignominy once again."
Another brother approached him from behind, and reassured him that this was not his fate. On and on it went, with every single member of the Inner Circle stating their piece before the Pillar of Luna and taking a small bit of it with them to paint a half of their face. Finally, it was Horus' turn, and he took his place before the rock. His hands reached higher than his sons did, and so the only pockmarks at this level around the pillar were of his own previous making.
"I am Horus Lupercali, Primarch of the Lunar Templars." he intoned. "I am the breaker of empires, the killer of kin, and the ruin of mankind. Because of me, humanity suffers a descent into a grim darkness from which there is no escape. I am a warrior without peer, but all that brings me is bloodshed. I am death, and I bring with me the end of all things that are good."
One hand appeared on his left shoulder, then another appeared on his right. Eventually, every member of the Inner Circle laid their hands on their genefather while they waited for the oldest and most respected among them to say the final words.
"It is not so, father." Abbadon the Redeemer said, his voice firm but gentle. "We are the Inner Circle, and we shall never let the darkness take you. Together, we shall break your fate, and we will stand triumphant as His Legion in life and death. Step back into the light!"
And so Horus did, taking his fistful of rock and mixing it with his paste so that it could cover one half of his face yet again. Half in darkness, half in light. It was an appropriate metaphor for how he felt.
As the Inner Circle all stood in unison at their father's signal, they grabbed the other bowl which had red paint in it. There was one final part to this ritual.
"We are all saved and redeemed here today, my sons." Horus intoned, "but we must be mindful of what it has taken for us to be here."
He dabbed two of his fingers in the red paint, streaking it vertically over the painted side of his face in a thin stripe.
"Let us remember those who have given their lives so that we may continue to lead the Lunar Templars upon the Golden Path, shaking off the woes of our impending doom."
"Hail to the honored martys!" the Inner Circle shouted, as they painted a thin vertical stripe over their own painted faces.
"Let us keep their memories forever in our hearts, minds, and actions, so that their watch over us never ceases."
"Hail to the glorious unforgotten!" they called back, as a second line was added.
"Hail to those who have shielded us from evil, and by their blood do we stand reading to protect humanity."
"Hail to the victorious dead!" came the last call, as a third and final mark was added upon their face.
They exited the room in a single file line, with Horus taking up the rear as they made their way to their respective assignments. No words needed to be spoken, as there were none that could hope to compete with the ceremony they had just completed. By the deeds of their brothers both present and dead, they were now masters of their own fate.
Horus gloated to himself that the Inner Circle was now ready for war, but as he did so, he couldn't help but wonder if he heard the faintest hint of a chuckle in the back of his mind.
Location: The Bridge of the Vengeful Spirit
Date: 894.158.M30
A priest of the Mechanicum let out a brief apologetic chirp in binary as Horus entered onto the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit. The poor soul's posture was so fearful that even a person untrained in the ways of the Martian order could see they were frightened, and Horus was extremely skilled in the art of such observations.
"My Lord Lupercali, I must beg your pardon." an Astropath said with a low bow. "Your brother has grown most impatient, and I have been unable to placate him. Please do not think so harshly of the others for this, I have failed in this task and I shall seek penance for such an egregious failure. Any offence that is taken is my responsibility alone."
Such zealots weren't uncommon among the psychics attache's to the Crusader Fleets, even after centuries of integration into the Imperial Creed. Horus requested fervent believers such as this one to be assigned to his Legion, for his nature was much more forgiving that some of his brothers, and he hoped this gentle touch would remind them that the world need not be as harsh as they had made it.
"Be at peace." Horus said gently, holding up a hand to forestall any other apologies. "None of the Stormbringers are easy for an outsider to deal with, and that goes double for their Primarch. You have done all that was required of you. Take pride in a job well done."
The Astropath bowed its head as it hurried back to its station, muttering a rushed apology as it pressed a few buttons to make the very annoyed face of Culain MacTurson appear on the screen in front of Horus, shielded from the physics altering properties of the warpspace both flagships found themselves in by the Astropath's abilities as well as the power it borrowed from the two mighty Primarchs.
"You are late, Horus." Culain said, not even trying to hide the annoyance at this latest turn of events.
"It's good to see you too, brother." Horus said with a grin.
"We are about to enter into the Gorm system's Mandeville Point, and the best thing you can think to do with your time is paint your face with your sons?" Culain snapped. Horus knew that he wasn't truly made at Horus for his ritual, but his brother was a practical man, and he had little time for things that he deemed inefficient.
"And yet, I am here now." Horus replied gently, electing to soothe his brother's ego instead of coming up with one of dozens of snappy retorts he thought of the moment Culain opened his mouth. They had a battle to win, and the X Primarch was not among those of Horus' brothers who fought better when angry.
"My sons are prepared, and our battle strategy is sound." the XVI Primarch continued. "The moment we enter back into realspace, we shall hit them with everything that we have. I am glad that it is you that is with me, brother. I have heard tales about the fearsome void battles you faced during the early days of the Golgothan Campaign. I am sure that experience will prove to be invaluable here."
Culain merely huffed and turned off his screen. The streams of data information that his flagship was sending over to the Vengeful Spirit about their own modifications to their battle formations told Horus that he was still very much onboard with the plan. It was going to be exactly the kind of fight that the Stormbringers excelled in, and Horus very much hoped that his own sons would not be found wanting.
Only forty standard minutes later, the alarms sounded that indicated a return to realspace. Horus felt the almost imperceptible pressure of the Warp recede from his mind and soul as they found themselves once again back in the comforting blackness of the void.
The tranquility was soon interrupted however, and klaxons blared that enemies were all around them and were making their way towards the emerging Imperial threat. Orkish spacecraft, each in such a state of shabbiness and disrepair that only the wretched Greenskins could get them to function, were barrelling towards the combined void power the the X and XVI Legions. There were thousands, if not millions of such craft, ranging from small one-man fighters to the attack 'Roks' of various sizes hurtling towards them.
"All Imperial craft, this is your commander speaking." Horus said in a steady tone. "Prepare to engage, on my mark."
He wanted them as close as possible. The tighter they bunched up in an effort to be, as the foul xenos dubbed "da killingest of them all", the easier it would be for the Imperials to kill multiple enemies with a single shot.
"Fire!" Horus barked, as the Greenskins came close enough that he could ensure total accuracy and a dizzyingly high casualty count for the enemy.
There was no sound in the void, but if there were, it would have been filled with the roar of countless Imperial guns firing salvo after salvo into the heart of the Ork menace. The xenos clearly had numbers on their side. This was obviously a system of some importance to them, and they had the numbers in hand to make sure they could mount a proper defense against any foe that sought to defeat them here.
But Horus Lupercali had been specifically created for engagements just like this, and he was not just 'any' foe that the Orks would face. He was a Primarch, a myth made flesh.
His was the myth of Master of War. Throughout their history, humans had idealized the master strategist, the one who could pull off a victory no matter the odds. With each triumph, their legend grew, both in the Materium and Immaterium. That belief of invincibility and tactical brilliance was manifested in the XVI Primarch, and he cast aside the first wave of the Orkish defense with pitiful ease. The Lunar Templars specialized in 'spearhead' tactics, using their strongest units as a tip of the spear to ram past the enemy's weakest points and defeat them before the battle had even truly begun to be a proper slaughter. The Orks were unprepared for such a vicious counterpunch, and the Vengeful Spirit had torn right through their ranks, creating small bubbles of encirclement that the heavy guns of the Stormbringers were only too happy to turn into radioactive dust, doomed to drift across the vast inky blackness of space for all eternity.
The Lunar Templar's Inner Circle was doing their jobs well also. Horus had decided that since the system had many planets and almost all of them had been heavily developed by the Orks in their centuries of occupation, each and every one of them needed to be hit at roughly the same time in order to prevent the now scattered Orks to regrouping and mounting a second void attack that the Lunar Templars and Stormbringers were unprepared for. As Horus spent the next standard day slowly making his way towards Gorm-2, destroying any resistance he and Culain found along the way, reports came in of his sons truly making him proud. Abbadon the Redeemer had cleverly deployed the Titans assigned to his planet in such a way that they had destroyed the Gargants protecting the planetary forgeworks before the cruel xenos tech could even get a shot off. Corin Calistar had encountered a large contingency of what the Orks called weirdboyz in the midst of planning to unleash lethal amounts of Warp energy on any unsuspecting section of the Crusader fleet that passed by their area of the asteroid belt.
As Culain and Horus finally made their way to the point where they had visual contact with Gorm-2, one of the artillery staff located on the bridge let out a small curse at the sight on his screen, and the XVI Primarch couldn't help but agree with him.
The atmosphere of the planet was swarming with bits of metal. Countless ships, in even more sizes and shapes than the ones who had greeted the Crusader Fleet at the Mandeville Point soared across the breadth of Gorm-2's expanse. When they fired their ammunition at the approaching fleet, a wall of molten death seemed to appear between the two sides of the fight, and it was only due to the power of the Imperial shields that they did not all die when the rounds impacted and also due to the valor of their Astartes defenders who repelled each and every boarding party without fail as the numerous Orks tried to find purchase on any vessel their ships had crashed into.
Round after round of ammunition was spent fending them off. The Lunar Templars and the Stormbringers complimented each other perfectly in this situation. The moment the Orks thought the Templars had left themselves exposed while going after a high-value target, Stormbringer rounds would destroy any ship foolish enough to try and take advantage of such a false opportunity. Still, the tactic could not last forever, and there were limits to how successful the Imperium could be in such a prolonged fight.
"We are running out of ammunition." Culain said, and Horus could tell that although perhaps not nervous, his brother was beginning to doubt whether this sort of strategy would win them the day. Even with all of the interference from the battle causing his image on the screen to waver and periodically dissolve into static, Horus could see the lines of worry etched into the X Primarch's face.
"Patience, brother. They're about to get desperate enough to try it."
"I should hope so." Culain huffed. "Your scouts had better be right about this. If they aren't we have wasted far too much time when we should have taken advantage of a break in their lines and landed on the surface, try to draw as many Orks out of the sky as possible and make them fight us on the ground."
"Trust me, Culain. I want every single Ork watching the sky for what happens next." Horus assured him.
And as if the Orks were listening in and waiting for their cues, alarms began to once again scream out a warning as a massive new blip appeared on the command screen.
"My Lord Horus, there is something coming up from behind Gorm-2. It's… it's… oh Emperor save me, it's massive!" a technician wailed.
The man had not been wrong. It truly was massive. Since roughly halfway through the Golgotha Campaign, Kota Ravenwing's best scouts had been giving him bits of information here and there. Nothing to make any massive conclusions from, but it added up to one over time. From the data Horus had seen, it was clear that the Orks were experimenting in creating bigger and bigger weapons to fight off the encroaching Imperials.
Every seasoned Imperial commander had tangled with Ork 'Roks' before. They were asteroids of varying size that had been carved up and hollowed out by the savage Greenskins. Once firmly in possession, they were stuff with as many guns and fast engines as possible, used as gargantuan floating fortresses that could hold a vital point in a void battle or rain down death on millions of unfortunate souls who happened to be in the line of fire from a weapon that almost defied human understand about how large or loud a weapon of this nature could be.
Still, Horus knew this was not the worst thing the Orks were coming up with. Roks had been defeated by the Imperium before, and it was starting to lose its effectiveness on the battlefield as more and more forces from the Great Crusade had encountered one and new exactly how to deal with it. But to give up on an effective instrument of death was not the Orkish way. Instead, they had invested considerable resources into making their fabled Roks "bigga an' betta, plus a whole lotta more dakka".
Rising up from behind the edge of Gorm-2 was the first ever functional Attack Moon that the Imperium of Man had ever encountered. A massive in the likeness of Gork and Mork stretched for hundreds of miles across the front surface of the moon, and from its evil maw came the biggest weapon the Imperium had ever seen in their Ork Crusade. Entire continents could be wiped out after a single round from such a weapon, not to mention what would happen if a ship took so much as a glancing hit if it fired.
Greenskins all over the system let out a cheer when they heard it was time for their fabled "Moon Killa" to be unleashed upon their enemies. Chants of "Big Rok!" were taken up all over Gorm-2 and wherever else pockets of resistance still held up against the unwavering Imperial onslaught. This was their monument to their victory over the "humies", and they were loving every second of it. They felt the excitement of those around them, and that energy fed into the WAAAAAAGH!!! centered around Gorm-2, uniting them in their fervor even more.
Exactly how Horus had planned it.
"It's time." he told the Chief Gunner with a solemn nod. "Fire the Lance of Luna."
The fear and trepidation that had been on the faces of the normal humans aboard the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit soon turned to awe and dread at what they were about to unleash. One of the communication officers soon pressed the vox rune to another section of the ship, a section that did not receive a great deal of attention during combat, but when it did, it was almost certainly among the most memorable of occasions.
"Weapon activation requested." the communications officer said, his voice jumping slightly in pitch as he spoke into the receiver. "It's time to unleash the Lance."
<Acknowledged, bridge.> came the crisp reply from the other end. <Awaiting confirmation code from the Primarch himself.>
"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war." Horus said with a sigh, quoting the authorization code he had made himself from a passage in a very old book he had badgered his father for years about before He had relented and let Horus read it.
<Authorization confirmed.> the voice said. <Begin launch sequence. May your enemies tremble in fear at what you have unleashed, my Lord Primarch.>
"I have not heard of this 'Lance of Luna' before, brother." Culain interjected as Horus simply stared out the window with a hard stare as the Attack Moon slowly made its way into firing position. "What is it?"
"The enemy vessel will fire on us in one minute." chirped a magos technician, permanently bound to the cogitator that he had read from for the better part of a century.
"It's something that I asked the Martian Shipwrights to craft for me when I changed the name of this vessel." Horus replied to his brother. "I figured that if I am the tip of the Emperor's Spear, should I not have a speartip of my own?"
"You are not answering my question, Horus."
"No, I suppose I am not."
"Thirty seconds to enemy attack."
"Please, whatever this weapon is it can wait. If you don't move out of the way, they will obliterate you!"
"No. If I do that, I won't have a clear shot. The Lance only has one opportunity at this. She's a good weapon, but slow to fire and it takes ages to recharge."
"Fifteen seconds."
"This is cutting it entirely too close. I am moving to attack the moon to shield your escape."
"Stay where you are, that's a direct order."
"Ten seconds."
"Brother, do not make me beg. Move your ship."
"Patience, Culain."
"Five seconds."
"You're running out of time! Please, don't let it-"
<Lauch successful. Die, xenos scum!>
As the weapons officer in charge of the Lance of Luna screamed his threat into the vox speaker, power on the Vengeful Spirit's bridge was drained as all non-essential energy was transferred into this one weapon. A weapon that if used properly, could changed the very tide of a war.
Decades ago, when Horus Lupercali had taken his flagship the Tiber-Prince into drydock at the equatorial shipyards of Mars, he had taken a private journey to the inner sanctum of Luna, where once he had made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that Chaos did not possess him and use his considerable talents to wage war against his father's Imperium.
What happened to Horus when he reached the now cleansed sanctum is known only to a precious few, and they would rather die than spill their secrets. What is known however is that when Horus Lupercali emerged from that chamber, there was a look of steely determination on his face that would have left unaugmented mortal humans in a fervent stupor for months if they had happened to gaze upon him.
Returning to the Martian shipyards, he made several demands of the techpriests in charge of his flagship's repairs. Some were simple, such as the renaming of his flagship to the Vengeful Spirit so that, as the Primarch put it: "that noble ship can escape its fate, just as I have". Others, such as outfitting his ship with the newly created Lance of Luna, proved to be much more difficult. But in the end, the techpriests prevailed and Horus Lupercali found himself in the possession of one of the most dangerous weapons in the Imperium.
The Lance of Luna itself is a peculiar weapon, drawing inspiration from both ancient tech found in the Dark Age of Technology and his older brother's void maneuvers in the Battle for Ceres in the opening days of the Great Crusade, making the Lance of the Luna one of the earliest examples of innovation that the Emperor and his servants were encouraging Mars to be open to. It was slow, it only had one shot before months of recharging and repairing had to be done, but to Horus it was completely worth it, for it could take unaware enemies such as these and turn their own arrogance against them.
The weapon was made up of two parts: the first is a adamantium rod, measuring over four hundred meters in length and easily seventy meters across with promethium rocket boosters in the back. The second part is a miniature warp drive, capable of sending specific things inside a ship into the Warp for short intervals.
Upon Horus Lupercali's express authorization, the adamantium rod is ignited and rockets out of its firing chamber at terrifying speeds. As it exits the barrel of its weapon, the miniature warp drive activates and sends the rod into the warp. At the command of the weapons crew manning the Lance of Luna, the adamantium rod will rematerialize into realspace right before it impacts the enemy vessel, thus creating twin impacts of energy: one coming from the kinetic explosion released by the hardest metal known to the Imperium of Man impacting its target at a fraction of the speed of light, and the other from the gravitational and warp energy detonation that occurs upon missile rematerialization, recreating a miniaturized version of Alexio Garva's 'Instein's Fist' maneuver which was incredibly effective at wiping out enemy resistance.
As the adamantium rod rematerialized back into realspace, mere meters away from hitting the Attack Moon, it was obvious that the blow had been landed exactly as planned. The twin bursts of energy, occurring within milliseconds of one another, created such a bright spot of light that even the combatants at the very edge of the system could see its radiant brilliance. The physical ramifications were horrible for the Orks. The center of the moon was gone, obliterated by the impact of the Lance and soon the Attack Moon completely disintegrated, the damage to its structure was such that the parts that had not flown into space at speeds nearly equaling the Lance were now just drifting aimlessly in the orbit of Gorm-2, lifeless and ashen as it bore silent witness to the awe-inspiring destructive power of Horus Lupercali and the Lunar Templars.
The effect on the Orks who took inspiration from the Attack Moon was almost as bad. Bereft of their source of courage and strength. Many Orks sent up a cry of anguish and despair, trying desperate to flee before the Imperials could catch them and burn them to a crisp to prevent further spread of the xenos filth. The lucky few that did manage to make it into a ship that took them out of orbit soon found that the X and XVI Legions were waiting for them with open arms and trained cannons. No Ork survived the innumerable escape attempts from the Gorm system.
There were no craft trying to escape from Gorm-2 however. Whatever had its grip on them down there would not give it up so easily, and Horus knew it would be a challenge unlike any he had faced before. These Orks would be the best of the best. Battle-hardened and ready to face whatever the Astartes could throw at them. It would be a daunting task at best to take this planet.
But they were the Emperor's Chosen, his mighty XVI Legion, and there was no foe they would not face and no challenge they could not overcome in the name of humanity.
"Now that this is taken care of up here, care to join me on the planet below?" Horus asked Culain, not even trying to keep the smug grin off his face. He felt that he had earned this one, especially after playing so fine of a surprise card against his dour brother. "There are still many Orks that are in need of killing. It's high time we corrected this error."
Culain MacTurson looked back on him with a grin of his own, but unlike Horus' which was filled with glee and swagger, this was a savage thing. A grin of something who is giddy with anticipation over what they are about to do.
"Aye, brother." the X Primarch said. "It is time."
"Let us go slay some Orks. For the Emperor, for humanity, for the Golden Path!"
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