Veritas Ferrum David Annandale The explosions rippled along both flanks of the Veritas Ferrum. The blasts were twin broadsides, as the Iron Hands strike cruiser drove between its enemies. With Night Lords to port and the Alpha Legion to starboard, there was no question of evasion. There was only, for now, a choice of foe. As the Veritas was bracketed by the fire of the two smaller cruisers, her void shields flared with the brilliance of a new sun. The glare was so intense that, for an instant, the oculus showed nothing but white blindness. Standing at his command lectern, Captain Durun Atticus raised his bionic rasp of a voice over the din of alarms and the rumble of secondary blasts. ‘Damage report, Sergeant Galba!’ ‘Void shield collapse over port-side stern, captain. Fire in that landing bay, and in the serf barracks.’ ‘Seal the sector. Divert its power to the shields.’ Galba looked up from his post just beneath the lectern. ‘Captain, the survivors–’ Atticus silenced the sergeant with a sharp gesture. ‘They’re dead either way. Anyone in that sector is a casualty. Let’s not add to their numbers. Do it, damn you!’ Damn the arithmetic of war. Damn Horus. Damn the turncoat cowards who were filling the near orbit of Isstvan V with the wreckage of ships, the flames of treachery, and the ruin of the Emperor’s dream. ‘And damn me too,’ Atticus muttered. Galba paused over his controls. ‘Captain?’ ‘Nothing.’ But it wasn’t nothing, was it? What was it he had said to his men, laughing with that bionic larynx of his – laughing – as the Veritas had begun its journey through the warp to the Isstvan System? He had said that it was not true that the Legions knew no fear, because he had a great one, and his fear was that they would arrive to find that their primarch, Ferrus Manus, had already crushed the Warmaster’s rebellion without them. After Callinedes – after Fulgrim’s craven ambush – and after the warp storms had calmed, Lord Manus had raced hard for Isstvan, taking the fastest, least-damaged ships, and filling them with his most experienced Avernii veterans. Atticus had given over half his complement of warriors to the primarch’s folly. But now the Veritas Ferrum had finally dropped out of the warp at the system’s Mandeville point, and into a vision of hell. Atticus descended from the lectern and strode to the oculus. Littering the far orbit of the Isstvan star was a graveyard of loyalist ships. Some had been caught as they attempted to escape, but many more were simply torn apart by enemy fire as soon as they emerged from the immaterium. The Iron Hands’ second wave had been virtually obliterated. ‘Hard to starboard!’ he ordered, sweeping his eyes over his crew. ‘Will none of you ask if I am relieved that my fear has not come to pass?’ The battle was not over, but the terrible truth was that it seemed as though it soon would be. He jabbed a finger at the nearest enemy ship that hove into view as the Veritas began its turn. ‘I want everything hitting that Alpha Legion bastard.’ If he still had lips, they would have parted in a murderous smile. ‘So the individual is unimportant, is it, Alpharius?’ he spat. ‘Then what we’re about to do won’t hurt you at all.’ With the slow majesty of a glacier, the Veritas rounded on its prey. The Alpha Legion ship, the Theta, tried to evade by rising above the ecliptic, but it was too slow, and too late. Concentrated lance and torpedo fire from the Veritas overwhelmed its void shields. They went down in a flickering cascade, and the Theta’s running lights died just before the Iron Hands main barrage struck it amidships. The blow was devastating. The Theta broke in half. Galba called out from his station, ‘The Night Lords vessel is firing again.’ ‘Noted, sergeant. Countermeasures.’ Atticus looked at the bisected cruiser before them. ‘Helmsman,’ he ordered, ‘take us through.’ The prow of the Veritas Ferrum drove into the dissipating fireball where the core hull of the Theta had been. The two sections of the Alpha Legion vessel seemed to fold in upon the Veritas in an embrace of the void. There was a glancing impact that brought down the starboard prow shields, but then the Veritas was clear. Behind them, the Night Lords vessel’s flank was exposed to the wreckage – the ship was manoeuvring into an evasive turn, but there was no time. The shattered rearward bulk of the Theta slammed into it, lighting up the void as her reactor went critical. The sound that came from Atticus’s voice box was a growl of satisfaction. ‘Sergeant Galba?’ ‘Shields holding. Just.’ Ahead, there was a clear path. Atticus turned to the vox-operator. ‘Any word from the dropsite?’ ‘Nothing I can confirm, captain.’ They had received only fragmentary vox chatter since their arrival. Broken distress calls from voices that claimed to be Iron Hands, lamenting the death of their primarch, but never any direct responses to hails from the Veritas. Atticus returned to the command lectern. ‘More lies, then,’ he said. He would not believe that Ferrus Manus had been killed. Not unless he saw the primarch’s body before him. Perhaps not even then. He would not believe it. Yet deep down he knew there was nothing left to salvage from the dropsite, and he felt his soul filling with a hatred that he would carry to his grave. Galba’s auspex blared a proximity alarm. ‘Capital ships, dead ahead!’ Atticus could not sigh any more. So much of the weak flesh was gone, the many basic human mannerisms given up and replaced by the strength of metal. So he did not sigh – he tightened his fists instead, bending the rails around the lectern. ‘We must retreat. If we do not, if nothing of the loyalist forces survived the slaughter on the surface, what then? What then for our Legion?’ The vox-operator whirled to face the lectern. ‘Signal! Thunderhawks. Two, outbound from the debris field, requesting aid.’ The war-arithmetic loomed before Atticus once more. ‘Put it on main speaker.’ Static crackled through the open channel. Then came a voice. ‘This is Sergeant Khi’dem, Salamanders 139th Company. Our carrier vessel was destroyed. We need recovery.’ Atticus looked at the tactical hololiths before him. So few allied ships left. The Veritas was the only one close enough, and with even the illusion of freedom to act. But the arithmetic was unforgiving. ‘I’m sorry, sergeant. We cannot help you. This is the Tenth Legion strike cruiser Veritas Fe–’ ‘We have a number of your brothers and those of the Raven Guard aboard. We lost many to save them. Is that worth nothing?’ ‘Do you have our primarch?’ There was a long moment of silence. ‘No.’ ‘Then, I regret–’ ‘Three Legions have fought for the Emperor, and now face annihilation. Are they to be abandoned, their sacrifice forgotten? Will you grant the traitors an absolute victory? Will there be no witnesses to what was done this day on Isstvan Five?’ Atticus cursed. He cursed Khi’dem. He cursed the entire galaxy. ‘Helmsman, set course to intercept. Recover those ships.’ He hated the piece of his soul that rejoiced at the decision. He wished he had replaced it with bionics, too. The Veritas Ferrum closed with the Thunderhawks. On both its flanks, the great warships of the Sons of Horus and the Emperor’s Children were approaching. A noose was closing around the Iron Hands. The Veritas slowed to take on the two gunships, even as the traitors opened fire. The starboard landing bays were closing when the torpedoes struck the port side. Then the already terrible damage became catastrophic. The explosions were thunder that built upon thunder. Atticus felt his ship’s wound through the command interface like a blade scraping the length of his ribs. The bridge klaxons were the Veritas screaming in pain. But the Iron Hands still had the vector of escape. Atticus pounded the railing of the command lectern. ‘Go!’ he roared. The Veritas ran. The tear in its flank was huge. It bled air and flame and tiny, armoured figures into the void. The ship was rocked by yet another torpedo hit. Galba was hunched over his post as though the screens themselves were his enemies. ‘Fire spreading, captain. Over a hundred legionaries lost to the void.’ ‘Many times more than the Thunderhawks were transporting,’ Atticus raged. ‘I’m sure our guests are worth it.’ He felt it then, the final excision of mercy from his being. The last weakness, killed one battle too late. And now, with only one desperate path remaining, a calmness as cold as the grave descended upon him. ‘Make the jump.’ Galba was staring at him. ‘Captain, the hull is compromised–’ ‘Make the jump. Now.’ The Veritas Ferrum’s warp engines flared. The bleeding ship plunged into reality’s scream, and Atticus gazed into the maw of a future as pitiless and uncertain as he.