‘We’re too close,’ Baskaline said.
It didn’t matter that he was right, that the centre of the Avenue would be better.
‘Can you move?’ Haas asked him.
‘No.’
‘Then this is where we stand.’
The tenements disappeared in an explosive combustion. Haas sweated beneath her riot armour. The shields blocked the direct intensity of the flame, but the fire shone through the viewports of the lockshields with daylight brilliance. The thunder-roar of the fire was joined by the cracks of failing masonry and the crashing of collapsing wood. ‘Here it comes!’ Haas warned.
The near facade came down with avalanche fury. Portions of the building fell in on themselves. Other sections of the wall smashed onto the Avenue of Martyrs, crushing the pilgrims, making them into burned offerings. Haas and the other Arbitrators crouched, angling their shields into a protective roof. Blazing wreckage crashed against the ceramite. Haas crouched lower, absorbing the shock of the blows with her arms and legs. A heavy, burning hand tried to drive the Arbitrators into the pavement. They pushed back, shoving the rubble aside.
The roar of the fire had lessened. Through her viewport, Haas saw that the worst of the conflagration had been smothered by the collapse. Hundreds of pilgrims had been crushed. She had no idea how many thousands had died in the buildings themselves.
She could move forward now. There was shelter in the smoking ruin, the chance to regroup and return to the fray. She clambered over some low heaps of rubble. The others followed, their armour protecting them from the guttering fires. The smoke choked the entire street and Haas coughed, wishing for a rebreather.
The suffocating air further smothered the flames of the panic. Many of the surviving pilgrims, bunched tightly in the street, were falling to their knees, retching. More powerful yet than the smoke was despair. It drained the urgency of terror from the crowd. It stole hope away and left the people motionless before their fate. On the other side of the street, the fire still towered from the tenement blocks. The collapse began there too.
Destruction marched up and down the Avenue of Martyrs, but in its wake, it left a kind of order.
Kord sounded like he was going to leave a lung on the pavement.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he said.
‘And go where?’ Baskaline sounded no better.
Haas’ vision swam. It was all she could do to remain upright. Baskaline was right, though. Any route they took would be back towards the fire. The space around the Arbitrators was fairly open. If they waited, the worst of the smoke would dissipate before too long.
‘Our duty is not complete,’ she reminded the others. Calm had been restored, for the moment. It fell to them to maintain it until they were ordered elsewhere.
Time passed. The air cleared enough that each breath Haas took felt like swallowing hot sand instead of burning coal. Kord looked up. There was nothing to see through the smoke. Even so, he stared as if he could see the object of his hatred.
‘We need to bring the fight to the greenskins,’ he said.
‘We will,’ Haas reassured him.
‘I don’t just mean the Navy and the Guard. I mean all of us.’
‘Our oaths are different. We’re called to serve here.’
‘What good will that do? This could be our last stand. If we don’t stop the orks, there will be no law to keep on Terra.’
‘If the orks make landfall,’ Haas countered, ‘we’ll be needed as never before.’
Kord had another coughing fit. ‘Things have changed,’ he said when he could speak again. ‘Everything has changed.’
Haas shook her head and started forward to stand guard in the midst of the pilgrims, an unbending sign that the Emperor’s law still prevailed. She would not swerve from her oath of office until death took her. It was her anchor, because Kord was right. Everything had changed.
And everything was ending.
The galaxy shook. From Segmentum Solar to Ultima, from Tempestus to Obscurus, the Beast unleashed its forces against the Imperium. Star fortresses appeared simultaneously in system after system. A predatory monster with uncountable millions of heads descended on the worlds of humanity. The fleets and armies of exultant savagery struck and struck and struck. The Imperium bled from a thousand wounds.
The worlds of Ultramar were spared the tectonic events of a star fortress extruding into near orbit. That was the only mercy. The first to be attacked were the agri worlds Tarentus and Quintarn. The skies over their cities turned black with ork drop-ships. Enemy cruisers devastated their orbital defences. Three companies of Ultramarines responded within hours, and they set the void on fire as a battle-barge and strike cruisers engaged the ork vessels.
