The Crippled Assassination

Shaaa strode along the corridor of the fortress on Ceres, seeing few others as he strode by, most of his sons and the mortal warriors who defended the Sol System in training or otherwise patrolling their allotted sectors, while his tech marines and adepts of the Mechanicum hurried to bring the Solar Guardian Array to even a fraction of its predicted strength before Almire and his treasonous forces arrived in the system. When would that be, Shaaa wondering. How long did they have left? What forces friendly to the throne would arrive before the inevitable happened and the storm descended upon them? So far, only a trickle had reached the Sol System, a handful of Ashen Crows revealing treachery of a different kind from that of Almire and assuring the Praetorian that the Ashen Crows were loyal, and yet had seen fit not to return to Terra.

Beyond them though, it had been a pathetic showing at best, dribbles of mortal and Mechanicum forces trying to reach the throneworld through the howling warp but nothing in any meaningful numbers. Was that how it ended? Standing alone against the Warmaster?

Shaaa’s scowl deepened as he finally reached the end of the corridor, moving inside his personal arming chamber, the dim lights flared into full life, banishing shadows with their stark, artificial glare.

Servo arms likewise came to life as Shaaa walked down the central channel of the large room, sliding along rails in the ceiling and instantly matching his pace before reaching out to touch him. Unseen ports across Shaaa’s armour opened with a single thought from the Breacher Lord, allowing the arms entry into the otherwise sealed armour, unclasping the plates and bearing them away, removing Shaaa’s armour in a manner far more efficient than the arming serfs some of the legions used. The entire IVth legion subscribed to that belief, their arming chambers ones of machinery rather than humanity, and Shaaa would have it no other way.

Within moments, the mighty Hydra terminator armour was removed and disappeared into hidden compartments in the ceiling, Shaaa’s body bare to the cold room, the Primarch forgoing the use of a body glove in favour of dozens of interface ports across his body to allow for instantaneous connection between warrior and wargear. Taking a final step, Shaaa came to a halt, squaring his shoulders as yet more servo arms appeared, sliding into two large ports on Shaaa’s back before slowly rising, lifting the Primarch from the floor and connecting him directly to the datastream of the SGA.

Any other, even another Primarch, would have been lost in the datasteam as it washed over Shaaa, even his mind struggling to keep up, barely registering as his cybernetic legs were deactivated, whisked away after his armour for maintenance, leaving Shaaa truly alone, little more than a torso floating above the ground.

For hours, Shaaa remained all but motionless, becoming one with the data that now flowed through him. He could see the entire SGA in that moment, from the ring of Luna and Mars to the outermost defences beyond Pluto. Nothing could escape his sight for long, he merely had to think to look in the correct places. Minute changes to deployment patterns and revised construction priorities were sent to work crews and individual squads at the speed of thought. Efficient. Precise. Centralised. These words were prized by Shaaa, they were what would keep the Sol system standing for as long as it was possible to do so.

“My lord.”

Shaaa was broken out of his scanning of the data feed instantly, the arms turning him to face the new occupant of the room. Any other would have been turned away long before reaching this sanctum, even those like Malchador or the Legio Custodes would have been queried and their approach relayed to Shaaa. Only one of his own sons could move even vaguely freely within the station, and it was upon one of his sons that Shaaa’s eyes now fell.

The sergeant saluted before Shaaa spoke, the Primarch still appraising this new arrival, accessing his service record almost as an afterthought, identifying him as Jallal. Even within the Sol System there had been fighting that had taken up a portion of his legions strength. Across every world in the system people were rising up for the Warmaster, only to be put down with brutal, bloody efficiency. The worst of this had been the agents of the Warmaster himself, Almire’s influence within the Adeptus Arbites proving every bit the danger many had always claimed it to be. Provincial houses became strongholds as they rose in rebellion, armoured and armed with enough munitions to stave off a regiment of Army Troopers, forcing Astartes intervention and taking their strength away from other postings that desperately required the expertise of the IVth.

Jallal had been assigned to the most recent of such purges, his armour showing the signs of the fighting, though still well-maintained as was demanded of Shaaa’s warriors. A blade had left a cut down to bare metal across the helmet's visor. On the right pauldron there was a scouring mark, undoubtedly the trace of a flamer’s touch. Shaaa noticed all such miniscule details in one glance. The Star Guardians had ever been a tightly wound order, prepared for combat at a moments readiness, but now, with the reality of the Warmaster approaching with forces orders of magnitude greater than what they had access to, this had fused many of Shaaa’s warriors a state of constant readiness, a perpetual expectation of threat that even the down-time within the heart of the SGA on Ceres itself had not diminished. Jallal’s hand, subconsciously conditioned, never strayed far from the butt of his clamped weapon, as though he believed he might be ambushed at any second.

“Report, Jallal,” Shaaa spoke, taking in all the details in less than a second. “I do not often like to be disturbed within my chambers.

“Of course, my lord,” Jallal replied flatly.

“What brings you here, sergeant,” Shaaa spoke again, reiterating the question.

Jallal hesitated.

“With your permission, my lord, I brought battle-brothers I would like you to meet with me.”

Shaaa coked his head slightly at this, Jallal taking this as a sign to expand upon his request.

“They have been present with me through every conflict within the Sol system, they were with me during the recent destruction of the Precinct 88573 on the Venus Secondary plate, we put down one of the Justicars in charge, his wounds were grave but they managed to rip some information from him before he died.”

Shaaa’s attention was piqued by this. That there were members of the Warmaster's own legion within some of the Arbites precincts was a known fact, another reason for their strength and determination, but each time they had been faced in battle they had taken their own life long before they could be taken alive. Even a scrap of information from one of them would be worth its weight in Auramite.

“They are with you?” Shaaa asked.

“They wait without, in the corridor beyond, lord.”

“Bring them in, Jallal.”

At a signal from the Sergeant, the other Star Guardians entered; nine warriors, their black and purple war plate as worn and marked as Jallal’s, unit insignia and markings on the armour were virtually illegible on all of them, while their code identifiers in the data feed showed them as warriors from across the legion, a patchwork squad thrown together from those who could be spared from other duties.

He drank in the details again, each untold story plain to see: an armour plate slightly distorted by a melta’s brushing touch; a missing finger, sutured and sealed; a combat hammer with the wrong coloured grip that had been taken up as a battlefield replacement and forced to fit the wearer’s scabbard; the pockmarks of a too-close call with heavy munitions; the slight twitch of a visor from side to side, hunting for hidden killers even here beneath the Orbital Trenches of Ceres.

“Speak,” Shaaa ordered with a word, looking between the ten. “You struck down one of the Warmaster's own?”

None moved, had the war really shaken his sons this much. Shaaa had not expected to see such behavior from Star Guardians.

One had spaced himself back near the main door, a standardised placement that was drilled into each warrior of the legion for chamber-to-chamber fighting. One always covers the exit. These were warriors built for this new war, forged by its early conflicts. There was no rest in the Sol system, and it was anything but secure. They had most probably lived in their armour for the last year, never letting their weapons out of their hands.

Each of them were armed, bolters, combat blades and a single large combat hammer. It was odd to see armed warriors this far within Ceres without an alert drill being sounded, the only weapons openly carried within belonging to those of the Saturnalians and the Fortress guard. It was this that finally drew Shaaa’s mind to a darkened corner. No Star Guardian, no matter their status, was above the rules he had set down, his Saturnalians would know that.

“You carry with you weapons,” Shaaa noted.

“Lord?” Jallal replied.

“Your weapons, standing orders are to relinquish them within this fortress.”

Shaaa was not accustomed to subterfuge, it was one thing he did pride himself on, his propensity to the truth, lies unable to fall from his lips. Not all shared this view however, Shaaa’s eyes narrowing.

“Remove your helmet, Jallal.”

“My lord–”

‘Remove. Your. Helmet.”

Jallal did not reply.

His right hand went for the boltgun mag-clamped at his hip.

Shaaa’s mind turned cold. Anger welled up inside him as he realised he’d been so caught up in the datastream of the SGA he had missed the obvious in front of him. Surprise at the betrayal of his own. Disappointment that they had penetrated so deep into the heart of the SGA. All of these flashed across Shaaa’s face for an instant before he banished them from his mind. He had no time for the luxury of outrage. Now was the time to act or die.

Jallal’s bolter was up and firing in an instant, his men firing a split second later. As the first bolt launched itself from the weapons muzzles, time seemed to stand still. Shaaa was never regarded as fast compared to his brothers, not like Abner or Bartosz, but he was still a Primarch, and words like ‘slow and ponderous’ were relative in the extreme, transhuman physiology accelerated from nothing to hyperfast response.

He read the storm of bolter-rounds spitting from gun barrels. He read the white-hot muzzle flashes almost frozen mid-belch by the suspension of time as his heightened reactions propelled him to a new state of response. He read the mass-reactive shells in the air, travelling, burning towards him.

Shaaa was already moving, not under his own power but under that of the servo arms still holding him, their motors roaring as with a thought he flung himself to the side, detaching from them and twisting into a dive, landing heavily behind a heavy metal desk, his fall overturning it and providing a split seconds cover.

Bolt rounds detonated against the thick metal plate, blasting great holes in its surface.

*Armour piercing rounds. Prepared to meet me in armour. Not standard issue. Premeditated betrayal, not battlefield insanity.*

Shaaa did not let his momentum from the throw die as he landed, twisting and catching himself, before springing forward once again. His ruined physiology rendered traditional combat impossible, his hammer useless without his legs beneath him.

Shaaa was diving through the air, a huge target despite his half stature.

The Star Guardians did not hesitate, shifting their fire pattern to match Shaaa’s trajectory. Six bolt-rounds missed the diving primarch, annihilating a section of the high chamber wall and destroying a cogitator bank in a shower of sparks. Another clipped Shaaa’s shoulder, its armour piercing head ripping through the meat and out the other side, detonating behind the Primarch instead of within his flesh, though still leaving a ragged hole behind it. The round had failed to do lasting damage, but the heat of the detonation scorched his left cheek and the nape of his neck, and shrapnel peppered the side of his face.

He hit the floor, rolling, his tumble distorted by the glancing impact. In the corner of his eye he could already see bolter magazines dropping to the floor, new ones being slid into place. These would not be armour piercing, they would not repeat their mistake.

A weapons discharge alarm finally began to blare through the corridors of Ceres. Why did it take so long to activate? The first had been fired hours before, no, days earlier.

No, it had been but seconds. Time was just moving at glacial speeds.

Concentrate! If the alarms are sounding Saturnalian units will be on their way. Stay alive.

The Star Guardians near the door stopped firing, turning and pulling out a large metal disk, clamping it to the door and twisting sharply to the left. Great metal spikes shot from the disk, anchoring into the walls, floor and door before a flash of electrical discharge shot up the door, fusing it shut in an instant. Of course one of the bastards would cover the exit for such an ambush. These were no fools, these were Astartes. They did not make simple mistakes.

The door would remain closed, sealed by electrical and physical means. They were locked in together. The primarch and ten would-be killers.

*Traitors. Turncoats.*

*Why?*

*Why is irrelevant. Act.*

*Betrayal needs answers.*

*Asher gave none the last time.*

Shaaa was rolling even as his thoughts spiralled, memories of the last time he had fought in such odds. Weaponless, armourless, bereft of legs and body screaming from the pain of his wounds, disorientated by the blast and blinded by the grief of loss. It was a lifetime ago aboard the Ring, he had only just survived that time, but there he had fought mere mortals, abhumans of the Ring, but humans nonetheless. Now he fought against Atsartes. His Astartes.

Shaaa finally came to a halt, stopping for the first time since the firing had began, the tumbling roll leaving him staring up at the ceiling.

*I’m damned if I’ll die on my back.*

Shaaa rolled onto his front, slamming his hands into the floor with enough force to shatter the rockcrete, pushing down and sending himself leaping into the air.

*If I die, I will take you with me. Odds need evening. Think, adapt, overcome. Survive.*

Time was still as slow as glue. He could see individual bolt-rounds in mid-air, leaving comet trails of fire behind them. He smashed into the of the nearest killer, his fist pistoling forward into his helmet, augmented by his full weight as he dropped. Even out of armour Shaaa’s blow was enough to destroy the helmet, blood erupting outwards, the warrior beginning to fall even as Shaaa grabbed his wrist, snapping the bones beneath and forcing the bolter to drop.

Before it had even hit the ground, Shaaa was spinning, one palm on the floor while the other kept hold of the corpse for a split second before releasing it, flinging it from him, the flying corpse, showering blood, loose-limbed and whirling horizontally, hit two of the other killers in the faceplates and knocked them onto their backs.

Shaaa turned, needing to move again, unable to remain still. Every instinct he had honed over two centuries of warfare disregarded as the mantra of outlasting was forgotten. He was outgunned, he was vulnerable. The bolter fired twice, two shots remaining in its magazine before clicking empty. The shots were true however, the warrior not having yet swapped out his armour piercing rounds, the tips easily puncturing the armour of the next warriors chestpiece, the impact against armour rather than flesh enough to detonate their warheads, turning his insides to pulp.

Discarding the bolter, Shaaa pushed himself forward, skidding along the floor, gripping the fallen warriors sword as he went and pulling it free from its scabbard, the power field erupting into life. Arresting his momentum, Shaaa swung the sword in a wide ark, catching the ankle of a third Space marine, separating the leg from the foot, sending the warrior tumbling to the floor. A fist to the chest cracked his armour, the warrior out of action, though not dead. Not yet.

*Three down, two of them dead.*

But Shaaa was still again, and even without his legs he was a big target. No matter that time had slowed to a glacial pace, he was not the only being in the room with transhuman reactions. His assailants were of the Legiones Astartes, and that made them the most potent warriors in the Imperium.

Shaaa took his first solid hit: a second bolt-round to the shoulder, hitting almost exactly where the last one had struck, but unlike last time this was not an armour piercing round. He felt the bolt explode against his skin, blasting free a massive chunk of flesh, felt the sledgehammer slap of it, felt the searing pain of the fragments that had penetrated his body. A second hit, an instant later, lower back, and then a third, stomach. Dizzying pain. Impact. Blood seeping onto the floor. He was fighting for balance, propped up on his arms like a simian creature of Old Earth. There was blood in his mouth. He saw his own blood glinting as it ran down his pale skin, an attribute of a lifetime in sealed armour and in the void.

Another bolter-round caught him in the left side, exploded, and threw him hard into the room’s massive metal desk, the same one that had protected him a lifetime ago, or was it seconds ago? The sword was long gone, Shaaa having to twist himself to avoid slamming his wounded back into a jagged piece of metal protruding from the desk. Roaring, Shaaa pushed away from the desk, narrowly avoiding another hurtling round, before swinging his fist sideways, catching the warrior square in the throat. He felt the collision impact shiver along the arm. The man left the ground, head back, arms rising, as if he had run throat-first into a tripwire. He landed hard.

Shaaa wanted to reach for the man’s bolter, but another round took him in the chest and blew him back against the desk. They were coming at him. All those he had knocked down but not finished were on their feet again. He groped for a piece of broken metal on the desk, missed it, and found an artificer's spanner. He hurled that.

It struck one of the killers in the faceplate hard enough to turn his head and smash a visor lens, though little meaningful damage. It had given Shaaa time however, his rummaging hand finally locating the jagged metal shard. He hurled that too, like a throwing knife. It impaled the neck of the assassin he had just dazed with the spanner. The man lurched several drunken steps sideways and collapsed, blood gouting from under his chin.

Shaaa was hit again, right pectoral. The pain was so fierce he wondered if his collarbone had fractured. Two more shots went past his head to the left, missing him by less than a hand’s breadth.

Gasping with pain, the Breacher Lord threw himself backwards over the desk in an evasive roll, trying to get its remains of the metal bulk between him and the relentless bolters. Metal chips and fragments whizzed out from every fiery impact. The front and top of the desk quickly began to resemble the cratered surface of a moon. One of the attackers leapt on the desk to fire over the side at the sheltering primarch. Shaaa came up to meet him, sweeping his legs out from under him and dragging him down, the bolter falling to the other side of the table, but the combat hammer fell towards Shaaa.

Shaaa’s hammer would have been useless, but the combat hammer was designed to be used one handed, and in Shaaa’s hands it was like a toy, but it did the job, the weapon rising and falling in a blur, reducing helmet and head to a bloody mess.

Shaaa could feel blood leaking down his ruined flesh. He could feel blood running from the torn tissue of his face and neck. He could hear the Saturnalians  hammering at the chambers door.

The guards could not open the doors, the override device that had been used was stopping any attempts to open the chamber, built like the rest of Ceres to be a fortress. Premeditated. Clever. Ingenious, in fact.

*Not the actions of bitter, disaffected veterans, nor the behaviour of warp-damaged maniacs.*

‘Who are you?’ Shaaa demanded of anyone and no one. His voice sounded small, enclosed by gun smoke, cinched by pain.

More bolt-rounds came his way in answer, flaring out of the fyceline smoke that clogged the air. Shaaa threw himself flat. Bolts kissed the ruined desk and struck the main cogitator screen behind him, creating cobweb patterns of cracks in the strengthened glass.

How many had he finished? Five, and one other with a hand severed. Was it five? Six? Four? How many of them would it take to finish him?

He glanced around.

The man he had pulled off the desk and crushed his head was sprawled beside him on his back, still twitching. Blood had already stopped jetting from the stump of his neck, and yet miraculously, impossibly, he was still alive, reaching for his fallen bolter to aim at Shaaa, despite having no eyes with which to see.

*What are you?*

Shaaa lashed out, punching the man backwards and impaling him upon the jagged metal of the desk The man went into juddering spasms and finally died. Shaaa wrenched the boltgun out of his dead grip. it was like a pistol to him. It only fitted his un-gauntleted hand, if he had been wearing his armour, he never would have been able to grasp it.

*If you were wearing your armour they would be dead, not you.*

*Not dead yet.*

He heard the remaining assassins exchanging guttural, coded words as they fanned around the devastated desk through the smoke to finish him. He didn’t understand what they were saying. It wasn’t a Star Guardian battle cant.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand. All that mattered is it was happening.

Their exchange told him plenty. It placed them. Sound and relative angle. He knew, without having to see, that two were coming around the desk to his left, and one to his right.

He went to the left, pushing himself with one free hand, sending him skidding across the floor once more, the metal cap that usually connected his body to his legs screeching in protest. He came around the desk firing. One kill, solid, a head shot, a red fog. A second, two through the chest.

Something ran into him from behind. His mouth opened wide, a silent howl, as he felt the sharp, cold bite of a blade punching through his back and running in under his ribs. It stayed there. It was wedged. Shaaa wheeled and smashed his left fist into the face of the swordsman.

The Star Guardian was somersaulted backwards by the force of the blow. He hit the cogitator screen face first, upside down. Despite the cobweb cracks, the glass did not shatter. The man dropped in a heap on the floor beneath them.

Shaaa turned to track the remaining killers. The damned sword was still stuck through him. He–

At least two shells struck his left shoulder behind his ear and detonated. He felt as though his head had snapped off to the right with the shockwave. He felt heat and ferocious pain. He tasted blood and fyceline, his ears ringing, his vision gone.

He fell. He couldn’t get up. He was half propped against the desk or an overturned chair.

He couldn’t see. He fired blind. It was pointless. He fired again.

He felt a blade against his throat.

‘Death to the false Emperor,’said the voice Shaaa had thought belonged to Sergeant Jallal.

‘Let me die knowing what you are,’ Shaaa whispered.

A laugh.

‘Your killer.’

‘What else? What else are you?’

“I am the star that burns away the so-called Guardian, all your kind shall know the touch of his glow before the end.”

Then the hateful rumours from half a galaxy away, of treacherous masquerade and false colours, were true. The Consul Exemplar would employ any means. The deception through which this execution had been accomplished, the impeccable covert approach, it made sense. Shaaa had never had any martial respect for the elusive, cowardly tactics of the XIIIth Legion, but this had been superlative, had he not been its target, he would have called it masterful.

‘One thing you should learn from this moment, servant of the Gaius,’ Shaaa said. ‘When you have to murder a primarch, and you get one at your mercy, do not waste the moment answering his questions when he still has a bolter in his hand.’

Shaaa fired, his aim guided by Jallal’s voice.‘Jallal’ was thrown away from him by the force of the point-blank shot. The assassin’s blade left a deep gouge across Shaaa’s exposed throat. Blood welled.

He pushed himself upright, unsteady, balanced on the ruined metal cap at his waist. His clouded vision began to return. He saw the last assassin crawling across the high chamber floor, struggling to find a boltgun.

‘Enough,’ Shaaa said, and shot him through the back of the head. Then he dropped to the floor and realised how tired he was.

At some point after that, the Saturnalians finally cut through the main doors, melta cutters and charges reducing it to slag. Shaaa did not see their entrance, blood pooling around the unconscious Primarch.