Chapter Text
The world had been known as 337-89 and had avoided a more unique name through almost three centuries of imperial rule. It was an unremarkable brown ball orbiting around an unremarkable sun with precisely 2 notable things about it: one was that it was capable of maintaining an atmosphere tolerable by complex life and that this planet, being on the orbit of that unremarkable star, was where the last remnants of a mighty alien empire had died.
They had fled to this furthest flung outreach of their empire, desperately huddling their ships around the sun and drawing strength and air from the tiny little brown rock, hoping to escape the exterminating fleets that had hunted them across the galaxy by orders of their Master, and burrowing deep into the tectonic plates of that dead rock of a planet.
They failed.
The 4th of the Emperor's legions had been assigned for such a dismal mop-up operation, sparing more influential and vital legions. They had scoured the world, crushing the alien race's last fortresses and exterminating the last refugees with a grinding competence that gained victory no matter the cost.
The prize their sacrifice had won was not grand. The world was barely suitable for human habitation; cold, dry, and dusty. The only significant geographical feature, oceans nothing more than vast tepid ponds with algae blooming in them, had just enough life to give the dull place a breathable atmosphere. This and a relatively strategic place near an important warp route had been enough to gain it a point in the map, and thus the order had been given. The Iron Warriors were to make a fortress upon it.
They had raised it up on the closest thing to a mountain the bare granite rock had before the expeditionary fleet had left. Layers of defences and millions of tons of rock were moved to present clear kill lines.
And then, the Crusade had moved on, leaving behind its 80 the Iron Warriors and just the necessary equipment for them to do their duty.
At first, the detachment had done nothing except dig out fresh kill zones, fortify their position and refortify again and again. They stewed in humiliation at the indignity of their duty. The dry, dead world was a place of no beauty, no glory—just bitterness and ennui.
Beauty came to the fortress slowly.
It came with the other changes to the 4th Legion, creeping in like drops of water through the floodwall. Warriors have rotated away, those with glorious achievement being transferred to garrison duty, and those who had been relegated to it being rotated into new combat zones. They brought life and stories, and news with them. Tales of what had happened with the Legion, of cousins becoming as close as brothers.
The idea that just because their duty was that of the garrison did not mean there was no opportunity for advancement or the hope of a brighter tomorrow.
It started with a simple piece of graffiti. Nothing more than a bit of powdered chalk pressed against the wall in a shocking mark of coloration against the gunmetal grey stone. But it began to spread and with it, the nameless citadel began to change.
It had done so before, but this was not the expansion of kill zones or the laying of new razor wire. The sons of Perturabo began to make art. Clumsy at first, but with each day that went by without executions being ordered, the Iron Warriors began to make their fortress beautiful. They began to carve decorative stonework more rapidly, drawing paintings with the chalk of the dismal plains, bringing fresh colours to life. They drew pictures of roses and the other flowers of the home world they barely remembered on the rock, using walls designed to withstand orbital bombardment as their canvases.
They made the mouths of their orbital defence weapons into gargoyles, into smiling faces, and they gave them names. In the desert, around the nameless colourful citadel, they made rock gardens in the style of Olympia,
None of these decorations could make the task they were assigned any less dreary. None of the bright splashes of colour did anything to change the endless grey, gloomy sky and the barren wilderness, but they helped; it helped to remind the legionaries that they were not forgotten; it helped remind them that there was brightness out there and what they were fighting for. It helped to make the nameless citadel a home.
Now, the last of the legionaries who had called the citadel his home was dying.
Desperately struggling to reach his bolter and turn to face his foe, his hand never reached its target as it was severed in one smooth motion and the next strike separated his head from his body as the man who had been commander, Castor Dorin, now called Bone Blade, roared his triumph to the sky. The blood streaked down his artificer armour, once magnificent and golden, now stained with blood that would never come off.
Around him, his brothers in gold shouted their own battle cries. They had relished the opportunity to be set loose.
They had seen the existence of this place as a challenge. Of course it was, so a battle barge and Company of Imperial Fists had come to destroy it. Keeping their name, "Imperial Fists", seemed dreadfully perverse to Bone Blade's mind.
The air was heavy with the stench of burning Prometheans and the rotting stench of human flesh being ripped apart. He looked around contemptuously and watched his men roar their triumph as they demolished the artworks and statues the Iron Warriors had made. There had been so many Imperial Fists against so few Iron Warriors. This was the only chance many of them would have in this battle to vent their old hatred.
Not that the Olympian bastards hadn't tried to give them a good fight, he thought, pacing his way up to the tallest tower, trudging under an archway decorated with a looping vine structure. The Iron Warriors must have understood that their position was hopeless, Bone Blade mused as he stepped over two loyalists who had died back-to-back with nearly an entire squad of Imperial Fists lying dead around them. He stared down at their bodies, not in grief or out of respect, but with quiet contempt. Bitterness began eating into his soul now that the blood fury of his triumph was fading.
He saw how undisciplined his men were and wondered how many more would still be alive if they had fought as they used to. Some were still hacking at the dead Iron Warriors, as if hoping to kill their foe twice.
Overwhelming numbers had broken the citadel. There might have been a hope of holding out against a host of other forces, even fellow Space Marines thrice their number, with the fortresses a multiplier of power. But against nearly 2000 Imperial Fists? they had stood no chance.
And they must've known, concluded Bone Blade as he watched his yellow-clad men dragging the armoured warrior bodies out to be crucified along their ramparts. They were doing that without having been ordered to, moving in a strange kind of purpose, as if part of some grand ritual not discussed but known by all. A part of him was disturbed by it, but the far more prominent part recognized it as the way of things.
This was their new way of doing war.
He looked around at the dismal planet and hoped that he would gain more glory from this than the Iron Warriors ever had. Hardly a conquest of both sides, he scoffed, looking out over the grey skies as he reached out his bloody hands to the relay set built into his armour, putting it away. There is no point in giving orders for some time. Eventually, this place would be refortified, and another vital link in the Warmaster's plans would be built. But for now, he could indulge his men.
After all, it wasn't as if anyone could stop them.
And in the sky above, there was a flash of light as if someone had heard his challenge.
The ship ripped out of the Warp, engines burning hot as it hurtled towards its destination. The Captain of the Cruiser knew it was too late. They had known it even before the distress call was received and numbers had been given. They knew there was no hope of rescuing the valiant warriors of the 4th, that this was never meant to be a rescue mission, but they could provide recompense; they could make the traitors bleed.
The jump into reality so close to a planet was always seen as reckless. To make it non-suicidal, you would need one of the best navigators in the segmentum, an excellent ship and an unwavering belief that you were the chosen of your God and thus could do anything.
On the bridge of the 11th Legion's war vessel, the first sensor sweeps were already coming in. They didn't tell the Captain anything that he couldn't already have guessed: The enemy ship was bigger than theirs, a full battle barge against their grand cruiser, and was both better armed and equipped. The only relief was that it did not have any surviving escort. The debris field that was all that remained of one orbited the planet. That had brought a smile to the face of the officers and a log of it was made, to be sent back to their Olympian comrades when victory was achieved.
Captain Tréhouart would not have it said that he did not share the glory of his victories with his cousins.
He analysed the tactical data as it came closer and closer. The fight might be more in their favor than it would initially have seemed as his vessel was a grand cruiser, a proper fighting ship designed for void warfare instead of the battle barges' more specific task of troop deployment.
The standard Imperial tactics in this case would have been to use the grand cruiser to skirmish with the enemy, using its superior mobility and speed to grind down their defences. It would not be a rational calculation to risk the destruction of his own vessel just to destroy a single enemy battle barge.
Also, the enemy's Space Marine Company on the planet below would've provided additional advantages to such a strategy, potentially allowing for boarding actions. The 13th Legion had codified it, written out in a long list of practical naval tactics that the Ultramarines had shared with all of the other legions. With a few notable exceptions, every Legion would have agreed in principle with it. So, according to its publicly available methods, would the 11th Legion.
No formally codified strategic doctrine of the Imperium would have recognised what the vessel actually did. No cogitater would have come to the conclusion that burning all engines at full speed while transmitting a lurid set of insults and oaths on full broadcast would have been a sensible tactical decision, let alone charting a path that brought them dangerously close to the planet's thin atmosphere.
Unfortunately, even if someone had tried telling this to the Bretonnians, they would not have listened.
The mighty battle barge, once known as the Monarch of Fire, hung low in the thin atmosphere of the world. It had broadcasted its new name, the Burning Beast, even as its kilometre-long engines desperately struggled to move its multi-million-ton bulk out of the upper atmosphere. On its flanks, gun turrets swivelled frantically, and slaves desperately strove to pull the wheels and turn the pistons under their overseers' cruel lash.
The Imperial Fists had surrendered their loyalty, but they had yet to fully surrender their sanity; and so the commander of the vessel knew that his best course of action was to delay long enough for the Beast to rally its guns. The insult-screaming vessel would need to manoeuvre around the planet to shoot them and that would buy them enough time for the troops on the ground to fortify, but also, for the Beast to be able to fight properly.
And even if the Beast was to succumb, there were troops on the planet below who could re-establish the fortifications and make extraction extremely painful for the loyalists.
If the Imperial Fists had known who they were facing, perhaps they would have reconsidered, but they had always been arrogant even before their treachery
The grand cruiser, the Lance of Leoncoeur, plunged into the atmosphere, shrieking void shields burning bright orange with atmospheric friction. The Lance torched through the sky, trailing fire with it, particles flaking off its burning form and drifting down as the Imperial Fists looked up in horrified awe at what was happening.
Its engines strained, fighting to maintain a speed lest it is dragged into the gravity well. But it did not falter as it streaked through, skimming close enough to where the Beast was desperately hauling itself out of the gravity well on a direct course.
The Beast lit its void shields and its canons began to fire, desperately blazing away to stop the ship's advance. The Lance's canons returned the favour, even as its void shields flickered and failed and it burned closer.
On the corrupted bridge, the Beast's Captain realized what was about to happen and screamed desperately, shouting orders at his slaves to try to manoeuvre the Beast out of the way.
The 11th Legion had always valued beauty, both for spiritual purposes and as a reminder of the homeworld. Art was spiritual and it glorified the dismal tasks that they had had to accomplish.
When the Lance had been brought into the service of Bretonnia, its great armoured prow had been gilded and a figurehead of a beautiful woman had been placed at the very tip of the ram. The statue had been carved out of solid adamantium, and with the fires of atmospheric acceleration burning across her face, it made her seem contemptuous of the Beast.
The figurehead slammed into the Beast with all the momentum of a grand cruiser behind it. Void shields clashed and burst apart, releasing a colossal storm of lightning in the space between the ships. The shock of both ships' capacitor overloading killed hundreds on their decks. But still, the momentum could not be stopped so easily.
The Lance of Leoncoeur struck the Beast, dealing a mortal blow.
Penetrating just ahead of the main reactor, it ran through hundreds of metres of armour, decking, compartments and weapons decks. It obliterated anything in its path, trailing explosions as it cleaved clean through to the other side, bursting out in less than a second.
The strength of the strike ripped the Beast in twain.
The Lance of Leoncoeur did not emerge unscathed however. All of its decks were dealing with at least one fire and multiple atmospheric venting from breached compartments. Men and women were vented into the cold dead void of space or burned as the air burst into flame from sheer friction. Some were shaken to death by the sheer force of the impact, even though they had managed to brace.
But even as they had passed through, many of them had still followed their overseers' orders, firing in that split second as they were pushed through the enemy vessel, unloading broadside weaponry and closing them point blank range.
The Beast burnt from the inside out, with secondary detonations and firestorms as the atmosphere burst out and its guts were exposed to direct gunfire.
A battle barge is hard to kill, but the Lance had managed it, even as the Beast twisted its keel, bent and shattered its guns, firing like the death spasms of a monster.
That the cost had been a ship ruined so thoroughly that it would take weeks in dry dock to bring its total combat efficiency would have been a price to pay for Captain Tréhouart. As the Leoncoeur turned, its maintenance crews were already scrambling to prevent the fire from spreading. It would not be able to fight again quickly, but in the less than 15 minutes that had passed from entering the system, they had killed an enemy battle barge.
And more importantly, they had delivered their deadliest payload.
"The Lady be with you." Tréhouart prayed with a reverent bow of his head and then returned to keeping his ship alive.
Down on the planet, watching the devastation, Bone Blade chuckled. Part of him knew he should have been angry, but all he felt was joy at the prospect of another worthy foe. Better still, the sight of the Beast's death made his wide-eyed men obey orders once more; it would take some time, he knew, for the strike cruiser to finish killing the Beast properly and during that time his men would re-establish the fortress, bring the guns online, and make sure that this place could take more than their numbers. Reinforcements would come for him, whereas the loyalists would be stuck with what they had.
"Give me seven hours, and I will make this place holy", Bone Blade muttered, staring at the sky and at the slowly fading traces of light that failed to flicker out. In fact, they seemed to get brighter and brighter, as if they were coming closer.
The traitors down below did not have a few hours; they did not even have more than a few minutes.
An Estoc pattern void bike is mighty, more considerable and heavily armed than conventional jet bikes. Heavy Grav engines, capable of thundering the weighty armoured prow like a battering ram through the air as the trans-human warrior astride fought and controlled it. A greatly armoured ram for slicing through enemy formations, an onboard servo brain control that provided targeting data for the weapon systems and regulates the engines.
They were commonly used as the Armour Fist of the 11th Legion when a swift, decisive, but well-supported blow was needed, especially to come from an unexpected angle. Therefore, it was part of the tactical doctrine to do orbital insertions.
However, these did not usually involve being dropped out of the launch bay of a strike cruiser, pointing its prows towards the planet and punching the engine to full blast. Risking hundreds of Space Marines and their highly irreplaceable jet bikes in a vertical charge was no one's tactical doctrine, because only a lunatic would give such an order, and only lunatics would carry it out.
As the sweat that even his trans-human physique could not stop drenched him, Henry Fitzroy laughed like a lunatic. Not that anyone could hear him over the rush of the burning wind that covered his armoured form.
The pulsing sound of the charge was all around him. The desperate drumbeat of his twin heart, doing their best to keep his blood flowing despite the colossal acceleration forces upon him and the high singing noise of his bike's engine reminded him briefly of the hooves of the horse he had first ridden into battle. But what really reminded him of home was the righteousness.
This was not some alien who had the misfortune to be born into Humanity's Galaxy. This was not some world defying the Imperium out of fear of the unknown. This was the slaughter of traitors. The liberation of the slaves of the Ruinous Powers. This was true glory!
The fires diminished as lights began to flicker inside his helmet. The knights were signing in, clear of the disruption that had both shielded them and prevented them from communicating. Squad leaders confirmed their Lances' readiness, even as they spread apart, targets being identified at a breakneck pace. The enemy had not noticed them yet, but they soon would.
When Fitzroy had devised the plan, he had expected resistance.
First their sergeants and then the entirety of them. He had been moved almost beyond words by their valiance as they accepted the risk without hesitation and, in some cases, cheers. That what they were doing had never been attempted before was irrelevant; that it was reckless and foolhardy was a bonus. As he plunged towards the planet, his faith was rewarded, with each light flickering on, confirming that his knights had done what should not have been possible.
Henry risked a brief glance at himself and was most pleased with what he saw.
The fires of the re-entry had burnt the paint off his power armour and scorched it down to bare metal and ceramic. His plate blackened and charred, markings of rank removed, heraldry erased. All save for one, the golden fleur-de-lys that he wore, that all his knights wore, still gleamed.
How could it not? How could chivalry and honour not gleam even more gloriously in the face of the vilest treachery? It was the symbol of the Lady; it was the symbol of Bretonnia.
His grin was a rictus of focus; his kinetic lance was raised, and he gunned the throttle.
Boulter rounds started to sprinkle up from the planet below. Guns desperately elevated, trying to stop them…. as if they would have had the chance.
Closer and closer, and then at the last moment, every single knight turned his bike up from the dive and turned the downward momentum into a forward charge, breaking apart and swooping in above their foes.
Henry's first lance strike hit a terminator, a hulking beast clad in thick yellow armour. In a flash, the terminator was obliterated, the man's blood literally catching fire from the sheer friction caused by the full impact of the kinetic lance. As the lance recharged, he rode on, moving so fast that he was a blur. Reflexes and long years of training sustained him, letting him aim his kinetic weapon wherever he needed to; even as with each strike, the lance splintered a bit, and momentum was further lost. An Imperial Fist in the colours of a Sgt was struck by the armoured prow. The impact drove him to the ground, and the repulsor engines crushed him into the barren rock hard enough to leave a crater. Henry killed two more with glancing strikes of the kinetic spear, with one bodily carried on it for a few moments until Henry slammed both the Imperial Fist and his lance into the side of a rhino APC.
The force was too much, and the spear splintered. Its systems were overloaded beyond the capacity of its Machine Spirit's endurance, sending volts of energy that made the dying Imperial Fist twitch in spasms as he fell to the ground, not that Henry spared the dying man a moment of attention. One arm, still black and burnt off with the fires of re-entry reached down, drew his power sword in one fluid motion. He gunned the throttle of his engine once more, flicking his thumb over the power sword igniter even as he flicked the switch to deploy the onboard servo arms.
He moved forward, smashing Imperial Fists out of the way with his bike's servo limbs striking out as his horse's hooves once would have. A traitor had lept up on one of his Brother Knight's steeds and was stabbing towards them with a combat knife. Henry soared past, slicing the Imperial Fist in half at the middle and urging his fellow knight onwards. Squads were splintering off and maintaining cohesion.
Having expended their kinetic lances as they had now, they fell on the formations that have been pre-decided upon. Squad leaders shouted orders as they organized. Speed and impact were crucial, making sure the Imperial Fists could not gain cohesion and tighten their formation enough.
Henry turned from the top of the tallest tower in the nameless fortress as an Imperial Fist, once beautiful armour, now stained indelibly with blood, came charging towards him, chanting something as it bellowed his rage. Henry slew two more Imperial Fist who jumped from the shadows in quick succession and pointed his blade firmly at the yellow clad monster in the oldest gesture of a challenge.
His standard bearer, still flying the sacred banner shielded by his own body in the descent, called out to him, "Shall we have the steeds gun him down?"
Henry did not allow any contempt at his brother's desire to see the Imperial Fist dead in the most undignified way possible. He did not bother to correct him for his lack of honour. He knew his brother had had many friends among the 4th Legion.
"No. He's mine." Henry said simply, spurring his mount onwards. Accelerating up with the roar of engines even as around him, the Imperial Fists died, struggling and failing to hold their formation against the flower of Bretonnian chivalry.
He roared, going forward, and his sword danced. Like a poem of glory, each strike killed and maimed traitors as their tainted blood sizzled off the burning power field.
Henry shouted his joy to the universe, the burning sky and the dying traitors. "For Bretonnia, for the Lady!"
Bretonnian regiments of the 11th Legion provided a valuable role during the Horus Heresy, with many decisive engagements being won by their hand.
"I never said they were sane, merely that they were efficient." commented Grand Adml Arielle later on, when asked by flabbergasted Ultramarines who could not find any such tactics supported by the Codex Astartes.