The Petitioner’s District

I’ve taken a quick break from writing I should actually be working on to write another short piece of Warhammer 40,000 fiction, this time in the Horus Heresy setting during the Siege of Terra.

***

The dust from the bombardment had given the sky a permanent red cast, even here in the old Himalisia. The hellish glow had choked the normal cloudless azure of the sky. But that was just another irrelevant detail for Letholdus to file away as his world was swallowed by the siege. It ground on and on, consuming all of his existence. The Traitors were being made to pay for every single step they took towards the walls of the Imperial Palace. They paid in blood, and in iron and in transhuman lives. But it appeared the Treacher Legions had more than enough coin enough to spend on their advance.

Letholdus was numb to it all. Numb to the insanely spiralling casualty figures. Numb to the weeks of only fitful half-sleep. Numb to the faces of friends and foe alike, faces that even now faded to grey in his mind’s eye and were swept away in the ash. It had all become a rhythm; a ticking metronome that measured their backwards steps across the Kathmandu plateau.

Tick-tick-tick. The thermal contraction of Mark VI power armour in the cold Tibetan nights. Tick-tick-tick. The chrono counting down to the next bombardment. Tick-tick-tick. A faulty actuator twitching in his powered gauntlet. Tick-tick-tick. The butcher’s tally steadily rising as their defensive perimeter tightened across the Petitioner’s District.

His Command Land Raider crushed a low wall to powder beneath its relentless tracks, and Letholdus steadied himself on the cupola. The cyclopean walls of the Inner Palace loomed on the horizon, a rockcrete smear in the haze, dwarfing the district they currently traveled through. As the Imperial Fists fell back and the walls became clearer, so too did their…their what? Defeat? No, never that. Their situation. Their limits, logistics and supply lines. That’s all he saw now, in crystal clarity. Letholdus watched the walls grind inexorably closer and listened to the tick-tick-tick of Land Raider’s systems beneath him.

The vox snapped. Letholdus touched his earpiece.

“Reinforcements, Praetor,” a voice crackled, the words of his vox operator distorted by magnetic backwash.

The information was unnecessary, he had already seen them. As the Imperial Fists consolidated further towards the Palace walls, a golden arrow flew out to meet them. Letholdus watched the baroque grav-carrier skim towards them, feeling the tick-tick-tick of muscle spasm around the edge of his bionic eye. In better times would he have considered their arrival an honour or an insult? It was neither now, he was simply numb.

Letholdus called a halt. They had reached their latest fall-back line. The Iron Warriors weren’t far behind. Ranging artillery was already stamping flat the slums to the east. Soon these streets would run red with genhanced blood. The Imperial Fists began to dig in. Tattered but proud banners were raised. Letholdus issued orders. The grav-carrier slowed, disembarked four gilded lions, and then sped away, back towards the Palace.

Tick-tick-tick. Four pairs of gold armoured boots rhythmically crunched through the dust and broken glass towards Letholdus.

“Praetor Letholdus,” said their leader, removing his helmet, “I am Shield-Captain Hyperion of the Legio Custodes.”

***

Part II of this short story can be found here.