Fulgrim Read Free

to achieving.
    ‘If you will not play for the marquis, would you consent to do so for me?’ asked Fulgrim.
    Bequa Kynska nodded and the music began anew.
    T HE BATTLE ON Atoll 19 would later be described as a minor, opening skirmish in the Cleansing of Laeran; a footnote to the fighting that was yet to come, but to the warriors in the speartip of Solomon Demeter’s Second Company of Emperor’s Children, it felt considerably more intense than a skirmish.
    Shrieking bolts of hot, green energy flashed down the curving thoroughfare, melting portions of the angled walls and dissolving Astartes battle plate whenever they struck one of the advancing Space Marines. The hungry crackle of fires and the whoosh of missiles mingled with the hard bangs of bolter fire and the shrieking horns from the coral towers as Solomon’s Astartes fought their way up the serpentine street to link with Marius Vairosean’s squads.
    Coiled towers of glittering crystal coral reared above him like the gnarled conch shells of some great sea creature, with smooth rimmed burrow holes piercing the spires like the touch holes of a musical instrument. The entire atoll was formed from the same lightweight, but incredibly tough material, though how these structures floated above the vast oceans was a mystery the Mechanicum adepts were eager to solve.
    Screeching cries echoed from the disturbingly alien architecture, as though the spires themselves were screaming, and the damnable metallic slither of the aliens’ movement seemed to come from all around them.
    He ducked back behind a sinuous column of pink veined coral and slammed another magazine into his customised bolter, its every surface and internal working hand-finished by his own artifice. Its rate of fire was only marginally faster than a regular issue bolter, but it had never once jammed, and Solomon Demeter wasn’t the kind of man to trust his life to anything he hadn’t worked towards perfection.
    ‘Gaius!’ he shouted to his second in command, Gaius Caphen, ‘Where in the name of the Phoenician is Tantaeron squadron?’
    His lieutenant shook his head, and Solomon cursed, knowing that the Laer had probably intercepted the Land Speeder squadron en route to them. Damn, these aliens were clever, he thought, remembering the grievous loss of Captain Aeson’s flanking force, which had revealed that the Laer had somehow managed to compromise their vox-net. The idea of a xenos species with the ability to wreak such a violation on a Legion of the Astartes was unthinkable, and had only spurred Fulgrim’s warriors to greater heights of wrath in their extermination.
    Solomon Demeter was the very image of an Astartes, his short dark hair kept shaved close to his scalp, his skin tanned from the light of a score of suns, and his animated features rounded and wide spread on thick cheekbones. He disdained the wearing of a helmet to prevent the Laer from deciphering his orders over the vox-network, and because he knew that if he were hit in the head by one of the Laer weapons, he was as good as dead, helmet or not.
    Knowing he could not expect any immediate help from the aerial units, he knew they were going to have to do this the hard way. Though it railed against his sense of order and perfection to undertake this assault without the proper support in place, he couldn’t deny that there was something exhilarating about making things up as he went along. Some commanders said that it was an inevitable fact that they would often fight without the forces they wanted, but such a belief was anathema to most of the Emperor’s Children.
    ‘Gaius, we’re going to have to do this ourselves!’ he shouted. ‘Make sure we’ve plenty of fire keeping those xenos heads down!’
    Caphen nodded and began issuing curt, concise orders, with sharp chops of his hand, to the squads spread through the rabble of what could laughingly be called their landing zone.
    Behind them, the wrecked Stormbird still burned from where the