Capturing the Rebel Leader

The Paladin was the most common Imperial Knight. Nine meters tall, it balanced speed, firepower, and armor to perfection. Its excellent performance made it a favorite among Knight nobles.

These war machines generally carried one ranged and one close-combat main weapon. The left arm mounted a rapid-fire battle cannon, a Gatling laser, or a heavy autocannon, allowing it to suppress enemy fire at range. On the right were a chainsword and a thunderstrike gauntlet charged with devastating energy, giving it formidable strength in close combat as well.

The thunderstrike gauntlet was a punching weapon. When it struck, it released a deafening thunderclap and a surge of energy powerful enough to tear enemies apart, even rip limbs from a Titan. A mounting on the Paladin's carapace also carried an Ironstorm missile pod or a Stormspear rocket pod.

Its defensive field was an ion shield. This ancient technology projected an energy field across a narrow arc in front of the Knight. It could not cover the whole machine, but its strength was extraordinary. A Knight could survive in the fiercest fighting and keep returning fire. The shield was designed to deflect or slow incoming shots, not absorb them like the protection of an Astartes battle-brother's power armor or a warship's void shields.

To get the most from it, the pilot needed exceptional combat and handling skills. Paladin pilots were among the finest warriors in their houses, with extensive experience and military skills ordinary people could scarcely imagine. Combined with their powerful Knights, they were a nightmare on the battlefield. Even against xenos and daemons, they stood among the Imperium's greatest defenders. Kewonei would not underestimate them. None was an easy opponent. Arrogance and carelessness would get him killed.

After a brief conference, the squad settled on its tactics and prepared to attack. A squad of Knights could annihilate an infantry regiment. Even elite Catachans could not ordinarily stand against three such killing machines. Now Kewonei's seven soldiers intended to destroy three Knights, along with antiaircraft guns, two tanks, and the other defending units. It sounded suicidal.

Yet they were confident of victory. The close-fitting armor gave them the confidence to face anything that had once seemed powerful and invincible.

"Ready? Go!"

Kewonei charged first, pushing his thrusters to full power. His shoulder cannons opened up. Soldiers who reacted too slowly were cut down. Their frail bodies, protected only by green flak armor, were torn into bloody pieces.

Through his visor, he watched crowds of soldiers carrying energy weapons fall. They still wore Imperial helmets, but the aquilas had been painted over with the crest of Kaliguisi's house. "Unforgivable. Traitors."

His face twisted with anger. As if sharing it, his shoulder cannons roared and tore everything apart. The squad plunged into the outer defenses. Explosions followed their advance, flinging fireballs in all directions. Black smoke rose toward the sky. Every blast shook the ground. After each shock faded, wreckage and torn flesh still rained down.

Kewonei's men were seasoned fighters, chosen from Catachan, the most feared and notorious death world in the galaxy. In the Segmentum Ultima, its surface was covered in dense jungle. The entire ecosystem seemed consciously hostile to humanity. Every native plant was an enemy. Its wild creatures were so savage that even Space Marines preferred to avoid them.

The world's only valuable resource was its human population. Catachan children learned to shoot before they could walk. By the time children elsewhere learned to run, they were already deadly warriors. On that planet, the strong devoured the weak and only the fittest survived. Over the long ages, the Council of Terra had discovered with astonishment that the Catachans needed no Imperial help to drive off invading Chaos forces or xenos.

The squad met fierce return fire, but it posed little serious threat. Their mobility and the support of the Stormbirds they called in gave them the upper hand. This was modern war in a civilized society, against an advanced, spacefaring enemy. The defenders had guns and artillery every bit as good as the Imperial regiments', and they were skilled, well trained, and no less professional. Had Daluoke been weak, the Chaos forces pouring from the Great Rift would have overrun it long ago. Its rebellion did not diminish the strength of this Knight world.

Yet no amount of roaring defiance from its Knights could save them now. "For the High King's glory! We cannot lose..." A Knight's furious shout rang over the war machines' communications channel.

The three Knights charged Kewonei's squad, flames spitting from the Gatling cannons on their left arms in answer to their masters' fury.

"In the Regent's name, kill them!"

Kewonei charged to meet them. Two sturdy plasma-powered kinetic blades sprang from his arms, red fields of destruction shrouding their edges. He struck a weak point in one Knight's mechanical leg. Before its backup hydraulics could restore movement, he ordered his automatic cannons to bombard the damaged joint and blow it apart. The towering Knight lost its balance and toppled with a thunderous crash.

His squad hunted down the other two. The Spartan armor's mobility made the kills easy. These old Knight patterns were obsolete. They might still be useful against xenos and other enemies, but taking on Guilliman's new army was beyond them.

With the Knights down, the remaining combat units were soon blasted into steel wreckage. The squad slaughtered the rebel infantry. Kewonei's automatic cannons locked onto their vulnerable bodies and tore them apart. The sound of resistance quickly dwindled.

The rebels' guns fired only sporadically now. Their bravest soldiers were dead. A few still hurled themselves at the Catachans in desperation, but most fell to their knees and begged for mercy. Kewonei did not stop. It was not that he enjoyed killing prisoners who had laid down their weapons. He had no authority to let them live. Only ruthless suppression would teach this world the price of rebellion. Their High King's atrocities against other fleets had also put forgiveness beyond reach. The rebels had to be taught a lesson, so that more wars could be prevented.

"There is no mercy here. Dying twice would be better than betraying the Imperium. You made the wrong choice."

Kewonei and his men fired their automatic cannons and swung their close-combat weapons where the kneeling traitors had been, leaving dark red blood behind. Having broken the reactor's outer defenses, they stepped over the heaped bodies and entered the gate. They advanced through the corridors, killing the last defenders.

They placed explosives at designated points to disable the power supply. The charges had to be positioned carefully so they would not destroy the reactor core. The pacification fleet wanted to kill High King Kaliguisi and his lackeys, not destroy the entire world.

With their objective complete, the squad withdrew.

"Kewonei, take your squad to the High King's palace. Join the other teams and capture him." The new assignment arrived as soon as he reported success.

With key installations disabled and planetary defenses weakened, command turned its attention to the rebellion's leader. Kaliguisi had brought this war upon his world. Who knew how many lives had already paid for his foolish decision? A large-scale airborne assault would break into the royal city and crush the rebel lord's power in one blow.

Kewonei received the orders and headed toward the palace to rendezvous with the other squads.

By the time they reached the royal city, evening had come. The sky was stained with blood. Whether the setting sun had colored it or the blood of Daluoke's soldiers, dead for their High King, was impossible to say. His palace stood on a plateau, protected by a vast fortress shield. Gun batteries and defensive emplacements surrounded it. All of Daluoke's finest troops had gathered there.

The palace's many windows should have been turning slowly with the sun. Servants liked to tell the time by the movement of the reflected light. Now the windows twitched uneasily beneath the brilliant beams filling the sky. Light and shadow wheeled through the atmosphere. Countless aircraft fought overhead, tracing brief, nameless constellations with the blazing lines of their weapons.

The broad basalt plazas outside the palace were swept by gunfire. Streams of bullets wound into the air like iron serpents. Straight energy beams flashed skyward and vanished. Now and then, a burning aircraft crashed nearby.

Even with their new equipment, the pacification forces had suffered a setback before the royal city. Kaliguisi ignored the fleet's final demand for surrender. His actions made clear that he would resist to the end. A wall a hundred meters high and forty meters thick protected the palace. They had to breach it, enter the city, and capture the rebel leader to end this pointless war between humans.

A vast formation of Astra Militarum tanks advanced slowly toward the wall, supported by the Adeptus Mechanicus's cyborg troops and war machines. The Spartan-equipped Catachans split into six groups, striking different parts of the royal city to prevent the defenders from concentrating against the frontal assault.

Black humanoid shapes moved ponderously behind the tank formation, step by step toward the palace walls. Their silhouettes and postures resembled heavily armored giants, a full hundred and forty meters tall. The fleet had deployed six Titans. Tanks, the supposed kings of land warfare, could not compare even to those war engines' immense, scorched steel feet.

The frontal formation spread across more than a hundred kilometers, with wide intervals between units to minimize losses from enemy artillery. Stormbirds screamed overhead, skimming low beside the lumbering Titans and whipping the rising smoke into wild vortices.

Every unit's channel was alive with voices. Messages never stopped. From outer orbit, command directed the whole battlefield, sending troops where they were needed to destroy the enemy or rescue allies.

The pacification army advanced slowly and inexorably. With the other groups harassing the flanks, it reached the towering palace wall. Titan faces loomed above the fortifications. Ignoring the rain of enemy fire, the engines reached out with enormous power fists to tear the wall down.

Disruption fields powerful enough to crush a small starship crackled, adding their shriek to the battlefield's roar. Under the Titans' heavy blows, a section of wall collapsed. Before the fragments had settled, countless Imperial soldiers were pouring into the royal city. Kewonei entered with them, ready to capture High King Kaliguisi.