Warhammer: The Horus Heresy
Liberty's Dusk
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The walled cities of Felsicane rise from the sun-blasted plains like islands dotting an endless, stony sea.
The largest of them is New Anchester, a great hive of humanity that is home to more than thirty million people. For centuries they have sheltered behind the towering steel walls that surround the city, safe from the hot desert winds and the sandstorms that scour the planet's surface.
They are not safe from what threatens them now.
The walls of New Anchester are manned by a force of thousands - the City Guard and their Tactical teams, augmented by ad-hoc militia and the defenses built into the walls by the founders of New Anchester in ages past. All considered, for such a large city it is a minimal defense - even before the Unification ended such conflicts, war on Felsicane had been rare, owing to the planet's harsh environ and the distances between the great cities.
The defenders of New Anchester are used to conflict on a smaller scale - their history is replete with such things as hive-gang turf battles, civil unrest and the occasional drug war. They are excellent peacekeepers. But they are not warriors.
The swollen globe of Felsicane's sun is sinking lower in the western sky. As it descends it casts the city and the surrounding wasteland in a golden light, tinting the sky a hazy orange color. Across the city, men watch the sunset with unusual attentiveness. Some of them reflect upon the beauty of it, and how in a lifetime of days and nights they had forgotten the beauty of the simple sight. Others simply follow the dying orb with trepidation as the inevitability of the night draws ever nearer.
The bottom of the globe touches the horizon.
A shout goes up from a man upon the walls, drawing the attention of his fellows. In a chain reaction more shouts follow as weapons are shouldered, safeties unlocked, and the last barricades are put into place. Some men say prayers, others simply lower their visors and look out into the waste where the worst fears of an entire city have been realized.
It's not clear how they got so close without notice - the heat and rock of the desert can make sensors temperamental. But there they stand, gathered just outside the range of New Anchester's defenses, arrayed shoulder to shoulder in rows and columns thousands strong that seem to cover the landscape. The dying sunlight is reflected by armored bodies. It gives the invaders an unearthly glow. The massive guns in their hands glint where the sunlight touches their barrels, an ominous portent of what is yet to come.
They stand in ready formation, as if the sunlight had just deposited them upon the barren plains by some form of magic. Boxy vehicles and the structures of mechanized war machines are the only thing that breaks the sea of armored figures. Their helms are visored, structured with grilled mouthpieces that makes them resemble grinning skulls. Between this ghastly image and the eerie silence that hangs over the assembly they seem almost ethereal, like some hallucination of an army of the dead.
At the head of the gathered force is a mighty figure whose fluted, ornate armor catches the dying light of the sun and glimmers golden despite the hooded cloak he wears. The arc of a massive scythe blade haloes the figure's head. The desert wind stirs the cloth of his enshrouding cloak, the sole hint of motion amongst the silent assembly. As the men of New Anchester watch, the figure reaches to his side and draws forth a bulky handgun. It, too, catches the last rays of the sun, shining like a star itself as the figure lifts it overhead and points it upwards.
The sun of Felsicane disappears behind the horizon.
The figure fires once, a bark of energy and a spat of plasma staining the air before vanishing, leaving dark afterimages in the eyes of the watchers, and as the echo rolls across the open wastes, the assembled legion takes a step forward with their right foot.
The march upon New Anchester has begun.
With the first steps taken, the sky shakes with great, booming shocks as the invaders' artillery fires its first barrage. Explosions erupt amongst the walls of the city moments later as the heaviest of New Anchester's defenses are targeted and taken out with clinical precision. A few heavy guns light up in retaliation, but the invaders are yet at the very edge of their range and they are woefully inadequate in the face of the advancing army.
The armored figures march forwards beneath the tooth-rattling exchange of cannon fire. Their movement is unhurried, a slow and steady advance that devours the kilometers separating their front ranks and the walls of the city. The massive war machines march with them, arm-mounted weaponry blazing with man-made thunder and lightning that lash at the structure of the walls, seeking out the weak points wherein the defenders have set up their fire-points and emplacements.
Despite this, as the invaders reach the base of the walls they are greeted by a storm of las- and autocannon fire. Much of it pings harmlessly from their armored bodies, and though here and there one of the skull-faced attackers falls to the rocky ground, the retaliation of their fellows as they raise their weapons and reply is horrific. The massive guns bark and chatter, explosive rounds reaping a fearsome toll as heavy lascannon and hand-carried missiles join the barrage.
The gates into New Anchester are few in number, since no sane person would want to wander off into the wastes of Felsicane for any reason. Still, the invaders find them with unerring precision and burst them seemingly without effort. One steel portal crumples as one of the boxy vehicles crashes through it, using its armored prow as a ram. Another turns red and melts away as the doors that for centuries stood unyielding against the harsh treatment of the planet are burned away in mere seconds by the destructive power of the attackers' thermal weapons.
One particularly large and well-defended gateway manages to stymie the invaders for a short while. Within minutes, however, it is challenged by the approach of one of the fearsome war machines, a hunchbacked thing with a multibarreled cannon for one arm and a great, four-fingered claw for the other. The machine-thing lifts its close-combat weapon, arcs of electricity beginning to writhe around the wicked claws. With a hum of power and a groan of hydraulics the titanic construct twists its upper body and lifts the crackling weapon before bringing it down into the face of the steel door. Metal screams as adamantine claws rip through the thick door like knives through butter, tearing long furrows that admit light from the other side before the machine closes its grasp and pulls. The hinges resist - briefly - before the door is torn from its mounting and cast aside. It strikes the ground with a cacophonous series of clanging sounds, like the tolling of great bells.
Around the feet of the titanic machine the invaders stream into the city, weapons chattering. There is combat in the corridors that honeycomb the city walls, all of it dreadfully one-sided in the favor of the armored attackers. Although the defenders claim blood, it is a pitiful measure against the gruesome toll exacted by the weapons of the skull-faced men.
Amidst the carnage, the hooded figure and his bodyguard advance into one of the open gateways. The glinting pistol that signaled New Anchester's doom is still in his hand, though it has not spoken since that opening shot. Around him, the figure's elite guard fight in close combat with long-handled scythes made in echo of the one carried by the giant himself.
It takes him eighty-four steps to walk from one end of the gateway to the other. In the time it takes him to do so, the invaders have carried the walls of the city.
Overhead, Felsicane is enshrouded by night. The last rays of the sun are gone, replaced by the glinting speckle of distant stars and the ruddy light of the planet's three moons. Now the battle moves to the streets of the great city, the lethal combat between attacker and defender illustrated by the lights of New Anchester, accompanied by the strobe-like flashes of muzzle flare and the writhing, crackling light of the fires lit by the furious exhange.
The advance of the armored tide remains inexorable and maddeningly patient. The invaders wade through storms of improvised explosives and nests of gunfire, calmly eradicating opposition step by merciless step. Little discernment is paid between the uniformed figures of the Guard and the civilian militias, as any figure that raises a weapon against the armored figures is swiftly gunned down. There are few wounded - the terrifying lethality of the attackers' arms means that nearly every shot results in a kill.
With grim resolve, the invaders push further and further into the city, their war machines following along with them as the sounds of death and warfare spread throughout the streets of New Anchester.
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At the center of the city, a man makes his final preparations.
He has known this moment to be coming since the sun set earlier. In all fairness, he supposes, he has known it longer than that - perhaps since the new arrivals had first made their proclamation. Still, it is a hard thing to swallow, ashen and bitter.
He draws on his jacket and squares his shoulders, tugging on the sleeves to make sure it settles evenly upon his frame. He is not a gaunt man, though a difference of ten or fifteen pounds might make him so. He is tall, with dark skin toughened by age and short, crinkled hair that has long faded into bands of grey and white. With automatic motions long settled in by routine, his fingers pin a silver badge to the lapel of his jacket, the seal of his home city glinting under the ceiling lights.
The last item are his glasses. In an age of easy augments and cheap surgery, the glasses have long since become the man's trademark, rectangular lenses that frame his dark eyes and lend an air of gravitas to his wizened face. He sets them upon the bridge of his nose and adjusts his tie one final time as he inspects himself in the mirror before turning on his heel and walking out.
The Congressional House is silent, the representatives and their staff evacuated in the face of the invasion. He had excused himself from the war room minutes ago, bade the last holdouts of his commanders good-bye, dismissed his bodyguard. As such the man is undisturbed as he walks the long hallway, passing by the portraits of the three hundred and twenty seven Presidents of the Unified Cities of Felsicane.
He is the three hundred and twenty eighth. There will be no three hundred and twenty ninth.
The man's shoes click loudly upon tiled stones as he emerges from the carpeted hallway into the lobby of the Congressional House. The place is a mess with scattered papers and abandoned possessions, a shadow of the grandeur to which the great chamber had grown accustomed.
He emerges from the columned entrance into the open square that lies before the governmental structure. From here, he can see the whole of the northern districts of New Anchester, an intentional design choice by the city founders and the hill upon which Congressional House had been built. Normally, the city is bright with activity. Now, large portions of its reaches are dark, framed by rising clouds of smoke.
He does not walk too far from the building, only to the plinth that rises from the top of the great staircase. There is a bronze plaque there, and the man lifts his hand to rest it upon the cool metal as he comes to a halt beside it.
There he waits, listening to the distant sounds of gunfire. The building behind him is well-lit, pale stone bright against the darkness of Felsicane's night, and he knows he will not have to wait long.
He is correct in this, as before long the armored figures of the invaders appear at the arterial streets that connect the central hub of New Anchester to its distant reaches. The man watches them, waiting with a patience that surprises even him. Soon enough the cloaked figure appears, approaching with the same studied deliberation that has marked the attackers all throughout the battle. He ascends the stairs, followed several paces behind by his bodyguard, and though he halts several steps before the top it is he that looks down upon the bespectacled man awaiting him.
The eyes beneath his hood are amber in shade, and the Felsican president can watch as they are drawn to the bronze plaque and the words engraved there. Then they lift once more as the giant figure makes eye contact and lifts his gun.
"I understand why you chose resistance," he says in a low, firm voice that filters through the grill covering his nose and mouth.
The other man takes a breath as he looks down the impossibly wide barrel of the gun, gathering himself up in dignified fashion. Compelled to speak, he says only- "There is no room in autocracy for the freedom of man."
"I can respect that," the giant replies.
The gun bangs sharply, a searing light of energy erupting from the barrel.
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With the inevitability of the laws of nature, morning breaks over New Anchester ten hours later.
The city is quiet, compared to the apocalyptic carnage that took place during the night.
Smoke rises from many portions of the hive city, the great walls damaged and flaking like cracking paint...except that the 'flakes' are shredded steel splinters dozens of meters long.
The flag of a double-headed eagle has been raised above the center of the city, snapping in the hot breeze that wafts across the broad plains.
Outside the Governor's Manse is a stone plinth that bears a bronze plaque, damaged by the intense heat from a nearby energy blast. In due time it will be removed, replaced with a monument more befitting the new government. For the moment, however, the scarred stone and metal still holds aloft its proclamation, printed in great block letters-
LIVE FREE OR DIE:
FOR DEATH IS NOT
THE WORST OF EVILS
FOR DEATH IS NOT
THE WORST OF EVILS
