Knightsblade

by Andy Clark

  ‘Brace!’ shouted Danial, locking his impellers and tilting his ion shield. The Gargant convulsed, then lurched drunkenly as flames roared up from within and blew its head clean off like an erupting volcano. Danial’s shield flashed blue as fire washed over it. His steed shuddered around him, jerking with impacts as chunks of wreckage rebounded from its hull. His auspex filled with static and his audio-receptors blanked to save his hearing. The Gargant’s head slammed into the ground barely a dozen yards away as little more than a huge blackened lump of scrap metal. Its body sagged, hollowed out, and slowly began to fold in on itself among the clouds of smoke.

  In his mind, Danial heard the ghosts of this throne murmuring their approval.

  The greenskins’ spirit was broken. Isolated bands fought on, but the explosive death of the Gargant had wrought havoc amongst their unshielded ranks and for most of the xenos, it seemed the fight was over.

  As the xenos fled in disarray across the Valatane, Danial limped Oath of Flame back towards the Draconspire.

  ‘Victory is ours, Knights of House Draconis!’ he voxed across the open channel. ‘The Emperor will smile upon us this day!’ Cheers came back to him, and the surviving Knights raised their autopennants in salute. Wearily, he switched to the command channel.

  ‘That was more painful than it should have been,’ he said.

  ‘Orks, always more tenacious and destructive than they’ve any right to be, sire,’ said Markos. ‘But we crushed them, and casualties were acceptable. Drogg and his warband won’t be joining the siege.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Danial. ‘Garath, how is your force looking?’

  ‘Hale and hearty, sire,’ replied Garath. ‘They gave us what they had to offer, but it was a pauper’s sum.’

  ‘Then to you, I give the honour of the final hunt,’ said Danial. ‘Pursue what’s left of Drogg’s orks and slaughter them. I’m releasing our aircraft to support you.’

  ‘Thank you, sire,’ said Garath. ‘We’ll punish these xenos filth.’

  ‘See that you do,’ said Danial. ‘No further than the fourteenth quadrant though, Garath. Gorgrok is still coming, and I’ll not see you trapped outside the walls when he gets here. We’ve lost enough today.’

  Garath sent a rune of assent, his Knights already loping away over the burning plains.

  ‘Suset,’ said Danial. ‘Signal the Sacristans. Salvage and medicae operations are authorised. Save repairs for inside the walls. They have two hours, then I want them back inside.’

  ‘Of course, my liege,’ said Suset.

  ‘Bid them make Percivane a priority, will you, my lady?’ asked Danial.

  ‘I will,’ said Suset. ‘Sire…’

  ‘He’s alive or he isn’t,’ said Danial. ‘The Emperor has smiled on him before. If he is, good, we’ll need him in the days to come. If not, we’ll avenge him.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Suset. ‘We did the right thing here. I know we lost Knights, but we could have lost a lot more if we’d allowed them to join their strength to Gorgrok’s, or permitted that Gargant to reach the outer wall.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Danial.

  ‘I am,’ she said firmly. ‘And you were, to order this attack. Stop wondering if your father would have done the same, and get on with ruling.’

  Danial gave a mirthless laugh.

  ‘At once, O Consort,’ he said. ‘Your wisdom is appreciated as always.’

  ‘As it should be,’ she said. ‘The orks are coming. We need to be strong, and ready.’

  ‘We are,’ said Danial, and was pleased to find that he believed it.

  Act Two

  Luk watched as Adrastapol’s orbital envelope swarmed with ork craft. They surrounded the blue-and-green orb like shoals of piranha, raining fire onto the planet and, in some cases, one another. Smaller craft flew erratically around lumbering leviathans, leaving trails of oil and debris in their wake.

  Wreckage drifted, flickering cherry-red as it burned up in Adrastapol’s atmosphere and fell upon the tortured planet below. Further out, beyond the range of the orks’ crude sensors, hung a single Imperial cruiser. Its Imperial navy heraldry had long been erased, replaced with grim, ashen panoply. Its name was Unbroken.

  Aboard, Luk stared in horrified fascination at the spectacle of his home world, projected directly onto his retinas in excruciating detail. He forced himself to take it in. Strapped into the webbing of his throne mechanicum, he felt Sword of Heroes rumble with disquiet.

  ‘We’re not too late,’ he said, unsure whether he was reassuring himself or his steed. ‘They’re still fighting.’

  Luk watched an ork cruiser come apart in a blossom of flame, underbelly pierced by laser beams from the planet below. His comrades, strapped into their own Knights that stood around his in mag-restraint rigs, watched the same feed.

  ‘Your world is dying,’ voxed Ranulf Vo-Geiss. ‘Soon you will join your comrades in being homeless as well as honourless. Perhaps then you’ll stop lording over us, no?’

  ‘Mind your tongue, Vo-Geiss,’ said Lady Ekhaterina. ‘Though he does have a point, Luk. The greenskins aren’t holding back.’

  Luk could see the truth of it. Several mushroom clouds rose like cancerous trees from the planet’s primary land-mass, their palls spreading slowly. Raging firestorms had claimed other areas, while the atmosphere was lousy with impact debris and frenetic storm fronts.

  ‘They need our aid,’ said Luk. ‘The seer’s warning was true. The hand of the Emperor is upon us, and we shall not disappoint him.’

  ‘You are deceived,’ said Maia. ‘We waste time here. Our quarry is elsewhere.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have done everything in your power to save your home world from the Tyranids, when they attacked?’ asked Luk.

  ‘I did,’ she replied.

  ‘Then surely you can understand why I must help my people now,’ he said.

  ‘No. I was oathed to fight,’ she said. ‘You are oathed to hunt, yet you are not hunting.’

  ‘We have had this conversation,’ said J’madus Hw’ss. ‘Several iterations of it, in fact. Our true quarry is unassailable with our current strength. Our chances of success would be vanishingly small. We need the aid of Luk’s former comrades if we are to prevail against the sorceress.’

  ‘We need aid,’ said Maia. ‘We do not need their aid. What do these Knights have, that other Imperial allies would not?’

  ‘Hatred,’ said Luk. ‘They hate Alicia with a passion second only to mine. Others might falter, or bend to her will. They won’t.’

  ‘Then we had better get planetside and pull their noble rears out of the fire before there’s no one left to help us,’ said Ekhaterina. ‘Talking about it won’t achieve anything.’

  ‘None of this will achieve anything,’ said Vo-Geiss. ‘Except getting us all killed for the sake of Luk’s erstwhile friends.’

  ‘Vo-Geiss, if you continue to push me, I will drag you into the sparring circle and bloody my knuckles on your face again,’ said Luk angrily. ‘Now, are you part of this company or not? If the answer is no, you can stay on the damn ship.’

  ‘I am an Exile,’ said Vo-Geiss. ‘Let that be enough.’

  ‘It’s enough for now,’ said Luk, before switching vox channels. ‘Captain Shas, are we prepared?’

  The Captain’s voice came back, Valhallan accent thick over the vox. Luk could practically smell the vlod on his breath.

  ‘Ya, we’re ready for the drop. The Sacristans are enjoying a last chant. Their ironlegs are strapped down, kitted out good. Your mercenaries are bundled up nice and tight in their dropships.’

  ‘What of our approach?’ asked Luk. ‘Do we have a clear run?’

  Shas laughed, the sound reminiscent of something ursine being violently ill.

  ‘Like an inspection cruise,’ he chortled. ‘Nice smooth ride, you won’t even
notice the orks.’

  ‘Shas,’ said Luk warningly.

  ‘Ms Telok has a vector, and if she cogitated it, you won’t get better,’ said Shas. ‘I don’t know if it’s unclear on your screens, but your home world is deshysva, covered in xenos. I’ll drop you where I can, Luk. Beyond that, it is in the hands of the Emperor.’ Shas made a guttural noise that Luk knew was accompanied by a heavy shrug.

  ‘Just get us down in one piece, captain,’ said Luk. ‘And yourselves out alive afterwards.’

  ‘There’s not a xenos alive could knock Unbroken out of the sky,’ Shas replied fiercely. ‘We don’t worry about them, they worry about us.’

  ‘Good enough, captain,’ said Luk. ‘You have the order. Commence your attack run.’

  ‘We’ll hit them like the wrath of an avalanche. The xenos filth won’t stand a chance. All hands, battle stations! And Luk?’

  ‘Yes, captain?’

  ‘Let the mercenaries know I packed them a little present on their dropships, eh? They check the storage compartments, they’ll find some extra deck mops.’

  ‘Deck…?’ began Luk.

  ‘For when they piss themselves in terror on the way down!’

  Luk shook his head despairingly, cutting the vox link and the sound of Shas’ laughter.

  ‘That man is a lunatic. He’s going to get us all killed,’ said Ekhaterina.

  ‘Actually, I think he’s probably one of the few people I’d trust to get us through this alive,’ said Luk. ‘But all the same, a few prayers to the Emperor wouldn’t hurt.’

  Captain Shas sat forward in his leather command throne, one hand clamped on its arm. The other, a rugged augmetic, hissed and clicked as he stroked his forked beard. Shas’ good left eye was fixed upon the bridge holoscreen, while data feeds poured across the display of his bionic right one. Over his straining uniform, he wore a fur-trimmed greatcoat whose chest was heavy with medals.

  Around Shas, the bridge bustled with activity as crew worked their stations, hurried along iron gantries clutching scrolls, or knelt in prayer to the machine-spirits. Commissar Hauptvier prowled the walkways overhead. Valhallan victory hymnals echoed from the bridge’s vox speakers.

  ‘All right!’ bellowed Shas, his parade-ground voice carrying across the bridge. ‘You all know what we’re doing. You all know who we’re fighting. And you all know that you’ll serve your Emperor, your ship and your captain, or the good commissar will make a deck-stain out of your skull, ya?’

  ‘Yes, captain,’ his crew shouted back at him. Shas smiled a huge, hungry smile and took a slug from his hip flask.

  ‘Then in the Emperor’s name, we begin!’ he cried. ‘Engines, all ahead full! Helm, follow Ms Telok’s trajectory cogitations, you don’t deviate for anything. Guns, unshroud all decks and power up the lance batteries. Shields, get ready for a storm!’

  Shas’ crew responded swiftly and smoothly, and he felt a warm satisfaction that had nothing to do with the vlod. On the main screen, he watched the planet swell as the Unbroken lit her drives and leapt towards it like a thrown spear.

  Shas’ first officer, Mister Klem, stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Where Shas was a bear of a man, Klem was whip-thin and spare, and gnarled like an old tree root.

  ‘The orks will notice us soon, captain,’ he said, voice clipped.

  ‘They will,’ replied Shas. ‘But not soon enough, eh?’

  ‘That is the hope,’ said Klem. ‘There’s a lot of Kroozers out there, sir, to say nothing of that Dreadnought-class abomination over the northern pole.’

  Shas made a dismissive noise and waved one meaty paw.

  ‘Your capacity to convey contempt while utilising only vowels continues to impress, sir,’ said Klem.

  ‘Orks are dangerous,’ said Shas. ‘They’re vonskak. Crazy. But they’ve got no discipline. They don’t pay attention to anything unless it’s right in their faces. That’s why we’re coming in from behind. Ms Telok’s trajectory is good. We don’t fire ’til they already know we’re there, then we skim atmos, drop cargo, and use planet’s gravity to slingshot away before the greens know what’s happening. Emperor smiles on us, this will be over in minutes.’

  ‘That is the hope, sir,’ repeated Mister Klem.

  The ship was vibrating now, the steady rumble that indicated it was up to combat speed. Runes flashed across Shas’ instruments, indicating readiness from helm, engines, shields and the gun decks. Down in the ship’s bowels, sweating teams of labourers would be hauling massive shells along loading rails to be driven into the breeches of his ship’s immense guns. Armsmen would be jogging down corridors with their shotguns held ready, deploying to key junctions in case of enemy boarders.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Here we go.’

  ‘Sir,’ came the voice of Mister Malsyn on auspex. ‘The xenos have spotted us. Several ramships and frigate-class vessels are firing up their manoeuvring thrusters and adopting intercept headings.’

  ‘Noted, Mister Malsyn,’ said Shas. ‘Ballistics, hold for now. Helm, how’s our course?’

  ‘My compliments to astrogation,’ came the voice of Mister Frent, Shas’ first helmsman. ‘Course is optimal. Two minutes to atmos contact, angle golden, debris impact minimal.’

  ‘Shields holding,’ reported one of the bridge Tech-magi. ‘Orbital debris hazards encountered and neutralised thus far, captain. By the Omnissiah’s blessings, I cogitate no major impediments along our trajectory.’

  ‘Enemy firing,’ called Mister Malsyn. ‘More ships waking up, captain. A couple of Kroozers amongst them.’

  ‘Brace for impact,’ ordered Shas. ‘Ballistics? Give them the Dasvanov salute!’

  Tectonic shudders ran through the deck as crude ordnance struck their shields, and the Unbroken’s guns roared in return. On the holoscreen, he watched lance beams and macrocannon shells reach out to blast smaller greenskin craft to atoms.

  ‘Compliments, ballistics. Fine work!’

  Mister Klem, riding out the ship’s convulsions with his feet planted, nodded to a secondary screen.

  ‘Torpedo-boat to port, sir.’

  ‘I see it,’ said Shas, stealing another nip from his flask. ‘Ballistics, they think they’re a torpedo-boat. Show them what that really means. Full spread, intercept vector, but mind the gravity well.’

  An assent rune flicked up on his instruments, and moments later a volley of checkered torpedoes sped away on plumes of fire. Shas watched as the slab-jawed ork ship tried to launch a volley of its own in response.

  ‘You’ve left it too late, vermin,’ he said viciously. Even as the ork torpedoes escaped their tubes on dirty plumes of smoke, his own projectiles ploughed into them, and through into the bays behind. Fire lit the void as impact after impact shivered the ork ship, and a cheer filled the bridge as the Kroozer listed and fell away towards the Adrastapolian atmosphere.

  ‘A bottle of vlod for that gunner!’ shouted Shas, thumping the arm of his throne.

  ‘More enemy inbound, captain,’ voxed auspex. ‘They’re really waking up now, sir. Things are about to get difficult.’

  ‘Atmospheric skim commencing in ten, nine, eight…’ As Helm counted down, Shas gripped the arms of his throne.

  ‘Permission to hang on, sir?’ asked Mister Klem. Shas answered with a grunt, and the first officer took a firm grip of the back of his Captain’s throne.

  They hit the atmosphere with a savage kick, Klem’s feet leaving the deck for a moment then clanging back down. The shaking intensified.

  ‘Our shields are taking heavy fire,’ reported Magos Chak’lir. ‘Operational efficiency down to fifty-three percent and dropping.’

  ‘Fire in compartments seventeen through twenty-one,’ reported Ms Petronov on damage control. ‘Aft lower gun deck magazine detonation, voided to space but blast shields holding. Auspex array nine has taken a hit, reads as inope
rable.’

  ‘Hold your course,’ boomed Shas. ‘Steady, my fine voidfarers, steady! The Emperor is watching, and so is our good friend Hauptvier!’

  ‘Dissuading them, captain,’ reported Mister Jessab on Ballistics.

  ‘Drop coordinates in thirty seconds,’ called Mister Frent.

  ‘Second aft shield collapse,’ warned Magos Chak’lir.

  ‘Torpedo hit, that section,’ barked Ms Petronov. ‘Damage to third aft gun deck. Damage to aft life support. Damage to starboard saviour pods. Warp core now at risk, captain.’

  Shas swore vehemently.

  ‘Magos, get my bloody shields back in place! Helm, drop the cargo.’

  ‘Fifteen seconds to–’

  ‘I can count, Frent!’ roared Captain Shas. ‘Just do it then get us clear of this kuklashka!’

  ‘Drop commencing,’ said Mister Frent, his voice tight. On his screens, Shas watched as a swarm of craft disengaged from the launch bays of his ship and plunged away on fiery trails. In their midst fell an airborne fortification, a fearsome slab of armour and turrets fitted with grav-chutes, retro thrusters and ceramite heat shields.

  Luk’s drop keep, aboard which the Exiles rode to war.

  ‘Good hunting, Knight of Ashes,’ said Shas, raising his flask in salute. ‘Now get us out of here you gang of ork-fondlers, or I swear on the Throne, I’ll crush your skulls myself!’

  Aboard the drop keep, Luk felt the thrill of acceleration rise in his chest, mingling with the adrenaline rush of his nerves. The drop keep shook and shuddered as it thundered down through the atmosphere.

  Back to your birth world, exile, muttered a sour voice from his throne. Oath unfulfilled, added another. Honourless, still. How do you think they will receive you?

  Luk shook their words from his mind, dislodging memories that were never his.

  ‘Drop rituals successfully observed,’ he said, checking over his instruments. ‘Sacristan Dolvar, Colonel Gesmund, report.’