‘Honoured ward of House Chimaeros,’ came a firm, female voice over the vox. ‘We are about to enter a live warzone. I would ask that you refrain from any further squiresyard banter at my brother’s expense.’
‘Apologies, lady’ responded Luk, only slightly mollified. His Knight, Sword of Heroes, inclined its helm with a whine of servomotors. ‘You’re right, Jen. No distractions.’
‘Her title,’ came a heavy, gravelly voice over the vox, ‘is Jennika Tan Draconis, Gatekeeper of the Exalted Court. When in panoply I would remind you to address her as such, lad.’ Danial grimaced at the curtness of the exchange. Markos Dar Draconis, herald of the Exalted Court and his father’s first Knight. Not one for tact, or bandied words. Danial knew his friend like a brother; Luk would take that reprimand badly.
Danial’s train of thought was interrupted as the soft emerald light within his Knight’s cockpit flashed an angry red. A dolorous chime rang through the debarkation deck of the drop keep, carried to the ears of each Knight by the audio-pickups on their warsuits’ hulls. Danial gritted his teeth as the drop keep’s landing thrusters fired in sequence, increasing the pressure further. Ingrained training kicked in, and he began final checks, floods of information flowing through his neural jacks as he communed with Oath of Flame. Runes scrolled across his retinas, and his vision expanded to take in everything that the Knight’s external sensorium arrays could see. To an untrained mind it would have been a violently overwhelming experience, a pseudo-sentient and maddening mechanical violation. For Danial it was a sort of ascension. Adrenaline surged, then focused to a bright point. Nausea fled, along with the feeling of the webbing and straps that encased him. Danial’s body became plasteel and ceramite. His heart beat as a thundering plasma furnace. His senses became auspex readouts and inload shunts. In that moment Danial Tan Draconis became one with his Knight, and knew its hunger for battle.
The drop keep hit bedrock with a titanic boom, sending a shockwave through Danial’s metal body. Ahead, behind and to both sides, his fellow Knights disengaged the plasteel cages of their armatures. Gas vented in hissing streams and runelocks flashed from amber to green as the huge bipedal war machines shook off their fetters and prepared for war. From the shadows edging the cavernous deck, electrobraziers lit with roaring flames. Muffled by the thick plates of the drop keep’s outer hull, Danial heard an automated fanfare blaring, throaty and glorious. It was accompanied by a staccato thunder that he realised must be the keep’s weapon batteries opening fire. They were shooting at enemy targets, just outside. In moments he would face the foe himself. His heart thumped and threatened to shake his focus, but with an effort of will the young warrior held steady.
‘Knights of Adrastapol,’ a regal voice rolled through the vox network, filling Danial with fierce pride. His father, High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis, addressed the assembled hosts. ‘Noble sires of Houses Draconis, Chimaeros, Minotos, Wyvorn and Pegasson. Honoured allies of the Astra Militarum, of Tanhollis and Mubraxis and Cadia. Today we do the Emperor’s bidding. Today, we are the cleansing flame. This world of Donatos has known the insidious touch of the mutant. The heretic. The traitor.’ The High King spat the words with such disgust that Danial’s own hatred for the enemy burned hot. ‘But no more! Today the Knights of Adrastapol will march forth and show these turncoats what becomes of those who shun the light of the Imperium. Honoured sires, for Adrastapol and the Emperor. Let them know no mercy, only death!’
‘Only death!’ roared the assembled Knights, their voices carrying across the vox from the debarkation decks of twenty separate drop keeps. Danial’s voice was joined with those of the warriors around him, and he felt stronger in that moment than he ever had before. The ceramite portcullis at the front of the drop keep rattled upwards. The thunder of battle washed over Danial’s Knight. Infernal light spilled inwards, accompanied by a scattered hail of las-bolts and bullets that ricocheted from the red and black armour of his comrades’ steeds.
‘In Excelsium Furore,’ cried Sire Tolwyn to his House Draconis comrades.
‘Wield the fires within,’ they shouted back, the ancient battle cry of their Knightly House. With that, they willed their machines forward to war.
Danial watched the Knights in front of him engage their motive systems and advance. Hydraulic tendons flexed. Gears whirred to speed. Spumes of smoke and incense boiled from exhaust vents atop armoured carapaces, filling the debarkation deck with churning fumes. The Knights’ helm-lumens shone in the gloom, and Danial was reminded of the mythic dracon that gave their house its name. Suddenly the way before him was clear, Sires Daeved and Garath smoothly walking their Knights forward into battle ahead of him. Danial felt a moment of panic as every lesson he had ever learned fled his mind. For a second his Knight hesitated, shuddering on the spot. Angrily, the young kingsward thrust the feeling aside and engaged his motive actuators. Oath of Flame took a long stride, and then another that carried it to the edge of the assault drawbridge. Another, and he was out into the fiery light of a strange world. A fierce grin spread across his face as he stomped down the drawbridge and into the maelstrom of battle.
Danial drank in the data feeds and imaging returns of his auspex. The drop keep had landed right on target, demolishing a guildhall as it slammed down amidst the northern commerce district of Pentakhost. Others like it had crashed down to the east and west. They had unfurled their house banners, begun their rolling fanfares and unshrouded their servitor gun-towers, forming a line of towering fortifications that choked off the neck of the peninsula. The traitor foe was trapped between the wildfires and the Knights, just as King Tolwyn and Viscount Gerraint had planned. As Oath of Flame ventured onto the cracked plaza before the guildhall, Danial saw a jumbled skyline silhouetted against the inferno. Smoke rose in thick black pillars that seemed to hold up the lowering clouds like titanic columns.
Over his Knight’s head fluttered flights of servo-cherubim, the grotesque little creatures winging their way into the sky on grav-impellers and rotor-wings. Released from each drop keep, the cherubs would form a low-altitude sensor-web that would greatly enhance the auspex acuity of the Knights below. The Sacristans called them the Heavenly Host, and were clearly proud of their macabre progeny. The infant servitors made Danial uncomfortable, and sad somehow.
Ash fell like snow, coating the grubby buildings that crowded in around the plaza and swarmed with enemy contacts, revealed by Danial’s pinging auspex runes. From his high vantage they were tiny, insects scurrying from one ineffectual scrap of cover to the next. Some waved tattered banners bearing unclean sigils, and many were visibly mutated.
‘They’re like rock-roaches,’ said Luk over the vox, his Errant moving up alongside Danial’s as they both lit their ion shields and searched for targets. The contempt in the young Knight’s voice was clear, and Danial found it hard to argue. The sense of power rushing through his body was immense. The foe seemed small and weak by comparison. Already their comrades were engaging, tilting their ion shields expertly to absorb the hail of small arms fire that stuttered from broken windows and vehicle wrecks.
To Danial’s right, Sire Olric’s Crusader-pattern Draconsflame opened up with all guns. The scream of his avenger gatling cannon was deafening, its torrent of shells chewing along the front of a refectorum and leaving rubble and bloody corpses in its wake.
To the left, Sire Daeved’s Knight Gallant, Pyrefang, advanced through hails of autogun fire. His reaper chainsword carved out the front of a building to send rubble thundering down on the screaming cultists below.
‘Why are they even trying to fight?’ Danial said aloud. ‘Guns like that can’t harm Knights.’
‘Hate? Panic? Desperation?’ came his sister’s voice in reply, Jennika’s Fire Defiant striding past Danial’s flank. ‘Don’t try to fathom the motives of heretics, little brother. Just kill them. And don’t underestimate them either.’ As if to underpin her words, a missile streaked out from a nearby rooft
op and exploded against Jennika’s ion shield. The energy field flashed blue as the warhead’s force dissipated harmlessly, and a second later Fire Defiant’s battle cannon boomed twice. The rooftop erupted in flame and shrapnel, obliterating the luckless heretics and their tank-busting weapon.
‘Kingsward,’ said Sire Markos across the vox, ‘form lance on Lady Jennika. Take Tan Chimaeros with you. Both of you try to learn something, and keep your damned shields up. I’ll not be the one to explain to either of your fathers why a rabble like this managed to unseat their precious sons.’
Danial obeyed swiftly, feeding power to his servomotors and feeling acceleration as his steed strode forward. The ground shook beneath his tread, and targeting data filled his thoughts as his thermal cannon powered up. Luk’s Knight followed, the green and grey of House Chimaeros incongruous amongst the crimson and black heraldry of his Draconis comrades.
‘You know you’re both Exalted Court, yes?’ said Luk resentfully over a private channel. ‘He’s no authority over you, Da.’
‘But he’s a veteran of a dozen wars and more,’ replied Danial, lengthening his stride to keep up with his sister. ‘This is our first. We don’t know what we’re doing yet, not really.’
‘Maybe you don’t,’ Luk answered, a moment before a massive heat bloom lit Danial’s auspex.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019.
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Apex Predator - Gavin G Smith Page 4
