by Nick Kyme
‘I... I don’t rightly remember,’ he mumbled.
‘What regiment?’
‘Forgive me, it’s all a bit fuzzy. And could you speak up? I think I’ve gone a little deaf.’
Calsar’s patience was wearing thin. He didn’t have time for this. ‘What. Happened. Here?’
‘A battle, I expect,’ the stranger replied with a shrug. ‘That doesn’t really matter now – there is something important, something I have to tell you.’
The colonel stared at the devastation that stretched in all directions. ‘How could anyone survive this?’ he muttered. ‘It’s incredible...’
The man thrust forward a sheaf of loosely tied pages, their edges scorched. There was handwriting on the tattered cover but a dirty, broken-nailed thumb obscured the words.
‘No, my friend. This is a miracle.’
Marcus Valerius of the Therion Cohort
THE EMBER WOLVES
Rob Sanders
The void rumbled at the arrival of the Dark Mechanicum. Monstrous coffin-ships thundered into the backwater systems of the Gorgonopsii Maestrale, glimmering with the fell light of corruption. Each transported tainted constructs – tech-pledged to the Warmaster. They were packed with traitor cyborgs of the Thallaxii cohorts. They carried the fallen god-machines of the Legio Audax.
The Ember Wolves. Death, by any other name.
At the heart of the Maestrale lay the shabby little hive world of Absolom. It was here, in the shadow of ancient hives, that the towering war machines of the Legio Castigatra made their stand. Overconfident and untried, they had been drawn together with other legions as part of the newly formed Adeptus Titanicus. The loyalist Titans marched forth under the banners of the false Fabricator General of Terra and met Horus Lupercal’s forces, god-machine to god-machine.
The hive world shook with landing Titans, brought down with rancid expediency from macro-carriers achieving low orbit. The dunes of the surrounding ash wastes trembled, while the crooked spires and looming accretions of the hives fell and crashed into the cityscape below. With ear-splitting horns of arrival, cybernetic shock troops spilled from landing transports. Screams spread through the shanties as Thallaxii soldiers made their maniac way through the corrugated townships, wildly gunning down the hive-worlders. But the true terror came with the first steps of the god-machines, a cacophonous thunder that shook such structures to scrap and crushed families underfoot. Colossal weaponry boomed to life – power converters filled the air with the hum of static, while the heavy metal clunk of loading mechanism echoed through the canyons between the hives.
By the time the Emperor-class Titans of the Legio Castigatra arrived to intercept the traitor machines and retake the landing sites, the Ember Wolves had long been lying in wait.
Balthus Voltemand glowered in his command throne. His battle-scarred face looked like a topographical map in the red of the canopy lighting. As well as being commander of Canis Ulteriax, he was the ranking princeps amongst the Warhound Scout Titans of Battle-Pack Karnassia. Like others of the pack, Voltemand’s machine had once borne another name: a proto-Gothic moniker, little more now than a lousy, Terran curse word, that no longer had any meaning for the Warmaster’s battle-pledged.
The pack had taken position amongst the hyperstacks and fat chimneys of Hive Septus. The billowing, metallic clouds of industry cloaked the area, hiding even the towering forms of the battle-pack’s six Warhounds. They listened to hives in uproar, and the thunderous weaponry of loyalist machines and the Warmaster’s finest exchanging distant fire.
While they had lain in wait, much had happened. Mechanicum-allied Thunderbolts on a bombing run ran afoul of barrage balloons surrounding Karnassia’s landers. The hive spire, with its palaces and grand ballrooms, suffered the quake of passing god-machines before toppling down the side of the monstrous city. With aircraft plummeting through the chemical smog and colossal chunks of masonry raining down after them, the Ember Wolves held their nerve and position.
When Tantorus Magnificat rounded the hive, the Warmonger’s stride taking it through the decimated shanties, Voltemand knew that he had acquired a target worthy of his battle-pack.
He stared through the cockpit eyes of Canis Ulteriax. He scanned for heat signatures, for echolocational feedback and movement among the cycling visual spectra. He didn’t need them. Overhead, between chimney-spumes of rancid smoke, Voltemand had thought he saw the jagged cityscape of the hive itself moving, but it was not. It was the fortress towers of Tantorus Magnificat’s hunched carapace emerging from the crooked confusion of accretions and spires. The princeps knew the mighty Titan of old. He had fought both alongside the veteran machine at Vorda Corona and against it at Belisarr Alpha and Phendrick’s World. But he had never had the opportunity to actually engage the Warmonger, and wasn’t going to waste this one, now.
A grating ping reverberated across the cockpit enclosure.
‘I have an auspex contact,’ Moderati Shenk reported from his forward throne, his voice a monotonous drone.
‘You have more than that,’ Voltemand said with a wolfish smile.
‘Is that…’ Kordella began, leaning over from her station.
‘It is,’ the princeps told her with relish. ‘Tantorus Magnificat. The False Mechanicum of Terra wishes to test us, and we welcome the challenge. The Ember Wolves do not shirk from the fight. For we are ferocity made metal. The doom of mightier machines. We bring gods to their armoured knees.’
‘Powering up,’ Shenk said, rerouting automotive energies to the Warhound’s dormant magna-hydraulics and legs. ‘Waking the enginseer.’
Voltemand banged his fist against the runebank wall behind his throne, hoping to rouse the cantankerous construct and his malformed servitors in the compartment beyond. ‘Tell that malingering priest to be ready. We stride into battle. Dark destiny awaits us in the thunder to come.’
‘Weapon systems online,’ Kordella reported as the clunk of the Vulcan mega-bolter’s autofeeds rumbled through the superstructure. ‘Awaiting your command. Ursus claw ready, harpoon primed.’
‘Very good, moderati,’ Voltemand said. While the Warhound Titans of the Ember Wolves carried different primary weapons for tactical variety, the right arm of each was mounted with a spear-and-cable weapons system, designed to ensnare and bring down greater prey. ‘Shenk, open a channel. All Warhounds of Karnassia.’
‘Affirmative,’ the moderati said. ‘You are patched through, princeps.’
‘Harken, my brothers,’ Balthus Voltemand called across the crackling channel. ‘Berate your crew and stir the monstrous spirit of your machines. The wait is over. The time has come. Prey worthy of our efforts draws near.’
‘Tantorus Magnificat?’ a voice like churned gravel ventured back across the channel. ‘Then the honour shall be mine.’
It was Grental Thrax, princeps of Rubella Mortem. His Warhound, ‘the Red Death’, had the greatest number of god-kills in the pack and, but for the fact that he was a disagreeable maniac, would have led the six machines of Karnassia in the hunt. In appointing a princeps primus, more tactical cogitators had prevailed and Balthus Voltemand and Canis Ulteriax had been given the honour instead. Across the open channel, Voltemand could hear Thrax threatening his moderati crew with the sceptre that he always carried, and the sound of the Red Death’s plasma blastgun priming.
‘There is no honour without victory,’ Balthus Voltemand growled back, ‘and there is no victory without the pack. You will take your place, princeps, amongst the Ember Wolves. As it has been. As it is. As it will always be.’
As the voices of other commanding officers resounded through the vox, Voltemand heard Thrax grunt an acknowledgement.
‘Form up, you Warhounds of Horus,’ Voltemand ordered. ‘Ready your weapons and call upon the savagery of your machine-spirits.’
The princeps primus thrust his arms forward and sat bolt upright in his throne. Through the Titan manifold, Canis Ulteriax answered. Skulking like some low beast of the plain, the W
arhound held its armoured head at a hunch, while its ursus claw and mega-bolter were raised up and ready to fire. The Scout Titan’s clawed feet pounded through the shanties, flattening ramshackle structures and turning dunes to clouds of pounded ash. The clunk of heavy metal servos and pistoning pump of magna-hydraulics echoed through the acidic smoke clouds of brute industry. The hunters of Karnassia followed, picking their way through the destruction after Canis Ulteriax – Vulpium Nox and Lupa Laudator following Voltemand’s lead, while the Warhounds Pugnax Principio and Rapacia Rex fell into flanking positions either side of the Red Death.
‘Moderati Shenk,’ Voltemand called. ‘My compliments to the magos reductor. Inform him that the blessed ruin of his Thallaxii shock troops are needed, fourth quadrant, delta-east peripheral. Tell him that the Ember Wolves are about to make a kill, and both his siege-craft and armoured cohorts are required to extract the marrow from metal bones.’
‘Aye, princeps.’
Beyond, the hive shook with the arrival of the loyalist Warmonger. Structures crumbled and sub-spires toppled. The colossal Titan simply stepped through factory complexes, the detonations of uranic works and power stations flashing about the god-machine’s armoured feet. Mushroom clouds billowed around Tantorus Magnificat’s monstrous form, while energy unleashed from ruptured power cores felt its way up armoured plate the thickness of a battle cruiser’s hull.
‘Attack pattern umbilicus,’ Voltemand said as the Warhounds stalked into position. Through the rust-stained smoke and ruined architecture of the hive, the Titans took their places. Ordinarily, the movements of such mighty war machines would easily attract attention, but amongst the cascading destruction of Hive Septus and the booming advance of the Warmonger, they were all but lost.
‘Come on,’ the princeps primus quietly urged the loyalist Titan. ‘Come and get us.’
He keyed the comm-channel on the arm of his throne.
‘Tunstall, the duty is yours. Draw him on.’
Voltemand heard both the displeasure of Tunstall Haulk and Grental Thrax across the channel. The princeps primus had offered the glory to one of Thrax’s close allies: Haulk’s Rapacia Rex was about to become bait in the trap the Ember Wolves had set for Tantorus Magnificat. From its position amongst the vent-scrapers of a manufactorum stack, Rapacia Rex levelled its turbo-lasers at the oncoming Warmonger. A well-placed beam from Rapacia Rex would be barely enough to wound the mighty god-machine, but it would be more than enough to get the Titan crew’s attention and draw Tantorus Magnificat on.
‘Wait,’ Voltemand ordered. Something was wrong.
Moments before the air had been thick with the metallic boom of the giant’s advance. Tantorus Magnificat’s steps had crunched through structures and the unseen hivers crowding within. Explosions rippled through the path of decimation that marked its progress. Now, however, the air was still.
‘Auspex!’
‘The enemy Titan has come to a halt,’ Shenk told his princeps. Voltemand knew that could mean only one thing. He had underestimated the Warmonger’s long-range scanners.
Kordella spat. ‘Tantorus Magnificat is arming missiles.’
‘Intensify forward void shields,’ the princeps barked, his scarred features wrapped around a snarl. Then into the open channel he added: ‘Brothers, brace yourselves.’
‘Incoming!’ Kordella called. A missile suddenly punched through the lead-coloured clouds. Tantorus Magnificat was revealed, towering above them. Its towers and hunched fortresses twinkled with lights while its right arm, bearing a multi-racked launcher, was pointed down at the Karnassia pack.
Canis Ulteriax had been facing Lupa Laudator when it was hit. One moment it was four hundred tonnes of armoured pugnacity, the next it was a rocketing explosion of shattered scrap. The dull thunk of shrapnel hitting Canis Ulteriax’s outer hull could be heard through the cockpit, and through the manifold Voltemand could feel the destruction wash over his Titan. The princeps primus knew he had to act.
‘Shenk, backtrack,’ Voltemand called out. The princeps thrust his left arm out. ‘Kordella, answer!’
As the Warhound backed through blazing shanty dwellings, its Vulcan mega-bolter roared to life, sending a magnificent stream of magna-bore bolt shells at the loyalist Warmonger. The huge rounds plucked at the Titan’s overlapping void shields, sparking sizzling ripples through the fields like stones in a lake.
The dank hive world air trembled with the blare of war-horns: Tantorus Magnificat would answer the challenge.
With huge steps it crashed through the shanties. The Titan moved with all the territorial urgency its colossal frame was capable of mustering. Giant weapons, ancient and bedecked with banners, were presented. Its ponderous movements swept like a gale through the smog drifting down from the chimneys of the industrial districts, clearing the filth away.
‘Come on, you glorious abomination,’ the princeps said, as Canis Ulteriax backed through a nest of flimsy smokestacks. ‘Again!’
As the mega-bolter gave account of itself once more, Voltemand could feel the rhythmic tremble through the Warhound’s superstructure and his command throne.
‘That’s it,’ he seethed. ‘Keep your attention on me… On me, damn it!’
As Tantorus Magnificat waded on, its great, racked launcher rotated with an echoing clunk.
‘Princeps,’ Shenk said, but Voltemand ignored the moderati. As the Warmonger primed a second missile for launch, Kordella turned in her throne.
‘Princeps,’ she echoed, her voice tinged with something more than just dutiful concern.
‘Hold your tongues,’ Voltemand shot back. ‘I’ll give the order when I’m ready.’
Kordella turned back, staring through the Titan’s cockpit eyes and up at the advancing mountain of plasteel and adamantium. Voltemand watched. He waited. The timing had to be right, as did the positions and angles. Upon these factors, everything depended. Engagements such as these were won or lost in seconds.
Seconds of excitement and horror, where a Titan princeps had to hold his nerve.
‘Balthus!’ Kordella called out.
‘Now, brothers of iron and fury,’ the princeps commanded, ‘brandish your claws and let slip your harpoons. This god-machine is ours for the taking.’
The first shot came from Vulpium Nox. Over the vox-channel, Voltemand heard Haximiliian Bettanquor roar from the command throne as his Warhound loosed its arm-mounted spear. Initially designed as grappling and boarding devices for World Eaters legionary vessels, the ursus claws were powerful Titan-hunters. Vulpium Nox stumbled back as the harpoon tore away on its cable. Able to punch through the heaviest armour plating, it had little problem with the racks and tubes of the Warmonger’s missile launcher.
Skewering through with an appalling screech and a ringing that hung in the air about the loyalist Titan, the claw knocked the launcher off its aim; the next missile streaked wide on a trail of rocket propellant smoke. As it struck the rust-stained rockcrete of a cooling tower, the structure was transformed into an inferno of flame and showering grit. Canis Ulteriax was knocked to one side by the blast but, under Moderati Shenk’s control, managed to keep its footing.
Like a giant herbivore surrounded by death world predators, Tantorus Magnificat was trapped. Spears shot up through the thinning smoke, burying themselves in the target with a shearing prang. Cable spools ran. Lines dragged taut.
The shanties shook with the tremble of gears and automotive engines. Power cores roared and magna-hydraulics struggled. The splayed-claw feet of Battle-Pack Karnassia’s Warhounds scraped across the ground, shearing through corrugated complexes as the Warmonger tried to escape their clutches. Trapped in a web of taut cables, Tantorus Magnificat tried to heave its way free.
‘Hold it!’ Balthus Voltemand called across the open channel. ‘Call upon everything your machines have! The Warmonger is ours now. Don’t let it move. Don’t let it breathe…’
The Ember Wolves hauled back at the behemoth, bracing it between them. Titanic weapo
nry mounted upon the Warmonger’s arms and carapace fired off wildly, attempting to blast its tormenters to oblivion. Instead, all it achieved was turning the settlement and surrounding industrial zone into a mess of smouldering craters, into which the Warhounds almost slipped.
‘Heave!’ Voltemand called to his brothers as Canis Ulteriax stalked back in to join the fight. Harpoon heads worried at armour plating and cables sang their high-pitched song. The hunched backs of the Karnassia machines steamed with the effort. Giant servos whined and hydraulics hissed as the Warhound Scout Titans scrabbled ever backwards through the ash dunes and wreckage.
Tantorus Magnificat’s great, bellowing war-horn sounded once again. This time it seemed almost panicked. This time it was almost in rage. Voltemand could believe that it might be calling out for aid.
‘Auspex sweep,’ he commanded. ‘Long range.’
He didn’t need it, however. Through the cockpit eyes of the Warhound, he saw the forward void shields flash and ripple with kinetic impacts. Squinting, the princeps primus could see the heat signatures of tank formations out on the ash wastes. He could make out Baneblades and armoured personnel carriers lurching across the dunes towards them.
‘Hivers,’ Kordella informed her princeps. ‘Planetary defence contingents.’
Voltemand thrust out his arm to the side. The contempt was clear on his face. Shenk and Kordella were busy at their stations as the great Warhound heaved around. With a grunt of brute satisfaction, the princeps watched as Canis Ulteriax’s mega-bolter unleashed its firepower. Bolts tore up through the wasteland, turning Chimera transports and their hive soldiers to chopped wreckage. Even super-heavy tanks were turned back or aside by the relentless storm of shells, skidding this way and that through the ash as their tracks thrashed for better traction. Several mauled vehicles exploded as the bolt streams hit critical systems, fuel lines and the like, while others were knocked down the sides of the dunes and rolled onto their backs to present their vulnerable underbellies. As hive world soldiers and tank crews, bloody and broken, abandoned their smashed vehicles, they were met by Legio Audax-allied Dark Mechanicum transports. Cybernetic shock troops poured from troop bays. Thallaxii warriors, impassive and indomitable, moved through the swirling ash, blasting hivers to splattered shreds with streams of energy from their lightning guns.
