Heralds of the Siege

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Princeps,’ Kordella warned, drawing Voltemand’s attention to the besieged Warmonger Titan.

  ‘The honour will be mine,’ Grental Thrax announced, as the Red Death hauled at Tantorus Magnificat. His harpoon had found a high target and the Warhounds’ relentless efforts had almost managed to topple the Titan. Pugnax Principio’s plasma blastgun hammered brightly blazing spheres into the Warmonger’s void shields. Each blast was like a small sun and the fusillade swiftly overpowered the generators, and the shields began to collapse in a riot of colour and spent energies.

  ‘Forward!’ Voltemand ordered. ‘Enough of these trifles.’

  ‘But, princeps…’ Shenk said, his monotonous voice like a sedative in the confines of the cockpit.

  ‘Do as I say,’ Voltemand snarled.

  As Canis Ulteriax stalked forth at a belligerent hunch, the loyalist Warmonger lifted one mighty armoured foot. Kicking out, the foot knocked the Warhound back into an unsteady stumble. Voltemand was almost tipped from his throne and the cables torn from his temples. Cockpit runebanks flashed and sparked. The princeps felt the pain of the Titan’s wounded spirit through the manifold but, crashing back through the shanties and into the side of a cooling tower, the Warhound managed to regain its composure. Supported by the colossal rockcrete chimney, Canis Ulteriax shook off dust, shattered masonry and embarrassment.

  ‘Damage report,’ the princeps primus demanded. As Shenk and Kordella struggled with their sparking stations, Voltemand smacked his fist against the back wall of the cockpit. ‘Wake up, priest!’

  As the two moderati read off a list detailing minor damage to locomotion drivers and some superficial malfunctions in the weapons systems, Voltemand watched Tantorus Magnificat fight for its life, and the lives of all those within its armoured shell. Heaving around, the Warmonger lifted Vulpium Nox up by the cable and off its scrambling feet, before whirling it back into the ground. As the Warhound came crashing down, it too stumbled into surrounding structures before being righted again by the tautness of its connecting cable.

  The Warmonger brought its foot crashing down once more, managing to connect with Pugnax Principio. Unlike Voltemand’s Warhound, Pugnax Principio was not merely knocked back. It was stamped down into the earth, the colossal Tantorus Magnificat bringing its full, city-block weight down on the Scout Titan. Like his brothers, Voltemand heard Princeps Phestalag and his crew die across the open channel as Pugnax Principio was pulverised by the much larger god-machine. Detonating beneath the armoured foot, the breached plasma reactor turned the ash and sand for a hundred metres about it to glass.

  At this, the Ember Wolves found their fury once more. Held firm between Vulpium Nox, Rapacia Rex and the Red Death, the Warmonger wasn’t going anywhere. Its great weaponry had been reduced to wild thunder and its automotive systems were straining. It was difficult for even a god-machine’s crew to orchestrate a counter-attack when their mighty Titan was straining hard not to topple over.

  As the moderati finished their damage report, Voltemand spat.

  ‘We can fight without those secondary systems,’ he said, lifting his arms to present Canis Ulteriax’s weaponry to the ensnared enemy. ‘Engage!’

  The Warhound loped forward, its Vulcan mega-bolters unleashing a continuous stream of mass-reactive fire. The remaining void shields about the Warmonger soaked up the damage, their surfaces rippling with the impacts. Voltemand roared. The Warhound charged. The torrent of magna-bore bolt shells found its way in through the collapsing shields and widening holes in Tantorus Magnificat’s ablative defences.

  ‘Ammunition low,’ Kordella warned. ‘Seventy-five per cent depletion.’

  It did not stop the princeps primus.

  The plan had been his. The kill would be his. Honour was at stake.

  As the Red Death continued to haul on its spear cable, Voltemand’s incessant bolt stream pounded its way into a magazine compartment attached to one of Tantorus Magnificat’s ancient battle cannon emplacements in a lower bastion.

  The blast was blinding. Twisted struts and pieces of shattered adamantium plating flew high through the air. The gunnery system to which the magazine was attached went up in a smaller, secondary explosion. Voltemand could only imagine the flame-rolling havoc that the crew of the afflicted section must have been experiencing.

  ‘Yes…’ the princeps hissed. The cockpit eyes had further delights for him, however. The detonation had rocked the already unbalanced Titan. With servos and magna-hydraulics in the connecting sections compromised, Tantorus Magnificat reluctantly gave up its fight against the Ember Wolves, and gravity itself.

  ‘Heads up!’ Grental Thrax warned as the Red Death heaved the Warmonger over. Both Rapacia Rex and Vulpium Nox backed up, letting their cables run. Voltemand watched as the Titan wavered and then began to fall.

  It seemed to take an eternity. Great, weaponised limbs reached out uselessly, seemingly in slow motion. Armoured bastion-feet attempted to find their balance. The buried harpoons had done their work, however, and the fall was inevitable. Once a prize of gargantuan grace and indomitability, Tantorus Magnificat now looked like a snapshot of some cataclysmic accident in progress. Its slow movements appeared clumsy and ridiculous.

  When the god-machine finally met the ground, it levelled the landscape beneath it.

  Several more explosions rippled through the Titan’s superstructure as it buckled, its ancient frame never intended to support the colossal weight of the carapace at ninety degrees from true. Buttresses shattered, stanchions sheared through. Broken statuary and ruined glassaic rained down from the ramparts, while power generators in the industrial complexes crushed beneath its bulk flashed blinding white. Shanties were blasted away in the backwash and ash was thrown up into the air, covering the area with poisonous clouds of particulate matter.

  The Warmonger’s skull-like head lolled to one side. The internal lights of its left eye went dead. With a final, mournful blast of its war-horns that kicked up dust from the ground beneath its chin, Tantorus Magnificat fell silent.

  ‘Yes…’ Voltemand said again. Nothing was more fitting or beautiful in his Warhound’s sight. ‘Kordella.’

  ‘Princeps?’

  ‘Send word to the magos reductor. The carcass is his to strip. Tell him to unleash his Thallaxii.’

  ‘And our orders, princeps primus?’ Shenk asked.

  ‘Power down weapons and void shields,’ Voltemand said. ‘Then onwards, to claim my prize.’

  Canis Ulteriax found the ugly shapes of the Red Death and Rapacia Rex waiting. The Warhounds had disconnected their spear cables and were standing over the fallen Tantorus Magnificat as though it were a hunter’s trophy. The Vulpium Nox, meanwhile, had become tangled in surrounding wreckage and its own ursus claw.

  ‘This time, I think not,’ Grental Thrax called across the vox-channel. As the dust settled and Canis Ulteriax approached, there seemed something savage and threatening about the way the Warhounds were carrying themselves.

  ‘Kordella?’

  ‘They’re both running with shields up and weapons primed, my princeps.’

  Voltemand stared through the cockpit eyes of his Warhound at the Karnassia Titans. He turned his head to one side, presenting the grizzled scars of his face.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Grental?’ the princeps primus said. As the Warhounds stood facing one another, cohorts of Thallaxii shock troops descended upon Tantorus Magnificat, laying siege to the tech-guard positions within the downed Warmonger. They could have little notion that a greater battle still loomed over their heads.

  ‘You and your godless Titan,’ Grental Thrax came back. ‘Both of you afflicted with a cowardly soul. Neither worthy to lead this battle-pack. It is time, Balthus. Time to step aside and let worthier men and machines lead.’

  ‘Princeps?’ Kordella asked, her voice hushed.

  Voltemand’s lip curled. ‘Do it.’

  As the Warhounds stared each other down, the moderati activated Canis Ulteriax’s forwar
d void shields and re-engaged their weapons systems.

  ‘You’ve spent too long with the World Eaters,’ Voltemand said. ‘We’re all still sons and daughters of Mars, here. We’re all still pledged to the Warmaster, are we not?’

  ‘Horus,’ Grental Thrax told him, ‘like his brother Angron, is served best by strength – a quality that you lack, Balthus. You would use your brothers as bait, while standing idly by. I lead from the front. I lead by example. My victories are my own.’

  ‘And yet,’ Voltemand shot back, ‘you stand over my prize.’

  ‘My brothers and I dragged the wounded beast to the ground.’

  ‘And who was it that wounded the god-machine?’ Voltemand demanded. ‘Who delivered the killing shot that brought this monster down? The honour is mine – as it is for all Titans felled by this battle-pack, for Karnassia is mine also. Do you hear me, Thrax? I am primus. I am the first, by right. Now, enough of our number have fallen today. Don’t add your mongrel machine to the tally. Stand your Warhound down. That goes for you too, Haulk.’

  Voltemand waited. The Red Death and Haulk’s Rapacia Rex were unmoved, however.

  Precious seconds passed.

  ‘Ready mega-bolter,’ the princeps primus whispered, slowly lifting his left arm.

  ‘Ready, princeps,’ Kordella told him.

  Few were expecting what happened next. Rapacia Rex was suddenly knocked forward and then disappeared in a blaze of flame. Engulfed in a blinding inferno, the Warhound burned. Its reinforced shell was doused in promethium jelly that burned as hot as an armoury furnace. Inside, Tunstall Haulk and his crew roasted. Vulpium Nox had disentangled itself. Listening to the interchange, the Warhound had stalked up behind Rapacia Rex and hit it at point-blank range in the back.

  Voltemand heard Grental Thrax roar over Haulk’s final screams. In the silhouette of the eye-searing flame, the Red Death turned, aiming its arm-mounted turbo-laser straight at its new attacker. As the pulsing beam of energy raged into the hunched body of Vulpium Nox, it hit something that went supercritical within the Warhound Titan’s body. As the chassis violently exploded, the cockpit followed suit – but both were engulfed in the promethium blast of the Titan’s inferno cannon reservoirs.

  As both the demolished Vulpium Nox and the Red Death vanished behind a curtain of flame, Voltemand squinted. Echolocation and visual spectra were useless. The entire area was one big heat signature.

  ‘Target?’ Voltemand demanded. Like her princeps, Kordella searched for the enemy Warhound.

  ‘I’ve got nothing,’ she told him.

  ‘Fire anyway!’ Voltemand growled, lifting his arm.

  The Vulcan mega-bolter hammered a stream of rounds into the fire. As the flames died away, they could see the Red Death. Its armoured shell was black and smouldering, while its turbo-laser was pointed directly back at Canis Ulteriax. Its void shields had collapsed with the backwash of the explosion, and its armour plating was perforated in a hundred places.

  ‘I have you now,’ Voltemand said, aiming the mega-bolter squarely at his foe.

  With a doom-laden clunk that reverberated through the Titan’s superstructure, the mega-bolter’s ammunition belt ran dry.

  Shenk, Kordella and their princeps primus couldn’t tear their eyes from the spectacle of the smouldering Red Death. Voltemand bit back a curse, and gripped the arms of his throne. ‘Brace–’

  The turbo-laser fired. When it did, all Voltemand knew was light and heat. For a moment, everything was cacophonous and unbearable. He tried to blink the intensity from his eyes. His nostrils stung with the chemical brume of the hive world atmosphere. All he could do was experience the agony of Canis Ulteriax through the manifold as its machine-spirit suffered.

  As his sight returned, the princeps realised that the cockpit was open to the air. The turbo-laser beam had carved a path straight through the left-hand side of the cockpit. Shenk was gone. So too was his throne and command station.

  Voltemand looked upon the Red Death with his own eyes, unaided, unclouded. He knew that Grental Thrax would be staring back from within his own, roasted cockpit.

  ‘Kordella,’ Voltemand said, reaching forwards for the moderati’s shoulder. ‘Are you still with me?’

  ‘To the last, princeps,’ she managed through raw, blackened lips.

  ‘Then let us show Grental Thrax our claws,’ Voltemand said, ‘and grapple with our brother.’

  Thrusting his right arm forward, he fired the ursus claw. The harpoon rocketed forth. Unswerving. Unstoppable. Balthus Voltemand punched the spear straight into the cockpit of the Red Death. As it was buried there – in and through the Warhound’s ugly bridge compartment – Voltemand could plainly hear the sounds of human suffering over the open channel.

  Something was still alive in the cockpit, at least. The princeps hoped that it was Grental Thrax.

  Tearing his arm back, Voltemand violently tore the head from the Red Death, and Thrax’s ruined body from the shattered cockpit. The whole Titan lurched forwards, the decapitated body crashing onto the stump of its neck and the muzzle of its turbo-laser, crushing whatever remains lay before it.

  Settling back into his throne, Balthus Voltemand glowered at the dead Warhound.

  ‘I got you,’ the princeps mouthed. ‘The prize and the honour is mine.’

  ‘No,’ Kordella told him. It took the princeps a moment to register what she had said.

  ‘What?’

  The moderati looked from her runebanks to her princeps before standing up from her throne. Voltemand did likewise. The pair of them looked down from their smashed cockpit. Thallaxii shock troops were no longer attacking the corpse of Tantorus Magnificat. They were fleeing the downed Titan, while armoured personnel carriers were thrashing their tracks back through the ash and sand.

  As a princeps, Voltemand understood. ‘The reactor core?’

  Kordella confirmed what her runescreen had told her with a slow nod. In a final act of defiance, the crew of the Warmonger hoped to deny the traitors the ancient god-machine. They had overloaded the power systems, sending the reactor into a critical meltdown.

  Nothing would escape a blast of that size.

  Not the fleeing Thallaxii. Not Canis Ulteriax.

  Balthus Voltemand slumped back down. The Warhounds of Karnassia were no more. His command was ended. He had been beaten.

  Gripping the arms of his command throne, the princeps primus watched as oblivion came for him in the unbearable light of a miniature star.

  BLACKSHIELD

  Chris Wraight

  He had taken back his name.

  That was a victory, of sorts – a measure of defiance. Now he bore it openly again, and they called him by it, and he listened to the scrape and rasp of Barbaran tongues reminding him where he had been birthed, and made, and turned.

  Kho – rak. Two syllables, pronounced with the rattle of toxin-hardened throats.

  Despite all else that had taken place, it felt good to have it spoken again.

  Now Khorak looked out over the bridge of the Ghogolla, his ship, heavy and rust-spidered, fitted out for close-range actions. The menials worked below him, their faces hidden behind smeary, gas-filled face masks. The recycled air tasted faintly brackish.

  One of them approached – a mortal, Narag, the ship’s master, clad in XIV Legion grey, white and green, eyes lowered, fists balled in deference.

  ‘And?’ Khorak asked, pushing the pivoted command throne around on its creaking axis.

  ‘Commander,’ Narag said. ‘We cannot outrun it.’

  Khorak considered that. The Ghogolla was old, and tired. Its plasma drives creaked like stretched leather. Sooner or later they were bound to meet something faster, something that had properly weathered the storm and which could end them.

  ‘Then we fight it,’ Khorak told him.

  Narag looked uncertain.

  ‘What other option remains?’ Khorak asked.

  ‘Perhaps, on firm ground…’

  Ah yes, that was still
possible. They had headed to Agarvian for a reason, playing to their Legion’s strengths. It might be better yet to cleave to that, cheating destruction one more time, rather than face a tilted contest in the void.

  ‘Can we reach it, though?’ Khorak mused idly, glancing at the grease-specked monitors showing forward augur scans. ‘What manner of hunters are they?’

  Narag did not know. It had become hard to detect the enemy from range, what with overlapped ident-markers, false flags and hidden colours. The galaxy was now a patchwork of broken allegiances, and you could only tell truly who your opponent fought for when you looked him in the eye and watched for the twitch.

  The intentions of these opponents were clear enough, though.

  They were coming to kill.

  Khorak spun his throne around again, pushing lazily with a scuffed boot-tip. ‘No matter. Make for Agarvian, but prepare for void-action. It will be tight, to reach sanctuary.’

  ‘Aye, commander,’ Narag replied with a bow. Before withdrawing, he hesitated. ‘But I will get you there,’ he added, his voice a mix of pride and resignation.

  Khorak nodded. That was probably correct, though it would likely be the shipmaster’s last feat of void-craft. They were handsomely outgunned and outpowered, and it seemed somehow fitting that the tortuous fate spawned on Isstvan had caught up with them at last.

  ‘I believe you,’ Khorak said. ‘Now get to work.’

  They ran hard. The Ghogolla seemed aware of its impending demise and, as if from wounded pride, dragged some vestige of its old thunderous power up from a clanking enginarium. As they were now too far from a Mandeville point to make the warp, Narag took the ship deep under the solar plane of the Leops System, shadowed all the while by their pursuer. They passed within ten thousand kilometres of the silky mass of the methane giant Hereb before breaking for the system’s heart on full burn and in towards Agarvian.