by Gav Thorpe
The transports had deposited them and many thousands of others on a raised apron, after a brief glimpse of the dizzying sprawl of roads and rails. Since landing, Zenobi had seen nothing but the others around her and the lightening sky above.
She had no idea where they were going next and the thought was oddly liberating. All she could do was move with the crowd, directed by the officers and the course of the wide rampways and bridges – she knew they were still high up by the cold bite in the wind, like when she used to steal a few moments on the upper hive-skin between shifts.
The drone of engines and clatter of rail carts created a backdrop to the tramping of booted feet. There was little chatter – after nearly a day in close confines with each other everyone was content with their own thoughts.
Over time the footfalls became even more regular, a rhythmic thudding that reminded her of pneumatic die cutters and pounding shell-hammers.
A few metres ahead of Zenobi a woman raised her voice, the words familiar to anyone that worked in the lower east cradlespur, and Zenobi had heard of similar work songs all across the manufactories.
‘I been working the line, working the line, working it all day.’
‘Just like my father before,’ someone sang the refrain from behind.
‘I been working the line, working the line, working it all night,’ the woman continued.
‘Just like my mother before,’ sang more voices.
‘I been working the line, working the line, working all shift.’
‘Just like my son will after,’ sang Zenobi, her wavering voice joining dozens more.
Others took up the lead line, a mix of bass and lower notes from the men, higher-pitched and strident harmonies from the women.
‘I been working the line, working the line, working all my life.’
‘Just like my daughter after.’
The sound swelled around Zenobi, helping her forget the endless sky above, reminding her that she was with her people. With that thought came the comfort that she was where she was meant to be. The factory workers of Addaba were a fatalistic people, but not without contentment. Within their allotted lives there was room to rise a rank or two, to get a little more living space, an extra ration of fresh water and – if one reached the heady heights of overseer like Egwu and the others that had become officers in the defence corps – real fruit once a month. Having been raised on recycled water and air and having tasted nothing but synthetic protein slabs and nutri-mush, the idea of an apple or orange bordered on the mythical.
So they sang songs as they marched, of labour and love, of family and cherished moments, of building a world for their descendants and honouring the lives of their ancestors. Songs that carried them through long shifts of dangerous manual labour swept them along the seemingly unending march to their next stop.
It was almost two hours before the monotony of walking was interrupted. Zenobi reckoned they had covered more than ten kilometres since being put down by the transports. They came to a slow stop and Zenobi took the moment to crouch and rub her calves, her hamstrings just as stiff. The singing died away and was replaced by sighs and grumbles. It was just a couple of minutes’ break before they were moving again, and a few hundred metres later Zenobi could see the reason for the delay.
The huge rampway dropped and split into three, dividing the defence troopers into contingents. The left and right paths curved gently away from the central road, the descent steepening sharply. Their destination was still out of sight.
She found herself being ushered left with the rest of Company Epsilon and as the body of troopers moved, she caught sight of the low wall that bordered the ramp. From this new vantage point she could see down into the mass of the transit hub, though at first vertigo threatened to topple her as she gazed at the bewildering maze of rail lines and roadways.
She turned her attention ahead and saw five massive roofed structures. They were not buildings as such, for they had no walls, and beneath each of them stretched eight straight tracks that continued underneath the walkway she was on.
The sound of rotors and engines had faded with distance but as they descended it was replaced by a background noise of a different kind – shouts, moans and cries. A disturbed muttering rippled through the Addaba companies as they encountered its source.
Beneath the bridge, on a platform many kilometres long, tens of thousands of conscripts were being herded towards the open-topped carts of a train that stretched out of view. Goad sticks crackled and the bellows of provosts with voxmitters cut through the audible misery of the massed people.
The anarchy sickened Zenobi, as much as the obvious suffering of those unfortunates being loaded for transport to their zone of deployment. It was such a stark contrast to the orderly manner of the Addaba Defence Corps.
‘I wonder where they’re from,’ she said to Seleen, the woman between her and the retaining wall to their left.
‘I don’t know, yeye, but they don’t look happy to be here.’
‘Khertoumi wasters,’ said Menber. ‘Look at their tattoos.’
He was right: amongst the press of bodies it was possible to see the distinctive white facial tattoos of the nomads that lived in the Khertoum rad deserts.
‘Grit-eaters?’ laughed a trooper just in front of Zenobi. She recognised him from Gamma Platoon but did not know his name. ‘Dorn will hurt his back bending to scrape so low for his armies!’
‘They’ll fire a lasgun just the same as you or I, Kettai,’ snapped Menber. ‘And their blood will water the ground all the same too. You think the war cares what station we each come from?’
‘I’m just glad we’re not sharing space with them, is all I’m saying, yeye. Don’t be taking hurt for their feelings, they don’t have none.’
‘That would be us, if it were not for the cause,’ said Zenobi, fingers tightening around the haft of the standard over her shoulder. ‘Swept together and thrown into wagons like animals. Only because we work together are we marching like this, so you keep your mean words in your heart and not let them come to your lips.’
‘She is right,’ called out someone outside Zenobi’s eyeline. ‘We have bonds, we are all family, but when we fight we’ll be doing it for all Terrans, yeah? All humanity! For Addaba!’
‘For Addaba!’ came the reflex cry in response, even from the mouth of Kettai. He fell silent but shook his head as he continued to glance down at the awful scene playing out below, the stink and sobs of the indentured troopers growing stronger as the rampway took the defence corps down to ground level.
A monumental task
The assault begins
The locomotive
Lion’s Gate space port, eastern approach, six hours before assault
‘Remind you of anywhere?’ Forrix said to his companions.
‘Cadmean Citadel.’ Kroeger grunted the name of the place where Perturabo had elevated him to the Trident. To Forrix it seemed that journey had now been completed by Kroeger’s appointment to general command of the assault on the Lion’s Gate space port but Kroeger made no mention of it.
‘As though drawn on a far larger canvas,’ said Falk.
‘Far, far larger,’ agreed Forrix.
Cadmean Citadel had also been a space port, a mountain of a tower raised and defended by the sons of Dorn. Forrix recalled it as something of an arduous campaign, among many such labours of war in which he had taken part. Yet it seemed a mere anthill in comparison to the structure that rose out of the Imperial Palace, dwarfing even the mountains from which most of the Emperor’s grand city had been hewn.
He was a considerable distance away and yet had to crane his neck to see its summit, lost against the haze of the upper atmosphere now fogged by bombardment debris and energy discharge. It was a ziggurat, in rough outline at least, half as broad at its base as it was high, large enough to be considered a hive city in its own right
. One of the largest, in fact, though its purpose was not residential but logistical. From this angle he could just about make out the highest connecting transitways between the space port and the Imperial Palace – highways and monorails and viaducts, each half a kilometre across, big enough to carry the bulk transport of the immense cargos that passed to and from the ships docking at its summit.
Cadmean Citadel had been large enough for traders and carriers to land, but the very largest vessels – vessels like the Arks Mechanicum and the Legio Titanicus transports that had sworn for the Warmaster – could not enter so far into a gravity well nor withstand re-entry to any significant degree. They were giants born in the void and destined to die in the void. But the Lion’s Gate space port was so tall that such considerations were no longer valid. Starships were not forced to shuttle down their loads in smaller landers but could disgorge the contents of their kilometres-long bodies directly to the massive elevators and carriages.
‘Do you think we’ve brought enough guns?’ said Forrix, turning his attention to the infamous siege train of the IV Legion. The landing had begun three days ago while Mortarion and Angron had occupied the attention of the defenders. Still the dark blur of shuttling craft could be seen linking the distant drop field with a succession of starships in orbit. The column of armoured vehicles stretched all the way back to that landing site, nearly forty kilometres of undulating metal serpent intent upon the Lion’s Gate.
Like the Trident and the twenty-five thousand legionaries that accompanied them, the wall-breaker companies of the Iron Warriors had been landed within range of only the largest defence cannons of the space port – and they were directed upwards to fend off any direct approach from orbit. Lead formations had encountered little resistance, the bulk of Dorn’s forces having been withdrawn to the final defences within a few kilometres of the space port.
A mountaintop had been flattened by orbital scouring to create a level a kilometre across. Tiny compared to the vast expanse of the Katabatic Plains that had been flattened for the Imperial Palace but enough to allow heavier landers to bring down squadrons of tanks and assault guns.
‘Two thousand, three hundred and eight Basilisk assault guns,’ said Kroeger, reeling off the list as though pleased with the feat of memory. To Forrix it was the least requirement of command to have the complete logistics of one’s force ready for immediate recall. ‘Fifteen hundred and twenty-two Manticore assault rocket carriers. Thirteen modified Sicaran bombards. Four hundred and seventy-six Deathstrike platforms. Four hundred and ninety-five Medusa howitzers. Thirteen hundred and six Siege Dreadnoughts. Eighty-four Typhon siege guns. Seven thousand, one hundred and eighteen Thunderburst towed guns.’
Forrix allowed Kroeger’s voice to become a drone as he continued to list the tens of thousands of support tanks, Land Raiders and other armoured beasts committed to the attack. It was nearly eighty per cent of the Legion’s armoured might in the Solar System, the rest being kept in orbit or the outer reaches, or already deployed in support of the efforts being made by the other Legions and primarchs, particularly Mortarion’s attempts to break the wall to the western side of the Palace.
Their efforts would be rendered obsolete if the Iron Warriors could break through at the Lion’s Gate.
To the north and south stretched the support echelons – Imperial Army forces sworn to the Warmaster and appointed to Perturabo, as well as various vassal hosts that had come under the sway of the Iron Warriors. One and a half million men and women, as well as countless beasts, mutants and freaks of the warp. Forrix didn’t care much for such grist in the war mill, but viewed them more as a lubricant. Their blood would make the machine of battle turn more smoothly for the warriors of Perturabo.
For perhaps the first time in decades, Forrix felt that the IV Legion would be given credit for its victories. He thought back to when he had left Terra, just a line legionary, embarking on the Great Crusade for the Emperor. He had harboured no illusions regarding the glory of war – the brutal truth of battle had been revealed to him during Unification – but they had all felt something of a greater promise to the war they would unleash. Reclaiming Terra and Luna had been a stepping stone; the Great Crusade was the endeavour for which history would laud the Space Marines.
‘I left from here, you know?’ he said to his companions.
Kroeger grunted, annoyed at the interruption to his logistical liturgy. Falk turned a helmed head, cocked slightly to the right.
‘Really?’ said the Warsmith. ‘I knew you were from Terra. I did not realise you were native to the Himalazia.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Forrix corrected him. ‘But before the Fourth Legion were despatched, we were granted honours by the Emperor. A parade to receive His salute. We went straight from there onto our first crusade campaign.’
He looked again at the sky-piercing stalagmite of ferrocrete and plasteel.
‘It was smaller then, of course.’
Watching the seething mass of humanity and inhumanity spilling like a stain across the Katabatic Plains, Forrix realised that the non-Legion elements of the army were driving straight towards the space port. By the early morning they would be in range of the space port’s main batteries and the heavy weapons of the trench lines around it.
‘You’re launching the attack without any preparatory bombardment?’ he said, unable to hide his incredulity from Kroeger.
‘Perturabo was quite clear in his orders,’ the other triarch replied. ‘Speed. It was your plan, wasn’t it? Take the port-city before Dorn can respond? There’s no point wasting shells on a city where the defenders are hiding behind the walls. The scum will bring them to their gun positions and then the heavy metal will fly.’
Forrix bit back any reply. He could think of half a dozen flaws in this approach but remembered the injunction of his primarch not to interfere. It was this brutish simplicity that Perturabo desired.
‘I recall Cadmean Citadel again,’ said Falk. ‘The Lord of Iron’s coming went very poorly for some. It would be wise not to draw the primarch’s personal intervention, especially as he has been most specific in his desire not to become embroiled in Dorn’s trap.’
Forrix was not convinced that there was any trap, but he was not about to argue the matter with Falk, whom he had once considered a close ally but now viewed with deep suspicion. The Warsmith would not hesitate in reporting any perceived misdemeanours to the primarch.
There was the added benefit that when Kroeger’s lack of expertise led to failure, he would pay the price of the primarch’s wrath. His replacement might be more amenable to Forrix’s desires, or at the least more wary of ignoring him.
Djibou transition station, Afrik,
one hundred and six days before assault
Under the shade of the station Zenobi felt the chill, her bare arms sheened in sweat from the morning sun and the long walk. It was not just the sudden drop in temperature that set her skin prickling. As they passed into the shadows, she saw the gun towers. They were built into the great pylons that held up the roof, dozens of them stretching along the narrow platforms between the tracks.
Her fingers sought the arm of Menber next to her, gripping it tight just below the elbow. He glanced at her and saw where her gaze was directed.
‘You’ve seen guns before,’ he said with a shrug, his lasgun almost falling off his shoulder. He hiked it back into place.
‘Look where they’re pointed, cousin.’ Quad-barrelled heavy stubbers tracked back and forth between the scores of companies filing into the station. On walkways between the pillars visored guards patrolled, heavy carbines at the ready. ‘They’re not here to protect the station against attack.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ insisted Menber. He cocked his head back towards the loading platforms where the waster conscripts were still being corralled into their wagons. ‘Maybe there was some trouble before.’
‘Why would they
suspect us?’
‘They don’t. It’s… It’s like the dynastic security teams. They don’t expect any trouble, it’s just for show.’
Their pace had slowed to a few metres a minute as the companies pushed together on the raised rockcrete. There was nowhere to go, no way of avoiding a lethal fusillade if the guards decided to open fire. Her heart pounded harder and faster as she imagined the muzzle flare and screams. She remembered the stories Auntie Hermayla had told her of the old food riots, how the corridors would be filled with bodies, the stairwells red cascades of blood.
‘I can’t even lift my arms,’ Zenobi muttered, ‘much less fire my lasgun. What are they afraid of?’
‘Nothing,’ growled Menber. ‘It’s procedure. It’s not for us. Why would it be for us?’
In the press of bodies the banner pole was pushed tight against Zenobi’s chest. She ran a hand along it, seeking reassurance from the touch.
‘Dorn put out the call, and we answered.’ Menber leaned towards her, face earnest, voice quiet. ‘There is nothing to worry about.’
Zenobi tried to look around to take her mind off the matter, but there was little to see. She was one of the shortest in the company and even on tiptoe she could barely see past the shoulders of her companions.
It was not long before the ground started to vibrate. It was almost undetectable at first but quickly grew in vigour. Through the soles of her boots, Zenobi could feel it thrumming, a slow pulsing sensation.
‘I think the trains are coming,’ she said, as excited muttering and whispers spread through the assembled platoons. ‘It’s nearly time.’
She saw Kettai was right in front of her. He was rangy for a factory-hiver, almost a metre and seventy-five tall. She heard Kettai gasp and there were other expressions of surprise and shock rippling through the troopers. Zenobi tugged at Kettai’s collar.
