by C Z Dunn
‘The company master lives, but his life hangs by a thread. Brother Rephial is doing all he can.’
‘And that leaves you in charge of the mission.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Grand Master Danatheum has endorsed my promotion. On a temporary basis, naturally, until Master Zadakiel is sufficiently recovered.’
‘Naturally,’ Balthasar said, with more than a hint of disdain.
‘And I am appointing you my second in command.’
Balthasar displayed no emotion. ‘Of course. I am sergeant of First Squad. That gives me seniority in all company matters.’
‘Your seniority was irrelevant to my decision, sergeant. Sergeant Daedalus of Eighth Squad has a year’s more service than you, and Brother Jobriah of Second Squad is seconded to Fifth Company until he can be reunited with Third. If I were following protocol to the letter then either of them could be at my right hand for the remainder of this campaign.’
Balthasar’s brow furrowed.
‘I am choosing you because Grand Master Danatheum and other senior brothers of the Chapter see something in you, and I am beginning to see it too,’ Ezekiel continued. ‘Do you understand my meaning here?’
Ezekiel could not outright say that Balthasar was being assessed for ascension to the Deathwing, but he could allude to it, swaddle it in a fabric of innuendo and inference as was the Dark Angels way. The first sergeant was bright enough to figure it out.
‘Perfectly,’ Balthasar said, still not betraying any emotion. ‘Neither you nor the Chapter will find me wanting, Brother Librarian.’
‘I expected nothing less,’ Ezekiel said, a vague smile forming. The two Dark Angels exchanged the salute of the Lion.
The moment was broken by another roar of celebration from the Mordian ranks, tens of thousands of voices raised to praise the Emperor and the Dark Angels. Far below, the orks were retreating, abandoning the field – and their dead – in their hundreds of thousands. Balthasar, Ezekiel and the brothers of First Squad exchanged uneasy glances.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Balthasar said, putting his helmet on from where it was mag-locked about his waist and speaking to his fellow Dark Angels over the vox. ‘Something’s not right about this.’
‘Agreed, brother,’ Ezekiel said, simultaneously reaching out psychically to Turmiel, Serpicus and the sergeants of the other nine squads of the Fifth Company. All over the planet, the same scene was being played out: orks retreating for no apparent reason. Then new reports began to flood in, from Astra Militarum garrisons at other gates who were now coming under attack.
‘Recall the Stormraven,’ Ezekiel ordered, already sprinting for the rendezvous point.
Over the course of the next two days, the same thing happened four times.
The capital, Aurelianum, came under the heaviest attack with all but two of its gates assaulted by the greenskin army, but not a single corner of Honoria escaped unscathed. For hours at a time, the orks would throw themselves at the high fortress walls, a hundred of them dying for each Guardsman they slew. With only token resistance in the skies, the Dark Angels were able to react quickly to each new onslaught, transporting squads at will to bolster the human defenders. There was no pattern to the attacks – at times as few as five gates would be besieged simultaneously, at others as many as twenty. Some fortresses reported that the greenskins bypassed them altogether, marching on to outlying gates that were often more heavily defended. In each case, the trenches were soon choked with the corpses of tens of thousands of dead xenos.
‘This gains them nothing,’ Balthasar scoffed as he beheaded the last of the orks to have made it over the battlements of the Liguria Gate. ‘At this rate we’ll have slaughtered all of the orks on Honoria within a week without ever having to step out from behind the fortress walls.’
‘I don’t think it is as simple as that, brother,’ Ezekiel said, closely observing the greenskins’ retreat in an attempt to fathom their methodology. ‘We have already underestimated their general once to our great cost. Let us not make the same mistake again.’
‘For all we know, Puriel’s murderer may already be dead, its mantle assumed by any other greenskin big enough and brave enough to challenge its leadership,’ Balthasar said. ‘You know how the greenskins operate as well as I, Brother Librarian. The only language they understand is violence – it is the foundation of their entire culture. If this Groblonik is seen to be weak, if not enough blood is being spilled under its command, then the xenos will quickly rise up and replace it.’
Ezekiel nodded. He had already considered this possibility and was not ready to dismiss it entirely. ‘Perhaps you are correct, sergeant, but that still does not explain why they remain so disciplined. If a power struggle had occurred then the infighting would still be occurring, ork turning on ork on the battlefield. Even here, in this brief engagement, we have slain warriors of at least four different tribes.’ Ezekiel gestured at the bodies being thrown back over the battlements by the rest of First Squad. ‘And at the other gates there were combatants with different colours and facial markings. If this change of tactics comes either as the result of a change of leadership, or merely the old general adopting a different approach, then we would do well to be wary. It is a powerful ork indeed that can keep such a large and disparate force united.’
Balthasar was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Either way, we have the upper hand. These walls are too high for them to scale in any great number, and too thick for them to breach effectively. We can deploy at will to wherever the threat is greatest and the Guardsmen at each gate do not tire as the attacks are brief and unsustained. If I did not know better, I would say that the orks are intentionally trying to lose this war.’
Ezekiel’s response went unspoken. Serpicus’ voice broke across the vox, the last of the Dark Angels to report in to their commander.
‘Something’s happening here, brother,’ the Techmarine said in his harsh, mechanical tone. ‘The orks aren’t retreating. They’re being reinforced.’
Ezekiel, Balthasar and First Squad were already running down the wide stone steps to the Thunderhawk idling in the courtyard far below.
‘Where are you, Serpicus?’ Ezekiel asked, taking the stairway four steps at a time.
The vox filled with static, before Serpicus spoke again.
‘Sularian Gate.’
Chapter Fourteen
Ladbon placed the muzzle of his shotgun squarely against the temple of the ork and squeezed the trigger. The weapon blew a hole in the side of the thing’s head and sent it sprawling lifelessly back over the walls of the Sularian Gate. In the same movement he brought the sawn-off weapon around and discharged the second barrel into the face of a greenskin threatening Mute’s exposed flank, the silent Vostroyan too preoccupied with ensuring Kas’ heavy bolter did not run dry.
To the casual observer, Ladbon’s actions would have appeared pre-meditated, as if he already knew that Mute’s life was in danger before he had seen it unfold with his own eyes, augmetic or otherwise. Fortunately for Ladbon, in the heat of battle there was no such thing as a casual observer, each combatant focused solely on preserving their own life at the expense of the enemy’s.
Another wave of orks raised their heads above the parapet only to lose them in a barrage of las-fire and bolter shells. With their weapons spent, Ladbon’s squad pulled back from the action, immediately replaced on the wall by a unit of skitarii moving and firing in unison. The Vostroyans were greeted at the top of the steps by a group of walking wounded and interpreters, who swapped their drained lasrifles for ones with fresh power packs or bandoliers of ammunition. Though Ladbon had argued hard against it, Marita was among them, the need of the Astra Militarum so high and his standing among his own regiment so low that he could not convince anybody in authority to excuse a pregnant woman of serving on the walls. She smiled fondly at him as she passed him a batch of shotgun shel
ls, but instead of taking them Ladbon grabbed Marita’s wrist and pulled her in close for a kiss, the hand not holding his gun straying towards her belly.
‘Stay safe, my love,’ Marita said, pulling out of the clinch.
‘You too,’ Ladbon replied, snapping open the shotgun and replacing the shells before stowing the rest in his pockets and rejoining his squad, relieving a band of Mordians whose weapons had just run dry.
With the few orks who had made it as far as the battlements dealt with, the Vostroyans turned their attention to the hundreds still scaling the exterior of the fortress. Kas perched himself between two of the crenellations and, steadied by Mute, who clung on to the bigger man to prevent him from falling, leant out over the void and blasted away, each killshot accounting for two or three more orks as the bodies crashed downwards. Allix, Dmitri and the twins took a more measured approach, picking off single headshots as the greenskins clambered into range. Any they missed were dealt with by Ladbon as soon as they got within a few feet of the top. After several minutes of this, each of them signalled that their power packs or ammunition supplies were running low and the Mordian major who was coordinating efforts on this section of the wall rotated them out again, replacing them with another Vostroyan unit.
Ladbon was ten paces from the top of the steps when the vision hit him.
The next section of wall along. The Mordian trooper kills the ork just before it reaches the top of the wall. He doesn’t see it throw the grenade as its dying act. None of them see the grenade. It rolls slowly behind them. Then it detonates. Those who don’t die instantly are too badly wounded to react. Almost twenty orks make it over the top. They slaughter the maimed before spreading out along the walls, killing all who stand in their way. Gaspar and Grigori run to meet them head-on but are killed before they can even let off a shot, both brothers slain by the same swing of an axe. Dmitri goes down next, split down the sternum by an ork knife as big as a sword. Kas, Mute and Allix are the next to go, a single ork soaking up multiple shots from the heavy bolter, its rage intensified to the point where it tears the three Vostroyans apart with its bare hands. It keeps on coming. Ladbon fires, fires again. It does not fell the beast. The ork backhands him hard, knocking him to the ground. Ladbon sucks in his last breaths through ruined lungs but he sees everything. He sees what the ork does to Marita and their unborn child.
Reality hit Ladbon as hard as the ork’s punch from his vision, his legs moving before he had fully regained his senses. Oblivious to the calls from his squad, he concentrated his efforts on reaching the next section. Through his augmetic eye he saw the Mordian loose off the killshot, then the arc of the crude metal device as it sailed over the heads of the unaware Guardsmen and skittered across the stone floor behind them.
Ladbon wasn’t going to make it in time. At best he could throw himself into the path of the blast, hope that his body absorbed enough of its energy to save the lives of the Mordians, who in turn would kill – or at the very least, hinder – any orks that came over the wall. Ladbon was just about to launch himself through the air when he was stopped dead in his tracks.
The enormous figure of a Space Marine, half transhuman, half machine, clad in red armour, hove into view before him. The giant moved with preternatural speed, crouching low to scoop up the grenade and flinging it far, far out over the battlefield. It detonated harmlessly in the cold skies, the unexpected airburst shocking the Mordians, causing them to cease firing and look back over their shoulders at the saviour they didn’t know they needed.
‘Get back to it!’ the man-machine growled. ‘The enemy aren’t going to kill themselves, are they?’
The imposing figure looked at Ladbon, appraising him from head to toe, paying particular attention to his augmetic eye.
‘And what do you think you’re doing, Vostroyan?’ The servo-arms harnessed to the Space Marine’s torso twisted menacingly as he spoke. ‘Get back to your post before I put a bolt-round through your skull for desertion.’
Without question, Ladbon did as he was told.
The battle for the Sularian Gate was still in full effect when Ezekiel and First Squad landed there. From the air they had witnessed the millions of greenskins encircling the capital, baying and calling but holding back from the fray save for at one solitary gate, the sole focus of the orks’ attention.
Ezekiel had made the pilot circle around Aurelianum twice so that he could try to better understand the attackers’ strategy or, at the very least, confirm if Groblonik was still alive or replaced at the head of the army by a usurper. Alas it was to no avail; the ork battle plan was as much a mystery as the greenskin general’s fate.
‘The gate is holding, brother?’ Ezekiel said to the waiting Serpicus, flanked by Diezen and Turmiel, who had returned from his posting at a nearby gate only minutes earlier.
‘The walls remain intact and those orks that do manage to scale them are swiftly dealt with,’ Serpicus said. ‘The sustained nature of the assault means that the Astra Militarum forces grow tired after a time, but there are enough garrisoned in the capital to allow for regular rotations.’
‘And the turrets still perform efficiently?’ Balthasar asked.
‘Of course!’ Diezen said defensively, pre-empting the Techmarine’s answer.
‘Then if matters are in hand, there is some place else I need to be,’ Ezekiel said, taking his leave. ‘You have command here, sergeant. Turmiel, come with me.’
Balthasar acknowledged with the salute of the Lion, his squad dispersing by rote to bolster the Guardsmen at the ramparts.
Where are we going, master?+ Turmiel asked.
To see Master Zadakiel.+
The medicae was almost full with Astra Militarum wounded, the groans of the gravely injured and dying punctuated by the bleeping and hissing of monitors and life support systems. The volume dropped considerably as the two hooded Space Marines entered, any eyes still capable of opening staring wide at the blue-armoured giants.
Ignoring the attention they were receiving, Ezekiel and Turmiel strode over to a screened-off area in one corner, pulling back heavy medical drapes to reveal Zadakiel bereft of his armour and strapped to a reinforced gurney. Rephial was hunched over him, carefully examining the gouge in the company master’s midriff.
‘Any change in his condition?’ Ezekiel asked quietly.
Rephial shook his head but did not look up at the Librarian. ‘I’ve been able to close the wound and stem the bleeding, but his internal injuries are severe. The oolitic kidney and other organs were damaged by the blade, and unless they repair themselves I fear he may never awaken from his sus-an coma.’
‘Is there anything we can do, brother?’ Ezekiel asked.
‘Your offer is appreciated, Brother Ezekiel, but I have no doubt that Master Zadakiel’s psyche remains intact. He has the mind of a born fighter – it’s his body that needs to keep up.’
Though the apothecarion and Librarius dealt with the physical and metaphysical respectively, at times one would have need to call upon the skills of the other, most commonly in matters where psychic wounds gave rise to bodily injury or where physical trauma led to mental scarring. Ezekiel was the most adept among the Dark Angels Librarians at repairing the damaged minds of his brothers and by helping Zadakiel, he would be able to teach Turmiel a valuable skill. It would also go some way to repaying Rephial, who had guided him through his recovery from the damage he had suffered on Korsh.
‘I gather the war goes well,’ Rephial said, gesturing to the three empty gurneys spread around his medicae area. ‘After what happened to Zadakiel and Puriel I was expecting the worst.’
‘The orks seem hell-bent on expending their own troops rather than inflicting damage upon us. They keep throwing themselves at the walls and we keep throwing them back down,’ said Ezekiel. ‘They still have a massive numerical advantage but if they keep killing themselves off at this rate, we’ll have driven
them from the planet within a week.’
Rephial paused his ministrations. ‘Curious…’ he said, staring off into the distance.
The Apothecary was an adept healer first but a consummate warrior a very close second. All of the company masters of the Dark Angels respected both his skill with the scalpel and his abilities with a weapon and incisive tactical acumen. Ezekiel’s ulterior motive for visiting the medicae was to see if he could tap into Rephial’s insight and solve the conundrum of the orks’ reckless behaviour.
‘Sergeant Balthasar speculates that it may not be their means but also – quite literally – their end. That their plan is merely to die at our hands,’ Ezekiel said.
‘Suicide by Space Marine?’ Rephial said, nodding ponderously. ‘That might be accurate. If we apply the principle of Accam’s Blade then it is the simplest solution, and as well you know, the ork is the simplest of all the xenos.’
Ezekiel sighed and shook his head.
‘You remain unconvinced, brother,’ Rephial said.
‘I think that explanation is too simple, even for the greenskins. There has to be more to it than that.’
‘One thing is for certain,’ Rephial said, checking the screen of one of the many devices hooked up to Zadakiel. ‘We won’t have to wait long to find out. The orks are hardly known for playing the long game.’
With uncanny timing, Balthasar’s voice crackled over the vox.
‘Get back to the wall, Brother Librarians. You need to see this with your own eyes.’
‘When did this start?’ Ezekiel asked, removing the magnoculars from his eyes and passing them to Serpicus. The Techmarine refused the proffered eyeglasses, his own augmetics whirring and focusing, allowing Turmiel to take them instead.
‘Seconds before I contacted you,’ Balthasar replied. ‘There didn’t appear to be any one event that triggered it, but all of a sudden they just turned on each other.’
