Grey Knights: Sons of Titan

by David Annandale

  ‘Took the first ones down, colonel,’ Dietrick said.

  ‘I saw the bodies, sergeant. Well done.’ He was starting to get his breath back, but it was all he could do not to hold on to the dormitorium archway to keep from collapsing.

  ‘We can’t stay,’ Stumar said.

  ‘Pull back now?’ Brauner asked, startled.

  ‘Listen to what’s coming,’ she said. ‘If we don’t retreat to the cemetery now, we won’t have the chance later.’

  He wanted to refute her. He didn’t want to surrender what was his without a fight. What difference does it make? he almost said. He held back from that truth. The people who worked for him deserved at least the prospect of hope before their deaths. Stumar was right. There were heavy vehicles approaching. They would run right through the house. But in the cemetery, the land was steep, the obstacles plenty, the area more restricted. It was possible to imagine a weaker force holding out longer there. He nodded. To the farmhands he said, ‘Load up. Grab whatever weapons and food you can. Five minutes.’ He hoped the greenskins would amuse themselves that long at the ruins of Stumar’s farm. ‘We’re moving to the cemetery.’

  Dietrick looked wistfully out of the window at Orbiana’s shuttle. ‘A shame to leave heavy bolters behind.’

  ‘Can’t be helped.’ A thought struck him. ‘That’s probably what drew them here in the first place.’

  There weren’t enough guns for all. Many of the weapons were keepsakes, growing ancient along with their owners. Brauner had purchased more lasrifles and energy packs due to the raids of the last decade, so half his army, at least, would be able to shoot. The rest grabbed old combat blades, a few swords, or made weapons out of whatever tools were around. Grabbing supplies in his quarters, Brauner started to hand a rifle to Stumar, but she refused it.

  ‘No point,’ she said, raising her arched fingers. ‘Can’t pull the trigger. Get me a sword.’

  Brauner pulled his own off the wall. She worked her fingers around the hilt with difficulty. She could just hold it, but her grip was tenuous. ‘How are you going to use it?’ he asked.

  ‘Bind it,’ she said.

  He didn’t ask if she was sure, though he winced at what she was requesting. He pulled the sheets off his cot and tore strips off them. He wrapped her hand, wrist and upper arm.

  Her breath hissed. ‘Tighter,’ she said through her wince.

  Brauner obeyed. When he was done, the blade was an extension of her arm. ‘Must hurt like hell,’ he said.

  She nodded. She gave the sword an experimental swing. ‘It’ll hurt the green bastards even more. Now give me another sword.’

  Then they were out the door, and moving with their patchwork army up the slope, to make their last stand among the dead.

  Less than an hour later, on the Scouring Light, Orbiana’s signal arrived.

  ‘A tomb,’ Furia said, when she heard the vox.

  ‘Our target,’ said Styer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE TOMB SIEGE

  The Harrower came in over the high butte. Brother Warheit dipped the nose and took the Stormraven into a steep dive, almost flush with the cliff face. Seated in the twin-linked heavy bolter turret above the cockpit, Styer watched the graveyard race towards them. The orks had it surrounded. Their infantry was spilling over the wall. Downslope to the west, four Battlewagons were cresting the shoulder. The defenders were clustered around the large mausoleum. They were slowing the orks but they were not holding them.

  ‘Take the tanks, brother,’ Styer said.

  Warheit opened up with the nose-mounted multi-melta, angling to port to bring the weapon to bear on one Battlewagon while Styer rotated the turret to fire on the starboard tank. As the Harrower passed over the Battlewagons, a beam of solar fire ripped into the one, while mass-reactive ammunition pounded the other. Twin-linked assault cannons tore into the foot soldiers. The ork vehicles were strong, their shielding an excess of metal piled upon metal. They could stand up to a lot. But Warheit flew low, hitting his target with the full strength of the multi-melta. The orks on the roof were vaporised. The beam sliced deep into the hull, incinerating the interior, turning steel into slag. The tank shuddered to a halt, its shape disappearing, melting into formless wreckage.

  To starboard, Styer battered his target, keeping the turret trained on the Battlewagon as Warheit completed the first pass. The initial shells punctured the armour. The ones that followed in the rapid drumbeat of the barrage exploded inside the tank. The chain reaction did not come right way. The interior shook with the blasts of the shells. The tank kept moving. And then there was fire, the flames billowing out of the torn hull. Still the tank kept moving. Styer was surprised any members of its crew were still alive.

  The Harrower left the Battlewagons behind. Warheit brought the ship around for another pass, aiming at the untouched tanks. As the gunship flew over the shoulder again, the burning vehicle skewed to its left. It was out of control, still under power but no longer steered. It rammed up against the third Battlewagon, hard enough to lift its right side off the ground for a moment. The driver tried to steer the tank away, but the spikes and jagged edges of the hulls locked together. The Battlewagon’s guns fired upward at the Harrower. A few shells smacked into the underhull shields. They did little damage.

  The chain reaction in the flaming tank reached its climax. The ammunition erupted. The Battlewagon became a fireball that engulfed both vehicles and the foot soldiers around them. Twisted, blackened metal arced across the hillside and the cemetery. Warheit flew in a circle over the conflagration, still firing. The two vehicles were welded together. They ground forward another few metres, then stopped. They were a single torch.

  The remaining Battlewagon raced towards the cemetery wall. Though the orks clinging to its exterior fired at the Stormraven, the orks crewing the tank’s guns ignored the gunship. They used their last few seconds to fire the main cannon and secondary guns forward at the defenders, as if they wished to go down shooting at something they knew they could kill. Earth and shattered tombstones erupted as the shells marched uphill to the mausoleum. Styer saw more ork bodies than human caught in the destruction. But the orks had the bodies to spare.

  ‘Finish it,’ Styer said.

  Warheit did. Heavy bolters and the multi-melta reduced the Battlewagon to a smouldering wreck.

  ‘That’s all of them,’ the pilot said.

  ‘For the moment. There will be more once the greenskins realise they have a battle on their hands here. Drop us at the mausoleum. Then hold off the heavy armour as long as you can.’

  ‘By your command, brother-justicar.’

  The Battlewagon’s final volley collapsed the vault Brauner was using as shelter. He scrambled back from the tumbling stone and ducked behind another large tomb, a few metres down from the mausoleum. He leaned against its rear wall, catching his breath. Dietrick was there, poking around from the right to fire. Without taking his eyes off his targets, the old sergeant said, ‘Did Orbiana summon Adeptus Astartes? Who is she that she can do that?’

  Brauner looked up at the Mehnert tomb. Orbiana still hadn’t emerged from its interior, but her escort was holding the entrance, laying down a disciplined stream of las at the orks. Brauner saw one stare for a moment at the gunship, then shout something at his comrades. ‘I don’t think she did,’ he said to Dietrick. ‘Her troops are as surprised as we are.’

  He stepped out from the vault and fired a quick burst. He dropped one ork. A single drop in the wave that was over the cemetery wall and crashing against the tombs.

  ‘I don’t recognise the heraldry,’ Dietrick said.

  ‘Neither do I.’ Black on white in a field of crimson, a sword pointed down like judgement rendered. The ship was grey. Pride and honour mixed with the cold realities of war.

  The Stormraven unleashed a storm of assault cannon and heavy bolter fire on the orks.
The lower half of the cemetery vanished from Brauner’s sight in a cloud of earth, fire and smoke. The orks were shredded. They fell back from the assault, though still more moved up the graveyard walls on the left and right to flank. The gunship dropped to within a couple of metres of the ground. The slope was too steep to permit a landing. Its side door opened and the warriors within leaped out. It seemed to Brauner that the earth shook as they landed.

  How could it not, when struck by such beings?

  The Stormraven rose and roared downhill to the west again, still raking the orks with cannon fire. The giants it had left behind strode up the hill. They were clad in silver-grey Terminator armour. They carried swords and halberds and hammers instead of the bolters he would have expected, but something with formidable barrels was mounted on their wrists. The armour was of a design Brauner had never seen before. In the heraldry was the same terrifying ‘I’ worn by Orbiana’s escort. Brauner had no idea who had arrived on the field, but his throat went dry from awe and fear.

  There were seven of them. As the squad advanced, they raised their arms and fired with their wrist guns to the north and south, striking hard into the flanking manoeuvres of the orks. The guns were double-barrelled, and Brauner recognised their deep-throated beats: storm bolters.

  Wrist-mounted storm bolters.

  That such power existed was stunning. For a moment, the howls of the orks faded to the rear of his consciousness, as if a sphere of majesty had expanded from the Adeptus Astartes and silenced the xenos filth that dared tread on soil claimed in the Emperor’s name.

  A bullet careened off the vault just above Brauner’s head. He flinched. He was exposed, staring at the Space Marines. He blind-fired to his left and retreated behind the vault again. Dietrick crouched with him, looking as stunned as he felt. ‘Who are they?’ he whispered.

  Brauner shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ In spite of the nobility of the beings he had just seen, he was uneasy, too. He had the intuition that there was a price to be paid for seeing such wonders. And he wondered why the thought of that price worried him, when he could hardly expect to survive through the next hour.

  The ork fire in their vicinity diminished. The ferocity of the attack was just as strong, but the storm bolters thinned the ranks. The orks within range concentrated their anger on the Space Marines. Their rage was futile. Brauner risked another look beyond the vault. The armoured figures walked through the enemy volleys as if it were beneath notice.

  Brauner took the seconds of relative calm near him to look around. He had lost track of Stumar when the shell barrage had hit. She had been forward of his position, taking on orks that ran ahead of the main bulk of their force. She had been near the centre of the cemetery. If she had been caught in the Stormraven’s scouring assault, there wouldn’t be enough left of her for him to know that she was gone.

  Then he spotted her. She had retreated towards the mausoleum too. She was near the southern wall, crouched behind an altar-shaped tomb. An ork thundered past her in the direction of the Space Marines. The beast wore an iron shield over its face and wielded a flamer. It sprayed a stream of fire before it. Stumar lunged up behind the ork and stabbed at the promethium tanks on its back. She dropped to the ground and scrambled back as the liquid splashed and ignited. The ork shrieked as it was enveloped by the conflagration. It ran faster yet, veering wildly downhill, colliding with its kin, spreading its death wide.

  Stumar had given away her position. She ran, hunched low, towards the mausoleum, joining the rest of the defenders as they retrenched even more tightly around the great tomb. She arrived just before the Space Marines. Her breathing sounded like stones in a pipe. She was bleeding from cuts to her forehead and left shoulder. Her clothing was scorched. They exchanged exhausted looks, then looked up as the Adeptus Astartes were among them.

  At their head was a colossus. Given the size of the squad, Brauner would have guessed him to be a sergeant, but the glory of his armour and its skirt gave him a gravitas that marked him as somehow other than even those legends of the battlefield. The helmeted head looked down at Brauner and Stumar. Brauner couldn’t guess what he saw, but he asked, ‘Do you command here?’

  ‘Outside the mausoleum, I do.’

  To the rest of his squad, the Space Marine said, ‘Hold here. Brother-Epistolary, please join us.’

  The Librarian stepped forward while the squad formed a perimeter around the vault. Their suppressive fire held the orks at bay. The greenskin numbers would have overwhelmed the veterans of Squire’s Rest before very much longer. Even with the benefit of the high ground and the shelter of the graves, Brauner’s comrades had been reduced by half. But the green tide would have to be much higher to swamp the power that had arrived on the field.

  ‘And inside the mausoleum,’ the Space Marine asked, ‘is it Malia Orbiana who commands?’

  ‘Yes, lord. She is searching for something.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘I see.’ The voice hardened.

  The Librarian looked towards the Mehnert tomb with a cold gaze. His face, shadowed within his psychic hood, was lined with scars that had not been created by any physical wound. Whatever evils he had fought, the determination to confront them had, over time, given his visage the unyielding qualities of stone.

  ‘What is your name?’ the commander asked.

  ‘Klas Brauner, lord. Forgive me, but it shames me to say that I do not know who honours us.’ It felt strange to be so formal while the clamour of war resounded, but he had no choice. He felt that he was addressing beings in which the truly divine burned.

  ‘I am Justicar Styer. We are the Grey Knights.’

  When Styer spoke, the Librarian’s eyes flickered to Brauner. He thought he saw pity in their depths, which was terrible to witness. Though the orks were the threat, Brauner didn’t fear them. He did fear these warriors.

  ‘What will you have us do, lord?’ Stumar asked.

  ‘What you have been doing. Fight well.’ Styer fell silent again, but when he started forward, with only the Librarian accompanying him, Brauner realised he must have been speaking to the rest of the squad over the vox.

  The Librarian stopped for a moment. He turned to Brauner and Stumar and said, ‘Do not trust the shelter of the mausoleum. Be aware of events at your back.’ Then he disappeared with the justicar though the entrance.

  ‘What did he mean?’ Dietrick asked.

  ‘Just keep fighting,’ Brauner told him. He looked around the vault and resumed fire, shooting in the gaps between the Grey Knights. On all sides, the orks were dying.

  But they kept coming. And their numbers were still growing.

  Montgelas tried to follow Furia as she left the bridge. She rounded on him. ‘What are you hoping to accomplish, shipmaster?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, inquisitor, but I must insist–’

  ‘Insist? Insist? Is that really the word you wish to use?’

  Montgelas swallowed. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I merely meant…’ He trailed off, squirming.

  ‘You meant to stay out of my way,’ Furia informed him. She remained quite still, but the shipmaster took a step back. ‘Your loyalty does you credit,’ she continued. ‘I respect it. What I do not respect are the risks Inquisitor Orbiana is taking, and I know she is taking them, even if I do not yet know what they are. You will not tell me?’ She waited, watching Montgelas squirm, turning an even unhealthier shade of pale. ‘I didn’t think so,’ she said. She lowered her voice so only he could hear. ‘I will not punish loyalty. You have your duty. But if you try to interfere with mine, I will kill you.’

  Montgelas took another step back.

  ‘You are the master of this vessel,’ Furia said. ‘You are needed on this bridge. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, inquisitor.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Furia left him there. She began by retracing the route back towards
the loading bay. She had no precise destination in mind, but there were passages and chambers that she wanted a closer look at. She wanted a solid sense of the ship’s layout before Orbiana returned and was able to mount a more effective barrier to her movements.

  She knew that, even now, there were doors that would remain closed to her. Montgelas did not know it, but she had been bluffing when she had threatened him. Without incontrovertible proof of Orbiana’s malfeasance, something that went beyond the ideological divides of the Inquisition, direct action would carry tremendous risks, and could very probably backfire. Without that proof, and especially during Orbiana’s absence from her vessel, any violence Furia meted out would be construed by many in the ordos as an act of war, rather than the furtherance of her duties. Montgelas no doubt thought she had spoken softly in order to allow him to hold on to his pride before the crew. The truth was that she wanted the threat of her presence, at this stage, to be a thing of whispers and suppositions.

  She walked with a slow but determined stride down the main corridor, giving herself time to examine the intersections and doorways closely, but moving with apparent purpose. She chose one of the open doors. The inner chamber was a small librarium, little more than a study. Furia scanned the titles on the shelves. For the citizens of the Imperium, they were all on the index of prohibited texts. For the Inquisition, they were nothing remarkable. They were standard treatises on xenos threats, with special attention given to the orks. Furia saw treatise after treatise on ork physiology. She took a few down and leafed through them. They were heavily annotated. Two people were responsible for most of the notes. They were all written in the same cryptic shorthand. Given enough time, Furia was confident she could decipher their import. But she did not have enough time, and if the books were out in the open, they could not be that important.