‘The orks?’
‘Yes.’ He had experienced these difficulties before. Every time had coincided with a massive greenskin action. The orks’ use of psychic forces was as mysterious as their technology. But it was real, it was powerful, and when their numbers reached a mass such as the one that had invaded Sanctus Reach, they created a shockwave in the immaterium. The orks on Squire’s Rest itself weren’t numerous enough to have this effect, but the totality of the force in the Reach was a system-wide psychic blow. The collective strength of uncountable thousands of greenskin witches pressed inwards on Gared’s skull. His ability to strike out was undiminished, but scrying with any accuracy was impossible. ‘You feel their impact too,’ he said to Styer.
‘We all do.’
‘Their presence may explain our difficulty in pinpointing the threat.’
‘But not the lack of other evidence.’
An inspiration struck Gared. He wanted very much to believe it was inspiration, and not something weaker, further from the truth. ‘It may be that our view of the tomb is incorrect. We have been looking for signs of corruption. Perhaps corruption is precisely what it guards against.’
‘And its destruction by the ork invasion is the danger we have come to prevent?’
‘That would account for what appears to be the unblemished life of the deceased.’
‘I am not satisfied, Brother-Epistolary. I would prefer to know what Inquisitor Orbiana found to her benefit here. But I agree that we must not allow the orks to rampage through this site. To war, then.’
They emerged from the mausoleum, back into the rage of battle. The rest of the squad had held the ground well. The orks had made inroads into the cemetery, but at a great cost to themselves. Their numbers had dropped. They still outnumbered the defenders by hundreds to one, but Gared could see no reinforcements beyond the current wave. However the rest of Squire’s Rest was faring, this was the greenskins’ last push on the cemetery.
‘Brothers!’ Styer shouted. ‘Purge this land. Restore its sacred nature!’
Gared ran forward with him. They rejoined the squad and added their storm bolter fire to the barrage. The human defenders, clustered tightly around the mausoleum and using the nearest gravestones and vaults for cover, fought with more spirit than effect. Their weaponry was too weak, their bodies too old. But they still took a toll, and Gared saluted them for that. He wondered if any would survive the day. If they did, they would not be permitted to remember it, so perhaps it would be a gift for them to fall in glory.
Orbiana and her acolytes had taken up a position at a vault a short distance to the left of the Grey Knights. Their weapons were disturbing, the most blatant confirmation of the inquisitor’s radicalism. The acolytes were using kroot long rifles. They were more powerful than lasrifles, and were downing orks at a good rate, but that did nothing to cleanse them of their unclean, xenos origin. Orbiana’s willingness to outfit her troops with the tools of a race of mercenaries paled next to the crime of her own weapon.
Beams of green lightning arced from the muzzle into the enemy. Orks disintegrated, their being negated in layers by the gun’s arcane energy. With every pull of the trigger, she was plunging a thin, sharp blade into the body of the enemy’s advance. Her armour gave the means to be exposed for longer periods, and she was using this to her advantage, scything greenskins apart with a grim, venomous enthusiasm.
The gun was not the work of any human hand.
The need to know what she had found in the tomb became more pressing.
‘Justicar Styer,’ Orbiana called, ‘our extraction from this location is the highest priority.’
Styer ignored her. ‘I want the heart torn out of the enemy,’ he said to Gared. He hefted his daemon hammer. ‘Give our strength the speed we require.’
Gared nodded. As he concentrated, he heard Styer order the mortals to hold their positions. The justicar then divided the squad in two and called for a forked advance down the hill. Gared reached out, expanding his consciousness to envelop the totality of the squad. His awareness became a collectivity. What his brothers saw and heard and felt, so did he. The influx of information did not overwhelm him, because their responses were his as well. Through him, the squad achieved full situational awareness.
The Grey Knights charged forward from the vault. They were a hurricane. Their speed was the wind. Their reflexes were the lightning. The battlefield unfolded before Gared’s consciousness like a regicide board. He and his brothers had all the time they needed to react to each threat, to evade each shot and blow, and to bring destruction to the orks.
In Styer’s combat squad, Gared closed with a cluster of orks. They moved as if in a quagmire, laughable in their sluggishness. He swung his sword. Its blade crackled as it decapitated one ork. He brought the sword back and killed another before the first gun was pointed his way. The recoil of his wrist bolter jolted along his arm as he blasted two more greenskins into oblivion.
Forward. Like a storm. Like thought. The speed of instinct, the fury of faith. The orks fell before them, scythed. In less than a minute, the two groups of Grey Knights were more than half way to the downslope wall. They carved a pair of furrows into the orks. The greenskins howled frustration and rage, and converged on the threat. Their advance towards the defenders of the mausoleum ceased. The struggle became a whirlpool in the centre of the graveyard. The orks poured into the vortex, and the Space Marines took them apart as fast as they arrived. The frenzy was no more than a series of still lifes for Gared. Each kill, each explosion of blood and bone, each grinding fusing of metal and flesh was distinct. The orks saw a whirl of ceramite and metal and energy discharges. Gared and his brothers saw a series of targets offering themselves up for the slaughter.
The Grey Knights obliged.
The greenskin numbers thinned even more. The enemy’s ferocity meant nothing. Gared felt the tide of battle tilt towards the inevitability of victory. The battle was not over. Much blood would yet be shed. But the end was known. There was nothing this force of orks could do.
In the small portion of Gared’s awareness that was not consumed by the flood of impulses and reactions to the struggle, a hope sparked. It was the hope that a decisive victory here was the action this mission required. Squire’s Rest itself was lost. It would take a massive Imperial effort to repel the orks, and there were other, more vital worlds in the Sanctus Reach where those operations were concentrated. But if this one spot could be saved, if only for a time, perhaps that would be enough to defeat the machinations of Chaos.
The hope was not for ease of battle. The hope was for the confirmation of the prognostication, and the erasure of doubts.
He plunged his force sword through the chest of a chainaxe wielding ork. To his right, Styer’s hammer came down on the head of a brute whose limbs were a thick as the arms of Terminator armour. The skull exploded. And for a moment, the way forward was clear. In that direction, for a drop of time, there were no orks.
In his accelerated state, the moment expanded. The clarity became more than spatial. In that moment, it wasn’t just the ork lines he broke through. His strength pierced their psychic interference. He grasped a single fragment of knowledge, a crystalline intuition as fine as it was narrow. He saw himself in battle again, and his attacks were magnified. His identity was a composite one, his body giving motion and force to a much larger one. He did not know what he was fighting, but he recognised the sensations he was experiencing. He knew how he was fighting. He was piloting a Dreadknight.
The moment ended. His consciousness returned to his body and his body alone. The world returned to its normal pace. The orks fought with a growing, desperate anger. Gared tore into them with a bitter taste in his mouth, and an even more bitter knowledge in his heart.
His hope had been a lie. The war would not end here. It was going to get worse.
And then, from the Tyndaris, Shipmaster Saal
frank’s voice came over the vox. ‘Lords,’ he said, ‘an ork vessel, designation kroozer, is approaching Squire’s Rest.’
Much worse.
CHAPTER FOUR
PREDATOR
Montgelas ordered the magnification of the oculus reduced. As Furia watched, the kroozer’s size diminished. But not by much.
Another chance, another temptation. The Scouring Light was no match for the monster that entered the orbit of Squire’s Rest, and it was at anchor between the ork vessel and the Tyndaris. Furia could return to the strike cruiser, engage in battle, and leave the sloop to its fate. It might survive. It likely would not. Orbiana’s project, whatever it was, would perish. The death of the ship’s crew was regrettable, but she had had to make colder decisions in the past.
Duty, discipline and caution pushed her away from that move. The situation had too many unknowns. If it became necessary to destroy the Scouring Light, it would be done on her orders, and by Imperial hands. She could not pre-emptively assume Orbiana’s heresy. The reasons that made her spare Andoval applied again.
‘Open a channel with the Tyndaris,’ she ordered Montgelas.
He did not hesitate. In the context of the approaching battle, he deferred to her authority without question.
‘Your orders, inquisitor?’ Saalfrank asked.
‘Draw the enemy’s attention. Then kill it.’
‘I shall. My thanks for this honour.’
‘Shipmaster Montgelas,’ Furia continued. ‘Hold fire. As soon as the Tyndaris begins its action, take us lower. Evasive action until the ork vessel has committed itself.’
‘Understood.’
The kroozer came nearer. It was a hulking, carnivorous mass, the upper and lower halves of the prow split like gaping jaws.
‘Why aren’t they attacking?’ Montgelas said softly.
‘They might not know we’re here.’ As soon as the kroozer’s approach had been detected, Furia had ordered both Imperial vessels to run dark. At this distance, on the nightside of Squire’s Rest, shadows against the void, they might avoid detection a few minutes longer.
Closer yet. The ship would be an inviting target for the Tyndaris’s bombardment cannons.
‘If they don’t see us, why are they here?’
The answer came a moment later. The kroozer’s bay doors opened, unleashing an unending stream of landers and drop-ships.
‘They’ve come for the fight,’ Furia said. The ork hordes would be coming down very close to where the Grey Knights had engaged them. ‘Saalfrank!’ she called. ‘While the doors are open, fire! Fire now!’
The Tyndaris unmasked itself with a gigantic broadside assault. The Scouring Light began its dive. The war of leviathans began.
The sky above the cemetery darkened. So many ships, so many contrails. A storm was coming, raining iron and flame. Styer looked up once from the killing. He saw what was coming. He turned back to the slaughter.
Under the shadow of the coming doom, the battle was almost done. The orks had rushed the Terminator squads and paid for it. Two unstoppable fists had broken them. Two centres of destruction had formed, the annihilation of the orks spreading outwards while the mortals whittled away at the outer edges of the mob. He and his brothers were mopping up now.
Setting the stage, Styer knew, for the greater battle on its way.
‘Justicar,’ Orbiana voxed him. ‘This is our moment. We must leave.’
‘What did you take from the mausoleum?’ Styer asked.
‘Nothing that concerns the Ordo Malleus, rest assured.’
Yet you refuse to tell me, he thought. ‘I do not rest,’ he told her. A dozen metres away, three orks sheltered behind a family vault and fired their crude rifles. The bullets would have torn the head off a mortal. They ricocheted off his armour. He trained his storm bolter on the tomb. Stone and ork bodies alike disintegrated under his barrage.
‘I say again, we must leave,’ Orbiana insisted.
‘Not until I am satisfied.’
‘With what?’
He ignored her. He did not answer to demands from the Ordo Xenos, and especially not from a Xanthite. She would get no more information from him than he would from her.
A few minutes later, he killed the last of the orks from the first wave, swinging his hammer through the brute’s chest. The corpse fell in two pulped halves. He turned around, scanning the cemetery, taking in the full situation. The mortals had barely been a factor to begin with, and there were only a few dozen of them left. Many of the graves had been destroyed, reducing the available shelter. The mausoleum still stood, as did the larger vaults in its immediate vicinity. None of his battle-brothers had fallen.
‘This foe is beneath us,’ Vohnum said as the other combat squad reached Styer’s position.
‘Perhaps, but we will soon be beneath them.’ He pointed to the sky. The ork landers were still coming down. The initial landings were taking place out of sight, beyond the shoulder of the slope. Styer judged that most of the ork ships were coming down in Brauner’s fields. The attack would not be long in coming.
Styer turned to Gared. ‘Any new insights, brother?’ he asked.
‘Only that our struggle is just beginning.’
‘That much is clear to us all.’
‘Against more than just orks.’
‘We know that too,’ said Vohnum.
‘But we still have no idea how and why or if the incursion will occur,’ Styer said.
‘It will.’ There was fatalism, but not doubt, in Gared’s tone.
Styer looked back at the mausoleum. ‘Very well. We have no choice anyway but to act on that assumption. But Brother Gared, we have no hope of keeping the cemetery out of ork hands. If the mausoleum has an importance, we need to know what it is, and immediately. Otherwise we should listen to Inquisitor Orbiana and leave.’
‘I will examine the tomb again,’ the Librarian said.
‘Ten minutes,’ said Styer. ‘If you find nothing definitive, we depart.’
‘And if I find something?’
‘We will deny the greenskins their prize.’
The Librarian made the sign of the aquila and headed for the Mehnert tomb.
‘This is going to be a defensive war,’ Vohnum said.
‘It will,’ Styer agreed. He thought for a moment, considering the terrain and its possibilities. ‘But that doesn’t mean beginning from a defensive position.’ He outlined what he had in mind.
Vohnum nodded. If he had any reservations about Styer’s strategy, he was keeping them to himself. ‘It will be hard on the mortals,’ he said.
‘There is nothing easy for them this day. I will speak to them, though. They should know what to expect. Make ready in the meantime.’
As Styer walked up the slope, he contacted Warheit in the Harrower. ‘The orks have only one possible approach, unless aircraft are involved.’
‘I understand, brother-justicar. They will not find the passage an easy one.’
Orbiana met him before he reached the clusters of battered mortals. ‘This delay is foolish,’ she said. ‘There is no reason to remain here.’
‘You are wrong,’ Styer said. ‘I have reasons. As you pointed out, the duties of the Ordo Xenos and the Ordo Malleus are different.’
‘There is nothing I can say to convince you of the foolishness of this course of action?’
‘Will you tell me what you were looking for? No? Then I have a campaign to prepare.’ He stepped away from her.
‘Justicar,’ she called, ‘if your decision is based on displeasure with my necessary silence, then that is a poor reason to pursue an unwinnable war. It is a mistake.’
Styer stopped and looked back at her. ‘The mistake is yours. We are facing a danger more pernicious than an ork invasion at these coordinates. It is my sacred mission to confront that danger.’ His doubt
s were no concern of hers. And they did not change the dictates of his duty. ‘If you have nothing constructive to contribute, inquisitor, then your views on this mission are irrelevant.’
He left her, and walked on until he stood before the mortals. What was left of their force – a bit more than twenty souls – was bloodied. There was a better distribution of arms than there had been earlier, though. They had retrieved rifles from the hands of the fallen. Styer was looking at an assembly of the aged and worn-out. But these men and women were also veterans of the Imperial Guard. Their lives, their bodies, and their souls had been shaped by unflinching service. Physically, they were the weakest combat force Styer had ever seen. He had no choice but to admire their spirit, and to grant them his respect. He had taken the time to learn the names of their two leaders. He could grant them one more thing: the chance of a good death. That was no small thing.
They had all been watching the sky, which was still clawed with the marks of the greater invasion’s arrival. Now their eyes turned to Styer. They already knew their fate. They were waiting for him to give it purpose. ‘This day draws to an end,’ he said.
‘Along with Squire’s Rest,’ said Stumar. Her tone was not bitter or disrespectful. She was merely speaking the truth.
Styer nodded. ‘That is so.’
‘Are you standing with us, lord?’ The speaker was an old woman. She wore a blood-soaked strip of cloth as a patch over her left eye. Next to her was a man the same age. His right arm was missing below the elbow. He held on to his rifle with his left hand. He held his posture erect with exhausted dignity. He looked at Styer with the same intensity of hope as the woman.
They all did.
He saw in them the strength of honour. So he gave them the honour of the truth. ‘The next minutes will determine the course of our mission,’ he said. ‘If we are still here, then we are not standing with you. It is you who are standing with us. And for that, you have my thanks.’
In the wake of his words, a shadow flickered over their faces. That was the realisation that death was coming this day, and that to hope otherwise was to believe in a lie. Then the shadow was banished by the adamantine will to fight that had brought them through all their other battles to this final one.
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