Helsreach (warhammer 40000)

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  'As you will, Reclusiarch.'

  Gone was the thrill of hoping to look upon Oberon, and being the soul to reawaken the great Ordinatus Armageddon. In its place was cold efficiency and undeniable disgust. This sealing code was one of the most complex creations humanity had pieced together from its various spheres of knowledge. Destroying it afflicted him with a pain akin to that which an artist would feel in destroying a priceless painting.

  Runes spilled across his retinal display in green lettering. He solved six of the scrolling codes in the space of a single breath. The final five involved additional calculations based on the parameters established by the previous ones.

  The code evolved. It reacted to his interference like a living thing, its ancient spirit fighting against his manipulations. So, so beautiful, Jurisian thought as he worked. Damn Grimaldus for asking this of him.

  His servitors stood behind him, slack-jawed, dull-eyed and slowly starving to death.

  Jurisian paid no heed.

  He had a masterpiece to slay.

  CHAPTER XI

  The First Day

  The shaking nolonger bothered Asavan Tortellius.

  His presence was an honour, and one he thanked the Mechanicus for in his daily prayers. In his eleven years of service, he'd quickly grown used to the shaking, the lurching tread, and even the rattling of weapons fire against the walls of his monastery. What Tortellius had never grown used to was the Shield.

  In many ways, the Shield replaced the sky. He had been born on Jirrian - an unremarkable world in an unremarkable subsector a middling distance from Holy Terra. If Jirrian could be said to possess any attribute of note, it was its weather in the equatorial regions. The sky over the city of Handra-Lai was the deep, rich blue that poets spent so much time trying to capture in words, and imagists spent so much time trying to capture in picts. In a world of tedious tradition and the greyness of infinite societal equality - where everyone was just as poverty-stricken as everyone else - the skies above the slum hive Handra-Lai were the one aspect of his early life worth remembering.

  The Shield had stolen that from him. He still had the memories, of course. But every year, they became duller, as if the Shield's overreaching presence caused all else to fade.

  It wasn't that the Shield had any particular colour, because it didn't. And it wasn't that the Shield was brazenly oppressive, because it wasn't.

  Most of the time it wasn't even visible, and at the best of times, it wasn't even there.

  And yet, in a way, it always was. It was oppressive. It was always there. It did discolour the sky. Its existence was betrayed by the abrasive electrical fizz in the air. Static would crackle between fingertips and metal surfaces. After a while, one's teeth began to ache. It was most irritating.

  And to think that it could be raised any moment. Looking up at alien skies held no pleasure at all, and it was all because of the Shield. It severed any real enjoyment of the heavens. Even when deactivated, there was forever the risk of it slamming up into life without notice, cutting Tortellius off from the outside world once more.

  In moments of battle, the Shield was more beautiful than threatening. It would ripple like breaking waves, the colours of oil on water cascading across the sky. The smell of the Shield as it suffered attack was a heady clash of ozone and copper that, if one stood outside on the monastery's battlements, would actually begin to make you feel light-headed after a time. Tortellius made a point of standing outside when the Shield was under siege, not for the stimulant effects of the Shield's electrical charge, but because it was a dark pleasure to see his prison's limits, rather than fear the invisible oppression.

  Sometimes he would wonder if he was watching it in the secret hope it would fail. If the Shield came down… then what? Did he truly desire such a thing? No. No, of course not.

  Still. He did wonder.

  As he leaned on the battlements of the monastery, watching the city below, Tortellius reflected on the loathsomeness of this particular breed of xenos. The greenskins were filthy and bestial, their intelligence generously described as rudimentary, and more accurately as feral.

  The mighty Stormherald, instrument of the God-Emperor's divine will, had come to a halt. Tortellius noticed only because of the relative silence in the wake of its crashing tread.

  His monastery, only part of the cathedral of spires and battlements adorning the Titan's hunched shoulders, remained silent. Fifty metres below, he could hear the rattling of the leg turrets killing the aliens in the street. But the domed weapon mounts - each one bristling with granite gargoyles and stone representations of the angelic primarchs, those blessed slain sons of the God-Emperor - merely moved in their set alignments, their cannons ready.

  Tortellius scratched his thinning hair (a curse he blamed entirely on the harsh electro-static charge of the Shield), and summoned his servo-skull. It hovered along the battlements towards him, its miniature suspension technology purring as it stayed aloft. The skull itself was human, sanded smooth and modified after it was removed from a corpse, now showing augmetic pict-takers and a voice-activated data-slate for recording sermons.

  'Hello, Tharvon,' said Tortellius. The skull had once belonged to Tharvon Ushan, his favoured servant. How noble a fate, to serve the Ecclesiarchy even in death. How blessed Tharvon's spirit must be, in the eternal light of the Golden Throne.

  The skull probe said nothing. Its gravity suspensors hummed as it bobbed in the air.

  'Dictation,' said Tortellius. The skull emitted an acknowledgement chime as its data-slate - no larger than a human palm and built into its augmented forehead - blinked active.

  What little breeze penetrated the Shield wasn't enough to cool his sweating face. The Armageddon sun might have been weak compared to the star that burned down on equatorial Jirrian, but it was stifling enough. Tortellius mopped his dark-skinned brow with a scented kerchief.

  'On this, the first day of the Siege of Hive Helsreach, the invaders have spilled into the city in unprecedented numbers. No, hold. Command word: Pause. Delete ''unprecedented''. Replace with ''overwhelming''. Command word: Unpause. The skies are clogged with pollution from the world's industry, flak hanging in the clouds from the hive's defences, and smoke from the outlying fires that ravage the outermost districts where the invaders have already conquered ground. It is my belief that few chronicles of this immense war will survive to be interred in Imperial archives. I make this record now not out of a desire to spread my name in pomposity, but to accurately detail the holy bloodshed of this vast crusade.'

  Here he hesitated. Tortellius struggled for the words, and as he chewed his lower lip, musing over dramatic description, the monastery shook beneath his feet again.

  The Titan was moving.

  Stormherald strode throughthe city, its passage unopposed.

  Three enemy engines - the scrap-walkers that the aliens called gargants - had already died to its guns. In her prison of fluid, Zarha felt the stump at the end of her arm aching with a dull heat.

  Once, she thought with an ugly smile, I had hands.

  She aimed her next thought with care.

  The annihilator is overheating.

  'The annihilator is overheating.'

  'Understood, my princeps,' replied Carsomir. He twitched in his restraint throne, accessing the status of the weapon through his hardwired link to the Titan's heart-systems. 'Confirmed. Chambers three through sixteen show rising temperature pressure.'

  Zarha turned in her milky coffin, feeling instinctively what every other soul on board needed to perceive through calculations on monitors or slower hardwire links. She watched Carsomir twitch again, feeling the orders pulsing from his mind through willpower alone, reaching into the cognitive receptors at the Titan's core. 'Coolant flush, moderate intensity,' he said. 'Commencing in eight seconds.'

  Zarha moved her right arm in the ooze, feeling pain in fingers that no longer existed.

  'Flushing coolant,' said a nearby adept, hunched over his wall-mounted contr
ol panel.

  The relief was immediate and blissful, like a sunburned hand plunged into a bucket of ice. She cancelled the vision feed from her photoreceptors, immersing herself in blackness as relief washed through her arm.

  Thank you, Valian.

  'Thank you, Valian.'

  Her vision flickered back into existence as she reactivated her optical implants. It was the work of a moment to readjust her perceptions, filtering out the immediacy of her surroundings. She took a breath, and stared out across the city with a god's eyes.

  The enemy, ant-like and amusing, swarmed in the street around her ankles. Zarha lifted her foot, feeling both the rush of air on her metallic skin and the swirling of fluid around her footless limb. The aliens fled from her crushing tread. A tank died, pounded into scrap.

  Incidental fire from Stormherald's leg battlements spilled into the road, cutting the orks down in droves.

  'My princeps,' Moderati Secundus Lonn was twitching in his throne as he spoke, his muscles spasming in response to the flood of pulses from his connection to the Titan.

  Speak, Lonn.

  'Speak, Lonn.'

  'We are venturing ahead of our skitarii support.'

  Zarha was not blind to this. She hunched her shoulders, wasted muscles tensed and trembling, striding forward through the street.

  I know. I sense… something.

  'I know. I sense something.'

  The hab-towers on either side of the marching Titan were abandoned - this sector was one of the few lucky enough to be within easy range of the city's scarce subterranean communal bunker complexes.

  Inform Colonel Sarren I am pressing ahead with phase two.

  'Inform Colonel Sarren I am pressing ahead with phase two.'

  'Yes, my princeps.'

  This sector, Omega-south-nineteen, had been one of the first to fall when the walls came down the day before. The aliens had been crawling through the area for many hours, but significant scrap-Titan strength was - as yet - unseen. It represented the perfect opportunity to slaughter legions of the enemy while their gargant groups were engaged elsewhere.

  A feeling grew in the back of her head - something invasive and sharp, blooming through the webbing of veins in her brain. It was something she had not heard in many, many decades.

  Someone was weeping.

  Zarha felt her face locked in a rictus as the feeling blossomed and grew fangs. The sharpness was jagged now, an acidic pulse through her skull.

  'My princeps?'

  She didn't hear at first.

  'My princeps?'

  Yes, Valian.

  'Yes, Valian.'

  'We're receiving word from Draconian. He's dying, my princeps.'

  I know… I feel him…

  A moment later, Zarha felt the full shock grasp at her senses. The mortis-cry slashed through her cognitive link like a hurricane, shrieking at a soundless pitch of pain. Draconian was down. The princeps aboard her, Jacen Veragon, was screaming as the aliens scuttled over his corpse, pulling at his armoured metal skin as he lay prone.

  How had he fallen?

  And there it was. In the screaming cry was the memory she sought. The lurching of vision as the Reaver-class engine was dragged to its knees. The sense of infuriating immobility. He was a god… How could this happen… Why would his limbs no longer function…

  Everywhere around was rubble and smoke. It was impossible to see clearly.

  The scream was fading now. Draconian's reactor-heart, a boiling cauldron of plasmic fusion, was growing cold and still.

  'We've lost contact,' said Valian, a second after Zarha sensed it herself. She was weeping, though the saltwater secreted from her tear ducts was immediately dissolved in the fluid entombing her.

  Lonn had his eyes closed, accessing an internal hololithic display within the cognitive link. 'Draconian was in omega-west-five.' His dark eyes flicked open. 'Reports show the site is the same as here: evacuated habitation towers, minimal engine resistance.'

  The adept manning the scanning console, his mouth replaced by a scarab-like vocaliser, blurted a screed of machine code across the cockpit.

  'Confirmed,' Carsomir said. 'We're getting an auspex return to the south. Significant heat signature. Almost definitely an enemy engine.'

  Zarha heard almost none of this. Images of Draconian's death played out behind her false eyes like scenes from a play, coloured by the stinking taint of black emotion beneath. She sobbed once, her heart aching like it would burst. Hearing only that an enemy was nearby, she walked in the fluid, her limbs moving.

  The Titan shook as it took another step.

  'My princeps?' both moderati said at once.

  I will have vengeance. Even in her own mind, she could barely hear herself in the words. A mechanical overtone twinned with her thoughts – and it was protective in its overwhelming rage.

  I will have vengeance.

  'We will have vengeance.'

  Tower blocks passed by its shoulders as the Titan strode on.

  'My princeps,' began Carsomir, 'I recommend we hold here and wait for the skitarii to scout ahead.'

  No. I will avenge Jacen.

  'No,' the vox-voice was harsh. 'We will avenge Draconian.'

  Blind to the disparity between her thoughts and the emerging voice, Zarha pushed onward. Voices assailed her, but these she cast aside with a brush of willpower. Never before had she felt it so easy to disregard the chattering, needy voices of her lesser kin. Valian's voice, coming from the cockpit chamber rather than the cognitive link, was another matter.

  'My princeps, we are receiving requests for Communion.'

  There will be no Communion. I hunt. Communion with the Legio can come tonight.

  'There will be no Communion. We hunt. Communion with the Legio can come tonight.'

  With effort, Valian turned around in his restraint throne. The cables snaking from his skull's implant sockets turned with him, like a beast's many tails.

  'My princeps, Princeps Veragon is dead and the Legio demands Communion.' In his voice was the edge of concern, but never panic, nor fear. The rest of the battle group desired the momentary sharing of focus and purpose - the unity of princeps and the souls of their engines - that was tradition in the aftermath of loss.

  The Legio will wait. I hunger.

  'The Legio will wait. We hunger.'

  Forwards. Ready main weapons. I smell the xenos from here.

  Her voice emerged as a crackle of static, but Stormherald marched on.

  While Carsomir was not a man prone to extremes of emotion, something cold and uncomfortable crawled through his thoughts as he turned back to watch the cityscape through the Titan's huge eye lenses.

  He may not have been as connected to Stormherald's burning heart as the princeps was, but his own bonds with the god-walker were not devoid of intimate familiarity. Through his weaker tie to the engine's semi-sentient core, he felt a depth of fury that was almost addictive in its all-encompassing purity. The passion transferred through his empathic link into grim irritability, and he had to resist the urge to curse the inefficiency of those around him as he guided the Titan onwards. Knowing the cause of his distracted irritation was no balm for it.

  The Titan's right foot came down on a street corner, pulverising a cargo conveyer truck into flat scrap. Stormherald turned with a majestic lack of speed, and hull-mounted pict-takers panned to show a wider avenue, and the afternoon sunlight glinting from Stormherald's burnished iron skin. Valian was immersed, just for a moment, in the wash of exterior imagery fed through the mind-link. Hundreds of pict-takers, each one showing pristine silvery skin, or dense armour - cracked and pitted with its legacy of small arms fire.

  Ahead, down the wide avenue, was the enemy engine that blinked like a red-smeared migraine on the cockpit's auspex scanners. Valian shuddered at the sight of it, breathing deeply of the scent-thick cockpit air. As always, living within Stormherald's head smelled of oiled gears, ritual incense and the burning reek of crew members sweating and
bleeding, their bodies exerted despite remaining motionless in their thrones.

  The enemy scrap-Titan was grotesque - unappealing on a level that went far beyond mere design distaste to Valian. Its junk metal appearance showed no reverence, no respect, no care in its construction. Stormherald's iron bones were thrice-blessed by tech-ministers even before they were brought together as the skeleton of a god-machine. Each of the million cogs, gears, rivets and plates of armour used in the Imperator's birth was honed to perfection and blessed before becoming part of the Titan's body.

  This avatar of perfection incarnate faced its hideous opposite, and every crewmember piloting the Titan felt disgust flow through them. The enemy engine was fat, big-belled to hold troops and ammunition loaders for its random array of torso cannons. Its head, in opposition to the Gothic-style machine skull worn by Stormherald, was stunted and flat, with cracked eye lenses and a heavy-jawed underbite. It stared pugnaciously down the street at the larger Imperial walker, its cannons covering its body like spines, and roared a challenge of its own.

  It sounded exactly like what it was: an alien warleader within the cockpit head blaring into a vox-caster. Stormherald laughed in response, its warning sirens slamming back with a wall of sound.

  In her tank of fluids, Zarha raised her arms, her hand-less stumps facing forward.

  In the street, with an immense grinding of gear joints, Stormherald mirrored the motion.

  It never fired. The trap, as crude and simple as it was, exploded around the great Titan.

  'Your request forreinforcement is acknowledged,' the voice crackled.

  Ryken lowered the vox-mic, readying his lasrifle again.

  'They're coming,' he hissed to Vantine. The other trooper was with him, crouched with her back to the wall, sharing his slice of cover. Her expression was unreadable, masked by her goggles and rebreather, but she gave the major a nod.

  'You said that half an hour ago.'

  'I know.' Ryken slammed a fresh cell into his lasgun. 'But they're coming.'

  The wall behind them buckled as it took the brunt of another shell. Debris from the ceiling clattered down onto their helmets.