The ork toppled to the ground, and Temur leaped to the next, who was riding just behind the hatch. It had seen him. It was a big specimen, massive even among these freakish greenskins. It swung its power claw at him, faster than he had been expecting. With no chance to evade, he grounded himself, sinking all the weight of his body and his armour through the tank, down to the moon’s core. Head down, he took the blow on his shoulders. Ceramite cracked. So did bones. The impact shook his frame.
He lunged down and forward, slashing up with Windstrike beneath the ork’s left arm, cutting through the tendons. The power claw became dead weight. The greenskin howled and tried to spin its body, as if it could turn the claw into a flail. Temur stabbed it through the bridge of its nose. Bone and gristle parted before the powerblade. He hurled the corpse to the side.
Two other orks were scrambling to reach him from the front. The tank’s hull had two levels, one with the gun, and the second, the upper one, with the claw and hatch. The greenskins had too much uneven ground on their own machine to cover. Temur pulled a krak grenade from his belt, triggered it, let it cook, then dropped it onto the hatch. He took one step back and shielded his eyes from the incandescent glare as the explosive melted through the tank’s armour. The attacking orks staggered, blinded.
Temur leapt through the hatch while its sides still glowed with heat. He landed in a dark hell of grease, smoke, and roaring machinery. The cab was so cramped, he could barely turn around. The ork operating the claw had been killed by the krak. The gunner was climbing up from the lower level through another hatch. Temur sliced the top of its head off before the upper half of its body had emerged.
The driver came for him now. It fired a huge-bored pistol. The bullet ricocheted off the bulkhead to Temur’s right and took off the ork’s lower jaw. The monster shrieked its dismay and leapt at the khan. Temur stabbed Windstrike up through the driver’s palate, skewering its brain.
He withdrew his blade from the slumping corpse. He was alone in the tank now, but it hadn’t stopped. It hadn’t even slowed. It rattled over the terrain at full speed, a mindless juggernaut. Temur took two more krak grenades and tossed them forward to the steering compartment. Then he climbed back out through the hatch.
He jumped off the Battlewagon just as the grenades went off. The tank’s steering melted down. Its engine exploded. The front of the Battlewagon collapsed, ploughing itself into the ground with enough force to flip end over end.
It landed with a crash on its roof, and the impact touched off its ammunition. Then the fire reached its fuel tank and it blew itself apart. Temur saw the treads launched hundreds of metres across the battlefield.
Two down. Defence was turning to offence, with the Battlewagons under siege.
He ran back to his bike and mounted it. His squad reformed around him. He looked for their next target. Near the top of the rise, Sergeant Qaraqan’s squad had driven another tank into retreat. Incredibly, it was still functional after being hit by the multi-melta manned by Esen, riding in Boralun’s sidecar. But its claw was disabled, and the side gunners were dead.
As the driver pulled away, the Battlewagon’s turret swivelled left, then jerked right. The movement was so unpredictable, it could have been mechanical failure. It must have been chance. Temur did not want to credit the orks’ brute, instinctive genius of war.
Not that it mattered. What mattered was that the cannon fired and the shot went true. The shell hit Qaraqan directly. He and his bike vanished in the explosion.
The blast took out Boralun’s bike as well. The destruction of the multi-melta was a second explosion, smaller, but orders of magnitude more intense. Two more Space Marines were erased from existence. Worse, whether through luck or heightened cunning, the orks had managed to take out all of the attack bikes. Only the Thunder-hawk still had effective anti-tank weaponry. And worse again: Ulagan and Batunai veered hard to avoid the carnage, and luck cursed the squad a second time. They were directly in the line of the gun when it fired again. An entire combat squad gone.
Raging, Temur charged the tank. The command squad came in at an angle, the bikes hitting the forward left flank. The turret swivelled away from the rest of Qaraqan’s brothers. Temur led the run up, a hand’s breadth away from the length of the vehicle. That took them to the top of the ridge. In the moment before he began his turn for another attack, Temur faced the land to the north, and he looked at just the right second. He saw the flash.
He saw the arrival of still another Battlewagon.
‘The completion of our mission will also be yours,’ Tellathia insisted. ‘Once we free our seers, the teleporter will be disabled.’
The White Scars and the eldar had retreated a few metres back along the passageway, more securely out of sight of the orks, until they were ready to strike.
‘That is insufficient,’ Kusala said. ‘That will not shut down this manufactorum. It will not bring us appreciably closer to purging this moon of the greenskins. And there are vehicular routes in this warren. The teleporter is unlikely to be the only route to the surface for these tanks.’
Tellathia made a hand gesture that was eloquent in its disinterest. ‘Our paths are not entwined beyond this chamber. And if you think our present numbers are adequate to take on the thousands of orks in this facility, then I fear you are deluded.’
Kusala’s face darkened. Ghazan spoke before the sergeant responded with something more violent than words. ‘You are the ones deluded if you think the act of liberation will suffice.’
Tellathia’s head turned to him with a sharp jerk. She held it at an angle again, but instead of the hypnotic pendulum motion of earlier, there was an aggressive stillness. ‘Your meaning?’ Though the words were as empty of human intonation as ever, she spoke more slowly.
Anger, Ghazan realised. And quite quickly, too. Interesting. Perhaps important. The elegance and precision of these eldar did not make them immune to recognisable passions. But he was not looking for a weakness in combat in this moment. They all needed unity. ‘The larger shadow,’ he said. ‘It is here. You know this, I think.’
Silence from Tellathia. Her posture shifted slightly. She was more interested than hostile.
‘What would it take,’ he asked, ‘to capture so many of your kind? And to use them in this way?’
‘Much.’
‘The larger shadow can do this again, or worse, if it is not destroyed.’ He sensed her hesitation. ‘You saw that ork. You know there is something unusual at work here.’
‘More than unusual.’
Her phrasing struck him. He flashed back to what she had said before when he had asked if she could explain the anomalous nature of these orks: I cannot. He had the impression that she was genuinely unable to do so, and that the mere fact of her inability disturbed her.
‘That ork must be destroyed,’ he said.
‘Fighting it is your destiny.’
‘Not yours?’
For several seconds, she was motionless except for her fingers. They made slight movements in a complex pattern, as if she were playing some form of stringed instrument. Ghazan felt the deployment of psychic energies. There was a sharp spike, and Tellathia’s fingers stopped moving. Through the grille of her helmet came an intake of breath. Then she said, ‘No. The duel is yours alone. But it seems our necessary fate is to assist your journey to that point.’
One of the other eldar spoke quickly to Tellathia. She answered in a sharp tone. When she spoke her own tongue, Ghazan heard genuine emotion. Though he could understand nothing, he could hear a musicality that was meaningful, shaded with poetry, sorrow and anger, and so different from the soulless precision of her Gothic. The exchange went back and forth a few times, and then the other eldar held up his hands in a gesture of acquiescence.
‘Your necessary fate,’ Ghazan repeated when Tellathia turned back to him.
‘I believe you understand me,’ s
he said. ‘There are choices where the correct decision is so imperative, there is no real choice at all.’
‘I do understand,’ he agreed.
She looked at Kusala. ‘You have carried the day,’ she told him. ‘You understand that our priority must be the rescue of the prisoners. We will provide what further assistance is within our power.’
Ghazan said, ‘The rescue can serve our purposes. What happens here will draw the greenskins’ attention.’ To Kusala he said, ‘You can follow the vehicular route away from the teleporter. That might lead to the manufactorum itself. Perhaps to the other exits.’
Kusala looked confused. ‘Don’t you mean we, Stormseer?’
‘My battle is here. But given what we now know, there is a clear, immediate need to shut down the rest of this facility.’
‘You are staying with–’
‘I am. It is true that there are choices that are not choices. I think your own path in this war has just become clear, brother-sergeant.’
‘Your decision is troubling,’ Kusala said. He eyed the eldar with clear suspicion.
‘It can barely be called a decision. It is what must happen.’ The struggle was rushing closer. Though he spoke calmly, he could almost feel his enemy’s blood splashing against his armour. The wind of the steppes was at his back. A culmination was near.
‘Very well,’ Kusala answered. ‘We will start in the previous large chamber. We will wait for you to engage the enemy.’
‘Thank you.’ He extended a hand. ‘For the Khan and the Emperor.’
They clasped forearms. ‘For the Khan and the Emperor,’ Kusala repeated. Then he headed off with the Scouts.
‘You fight alone with us,’ said Tellathia. ‘Your willingness to do so is unusual in your species.’
‘It is not a question of my willingness. It is the unfolding of what must be.’ Questions of possible betrayal and the unease inherent in any contact with the xenos had faded to background noise as the war of his visions came into being.
They moved forwards to face the consequences of forced choices.
No words passed between Ghazan and Tellathia as they launched the attack. There was no formal coordination of strategy. Neither would accept any interference from the other in war doctrine. But there was also a measure of respect. They both drew on the warp. They both lived its dangers.
Ghazan had his purpose. Tellathia had hers. He would use the possibilities opened up by her squad’s attack to further his end. He knew she would do the same. The orks would be caught in the synergy of their separate but enfilading purposes.
The eldar struck first. While the ork tech and witch were moving towards the far end of the chamber, the three female warriors rushed forwards. They unleashed a scream that transcended mere sound. Even from his position behind the blast, and protected by his hood, Ghazan felt the brush of the lethal shriek. Its razors scraped against his nervous system. The orks operating the grid were far less fortunate. The nearest ones went into seizures. The eldar sliced them apart with power swords that sang with light.
The other four warriors in Tellathia’s squad opened up with weapons that resembled rifles, but fired a stream of what seemed to be discs. The air hummed with the sound of steel insect wings, and the rest of the orks at the machines staggered back. Some of them fell, lacerated to shreds, and did not rise.
In less than ten seconds, every ork in contact with the machinery had been struck. The part of Ghazan’s consciousness that saw the full picture of the battle registered that the eldar had taken care not to damage the mechanism itself. They were hoping, no doubt, for the luxury of removing the prisoners without inflicting further trauma.
There was no room in Ghazan’s war for hope. There was the speed of the strike, the hurricane of strife, and the rush of fate. Striding forwards, his focus zeroed in on the ork psyker. The beast was just turning, as was the engineer, the two of them startled by the sudden deaths of their underlings. Ghazan pointed his staff at the witch. He seized the ferocious psychic energy in the cavern, and through it called once more on the storms of Chogoris. Lightning flashed across the chamber. The crack of thunder shook the walls.
The lightning struck the witch, hurling it against the rear door. The electrical discharge washed over the tech, sparking and dissipating around the contours of an invisible sphere. The conical power coils on its back glowed and spat their own lightning as they fed energy to the force field. The ork snarled at Ghazan. It loped away from him, reached the far door, and punched a control panel in the wall to its side. The doors at either end of the cavern rose. Mobs of greenskins rushed in, raging at the intrusion, and celebrating the unexpected opportunity for war.
The web of pipes and cables were an easy climb, even in power armour. The Scouts, more agile in their lighter carapace, made their way down faster than Kusala. He caught up with them a few metres up from the floor. They waited in the shadows, surrounded by the hiss of leaking steam, the sparking of random discharges. The focus of the orks below was entirely on the machines and their snarling disagreements over how to make them work best.
The ambient noise was such that Kusala couldn’t hear when the war began in the next great chamber. He knew it had started, though, when the orks were overcome with what appeared to be spontaneous rage. They were rushing to the left, brandishing weapons, even before the door rattled open.
As the last few greenskins passed through to the unfolding battle, Kusala dropped to the ground. To the right, the vehicle path led through another opening and into a wide, high tunnel. He pointed at the tangled knots of conduits, valves and levers. The Scouts nodded and began rigging demolition charges.
Kusala moved to the tunnel entrance. There were plenty of smaller passages and caves intersecting with it. He heard the echoes of running orks bouncing down the tunnel’s length, coming from around the left turn a hundred metres from the entrance. A large force was approaching, too big to take on. ‘Get it done,’ he voxed.
They did. With seconds, the squad joined him. He pointed to the nearest cave. It was little more than a concavity on the right of the main tunnel, but it would do. There was no rear exit, so no further orks arriving from behind. If the squad was spotted, then it would be a fight, but Kusala didn’t think they would be. The orks would be too set on having their share of the main battle, too focused on what lay in front of them, to notice what watched at the side.
They moved quickly along the tunnel and into the side cavern, going as far back into it as they could. They formed two lines, bolters out, with the front row crouching before the others. Ariq held the detonator. He looked up at Kusala with a grin. ‘We aren’t going to forge an alliance with this lot, are we, brother-sergeant?’
‘No. Take them out at my command, brother.’
The horde arrived. The orks waved guns and blades. A few of them fired into the air. The ceiling was high enough for the vehicles to pass, but no more. Bullets ricocheted. Some found marks on a return trajectory. Kusala saw an ork killed by his own ammunition. The greenskins around him burst into laughter as he blew his head off.
The stream of troops was a large one, but it ended. As the last ork entered the machine chamber, Kusala said, ‘Now.’
Ariq pushed the button. Multiple blasts took out the controls, and brought tonnes of conduit crashing down on the orks’ heads. Screams of outraged pain filled the air. The collapse continued for several seconds, and by the end of it, the entrance was blocked by metal wreckage.
‘Both ends of the chamber?’ Kusala asked Ariq.
‘Yes, brother-sergeant.’ Still that grin. Ariq was partial to explosive deaths for the Emperor’s enemies. ‘The survivors are going nowhere.’
‘Good. Then let us make good use of the time we have purchased.’
Kusala sent Tegusal up as forward watch. They moved down the corridor at high speed, pausing at the corner just long enough to see that the way
was clear. As they followed the vehicle route, they heard the alarm spreading through the facility. The side corridors fed more sounds of confusion and riot as the orks converged on the two caverns. More appeared in the main tunnel, but the White Scars always had sufficient warning to get under cover. As with the other large passages in the complex, the tunnel was actually a series of linked caves. The natural formation must have served the orks’ purposes well, requiring very little in the way of further mining to create the underground highway. Kusala wondered how far it extended.
He had his answer before long, though he heard it before he saw it. The clamour of construction filled the tunnel. Even with a fight under way, and what must have been a serious loss of power, the manufacture of the tanks was continuing without pause. The squad went around one more turn, to the right this time, and before them appeared the heart of ork industry in the Lepidus system.
The cavern was the largest one yet. Its ceiling was no higher than the power plant, but this chamber was at least twice as long and wide. There were half a dozen Battlewagons close to completion, and what appeared to be the same number in earlier stages of assembly. More conduits from the power plant fed into the cave and into a collection of giant batteries spread at intervals around the floor. These fuelled the orks’ tools. The greenskins swarmed over scaffolding, slapping metal and guns and engines together. The activity was furious.
The squad closed in on the entrance. The tunnel split there, with a branch heading off to the right on a pronounced uphill slope.
‘The road to the surface,’ Tegusal said.
‘Yes,’ Kusala agreed.
Ariq was eyeing the assembly bay. Kusala could see his eagerness. There was great scope for destruction in that space. Had Ariq not been a White Scar, Kusala thought, he would have thrived as a battle-brother in a Devastator squad. ‘We can finish the job right here,’ Ariq said.
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