Overfiend

by David Annandale

  The ork chieftain roared through the fire, flesh smouldering, and brought its blade down in a two-handed chop. Krevaan brought his left arm up to block. The ork hit him with strength to shatter steel. The blade cut through the ceramite and into his forearm. He yanked his arm down, dragging the weapon with it, and punched forwards with his right claws. The ork dropped the blade and reared back, but not before Krevaan put out its left eye.

  The injury drove the ork to a paroxysm of fury. It came back hard at Krevaan, proving just how dangerous it was by channelling the rage into savage but skilled combat. It rammed him with its shoulder. One of the spikes on the plate stabbed through Krevaan’s gorget and into the side of his neck. The ork knocked him back against the wall, grabbed its blade and attacked again. It used the blade one-handed now, stabbing and slashing with its right hand while it hammered at Krevaan with the mailed left fist.

  Krevaan parried and jabbed. He drew more blood, but the ork absorbed damage like a sponge. Somehow, its mass and its energy of rage took the place of stronger, more complete armour. It was fast, too, much faster than should have been possible for a being of its bulk. It was another dark wonder of the orks of Lepidus: a serious threat that had been transformed into a monster.

  Behind it, Thaene had recovered. He aimed his plasma cutter at the combatants. The end of the servo-arm swivelled back and forth as Krevaan and the ork slashed, blocked, lunged and grappled. ‘Shadow Captain?’ the Techmarine asked.

  ‘I have this.’ Krevaan grunted as the ork landed a heavy blow against the side of his helmet. ‘Do what we came for.’ If the engineer had heard the explosion, it might be preparing a counter. The orks had little regard for each other’s survival. He would not be surprised to learn that the locomotive had a cannon that could fire through the car interiors.

  Thaene moved to the far end of the car. There was no door. The land train’s maker did not trust its passengers to have easy access to the locomotive. Thaene turned the plasma cutter on the wall.

  Krevaan forced the ork back with a flurry of slashes. The chieftain blocked his claws from tearing anything vital, but the brute was covered in its own blood. Krevaan swung up with his left hand and caught the underside of the ork’s right arm. He dragged the blades along the arm, slicing off flesh, feeling them grind against bone. He gave his fist a harsh jerk, and severed the ork’s right hand at the wrist. The chieftain howled its outrage and stumbled back to the other side of the car.

  Krevaan used the second’s pause to vox the other group. ‘Brothers?’ he asked.

  ‘A large contingent, Shadow Captain,’ Akrallas answered. ‘There were too many sentries to kill at once. They raised the alarm. The whole force on this train is converging on our position.’

  ‘Do what you must,’ Krevaan answered, and then the ork was attacking him again.

  It lunged with its left arm outstretched. It did not try to strike him. Instead, it sprayed a vast quantity of blood at Krevaan, completely covering his helmet. Through its lenses, he saw nothing but blood. He wiped them clear, but for a vital moment, he could not see the ork. He swung with his right hand, trying to ward off an attack. The ork came in low. It rammed its blade up the inside of his left arm, piercing the armour’s seam. Pain flashed down the length of his arm.

  At the end of the car, Thaene finished cutting through the metre-thick metal. He kicked the wall down. The cut slab fell onto the coupling between the locomotive and the car, then to the ground.

  Krevaan propelled himself forwards as if catapulted. He slammed into the brute. His momentum carried them both past Thaene and through the gap in the wall. They fell on the coupling. The grinding mechanism bit through the ork’s armour and seized its flesh. It beat at Krevaan, its blows still heavy but panicked now, losing precision as it reacted to its danger.

  Krevaan shoved himself away from the ork. He reached back and grabbed the ragged edge of the hole to pull himself back to his feet. The chieftain raged and struggled, but the mechanism held it fast and pulled it deeper into the gears. Krevaan now saw purpose in the excess of the construction. The cars were not linked by simple couplings. They were linked by traps. They were yet another of the train’s defences. The ork was falling victim to the engineer’s designs.

  Steadying himself, he stomped on the ork’s chest, driving it further into the hungry metal. The greenskin’s howls of rage became screams. Bone snapped. Flesh tore. The monster’s body was rendered bit by bit to pulp. For a surprisingly long time, it struggled to reach Krevaan and drag him down to the same fate. Then it was gone, the metal shards of its armour bouncing off the machinery to the ground.

  Thaene joined Krevaan at the gap. Behind them, they could hear the battle against the other orks still raging. The snarls and sounds of gunfire blended with the raucous beat of the engine and the clanking of treads. There was still no sign that the ork engineer had realised anything was wrong. If there was any way that the troops in the cars could communicate with the locomotive, they weren’t using it.

  The engineer was still consumed with the challengers before it. Ahead, the sky was a lighting storm of war. Rockets and shells flew from the train in answer to those that surrounded it with a halo of fire. The machine was moving uphill now. As Krevaan stepped back into the car, he heard a massive detonation. The big cannon on the rear car had fired. Krevaan saw the comet streak of its shell arc upwards. It had been fired at a target far beyond the attacking Raven Guard. It had, he realised, been fired at the city. A few moments later, there was a flash from beyond the horizon, reflecting against the low clouds. Reclamation had taken its first hit.

  ‘Do it quickly,’ Krevaan said to Thaene.

  The Techmarine trained his plasma cutter on the coupling. As it came apart, the machinery flailed like the ork had, pistons and chains and gears flying apart with centripetal violence. ‘This obscenity is an insult to the Omnissiah,’ Thaene said. His tone was even, the venom present only in the words themselves. But to the degree that Krevaan had ever known Thaene to express satisfaction of any kind, he was doing so now as he set about cutting the land train’s throat.

  The coupling gave a final, tearing death cry before the flare of the plasma cutter, and the link between the locomotive and the cars was severed. For a moment, the two sections of the train continued moving forwards. The cars lost speed quickly, their momentum drained away by mass and friction. The treads slowed to a halt. The locomotive pulled ahead, its own speed increasing. It advanced another fifty metres before it began to slow. After another ten, it stopped.

  Thaene said, ‘The defences are still operational.’

  Krevaan nodded. The turrets on the cars had not stopped firing. The big cannon boomed again. He jumped to the ground and looked up. He saw the flash and crackle of dissipating energy as Raven Guard attacks were neutralised along the entire length of the train. ‘The force field is still up too,’ he said. Whatever power system the ork engineer was using, it was not dependent on the physical connection of the land train to work. And the locomotive had not gone far enough to break the energy link.

  No matter. It was the engine and the being inside that counted. Once they were dead, the rest of the train would follow. And the advance had been stopped. That much was important.

  As if to contradict him, the big cannon fired once more. The flash of the detonation came a few seconds later. Reclamation was hurt, and it would bleed until the engineer was destroyed.

  ‘Brother Akrallas?’ he voxed. He ran towards the locomotive. Thaene followed.

  ‘Holding, Shadow Captain.’ His discipline hid his pain. Krevaan heard it anyway. ‘We have lost Brother Revaal.’

  ‘You are wounded.’

  ‘We both are.’

  ‘Your evaluation?’

  ‘The orks have the numbers.’ The statement was not a surrender. It was mere accuracy. Akrallas was letting him know what was inevitable unless the circumstances changed. It fel
l to him and Thaene to make that change.

  ‘How long?’ Krevaan asked.

  ‘As long as we can.’

  ‘Thank you, brother.’

  The ork tech was still in its blister. It was looking back as Krevaan and Thaene raced towards the engine. It was very still, its revel arrested. Krevaan could feel the rage in its glare, and he rejoiced that the beast was at last experiencing the possibility of defeat. He and Thaene drew nearer. Thirty metres away, the massive hulk of the locomotive loomed before them, the blister no longer visible. The defences lashed at the Space Marines. Corner turrets turned away from the diversionary attack and pointed downwards. They rotated back and forth, blanketing the area with shells. They were not aiming, which told Krevaan that the ork couldn’t see them either. It was trying to take them out by destroying the entire region to the rear of the engine.

  The turrets pumped out their high explosives with the speed of heavy stubbers. The direction of their fire crossed and re-crossed. Krevaan could see the movement of the guns, could tell where the shells would land. He and Thaene jerked left and right, their race now as much an evasion as it was an assault. They could not avoid the shells entirely. They were buffeted by the blasts. The engineer’s blows chipped away at their strength as they closed with the mobile fortress. They ran through an exploding landscape, fountains of earth and stone erupting on all sides.

  The engineer’s guns did not stop them. They reached the locomotive. There was no door at the rear. They began moving clockwise around the engine, looking for the entrance. The cannon fire continued. The engineer must have had a sensor array of some kind, however crude, because the turrets followed their movement. The guns could not aim straight down. Krevaan and Thaene were safe as long as they stayed almost flush with the side of the locomotive.

  The left-hand flank of the beast was far from featureless: it was covered in two-metre-long spikes pointing in every direction. The construction was monolithic, overlapping metal plates welded and riveted to excess. There was no entrance on this side. Nor was there on the front, though the jaws of the locomotive looked as if they might well be functional.

  ‘It would be unfortunate if the only way in is a hatch on the roof,’ Krevaan said. The engineer would have a free hand with the turrets in that case. The Raven Guard wouldn’t last long enough to effect a breach.

  ‘The greenskin is primitive,’ Thaene said. ‘So are its works. But there is dangerous cunning here. I doubt the beast would give itself only one possible egress.’

  The force field flashed and crackled. Krevaan was surrounded by wars that were simultaneously close and distant. His brothers’ assault was a great thunder, but it stopped just short of the land train, as if he were seeing the dissolve into static of a hololithic transmission. Several dozen metres away, the rest of his squad fought an army. He knew this, but his only evidence was vox communication. The sounds of that conflict were drowned out by the din of rockets and cannon. And somewhere further out, so distant at this moment that the struggle was almost mythical, the eldar fought another army. The final outcome of all those battles hinged on what he and Thaene did in the next few minutes.

  On the right flank, Thaene pointed to a metal slab near the bottom of the locomotive’s skirt. It was smaller than all the other pieces, and was an almost even rectangle in shape. A single spike stuck out of the centre. ‘Here,’ Thaene said. He examined the welding. ‘None on the outside,’ he said. ‘From the inside only.’

  ‘No one in, but it can get out,’ Krevaan said. ‘No trust among the greenskins.’

  ‘None,’ Thaene agreed. He started cutting along the outline of the entrance frame. The plasma beam sliced through the seal in a few seconds. Thaene gripped both sides of the door. Krevaan readied his bolter. Thaene yanked the door free.

  The entrance exploded. A huge blast of flame billowed out of the train’s interior. It smashed Thaene back, picking him up and hurling him across the blasted landscape. Krevaan had been standing a few metres to the side. He was brushed by the explosion, and that was still strong enough to knock him to the ground, armour smoking. The flames dissipated quickly. Krevaan risked looking in the entrance. He saw a narrow tunnel snaking its way deeper into the machine. On both sides of it were the immense gears, pistons and ill-defined mechanical follies that were the orks’ stock in trade. There did not appear to be any further traps.

  Krevaan looked back at where Thaene had landed. The Techmarine had ploughed a furrow into the ground when he had hit. He had been standing in the mouth of a giant cannon just as it had fired. ‘Thaene!’ Krevaan called over the vox. The Raven Guard’s rune was flickering red in Krevaan’s display.

  Thaene’s voice was weak. It could have been mistaken for a burst of static. But the sounds of a broken machine became words. ‘Victorus aut mortis,’ the Techmarine said.

  ‘We will have victory,’ Krevaan promised.

  He entered the locomotive. The passage took him through the interior of a monster’s heart. The air itself pulsed with the arrhythmic beat of huge mechanisms. There was barely enough room for him to walk without scraping against the tangle of heavy machinery on either side. The vehicle was not advancing, but it was very much alive, waiting only for the command of its master to rumble over any resistance. Vast breaths of steam gasped periodically from vents and nozzles placed at odd angles in haphazard locations.

  Halfway across the width of the locomotive, the passage turned right. On both sides now, Krevaan saw pistons the size of a Predator tank’s cannon. There were multiple sets, driving gigantic gears. There was little in the iron phantasmagoria that made any kind of sense. Krevaan could not imagine how the grinding work around him made the engine function. Against all reason, it did.

  The noise was enormous. Hissing and clanking and complaining metal filled the uneven pauses between the beats. Krevaan didn’t worry about stealth. He couldn’t hear his own footsteps, which meant he wouldn’t be able to hear the approach of the ork tech, either. He walked with bolter pointing forward, eager to send the greenskin aberration to oblivion. There was no sign of the engineer.

  The passage ran forwards most of the length of the locomotive. It ended at a ladder that went up three metres to a second level. Here, the way was even more cramped. The restless, groaning, shuddering web of machinery pressed in, surrounding him. He did not feel as if he were moving through the interior of an engine. He could see individual components whose function he could understand, ones that had a clear purpose of propulsion or the production of energy. But so much more of the engineering seemed to exist for its own sake.

  Perhaps, Krevaan, thought, it was yet another symptom of the supercharged nature of these orks. Even the drive that led to the construction of monstrosities like the land train had been exaggerated. The ork tech had built and built and built, unable to stop, and the end result was a creation whose enormous excess meant that it was as indestructible as it was nonsensical.

  Still no sign of the ork. Krevaan advanced halfway down the tunnel of gears and steam, then stopped. He knew where his enemy was: the blister. The ork controlled all aspects of the train from there, including all the defences. There would be no reason for the greenskin to leave that redoubt. If it had guarded so elaborately against attack so far, there would be other death traps ahead. Krevaan wasn’t interested in fighting this battle on the engineer’s terms. He would make the field of engagement his own. He would show the ork that there were shadows even here, where it felt safest.

  He examined the machinery more closely before deciding that there was no way of predicting the consequences of what he did next. The prospect pleased him. He would turn disorder and the storm of war back on the ork.

  He took a frag grenade from his clip and threw it to his left, deep into the gears. It bounced back and forth off the metal organs of the locomotive, then dropped towards the first level. Krevaan lost sight of it. The detonation was muffled, barely audib
le over the clanks and growls and hisses. For a few seconds, there was no change to the din, as if the locomotive had swallowed the grenade without notice. Then a different sort of grinding began. Its pitch started high and went higher. It was joined by a rising chorus of metal complaints as components scraped against each other and the perverse workings of ork technology began to go awry.

  Krevaan threw a krak grenade to the right. When it went off, its light and heat were also smothered by the intricacies of the machines, but its damage was felt, and the metallic shrieks grew louder yet. Live steam filled the passageway. Krevaan heard the angry buzz of multiple electrical shorts nearby. He smelled smoke. He couldn’t hear the crackle of flame, but his readouts indicated a rise in temperature.

  Visibility across all the energy spectrums fell to zero. As the locomotive writhed in machinic pain, it was filled with shadow. If the ork remained in the blister, Krevaan would take the engine apart with his bare hands until the engineer had nothing but its hiding place left. Krevaan started moving forwards again, certain that he had forced his enemy to join him.

  He was right. The ork dropped down in front of him from a tube in the ceiling. It was shorter than he was, but only because it was bent over from the weight of the giant harness on its back. Violet energy blazed from the towering coils of the harness, distorted light fighting the darkness that Krevaan had claimed for his own. Its left arm was a huge prosthetic. In its right, it held a gun that looked like a twisted, sawn-off lascannon.

  The Shadow Captain fired, point-blank. The mass-reactive shells slammed into the beast’s force field. The violet flashed brighter, and the shells disintegrated. The ork didn’t even blink. It grinned, and pulled the trigger of its own weapon. A beam of focused energy hit Krevaan in the chest. It threw him back down the passage, embedding him in machinery at the far end. Damage runes flared. His pauldron was cracked and smoking. His power pack struggled against the massive spike in temperature. Servo-motors stuttered, and for a moment his right arm shook back and forth. He steeled himself, fighting down the neurological chaos that raced up his spine and through his cortex. Will, strength and discipline worked in concert to return mobility to him.