by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)
I fell into the new rhythm. I might very well not be able to hear searchers until they were actually working on the tank. For all I knew, I could be the last human on Armageddon, fruitlessly hitting the interior of his coffin. But I could not risk silence, in case there was help nearby. So I hit three times and listened. Hit three times, listened.
On and on. For hours. How many, I had no way of telling. My existence reduced itself to this one task of striking metal in pitch blackness, a task I had no reason to expect would be successful. I refused to accept the likelihood of failure. If I did, the temptation to rest would become overwhelming. I lived from second to second. I found the energy to strike the hull three times, and then again for another three. I tried to shut out all thoughts of the past and future. The eternal present was all that mattered. Despite my efforts, though, I could not ignore the irony of my situation. The Saviour of Armageddon, dead in an overturned tank. A glorious end, truly.
I did laugh a bit. That helped.
Time wore on, and my bursts of dry laughter died away. My throat was parched. I could barely move my arm. My body demanded sleep, but I refused. Then, quite suddenly, I heard noises outside. Engines. Loud, coughing, rattling engines. And over their din, closer to the hull, voices. Guttural. Savage.
Orks.
I had poor options. A choice of deaths, but the decision was an easy one. I would go down fighting. I smashed at my tomb with renewed force. After another three blows, I heard pounding from the other side. And then the unmistakeable grind of metal cutting metal. The greenskin voices sounded excited.
I reached to my belt and activated my shield generator. The air around me thrummed as the power field sprang into being. I drew my bolt pistol, building up the charge of my bale eye. I waited. I was eager to begin. The moment the orks broke through, the situation would change. I had no illusions about my chances, but I would make the best of them.
Sparks showered into my cell. The pitch of the grinding rose to a scream, and a chainblade broke through.
Still I waited for the enemy to free me and provide a clear shot at his bestial face.
The blade worked its way around in a rough circle about a metre wide. The cuts joined. The blade withdrew. A heavy blow from the other side knocked the sliced plating inside.
Armageddon’s grey daylight was blinding after the hours of total darkness.
I fired my eye as the ork poked its head through the hole. The lasburst shot through the greenskin’s right eye, incinerating its brain, and it fell away. There was a growl, and then another ork appeared. I blew its skull off with the pistol.
The orks roared with outrage. Fists pounded against the hull. For the moment I saw nothing except a circle of brown sky. Heavy booted feet thudded across the hull towards the hole. Firing again, I took off the brute’s arm just as it began to aim.
The attack began in earnest now. They fired around the hole at every angle. Bullets ricocheted around the interior. My shield absorbed their kinetic energy and they fell. A grenade arced in. I caught it and threw it back outside. It exploded in midair, and I was rewarded with roars of outrage that turned into roars of pain.
The orks kept coming and I kept shooting them. I was trapped, but they couldn’t come at me where they could see me more than one at a time. I could hold them off indefinitely… until I ran out of clips for the pistol. Even then, I would take them apart with the power claw if they tried to come inside.
Indefinitely. Not infinitely.
I knew what the end was. I dismissed it. I would kill them one by one in the same eternal present as when I had banged my claw against the hull. They kept coming, wearing me down closer and closer to final exhaustion.
As I fought, and shot, and killed, I wondered why their attacks were so limited. I didn’t hear any engines, so perhaps these orks were without heavy armour. But none of them tried to burn me out with flamers. A well-placed rocket would have ended the struggle in an instant. Instead, they appeared to be limiting themselves to shotguns and blades.
But in the end, they tired of the game, and decided to change the rules. The grinding started up again. When the blade poked through, it began to cut the outline of a much larger hole. I would lose my shelter. I would be cornered with no protection except my power field, and concentrated fire would overwhelm it.
I changed my bolt pistol’s clip and waited for the endgame.
The huge roar of an approaching aircraft shook the air. I heard the shriek of launched missiles. Explosions. Howls from the orks. A confused stampede. The aircraft came closer. There was the blast of retro-rockets as it landed. And then the sounds of a perfect, cleansing slaughter.
I leapt and grabbed the edge of the gap with my claw. Hauling myself up, I climbed out of the coffin.
Storm of the Wastes had come to rest in a narrow plain between the hills. The wreck of one of the other tanks lay on the slope to my left. A dozen metres to my right, an obsidian Thunderhawk gunship sat on level ground. A squad of Space Marines marched through the battlefield. It was full day, but they looked like darkest thoughts of the night. They were horned monsters. Though they carried bolters, most of them were killing orks with blades that grew out of their forearms.
Black Dragons.
Judging from the number of bodies I saw, there had been a few hundred orks to start with. I had lost track of how many I had killed. In the initial moments of their attack, the Black Dragons had cut them down by half. The rest fought back, but not for long.
The massacre was over in just a few minutes.
The captain of the Black Dragons came to meet me as I jumped down from the Vanquisher’s upturned hull. He towered over his battle-brothers. The adamantium edge of his crescent horn gleamed in the sun. The coating of his bone blades was dark with greenskin blood. His flesh seemed more reptilian than human. In appearance, the Space Marine approached the daemonic.
This being too, I reminded myself, had a role to play in service to the Emperor.
The Black Dragon nodded. ‘Volos,’ he said. ‘Second Company. An honour, commissar.’
‘My thanks, Captain Volos. I am greatly in your debt. How did you find me?’
‘If we had flown through this area before you were attacked, I don’t think we would have,’ he said. ‘We spotted the orks.’
I took in the bodies stretching away on all sides. ‘So large a group in the middle of nowhere would have caught the eye,’ I agreed.
‘A large raiding party, yes,’ he said. ‘I am puzzled by their overall weakness, though. There are no warlords here. And their weapons…’
‘…are very limited,’ I finished.
He must have seen something on my face. ‘Commissar?’ he asked.
An ork force weak in strength but large in numbers. Easily spotted. One that could not simply blow up the tank they were attacking; one that would be just possible for a single human being to hold off. And why were the orks here? I had called them to the specific tank, pinpointing my location for any searching eyes, but I could not understand why this force had been in the area at all. After the bombers did the job, there was little to scavenge. There would have been no reason for any infantry to be diverted to this location.
Unless I was the reason.
I remembered Morena’s last vox transmission, alerting Imperial forces to my presence. I wondered now if someone else had heard it, if my enemy had sent this force knowing I was here. If they had sent these orks, whose constant fire showed they were not trying to capture me and also did not have the means of an assured kill.
I had no answers, only possibilities. But the questions were enough.
They were their own revelations, and they gave me that much more of the measure of my enemy.
I finally answered Volos. ‘I was just gathering my thoughts, Captain Volos,’ I said. ‘Learning what I must to win this war.’
‘Get down!’ Colonel St
raken yelled, and the charges detonated. The Armageddon jungle seemed to burst apart, hurling itself at him. For a long second, foliage and chips of bark rained down on his bionics and his skin. The explosion rang in his ears. Then he shouted ‘Smoke!’
There was a hollow pop of grenade launchers and a hiss of smoke. ‘Move it, Catachans!’ he called. ‘Do I have to do everything myself?’
The platoon advanced: a rapid scurrying between rocks and fallen trees, ducked low with their lasguns raised. A few had slung their guns and pulled the long knives of their home world.
Straken took the centre. The orks would be dug in deep – the blast would have killed a few, but not enough. You never can kill enough, he thought.
‘Captain Montara?’ he called. ‘Get up on the left flank.’
‘On it,’ she replied. He saw her briefly, a bulky shape slipping through the smoke: her hair cut down to black stubble, an aquila shaved into it. Two men with shotguns followed her, one with a vox set lurching on his back. Straken plunged further into the smoke.
Ork heavy-weapons fire barked out of the swirling haze, a chattering pulse of light. Bullets hit tree trunks and tore them open, howling through the air over the Catachans.
‘Move it,’ Straken called. ‘Shut that gun up!’
Broad, hulking figures appeared in the smoke ahead, half-obscured. Straken glimpsed red eyes and teeth like tusks under crude metal helmets. Las-fire caught one of the orks, spun it, and sent it to the ground. Straken raised his shotgun and fired at the other. It grunted and ducked out of view. Injured, but not dead.
They’ve left their camp, Straken thought. They’re in the trees.
Doc Hollister appeared on Straken’s right, medi-kit slung across his body, a big grin on his lined face. ‘Got ’em scared now!’ Hollister said.
Roars and grunts came from the undergrowth and flanks as well as from ahead.
‘No, just angry,’ Straken replied.
An ork burst out of the foliage on the right. It howled as if on fire, arms flailing, mouth swathed in foam. It wore a vest of grimy metal plates.
Straken blasted it in the thigh. The ork went down, cleaver bouncing out of its grip. Snarling, it reached for a pistol. Straken worked the slide of his shotgun and aimed, shooting it in the neck. The ork fell and Straken leaped after it. He stabbed down with his knife as the beast tried to rise, but the ork pulled a cleaver from its belt and blocked his blade. For a moment they strained against each other, a contest of sheer brute force, but the alien’s strength seemed to break, and Straken’s knife slid through its throat into the earth behind.
Gunfire roared from the left. Straken threw himself down and fired prone: he glimpsed a tusked face, and a body dropped into the undergrowth. Straken leaped up and rushed down the length of a huge fallen log, turned and saw Guardsman Hardec lying on the ground. Wooden spikes stuck out of his shoulder and a pack of scrawny creatures pinned him down, jabbering as they prodded the spikes.
Straken was on them before they could turn. His shotgun blasted the first three aliens apart. Their comrades turned, but too slowly, and Straken’s metal fist clamped down on the biggest gretchin’s head. Bone shattered. The others squealed and ran into the trees. Straken fired, and a thin scream answered him. He shouted for the medic to help Hardec and pushed on towards the ork camp.
In a clearing, just before the camp itself, an immense ork raged and bellowed. Half a dozen Guardsmen surrounded it, pouring las-fire into the ork’s hide. It was riddled with wounds, kept alive, it seemed, by fury alone. Wild blows sent up a cloud of chopped foliage. ‘Take it!’ Straken cried, and he added his shotgun to the las-fire. Slowly, the brute sank down, grunting. It collapsed onto its knees, half-hidden by plants as if drowning beneath a green sea, then slumped onto all fours. For a moment, Straken could hear its hard, loud breathing. Then came the inevitable shot, and the sound of a huge body striking the earth.
Sudden quiet. Straken heard Hollister’s voice – ‘I’ll just tie the bandage off’ – and a groan of pain answered it. Captain Montara looked over her shoulder and made a throat-cutting gesture. She meant that the enemy were all dead.
Straken said, ‘Three squads. Montara, you check the area east of the bunker. Griersen?’
The lieutenant looked round. The left side of his face was mottled with scar tissue. ‘Sir?’
‘Take the west. I’ll check the ork camp.’
Straken gestured to Cole, the demolitions expert, and Myers, the support gunner. Massive even by Catachan standards, Myers lumbered over and waited for the call to fight, holding his heavy bolter like a lasgun.
‘Colonel?’
He turned: it was Lessky, the command squad’s vox operator. The man squinted, pressing the comm-link to his ear. ‘Sir, I’ve got a signal. It’s on the special frequency, coded. I can almost make it out...’
‘Get to higher ground. I’ll cover you. Stokes,’ he added, pointing at a corporal who wore nothing on his chest except dirt and a bandolier, ‘take four men and come with us. Sergeant Tren, get the rest of the camp checked! Now move!’
‘Alright, listen up. Previous orders are overridden.’
Straken stood on an outcrop of bare rock, as high as he could get. His officers watched from a little way down. Montara stood at the front of the group, arms folded. Lower down, a ring of Catachans watched the forest. The orders might be cancelled, but that didn’t mean that the orks had gone away.
The outcrop just cleared the tops of the trees. They were only a few miles from the edge of the jungle, and the plant life was less dense here. Among the trees, visibility was down to a reasonable fifteen yards. Further in, you would be lucky to see three feet into the forest.
‘There’s a reason we’re up here, and this is it.’ Straken pointed to the east, his metal arm glinting in the sun. Miles away, a massive dark structure rose up from the ground, its base hidden by the forest. It was gigantic, but distance made its exact size hard to make out. The tip was wreathed in clouds: smoke billowed from the edges of the structure. It was roughly conical in shape, but bulged in places like a termite mound. It was, in some ways, the closest thing to a termite colony that the Imperium produced.
‘Infernus Hive,’ Straken said. ‘A message has come through that the orks have been gaining ground inside the hive city. Looks like the front is stabilised – Emperor knows if that’s good or bad news.’
A couple of Catachans nodded. Sergeant Halda spat over the side of the outcrop. The fight for the hive went in waves: not just forward and back, but up and down as different levels of the structure changed hands. It was confusing and vicious work, and Straken knew that his men had been pleased to be sent to fight orks in the jungle outside. The jungle might be no less deadly than the hive – probably more so – but it was a deadliness that they knew well.
‘The vox says that in the last greenskin offensive, something called Perimeter Fifty-Six was overrun. It seems that General Beran of the Mordian One Hundred and Sixth had been believed dead along with his regiment. Turns out they’ve picked up a signal from them. The general is injured and they need extraction.’
There was a murmur. Someone said, ‘Ah, hell.’
‘And we will be extracting them. We move in on the location, taking out any opposition on the way. We locate this general and whatever’s left of his men, then we get out and signal for extraction. Questions?’
Lessky raised his hand. It was missing a finger. ‘Does that mean that we’re going back into the hive, sir?’
‘Yes, we are.’ Straken looked them over. ‘Alright then, what’re you waiting for? Let’s move!’
They slipped easily through the jungle, even as a multi-limbed and spider-like creature lunged at Straken. But he pinned its head to a trunk with his long knife, cleaning the blade as they kept walking.
Seventy years, nearly, he thought as he slipped the long blade back in its sheath. They ma
de the fang-knives of Catachan well. Straken had never marked his kills on the blade the way some soldiers did – had he done so, he would have run out of metal decades ago.
‘Colonel?’ It was Hollister. The unit’s medic was as tough as any of the rest of them, but there was something odd about the fellow, as if his mind was always half on other things.
The medic glanced at Straken, as if checking something. It made Straken think of the rejuvenat treatments that Hollister could provide. The thought of being kept going by some drug sent a flash of anger through him.
Seeing the colonel’s expression, Hollister drew away, and Straken scowled at the path ahead.
They stopped at the edge of the jungle, spreading out at the treeline. Suddenly, there was no canopy to hide the Catachans. They had arrived at Infernus Hive.
Somewhere to the east, gunfire crackled and boomed as the front raged, but here it was quiet. Two hundred metres of barren ground stretched before them. It was dirt, grey-brown stuff, more like brick dust than compressed earth. Ruts criss-crossed the ground, a mass of scars laid down by tank tracks and huge wheels.
Ork vehicles lay wrecked before them: buggies, tanks, gun platforms, half-tracks, even a couple of flying machines covered in trophies and glyph-signs. They had that motley, thrown-together look common to ork machinery and lay among craters and chunks of rubble, some burned out, others blasted apart. Their pilots and crew were strewn around them, great green bodies torn and burned. All had been heading towards the same place, trying to swarm into the hive city when its defenders had opened fire.
Beyond the barren ground stood the wall of the hive. It rose into the sky, higher than any cliff. Gargoyles studded the wall. Friezes of Imperial heroes had been painted onto the rockcrete. The figures were taller than knight Titans, chipped and worn away by storms and explosions.
The scale of the wall was dizzying; it would have dwarfed a Capitol Imperialis. Beyond it, the next level of the hive city began, tapering slightly. High above, miles from ground level, the city vanished into the clouds.
