Astra Militarum

by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)

  Straken voxed the order down the line.

  ‘Move up in squads,’ he said. ‘Use the ork armour for cover. And careful – just because a greenskin’s lying down doesn’t mean he’s dead. If you don’t know for sure, make sure. You’ve got your knives for a reason.’

  Straken’s command squad went first. They ran out, dashed across the open ground and ducked behind an armour-plated truck that had flipped onto its side. Straken peered around the edge of the truck and boosted the vision in his bionic eye. No lights shone on the wall, but he could see alcoves that looked like windows and firing-points. Maybe they were being watched. In a structure that big, it was impossible to tell. The only hope was that they would seem so tiny that no one would pay them any notice.

  The snipers and heavy weapons teams hung back, hidden among the trees, covering the advance. Straken saw Serradus, the most experienced of the snipers, directing his crew to vantage points. Sellen and Ferricus, two men so alike that they seemed to share the same brain, set up their missile launcher.

  Squads moved up behind Straken’s, using one another’s cover to advance. Straken kept to the front, as he always did. He ran alongside a stripped-down buggy, little more than a frame on wheels. A plasma gun had blasted straight though it, and the incinerated driver was as skeletal as his machine. The ork’s mouth gaped open, the eye sockets turned to the wall as if awestruck by the size of the hive.

  Sergeant Eiden gestured to get the colonel’s attention. Eiden was on the far edge of the advance, crouching down behind a heap of ruined ork bikes. The white-haired sergeant wore a necklace of ork canines, each seven centimetres long.

  ‘Hold position,’ Straken told his squad. He broke cover, rushed across the ground and darted to Eiden’s side. ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘Entry point.’ Eiden nodded at the wall. Straken looked, didn’t see it for a moment, then realised what the sergeant meant.

  Something, a vehicle or some kind of tunnelling missile, had blown a hole in the bottom of the wall. It had cut along the ground, burning a trench as deep as a man was tall, before tearing into the rockcrete. Orks lay scattered around the hole, presumably killed as they had tried to rush into the breach.

  But they still got in, Straken thought.

  The hole in the wall was big enough for a Baneblade tank to pass through. It made him feel wary, a sense of being outside his natural hunting ground that no jungle, no matter how hostile, could give him.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, and motioned to the command squad to follow him.

  They were forty-five metres from the hole when the orks opened fire.

  Lights flared in the hole, bullets roared, and four men were cut down in half a second. Corporal Jenks was hit by some kind of mounted gun and blown to pieces. ‘Take cover!’ Straken bellowed, and threw himself down, reaching for a grenade with his steel hand.

  Eiden’s squad darted back behind a ruined truck. A great howl echoed from the wall and massive aliens rushed out of the hole, holding axes and machetes. Straken pulled the plasma pistol from his hip and snapped three shots into the first pair of orks.

  An ork leaped onto a ruined buggy, heaving a machine gun up after it. Lasguns cracked, and its head burst. The alien toppled backwards, out of view. Straken risked a glance out of cover and saw more orks running down from the hole, a slavering gang of them. He raised the grenade to his mouth and paused a moment to let the aliens get closer.

  Straken pulled the pin out with his teeth. He counted – one, two – and hurled the bomb with his metal arm. It hit the ground, bounced and exploded in midair. Several of the brutes were killed – but, more importantly, it made the rest of them pause.

  ‘Come on,’ Straken shouted, ‘do I have to do everything myself?’

  The Catachans rose up around him and charged in. Straken hacked down one ork and put a plasma blast straight through a second. His men brought the aliens down with knives and lasgun butts.

  Gunfire rattled out of the hole, mowing down three men, but a missile streaked out of the Catachan line and burst in the gap, blasting orks out of cover. Enfilading fire came from the flank: Montara’s squad ripped into the enemy from the side. A few orks ran back into the dark; most charged forward when they realised that their cover was no more use, and fell a few steps later.

  Eiden approached. His knife was bloody and he held two long teeth in his other fist. ‘Ambush,’ he said.

  Straken nodded. ‘Let’s go. They’ll bring up others if they know we’re here.’

  The Catachans moved in silently, picking their way through the rubble and the wreckage that the orks had left behind. Straken sent out scouts to check the edges.

  ‘Emperor!’ Eiden said. ‘Look at that.’

  The explosion that had blasted through the wall had exposed several layers of the hive, as if the front had been ripped off a gigantic hotel, revealing the rooms and lives behind. Straken gazed upwards, seeing different levels: the narrow warrens of hab-zones, the halls that served as chapels and factories, canteens and recreation areas – even what looked like a mechanic’s yard, crammed with dozens of armoured vehicles.

  The entrance was daubed with dozens of ork symbols.

  ‘Place looks infested,’ Montara said. ‘No wonder these Mordian guys are pinned down.’

  ‘Keep moving,’ Straken said. ‘Go quietly. From here on, use your knives.’

  One of the few good things about fighting orks was their disunity. In the decades that he’d been killing greenskins, Straken had never seen much organisation. They barely had ranks, and their groups were more like feral gangs than regiments. They came together to attack a common enemy, like animals preying on the same herd, and squabbled and bullied one another when there was no better enemy to be found. Straken had seen dozens of ork hordes, but never a true ork army.

  Now, as he dragged a dead ork sentry into the shadows, he realised just how useful that was. The aliens considered it only natural that they would feud among themselves: if an ork went missing, he had probably just been killed by his fellow orks.

  They pressed on, deeper into the hive, moving steadily closer to the Mordians. The hab-zones had been gang territory before the orks had taken them. The Catachans passed gang symbols on the walls and the corpses of the people who had once sprayed them there. Now various ork clans occupied the areas, and had added their own scrawl to the graffiti. The locals lay sprawled over barricades and across the narrow corridors, or wherever the orks had found it amusing to leave them. It seemed that the xenos had taken particular delight in throwing their enemies down the lift shafts.

  The Catachans went quickly and quietly, fighting only where they had to, and killing swiftly and silently when it could not be avoided. The scouts brought back reports of large alien gatherings to the east and west and Straken’s men would be passing between them. Then they started to find dead orks.

  ‘Las-fire,’ Montara said, glancing at a huge green corpse. ‘We must be near.’

  Straken raised his metal hand. ‘Wait.’ He tilted his head, concentrating. ‘You hear that?’

  Montara cupped a scarred hand around her ear. ‘Hear what? Wait, I–’

  ‘Gunfire,’ Straken said. ‘Coming from the rendezvous point. Listen!’ he called. ‘There’s firing up ahead. Let’s get down there and get stuck in. On the double, Guardsmen!’

  They picked up the pace, running towards the sound. Only a few yards further, Straken began to hear the individual guns. A hundred yards on, and it was as though they were entering a storm of noise.

  Straken led them down a staircase, towards the epicentre. Voices joined the gunfire: human shouts and screams, and the roars and grunts of aliens. Straken paused at the end of the corridor and checked his weapons. Then he turned to his men.

  ‘Go!’ Straken shouted, and he lunged around the corner.

  They stood at the edge of an enormous hall. The cei
ling, so high that it was almost lost to view, was criss-crossed by enormous pipes like metal intestines. Under them, in the centre of the hall, stood a singular slab-sided building covered in robed statues and symbols of the Adeptus Mechanicus. There was a hole in one corner, where something had blown the building open, and a barricade of junk, furniture and metal sheeting was piled around the hole like a scab on a wound.

  Lasgun fire crackled from the barricade. Orks lay in heaps around the chamber, piles of xenos carcasses. Some were riddled with precise burn-holes, others blown limb from limb by grenades and mortar shells. As Straken entered, an ork eighteen metres away tried to rise, despite missing half of its head. Straken finished it with a shotgun blast.

  The Catachans tore into the remaining orks. The aliens were taken by surprise, hit from both sides. The las-fire from the Mordians and the knives of Straken’s men made short work of the orks. Straken grabbed one alien from behind, broke its shoulder in his metal grip and yanked its chin back, snapping the alien’s thick neck. Halda, the colour sergeant, knocked the legs of an ork out with his banner and drove it through its chest as if claiming the alien as Catachan territory. On the right, Montara grappled with a huge brute in yellow armour. Her arms strained as she pushed its head up and back, away from her. A Mordian on the barricade obligingly shot it through the brain, and it flopped down in a clatter of ramshackle armour.

  Straken could just make out faces over the barricade. Most of them wore dark blue caps.

  ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Are you General Beran’s men?’

  ‘That’s right!’ a voice called back. A corporal stood up. His left arm was bandaged, most of the sleeve torn away.

  ‘Colonel Straken, Second Catachan,’ Straken replied. ‘We came to get the general out.’

  ‘Yes? You’d better come inside.’

  ‘So,’ the Mordian said, ‘you’ve arrived.’ Her name was Krall: she was about forty, pale, with light brown hair and hard, deep-set eyes. She dressed like the rest of them: blue tunic, trousers with a stripe down the side and a pillbox hat. Her insignia said that she was a lieutenant. She looked like a toy soldier, Straken thought. So did the rest of her men.

  ‘Yep, we’re here.’ Straken walked into an entrance hall. Montara followed him. She looked grim and unimpressed. Behind them, Mordian soldiers were repairing the high barricade that they had half-dismantled to let the Catachans in. ‘Where’s General Beran?’

  Lieutenant Krall pointed off into a doorway. ‘He’s over there. But… the general’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  Montara said, ‘So what the hell did we hear?’

  ‘Probably a recorded message. We got hold of one of High Command’s servitors on the vox and told them to relay it. Then the orks attacked, and in the fight the set got smashed up. That’s the last message we were able to send.’

  ‘Great,’ Montara said. ‘So we came out here for nothing.’

  Straken said, ‘Sounds like there’s not much to stay here for. How many of you are there?’

  Krall paused. ‘About a hundred and fifty. Forty of whom are wounded, fifteen seriously.’

  ‘Get your troops ready to move out. You’ve got fifteen minutes. Put the injured on stretchers: we can rig up some sort of cart with the junk we passed on the way in.’

  ‘We’d need to take the general. But–’

  ‘Get him on a stretcher too.’ After all this time, Straken still hadn’t got used to the way some regiments dealt with the dead. On Catachan, it had always been the case that the body was left in the jungle, for the jungle to take. A man’s knife and his bandanna were left to mark his passing – his corpse meant little once the life was gone.

  ‘Colonel, you don’t understand. We can’t leave. I don’t have the authority.’

  Straken shrugged. ‘Then tell your commander. What is he, a captain?’

  ‘No. He’s a commissar.’

  Straken cursed under his breath. He paused a moment, thinking. ‘Where is he?’

  Krall said, ‘At the other barricade. That’s where we had the last big attack. You want me to take you?’

  ‘No. Show the captain here what your set-up is. Montara, send two teams of scouts to check the area outside. I need you to find out what the defences are, how far the perimeter extends and where the exits are – all the usual stuff, but especially the exits.’

  The Mordians had prepared for a siege, and once, Straken thought, they had been well-supplied. But now only a few ammunition boxes were stacked next to a couple of spare lasguns; the remaining medical gear and ration packs were guarded by broad, hard-eyed troopers. He passed an improvised hospital and saw a row of camp-beds filled by battered Guardsmen; their pain and senses blotted out with morphia. It was well-organised and neat. The only thing he couldn’t see was a way out.

  He walked past blue-uniformed men who looked as disapproving as they were wary of him. Thin grey dust was everywhere – Straken wondered how the hell the Mordians kept their gear so clean.

  The room beyond was wide and long, like the nave of a church. A massive hole had been blown in the rear wall. Thirty yards down, furniture had been heaped around bulky machines to form another barricade almost twice the height of a man. Troopers stood on the barricade, watching for the orks. Every few seconds, there would be a sudden crackle of lasguns, and a grunt or bellow from beyond the barricade. Beside the soldiers was a man in a long leather coat.

  ‘Commissar!’

  The man turned from his watch, stared at Straken, and then clambered down the heap of furniture.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s your uniform?’

  ‘Colonel Straken, Second Catachan. We picked up your distress message. I’m here to get you out. And this is my uniform.’

  The commissar was old, Straken saw, long-limbed and quick. He looked strong without being bulky.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Commissar Redmund Verryn. I assumed command here when General Beran was killed, and after Major Adamik showed himself incapable of facing up to the situation.’

  Which probably means that he got nervous and you shot him, Straken thought. All the same, commissars.

  Verryn took off his cap and stashed it under his arm. His hair looked as if it had been glued to his scalp in strips. ‘I don’t know how you got down here, but I’m afraid that the time for rescue is long-gone. We’re surrounded by the xenos.’

  ‘I’ve brought my men. We reckon we can get out of here. Probably take the wounded back, too. And the general.’

  ‘Appreciated, colonel.’ The commissar glanced back at the barricade. ‘But the orks will be too many. One way or another, we’re hemmed in. Emperor only knows how you got in – we barely managed it, too – but believe me, the way out will be closed by now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, colonel, that we are surrounded.’ He gestured around the hall. ‘This is it.’ Verryn smiled. ‘I always wondered what a last stand would feel like. It’s surprisingly bearable.’

  Straken felt a strong urge to knock that smile off the man’s face. ‘So we die here, is that it?’

  ‘Like heroes of the Imperium, colonel.’ Verryn sighed. ‘I’ve been with the Mordians all my life, you know. A lot of that time, I had the honour to serve with General Beran. Believe me, you’d have had the honour of fighting beside one of the great soldiers of the Imperial Guard.’

  ‘Too bad he’s a corpse. I’d have asked for his autograph otherwise.’

  ‘That’s enough of that attitude! You are in the presence of great men here, Straken. Great men. You should consider yourself lucky to be in such company.’

  ‘You should consider yourself lucky that I’m in a good mood.’

  Something seemed to snap in Verryn. His head darted forward, as if to bite Straken. His eyes were wild and as round and hard as spotlights. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
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br />   ‘It means that I’m getting these people out of here before you get them killed,’ Straken growled.

  ‘I’m not “getting them killed”! Didn’t you see how many orks there were? Or have your bionics rusted up?’

  ‘Yes, I saw. And I fought my way through ’em! Listen – I saw the state of your supplies. You don’t have long, commissar. Once you’re out of heavy weapon ammo, the orks will take two minutes to get over your defences and one minute to take your men apart. If we want to get out of this, we need to stick together and get out of here. Now.’

  ‘That’s enough! You will man the barricades and fight like a soldier of the Guard. And if you don’t...’ Verryn glanced over Straken’s shoulder. ‘Believe me, you won’t be on the barricade – you’ll be in front of it.’

  At the edge of Straken’s vision, a Mordian soldier stopped and glared at him. Straken wondered if there were others standing around, listening. He felt eyes on his back. He lowered his voice as much as his anger would allow.

  ‘Commissar, my men got here and they can get out again. We can get you, and the others, out. And then you can bury the general, come back and blow the hell out of as many orks as you want. Nobody has to die – not penned up in here, not on the way back.’

  Verryn’s teeth were clenched. ‘Your opinion is noted, colonel.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We will hold our ground. We can inflict far heavier casualties upon the enemy here than we could do on some hopeless escape attempt. The general’s body has to be protected. Consider it an honour guard.’

  ‘I consider it a waste of time,’ Straken said, turning away.

  ‘I don’t know what your customs are on Catachan, colonel, but the Mordians don’t abandon their dead,’ Verryn said, coldly.

  ‘Catachans don’t abandon the living, commissar,’ said Straken as he walked back towards his men.

  ‘They’ve tried to rush us more times than I can count,’ Lieutenant Krall was saying, ‘but the barricades hold up.’ She patted the heap of furniture. ‘We had some mines rigged, but the orks sent gretchin over them. Thing is, we’re short of ammo. Short of pretty much everything, really. Two, three, more good attacks and they’ll be inside.’