The Warhawks ran rampant, sweeping across the parapet and drawing closer to the massive defence tower ahead of them. Aikino kept it fixed in his sights. The push had gained them about twenty metres.
‘Sir!’ came Gerran’s voice over the vox, out of breath. ‘Left flank, heavy incoming!’
As soon as the lieutenant finished speaking, a swathe of bolter fire sprayed across the width of the parapet. Aikino flung himself to the ground, falling heavily on his wounded leg. Gerran did the same, but a series of shrieks from further back told him some others had not reacted quickly enough.
‘Where in hell did they come from?’ he blurted, crawling forwards on his belly and craning his neck. ‘How many of the damned…’
Aikino trailed off as he got a clear look ahead, out over the remaining ground between his men and the defence tower.
More defenders were massing. He saw gun crews struggling with tripod-mounted heavy bolters and lascannons. He saw fresh squads of troops in pristine armour emerge from access hatches and take up position behind bulkheads. Further back, he saw troop carriers bearing Shardenus insignia land on the parapet, unloading more men and materiel.
He looked over his shoulder, back towards the ground won by the Warhawks. The remaining Vultures still hovered, giving sporadic air support to the troops on the parapet. Every patch of ground won was coming under heavy fire from replenished ranks of defenders. The beachhead established on the walls, always fragile, was being ground back, pace by pace.
‘Here come more of them,’ said Gerran, gesturing out over the toxic wastes between the spires.
A squadron of Shardenus garrison heavy lifters, escorted by wings of stub-winged flyers, was heading towards their position. Aikino took a look at the lead craft. It was big enough for at least two hundred troops, and there were more behind it.
‘We’ve drawn them out, at least,’ he said, smiling wryly.
Then, as soon as he’d spoken, he realised what that meant.
‘That’s what we’re here for,’ he said out loud, shaking his head as he realised the truth.
Gerran shuffled forwards. The firefight was still raging all around them, and the Warhawks’ advance was in danger of stalling.
‘Sir?’ he asked, a note of urgency in his voice. ‘What are your orders?’
Aikino laughed bitterly.
‘It doesn’t really matter what my orders are, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘We’ve already done what we were meant to.’
Aikino checked the charge on his lasgun. Enough for a dozen or so more shots before a recharge – as if that mattered.
‘I don’t under–’
‘They knew we couldn’t take down these towers,’ said Aikino, speaking with the dry finality of a man whose death is very close. ‘But they knew we’d do enough damage to pull defenders from the other sectors.’
The sky across the western horizon suddenly lit up, far more brightly and more intensely than the sky above the parapets. Something very, very big had just gone off on the far side of the hive cluster, many kilometres away, beyond the spires that loomed over them.
‘What was that?’ asked Gerran, sounding startled.
Aikino looked carefully, letting his helmet visor do the work of filtering and magnification. Even with such aids, he couldn’t make much out. He could guess, though. Right at the end, he reckoned he knew just what was going on.
‘That’ll be our allies,’ he said, dragging himself up to his feet and preparing to charge towards the enemy lines. ‘That’ll be the bastards who were meant to be fighting with us.’
He broke into a run. Ahead of him lay ranks of enemy soldiers, well dug-in and waiting for him. Seeing his charge, others of the Warhawks broke cover and joined in the assault. Gerran came with them – he was a good soldier, one that Aikino would be sorry to lose.
They were all going to die. Every loyal trooper on that parapet sector, sooner or later, was going to die.
Aikino lowered his lasgun, ignoring the incoming beams as they whipped past him. He picked his target, and took aim.
He didn’t feel bitter. The adrenaline of combat still surged through his system, just as it should have done. He was a warrior of the Emperor, and there was no better way for a warrior to go. At least he understood.
‘For Harakon!’ he roared, firing all the while, running into the oncoming storm as if nothing could hurt him.
And behind him, valiant and doomed, the charging squads of Warhawks took up the battle-cry for the last time.
For Harakon!
‘What just happened?’ asked Nethata, looking at the tactical feed with disbelief. ‘Do we have troops over there? Why are we getting signals from that sector?’
His commanders said nothing. All of them stared, just as he was doing, at the hololith hovering over the main table. Each of them was perfectly capable of reading the situation. On the south-east sector of the hive cluster walls, the battle raged just as it had been doing for over an hour. The beleaguered Harakoni drop-troops defended the areas of the walls they’d taken, though their territory was being inexorably whittled away. Beyond the walls, out in the Gorgas, the Ferik tactical brigades were struggling to make much headway. Heavy munitions were dragged up into position only to be destroyed by the defence towers on the walls. The main assault on Shardenus Prime, for all its speed and daring, was foundering in a bloody mire of destruction.
None of the commanders were looking at those signals. All of them were looking at a whole array of light-points that had just appeared on the opposite side of the hive cluster, moving fast. They’d come out of nowhere, as if summoned from the ash of the plains. Without warning, those signals had rushed up from the western hinterland zone, overlapping with the walls on the far side of the hive complex.
‘No information, lord,’ said Vilese eventually, inclining his head to listen to an incoming datafeed from the long-range augur crews. ‘I don’t have anything.’
Nethata whirled around, barely suppressing an urge to hurl blunt objects at his command staff.
‘No information!’ he shouted, feeling the veins on his neck stick out. ‘No inform–’
His tirade was interrupted by a burst of static over the comm-feed.
‘Lord General,’ came the unmistakable metallic rasp of Clan Commander Rauth. ‘Maintain your assault. Disregard losses. We have engaged the enemy across sectors 9-6 on the south-west Melamar quadrant. We do not need assistance. The sacrifice of your men is acknowledged.’
The feed went dead, preventing any sort of reply.
The chamber fell silent. Only the servitors kept working at their stations, oblivious to the aura of shock hanging in the room.
‘They used us,’ said Nethata eventually. ‘We were a… diversion.’
Heriat nodded.
‘So it seems. What are we going to do?’
Nethata didn’t reply immediately. He carried on staring at the tactical hololiths, watching as men under his command died. He knew he’d have to make a decision quickly – the battle for the walls was agonisingly poised, and hesitation would doom more of his troops to a pointless death.
Even so, he found himself frozen, locked between rage and disbelief.
One thought ran through his head, again and again, blotting out all other considerations. It nagged at him, stopping him from making up his mind, stopping him from giving his commanders the words they needed to hear.
They used us.
Naim Morvox swayed against his restraint harness as the Thunderhawk carrier Tjeslak thundered into range. All around him his brothers stood silently, each lost in contemplation before the bloodshed to come.
The interior bulkheads rattled as the gunship streaked through walls of flak, but none of the warriors in the crew-bay so much as moved. Each one wore his helm, just as the Iron Hands always did, masking their emotions entirely. For all Morvox knew his squa
d were reciting litanies of hatred to themselves, or running through the attack plans a final time, or simply freeing their minds of unnecessary clutter. They were like ancient statues to him, cold and featureless.
‘Deploy in twenty seconds,’ came the voice of the pilot over the comm.
Morvox prepared himself, blink-clicking his retinal display into life and watching the bow-ramp for the first sign of movement. He knew they’d be coming in fast, far faster than any mortal drop-troops could have managed, and getting the timing right would be imperative.
The Thunderhawk passed through a patch of heavy turbulence – the corona of an explosion, perhaps – and the floor bucked like a living thing. The Iron Hands adjusted stance automatically, maintaining both their positions and their strange, expectant silence.
Morvox knew that other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes went into battle differently. He’d served alongside many of them: White Consuls, Flesh Tearers, Death Spectres. Each of those Chapters had launched into combat with cries of rage ringing from their vox-casters, invoking the names of the Emperor and their primarch to stoke their battle-fury.
The Iron Hands were different. All Medusans were different, raised on a world so choked with scouring winds that opening one’s mouth to shout anything in battle resulted in nothing more than a mouthful of grit.
So they prepared in silence. They trained in silence. When the moment came, they would disembark in silence, keeping the comm free for essential battle signals. When the Iron Hands went to war, the only sound was the low machine hum of power armour.
The Thunderhawk reeled again, hit by something along the right-hand stretch of fuselage. Morvox adjusted his stance fractionally.
‘Location achieved,’ announced the pilot calmly. ‘Manus guide you.’
The Thunderhawk swerved in mid-air, rapidly slowing as its mighty air-brakes kicked in. The front ramp shot down with a hiss of hydraulics, ushering in a storm of hot, dry wind from outside. The carrier was still travelling fast. The outside world, glimpsed through the lowered bow-ramp, was a speeding whirl of fire, smog and shrapnel.
Morvox severed his flight harness and crashed down the ramp.
The surface of the hive wall parapet lay ten metres below him, approaching fast. Las-beams and heavy bolters scythed out in all directions, aiming for the squadrons of Thunderhawks hovering over the parapets. Those shots that made contact fizzled out on the gunships’ heavy plate armour or reflected wildly out into the sky.
Morvox kicked free of the ramp and leapt out into the air. As he plummeted, dragged down quickly by his heavy armour, he had a brief vista across the whole plane of the hive cluster. Several spires rose up in the east, wreathed in burning ash clouds. Beyond them, out on the far perimeter, he could see the effects of heavy bombardment. A major engagement was taking place on the eastern wall sectors, and the sky above it was deep crimson like an angry wound.
Then he was down, crashing into the rockcrete surface of the parapet and cracking the slabs with his boots. The rest of Clave Arx crunched down around him, falling from the heavens like vengeful avatars of the gods.
The Thunderhawk shot overhead, banking sharply and bringing its cannon to bear on the fixed anti-aircraft points. Morvox started to advance, striding in silence towards the first of many low ridges he could see carved out of the flat expanse of the parapet. Las-fire and solid rounds flickered out at him, and he ignored them. His clave fell in alongside him, laying down bolter volleys in careful, disciplined bursts. The squad progressed steadily, soundlessly, moving methodically through the ash-wind like red-eyed golems of Terran legend.
Morvox reached the first line of cover and crashed straight through it, smashing aside loose blocks of ferro-crete. On the far side, a dozen mortal troops scattered, firing behind them as they fled. Morvox picked them off with single bolter shots, one by one, advancing all the while.
Across the parapet, Thunderhawks were dropping other claves into the battlezone. They all did the same thing – advanced steadily across the walls, heading for the defence towers and the access tubes that led further into the hive cluster.
The defenders attempted to rally in the face of the assault, dragging up a tripod-mounted heavy bolter and swinging it round into position. Morvox gestured to Gergiz, and he let rip with a withering torrent from his own heavy bolter, shredding the emplacement and cutting its crew into blood-flecked pieces.
The Iron Hands kept advancing, never speeding up, never slowing down. They stormed across each defensive perimeter they came to, cutting down any who stood in their way. The enemy troops were too sparse and too disorganised to put up any resistance – with the multiple assaults taking place in the eastern wall zones, all reserves had been deployed elsewhere.
A part of Morvox regretted that. He found himself wishing the defence was a little stronger, a little more worthy of his strength at arms.
Such thoughts were human thoughts, though, residues of his old Medusan self. Before long, he knew, his only thoughts in battle would be those of efficiency, of completeness, of slaughter in the pursuit of perfection. Until then, he allowed himself his fleeting regrets.
The main defence tower loomed before them, already burning from the strafing runs of Raukaan’s Thunderhawks.
‘Brother Sulzar,’ said Morvox, indicating the heavily barred gateway to the tower.
Sulzar stepped up and took aim with his shoulder-mounted missile launcher. A krak projectile screamed off towards the gateway, exploding with an echoing howl as it broke through the outer shell.
Morvox stalked towards the smoking ruins, scanning for targets. His helm lenses picked out three semi-conscious bodies in the rubble, which he ignored; others in his squad would dispatch them.
He broke into the tower, clanking down a long corridor lit with stuttering lumens. The interior space was already filled with the noises of battle – echoing bolter bursts, the thud of falling bodies, the screams of the dying. Other Iron Hands squads had penetrated the building at different levels and were already cleansing it, floor by floor.
Morvox reached the end of the corridor where it intersected with a larger chamber. A dozen defenders, each clad in close-fitting grey armour and with blank metal facemasks, attempted an ambush. One of them hurled a short-fuse grenade right at Morvox’s chest while others opened fire from the shadows.
Moving with sudden, whip-sharp speed, Morvox shot the grenade almost before it had left its owner’s hand, igniting a massive explosion that ripped the man apart. Then Morvox was amongst the remainder of the group, finishing them off with his armoured hands. He smashed one half-dazed trooper full in the face, shattering his helmet-mask and driving deep into the flesh and bone beneath. He broke the neck of another with a savage backhand, and crushed the chest of a third under his boots.
It went on. His armour slick with blood, Morvox ploughed through the rest of them, lashing out with precisely weighted movements. A few snap-shots glanced off his armour; they left little more than scorch-marks on the ceramite.
They passed into a mezzanine level beyond. He and his battle-brothers fired their bolters rarely, preferring to take the mortal fighters apart at close range to save ammo. As the press of combat grew fiercer, Morvox mag-locked his boltgun and drew his blade. The serrated edge shimmered softly in the gloom – a thin red light like the last dregs of sunset.
‘Locator reading,’ he ordered over the comm, slicing open the back of a retreating defender and shaking the flaps of flesh loose from his blade.
‘Two levels down,’ replied Fierez as he threw a soldier headlong into the wall, breaking his spine with a wet snap. He consulted his auspex. ‘Clave Prime is on schedule.’
Morvox grunted with satisfaction and kept going. The mezzanine platform hung over a deep shaft running up and down the centre of the tower. A wide metal stairway snaked around the interior of it, hugging the walls on all four sides. The few defenders who had
escaped the initial assault were already fleeing down the stairwell, any pretence at resistance given up.
Morvox followed them. More noises of combat rose up from the base of the shaft, echoing from wall to wall. Furious volleys of bolter fire interlaced with fresh shrieks of fear and agony, and lightning-white muzzle flashes shot up from the depths.
‘Prepare bolters,’ he ordered, sheathing his sword as he descended through the levels. ‘Ranged fire, controlled bursts.’
Two levels down, another corridor branched off from the stairwell, brightly-lit and paved with polished tiles. It led swiftly into a much larger chamber, one with a broad domed roof with a whole cluster of hovering glow-lumens under the eaves. The space beneath it was huge – large enough to accommodate hundreds of men. The walls had been decorated with panels celebrating ancient victories of the Imperium picked out in bronze, and an austere iron statue of Rogal Dorn – Shardenus’s patron primarch – stood proudly under the roof’s apex.
There, it seemed, the tower’s defenders had chosen to make their stand. Barricades had been hastily assembled all across the wide floorspace, each one manned by dozens of grey-armoured troops. Two squads of Iron Hands had arrived before Clave Arx, coming up from the levels below, and battle had already been joined. Las-beams and solid rounds swept across the open space, crashing into the walls and knocking huge chunks out of the bronze reliefs. The noise was ferocious, echoing in the enclosed chamber and resounding from the dome above.
‘Right flank,’ ordered Morvox, assessing where best to deploy his forces. ‘Close combat, standard pattern.’
The Iron Hands broke instantly into a new style of fighting, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere deep within their black-armoured shells. They charged straight at the nearest defenders. Despite the massive size of their power armour, the rate of acceleration was tremendous. Clave Arx tore across the short distance to the barricades, swerving with uncanny accuracy around the lines of incoming fire.
Once they reached the barricades, bedlam was unleashed. Still in complete vox-silence, they ripped up the ferrocrete barriers with thundering blasts of bolter fire. They cracked open the mortals’ armour with vicious, sweeping blade movements. They lashed out with fists, crunched down with armoured boots, unleashed hurricanes of heavy weapons fire. They ripped through the resistance like a swollen storm-wave crashing into an unprepared coast.
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