Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds

by Mark Clapham

  Malinko nearly knocked Wuhrsk, who was climbing to his right, off the wall as he swung sideways, but Wuhrsk caught Malinko by the arm and they dangled together, briefly, as the boiling liquid flowed down the wall.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ hissed Wuhrsk, expression unreadable behind his helmet.

  ‘Of course!’ said Malinko, regaining his own grip on the wall.

  Letting go of Malinko, Wuhrsk resumed climbing without saying a word.

  By the time Rotaka and Hulpin pulled themselves up onto the battlements, a small stretch had been taken, but the occupants of the city were rallying. Around the curve of the wall, mortals were moving in from both directions, subjecting the invaders to a barrage of bolts and las-fire.

  More Red Corsairs were coming up behind them. As Hulpin helped Wuhrsk up, Rotaka saw that Verbin had got ahead of them and was providing supporting fire to Becaro’s squad, who were fighting off the mortals to the right. To Rotaka’s left, a similar group was blockading the battlements in the other direction. The Corsairs were shoulder to shoulder, with no room for Rotaka to add his bolter to the battle.

  He looked into the city, over the low wall that ran around the inside lip of the battlements. Below was a warren of deserted streets between closely crammed buildings of various heights, huddled together in the space between the city wall and the Archway.

  Rotaka only had a second or two to take all this in before a rocket from the roof of a building a few blocks away streaked towards him. He ducked behind the low wall, against which the rocket exploded, fragments of hot rockcrete filling the air.

  Garreon’s voice came over the vox: ‘Is the target area secure?’

  A chorus of ‘ayes’ echoed over the vox.

  ‘Then brace,’ said Garreon.

  On the bridge of the Fist, Garreon turned to the Tyrant, who stood silently flexing his claw.

  ‘Area secure, my lord,’ said the Corpsemaster.

  Huron simply nodded, his glowing augmetic eye gazing balefully at Garreon as if to say that any failure would be his fault.

  Garreon pushed a sigil allowing him to vox the bridges of all the galleons.

  ‘On three, full power reverse and all batteries fire on target areas. One, two, three!’

  As one, the galleons pulled back, the chains fixed to the wall tautening. Simultaneously, the galleons’ smaller guns began to pepper the sections of the wall the Corsairs had taken with explosive fire, chipping away at the rockcrete surrounding that stretch of the wall.

  Ahead of the galleons, the air was filled with smoke, and from his position on the bridge of the Fist, Garreon couldn’t see whether the bombardment was working. All he could feel was the judder of the deck beneath his boots as the galleon pulled against the wall.

  That tension could not last. Sooner or later, something would give.

  Beneath Rotaka’s booted feet, the wall began to shift.

  Rotaka risked looking over the inner lip of the battlements once more, down into the city below. It was a long way down, and thin cracks were beginning to emerge on the interior surface of the wall.

  As the guns of the galleons battered the city wall on either side of the position held by the Corsairs, Becaro and the others withdrew to Rotaka’s position. The battlements to either side of them had been pulverised by the onslaught, driving back any mortal resistance.

  The stretch of battlements they stood on shifted outwards, towards the galleons.

  This was lunacy, thought Rotaka, and he knew what to do.

  ‘Malinko,’ he shouted over the roar of explosions and creaking rockcrete. ‘Will you lead us down to the city?’

  ‘It will be an honour,’ said Malinko. He turned to address his fellow Corsairs. ‘On my–’

  He was drowned out by the sound of rockcrete cracking, as loud as a thunderclap, and the entire section of wall on which they stood began to topple backwards, the galleon’s wheels spinning free as it pulled away and dragged that chunk of wall down.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Malinko as he jumped over the edge of the wall. The interior of the wall was no longer a sheer drop, but an increasingly sloped surface, and Malinko landed on that slope and began to descend on his heels.

  Rotaka and the others jumped after him.

  From the top of the wall to the paved street below, their descent must have taken a matter of seconds, but to Rotaka’s enhanced senses time seemed to slow, each moment stretching as he took in every potential threat, registered it and chose how to respond. Rotaka fell backwards as he hit the wall, sliding down on his back with his heels digging in to give himself some moderate level of control. He leant to the right to avoid an expanding crack from where their section of the wall had broken away – that section was falling to pieces around them, and they would be lucky to reach the bottom without being buried in falling rubble.

  In all, there were over two dozen Red Corsairs sliding down the wall, and as they descended closer to the streets, mortals began to emerge from cover and fire upon them. Rotaka almost respected those mortals who had the nerve to open fire upon a descending horde of Red Corsairs, a terrifying spectacle no doubt unlike anything these worlds had seen before.

  That respect wasn’t enough to discourage Rotaka from returning fire. At this speed of descent, the shots from his bolter flew wild, but it hardly mattered: each explosion of a bolter shell disrupted the mortals’ attempts to target the Corsairs, raised their panic and made the chances of anyone down there taking another clear shot virtually nil.

  As the Corsairs reached the end of their descent, Malinko led the way, launching himself away from the wall before reaching the bottom. Screaming oaths, he landed amongst a crowd of mortals and raised his flamer, letting loose a torrent of burning promethium.

  Hitting the ground and rolling into a firing position, Rotaka tried to get his bearings, but a great cloud of dust from the collapsing wall behind him consumed the Corsairs and everything in its path.

  Rotaka switched his helmet settings to track heat and motion. Ahead of him was a white-hot blur where Malinko had set his surroundings ablaze, but beyond that Rotaka could see red figures, most partially obscured by the cool blue of the barricades and walls they hid behind. His fellow Corsairs were the same blue as their surroundings, bulky hills of cold ceramite visible by outline as they moved.

  He fired quickly, and the other Red Corsairs did the same, bolters turning red, then white on the thermal sensors, the motion of the bolts streaking across Rotaka’s vision as they sped to their targets. Rotaka was systematic, sweeping his bolter up and across, finding red figures, squeezing the trigger briefly and moving on. There was a white burst of heat as each bolt found its mark – one, two, three targets down at windows and balconies. The smoke and dust in the air wasn’t giving the mortals any chance to fire back.

  Ahead of Rotaka, the mortals had fled from Malinko, and he had let his flamer rest. Sweeping his bolter back and forth for targets, Rotaka caught up with him. The enemy seemed to have retreated, with no red figures visible through the cloud. Then, before he could even speak to Malinko, he saw tiny streaks of motion overhead, small projectiles cast through the air towards them.

  ‘Grenades,’ shouted Rotaka, rushing for cover. There was little room for manoeuvring in the narrow street and he slammed himself into a wall as an explosion went off far too close, whiting out his thermal vision. He swore and switched back to normal vision. The dust cloud had largely settled, though the grenades were throwing up more debris now. Hugging the wall, Rotaka looked ahead to see mortals surging forwards, opening fire as they ran from cover to cover. The streets were a warren, branching off in three ways, and the mortals were ducking into doorways and arches to create a kill box ahead of the Red Corsairs.

  Then Rotaka heard a growing roar from behind him, and glanced back to see an army of slaves climbing through the gap in the wall. They were not an impressive sight, pallid and
starving from long years in the depths of Huron’s spaceships and land galleons, but they were many, and their desperation had bred in them a savagery that made up for their weak bodies and crude weaponry.

  And there, cutting through the centre of the horde, was Huron Blackheart himself, towering over the mob of slaves, striding at the speed they ran.

  ‘Do not hesitate – do not indulge in slaughter or stop to secure territory,’ he shouted, his voice carrying over the heads of them all. ‘Press on, press on and seize me the Archway before nightfall.’

  Blood pumping from this address, Rotaka swung around and opened fire on the mortals, determined to stay ahead of the horde and be one of the first to reach the Archway, to take it for the Tyrant.

  It had begun with the sound of distant thunder, a rumbling coming from the forest all around the city. Then came the roar of explosions, and a plume of smoke at the city’s edge. From his perspective on the rooftop, Kretschman could not see what had just happened, but he could guess, not just from the smoke and dust but from the shouts of Jandarme and Cadians rushing through nearby streets. Somehow, the wall had been breached and the enemy were in the city.

  While below his comrades at street level rushed to seal the breach like blood cells flowing towards a cut, Kretschman knew his duty was to maintain his position.

  Resting the rocket launcher on the low parapet that fringed the rooftop, Kretschman tuned out the distant, approaching noise of gunfire and concentrated on his job: watching for the enemy’s approach.

  Colonel Ruthger had established his command centre in Rubicon as close to the Archway as he could. He had chosen a narrow gallery overlooking the Archway, with thick red curtains and incense in the air and a single, heavy double door at one end of the room. Tech-priests made incantations and manipulated sigils on cogitators. Ruthger had presumed from all this ritual that the Adeptus Mechanicus had full control of the workings of the Archway.

  ‘What do you mean it won’t close?’ demanded Ruthger. He had been prepared for death, but not this.

  ‘The Archways are very ancient unknown technologies that we do not fully understand. It took many centuries for our predecessors to establish rituals to manipulate those technologies,’ said the tech-priest with an infuriating lack of urgency. ‘Our knowledge has always been incomplete and the records of our ancestors are, sadly, lost.’

  ‘So you know nothing about nothing,’ said Ruthger. ‘That doesn’t explain the problem.’

  ‘The controls have become infected with scrapcode,’ said the tech-priest. ‘It must have lain dormant, as we did not realise that those systems were even connected to the communications until we tried to close the Archway. Now the system is frozen, and the Archway remains open, with no means to shut it.’

  Ruthger looked out of the window of the gallery, which overlooked the far corner of the Archway. The gallery was several storeys up, but the stone curve of the Archway was massive, and this close Ruthger could see baffling symbols carved into the stone. Even through multiple shielded glass of the kind used in deep space – the tech-priest had tediously explained this a few hours before – the Archway’s energies were fiercely bright. Below, a riot was in progress as civilians tried to push through the Archway before it closed. There was the sound of gunfire as Guardsmen drove back the civilians who had not passed the final checkpoints before the Archway, so it could be bolted and barricaded.

  Those who weren’t shot would die in Rubicon, thought Ruthger. But if the Cadians allowed civilians through the Archway and didn’t close it, it would be a very brief reprieve. Ruthger had to sacrifice the people of Laghast to give those on Kerresh a fighting chance.

  ‘You do not understand the mysteries of this technology,’ said Ruthger, moderating his tone. He knew that for the Adeptus Mechanicus, especially the lowlier tech-priests, the mysteries of machines were part of their religious significance, and it did not help to enflame their fervour on these matters. ‘But you must maintain these technologies, yes? Perform the rituals to keep them in working order.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the tech-priest, nodding his hooded head.

  ‘And which are the most important, would you say?’ asked Ruthger.

  The tech-priest thought for an infuriatingly long time before answering. ‘The scrolls emphasise the significance of the banks of cogitation, and the rotors of alignment, but also the importance of maintaining the generators and the adjacent banks of power converters.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Ruthger. ‘We’ll need to take those out of action.’

  ‘Which ones?’ asked the tech-priest. Even through the harsh modulation of his artificial voice box, he sounded alarmed.

  ‘All of them,’ said Ruthger.

  Eleven

  Rotaka told himself that he did not debase himself like some of his fellow Red Corsairs, that he did not indulge in carnage for carnage’s sake, that he fought to carry out his orders and did not bathe in blood as an indulgence.

  Regardless, he felt something close to joy as his squad fought their way through the streets of Rubicon.

  Malinko took the lead, dashing from cover to cover, getting as close as he could to enemy lines before unleashing a burst of fire from his flamer. As Malinko darted around he drew fire from snipers high above, and Wuhrsk, clinging to the walls and staying in shadow, tracked back each shot to its source and returned fire. Rotaka and the others provided covering fire at ground level, taking out any mortals who emerged from behind their barricades to try to stop Malinko’s stuttering charge.

  They were making good time, not the speed they would if they were free to run through empty streets, but they were systematically fighting through the city’s defences. In rare moments where Rotaka’s squad were not in combat he could hear nearby gunfire and shouts, as other Red Corsairs squads and Huron’s slave army fought their way through parallel streets, all weaving towards the Archway.

  At the end of one street a light barricade blocked the way, undefended. The snipers seemed to be holding back too. Beyond the barricade Rotaka could see some kind of square, and beyond that the Archway, gleaming with temptation.

  ‘Malinko, halt,’ Rotaka snapped into the vox. ‘Hulpin, take down that barricade.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Hulpin, dashing past Malinko, bolter locked to his leg and chainfists thrumming. The barricade was a high metal fence of solid sheets, and Hulpin’s chainfists tore straight through it, cutting a criss-cross through the metal. Weakened, the middle of the barricade collapsed in on itself as Hulpin gave it a kick before withdrawing to cover.

  Rotaka was expecting a hail of gunfire as the barrier went down, but as his squad took cover there was no response. Through the gap in the barricade he could see a small open plaza with worn-down, faceless statues in the centre, memorials to some long-forgotten heroes of the Imperium. At the other side of the square was a street leading to the Archway. The route seemed clear.

  ‘It must be a trap,’ hissed Wuhrsk over the vox.

  ‘Of course it’s a trap,’ said Hulpin. ‘The gods may favour us, but they offer nothing of worth to those who do not fight for it.’

  ‘Thanks for that, very helpful,’ said Rotaka. ‘Verbin, can you get a grenade right in the middle of those statues?’

  ‘Ugly things,’ Verbin growled. ‘A pleasure.’

  Stopping short of entering the square Verbin ran forwards and cast a grenade overarm, the small sphere sailing through the air and landing perfectly between the worn statues.

  There was a moment of silence, and then the grenade detonated, blowing the statues into chunks that scattered across the square. Where several chunks landed there were further detonations, the debris setting off hidden mines. As explosions spread over the square there were brief bursts of gunfire from high windows and rooftops, before someone realised they were firing on smoke and the firing stopped.

  ‘What now?’ said Malinko. ‘I say
we get in there and draw them out.’

  ‘Let’s at least reach the objective before making a last stand,’ said Rotaka. ‘You and Wuhrsk stay here – take a few shots at likely sniping positions every minute or so. Hulpin, Verbin, you’re with me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Hulpin.

  Rotaka pointed to the rooftop of the nearest building.

  ‘We go up.’

  Coming up against a Red Corsair in person was a different thing to seeing one in a blurry visual feed. The figure that ran into the square below, threw something, then ducked back out of sight again, was a muscular, armoured mass of shifting, bloodied plate. It also moved faster than would be thought possible for a creature that size, and Kretschman nearly fired his rocket launcher in shock, expressly against orders, twice: once at the entrance of the figure into the square, terrifying even from a distance, and again when the grenade exploded in the centre of the square.

  The Red Corsairs knew it was a trap. Kretschman waited to see if this would change the Cadian plans.

  ‘Hold position,’ came an order over the vox.

  It took a matter of minutes for Rotaka, Verbin and Hulpin to reach roof level, smashing through the doors of a nearby building and charging up narrow stairs, their pauldrons dragging across plasterwork as they squeezed through spaces built for mortals. The interior of the building was deserted, any mortals having fled. They reached the rooftop intact, running out into the open air to find a couple of squads of Cadians aiming sniper rifles and a grenade launcher over a balustrade into the square below.

  ‘By the Empero–’ the officer began, turning and drawing his chainsword, but before he could either finish his sentence or begin to attack, Hulpin had jammed a chainfist through the man’s chestplate.

  ‘Leave the launcher intact!’ Rotaka shouted, firing a couple of bolts into the Guardsmen. ‘Hulpin, take these. Verbin, take the launcher.’

  With an oath to the gods, Hulpin crashed into the first group of Cadians, swinging his chainfists back and forth, cutting through vulnerable mortal flesh. One Guardsman was flipped over the roof edge. There was an explosion from below as he landed on a mine.