Assault on Black Reach: The Novel

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Welcome, brothers.’ His voice was noble, but filled with inner steel and undeniable confidence. ‘Please. Sit,’ he told them, and the officers obeyed. The Lions joined them at the tips of the U, occupying the last of the empty positions. Only Orad and the captain himself remained standing. Scipio noticed that Telion also remained where he was, and showed no visible sign of deference. But something had passed between the veteran scout and Sicarius. In his marrow, Scipio felt it. Respect.

  ‘We are two weeks from the Black Reach system,’ Sicarius began, once his officers were reseated. ‘Immortal renown for the 2nd, the Guardians of the Temple, awaits us there.’

  Scipio felt Iulus stiffen slightly at the captain’s apparent vainglory.

  ‘Daceus,’ the captain added, nodding to his battle-brother.

  The veteran sergeant rose to his feet and saluted, before activating a series of runic icons on the face of the strategium table. In the central point of the plate floor, delineated by the U, a hololith flickered into life, depicting a revolving green orb. The planet had several landmasses and was riddled with thick water tributaries, like fat through marbled beef, running from several major oceans. A wreath of smaller objects, a dense asteroid belt, swarmed around it, occasionally obscuring the view.

  ‘The planet of Black Reach, principle world of the Black Reach sector,’ Daceus announced. ‘A mining world, Black Reach has little obvious value to Ultramar yet it is tactically crucial,’ he explained.

  The sergeant pressed another rune on the sunken panel set into the table. The planetary image zoomed out, displaying the entire sector. ‘Jede’ogh and Voldermacht,’ he said, indicating two further worlds that had been revealed in the image shift. The immense asteroid field swathed all three. ‘And here,’ Daceus added, scrolling the image to one side with a desultory sweep of his gauntlet.

  A roiling mass of warp space, a rift in the layer of reality, was revealed circulating at the fringe of the sector. To Scipio it looked like a baleful eye, ragged and torn, seething with incandescent energy. Despite its pseudo-incorporeal form, it was visible even through the grainy resolution of the holo-capture.

  ‘Jorgund’s Eye,’ Daceus named it. ‘Through this wyrmhole a massive horde of greenskins has descended on Black Reach. It is unknown to us how such a thing was possible, how the ork could have caught us by surprise. It matters not. The facts are these: the greenskins have invaded the system and even now wage war upon the planet of Black Reach. Should their assault prove successful, the aliens will have gained a foothold in such close proximity to Ultramar as to make the Chapter Master nervous. Furthermore, the asteroid belt surrounding the system contains high concentrations of magnetic ore, making long-range augur probes all-but impossible.’

  ‘We cannot afford to let the greenskin infect this sector,’ Sicarius continued for his veteran sergeant. ‘I for one have no desire to engage in a lengthy purging campaign of the planets and all their astral bodies. Such an enterprise is costly. It would take us centuries to exterminate the alien scum if they were allowed to carry on unchecked. There is no honour in that.’

  Scipio felt Iulus bristle again, but he ignored him. By contrast, Praxor was utterly enrapt by the captain’s words.

  ‘Like any horde,’ Sicarius continued, ‘remove the head and the body will die.’

  He smiled grimly. ‘The orks have a head. A warlord, who, we have learned by vox-monitoring the Imperial planetary communications below, goes by the name of Zanzag. This creature must die. I will not rest until its head is mounted on a spike. My spike.’ Sicarius nodded to Daceus for him to continue.

  ‘Finding the ork warlord will not be easy,’ said the veteran sergeant. ‘If reports from the surface are to be believed, the beast has engaged in a series of lightning raids that has left nine of the original twelve hive cities in ruins, taken by the greenskins. Such inexplicable cunning is uncharacteristic for the ork, and we have yet to determine how such an assault was even possible.’

  ‘The orks have laid waste to this world, but it stops here. Now,’ Sicarius declared. ‘We will go in swift and hard, via drop pod assault. Prior to our insertion, the Valin’s Revenge will bombard the planet from orbit, launching plasma torpedoes into the greenskin forces. We will come in the wake of the ordnance, like hellhounds on the heels of its fiery wrath.’ He grinned ferally. ‘Wherever the orks stand and fight, we will strike hardest. For there we will find our quarry.’

  ‘Launching such an attack directly behind a planetary bombardment – the risks are incredible,’ said Iulus, unable to keep his discontent in check any longer.

  ‘I agree with Sergeant Fennion,’ said another dissenting voice, Sergeant Solinus of the Indomitable. He was the battle leader of the vaunted warriors who took Fort Telendrar. They were the first Astartes into the breach after Captain Sicarius, a feat that had earned them the Victorex Maxima. ‘Is such a strategy even feasible?’

  Daceus was about to intervene, when Sicarius raised a hand to stop him.

  ‘Brothers,’ the captain replied, spreading his arms in a gesture of solidarity. ‘For us,’ he shook his head, giving a belligerent smile, ‘nothing is impossible. A swift assault will catch the enemy off guard. Kill the head, and the body will die,’ he repeated. ‘Our victory will be assured. We are 2nd Company. We are the slayers of kings, the destroyers of worlds, bringers of death and ruination in all its forms. These things we do in the name of the Emperor and in the defence of mankind. I say let none stay our wrath.’

  Scipio could not help but feel the pride in his captain’s voice and knew the entire officer cadre felt it too.

  Praxor nodded with vehemence, smacking his fist against the cuirass of his power armour in affirmation and salute. The other officers followed his example, even Sergeant Solinus. Iulus was last of all, and gave a single firm rap against his armour. Sicarius held the truculent sergeant’s gaze for a moment before he moved on.

  ‘Is there anything further?’ he asked.

  ‘What Imperial forces can we expect to find on the planet surface?’ replied Sergeant Atavian of the Titan Slayers. The Devastator squad battle leader growled the words. A long scar ran down the left side of his face and terminated in a bionic eye, which added to his grim appearance.

  It was Daceus who answered. ‘Black Reach has its own Imperial Guard garrison, the Sable Gunners. They are well stretched across the four continents of the world, marshalling its hive cities and the numerous aqueducts that feed its reservoirs. Strategium indicates that the beleaguered defenders have been fighting the orks for two months, local time. Morale will be low, and casualties high. As such, any aid from that quarter will be negligible.’

  ‘And the greenskins,’ added Iulus. ‘What are our estimations of their forces?’

  The ork are concentrated on the northern continent.’ Daceus gestured with his gauntlet again, and the hololith zoomed in at a rapid rate of magnification. A large landmass was revealed, surrounded by black tributaries, with two towering spikes that were hives. ‘Their main offensive is dedicated to sacking Ghospora,’ he explained, pointing out the largest of the two hive cities displayed on the hololith. ‘We reckon their numbers to be in the region of fifty thousand, well spread out, with armour and heavy artillery.’

  ‘Against one hundred,’ stated Iulus.

  ‘Good odds, brother-sergeant,’ Captain Sicarius intervened.

  ‘Indeed, brother-captain,’ Iulus replied, levelly The captain smiled back at him without mirth, and nodded. ‘If there is nothing more…’ Sicarius turned to his veteran sergeant. We begin planetfall here,’ said Daceus, ‘at the north wall of Ghospora.’

  Black Reach, northern continent, Ghospora Hive City, two weeks later.

  PALE LIGHT LIMNED the interior of the drop pod. The doors slammed open seconds later as the vessel opened like a gunmetal bloom, venting steam, its hull still smouldering. The ochre sands of Black Reach had been scorched to glass with the intense heat radiation of the drop pod’s arrival. It crunched underfoot as S
cipio and his nine Astartes came out, bolters singing.

  The drop pod’s deathwind missile launcher armaments jolted with explosive recoil, a percussive chorus to the steady throb of bolter fire. A kill-zone of slain orks was forged around the landing site in seconds from the punitive barrage.

  It bought a few moments’ grace for Scipio to see the cauldron of battle.

  They had descended into the eye of the storm. Ahead of them, some five hundred metres or more, the north wall of Ghospora Hive loomed like a black bulkhead cliff. It was some eight kilometres across and stretched eighty kilometres high into Black Reach’s pollutant-laden upper atmosphere. Gunports, bunkers and battle-towers bristling with cannon and long-range sensor arrays hugged the extremities of the hive city like space debris clinging to the hull of a dead starship. Smoke billowed from the wrecked defences and fires raged unchecked along partially destroyed sections of the outer bastion wall. It was here at the forefront of the greenskin assault where the Imperial Guard Sable Gunners were making their last stand. Scipio’s enhanced vision, cycling through its various filters to ascertain the optimum visual spectrum, and augmented by the technology within his battle helm, detected the heat signatures from several heavy weapon emplacements.

  The native soldiery of Black Reach were dug in around bunkers and entrenchments crested with razor wire. Even from a distance, Scipio could tell it was a thin line. Officers barked orders down the length of the fracturing wall, charred banners rose and fell. Men died in their droves.

  A veritable sea of greenskins surrounded them, stretching for kilometres across and back in a dark mass. The thrashing ocean of aliens lapped at the meagre bulwarks of Ghospora Hive, threatening to overwhelm them. Ramshackle battle tanks and crudely-fashioned trucks festooned with cannon, rockets and other ordnance bounded madly alongside thronging mobs of green-skinned orks, decked in thick battle armour hammered with additional metal plates and daubed in crude glyphs. Diminutive gretchin capered in the wake of their larger cousins, swathed in little more than rags, brandishing over-sized pistols or scraps of battlefield debris to use as improvised weapons.

  Hulking mechanical constructs, the bastardised green-skin equivalent of Space Marine dreadnoughts, lumbered in the midst of the horde in clusters, rending with claws and razor-saws or loosing staccato bursts of automatic fire and errant missile salvos.

  Though broken up and battered from the strike cruiser bombardment – with thousands slain in the initial barrage, and some fleeing in terror or cowering beneath what little battlefield cover there was – it was still a vast horde. And it stood between Scipio and his objective.

  ‘Thunderbolts form up on me, fire-pattern omega,’ he said, unleashing his bolt pistol’s wrath into the rearguard of the greenskin ranks as the Space Marines started to move forwards. A splinter of the horde, now evidently aware of the Ultramarines’ arrival, had broken off from the rest and swarmed towards the drop pods.

  Orks were huge, slab-muscled monsters. Sloping brows and broad chins, jutting with thick yellow tusks, gave them a distinctly porcine appearance. They were beasts, and lived only for battle. Survival of the strongest was their only creed, and one they demonstrated to brutal effect.

  Scipio formed the tip of a spear, as his battle-brothers moved into formation around him. At one flank, Brother Garrik braced his missile launcher. Dropping to one knee for stability, he fired. A heavy whoosh of expelling incendiary blasted over Scipio’s head and an ork truck careening towards the squad was immolated in a ball of flame.

  ‘One for the Thunderbolts!’ yelled Garrik, his voice grainy through the comm-feed of Scipio’s helmet.

  The conflagration spread, belching oily smoke and devouring any orks and gretchin in its path, but the greenskin splinter mob was undeterred.

  Scipio’s bolt pistol jolted in his armoured grasp, exploding apart an onrushing ork’s skull. The beast ran on headless for a few more seconds in a macabre display of tenacity before it slumped and fell.

  A gout of promethium spewed from Brother Hekor’s flamer on the right flank, engulfing a swathe of belligerent greenskins. Some barrelled on through the intense heat, their bodies alight. Bursts of sporadic but controlled bolter fire put them down before they could get close.

  At the edge of his peripheral vision, Scipio saw other squads moving up alongside him, adopting similar assault formations as they made their approach. But this was just an advance force, fighting an initial sortie to secure the landing zone and gain a foothold on the killing field – the real battle was still to come.

  Several war-bikes and thickly armoured buggies bounced along with the splinter mob, belt-fed heavy cannons barking, ammo cases cascading like brass rain onto their flatbeds. The motorcade of greenskin vehicles picked up speed, smoke gushing from exhausts, spits of flame bursting from the overcharged engines.

  A whistling contrail from a krak missile weaved over Scipio’s shoulder and took out one of the buggies, blasting apart its front axle and upending the machine onto its roof. The roll-bar capitulated instantly, crushing the goggled driver and the orks on the flatbed. A rolling firestorm then engulfed the buggy and its crew as the fuel canister went up and burned them all to ash.

  Scipio commended Brother Garrik for his fine shooting over the comm-feed.

  Further explosions rippled down the makeshift ork line as bikes and buggies were ripped apart by bursts of heavy bolter fire or skewered on lances of las or blasts of promethium.

  Extending a chopping arm, Scipio took out one of the bikers as it sped past him. He felt the greenskins neck snap as he made contact. The bike slewed into a skid, ramming into another and the two vehicles exploded together in a fiery wreck.

  The motorised vanguard was down. The Ultramarines’ squads had been efficient in its destruction and were yet to take a casualty. Now they’d meet the splinter horde up close.

  Through the carnage, solid shot pranging off his pauldrons and greaves as the orks sought to retaliate against the Astartes’ fire superiority, Scipio saw the mob leader.

  The massive brute bellowed at its warriors, spittle flying from its maw. Crudely stitched scars laced its face like patchwork, and metal rings and bones punctured the thick flesh of its ears, lips and brow. It wore a fur-trimmed helmet, crested by a pair of horns. An interlocking hauberk of riveted iron plates bulged with the musculature of its immense body.

  The beast howled with rage as it charged at Scipio, brandishing a blood-slicked cleaver in challenge and squeezing off desultory rounds from a fat pistol. More greenskins flanked it, some pitched from their feet or staggered by bolter fire as the rest of the Thunderbolts tried to slay them from a distance. The brutish creatures bellowed in exultation of the fight to come. They wouldn’t have to wait long.

  Scipio thumbed the activation rune of his chainsword, and with a throaty roar the weapon churned to life.

  ‘For Sicarius and the primarch!’ he cried, and prepared to meet his foe.

  As they closed, Scipio held his bolt pistol’s trigger down. The muzzle-flare lit up the ork’s snarling face as a tracery of rounds ripped up its shoulder.

  The beast was barely slowed. It shrugged off the wound and smacked Scipio’s pistol aside before he could fire again. The ork mob leader then drove its cleaver downward, hoping to shatter Scipio’s clavicle beneath his power armour. But the sergeant parried the blow with his chainsword, the serrated teeth spitting sparks as they ground against metal. Blades locked together, the ork pressed its weight against the blow, and Scipio felt his legs starting to buckle. He swept his bolt pistol around again, but the ork caught his wrist and held it fast. Explosive rounds barked off ineffectually to one side, chewing up sand. Bearing down on him, the ork’s face twisted in what Scipio assumed was a grin. Its beady red eyes, sunken beneath its overhanging brow, glittered with malice.

  In his armour, Scipio stood almost two and a half metres tall, yet he was still dwarfed by the huge greenskin. Superhuman muscles flexing with every shred of strength he could muster, Sc
ipio pushed back. The servos in his power armour whined with effort. He was so close to the beast’s leering face that he could smell the stink of its vile breath even through his helmet’s atmospheric filters.

  ‘What are you smiling at, ugly?’ he snarled through gritted teeth and smashed a brutal head butt into the ork’s snout. Dark blood gushed from its ruptured nose and the ork squealed in anger and pain.

  There was a momentary lift of pressure. Scipio exploited it to the full. He heaved, pushed with his legs and arms simultaneously, and threw the greenskin off. The beast was unbalanced for a second, more than long enough for Scipio to ram the churning blade of his chainsword into its gut. Penetrating armour plate, he twisted and turned the weapon in search of vital organs, while the ork thrashed and bucked on the end of it like a stuck pig. Still it fought, and was about to swing its cleaver again when Scipio brought up his bolt pistol, rammed the muzzle in the greenskin’s screaming maw and pulled the trigger. The ork’s brain pan punched out of the back of its head, amidst a shower of gore and skull fragments, and at last it was dead. Scipio ripped his chainsword free, deactivating it before release so as not to spit chunks of viscera over his battle-brothers, and made a rapid tactical assessment of the battlefield.

  The greenskin rearguard was vanquished. Even now Ultramarines squads moved in staggered battle formations to close the gap between the remnants of the ork rear echelon and the main horde beyond.

  The landing site was secure. Devastator squads bearing the majority of the Astartes heavy firepower took up position at the back on the quickly established Ultramarines battle-line. They advanced slowly behind the tactical squad vanguard, two of which had converged on the Thunderbolts’ position in order to form one flank of the Space Marine battle group. Scipio recognised the squad markings of Iulus and Praxor at once, the Immortals and the Shield Bearers.

  ‘Rough deployment, Iulus?’ Scipio remarked through the comm-feed of his battle helm.