by Nick Kyme
‘Drawing off the bulk of our battle-brothers, thus emboldening his larger reserves to renew the Ghospora assault,’ Iulus concluded, making for the wrought-iron staircase that led to ground level.
‘Courage and honour, brother,’ he said, patting Praxor on the pauldron as he passed him.
‘Courage and honour,’ Praxor replied, a belligerent cast affecting his face as he followed.
The Ultramarines sergeants descended to the wall breach where eighteen of their battle-brothers awaited them, split into four combat squads. Soon they would be deployed along the wall, ready to repel the ork invaders.
Techmarine Lascar was also present, a final concession from Captain Sicarius to secure the hive city. The heavily augmented student of the Adeptus Mechanicus approached Iulus as soon as he had alighted from the stairs.
‘Blessings of the Omnissiah, Brother Fennion,’ intoned Lascar, invoking the benediction of the Martian tech-aspect of the Emperor as if by mechanistic rote.
Iulus had always thought there was an autonomous quality about the Techmarine’s voice, as if whatever scant emotions he’d possessed prior to his long years of training on Mars to be inducted into the ranks of the Mechanicus had left him almost a machine himself. Sergeant Fennion was ignorant of the clandestine rituals of the Martian adepts but their influence upon his battle-brother was plain to see.
Lascar was clad in the MkVII battle plate of his fellow Ultramarines, but wore the cog icon of the Adeptus Mechanicus on the lower portion of his plastron. The stark device indicated his fealty to the Martian creed. An immense servo-harness was affixed to Lascar’s back, hard-wired into the hefty generator for his power armour. It consisted of several pneumatic servo-arms, a lifter array, flamer attachment and various esoteric tools attached to the ends of snaking mechadendrites, including a las-torch, plasma-cutter and vibro-saw.
Two bent-backed servitors accompanied him. The partially lobotomised automatons were armour-clad and heaved slow and clicking breaths through metal respirator masks. Mono-tasked as combat models, each servitor carried a weapon mount affixed to its torso in place of an amputated arm. A belt-fed heavy bolter whirred up and down with concealed motorisation on one; a bulky plasma gun linked up to a massive generator hummed dully on the other.
The adepts of the Red Planet, worshippers of the Machine God who craved metal over flesh in their pursuit of oneness with the Omnissiah, had schooled Lascar, as they had schooled all of Astartes Techmarines, in the ways of the machine-spirit and the art of repairing vehicles and weapons. Lascar’s knowledge in this regard was without peer amongst the small battle group and Iulus knew the Techmarine’s expertise might well be the difference between victory and death when the greenskins reached the walls.
‘All is in readiness,’ Lascar announced, mechadendrites twitching, reflecting his own ardency to smite the greenskins.
‘And your tactical assessment of the Ghosporan natives?’ asked Iulus, careful to avoid looking at the servitors directly. The melding of necrotic flesh and metal felt somehow distasteful, despite his own genetically-engineered apotheosis.
‘The garrison is at forty-three per cent effective strength.’
‘Not much,’ remarked Praxor, his opinion how little the humans were worth obvious.
‘It will have to be enough,’ growled Iulus, cranking a round into the breach of his bolt pistol. ‘What of our ordnance?’
‘The Thunderfire cannons have been blessed and the Rites of Accuracy and Functioning performed,’ Lascar replied.
Behind him, Iulus could see the first of the Space Marine support guns grinding into position at empty cannon emplacements on thick, armoured tracks. Unlike most other Astartes artillery, the Thunderfire cannon was designed with static defence in mind. The broad, quad-barrelled guns were pintle-mounted and capable of unleashing a devastating barrage of surface, air or subterranean-adaptive shells. Within the packed ranks of the greenskins they would reap bloody havoc.
Iulus smiled grimly at the sight of the massive cannon.
‘Let the earth tremble,’ he said.
SCIPIO STARED BLANKLY out of the occuliport of the Xiphos. The dark sand banks of Black Reach flicked by in a slowly increasing blur as the gunship picked up speed and increased loft. The ruins of a ramshackle ork fortress lay burning in the Thunderhawk’s wake. Scipio could see the smoke coiling from its wreckage even when they soared to three hundred metres. It had been little more than a shanty town, a brutish amalgam of vehicle husks, wrought-iron plating and crude barricades, a rally point of sorts. Sicarius had sacked three such encampments on the edge of the Blackwallow already, purged them with cleansing fire and salvos from the Thunderhawks’ heavy bolters. Naught but churned earth, blood and greenskin pyres rewarded him. Zanzag had not been amongst the dead.
The Thunderhawk gunship was a singular vessel. Three powerful motors fuelled by an onboard fusion reactor provided speed and manoeuvrability that would rival most conventional Imperial fighters, and without the need to compromise firepower. This, the gunship had in abundance. Four remote turrets of twin-linked heavy bolters patrolled the front fuselage and wings, slaved to the Space Marine gunner’s control panel on the flight deck. A twin-linked lascannon protruded from the prow like a lance to tackle heavy armour. Finally, an immense dorsal-mounted turbo-laser on a fixed turret provided serious destructive potential, backed up by a payload of six Hellstrike missiles.
Despite the generous amount of munitions and the need to maximise the vessel’s Astartes transport capacity, there was still room enough for a small reclusium, a two-person shrine annexed from the upper transport hold where warriors could pray and take their oaths.
It was within the cool sanctity of the Xiphos’s reclusium that Scipio found himself kneeling head bowed with his eyes closed. Having seen enough through the occuliport, Scipio had left his battle-brothers, together with the warriors of Squad Octavian and the mighty Agnathio, rattling in his transit scaffold, in the Chamber Sanctuarine. It was the principle transport hold of the ship, where the Astartes would wait in their alcoves for the order to deploy.
‘A pure and pious mind is one that serves the Emperor,’ a voice like shifting ashes issued from the shadows in the reclusium.
Scipio was laying down his bolter reverently when he looked up, incredulous that he had not noticed the other figure in the small chamber.
‘Your devotion is to be lauded, Brother Vorolanus,’ rasped Chaplain Orad, leaning forward slightly as if to officially announce his presence.
Scipio tried not to react as he regarded him. The Chaplain went unhooded. His skull helm was set alongside him as he knelt. The sergeant of the Thunderbolts saw the suggestion of the horrific scarring that marred his visage. Pink tissue flared angrily in the wan light of votive candles. The flesh was twisted, and one half of the Chaplain’s lip was burned away revealing bone and teeth. His left ear was ruined, barely a void in the side of his head, all form and shape to it eaten away by bio-acid. And the eye… the eye stared always, its cornea bloodshot and glowering, the lid long since eroded. Scipio wondered if Orad could still see out of it.
‘I watched you as you entered, brother,’ he told Scipio, his blighted eye seeming to swell with a sudden change in mood. ‘Something troubles you, yes?’
Scipio considered a lie, but dismissed the notion immediately; it would be dishonourable. Furthermore, Chaplain Orad would discover the deceit before it left Scipio’s lips. It was as if that red-eyed gaze could penetrate the very depths of his soul. Instead, Scipio chose to remain silent.
‘Would you like to recite a liturgy with me or perhaps one of the Canticles of Hera, the Cassius Catechism mayhap?’
‘You honour me, Brother-Chaplain, but it is not necessary.’
‘You seek your answer in solitude, then?’
‘I do, my brother.’
Orad stared a moment longer, that baleful red orb stripping away Scipio’s defences like a laser, before he seemed satisfied and relented. The Chaplain donned his skull
helm, much to Scipio’s relief, and stood, muttering a benediction before the Imperial eagle symbol wrought into the facing wall.
‘I am here for you, my son,’ hissed Orad as he turned to leave. Through his helmet, his voice returned to its grating metallic timbre.
He gripped Scipio’s pauldron as he spoke. The sergeant felt it like the weight of judgement on his shoulder. ‘You have only to speak, and I will heed you.’
Once Orad had departed, his footfalls seemingly heavier and more resonant than his fellow Astartes, Scipio exhaled. He hadn’t even realised he was holding his breath.
Confession would have to wait. In truth, there was little to confess, save that he felt the smallest kernel of doubt towards the actions of his captain. Since the sacking of the third ork fort, Scipio, in what few moments he had been in his presence, had witnessed a change in Sicarius. With each hour that the ork warlord continued to evade him, the captain was becoming more driven, more vehement, more… reckless.
Scipio railed at himself. Sicarius was a hero, the bravest of all of them, perhaps the finest Ultramarine in the entire Chapter. Why had Iulus’s discontent plagued him so? Was the captain’s eye really fixed on personal glory? Did he desire a place at the Chapter Master’s right hand at the expense of Agemman? Arcus Helios was of 1st Company, and he seemed sanguine.
A presence at the chapel’s entrance broke Scipio’s introspection. He turned slowly, fearing for a moment that Chaplain Orad had returned to sermonise him after all. His mind eased when he saw Sergeant Octavian.
‘My apologies for disturbing your orison, brother, but Captain Sicarius has convened a war council. We set down in twenty minutes.’
Scipio nodded his thanks, and Sergeant Octavian took it as his cue to return to the Chamber Sanctuarine. Donning his helmet, Scipio followed him, crushing the slivers of his doubts beneath the heel of his devotion to the Chapter.
THE FOUR THUNDERHAWKS set down in a sandblasted clearing to the north-west of Black Gulch. The dark-veined ravine gushed below them through a thick crop of petrified trees. The gunships had landed in a square; ablative armour facing outwards, creating a ceramite-walled corral in which the Ultramarines could strategise their next move. In a planet overrun by orks, it was a prudent measure.
‘Three greenskin forts in ruins,’ Sicarius said to the assemblage of officers standing around the portable hololith map. A hazy rendition of the surrounding area in three-dimensional form issued from the spherical projector spiked into the ground. All of Sicarius’s sergeants that had joined the battle group were present. Arcus Helios of 1st stood at the back like a giant sentinel, easily towering over his power-armoured battle-brothers. Scipio realised as he was standing amongst the officer cadre that he missed the presence of Iulus and Praxor. His fellow brothers were the closest thing to friends that he had in the Chapter. His bond with them both was very strong.
‘Still we have no word, no sign of the beast – this Zanzag.’ Sicarius scowled at the name, his noble countenance creasing with annoyance. ‘This thorn must be excised,’ he determined. ‘I will draw it out and remove the poison that infects this planet. Nothing must stand in the way of this. Black Reach will be ours.’
‘The northern continent is vast and the orks swarm over it. Two months is more than long enough to have erected several outposts, spread over hundreds of kilometres,’ said Solinus, taking the opportunity to air his thoughts. ‘We have sacked but three in a week. Our progress is too slow. The longer we delay, the longer the greenskins have to become further entrenched. We are righteous warriors of Calgar and the Emperor, but we are one hundred in a sea of thousands. What should be our next course of action?’ Solinus asked of the group.
‘A quadrant by quadrant search of this area,’ offered Sergeant Helios, pointing over the shoulders of his battle-brothers to an area on the map that displayed Black Gulch and the location of the ork forts they had already destroyed. ‘We go through the wastelands one grain at a time. Time consuming – yes, but what other recourse is there? Caverns, ravines, ruins: the greenskin must have made its lair somewhere. We have but to find it.’
Solinus nodded his approval reluctantly. A painstaking search appeared the only option. ‘I will commence mapping out the search grid at once.’
‘No,’ Sicarius replied. The captain seemed distracted as he approached the hololith and began tracing his finger down one of the larger tributaries.
‘Which river is this?’
‘Blackwallow, my lord,’ answered Scipio, as he tried to fathom his captain’s thought processes. ‘It has the widest and deepest of all the planet’s river basins.’
‘Lightning-fast assaults, coordinated and able to disappear without trace…’ Sicarius regarded Scipio directly. The sergeant tried not to flinch before the face of the great hero. ‘We followed but a half hour after the greenskins retreated from Ghospora, but found nothing of the warlord. How is that possible, brother-sergeant?’
‘They are using the river,’ Scipio decided. ‘Something we haven’t seen yet, something that eluded the watch stations of the Ghosporans themselves,’
‘It fails to narrow down the search parameters,’ observed Arcus Helios, deep voiced and commanding. ‘We search by quadrants—’
‘No…’ Sicarius interjected calmly, his gaze on the hololith again. Scipio thought he saw a slight flicker of consternation cross the Terminator sergeant’s face at the rebuttal. ‘We are missing something,’ Sicarius resumed. He almost muttered the words, as if he were speaking to himself. As if deciding there was nothing more to be gained from poring over the map image, Sicarius looked up. A moment later, a smile crept over his face as his mood changed.
‘Our answer is coming.’
‘My lord…’ Sergeant Solinus began.
‘We have but to wait,’ Sicarius told them, looking over the sergeant’s head at the distant horizon.
Scipio followed his gaze, along with the other sergeants. A land speeder hovered into view. On board were Telion and four of his scouts from the 10th.
The vehicle set down amidst the gathering, its baffled landing thrusters kicking up scuds of dust and propelling them into the hololith, making the device flicker and whirr noisily.
Veteran Sergeant Daceus knelt and switched it off to soothe its agitated machine spirit.
Telion leapt from the land speeder’s open hatch before it had touched down, while its landing gear was still extending. He stalked over to Sicarius through the gritty maelstrom, eyes narrowed as the fine particles billowed around him. Emerging through the sandstorm, he thumped his plastron once in salute before delivering his report.
‘A fourth ork fort lies to the east, across the gulch and further along the Blackwallow river,’ he said, his voice clipped and with an icy undercurrent. ‘It’s isolated and well hidden. We only caught sight of it by chance, a light refraction from the structure’s steel sidings. Initial reconnaissance indicates that a large ork of similar build and ostentation to the warlord is residing there. It could be your quarry, brother-captain.’
Sicarius nodded slowly, clapping the shoulder of the old veteran.
Scipio saw the underlying agitation vanish, the slightly obsessive demeanour that the captain had cultivated in the last few hours disappear in a blink. The hunter had his prey again.
‘Haxis,’ Sicarius said into his comm-feed, addressing his pilot, though his eyes were still on Telion. ‘Engage the engines, we are leaving immediately. Brothers,’ he added, looking around expansively, ‘we go to hunt the ork.’
THE GREENSKINS FLED, leaving the broken bodies of their kin behind them.
Thunder boomed in the heavens, but not from any storm. The Space Marine cannons were speaking, their blistering salvos ripping into the ork ranks as they scrambled desperately for the cover offered by the sparse petrified forests surrounding Ghospora.
Each Thunderfire cannon, meticulously deployed according to Captain Sicarius’s precise instructions, rocked back on its tracks with a relentless, pounding rhyth
m, the quad barrels spitting out surface detonation shells with unerring regularity. Techmarine Lascar had performed his rites well.
It was the fifth assault in five days. Only on the first day had the orks been in a position to attack the bastion wall directly. Sergeant Tirian’s devastator squad, coupled with punitive salvos from the Thunderfire cannons, had ended that threat prematurely. After that the greenskins hadn’t even got close, and had been reduced to long-range shelling ever since.
‘Do you think they’ll return?’ Praxor’s voice came through on the comm-feed via Iulus’s gorget. The sergeant noted the tone of hopeful expectation in his voice.
Iulus looked out over the smoking carnage, the explosive eruptions ripping up clods of earth and shredding ork bodies growing ever more distant. He raised his hand to indicate a cessation to the barrage.
‘No, that last volley has broken them I think,’ he replied once the storm was over. ‘We could switch to airbursts and drive them from the trees but it would be a waste of munitions, and at extreme range… needlessly punitive.’
The comm-feed was still open. Iulus could hear the ambient noise from the other side of the rampart where Praxor was stationed with one of his combat squads.
Something was clearly on the sergeant’s mind. ‘Speak,’ Iulus said.
There was a further moment’s pause.
‘There is no glory in this,’ Praxor’s response was flat.
‘They are glad of it,’ Iulus replied, referring to the Sable Gunners. ‘They get to live their short and hurried lives a day or two longer at least.’
‘Why did he leave us behind, Iulus?’
‘Astartes were needed to hold on to what we had already gained, or would you have left Ghospora to its fate?’ Praxor lowered his voice. Despite the fact the two sergeants conversed over a closed channel, he did not wish to be overheard.
‘It may have held. And if not, it would have been a necessary sacrifice to find and kill the warlord, and save all of Black Reach.’
‘And gain another laurel for our banner? What of the battle-brothers who died in the first assault, what of their sacrifice? Would you have that be in vain, Praxor?’
