“First Claw!” came a voice over the tank’s interior vox. Talos blink-clicked a tuning rune. “Adhemar?”
“Talos, by the claws of our father… What are you doing here?”
The Land Raider lurched as it crashed to the street, its cycling treads already tearing up the concrete at full speed. Cyrion, at the tank’s driving throne, turned the huge vehicle to the right, moving through a wide alley into a parallel side street. Within the tank’s gloomy, red-lit insides, the rest of the squad checked their weapons.
“Take a guess,” Talos replied, and pounded his gauntlet against the door release. Night swept in, temperature gauges on retinal displays falling as the chill wind hit their armour. Talos, Uzas and Xarl leapt from the moving tank, scattering into the ruined hab towers.
“It’s not the scenery is it?” Mercutian’s voice crackled. “We’d have warned you away.”
“We appreciate the effort, brothers,” Adhemar voxed, “but even a Land Raider is scrap metal against a Warhound. We’re honoured you would join Seventh Claw in death.”
“Silence,” Talos barked. “Where are you in relation to the Titan?”
“I could spit and hit it,” Mercutian replied. “We’re in its shadow, with melta bombs to mine the road.”
“Save them,” the prophet ordered. “First Claw, move up through adjacent streets to link with Seventh Claw. Cyrion, bring Storm’s Eye in fast, just as agreed.” There was no sense trying to hide the Land Raider. The Titan’s auspex would scent its heat and power source from a kilometre away.
“You plan to take it down with your Land Raider?” Mercutian whistled low. “A good death.”
“Enough of your negativity,” Adhemar snapped. “Brother, tell me you’ve landed with a plan.”
“I landed with a plan,” Talos said. He ran through the rubble-strewn street, sighting the Warhound as it unleashed withering rivers of fire into the sky. “The Titan is about to become the victim of an unpleasant distraction. When we strike from the sky, follow my orders exactly.”
“Compliance, Soul Hunter,” Adhemar said.
The Thunderhawk transport was lightly armed compared to its troop-carrying gunship counterpart, but not entirely lacking in offensive capability. Wing-mounted heavy bolters made up the anti-troop complement of its weapons array, backed up by the capacity for six under-wing hellstrike missiles.
Septimus had been flying the Thunderhawk Blackened for years, and had performed strafing runs on enemy positions many times in the past. This attack run was marked by several uncomfortable differences to his usual participation in a battle. First among these was that the transporter lacked the main cannon armament of the more familiar Thunderhawk. Secondly, it could withstand significantly less damage on its hull mid-sections. Thirdly, as Septimus ran the flight path adjustments through his conscious thoughts, he reached an ugly conclusion: This bastard turns like it’s underwater.
The tank-carrier dived, and dived hard, like a spear from the night sky cast at the cruellest angle.
The Titan fired up at him. He could imagine its crew in their restraint thrones, unwilling to allow such a prize as an Astartes lander to escape its clutches, commanding their god-machine to send its anger skyward in a relentless hail of bolt shells, thousands at once.
The transporter jerked away from its dive, rolling so hard the pressure slammed Septimus painfully against his throne. The inertia of his attack run would, if he kept this up for much longer, either kill him, tear the ship apart, or both. But the lance of lethal shells slashed past.
Altitude meters chimed in alarm. Velocity readouts did the same. The vessel itself was screaming at him.
Septimus dragged at the control sticks, ramming the thrust levers a moment later. The transport powered closer, its angle less insane. Septimus had held out as long as he could, not wanting to broadcast his intent, but the Titan crew had to know now. They would recognise this manoeuvre. Not a strafing run with the cannons. A bombing run.
Talos crouched with Adhemar in the ruined ground floor of the hab block. With the walls almost completely levelled, they had an unopposed view of the street. Both warriors gripped plate-sized melta bombs in their hands, watching the Titan in the middle of the avenue as it fired into the sky.
Adhemar, older than Talos and showing it with his head bare, grinned toothily at the prophet. “If this works…”
“It’ll work.” Talos was almost smiling behind his own helm, glad that Adhemar had survived the Titan’s initial assault.
Above, the transporter began its howling descent, racing closer by the second. The Titan locked its legs for support, and opened fire with a fresh volley from its Vulcan bolter cannon.
Septimus came in between the towers of hab blocks. Low now. Even lower.
Low and close enough to graze the Titan’s shoulders with heat wash when he passed overhead. When only two hundred metres separated the knifing flyer and the firing Titan, as he heard dangerous clashes on the hull from shredding bolter fire, Septimus pulled back and climbed again.
The Titan tracked its flight, but the ancient, time-honoured joints couldn’t keep pace with the speeding flyer as it nosed up into the final stage of its attack run.
Septimus was holding to the thrust and altitude levers too tightly to risk letting go. The flyer was wounded, venting black smoke from several critical points, and he didn’t dare take his hands from the controls for a moment. Leaning sideways in his throne, he cursed the fact this ship was made to be piloted by oversized gene-forged Astartes instead of mortals. With a Nostraman invective, he kicked out at the clamp release console the very second his targeting rune flashed green, green, green.
Septimus’ boot heel smacked the lever up from Secure to Armed.
Aimed downward like six separate blades, the missiles spat from their pods and fell, howling, from the sky.
At this range, near-suicidal as it was for the Thunderhawk, the Titan had no chance to intercept the missiles.
The impact was a sight to behold. It burned into Talos’ memory as fiercely as it burned into his eyes.
The missiles struck with savage force, hammering into the Titan’s void shields with the force of a falling building. They exploded as one, and the flare momentarily blinded the one Night Lord that couldn’t resist watching it all play out.
Talos stared, seeing nothing until his eye lenses frantically cycled through filters to compensate for his blindness. Sight returned, blurred by smears of retinal pain, just in time for the Astartes to see the Warhound stagger back a step, its right leg moving back to support its tilting weight, clawed foot grinding into the ground.
Its shields seemed fluid and malleable, swirling like oil on water, dissipating and sparking back to life as the internal generators strained to maintain the power feed to the void shield projector. Talos could almost see the tech-adepts working around the central column of the Titan’s juddering fusion reactor, like a spine running through its torso and beneath its dense shoulder armour.
The Titan’s shield crackled and flared with a sudden burst of dissipating energy. Deep within its armoured body, a low and rising thrum built up, muted but still audible to the Astartes in hiding. The Warhound’s internal systems were bracing, feeding additional power to prevent a complete shield shutdown. Its voids were on the very edge of failure.
“Night Lords,” Talos voxed, smiling his crooked smile. “Move in for the kill.”
The machine-spirit housed within the immense bulk of the VIII Legion Land Raider Storm’s Eye had been honoured time and again for its aggression. Scrolls and pennants marking dozens of glorious victories moved in the wind as they hung from its hull. On treads that had churned the earth of countless worlds, it powered from the side street, acting as much on its own blood-lust and instinct as it was obeying the suggestions from the flesh-master at the controls.
Its prey… Its prey was immense. Storm’s Eye sensed the boiling heat of the Titan’s plasma reactor; felt the fierce pressure of the giant’s glare as it
drew a target lock. Yet Storm’s Eye, the soul of the machine, knew nothing of fear, nothing of retreat, nothing of cowing to intimidation. It tore into the avenue, treads crushing and grinding the rockcrete beneath its weight, flanking the towering foe.
Storm’s Eye clawed and spat at the larger predator—its spitting venom was a withering hail of high-calibre bolt shells from its hull-mounted turret, its talons raking the enemy’s flesh were Kz9.76 Godhammer-pattern las-cannons, each side turret unleashing eye-aching beams of merciless laser energy from two barrels slung side by side.
It clawed and clawed and clawed, ripping at the prey’s fragile shimmer-skin, tearing at the half-seen protective shield.
Something burst. The shimmer-skin. Storm’s Eye’s talons had peeled the final layer of shimmer-skin away, leaving the foe cold and exposed. The enemy staggered with violent kinetic feedback as something broke within its body.
Storm’s Eye heard the flesh-masters shouting to one another. It sensed their blood-excitement and shared their hunt-hunger. The joining of battle-hate pushed the tank’s soul even harder. Its claws ached with death-heat. The cooling touch of maintenance would be a blessed relief after this hunt.
The prey was still strong and it was still fast. The flesh-master guided Storm’s Eye at hunt-kill speed across the avenue, reversing from the larger foe without ceasing fire. It was a battle to keep the tank’s hull-body away from the murder-claws of the colossal predator. Like a shark seeking prey, Storm’s Eye moved left and right in a weaving motion, engine-heart burning hotter and hotter, claws tensing and hissing with the killing heat.
The foe finally turned fast enough. No longer prey… No longer threatened…
It roared its own reply at Storm’s Eye, machine-soul to machine-soul, and with the wrath of a predator-god, it clawed back.
Talos vaulted another broken wall, sprinting across the avenue into the shadow of the firing Titan. With its Vulcan bolter cannon chattering a thunderstorm of shells at the Land Raider’s retreating form, the enemy war machine had a greater threat to worry about than the Astartes at its feet. Still, it knew they were there. A clanging auspex return from the Titan sent warning runes flashing across Night Lord retinal displays, but even as the towering foe turned and sought to crush its weakling prey, the weakling prey was already acting.
Talos was the first. Aurum crackled with energy in his fist before a single slash carved a malicious streak through the armour and engineering of the Titan’s ankle. Even one-handed, the blow would have felled a tree or carved a mortal in half. Talos’ own gene-enhanced strength, amplified tenfold by the artificial muscle fibre of his war-plate, was the pinnacle of mankind’s genetic manipulation coupled with some of the Machine Cult’s closest-guarded secrets rediscovered from the Dark Age of Technology.
The golden blade sliced and sank into the armour plating, biting deep into the mechanics beneath. This alone was nothing, a pinprick of a wound caused in a heartbeat’s span. Talos snarled with effort, his muscles unused to being so tested as he wrenched the blade deeper, impaling and sawing through the cables and rods and pistons that served the Titan as tendons.
Machine-blood spat from the carved metal, sheeting Talos with discoloured lubricant and oil. Its next auspex pulse sounded like a wail. With a replying cry of exultant anger, Talos slammed his other hand against the jagged wound he’d carved. There was a hollow clunk as the melta bomb adhered fast.
Adhemar and Xarl were next, clamping their own explosives to the Hound’s edges. Talos was already sprinting to safety as Mercutian slammed his incendiary home. He sighted Uzas.
Uzas, who was not laying his explosives with the rest. Uzas, who stood under the towering, stamping Titan and fired his bolter up at the war machine’s chin. Did he think small-arms fire was ever going to puncture a hole in the armour of a Titan? Did he think the crew within that head-cockpit felt his gunfire as anything more than a whispered irritant against the hull-skin of their walking sanctum?
Xarl’s voice barked over the vox, caught between anger and disbelief. “What’s that damn fool doing?”
Talos didn’t answer. He was already running back.
Cyrion’s influence made it all the more difficult. Sight-stealing brightness flashed in colourful blurs across Talos’ eyes as the Land Raider down the avenue maintained heavy fire with its Godhammers. Talos closed his useless eyes, running blind between the Titan’s crashing legs, relying on his other senses to guide him.
Beneath the pounding stamp of the enraged Titan’s tread…
Beneath the mocking, deafening waspish buzz of constant lascannon fire…
There. The thrum of power armour. The heavy chatter of a bolter like an impish giggle in the wake of the superheavy weapons at play. Most identifiable of all was Uzas’ gleeful voice risen in the howling of names Talos had no wish to know. Names which cast him back—just for a moment—to his vision of Abaddon’s “allies”.
He threw himself at the sounds, shoulder-charging Uzas ten metres across the street with the dull crash of ceramite armour plates clashing hard. Still blind, he ran to his brother’s rising body, and powered his fist into Uzas’ helmed face.
Once, twice, a third time and a fourth.
With a weak growl, Uzas staggered on shaking legs. Talos headbutted him, the Nostraman rune on his forehead shattering one of Uzas’ red eye lenses. Feeling his brother go limp, the prophet hooked his fingers in Uzas’ armoured collar, and dragged the fool into the relative cover of a half-fallen hab block.
He looked up to see his death. The Titan’s arm, the one not releasing a torrent of murder down the avenue at Cyrion and Storm’s Eye, aimed directly down at him. The arm itself was longer than a battle tank, sucking in light and heat through side-vanes as it amassed the power to fire.
An inferno gun. It would liquidate him, Uzas, the stone of the building, the concrete of the street, in a wash of sun-fire.
One thought burned through his mind as Talos stared up at the trembling cannon.
This is not how I will die.
The explosives bolted to the Titan’s ankle detonated, as if the prophet’s silent words shaped fate itself.
Princeps Arjuran Hollison grunted a weak murmur, because it was the only sound he could make. Something was crushing his chest, blocking all attempts to breathe, and pressing him back against his throne. The pressure that forced him hard against his throne made the hardwiring needles and probes socketed to his spine and skull push far deeper than they should, effectively impaling him. He could feel the dim, pulsing throb of internal bleeding in his head and chest as his vision swam, and…
No. It was the Titan’s pain. Still linked to the enraged, crippled form of Hunter in the Grey, the princeps was drowning in the god-machine’s overwhelming pain.
And its overwhelming indignity.
It had fallen. Not in glorious battle. Not in war against a stronger foe. The Titan, Warhound-class, assembled in the hallowed and sacred forge-factories of Alaris II—noble and knighted Mechanicus world—had fallen. Stumbled. Crashed to the ground, now prone to the ant-like bites of lesser prey.
The cooling reactor core of the humbled giant bled helpless rage into Arjuran’s mind. Just as the Titan lay prone, so too was he defenceless against its maddening anger. He couldn’t move his head to unplug himself. Rage flooded him, terrifying in its intensity and inhumanity, rendered worse by the very fact it could not be escaped. The twisted metal crushing him (the pilot throne of his faithful morderati primus, Ganelon…) was unmovable. His hands beat weakly, worthlessly, against the restraining weight.
He became aware that not only was he crushed, but that he was at an angle. His right arm and leg as well as the right side of his head, were numb with dull pain from being forced against the metal wall of the cockpit. Hunter in the Grey had twisted as it fell, coming down on its side.
Arjuran had a fragmentary burst of short-term memory. The pain in his left fist as the inferno gun streamed killing fire into the sky, a useless release as the Ti
tan toppled.
Then the thunderous crash.
Then blackness.
Then pain.
Now the rage.
Arjuran was shivering and drooling, half-senseless from the fury of his fallen Titan, when the roof of the wolf-headed cockpit was torn away. Not that he was aware of it, but his body was spasming every few seconds with violent jerks, banging his cracked skull and broken leg against the wall. The Titan’s mortis-cry, an ululating wave of channelled hatred, was slowly killing the one crew member still alive. But then, Hunter in the Grey had always been a wilful and vindictive engine.
Arjuran gasped and wept as a dark figure dragged him from the throne. He gasped in relief, wept in thanks, as the plugs and cables snaked from his skull and spine.
Even now, deprived of the invulnerable shell of his Hunter, he could not care that he had traded one death for another. Blessed succour from the dying Titan’s poisonous emotion. That was all that mattered.
Held limply in the gauntlets of the enemy Princeps Arjuran Hollison, born of the dynast-clans ruling the Legio Maledictis of Crythe Primus, once the commander of one of his home world’s precious god-machines, stared into the emotionless red eyes of his captor.
“My name is Talos,” the dark warrior growled. “And you are coming with me.”
XIII
SEEDS OF INSURRECTION
“It is possible to win and lose at once.
Think of the war that rages for so long that a world is left worthless in its wake.
Think of the swordsman that slays his foe at the cost of his own life.
Think, finally, of the Siege of Terra. Let those fateful nights burn into your memory.
Never forget the lesson learned when Horus duelled the false god.
Triumph bought with too much blood is no triumph at all.”
—The war-sage Malcharion
[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter Page 21
