by Gav Thorpe
Less than a minute after detecting the first defence activations, Zhokuv sensed a ripple of energetic particles erupting from one of the ground installations. In less than a second the beam struck the Cortix Verdana.
‘Gravitic attack!’ The warning raced through the ship’s systems. Klaxons blared. Those that could made fast to whatever they could hold.
The wave of anti-gravitic energy passed through the void shields without effect. It slammed into the planetwards decks, instantly crumpling metres-thick armour, tearing chunks of plasteel and adamantium from their housings.
The physical damage was significant, but worse still, the beam ruptured the basic fabric of the gravity well, dragging the ship towards Ullanor. The sudden acceleration created a form of weightlessness on board, overpowering even the artificial gravity. Personnel and equipment were sent flying from the decks, slamming into ceilings and bulkheads as though caught on an aircraft in horrendous turbulence. Zhokuv felt pressure doors bursting and vacuum seals shredding under the immense forces.
The dominus knew from all previous reports that even the massive engines of the Cortix Verdana could not resist the power of the gravity beam. Instead he diverted all remaining energy to the physical defences and energy shields.
‘Atmospheric entry in thirty seconds,’ groaned an alarm-servitor.
The strategium was a scene of chaos, tech-priests and servitors thrown like dolls as another wave of impossible gravitic energy flared along the Cortix Verdana. Zhokuv had no time to spare for the broken bodies littering the deck – every navigational shield and altitude jet burst into life at his command, easing the massive starship into a better angle of entry.
Even so, the flare of frictional heat from the thickening atmosphere overloaded the ship’s sensors. Blinded, the flagship of the Adeptus Mechanicus plunged into Ullanor’s skies.
‘Launch everything!’ bellowed Koorland. ‘Anything that can drop, get it off the ships. Any vessel that has already despatched must break orbit immediately.’
Thane was already barking commands at the vox-officer, demanding reports from the surface. Warning alerts wailed into life as the Alcazar Remembered took evasive action. The battle-barge fired its main engines, heading towards Ullanor in an attempt to break the target lock that had overloaded its surveyor systems a minute earlier.
‘Incoming missiles,’ growled Thane from a monitor station. ‘A dozen at least.’
The flat areas chosen as landing grounds by their forces had in fact been the covers to immense silos of anti-ship guns and missiles. Not just physical missiles targeted the orbiting fleets – powerful gravitic manipulators were turning ships inside out, pulling them down to fiery deaths in the atmosphere or tossing them into deep space. Strangely pulsating green rays sliced warships in two while cluster-missiles engulfed descending drop-ships with thousands of detonations, and rapid-firing flak guns smashed apart plummeting drop pods.
‘We can’t stay here,’ snarled Koorland. He started towards the door of the command bridge. ‘Alert all combat personnel to prepare for launch. Drop pods and Thunderhawks.’
‘We’re evacuating, Lord Commander?’
‘Attacking, while we can.’
‘And Lord Vulkan?’ asked Thane, following his Lord Commander. The remaining Space Marines left their positions, their roles handed to unaugmented officers and servitors. Fists Exemplar across the ship would be doing the same. Every warrior ready for combat would be at his drop-station in minutes.
‘I will speak with him myself,’ said Koorland. He took his helmet from his belt as the doors wheezed open. With a last look at Thane he fitted the helm.
‘Brace for impact.’ The mechanical tones of the alert servitor across the shipwide vox did nothing to convey the urgency of its message. ‘Impact imminent.’
Koorland grabbed a bulkhead, pressing close to the plasteel. The others found similar handholds and waited.
Three seconds later the ork missiles erupted around the battle-barge in a storm of fire and metal. Void shields flared black and blue, warp-shunting what they could before their generators overloaded, exploding with showers of sparks in the bowels of the ship.
The Alcazar Remembered shook from prow to stern as the remaining energy and debris slammed into its starboard side. The entire ship lurched. Lights flickered. Koorland felt as much as heard the rip of tortured metal shuddering along the length of the battle-barge.
Damage reports flowed through the vox but he cut them off and signalled the quarters of the primarch. Unlike before, Vulkan responded immediately.
‘The orks have woken up,’ said the primarch.
‘A quarter of the fleet is already in ruins, my lord,’ replied Koorland. He hit the call rune for the conveyor and chains rattled in the shaft beyond the heavy doors. ‘They hit us exactly when we could do the least about it, mid-drop.’
‘And your strategy, Lord Commander?’
‘We have to complete the drop, Lord Vulkan. Our ships cannot stay in orbit and survive.’
‘The army will be stranded on Ullanor.’ Koorland heard the grinding noise of the primarch’s chamber doors across the link. ‘While these weapons remain active there can be no return from the surface.’
‘That does not concern us, does it?’ Koorland said. The conveyor arrived and he wrenched open the door. He and the others crowded into the cage within. Thane operated the controls, taking them down to the launch decks.
Memories crammed into Koorland’s thoughts as tightly as the warriors in the conveyor. Of Ardamantua. His brothers penned in, dying by the score with no escape. The buzz of suppressed vox-traffic reminded him of the confused warnings and alerts of that dreadful day.
‘Lord Commander?’ Vulkan had been speaking. ‘Koorland, respond.’
‘It is of no concern,’ the Imperial Fist said, pushing back any thoughts of his Chapter’s demise. ‘The orks were ready, no matter what. The dilemma has not changed. Attack, or return to Terra. We came to Ullanor with a single purpose. That mission remains. The Beast must die!’
Bohemond watched with mounting incredulity as the barrels of three immense cannons emerged from the splitting crater. Secondary guns broke free of rock cladding in the surrounding hills. Within seconds they opened fire, spewing a torrent of exploding shells and pulsing blasts into the drop-ships bringing down the Astra Militarum forces.
He looked up into the sky and saw drop-craft burning, falling like meteors. Showers of debris rained down, some pieces as large as battle tanks. Charred skeletons and bloody body parts fell too, striking terror into the squads of Guardsmen fleeing the carnage.
The main cannons boomed into life. Bohemond’s auto-senses blotted out the ear-shattering noise but the shockwave threw hundreds of Astra Militarum fighters to the ground, screaming as their eardrums burst. The wave swept onwards, tipping armoured vehicles and sending Land Speeders and Navy aircraft into mad spins. Bohemond’s armour registered the wash of pressure over him with a row of amber warning sigils.
The High Marshal could just about track the supersonic course of the shells towards orbit but in moments they were lost in the high cloud. His eye was drawn to the upper reaches, his disbelief increased. A scarlet comet fell, larger than anything he had ever seen. Increasing the resolution of his auto-senses, he magnified the view.
The descending ship was wreathed in fire, trailing broken plates and corpses like smoke. In general shape it was an inverted pyramid, a stepped ziggurat of many levels. He could see the blazons of the Adeptus Mechanicus in many places and realised it was the flagship of the dominus.
Despite its calamitous fall, the ship was not without control. Bohemond could see that its trajectory was flattening sharply, some mechanism of the Cult Mechanicus lessening the speed and incline of its course. Distance and size made its rapid descent seem almost stately.
The Cortix Verdana hit the ground many kilometres away,
just beyond the horizon. The ork cannons fired again even as a bright flash of detonating plasma lit the distant sky.
Bohemond turned away from the fallen ship and voxed his warriors.
‘The xenos have hidden their holes well, my brothers. Now they are revealed and our vengeance will be swift.’ He activated his jump pack and bounded back towards the crater. ‘In attacking, they have left themselves vulnerable. Into the breach they have opened! Destroy the guns! Praise those that slay in the Emperor’s name!’
Esad Wire, known to a few by the title of Beast Krule, let the body of the greenskin slip to the ground, its throat crushed. His synskin suit was hidden beneath a few scraps of clothes and armour he had looted from other targets. The silhouette they gave him was more of a disguise than the shifting cameleoline, though he could not hope to look like an ork. He had smeared a little of their filthy blood and spoor over himself to cover his own scent, having been briefed on orks from the Officio Assassinorum’s mission data repositories. Despite its limits, his rough silhouette had confused the greenskins he had encountered long enough to get in range with weighted fists or needle pistol.
Grand Master Vangorich had expressed the uniqueness of the mission – rarely was an operative of the Assassins despatched to slay a non-human target. Their purview was far more concentrated on the rogues and rebellions within the Imperium.
In fact there was almost nothing about the orks at all in the archives, and Vangorich had drawn in favours from the Inquisition to supplement their records.
Krule stepped over a corpse, past two other dead orks that had been lounging by their armoured wagon. The complacency of the aliens – the sheer casualness they showed in the face of a massed human attack – worried him as he pulled himself up into the driver’s position. Settling into the bucket seat, he looked over the crude pedals and controls, working out where throttle and gearing systems were located.
He heard a dull, distant thunder that he instantly recognised as the retort of a large cannon. It continued for some time, many guns firing not quite in unison. He waited to hear the corresponding explosions in the city but nothing came, yet the fusillade continued.
Perplexed, he stood up, the better to see over the corrugated iron and broken plastek rookeries of the ork shanty piled up on the foot of the mountain that was Gorkogrod. The haze of the force dome gave everything beyond the city’s borders a greenish cast. Streaks of shells disappeared into the cloud. Looking left and right the Assassin saw the flashes of other weapons – beams and blasts and oscillating green waves from emplacements somewhere beyond the city’s semi-derelict outskirts.
He had seen drop-ships descending all afternoon, accompanied by the occasional shower of artificial meteors when the Adeptus Astartes had made secondary drops. The Assassin had paid it no mind. He had been expecting floods of alien warriors to pour from Gorkogrod to fend off the attacks, and had hoped to use such activity and confusion to slip through the ork city. Now the lack of response from the orks was explained. He had seen no defences as he had brought his commandeered aircraft down, but could see that the firepower being unleashed into the sky and towards orbit was devastating.
Dropping down into the seat, Krule started the engine. Its throaty roar accompanied a cough of oily smoke from the pierced exhausts flanking the machine. He slammed his foot onto the throttle pedal and sped out of the courtyard and into the street beyond, crashing through a crowd of greenskins that had emerged from their hovels to stare at the anti-orbital attacks. One bounced from the large iron buffer on the front of the battlewagon; another went jolting under a wheel.
Ignoring their death-cries, Krule powered the vehicle uphill, heading as fast as he could towards the inner city.
Chapter Nine
Ullanor – Gorkogrod
I dared what others could not. I knew what awaited me in the inferno and I stepped willingly into the flames. No other could. As above, so below, the fight without and the battle within. Endless torment, unending perseverance. Not one of my brothers could have done it, in body or in mind. It was my agony alone to suffer.
For what? For maggots to erupt from the corpse of greatness, devouring blindly the very thing that sustains them, consuming all until is spent. The Imperium is a husk; even the rot has eaten itself.
The city was ringed with fire. Devastation caused by crashing ships and burning debris spread far into the wastelands that surrounded the ork capital – wastelands that had not been empty of life, but concealed a profusion of orks beneath rock and ash.
‘Be thankful for small boons,’ said Vulkan. Thane looked from the Thunderhawk at the fires and wreckage. The primarch spoke from the main compartment, making the already over-filled space even smaller with his bulk. Thirty-five more Space Marines had managed to fit into a space intended for thirty, even with the primarch. Similarly laden, every drop pod, gunship and shuttle on the Alcazar Remembered had been despatched within minutes of the first ork attack.
‘Small boons, lord primarch?’ asked the Fists Exemplar Chapter Master.
‘Our fall from grace has killed no small number of orks as well.’
‘Forgive me, my lord, for taking little comfort in that fact.’ Thane activated the powerful vox of the Thunderhawk to contact his battle-barge. The signal was surprisingly clear when Shipmaster Weylon Kale responded. Evidently much of the vox-clutter had been deliberately created by the orks to mask their anti-orbit weapons.
‘Substantial damage, Chapter Master,’ Kale reported in response to Thane’s inquiry. ‘But we have attained higher orbit. It seems that the initial attack was a massive drain on the power grid of Ullanor and their targeting systems are having trouble tracking us at this distance.’
‘How much of the fleet has survived?’ asked the Lord Commander, sat next to Thane.
‘Half of the warships, barely any transports. We are also detecting increased activity from the ork vessels in the system. It seems they will try to pick over the scraps. Admiral Acharya has taken command for the Imperial Navy. He assured me that they can cope with the void threat for the time being.’
‘Low orbit is out of the question,’ said Thane. ‘We cannot risk any more ships even for the benefit of orbital firepower.’
‘Agreed,’ said Koorland. ‘We have perhaps one more opportunity to strike with everything – we cannot waste it.’
‘You have a strategy, Lord Commander?’ Vulkan shifted his bulk and looked through the door into the command deck.
‘I do, Lord Vulkan. What I said before still holds true. We must attack as swiftly as possible. Our mission has become threefold. We must determine the exact location of the Beast for an overwhelming concentration of force. We cannot be tricked into thinking a whole world is arrayed against us. It will take time for the orks to mobilise any force of note from the other cities and move them to our battlezone. We must use what strength we can to break into Gorkogrod and destroy the Great Beast before we are overwhelmed.
‘In order to do that we must first disable the force fields and weapons protecting the city against orbital support. Also, we need to disrupt the gathering ork armies so that both of the previous objectives can be achieved before the massive weight of ork numbers can be brought to bear.’
Vulkan nodded his approval.
‘A sure course of action, Lord Commander. The warriors of the Adeptus Astartes must bear the brunt of the assault on the city. As much as it seems counter to your ethos, I would spare the Chapters the brunt of the fighting before then.’
‘I can think of several commanders that will not like the idea of holding back,’ said Koorland.
‘Bohemond, for one,’ said Thane. ‘And there will be others of similar thought. Those that supported his pre-emptive strike spring to mind.’
‘What happened was unavoidable,’ Koorland replied, staring out of the canopy. Night was falling, the darkness lit by plasma fires and the occasional jade
glow of defence beams and scarlet of missile trails, the sunset obscured by columns of black smoke. ‘Whether today or tomorrow or the day after, we would have landed and the orks would have revealed their intent. Perhaps the High Marshal’s attack was not so rash. Had the orks had time to prepare even further for our landings we might not have the period of relative grace we have now. There has been little sign of enemy movement on the ground to exploit our predicament.’
‘Why?’ said Vulkan. ‘The city must house thousands of orks. Why has the Great Beast not unleashed its horde on our remnants before we can gather ourselves?’
‘I feel that you know the answer to that already, Lord Vulkan,’ said Thane.
Koorland shook his head.
‘The Great Beast does not need to strike. It knows that we come for it. We do not face a childish mind, but a calculating leader. It will let us bleed ourselves on the walls of its fortresses before it wipes the remains from the planet.’
‘That fails to comfort me, too,’ said Thane.
‘Which is why we cannot expend our best,’ Koorland said quietly, looking at Vulkan. ‘Dross and slaves may man the defences, but their guns will slay Space Marines as surely as they will combat servitors and Astra Militarum.’
‘It is not the place of the Adeptus Astartes to hide behind the shields of others,’ said Thane, not believing the strategy his superiors discussed.
‘Nor shall they,’ said Vulkan. ‘If Bohemond wishes to be the point of the spear, let him. Guardsmen and skitarii will not breach the city, but the Black Templars might. Lord Commander, I appreciate the sentiment but you mistake the intent of my words. We cannot fight a war of attrition. We must trust to others to guard our backs while we turn every thought to piercing Gorkogrod.’
‘Very well, lord primarch. The Astra Militarum and the Cult Mechanicus will provide the weight behind our shaft. The Adeptus Astartes shall dare the ire of the orks.’
Koorland spoke with certainty, but Thane could not tell if it was simply the habit of the commander or genuine confidence. As the Thunderhawk touched down among the broken and burning remains of the fleet, he felt no particular reason to be hopeful.
