A bolter shell plucked at his sleeve and blood streamed from his bicep. His hand spasmed and he dropped the las-gun. It rolled to the edge of the gantry and he lunged for the rifle, just stopping it from falling. Something heavy landed on him.
A fist cracked against his jaw, but he rolled with the blow, twisting his head aside as the man on top of him repeatedly punched him.
Hawke drove his knee into the man's groin and delivered a thunderous head-butt as his opponent's shoulders dropped. He hammered the heel of his hand into the man's neck and gripped his red overalls. Hawke slammed his head into the metalwork of the railings before heaving him over the edge.
Another enemy soldier stood in front of him, aiming a rifle.
Hawke kicked out hard, cracking his boots against the man's legs and shattering his kneecaps. The man shrieked and dropped to the floor of the gantry.
Hawke fired a hail of las-bolts, ripping the man's chest to bloody ruin and blasting clear the wall-mounted grille behind him. More bullet impacts raked the wall around him and he rolled away from the gantry's edge, finding himself looking into the depths of the torpedo's access panel.
How the hell did he fire this bloody thing?
He couldn't remember.
He heard more people climbing and cursed as he saw the charge indicator on the rifle flash red. Almost empty. He could see another soldier had reached the top of the ladder. He snatched the late Guardsman Hitch's pride and joy from his belt and rammed the full length of the Jouran fighting-knife into the man's neck. Bright arterial blood spurted from the wound, drenching Hawke. He frantically wiped his eyes clear, scrambling back towards the torpedo and ramming the knife back in its scabbard.
Gunfire sounded from below, but none of the shots seemed to be directed at him. He risked another furtive glance over the gantry and saw that the armoured giant had killed his remaining soldiers. Perhaps they hadn't been keen to meet the same fate as their comrades.
Hawke grinned suddenly. He didn't blame them.
'You are braver than I took you for, little man,' said the Chaos Marine, mounting the iron ladder. 'I will honour you with the most brutal death.'
'If it's all the same to you, I'll pass on that,' shouted Hawke, firing his lasgun, but the weapon was useless, his shots bouncing from the warrior's burnished armour. He searched desperately for something to use as a weapon, his gaze finally falling on the one thing he knew would finish this bastard off.
But how to use it? What had Beauvais said?
Strike the rune of firing upon the…
The what?
He bit his lip as he heard the warrior climbing.
'To hell with it,' he said and closed his eyes, reaching inside the access panel and hammering his open palm against the exposed runes, switches and buttons.
Nothing happened.
'Emperor damn you!' Hawke screamed in frustration. 'You useless pile of worthless junk! Fire, damn you! Fire you bastard! Fire!'
As the last word left his mouth, a rumbling tremor filled the chamber, klaxons blared and a series of lights began flashing at the chamber's top. Hawke opened his eyes and laughed hysterically. Of course! The Chant of Awakening!
Sudden heat filled the chamber and steam flashed up the walls as powerful rocket engines began igniting sequentially. He'd only gone and bloody done it, hadn't he?
As the heat in the torpedo room suddenly leapt upwards he realised his danger. The ladder was sure as hell not an option and he cried in relief as he saw the duct exposed by the shattered grille. He didn't know where it led, but was sure it had to be better than here.
'Well, Hawke, my lad,' he whispered, 'time to get going.'
Swiftly he crawled towards the duct, pushing his lasgun ahead of him. It was easily wide enough to accommodate him and he slithered inside.
Something tugged at his fatigues. He turned and cried out as he saw the Chaos warrior's loathsome, mechanised claw snap shut on his ankle.
The giant was too large to enter the duct, but the claw would soon pull him out.
'If we are to die, we will die together, little man,' promised the warrior.
'Guess again,' snapped Hawke as he drew his knife and sawed through the throbbing power cables that ran from the claw. Black oil and hydraulic fluid spurted out, and the claw jerked spastically.
Its iron grip slackened and he kicked it clear, powering along the smooth metal duct. With every passing second he expected a bullet in the back, but none came. Vibrations rumbled along the duct and he pushed his muscles harder than he would have believed possible.
Hot steam billowed after him. Sweat poured from his brow as the aimbling of rocket engines grew behind him and the ductwork creaked as it expanded in the burgeoning heat.
Suddenly there was space above him. He pulled himself from the duct and slung his rifle over his shoulder as he found himself in what looked like a vent chamber. Other ducts fed into the chamber and another ladder ascended to a circle of reddish sky high above him. He leapt onto the ladder, climbing as fast as he could, hearing the rumble behind him build to a full-throated bellow, like a mighty dragon waking from its slumbers.
He climbed and climbed as the roar built below him.
Geysers of scalding steam flashed past him.
The heat was intolerable and he gritted his teeth. His skin blistered, but he shut out the pain, putting one hand above the other and pulling himself onwards.
Hawke reached the top of the ladder and moaned in fear as he felt a blaze of heat rash towards him and searing orange light flare around him. He shouted with one last herculean effort, hurling himself over the lip of the vent and rolling aside as a fountain of fiery exhaust gasses exploded behind him.
Hawke squeezed his eyes shut, and rolled away from the heat until he was sure he was safe. He gasped for air and pushed himself into a sitting position, opening his eyes in time to see the torpedo roaring through the sky on a pillar of fire.
Guardsman Julius Hawke knew he'd never seen a more beautiful sight.
THE GLAIVE CLASS ground-launched orbital torpedo climbed rapidly through the red sky of Hydra Cordatus on a blazing tail plume, lighting the battlefield below with its brilliant glare. It soon became nothing more than a flickering point of light in the sky, climbing to an altitude where the air was thinner and its speed could increase. As it reached a height of nearly one hundred kilometres, the first stage of the torpedo separated and stage two ignited, increasing its velocity still further as the war-spirit caged within the warhead calculated the time, distance and vector to its target.
The torpedo nosed over, travelling at almost fourteen thousand kilometres per hour, and began hunting for its prey. The Adeptus Mechanicus had cursed its target and that curse now passed to the war-spirit. As the torpedo angled itself back towards the planet, the warhead identified its target.
With its target locked in its sights, the war-spirit vectored the nozzles on the second stage to fire a corrective burn that altered its flight path and sent the torpedo plummeting back to Hydra Cordatus.
FORRIX STOOD AT the edge of the promontory watching the battle raging below with impotent frustration. The batteries were being attacked by the Imperials and he could do nothing about it. Who would have believed the curs of the corpse-god could be so bold? His hands bunched into fists and he vowed that someone would pay for this.
Flashes and rippling explosions lit up the night and his enhanced sight could follow individual acts of bravery and heroism in the battle. Not only that, but he could clearly see the yellow armour of the Imperial Fists in the flickering light. To have the ancient foe here was as close to perfect synchronicity as he could have wished. He remembered fighting Dorn's warriors on the walls of the Eternity Gate on Terra, ten thousand years ago. Then they had been warriors to walk the road to hell with, but now… ?
He would soon find out. An inferno of hate burned within his heart with a passion he had all but forgotten.
He'd watched the spear of light roar from the mountains to th
e east of the citadel and had experienced a moment's unease as he watched the orbital torpedo climb higher and higher.
How had it been fired and where was it bound? But these questions seemed largely irrelevant now, as it had streaked into the heavens then vanished through the clouds.
Forrix returned his attention to the battle below, sneering in contempt as he saw the Imperials begin to pull back under the fury of the Iron Warriors' counterattack. He saw Honsou leading a rabble of soldiers through the battery, killing those not quick enough to make their escape, and smiled grimly.
Honsou was becoming a fearsome war-leader and Forrix knew that, given the chance, he could be amongst the greatest Warsmiths the Legion had ever seen.
The battle below was as good as over. Forrix turned away, marching past the huge number of artillery pieces he had assembled on the promontory and over the breach Honsou had fought his way across. Tomorrow they would begin firing again and the walls of the citadel would crumble.
He crossed the entrenchment on long, flat sheets of metal, stopping as a sudden premonition sent a shiver along his spine. He craned his neck upwards.
The sky was, as usual, the colour of blood, lit by reflected flashes of explosions from below.
What had made him look up?
Then he saw it.
A burning dot of light high in the sky, arcing down towards the planet at fantastic speed. Forrix's jaw hung slack as he realised the ultimate destination of the torpedo. Hot anger flooded his body as he watched molten streamers of light flare from the torpedo as it entered the lower atmosphere.
He bolted for the keep, shouting a voxed warning to the warriors inside.
'By all that is unholy, raise the keep's void shield!'
He lumbered towards the sunken blast doors that led within, casting a hurried glance over his shoulder. The burning corona of fire that surrounded the torpedo appeared to him like a baleful eye in the heavens, aimed straight for his heart.
Forrix entered the keep, hammering his fist across the door-closing mechanism and set off towards its command centre. He heard the pervasive hum of the void shield generator buried beneath the tower powering up and fervently hoped that it would raise in time.
For if it did not, he and everyone in the keep were as good as dead.
THE TORPEDO IMPACTED almost exactly in the centre of the Kane bastion of Tor Christo where its triple stage warhead detonated with devastating results. The lead element of the warhead was designed to crater an opening through the thick hull of a starship, while the tail element would explode simultaneously, acting as a propellant and hurling the middle charge deep within its target, But instead of the metres-thick, reinforced adamantium bulkhead of a starship, the torpedo slammed into the ground of the Kane bastion, travelling at over a thousand kilometres an hour. The first stage of the torpedo exploded with phenomenal power, flattening everything within three hundred metres and blasting a crater fifty metres deep. The tail section blew and thrust the torpedo deeper into the rock of the promontory where the more powerful centre charge detonated with the power of a sun, ripping the rock of Tor Christo apart.
Night became day as blinding light fountained from the impact. Tank-sized chunks of stone were hurled through the air like pebbles as an expanding wave of blinding smoke and dust filled the valley. The thunderclap of detonation was like the hammer of the gods, come to smite the surface of the planet, and a surging mushroom cloud billowed a thousand metres into the sky, hurling ash and burning rock in all directions.
The ramparts of the bastions either side of the torpedo's impact sagged and cracked, their rockcrete walls splitting under forces they were never designed to endure. The crater in the centre of the promontory expanded with terrifying rapidity, tonnes of rubble and artillery pieces collapsing into the fiery pit.
With a tortured groan, millions of tonnes of stone cracked and rumbled, sliding free of the slopes of the promontory, crashing down in a rocky tidal wave of destruction. The western end of the first parallel was buried beneath the avalanche of rock, and the zigzag approach saps leading to the second parallel filled and collapsed. Thousands died screaming as they were crushed beneath the sweeping tide of earth.
The battery constructed before the walls of the Vincare bastion vanished in a torrential downpour of earth and rock, the guns buried forever beneath thousands of tonnes of debris.
Hundreds of secondary explosions were touched off as burning shards of wreckage dropped into the Iron Warriors' camp, detonating ammo dumps and fuel bladders, and setting light to hundreds of tents. Anarchy filled the camp as men attempted to fight the blazes, but they were as ants fighting a forest fire; nothing could halt the spread of the voracious flames.
The blast wave buffeted the towering form of the Dies Irae, but the workers had done their job well and the towering buttresses and scaffolding held, keeping the monstrous leviathan from toppling. The massive Titan shook, its joints groaning and squealing as its external gyros fought for balance, but the Shockwave passed over it and left it intact. Several other Titans were not so fortunate and three Warlords of the Legio Mortis were brought down by massive hunks of rock or collapsed by the force of the blast.
The death toll had reached nearly ten thousand by the time the final echoes of the blast had died away and the blinding light of the torpedo's detonation had faded. All that remained of Tor Christo was the void-shielded keep, perched precariously on a splintered corbel of rock.
In a single stroke, Guardsman Hawke had suddenly tilted the balance of power on Hydra Cordatus.
CASTELLAN VAUBAN PUSHED himself up out of the dust and earth and shook his head clear of the ringing din that filled his skull. Bright light filled the valley and he laughed in triumph as he saw the enormous mushroom cloud wreathing Tor Christo in smoke and flames.
He and Leonid had seen the torpedo launch, but they had been too busy rallying the men to fall back towards the Primus Ravelin to follow its course. The chaos of the attack on the battery had consumed him and the first he'd known of the torpedo's impact was when he'd seen his shadow suddenly thrown out before him and an enormous force smashed him to the ground. Fleeting impressions of flashing light, thunderous detonations and pain as rocks and earth came hammering down around him.
Dizzily he pushed himself to his feet, casting his gaze through the grey smoke, attempting to see the extent of the damage, but it was futile. He couldn't see more than a dozen metres: the dust and smoke was too thick. He could see shapes picking themselves slowly from the ground, but whether they were friend or foe was impossible to tell.
Muffled rallying cries of sergeants pierced the gloomy, dust-filled air and he thought he heard Leonid's voice calling his name, but it was hard to tell. He tried to shout a reply, but his mouth was dry with ash and all he could manage was a hoarse croak. He spat, wiping his face clear of dirt and futilely dusting down his jacket and breastplate.
It was time to impose some order. He stumbled towards where he thought he'd heard Leonid's voice. He turned blindly, all sense of direction lost in the haze.
Vauban froze as he heard a voice in the smoke and an enormous figure in burnished, dust and blood stained armour wearily emerged from the swirling clouds before him.
The warrior was helmetless, his close-cropped black hair tight against his skull and his eyes burning with a hate that chilled Vauban to his very soul.
The two faced one another in silence until Vauban drew his power sword and assumed a relaxed fighting stance, though fear of this warrior pulsed along every nerve of his body.
In a calm voice he said, 'I am Castellan Prestre de Roche Vauban the sixth, heir to the lands of Burgovah on the planet Joura, scion of the House of Vauban. Cross blades with me if you wish to die, foul daemon.'
The warrior smiled. 'I have no such impressive titles, human. I am called Honsou. Half-breed, mongrel, filth, scum. I will cross blades with you.'
Vauban activated the blade of his sword and dropped into a fighting crouch as Honsou approache
d. The battery fell silent as the two combatants circled one another, searching for a weakness in the other's defence.
Vauban raised his sword in salute and, without warning, leapt towards Honsou, thrusting with his energised blade.
Honsou swayed aside and swept his sword round, slashing the blade towards Vauban. He ducked and spun away, slashing high with his sword.
Honsou deflected the sweep and stepped back, his sword raised before him. Vauban recovered his balance and advanced towards Honsou. He lunged again and Honsou expertly blocked the thrust, rolling his wrists and slashing at Vauban's head. But he had read the move in Honsou's eyes and the castellan dodged the blow.
Wary now, the pair again circled each other, their defences alert for any sudden moves.
Honsou attacked, a flashing whirlwind of steel, forcing Vauban backwards step by step. Vauban parried a vicious slash aimed at his chest, launching a lightning riposte at his foe. The blade scraped a deep furrow in Honsou's armour, but slid clear before drawing blood.
Honsou retreated and Vauban followed with a grin of anticipation, launching himself at Honsou with fresh vigour. Honsou was a powerful warrior, but Prestre Vauban had been a student of swordplay his entire life and each attack drew fresh blood from his adversary.
He hammered his enemy's defences again and again, forcing him slowly backwards until Honsou stumbled and lost his footing.
Vauban spun left and struck out at Honsou's sword arm. Honsou was quick, bringing his block up just in time to intercept the blow, and their weapons met in a coruscating halo of sparks. Vauban roared as Honsou's blade snapped and his own smashed home. The Iron Warrior grunted in pain as his arm was severed just above the elbow.
Honsou retreated, stumbling as blood sprayed from the stump of his arm.
Seizing the opportunity, Vauban leapt in to deliver the deathblow, but, at the last second, realised that Honsou had lured him into the attack.
Iron Warriors - The Omnibus Page 22
