Ravenwing

by Gav Thorpe

  Freed from its grip, he pushed himself to his feet, hand moving for a fresh magazine at his belt. Ejecting the empty magazine from his bolter, he slotted home more ammunition, turning back towards the corridor.

  The flamer blast had finished off the orks. In the passage there was nothing but charred corpses and burning bodies. Here and there a limb trembled or a hand twitched, but these were simple muscle spasms, not true signs of life. Any shots fired now would be a waste of ammunition.

  Moving his attention back to the other entrance, Telemenus saw that the other three Dark Angels had pushed out, pressing the orks back to the adjoining room.

  ‘Orders, sergeant?’ he asked, taking a stride towards the others before stopping. It was risky leaving only Daellon and his flamer as rearguard.

  ‘Secure your position and extend the perimeter, brothers,’ came Amanael’s reply.

  ‘I shall lead,’ Telemenus told Daellon, pushing past his battle-brother. ‘Conserve your ammunition for when we encounter sufficient foes.’

  ‘You mean I should leave the kills to you, brother?’ said Daellon. He lifted up the muzzle of the flamer and waved Telemenus on. ‘I would be no brother to deny you.’

  The narrow passageway was short, not more than fifteen metres before it came to a T-junction. There was more evidence of the orks’ salvaging and jury-rigging, panels torn from the walls to expose battered air pumps and vapour-spilling heating pipes.

  ‘Brother, your leg?’ said Daellon, reminding Telemenus of the axe still stuck in his hip joint. He pulled the weapon free and tossed it to one side, wincing briefly before the pain subsided. Inspecting the pierced ribbing, he saw the polymer expanding to close the breach, just as his blood cells were clotting to seal the wound in his flesh. Although it was not perfect, the joint would hold well enough for the moment, as would his leg.

  ‘‘Tis but a scratch,’ replied Telemenus, turning right while he motioned for Daellon to cover to the left.

  After a just a few metres the corridor ended abruptly at a round doorway with a rusted lockwheel and a shattered datapanel in the bulkhead beside it. There was no window to check if he was correct but Telemenus assumed it was an airlock of some kind. Certainly it had not seen use for many years. Rejoining Daellon, he found that the left fork of the passage led to a stairwell. The two Space Marines paused at the bottom and listened, but heard no signs of activity on the levels above and below.

  ‘Nothing here, brother-sergeant,’ Telemenus reported. ‘Access to levels four and six. Shall we proceed?’

  ‘No, brothers, return to our position. We will hold for you and proceed together. Sergeant Seraphiel is sending in Squads Actael and Mellusian to provide a cross-sweep to our position.’

  ‘Understood, brother-sergeant.’ Telemenus looked up the steps once more, hoping to see a foe skulking on the steps that he had not registered previously. There was nothing.

  The sound of bolters echoed in the distance and the squad comm erupted into life. Telemenus and Daellon were running even before they heard the first words, pounding back down the corridor as they listened to their squad-brothers.

  ‘Target the leader, Cadael. Achamenon, hold the left.’ Amanael spoke quickly but calmly.

  ‘They are cutting through the bulkhead, brother-sergeant.’ This was from Achamenon.

  ‘Throwing frag,’ warned Cadael. The crack of its detonation rolled along the metal walls around Telemenus a second later. ‘And another.’

  The two Dark Angels sprinted across the corpse-choked chamber where they had first encountered the orks, striding over the mounds of the alien dead as a second fragmentation detonation echoed from the corridor ahead.

  ‘It is still coming, brother-sergeant! Some kind of forcefield?’ Tension had replaced Cadael’s calm as the ork leader apparently survived the Space Marine’s attacks.

  ‘Swap places, brother. Watch that archway on the left.’

  The buzz of Amanael’s chainsword rang through the empty passageway as Telemenus and Daellon ducked beneath swaying fronds of moss and wire and squeezed through a narrow portal at the end of the corridor. They found themselves in what appeared to be an old water vaporisation chamber, the floor still covered with a few centimetres of algae-thick water. It was nearly fifty metres across and half as high. Nearly a third of the space was taken up with a festering mound of ork dung. Insects and small creatures buzzed and skittered over the disgusting hillock, which was obscured in places by forests of sprouting fungi with stems as tall as the Space Marines.

  The flash of bolter fire reflected from the tarnished wall of a service duct off to Telemenus’s left and the pair headed through the miasma of thick fumes and flies. Telemenus was grateful of the sealed environment of his armour; his suit had shut down all external air the moment they had entered the vat, but the stench would have been overwhelming.

  The access hatch was barely large enough for Telemenus to squeeze through. He had to turn sideways and duck to manoeuvre through the opening, his bolter held out in front of him ready to fire. Straightening, he found himself in what appeared to have once been a pumping station, judging by the huge pipes that covered the ceiling, leading from the water vaporisation vat. The machines had long ago been dismantled, though large cogs, pistons and belts littered the rusty floor of the chamber.

  The cavernous space was almost as large as the mustering hall on the strike cruiser; easily three hundred metres long and a hundred wide for most of its length, opening into a nave-like space at the far end where a massive drop-pipe entered from the ceiling. Once it had housed immense processors pumping human sustaining air to a large portion of the station. In the place of the pumps was now a jumble of roughly built hovels and workshops, walled and roofed with torn bulkheads and ceiling tiles, stained carpets draped over some, smoke-spewing generators and glittering electrical wires connected to several of the ramshackle buildings.

  ‘A whole damned town of orks!’ exclaimed Daellon as he came up beside Telemenus. ‘Where are our brothers?’

  ‘There, on the right,’ Telemenus replied, pointing with his bolter towards a group of small huts about seventy metres away.

  The other members of the squad had taken up a position near two shacks butting up against the wall of the chamber. Telemenus could see Achamenon on the roof, his weight causing the metal sheets to buckle as he moved from one edge of the building to the other, firing into the heart of the orkish settlement. Sergeant Amanael was on the ground with Cadael, keeping the area around the buildings clear of attackers.

  There were scores of greenskins, clambering over rooftops and along swinging bridges held up by twists of cable. Many were the smaller aliens – the orks’ slave species – swarming from building to building, pausing to take pot shots with their simple rifles. The larger orks were mainly on a more robust structure towards the far end of the pump hall, laying down scatters of fire from heavy weapons that fired hails of shells and blazes of green energy.

  Telemenus spied a group of orks, fifteen or more, slinking through the gap between two workshops. Moving from one pile of debris to another, keeping to the cover of mangled engine parts and scrap, they were out of sight of the Dark Angels.

  ‘Flanking force, brothers,’ he warned, raising his bolter to fire at the skulking aliens. ‘Engaging.’

  He fired on the move, letting off single rounds as he closed with the aliens at a steady stride. Alerted to the new arrivals, the orks realised they had been found and made a dash for sanctuary behind a line of leaking drums. Telemenus’s bolter fire followed them, cutting down one of the greenskins and wounding another before they reached the shelter of the barrels.

  Daellon’s flamer was of no use at this range and he moved ahead of Telemenus at a swift run, covering the ground quickly. The orks in the workshop realised his intent and a barrage of bullets screamed out of their hiding place, poorly aimed but effective from weight of fire. Daello
n was forced to his right as rounds ricocheted from his armour, seeking cover at the corner of a small hovel made from piled crates. Metal splinters surrounded the Space Marine as the orks intensified their fire.

  ‘Suppress these bastards, if you please, Telemenus,’ said Daellon, his back to the wall of the shack.

  ‘My pleasure, brother.’

  He switched his bolter to burst fire and stopped, locking his armour into a stable firing position. The Dark Angel loosed off the rest of the magazine into the battered oil drums, the din of the bolts’ detonations echoing back from the walls of the workshop. Reloading swiftly, he fired again, targeting the darker shapes of the orks beyond the wall of barrels.

  The fire from the orks lessened under Telemenus’s attack, though whether from casualties or distraction he did not know. Swapping out his empty magazine – noting he had only two reloads left as he did so – the Space Marine advanced again, snapping off short salvos every couple of seconds, keeping the orks occupied.

  ‘Time to cleanse this damned filth,’ snarled Daellon, rounding the corner of the shack with his flamer levelled. He broke into a run, bullets pattering from his armour, and unleashed a sheet of promethium into the workshop’s interior. Burning flamer fuel and igniting oil filled the building with ruddy flames. Telemenus saw writhing, flailing figures dark against the wash of fire.

  Some of the orks survived the flamer blast and burst out of the building, their guns chattering wildly as they charged towards Daellon. Telemenus switched quickly to single fire and aimed at the foremost alien warrior, the bolt knocking the creature from his feet as it hit its shoulder. Blood pouring from the wound, the ork snarled and pushed itself to its feet just in time for Telemenus’s next shot. The round ripped out the creature’s throat, felling it permanently.

  With a glance to check his situation, Telemenus noticed more orks approaching from his left, at least a dozen of them. If he pushed on towards Daellon they would come at the pair of Dark Angels from behind and the two Space Marines would have only the burning workshop as cover.

  ‘Fall back, brother, to me,’ he told Daellon. ‘We cannot break through here.’

  ‘Damned if I retreat from orks,’ the other Dark Angel replied. He fired another gout of flames into the charging orks, killing two and forcing the rest to turn and run. ‘Not while I can still fight.’

  ‘We will be surrounded, brother,’ Telemenus said, breaking to his right, heading towards the blocky remnants of a pump engine. ‘We cannot reach the rest of the squad.’

  ‘Do as Telemenus says,’ Amanael barked over the vox. ‘Secure a position and we will pull back to you. The enemy are massing for a concerted attack. We cannot hold at our current location.’

  ‘As you command, brother-sergeant,’ replied a chastened Daellon.

  Telemenus stopped beside the rusted carcass of the pump and checked the immediate area for foes. Several orks lay close at hand, missing limbs and heads, but he was certain they were dead. Able to inspect the enemy more closely, he saw that these aliens were scrawnier than most orks he had encountered. They had wiry limbs and thin fingers, their teeth not as prominent as most specimens he had examined. Their dress was strange, for orks, made from stitched human clothes, patched and armoured with thin pieces of metal and plastek.

  Their weapons looked basically the same as the autoguns and lasguns of the Unworthy, though with typical orkoid embellishments of scrap fetishes, daubed paint and seemingly superfluous mechanical parts.

  ‘These creatures are amongst the Unworthy also,’ he concluded to the others. ‘Not just allied with the pirates, but numbered amongst their cult.’

  ‘So it seems, brother,’ replied Cadael. ‘The enemy commander is not averse to working with aliens. More proof of his sinful nature.’

  Daellon reached Telemenus’s position at a run, half a dozen orks a few metres behind. Telemenus fired into the group of greenskins as Daellon turned his flamer on them, and between the two Space Marines the alien warriors were cut down in short order.

  ‘How much fuel do you have left, brother?’ asked Telemenus as he eyed the indistinct figures of more orks gathering around the buildings ahead and to his left.

  ‘Two more bursts and another canister,’ replied Daellon, his voice grim as he took stock of what Telemenus had already noticed: there were several dozen orks massing for the next attack. ‘Perhaps eight good bursts in total.’

  ‘We cannot hold for long, brother-sergeant,’ Telemenus announced. He could not see anything of the rest of the squad from where he was; Achamenon had left his rooftop post. ‘What is your status?’

  ‘Fighting withdrawal,’ Amanael replied tersely, his words punctuated by the crack of bolter rounds. ‘Brother-Sergeant Seraphiel, this is Amanael. Our situation is deteriorating swiftly. We must receive reinforcements or withdraw. What are your orders?’

  Telemenus saw the three Space Marines past the burning workshop, the flames glinting from heavily scarred armour. Before they disappeared from view behind another shack he noted that Cadael was firing one-handed, his right arm hanging limply by his side.

  The hall reverberated with a loud, guttural roar from the orks; a war shout that echoed across the settlement as the aliens gave voice as one. Telemenus knew well what the throaty bellowing of the greenskins signified.

  The orks were readying for an all-out attack.

  No Innocents

  Glass splintered as Annael’s fist crashed into the console screen. The Dark Angel growled in frustration as he glared at the inoperative terminal and mentally cursed the Unworthy for their lack of maintenance. It was the fourth communications console he had accessed without success and Annael was forced to conclude that the entire internal comms network was not functional; at least not in the outer towers of Port Imperial.

  He was more than half a kilometre from the collapsed rail station and had abandoned the tracks after finding the second malfunctioning terminal, heading grid-north towards the central spire in the hope of establishing contact with another part of the Dark Angels force. He had not encountered any enemies, though on occasion he had heard distant, muffled explosions that he assumed were strike cruiser attacks in preparation for the assault on the inner sanctum of the enemy.

  He desperately wanted to rejoin the other Dark Angels for the final attack. He could easily imagine the comments by Sabrael and others if he was absent from the battle at such a crucial time. Perhaps he would be the little lost boy, or the wanderer, or some other gently mocking title. With so little time spent with the company, despite his earlier achievements in the Fifth, his reputation would be badly hurt, the episode a blot on his honour that would be hard to overcome. It was a shameful situation, made worse by a quirk of construction that meant his only route back to the main force would mean passing through the inner fortress.

  Mounting Black Shadow, Annael cursed Sabrael’s disobedience. He would have strong words for his brother when they were reunited, if not immediately then when the battle was won. It had been Sabrael’s irresponsibility that had plunged Annael into this debacle. It was an affront to the company that Chaplain Malcifer continued to tolerate Sabrael’s wayward behaviour and if he did not receive satisfactory words from his brother, Annael resolved to bring the matter to Grand Master Sammael and, if necessary, to the Supreme Grand Master.

  In a half-rage, Annael rode on, following a broad ferrocrete concourse that cut down towards the foundations of Port Imperial. Other than the communications relay, Black Shadow’s systems were working well, though the low ammunition warning icon reminded Annael that he was not well-placed to face determined resistance if he was able to access the central spire.

  The dark tunnel lit by the lamps of his steed, he covered another half a kilometre, passing smaller passageways branching off to each side. Having consulted the broken schematic in his steed’s cogitation engine, he knew that these junctions led only to self-contained h
ab-blocks with no connecting route back to the breach or the axis of advance the Dark Angels were taking. When he was roughly halfway along the connecting corridor his bike’s scanner started showing a faint return, ahead and off to his left. It was indistinct, blurred by the intervening structure, but it was definitely an abnormal signal.

  Bringing Black Shadow to a stop, Annael considered his options. It was impossible to tell from this distance whether the signal indicated hostiles, and their probable position meant that they were no threat to the Dark Angels attack, as cut off from the fighting as he was. Keenly aware of the difficulty he likely would face when negotiating his way through the central tower and his ammunition status, he was loathe to expend any more rounds in pointless battle but his instincts warned him against ignoring the signal return altogether. He reminded himself that he was Ravenwing now, and part of his role was to be the eyes of the Chapter. The hazy smudge on his scanner screen was likely to be irrelevant, but there was a chance that it might be a shuttle on stand-by, ready to bring a force of Unworthy to the attack. Remembering the conclusion of the fight at Hadria Praetoris, it occurred to him that it might also be an escape route for the enemy commander.

  As eager as he was to join the main battle, his duty as a warrior of the Ravenwing overruled his personal circumstance. With good fortune the scanner response showed an active energy grid, which in turn might indicate functional infrastructure and a working communications terminal. Whatever it was, Annael realised he had to investigate.

  His first attempt to locate the source of the signal brought him to a cluster of interconnecting living spaces that quickly became a dead-end. Backtracking to the main concourse he tried the next junction and after only a few seconds a dim light from ahead registered in his autosenses. On the scanner the reading became clearer, showing a scattering of returns that looked very much like life signals. Knowing that he could not afford a full confrontation with the enemy he engaged Black Shadow’s secondary engine. Running off a stacked crystal cell similar to the one in his armour’s backpack the bike’s growl quietened to a soft purr as the secondary core took over from the main motor. It was not quite silence but it would afford him the element of surprise should he need it, though at a cost of lower performance from his steed.