Deyers braced himself against a bulkhead. He thought it already felt warm. The engine idled while Medina waited for the Pallidus Mor to begin its advance. Beyond that low growl, outside the hull, Deyers listened to the greater rumble of the Titans, the muffled howl of the wind and the endless, thrumming bellow of the flames.
Then Medina engaged the gears. There was a jerk, and Bastion of Faith led the regiment into the inferno.
Gloria Vastator took the lead. ‘We are the symbol,’ Krezoc said to her moderati. ‘We are the hope, for all behind us, that the Klivanos can be crossed.’
‘Unless we fall,’ said Grevereign.
‘Was that meant to be funny?’ Vansaak asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Grevereign admitted.
‘It is,’ Krezoc said dryly. ‘It’s also true. If we fall, Princeps Drahn and Rheliax will take up the role.’
‘And the Pallidus Mor will cross,’ Grevereign said, not joking now.
Krezoc nodded. The fatalism of the Pallidus Mor was not defeatism. It was the acceptance of the worst as the cost of victory.
Her consciousness filled with the single task of walking through flames as high as the Warlord’s legs. Freed of the need to operate the weapons, the wills of the moderati majoris and, in their carapace pods, the moderati minoris, bolstered hers. She had an even more heightened awareness of the Titan’s body. She felt it more keenly than she did her own. Her control over its every movement was acute. She knew exactly what speed she must assign to each step so she could place the foot on the uncertain ground with the maximum of care. Magos Thezerin directed the entire auspex array to the analysis of the terrain’s stability, reading the ground for micro-tremors and heat blooms suggestive of a thin crust.
Though they moved with the maximum care and precision of control, every step was a gamble, and every completed stride a victory. Yet the Warlord’s gait was smooth. The pauses between strides were minute. The data flowed through the manifold into Krezoc’s single-minded awareness, and though her decisions were made on a rational basis, they happened with the speed of instinct.
Gloria Vastator waded through the sea of flame. The fires roared around its hull. They wreathed the pillars of its legs. The Titan stepped over geysers, and the fountains raged upwards, burning the legio banners. The ground cracked. It sank under the god-machine’s tread. It did not collapse. The Warlord moved further and further onto the plain. Soon, Krezoc had to depend almost entirely on the auspex. Outside Gloria Vastator’s head, she could see nothing except the waves and vortices of the conflagration. Storms of flame raged against the Titan, grasping upwards for its head. The ground was almost invisible. Now and then the orange tide would part long enough to reveal the wounds below. The terrain resembled an expanse of scabs broken by fresh injuries. Gloria Vastator blazed the trail. The rest of the Pallidus Mor followed in its footsteps. Nothing was taken for granted. The crews of every god-machine subjected the ground to the same analysis.
But the land was the enemy. The land was treacherous. The land shifted.
Canis Gladio, in Rheliax’s maniple, was the last of the Titans ahead of the Kataran 66th. The Warhound followed the path of Crudelis Mortem. Deyers had crowded in behind Medina’s seat, peering through the driver’s viewing block at the burning plain, and when the collapse began, his brain had trouble processing what he was seeing. The Warhound canted suddenly to the left. Its leg sank into the ground. A colossal fireball rose around it, and then it dropped out of sight. A wave of promethium washed outwards from where the Titan had been. Medina braked. There was no way to evade the wave. The wall of liquid fire rushed at Bastion of Faith. It hit, and Deyers saw nothing but fire. The tank shook with the impact. It slid to one side. The heat inside, already intolerable, increased. When the wave exhausted its force, there was a deep, continuous, ominous cracking, loud enough to be heard through the hull.
The Leman Russ was drenched with promethium. Flames licked over the viewing block. There was nothing to see. Medina could not move forwards. And the cracking was growing louder. Deyers lunged for the hatch.
‘Captain?’ said Platen.
‘No choice,’ Deyers said. He could feel the warmth of the wheel through his gloves as he turned it. ‘We have to see where to go.’ He took a deep breath, held it and opened the hatch.
The heat was so intense he almost let his breath out. A shallow stream of fire ran by the Leman Russ and down the line of the regiment, licking halfway up the tanks’ hulls. Ahead, there was a heaving lake where Canis Gladio had stood. The ground was crumbling at the edges, cracks spreading wider and wider, reaching out to the other Titans beyond and to the Spears. The Warhound’s mega-bolter arm thrust up from the lake for a moment, then vanished beneath the surface. More waves splashed ashore, thrown outwards by explosions in the depths.
Deyers looked left and right. There was a wider stretch of ground between the new lake and the nearest geyser on the right. And still the crust was breaking off and falling into the burn. The searing wind gusted against Deyers’ face, and a roiling cloud of flame, fifty feet high, rushed off the pit towards him. He half fell down the ladder, slamming the hatch after him as he dropped.
‘Right!’ he shouted to Medina. ‘Go right, then ahead. Can you see yet?’
‘Clearing a bit,’ said Medina. ‘I can see a dark patch.’
‘That’s it. Head for that and swing around the collapse.’ And pray to the Emperor the ground holds.
The reports of losses filtered into Krezoc’s consciousness. They were unwelcome distractions from her focus on finding Gloria Vastator’s path, but they could not be ignored. The Klivanos Plain laid siege to the battle group. It was a war of attrition. The flames and the treason of the earth ate away at the column. It sought to halt their progress. Krezoc’s responsibility was to see that the march did not stop. She had known the losses would come. She had prepared herself for them, as she did for any campaign.
But this was different. The enemy could not be destroyed. It could not be conquered. There was no retaliation possible. Morale was as much a casualty as flesh and metal. Canis Gladio was the first to die. Its destruction took a toll on the Kataran 66th. Most of the regiment made it past the lake of fire, but a second collapse, triggered by the first, linked the lake to the geyser as the last of the heavy armour passed. Two Leman Russes and a Basilisk artillery tank sank into the fire.
Hours later, the ground became even more porous. It broke apart, part sand, an incinerating marsh. Gloria Vastator’s feet sank into ten feet and more of promethium. The auspex readings were a confusion of heat. There was no clear path. Krezoc marched the Warlord forwards, risking greater depths. Burning waves radiated outwards from its legs.
‘The Spears can’t cross this,’ she said to her moderati. ‘They need a route.’ She could not seek one. That would draw too much of her focus away from her Titan’s steps. Grevereign and Vansaak, though, could look, if only briefly.
‘On the right,’ Grevereign said after a minute. ‘Five hundred yards away. Looks like a ridge. It might be more solid.’
‘Good. Relay the data back to Captain Deyers.’ Gloria Vastator marched on through flames that reached almost as high as its head. In the manifold, Krezoc registered the steady stream of heat readings and accumulations of minor damage. Thezerin knew better than to report on their status and the risks they were taking. There was no choice but to walk, descending further and further into the crucible of the plain.
Krezoc lost track of time. It was night now. Beyond that, she had little sense of how long the battle group had been amidst the flames, or how far there was to go. What she knew was the necessity to march, and not to stop, for any reason.
From the ridge through the marsh, Deyers voxed and pleaded with her to wait. ‘Our tanks are getting bogged down in marshy ground,’ he said. ‘If the Pallidus Mor gets much further ahead, we will lose sight of our path.’
‘Is the column blocked by the trapped vehicles?’
‘No. They’re towards the rear. The ground was in bad shape for them.’
‘Can you free them?’
‘Without being able to get out of our tanks, I don’t think we can.’
‘Leave them.’
‘Princeps…’
‘Rescue the crews if you can, but we do not stop. Neither do you. To stop is to die, captain.’
‘If the crews leave their vehicles…’
‘That is their only choice. I am not being cruel. This is our situation. Keep moving, captain. Keep us in sight or get left behind. That is your choice.’
Because really, she knew, there was no choice at all. She had to make Deyers understand this too. When he started to protest again, she cut the link. A few minutes later, she voxed Rheliax. ‘Are the Spears moving?’
‘They are.’
‘Good.’ Deyers had received her message.
Onwards, through fire, onwards on ground that sank and erupted and cracked. Onwards, through a world in eternal cry. Gloria Vastator marched through the destruction, its pace relentless. The erupting plain battered it with wind and fire, and could not slow its advance.
Krezoc did not see the trap when it came. It was too well hidden by the flames. Gloria Vastator was moving through another erupting swamp. The Warlord’s left leg came down. It sank through ten feet of promethium to the soft ground below, as Krezoc expected. Then the ground was a shell over a cavern, and it gave way. The leg dropped thirty feet. The Warlord leaned suddenly to the left. It came to rest at a sharp angle, almost toppling over. The lake of fire rushed to fill the cavern. Flames embraced the Titan’s torso as though it were a burning log.
Krezoc gasped. The immobilisation of the Warlord hit her like a shock maul. Pain flared behind her eyes. She bore down on her focus and read every detail of the damage and what movement was possible before pulling back to consider what must be done.
‘Maniple!’ she shouted into the vox. ‘Cease advance! All units, go around us. Princeps Drahn, the lead is yours.’ She waited for the acknowledgments, dreading that the cave-in might catch the Reaver and Warhounds following on Gloria Vastator’s heels, drowning them in the depths of the promethium. She breathed more easily when she received confirmation of the escort pulling back.
‘How can we assist?’ Drahn asked.
‘By moving on,’ Krezoc said. ‘Do not approach us. Do not risk multiplying losses.’ The brutal arithmetic she had forced Deyers to follow applied to her Titan as well.
She consulted with Thezerin. ‘Magos, you concur that free movement is possible only with the right arm and carapace turrets?’
‘I do, princeps. We have no leverage for the legs. The left arm has limited range before the barrel falls beneath the surface of the promethium.’
Krezoc thought for a moment. ‘Extrapolate consequences of the following course of action,’ she said, and sent a datapack to the tech-priest.
Thezerin responded almost immediately. ‘Extrapolation is equivalent to speculation in this instance, princeps. The available data is insufficient to make qualified predictions.’
‘Speculate, then.’
‘Unnecessary. No other course of action is open to us.’
‘I agree. Thank you, magos.’ Choice, she thought, was a rare luxury for the Pallidus Mor. Over and over and over again, in the legio’s history, the apparently hard decision had not really been a decision at all.
She voxed Drahn again. ‘Give us a very wide berth,’ she said. ‘There will be weapons fire.’
‘The Omnissiah guide your aim,’ said Drahn. Gloria Vastator jerked and settled closer to the burning surface.
‘If the ground gives way any more…’ Vansaak began.
‘I know,’ said Krezoc. ‘We’re about to find out if it will.’ She turned to Grevereign. ‘Moderati,’ she said, ‘we are going to bring the fight to the enemy.’
Grevereign turned around to look back and up at her from his throne. ‘The enemy will be very displeased, I think.’
‘I’m counting on it.’
‘The Belicosa at this range?’ Vansaak said.
‘The Vulcan is on the wrong side,’ Krezoc said. ‘It can’t reach the targeted zone, and the Apocalypse missiles lack the precision. Moderati Grevereign, are you ready?’
‘I am. Weapon charged.’
Krezoc rotated the volcano cannon’s turret until the barrel was almost parallel with the Titan’s right leg. She kept enough of an angle that it was still aiming forwards, enough that the proximity of the blast would be within the tolerances of the Warlord’s armour. Thezerin was still streaming auspex data to her through the manifold. The tech-priest isolated what information she could about the state of the ground beneath the shallow lake of promethium. Krezoc adjusted her aim again. She looked at the wall of flame through the armourglass eyes of the Titan, and braced herself, gripping hard on the arms of her throne.
The gun fired. The las vaporised the promethium. It melted the ground beneath, instantly creating a new cavern where none had been before. Molten rock and liquid flame fell into the new pit. The explosion pushed out for hundreds of yards from Gloria Vastator’s epicentre. The entire subsurface trembled and dropped. In the midst of searing light, in an all-consuming eruption of its own creation, the Warlord dropped further onto shifting rubble. It righted itself as it sank further into the flames. When it stopped moving, it was almost up to its chest in the fire. Krezoc angled the turrets upwards during the descent, and the barrels were still above the level of the promethium.
‘Interior fires,’ Thezerin warned. ‘The breaches are happening faster than the crews can seal them.’
‘Then we must rise above,’ Krezoc said.
The Warlord was in the depression. It could not walk out of it. The Vulcan mega-bolter was free now. Krezoc linked with Haziad in his carapace pod and aimed the gun down at a shallow angle and forward of Gloria Vastator. She triggered a sustained burst. The shells punched through the lake, into the ground beneath it. Krezoc moved the Vulcan up and down, directing the fire to shape the land. The auspex reports exploded as the shells cut a swath through the fire, their blasts momentarily exposing more of the ground to the sensors. Thezerin took the data, and now she could extrapolate. She refined the information, sent it to Krezoc, and Krezoc used it to control the barrage. She turned destruction into creation. She hammered the plain into submission, forcing it to mirror her will. When she ceased fire, she had created a rough slope leading up to the higher ground beyond the burning lake.
With a blast of its war-horn, Gloria Vastator walked again. Its march was slow, the rubble beneath its tread constantly shifting. But there were no pauses, and the god-machine rose from the burning tomb, shedding cataracts of flame. With the inexorability of a mountain chain thrust upwards by the collision of tectonic plates, it climbed the slope, the ascending conqueror. When it reached the level ground, Krezoc sounded the war-horn again. The answering cries of the rest of the Pallidus Mor welcomed its victory.
Krezoc took Gloria Vastator forwards on as direct a path as she could. The arc Drahn had led the demi-legio on to avoid the devastation the volcano cannon unleashed in the subsurface was so wide that the Warlord caught up with the battle group in less than an hour. Drahn slowed the pace of Fatum Messor, giving Krezoc the chance to move up once more to the front of the column.
The battle group continued its march to the north. Dawn came, though there was no sign of it through the fire and smoke. The cycles of night and day had no meaning over the Klivanos Plain. It roared in an eternal twilight of red and black. Its attacks were unceasing. It sought to retaliate for its defeat by Gloria Vastator. More tanks became bogged down and had to be abandoned. The rage of the plain eroded the armour of the god-machines. Flames found their way inside hulls. The Warhounds, lower and much closer to the fury of the conflagrations
, suffered the most. Their gaits became more difficult, each step harder won.
The second day was ending when the ground at last began to slope upwards again. The change was gradual but real. The surface became more solid, less treacherous. The encircling mountain chains slowly came into sight again, though the distance between them was much greater than at the southern entrance to the Klivanos. The fires raged on for mile after mile ahead of the Pallidus Mor. The nature of the burn began to change. The auspex reported the difference before Krezoc could see it. The firestorm consumed forest, not promethium.
In the hour before sunset, the battle group left the plain behind and entered the trees. Krezoc increased the pace. The god-machines flattened the burning timber. Their passage left behind a firebreak hundreds of yards wide. The Kataran Spears charged down its centre. The tanks with dozer blades moved to the fore, clearing the charred and crushed trunks from the path of the column.
The heat was as intense as over the plain. The temperatures inside the vehicles was intolerable. The reports of unaugmented troops succumbing mounted. But vox-chatter increased too. Krezoc no longer had to second-guess each step, and she listened to the voices of the battle group. From the Kataran Spears, she heard the beginnings of hope. The embers of morale were flaring once more. The plain was beaten. It howled in impotent fury, bereft of further prey. It had injured many of the Titans, but claimed only one of them.
‘Moderati, you may resume normal duties,’ Krezoc said. Gloria Vastator’s weapons powered up. The auspex array scanned the distance for the war the Pallidus Mor had come to find. Distorted echoes of the conflict worked their way through the sheets of flame. They became stronger and more distinct.
The Warlord passed through a final wall of flames. Dark, guttering remnants of the forest gave way to the hills outside Therimachus. Brush fires swept over the grasses. Other flames, from other causes, billowed up from the distant city. The great blaze that had spread from the Klivanos parted like curtains, revealing the hell of war unleashed across the land.
Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine Page 21
