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Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine

Page 23

by David Annandale


  Ornastas frowned. The voice, rasping through the wounds to the throat, was familiar. There was something about the bone structure of the skull that he knew, too, but the mutilations were too extensive. He could not see past the muscle and brass plate to the mask of normality the wretch had once worn.

  ‘Darroban,’ the man said.

  Ornastas caught his breath. Another name from the past, another officer from his days in the Kataran Spears. They had not been close, but Ornastas knew him. Darroban had led well, though his brutality against the enemies of the Imperium had often seemed motivated by enjoyment rather than duty. He nodded once, acknowledging that he remembered the name. ‘You seem proud of your dishonour,’ he said.

  Darroban snorted. ‘Is that supposed to bait me? Yes, I’m proud. I’m proud of what I have done in the service of the Blood God. I’m proud of what is coming.’

  ‘What is coming?’ Ornastas asked. This was their moment to speak, to come to full clarity. Each man wanted the other to understand what was happening. Ornastas was conscious of his own vanity, and he accepted it. He would have the traitor know the extent of his crimes, and of his failure, and feel the force of the Emperor’s judgement.

  ‘Slaughter,’ Darroban said. ‘Slaughter so vast that it tears asunder this false dream of reality.’ His hands tightened on his spear as he spoke. He was preaching. ‘Katara has been chosen. The ritual began in Creontiades. It will be completed at Therimachus. When it is done, the armies of the Skull Throne will flood Katara. A storm is coming. Katara will be its centre.’ Darroban looked up to an invisible sky. ‘The maelstrom will take system after system. It will be a spiral of blood, Ornastas. You will not see it, but I want you to imagine it. I want you to take this knowledge to your doom.’

  ‘It will never happen,’ Ornastas said. ‘It has already failed.’ He gestured to the cauldron of Deicoon. ‘You may have begun a ritual here. It was not completed.’

  Darroban shrugged. ‘Therimachus will be enough.’

  ‘It will fail there too, just as you have failed. Do you think your god will reward you?’

  ‘I already have my reward,’ Darroban said. ‘And what of your failure? The war turns at Therimachus, not here. Nothing you can do here matters.’

  ‘Not to the war,’ said Ornastas. ‘But what I do here matters. I stand for the honour of Katara, heretic. I stand for the Emperor. As for you…’

  ‘As for me, I will take your skull for Khorne.’

  They stared at each other in silence for a moment, wrestling with the uncomfortable truths of wounded pride. They had come to the tower as chieftains, proud of their importance. We don’t matter, Ornastas thought. Darroban was right. The war was elsewhere. It had left them both behind. The survival or death of either man would make no difference to Katara’s fate. Darroban had aimed true in telling Ornastas what was planned for Katara. Ornastas’ soul bled at the thought that he was helpless to affect his world’s fate.

  We don’t matter, he thought again. Not yet. Therimachus would not fall. The ritual would not be completed. And when the Iron Skulls were purged from Katara, then the reclamation would begin. Deicoon would matter again. This battle would have meaning.

  He saw uncertainty, determination and anger move across Darroban’s bloody features. The warlock was wrestling with the same sense of futility.

  Ornastas felt a dark gratitude. He and Darroban needed each other in this battle. Each was the other’s guarantor of meaning. A leader to destroy, a symbol of triumph in the midst of burning ruin.

  And so they raised the symbols of their gods, and attacked.

  ‘They really don’t want us in the city,’ Drahn observed.

  The Pallidus Mor was almost within effective range of the enemy. The auspex readings showed the Iron Skulls had formed up at the outskirts to Therimachus, creating a mechanised wall between the Pallidus Mor and the hive. Slightly to the north of the barrier, the last contingent of the Imperial Hunters was engaged with another splinter of the traitors. The Iron Skulls had decided that their goals within Therimachus superseded committing everything to finishing off the foe.

  ‘They don’t want us in,’ Krezoc agreed, ‘and they want to finish their task. They’re playing for time. Which means they’re worried we can stop them.’

  ‘From doing what?’ Rheliax wondered.

  ‘From completing another ritual. Can’t you feel it?’

  Though the hills and towers of Therimachus prevented Krezoc from getting a general sense of the city’s layout, she could see enough. The lines of destruction were not random. As in Deicoon, sorcerous energy was building. She felt its pressure in the back of her eyes. The Titan’s machine-spirit snarled as the force that had tried to corrupt it once crept forwards again. A potential was growing. Soon all it would need was sufficient blood to ignite a terrible becoming.

  ‘Disruption, then,’ said Drahn.

  ‘Focused charge on their line,’ Krezoc said. ‘Maintain a spread for the initial attack. Force them to divide their fire. We will converge our fire on the centre. Close up as we approach, and break through them. We must snap their spine here.

  ‘Secutarii,’ she continued, ‘the traitors don’t have their infantry here. You are not escorts now. Attack where and how you can.’

  The secutarii travelling in the Titans had disembarked as soon as the battle group had emerged from the burning forest. They had a nimbleness and flexibility of attack that could be of use now. She paused for a moment. ‘Captain Deyers, you are with us?’

  ‘We are.’ Anger gave his voice life again.

  Krezoc hoped he wasn’t expecting to save the city. The path ahead of her was clear, and it burned.

  ‘Very well,’ Krezoc said. ‘Pallidus Mor!’ she voxed to the demi-legio. ‘We are the pride of Death!’

  ‘The pride of Death!’ the princeps shouted back over the vox.

  ‘The pride of Death!’ Vansaak and Grevereign cried.

  The war-horns blasted again, this time in concert with the unified barrage launched by every god-machine. The giants of the Pallidus Mor marched across the cratered wastes before Therimachus. The Iron Skulls laid down a wide bombardment, raising a curtain of fire across the fields. Energy blasts tore the earth open and strained void shields with a force that would consume armies. The Pallidus Mor’s fire zeroed in on the Banelord that raged at the centre of the formation. Hundreds of missiles flew against the monster. Multiple volcano las-beams, quake shells and Sunfury plasma blasts hit the traitor at once. The assault was colossal. No single Titan could withstand the massed fire of twelve others. It survived several seconds, its war-horn shrieking like a maddened beast. The Banelord actually advanced several steps into the barrage, in defiance of its fate, before it disintegrated. Its final explosion was subnuclear, though that was enough to damage the smaller Titans on either side of it. The Pallidus Mor turned its fire to the left, and the Ravager it struck vaporised even more quickly than the Banelord.

  The victories were quick, but costly. The entire demi-legio weathered the Iron Skulls’ bombardment. Gloria Vastator’s shields failed once, and a shell punctured its right upper torso. The movement of the right arm was hampered. Thezerin dispatched repair servitors and rerouted what controls she could. Krezoc and Grevereign could still aim the volcano cannon, but its responses were sluggish, delayed.

  In Drahn’s maniple, the Reaver Terribilis Ossa ceased all communications. It stood motionless in the field between two craters, smoke rising through the eyes of its skull. It had taken a direct hit to the head. The Titan might be salvaged, but its crew, princeps and moderati had been incinerated. It was nothing more than a tomb now, a monument to a battle that had barely begun.

  The Iron Skulls moved to compensate for the gap in their lines as another Ravager turned into a sudden, bloody sunrise. The distance between the two forces shrank, and the Pallidus Mor began its convergence. The fire between
the Titans became more concentrated, a collision of devastation that turned the intervening space into the heart of a supernova. The Iron Skulls moved back and forth on their line, directing their warp-tainted holocaust at the approaching wedge of the Pallidus Mor. Traitor and Imperial god-machines vanished from sight of each other as the conflagration spread, screaming, over dozens of square miles. Portions of the land before Therimachus turned molten. At the very centre of the crossfire, a cauldron of lava roiled, hungry to swallow the combatants.

  Krezoc navigated and aimed by auspex readings again. Her eyes could see nothing but the flare of void shields and the endlessly renewed flash of explosions. Gloria Vastator was marching through the sun. She took it through by being a thing of the manifold, her thoughts fused with the machine-spirit, reading the enemy signatures and signals of collapsing, melting ground as if the data were fed directly into her senses. She turned, altered the Warlord’s aim and course as the battlefield shifted and sank. She maintained enough of her identity to read the broader picture of the war. She maintained the strategy of the attack. The surviving Imperial Hunters, energised, managed to move their struggle closer to the edges of the Iron Skulls’ line, turning two battles into one, forcing the traitors to battle on two fronts. Therimachus burned, but the fire that closed in was all-consuming. If it moved into the city, it would raze even its shadows.

  ‘The Spears are making their move,’ Vansaak said.

  Krezoc picked up the signals of the regiment and the secutarii riding their hulls. They were racing ahead of the Pallidus Mor advance on the left flank, risking the cataclysm of shells and las as they arced around to come for the edges of the Iron Skulls’ formation. They were tiny components of the huge machine she had thrown into motion.

  Vansaak felt the same sense of perspective. ‘Are they beneath notice?’ she asked.

  When Krezoc answered, her bodily voice felt distant from her consciousness and slow to respond. ‘I hope they are,’ she said. She needed the Iron Skulls to ignore the threat. The battle for the gates of Therimachus was approaching a state of devastating balance. She needed the equilibrium to tip.

  Even a small stone could start a rockslide.

  The Kataran 66th had returned to an inferno. Deyers’ life was a journey from flame to flame. Deicoon, Klivanos, Therimachus – it was all a continuum of fire. He rode with Bastion of Faith’s hatch open this time. The firestorm that threatened his regiment now was very different from the one on the plain. Its intensity was more focused, and more overwhelming. The air was thick with the smoke that rose from the land in the aftermath of the Imperial Hunters’ lost battle. It came too from the burning city. But he could still breathe. And if the flames of the struggle between the Iron Skulls and the Pallidus Mor swept over the Spears, there would be no taking shelter inside the tank. Bastion of Faith would melt to slag in moments.

  The armoured column skirted the edge of the battle. The god-machines tore Katara apart between them. They were dark leviathans with blazing eyes, burning the night with the anger of their guns. Deyers felt his world turn brittle on his right. Immensities were warring with each other, their thunderous steps grinding Katara to cinders and dust. Ahead, Therimachus blazed. Flames silhouetted its skyline. Towers burst and fell under the continued onslaught of the other Iron Skulls. Death moved in colossal shapes through the pulsing crimson glow.

  Therimachus was the goal. Though its wounds were grievous, there was a city there still. Katara could make a last stand. There was something of its civilisation, culture and soul yet to save. Between Deyers and the goal was the line of the Iron Skulls. He could keep swinging south, go completely around the traitors while they were engaged with the Pallidus Mor, and head straight into the city. But the giants that remained there would make short work of the 66th. He didn’t trust Krezoc’s strategy. It was predicated entirely on destroying the enemy, not on preserving the city. Syagrius had promised preservation, though, and failed. The only path now was Krezoc’s, so he would follow it. And pray.

  He glanced up at Venterras. The alpha hoplite was riding the outside of the turret. Two more of his squad were crouched on the hull. The secutarii were unreadable in their helms. They were motionless, armoured statues of mechanical calm. Their eagerness to be at war came through in a constant, low thrum. They were war machines primed for combat. Deyers wondered if they were capable of doubt. If they were, it was not on this day, or in this battle.

  Medina turned the Leman Russ towards the north west, driving towards the southernmost of the Iron Skulls. The Titan was a Feral, small next to its brothers, immense to the human on the ground. It hunched forwards, its back humped and lined with jagged plates. Its tail ended in a spiked club that crackled with dark energy. It whipped angrily back and forth as the Feral stalked along the line, firing mega-bolter rounds and blasts from what must once have been a turbolaser destructor, but which now fired tainted beams of cancerous intensity. A few hundred yards beyond the Feral was another of its kind. The two twisted god-machines behaved like pack animals, their cannon fire the snapping jaws of predators seeking to bring down much larger prey but unable to advance closer without marching into the incandescent apocalypse.

  Venterras crouched a little lower. He was a wound spring, seconds before launching himself into the war. The vox-speakers in his helm emitted a short, squealing burst of binaric. The other two secutarii answered in the same fashion. Deyers sensed an entire battle plan presented, refined and confirmed in seconds. Then Venterras turned to Deyers. ‘The first of the traitors is ours,’ he said.

  ‘We can support you,’ Deyers said.

  ‘No. We will be in the way of your guns. If you take the second, our coordinated efforts will be more efficient. Do you agree, captain?’

  Deyers nodded. He voxed Medina. ‘Make a run for the second Feral.’

  The blaze Therimachus cast silhouetted the first Iron Skull and cast its shadow forwards. The lead tanks of the column entered the shadow. The Feral did not react except to turn back towards the north, narrowly missing a stream of mega-bolter fire from the Pallidus Mor. Then the Spears were within range for the secutarii. The Leman Russ formation came in close, risking the Feral’s trampling feet, directly underneath its extended cannon arms, too near for it to shoot down unless it backed up towards the city.

  The secutarii leapt off the tanks. The entire contingent of hoplite and peltast squads charged over the churned mud and stone, flowing with the brutal grace of a single machine. Platen turned Bastion of Faith’s cannon towards the Titan but held fire. The Feral ignored the column. The Spears passed through its shadow, ants before a giant. The vibrations of its footsteps rattled the hull. The concussions of bursts of fire hammered at Deyers’ ears. The thud-thud-thud-thud of the fire rattled the bones of his chest. This close, he could see the distorted nature of the Feral even more clearly. He recoiled, body and soul. Its armour looked like reptilian scales. Foul icons writhed in his peripheral vision. When he looked up at the lunging head, he expected it to open, revealing a giant maw. Its taint was so pervasive, its shadow crawled over Deyers’ flesh like an oil slick.

  The Leman Russ roared past the Titan, into the space between it and the second target. The secutarii reached the feet of the Iron Skull.

  With a snarling blast of its war-horn, the other Feral turned away from the Pallidus Mor and trained its weapons on the 66th. A line of explosions walked towards the tanks.

  Venterras mag-locked his shield to his back and leapt onto the toes of the Feral’s right leg. The moment he made contact, the monster reacted, as if he walked on skin instead of metal. Its hunched form lurched down. It jerked back and forth, a beast trying to see its tiny enemies. It took two long steps backwards. He tried to magnetise himself to the moving foot, but his boots began to slip. They could not hold on to the transformed substance. He staggered forwards and jumped up to the plate of the leg. His right hand found a hold on the shifting, overlapping scales. H
e stabbed up with his arc lance, triggering a blast at the same time. The lance forced a small crack in the armour. It held the blade enough for Venterras to avoid being shaken off when the foot slammed down to the ground again. More hoplites had joined him on the foot, while others had begun to climb the left leg.

  On Khania, he had ascended Gloria Vastator to cleanse it of xenos filth. Now he was climbing again. This god-machine was lesser, and more foul. Before, the mission was defensive. Now he was on the offence. The symmetry had meaning. Difference and repetition were interlocked teeth of adjoining gears. The machinery of fate was clear to him, and with it the hand of the Omnissiah. He was privileged to experience a fragment of the divine mechanism. He gave thanks, and shot upwards.

  The peltasts moved to circle the monster, harassing it with kinetic hammer-shots from their galvanic casters. They placed their shots with machinic precision, the supersonic masses punching into the armour just above the hoplites’ positions, creating more handholds. They ran hard to keep pace with the Feral’s retreat.

  It moved faster. It brought them into range of its guns. Its mega-bolter chewed up the ground. Shells overwhelmed kyropatris fields, shattering bodies and armour, turning them into pulped masses of ceramite and bone splinters. The peltasts scattered to either side of the fire, and ran harder.

  Trigerrix signalled to Venterras.

  Venterras moved quickly from handhold to scale, propelling himself up towards the Titan’s knee. He calculated the vectors of the Feral’s movements, its cannon fire, the speed of the peltasts and the rate of the hoplite climb. The results were dark, but they could not account for all variables. The Omnissiah knew all, and this was the one path open to serve Him. The variables Venterras could not see would determine the true solution to the equation.

  He had faith.

  His faith was rewarded.

  A turbolaser from the Pallidus Mor cut across the night and struck the Feral’s torso. The traitor’s shields held, barely. It reared up and sidestepped. It fired back into the dark, giving the peltasts a brief reprieve.

 

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