How far had the others travelled? There was no way to know.
But if someone were to see the wrecks, and a land-based search followed, there would be nothing to say there was a survivor. Nothing to suggest that prying open the destroyed armour would be worthwhile. Unless there was an unmistakeable signal.
That was the one thing I could do. I couldn’t reach high enough to strike and do any damage, but I could ring the hull like a bell. So I did. Three rhythmic blows. I stopped to listen, counting to twenty, then three more blows.
I fell into the new rhythm. I might very well not be able to hear searchers
until they were actually working on the tank. For all I knew, I could be the last human on Armageddon, fruitlessly hitting the interior of his coffin. But I could not risk silence, in case there was help nearby. So I hit three times and listened. Hit three times, listened.
On and on. For hours. How many, I had no way of telling. My existence reduced itself to this one task of striking metal in pitch blackness, a task I had no reason to expect would be successful. I refused to accept the likelihood of failure. If I did, the temptation to rest would become overwhelming. I lived from second to second. I found the energy to strike the hull three times, and then again for another three. I tried to shut out all thoughts of the past and future. The eternal present was all that mattered. Despite my efforts, though, I could not ignore the irony of my situation. The Saviour of Armageddon, dead in an overturned tank. A glorious end, truly.
I did laugh a bit. That helped.
Time wore on, and my bursts of dry laughter died away. My throat was parched. I could barely move my arm. My body demanded sleep, but I refused. Then, quite suddenly, I heard noises outside. Engines. Loud, coughing, rattling engines. And over their din, closer to the hull, voices.
Guttural. Savage.
Orks.
I had poor options. A choice of deaths, but the decision was an easy one. I would go down fighting. I smashed at my tomb with renewed force. After another three blows, I heard pounding from the other side. And then the unmistakeable grind of metal cutting metal. The greenskin voices sounded excited.
I reached to my belt and activated my shield generator. The air around me thrummed as the power field sprang into being. I drew my bolt pistol, building up the charge of my bale eye. I waited. I was eager to begin. The moment the orks broke through, the situation would change. I had no illusions about my chances, but I would make the best of them.
Sparks showered into my cell. The pitch of the grinding rose to a scream, and a chainblade broke through.
Still I waited for the enemy to free me and provide a clear shot at his bestial face.
The blade worked its way around in a rough circle about a metre wide. The cuts joined. The blade withdrew. A heavy blow from the other side knocked
the sliced plating inside.
Armageddon’s grey daylight was blinding after the hours of total darkness.
I fired my eye as the ork poked its head through the hole. The las-burst shot through the greenskin’s right eye, incinerating its brain, and it fell away.
There was a growl, and then another ork appeared. I blew its skull off with the pistol.
The orks roared with outrage. Fists pounded against the hull. For the moment I saw nothing except a circle of brown sky. Heavy booted feet thudded across the hull towards the hole. Firing again, I took off the brute’s arm just as it began to aim.
The attack began in earnest now. They fired around the hole at every angle.
Bullets ricocheted around the interior. My shield absorbed their kinetic energy and they fell. A grenade arced in. I caught it and threw it back outside.
It exploded in mid-air, and I was rewarded with roars of outrage that turned into roars of pain.
The orks kept coming and I kept shooting them. I was trapped, but they couldn’t come at me where they could see me more than one at a time. I could hold them off indefinitely… until I ran out of clips for the pistol. Even then, I would take them apart with the power claw if they tried to come inside.
Indefinitely. Not infinitely.
I knew what the end was. I dismissed it. I would kill them one by one in the same eternal present as when I had banged my claw against the hull. They kept coming, wearing me down closer and closer to final exhaustion.
As I fought, and shot, and killed, I wondered why their attacks were so limited. I didn’t hear any engines, so perhaps these orks were without heavy armour. But none of them tried to burn me out with flamers. A well-placed rocket would have ended the struggle in an instant. Instead, they appeared to be limiting themselves to shotguns and blades.
But in the end, they tired of the game, and decided to change the rules. The grinding started up again. When the blade poked through, it began to cut the outline of a much larger hole. I would lose my shelter. I would be cornered with no protection except my power field, and concentrated fire would overwhelm it.
I changed my bolt pistol’s clip and waited for the endgame.
The huge roar of an approaching aircraft shook the air. I heard the shriek of
launched missiles. Explosions. Howls from the orks. A confused stampede.
The aircraft came closer. There was the blast of retrorockets as it landed. And then the sounds of a perfect, cleansing slaughter.
I leapt and grabbed the edge of the gap with my claw. Hauling myself up, I climbed out of the coffin.
Storm of the Wastes had come to rest in a narrow plain between the hills.
The wreck of one of the other tanks lay on the slope to my left. A dozen metres to my right, an obsidian Thunderhawk gunship sat on level ground. A squad of Space Marines marched through the battlefield. It was full day, but they looked like darkest thoughts of the night. They were horned monsters.
Though they carried bolters, most of them were killing orks with blades that grew out of their forearms.
Black Dragons.
Judging from the number of bodies I saw, there had been a few hundred orks to start with. I had lost track of how many I had killed. In the initial moments of their attack, the Black Dragons had cut them down by half. The rest fought back, but not for long.
The massacre was over in just a few minutes.
The captain of the Black Dragons came to meet me as I jumped down from
the Vanquisher’s upturned hull. He towered over his battle-brothers. The adamantium edge of his crescent horn gleamed in the sun. The coating of his bone blades was dark with greenskin blood. His flesh seemed more reptilian than human. In appearance, the Space Marine approached the daemonic.
This being too, I reminded myself, had a role to play in service to the Emperor.
The Black Dragon nodded. ‘Volos,’ he said. ‘Second Company. An honour,
commissar.’
‘My thanks, Captain Volos. I am greatly in your debt. How did you find me?’
‘If we had flown through this area before you were attacked, I don’t think we would have,’ he said. ‘We spotted the orks.’
I took in the bodies stretching away on all sides. ‘So large a group in the middle of nowhere would have caught the eye,’ I agreed.
‘A large raiding party, yes,’ he said. ‘I am puzzled by their overall weakness, though. There are no warlords here. And their weapons…’
‘…are very limited,’ I finished.
He must have seen something on my face. ‘Commissar?’ he asked.
An ork force weak in strength but large in numbers. Easily spotted. One that could not simply blow up the tank they were attacking; one that would be just possible for a single human being to hold off. And why were the orks here? I had called them to the specific tank, pinpointing my location for any searching eyes, but I could not understand why this force had been in the area at all. After the bombers did the job, there was little to scavenge. There would have been no reason for any infantry to be diverted to this location.
Unless I was the reason.
I remembered Morena’s las
t vox transmission, alerting Imperial forces to my presence. I wondered now if someone else had heard it, if my enemy had sent this force knowing I was here. If they had sent these orks, whose constant fire showed they were not trying to capture me and also did not have the means of an assured kill.
I had no answers, only possibilities. But the questions were enough.
They were their own revelations, and they gave me that much more of the measure of my enemy.
I finally answered Volos. ‘I was just gathering my thoughts, Captain Volos,’
I said. ‘Learning what I must to win this war.’
CADIA STANDS
by Justin D Hill
The storm has broken and the forces of Chaos batter against
Cadia’s defences. Lord Castellan Creed leads the defence of the
fortress world, but for how much longer can they hold out? Cadia
stands… but will it stand forever?
Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com
THE PURITY OF IGNORANCE
JOHN FRENCH
‘The darkest secrets are those we hide from ourselves.’
– Sebastian Thor, words spoken
on the Road to Terra
‘Do you know why we do what we do?’
‘No, sir. That is not my… I do not need to know.’
‘We do it for the survival of humanity.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Lieutenant Ianthe, Second Squadron, Agathian Sky Sharks, sat at attention, hands on her knees, eyes straight ahead. The man sitting across from her was a priest, his bulk covered by an off-white robe. Crude tattoos spidered the knuckles of his hands, and hard, knowing eyes glittered in the wrinkled lump of his face. He was called Josef, or that was the name he had introduced himself with. Now after half an hour talking with him, Ianthe thought he seemed more senior sergeant-at-arms than a priest in the service of an inquisitor. But what did she know of the Inquisition?
‘Do you understand what that means?’ said Josef, as though hearing her thoughts in her silence.
‘If we fail, so does the Imperium,’ she said.
‘True, but not the whole truth. We fail and there will be no humanity to be called an Imperium. Not here, not on distant Terra, nowhere. There will just be a thing that was once called mankind, weeping as it eats itself and the darkness laughs. You understand me, Ianthe?’
‘Sir,’ she said.
He cocked his head, and scratched his stubble-covered jaw. She did not
move her own gaze but she could feel his eyes moving across her face, searching for something, watching for something.
‘Tell me about your service before this,’ he said at last.
‘Sir?’ she began, and fought to keep the frown from her face. ‘My apologies, sir, but I thought we had covered that.’
He shrugged, muscle and fat rippling under the folds of his robe.
‘Humour me,’ he said.
She listed her record, passing through the last twelve years of her life in clipped bites of information: Karadieve, command of platoon in the assault on the pirate holds; Anac, command forward reconnaissance units, wounded; Grey Klave, command primary assault squadron. And on until her record ran out, and the silence formed again between them.
‘And now you are here, with us,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ she nodded, and then felt her expression twitch before she could stop it.
‘You have something to say – say it, lieutenant,’ said Josef.
Ianthe nodded, licked her lips and then spoke. ‘Is this interview related to the mission, sir? I have been over my record several times, and my appraisal of the soldiers under my command.’
‘It is related to the mission in every way, lieutenant. In every way.’ He paused, watching her. ‘Is there something else you wish to say?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I have never had the honour of serving the Inquisition, sir. It is…’
‘Irregular?’ he finished for her, and nodded. For a second she thought she saw a glimmer of something like sorrow in his eyes. ‘That it is,’ he said, and there was an edge of weariness in his voice. Then he stood, shaking out his creased robe, and rolling his shoulders like a pugilist before turning and moving towards the door. ‘Ready your squad. It is time.’
Spire Mistress Sul Nereid woke with a scream between her teeth. For an instant the nightmare smudged her sight with bloated flesh and blood-covered chrome, and she felt the acid kiss of vomit rise to her mouth. Then it was gone, draining away with her panic as the dawn light filled her eyes. She shifted, feeling the silk padding of the throne at her back, and the smooth silver of its arms beneath her hands. She stretched, smiling. She had fallen asleep in her chair, just as she had when she was a child and used to sneak
into the throne room at night. She laughed, and the sound slid out to meet the sun rising behind the crystal walls of her room.
The throne room sat at the tip of the hive spire. Crystal walls set in frames of polished adamantium encircled a single open space within. A flight of shallow steps led from the foot of the throne, each one carved from a single piece of dark wood. The pelts of a thousand white felids had been seamlessly stitched to create a rug that flowed down from her throne to spill onto the open space beneath. Slender columns of ivory rose from the black glass floor, each holding a frozen explosion of gemstones and light, which glittered in rainbow hues as they spun in suspensor fields. Beyond the clear walls the cloud layer ran to the arc of the sun slipping above the horizon; the crowns of cumuli rose above a soft sea of white and folded purple and orange. At the apex of the sky’s dome stars winked against the last darkness of the night. In the far distance the pinnacles of Tularlen’s other hive spires rose from the plateau of clouds like shards of diamond set on cushions of spun sugar.
Nereid sighed at the sight.
This moment, this perfect moment, had been hers ever since she had inherited the spire throne from her father. He had treasured both the view and the position it represented, clutching both close to him even as he had fought the doom that claimed him at last. It had been a sad end, but it did mean that the pleasure of waking to this world was Nereid’s now.
‘Are you hungry, mistress?’
Saliktris’ voice came from just behind and beside her throne. She half turned her head, enough to catch the impression of the majordomo standing just on the edge of sight, clad in plum-and-crimson velvet, his smile an echo of her own. He was always there, just where he needed to be.
‘I am…’ she replied, and shifted on her seat, tilting her head to one side as she thought. ‘But…’
‘Some music…’ said Saliktris, smoothly.
Nereid’s smile widened.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is it. The arrangement from last night would be…’
‘Perfection,’ he said, and her smile widened. Others might object to a servant talking so freely with his betters, but Saliktris always knew what to say, and what she wanted. She did not know what she would do without him.
The spire throne was no doubt something that many coveted. The House of
Tears, the Extrabati and their Mechanicus backers, the Sons of Lupolis, and
all the other lesser power blocs regarded this seat, and the power it represented, with a hungry eye. That jealousy had been one of the poisons that had marred her ascension, that and the riots burning in the factory core of the hive, and the Administratum’s suddenly inflated tithes of manpower and materiel. Apparently there was a war, and Tularlen had to feed every scrap of flesh and wealth into its gullet.
No matter that it was draining the wealth of the hive houses, no matter that discontent was curdling to violence in the drone masses, no matter that it could not be done, the Imperium demanded and would not be denied. Nereid shuddered as the memory rose in her mind, and her mouth twisted as though she had just bitten into a rotten fruit.
The expression and memories faded, and she smiled again.
‘Mistress…’ whis
pered Saliktris, and she looked up.
The ensemble players appeared as her smile bloomed. They filed out into the space beneath the throne, thirty-six men and women robed in white, their instruments gleaming in the brightening day.
‘Do you wish for dancing?’ asked Saliktris, and all she had to do was nod.
Two of the thirty-six players stepped forwards, their limbs trailing tapers of silk that shimmered like the inside of a seashell. They halted and stretched their limbs, becoming statues poised on the edge of movement. The first notes rose from the instruments, blending as layers of melody harmonised from tuned strings, silver flutes and taut drumheads. They began to sing, voices rising to meet the swelling chords of the instruments.
Nereid closed her eyes and tilted her face back as the sound pulled her senses up through the greyness and into a world of unfolding glory. This was what the dull words of preachers never could convey; this was what it was to touch the divine.
She opened her eyes just as the dancers started to move.
‘Wait,’ she said. The dancers froze, bodies suspended in mid-movement as though they hung on strings in defiance of gravity. The music from the ensemble did not cease, but circled through harmonies, holding just beneath the peak of its ascent.
Nereid turned her head slightly to the right, and a mirrored platter appeared, heaped with glistening fruit, each one a jewel taken fresh from its tree. A chalice sat beside it, the wine within almost black in the daylight brilliance.
She reached out, took the chalice and raised it to her lips. Warm liquid kissed
her mouth, filling her nose with sweet scents and the promise of endless days of laughter. She plucked a fruit from the platter and popped it into her mouth.
It burst, and the flavours of the wine and the juice briefly warred before fusing into a taste that slid through a thousand shades of sweetness.
Nereid swallowed, and breathed out.
Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al. Page 20
