by John French
‘Marshal,’ said the voice of the lead tank commander, her voice clipped and efficient over the vox. ‘We are about to exit the highway.’
‘Confirmed, machine one,’ he replied and then blinked his vox over to squadron broadcast. Luminous digits counted down at the edge of his sight. ‘All units, objective is ten minutes at current speed, stand by for course change–’
The missile struck the lead tank and ripped it in two. Fire and smoke punched upwards from the detonation. The wreckage tumbled on down the highway, shedding tracks.
The carrier slewed to the side.
The vox exploded with voices.
‘Evasive action…’
‘… jamming our auspex…’
‘Where did that…?’
‘Trying to get a lock…’
‘I read three aerial targets, descending fast…’
Lycus blinked back to the image from outside of the carrier. Orange flame and black smoke coiled through the fog. The wreckage of the lead tank was closing to their front. Explosions flashed in its carcass as munitions detonated in the blaze. Beyond it, he could see the ramp sliding off the highway down into the fog.
‘Ram through it!’ shouted Lycus. The troop carrier’s driver did not hesitate. Power shuddered through the frame as the engines roared. The front of the machine hit the burning wreckage with a shriek of metal. The carrier bucked, momentum and power shoving it forwards as the bones of the burning tank raked down its side.
‘Incoming!’
The shout from the flak tank reached Lycus’ ears the instant before a second missile struck the wreckage behind them. A fresh explosion lifted the back of the carrier off the ground.
Lycus felt an instant of weightlessness, and then the machine struck the road. Force hammered through him. He heard muffled cries as the human soldiers slammed into the compartment walls.
‘All units, full speed,’ he called in the vox, ‘keep moving. Machine three, target status.’
‘I have three air units active,’ came the voice of the flak tank commander. ‘Two, possible Thunderhawk transports, dropping to surface in area of objective. Probable materiel deployment. Third is smaller, class uncertain, likely gunship. They are wrapped in sensor baffles.’
Lycus felt himself bare his teeth. ‘Burn the enemy from the sky,’ he said.
‘I have a partial lock. Engaging with cannons.’ The fog flashed, and the rolling drum beat of the flak tank’s heavy guns rose to meet the growl of the engines. ‘They are evading. Transports have touched down on the surface. I have missile lock on the gunship.’ There was a pause that reminded Lycus of a marksman’s inhalation before a shot. Then a streak of fire leapt into the fog shrouded sky. ‘Missile loose.’
‘Time to objective, six minutes,’ called Lycus. The transport lurched beneath him as it gathered speed down the ramp. Fire flashed high above them, strobing then sinking through the murk in burning yellow streaks.
‘Kill shot,’ said the voice from the flak tank.
‘Take the transports as they lift,’ said Lycus. ‘All units, auspex to maximum, enemy units active on objective.’
‘What was that?’ asked Sabir looking up towards the ceiling of the shelter.
No one answered. Gatt’s hands froze in the midst of checking the vox’s encryption settings. Another rumble trembled through the walls. Dust fell. Kulok felt an electric shiver circle his stomach. It was an old but familiar feeling. He had felt it when the bombardment had started, and before then in the years he had lost to the Great Crusade.
‘Start broadcasting,’ he said to Gatt without moving his eyes from the ceiling. ‘Make a connection, and find out how close the rescue force is.’
Gatt nodded, but Kulok was already moving to the door. His skin was buzzing, his mouth dry, the taste of metal on his tongue and teeth.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Sabir.
‘To the airlock,’ said Kulok.
‘What? Why?’ asked Sabir, voice snapping with tension.
Kulok did not answer or pause. He was already moving down the passage, dropping down the plasteel stairs to the level below, eyes fixed on his path. A cluster of survivors flattened themselves against the wall as he went past. Some of them shouted after him, but he did not slow down. He paused as he passed a hatch door covered in yellow hazard stripes. He shoved it open. Racks of shotguns and lasguns lined the walls, gleaming black. He pulled a shotgun down, scooped up a box of solid shells, and kept moving, shoving rounds into the breach.
An unpleasant thought was emerging in his mind. He had been so relieved to make contact with other survivors that he had not thought whether anyone else had heard their signals. Part of him had assumed that whoever had murdered Tallarn was long gone, that they had left the corpse of a world to its fate. He had not seen any sign of anyone on the surface. When the other shelter had said to use encryption keys for the vox, he had barely registered the information. Now that fact screamed to him in time with the sound of his running feet.
He reached the inner hatch of the decontamination lock. The entrance chamber was empty. None of the other survivors liked going near the exit. The bulk of the carrier he had used to go to the surface sat on the rockcrete. Decontamination fluid, rad-scouring and the toxic fog had reduced the surface of its hull to a mottled and pitted grey. The inner door loomed above him, a huge circular plate of plasteel over twice his height in diameter. Pistons gripped its edges, and pipes snaked from socks in its surface. A small porthole sat at its centre, set with glass as thick as the door itself. Kulok moved up to the glass and looked through.
He did not know what he expected to see. He was not entirely sure what he was doing, just that he suddenly felt the need to stand here, on the border between the life below and the hell above. Gloom filled the decontamination chamber on the other side of the porthole. Another porthole sat in the outer door directly opposite the one in the inner door. It was smaller, barely a hand span across. Sickly yellow light trickled through that narrow gap. Kulok watched it, his hands clammy on the grip of the shotgun. The fog folded and lapped over the view.
Something moved beyond the outer door. He squinted, breath held in his lungs. Was this them? Was this salvation? But then why had they not had vox contact yet? The shape grew in the outer porthole, casting its shadow through the murk.
The sound of running feet and gasping made him turn from the view. Sabir stumbled into the entrance chamber. Kulok took a step towards the older man, but Sabir pushed him away. The prefectus’ face was red, his mouth wide as he sucked air and fought to speak.
‘Signal…’ Sabir gasped. ‘A signal… came through…’
Kulok glanced back through the portholes. The angle was wrong, but he though he saw the light in the airlock chamber dim, as though something was blotting out the light from the outer porthole.
‘It’s them… the evacuation… force…’
Kulok stepped closer to the huge door. He glanced at the airlock controls set into the wall beside the door.
‘They say…’ Sabir coughed, his body quivering as he gulped air. ‘There is…’
Kulok hesitated, the weight of the gun in his hands suddenly seeming foolish. He stepped towards the control panel.
‘There is an enemy… and… and they… are…’
Kulok froze. Beyond the porthole something blotted out the light coming from the outer door.
‘…coming.’
Sabir trembled and slid onto his knees. Kulok took a pace towards the inner door. He was bringing his head to look through the porthole when something hit the outer door with a sound like the shattering of mountains.
The lascannon beams reached through the building in front of Lycus’ carrier and tore it apart. Plaster and rock exploded with heat. Plasteel girders folded like reeds as the building twisted under its own weight. The carrier lurched to one side. Rubble and dust c
ascaded down into the road. The hull of the war machine rang with impacts. Dust drowned Lycus’ visual feed, and he blink-switched it to the carrier’s auspex. Waves of distortion blurred the display. Flashes of weapon detonations splashed amongst the static. The hull shapes of the Iron Warriors machines stood out like blade edges reflecting moonlight at night.
Lycus’ squadron was rolling down a wide street. The shelter lay half a kilometre to their right. Rows of squat hab blocks ran along the road on both sides. The machine that had fired at them was running parallel to them, behind that screen of buildings. It was a Predator, one of a pair that the Iron Warriors transports had set down in the city before lifting off. Its twin was running with it, snapping out shots with its turret cannon and sponson guns. One road over again, the bloated bulk of an Iron Warriors Land Raider had vanished in the direction of the censorium shelter.
From a purely kill-tactic point of view, that was not a good position for the Iron Warriors. They had dropped three tanks: two light machines, and a heavy troop carrier. The Land Raider had moved directly towards the shelter, leaving its two lighter kin to face Lycus’ squadron. The two Predators were fast killers in open terrain or with surprise or numbers on their side. In the graveyard of the Crescent City they had neither of those advantages. Lycus still had three war machines. Even the carrier he rode in carried twin lascannons, and enough armour to weather anything but a direct hit.
Riding close behind the carrier was the flak tank. Its cannons were not designed to engage ground targets, but they fired high explosive shells at a rate that made design and accuracy irrelevant. Then there was the Vanquisher. It was an apex killer of its kind. Given time, the Iron Warrior tanks would die. But Lycus did not have time. The Iron Warriors lay between Lycus and the shelter. They only had to buy enough time for the Land Raider and its cargo to do their work. It was a game that Lycus had already played out in his mind, and seen that he would lose. That was not something he could accept.
‘Machine three,’ he said across the vox. ‘Static position. Fire sweep angles four-five through one-zero-three, immediate.’
‘Confirm,’ said the flak tank commander.
‘Machine four,’ snapped Lycus, ‘advance on current heading, fire-free.’ He held the connection long enough to hear the Vanquisher’s confirmation and then switched to the carrier’s internal vox. ‘On my command, turn hard right, maximum speed.’
A second later, he heard the rolling roar as the flak tank opened up with its cannons. Halted in the middle of the road, its stabilisers extended, it was panning its cannons through a slow arc, punching shells through the skins of buildings into the road beyond. Lycus saw the splash of detonations as three shells hit one of the enemy Predators.
‘Turn now,’ he called. The human driver yanked the carrier to the right. The machine’s engine screamed as power surged into the tracks. Its nose hit the wall of the building just behind the flak tank’s fire. It punched through, rockcrete dust exploding around it, ramming through internal walls, stone slabs exploding under its tracks. Above it, the building began to fall floor by floor, dust and fragments spinning through the air. Lycus’ armour tensed as the shock waves rang through the machine. The troopers shook like puppets with their strings cut. Then the carrier hit the other wall and ripped through onto the road. Behind it, the building cascaded to the ground. A wave of dust rolled out, clotting the fog, rattling shards onto the road surface.
Lycus blinked his visual feed link to the carrier’s infra sight. The world outside the tank became a painting in red and yellow on blue. They were between the two Iron Warriors Predators. Both machines glowed bright with engine heat. The turret of the nearest machine twisted towards the carrier, lascannons flashing white.
The Vanquisher shell hit the side of the Predator’s turret and ripped it out of its collar. Smoke spilled out, bubbling with white heat. The second Predator was accelerating and turning, its turret tracking around to the carrier. The Iron Warriors inside would know that they could not survive this engagement, but they also knew that their sole task was to allow the Land Raider to reach the shelter. They would see that task done.
The barrel of the Predator’s cannon turned towards the carrier. A shell hit the road beside its track. The Predator rocked as its gun fired again. The shell hit the carrier’s flank and ricocheted off. The sound smacked through Lycus. A sharp ringing filled his skull. The troopers in the compartment shouted in shock and pain.
An opening between two buildings appeared before them. The carrier’s engine roared as it plunged into the alley. Smoke from burning oil filled the compartment. Heavy rounds struck the block work behind them. Lycus blinked back to the auspex view – they were three hundred metres from the shelter, but the bright heat bloom of the Land Raider was already there. Above them, the tiers and domes of the censorium shadowed the fog, intact windows winking with the reflected light of explosions.
‘Marshal,’ came the voice of the flak tank commander. ‘Multiple aerial units dropping from orbit. Estimate three lifters and four escort gunships.’
‘Engage at will,’ said Lycus.
‘Locking targets and preparing to fire.’
The vox stayed open long enough for Lycus to hear the first missile kicking free of the launcher. It would not be enough. They would take one of the Iron Warriors craft, two possibly, but the rest would reach the surface.
Kulok staggered backwards. The outer airlock door shook in its setting. He came to his feet. He could see something beyond the portholes, a looming slab shape moving in the gloom. The thunder roll of impact came again, and then a scream of torn metal. Kulok was at the lock controls before he was fully aware of what he was doing.
‘What…’ yelped Sabir. ‘What are you doing?’
Kulok triggered the inner door release. Seals disengaged with a thump. Pistons began to pull the circular door upwards.
‘You will kill us all!’ shouted Sabir.
Kulok ducked under the opening door, and looked back at the prefectus. ‘Lock the inner door,’ he said.
Sabir did not move.
‘Now!’
Sabir pulled himself up and scrambled for the lock controls. The inner door reversed its opening and began to press close. Kulok turned to face the outer door. The lock was small, just wide enough to take a single vehicle or a clutch of people. Nozzle and focusing arrays dotted the oiled metal of the walls. Kulok was breathing hard, trying to focus some calm into his pulse as the door sealed shut behind him.
He did not know what he was doing. He was one man, unarmoured and barely armed. The moment the outer door was breached, he would have seconds to live before Tallarn’s air took him. He might have a moment to pull the trigger on his gun once, maybe twice. He would take those two seconds, and those shots. It was his mistake; he had insisted on going to the surface, on throwing a signal out onto the wind for someone, anyone to hear. Perhaps they would have all died in the shelter in a few weeks. Perhaps – as clear as it had seemed then, it was less so now. All that was certain was that everyone in the shelter – all the little clutches of shivering scribes and administrators – all of them would now die, and die because of him. One shot could not prevent that. No act so small could stop whatever death pounded on the door, but that did not matter. The deed alone mattered.
Metal thunder shook the air inside the lock as another blow struck the metal. The sound blurred into the shriek of tearing metal. Kulok was breathing hard, heart hammering. He stepped closer to the tiny porthole.
And looked.
Figures stood in the yellow gloom at the bottom of the entrance ramp. Figures that could have been men, but men were not sculpted from iron. They were huge; taller than anything should be that had such a shape. Their shoulders were hunched curves of dull metal. Curtains of chain hung from them, swaying as they drew back lightning wreathed fists to strike the door. Red light shone from the slots that were their eyes. Kulok kne
w what he was looking at, but the shock still caught the breath in his lungs. They were Space Marines. They were Terminators.
A Land Raider sat on the ramp above them, its weapon pods twitching. As Kulok watched, one of the Terminators turned, head rotating in its socket. The red slot of its eyes met Kulok’s gaze. Its left fist ended in a pair of chain blades. The teeth blurred as they spun. Kulok froze, the gun in his hand hanging heavy. The Terminator raised its fist.
A flash of light split the gloom at the top of the ramp. The Land Raider rocked in place. Lightning whipped from the muzzles of its lascannons. Kulok blinked. Then there was a flash, and molten orange billowed into the fog as the Land Raider exploded. Flames rushed down the ramp. Pieces of armour struck the door as the blast wave hit. The Terminators were moving, gun arms rising as fire swallowed them.
‘Machine kill!’ called the Vanquisher commander over the vox. Lycus nodded. The kill had been good, exceptionally good in fact. The carrier’s lascannons and the Vanquisher shell had struck the Land Raider in quick succession. The first had weakened the Land Raider’s frontal armour. The second had torn the tank apart.
‘Take us in,’ said Lycus. ‘Do we still have a vox link to the shelter?’
‘Signal has failed, marshal,’ called the carrier commander. ‘But we won’t reach the entrance anyway, sir. The wreckage is blocking the top of the ramp.’
Lycus blinked the auspex feed from his sight. The masked faces of the human soldiers looked back at him. They had heard the carrier commander’s words, and all of them would knew what it meant.
‘All troops, prepare to deploy,’ said Lycus. ‘We clear the area in front of the entrance. When that is clear, we proceed through the shelter entrance and decontaminate.’
