Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon

by David Annandale

  ‘No,’ I admitted. The admission caused me physical pain. I had seen battles lost before. I had been on worlds that had fallen to xenos threats or the Ruinous Powers. Each defeat was a stain on my soul, and to concede the end before the battle began was abhorrent. Every clod of earth lost to the Imperium goaded me to fight ever harder for the preservation of the whole. The word no was a stiletto jab to my gut. But the canoness was right. The regiment, cut in half, and then in half again, deprived of all its heavy armour, might be able to delay the orks a short while. Nothing more. I could accept the necessary sacrifice. It was the pointless one I rejected.

  Setheno had spoken of sacrifice. But not the Steel Legion’s. Tempestora’s.

  ‘What is the city going to give up?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything,’ she said. ‘You already know that, commissar.’

  I did. ‘Then its sacrifice must be a true one,’ I said. ‘One with meaning.’

  If Tempestora was going to die, it would be for the salvation of something real.

  2. Brenken

  The outer defences of Hive Volcanus gave Brenken hope. They were incomplete, but work was progressing quickly. Count Hans Somner, the lieutenant of Lord Otto Vikmann, was a veteran of the Steel Legion, a former colonel himself. He was a grox of a man, and walked with such a wide gait that he seemed broader than he was tall.

  Brenken waved to take in the network of trenches and earthen barriers that stretched for thousands of metres beyond the main wall. ‘How much of this is recent?’

  ‘The basics were there already. Disused canals, old fortifications. But we’ve been working hard since the warning came.’

  ‘At least Vikmann took it seriously.’

  Somner snorted. ‘I made sure he did. The old toady was swallowing Herman’s swill, believe me. I just frightened him more. Told him some good stories. Voice of experience and all that.’

  ‘I wish the overlord was open to that voice.’

  ‘Only one he hears is his own.’

  Brenken grinned. ‘You aren’t shy about giving your opinion. You aren’t worried I’ll relay it up the chain of command?’

  Somner started to laugh, then broke into wracking coughs. He spat a wad of blackened phlegm and blood on the ground. He tapped his chest. ‘He’ll have to move fast if he wants to kill me before what’s in my lungs does. Anyway, I know a real soldier when I see one. I’m a politician now, and we all have to swim in Herman’s mucky swamp, but a good fight will make honest soldiers of us, wait and see. We shoot straight or we die. That simple.’

  Brenken smiled, but she didn’t share his optimism. She had seen plenty of corruption strong enough to survive the most unforgiving of wars. Somner’s confidence surprised her. Instead of agreeing, she said, ‘How close are the defences to being complete?’

  ‘Still some work to do. Need to link up and reinforce some trenches. Some of the barriers are just dirt. We have rockcrete blocks on the way. Don’t worry. We have all the workers we need. The job will be done. Now that you’re here, we’ll show the greenskins what it means to attack one of our cities.’

  Brenken heard it this time: the brittleness of Somner’s bluff certitude. He was clinging to the belief in easy victory because the alternative terrified him. He was working too hard to keep up his façade. He wasn’t lying, though, at least not to her. He couldn’t afford to have the slightest doubt about what he was saying.

  ‘We’ll teach the orks a few things,’ she said. She could promise that much. She could not promise that six companies would be enough for more. Three companies of armour and three of mechanised infantry had raced across the wastes of Armageddon Prime without rest, crossing the Plain of Anthrand and reaching Volcanus in two days. They had seen no sign of the orks, confirming that the landing point had been far closer to Tempestora. No ork forces had yet been detected outside that hive’s vicinity.

  That much was hopeful. But in the first day of the run to Volcanus, the six airborne companies had gone down. Contact had been lost for several hours. She had feared the worst. The news of their condition, when it reached her, was better than the worst, but not by much. And now Somner’s boasts were making her uneasy. There was a difference between determination and delusion. If Somner hadn’t lost the ability to make that distinction, he was well on the way there.

  ‘We’ll set up our tanks and artillery outside the main gate,’ she told Somner.

  ‘Good, good,’ the old soldier said. ‘And we’ll have so many guns in the trenches that we’ll shred them before they even reach the walls.’

  That was a good dream, Brenken thought. It was the best plan available. She didn’t think it was a realistic hope.

  Kuyper, her vox operator, came pounding down the path that zigzagged over the rims of the trenches. ‘Colonel,’ he called. He held up the handset. ‘I have Commissar Yarrick for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and accepted the unit from Kuyper. Her tone was clipped, but she was relieved to be able to speak to someone who had a clear-eyed view of where the regiment stood. ‘Commissar,’ she voxed, ‘where do things stand with Tempestora?’

  ‘Not well. We have a few hours at best before the orks are at the gates.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The siege won’t be long.’ The old war-dog’s voice rasped with frustration, and Brenken knew how much it cost him to admit a battle could not be won. ‘What is your situation?’

  ‘Uncertain but better. I hope we’ll be ready in time.’

  ‘We will buy you a few hours,’ Yarrick told her. ‘Perhaps as much as a day.’ His tone was clipped, matter-of-fact.

  Brenken sensed something terrible behind the words. ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll hold the orks’ attention. We can do that much. And we’ll bloody them too.’

  ‘At what cost?’ Brenken asked, though she already knew.

  ‘Tempestora will be lost. But if its sacrifice can save Volcanus, then its fall can have meaning. Tell me you’ll be ready, colonel.’

  ‘We will be.’

  ‘What about the Hive Militia there?’

  ‘At full strength, and Count Somner has ordered weapons distributed to all citizens.’

  Somner nodded, happy to be part of the good news. The manufactoria of Volcanus produced rifles for export across the Imperium. Supplies were limitless. If the preparations could be completed, the orks would encounter a civilian army tens of millions strong.

  ‘That’s good,’ Yarrick said.

  ‘Commissar, is part of Tempestora’s sacrifice going to be half my regiment?’

  ‘No. We will hold the orks, and then we will reinforce you.’

  ‘Even better would be to catch them in a pincer attack.’

  ‘That is our intent.’

  Brenken thought about how it would be possible to delay a much-larger army, and still be able to move quickly over the distance between the hives. There were many details she didn’t have, and they were unnecessary. All that mattered was how Yarrick’s plan would affect Volcanus. Even so, she could see the cost that would be paid. There was no choice, but they would all have blood on their hands before the next dawn. She accepted the necessities of war, but she did not revel in them. ‘The overlord will have much to answer for,’ she said.

  ‘Quite,’ Yarrick replied. He sounded as if he planned to put the questions to von Strab himself.

  3. Yarrick

  I knew Tempestora well. I knew all of Armageddon’s hives. I had served long enough with the Steel Legion that the planet was the closest thing I had to a home world. I had learned from the beginning of my career as commissar, as far back as Mistral, the value of being familiar with any world to which duty called me. I knew Tempestora’s geography, its industrial capacity, and its particular strengths. I knew exactly how best to kill it.

  I had Thulin bring me to the northern docks. Great tankers sat in their
berths. They might be useful, but I was more concerned with the pipelines. Wide enough for a Leman Russ to drive through, there were twenty of them, emerging from the Boiling Sea to then split into a network of smaller pipes. They carried the one great resource of the scorching, uninhabitable land mass to the north, beyond the sea. The promethium deposits of the Fire Wastes were among the greatest of any in the Imperium. Lines fed the manufactoria of Tempestora, ran outward from the hive towards the other industrial centres of Armageddon, or flowed to the spaceport where orbital lifters would carry huge reservoirs up to the waiting mass conveyors, which would take it out to the endlessly thirsty Imperium.

  ‘We will have to open all the valves,’ I said. ‘And where there are none, the pipelines will have to be breached.’

  ‘Ah.’ Thulin’s grunt didn’t mean anything. It was an expression of pain. He was pale with horror. Disbelief had robbed him of speech.

  I sympathised. But there was no time to manage him. If his ability to listen fled as well, I would have to make sure Tempestora had a functional acting governor.

  We were standing on a pier, its rockcrete stained black. We were in the perpetual shadow of the pipelines over our heads. I looked up and traced their path back to the hive. I thought about the most comprehensive way to accomplish our ends. I had accepted the necessity of Tempestora’s sacrifice. Doing so before the first shot had been fired still rankled, but there was no point kicking against reality. Having committed to this course, I would make it count. I would do whatever was necessary to give Volcanus a fighting chance. And I would hurt the orks to the greatest extent possible, by whatever means necessary.

  ‘We’ll need a greater distribution of the promethium,’ I said. ‘We’ll need a team of welders.’

  ‘You want to divert some of the flow from the pipelines?’

  The deputy governor was articulate again. Good.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To the Khatrin complex.’

  Thulin managed to grow even paler. ‘If we flood the water purification plant with promethium…’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’ll be sending promethium instead of water throughout the hive. That is my intent, Count Thulin. That is what must be done.’

  ‘But the damage… If it should ignite…’

  He wasn’t thinking clearly.

  ‘Of course it will ignite,’ I told him. ‘That is the point. The damage is the point.’

  Thulin stared into an absence in the middle distance. He could already see the flames. He tried again. ‘The people…’

  It was the first time since the Claw of Desolation had been detected that I had heard such a concern expressed. I tried to remember when I had last heard any politician on Armageddon worry about its citizens. I failed.

  I blinked, surprised. Then I showed him how misplaced his priorities were. ‘The people will be fighting, or they will be dying, and nothing that we do here will change the end result. The fate of Tempestora’s citizens is secondary to the strategic situation. That is how it must be, count. I take no pleasure in this truth, but that doesn’t make it any less valid.’

  He said nothing. He stared at the spires of the hive, no doubt already seeing the smoke. He didn’t dispute what I said. He didn’t even question why a commissar was ordering him to burn the city under his charge, and why he should give my words the force of law. Stahl had command of the military operations in Tempestora. But he had looked to me when Setheno had begun to speak of the sacrifice. I did not have the seniority of rank. But I did have well over a century of experience. That came with its own weight of authority. It was not a formal one, but it was felt.

  So many wars. So many sacrifices.

  At length, Thulin said, ‘We don’t have enough weapons. Not nearly enough for the population.’

  He looked at me, hoping for something. He had, in effect, abdicated in my favour. What was coming was beyond his competence, and he knew it. I suspected that his pliability made him well-liked by those higher in the hierarchy of Armageddon’s ruling class. But today that made him one of its more valuable members. If he was not quite willing to do the unspeakable thing, he was willing to let others do it.

  Right now, though, he was desperate for anything at all that might give him the hope of sleeping again at night. Even if he had little hope of seeing another night.

  ‘Tell me what you want to do,’ I said.

  ‘Order an evacuation.’

  ‘Of fifty million people? And to where?’

  ‘Away from the orks.’

  I didn’t bother to tell him that if the orks were not stopped, there would be nowhere to fly from them. In the meantime, though, that meant heading north. ‘Into the Ash Wastelands?’

  He nodded. ‘As many as there is time for.’

  I stared at him. ‘Do you understand what you will be telling them to do?’

  ‘Yes. And so will they. They will still prefer to run, commissar.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. If we hadn’t already committed ourselves to a path that meant the loss of the city, I would have given him a different answer. I would have made every inhabitant of the hive fight to the last drop of blood. They owed the Emperor that and more. But any further sacrifice there was pointless. If the people of Tempestora preferred a slower death in the Wastelands, I would not stand in their way.

  Thulin was right. The word went out, from the spires to the underhive, that the orks were coming, and the decision to be made was death or flight. The choice was a false one, but I let it stand.

  The Steel Legion companies spread out, at squad level, across Tempestora to oversee the sabotage of the pipelines. Some of the Tempestoran work teams resisted the destruction they were ordered to prepare. They did not accept the coming sacrifice. And the legionnaires had to move from overseers to enforcers. Setheno and I divided the key points of the pipeline between us.

  We oversaw the enforcers.

  I encountered the greatest reluctance at the Khatrin plant. The foreman of the shift raged against the desecration of his sacred trust. At the far end of a vaulted enclosure a thousand metres long, he stood on a dais before the primary controls, unarmed but calling a mob of workers to his side. The idea of turning the hive into a trap for the orks had no purchase for them. All they could understand was that we wished to replace the city’s water supply with promethium. When I arrived, a squad led by Sergeant Loxon was positioned at the other end of the room, rifles aimed at the workers. They had not yet fired on the people they believed we had come to save.

  I walked down the platform that ran the length of the enclosure. On either side were gigantic reservoirs of water undergoing filtration and desalination. I kept my weapons holstered. I strode forward in silence. I stared at the workers who blocked my path, one at a time, until they stepped aside. In a few minutes, I mounted to the dais and confronted the foreman.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked.

  Seeing my uniform, he had hesitated to launch into a tirade. My question further took him aback. ‘Heinrich Groete, commissar,’ he said.

  ‘Very well, Groete. You believe in duty, I see.’

  ‘Yes, commissar.’ He stood taller. He was a big man, wide of shoulder and generous of stomach. His hair and beard were untrimmed. He was so grease-stained, it was easy to imagine he never left his domain of huge iron wheels and levers.

  ‘I believe in duty, too. Mine is to defend the Imperium at any cost. Sometimes that cost is very high.’ I spoke so my voice echoed across the space. ‘The cost gives me no pleasure, but nor do I have a choice. You do, however.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘You can help me in the performance of my duty. You can help fight the xenos plague. Or you can perform your duty as it has always been. To the end.’

  He swallowed. ‘This has been the purpose of my life,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I respect your decision.’ An
d I did. But I really did have no choice. I pulled out my bolt pistol and shot him.

  The other workers backed away in fear.

  The ruin of the water supply proceeded smoothly.

  I was fortunate that on this day I did not have to enact judgement on any troopers.

  Later, as the rumble of the orks’ approach grew louder, and their stain covered the plains to the east, I stood on the northern ramparts with Setheno and watched the stream of the desperate. They flowed out of the gate, their fear greater than their speed. The gate was hundreds of metres wide, and that was too narrow. The people pressed against each other with such urgency that hundreds were being crushed and trampled to death with every passing minute. The exodus fanned out across the blasted land. Marching feet raised huge clouds of cinders. The twilight into which the Claw of Desolation had plunged Armageddon did little to diminish the heat of the day. The Wastelands were a panorama of grey desolation. Dunes of ash rolled towards the shores of the Boiling Sea. The accumulation of millennia-old industry had smothered all trace of life. The north-west reaches of Armageddon Prime were a shifting, smothering desert, a dead foretaste of the Fire Wastes.

  ‘It is possible,’ Setheno said, ‘that the evacuation may be of some use after all.’

  ‘They may hold the orks a little longer,’ I said. There had been nothing in the Wastelands to draw the greenskins. But now there was an invitation to slaughter.

  ‘The enemy will be amused for a few hours.’

  That might help a little. I wasn’t convinced it would make a significant difference. ‘Perhaps a final struggle in the open will be a mercy,’ I said.

  ‘Mercy would be better earned if they ran towards the orks,’ she replied.

  ‘I will not ask that of civilians when we will be retreating.’

  ‘Can we afford such a luxury, commissar?’

  ‘I don’t believe it is one, canoness.’

  She pointed down at the fleeing hordes. Their anxious howls reached up to us. From this height, and in this light, the people were an indistinguishable mass. A swarm of frightened insects. ‘Look at the weakness of their faith. They deserve no compassion.’