Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon

by David Annandale

  We were on the main highway linking Tempestora to Volcanus. Though repair crews worked on its length constantly, Armageddon’s brutal climate and the heavy volume of traffic that normally travelled it had left its surface cracked, pitted and uneven. The flaws meant little to the Chimeras. Eight lanes wide, the road also served well for the rapid transfer of military force from one hive to the other. The orks would find it to their liking. It would be a gift to the warbikers. We abandoned it to them, pulling off onto the rough surface of the plains. We had to slow down now. The land was rocky, ridged and uneven, broken up by gullies and narrow crevasses. The orks would have no concern about excessive velocity leading to a loss of vehicles. We did.

  We moved off at a sharp angle to the highway. We would need enough distance between us and the greenskin army that it wouldn’t divert and wipe us out, but not so great a gap that we couldn’t observe the enemy force. We were helped by the stoniness of the terrain. As sparse as the vegetation was east of Tempestora, here we were in a desert of rock, scoured bare by millennia of wind blowing over dead earth. We would raise no more dust than if we had stayed on the highway.

  We kept going until we hit a wider gulley. Its banks were rounded with erosion. It had once been the bed of a wide river, gone for centuries or more, and it ran more or less parallel to the highway. Stahl sent the other Chimeras on ahead. The command vehicle stayed behind. We left it at the bottom of the gulley and climbed back up the bank. We lay prone and watched. It was morning, but it was twilight. It was dark, but the heat was as suffocating as if Armageddon’s sun shone unfiltered by clouds and dust. Stahl had a pair of magnoculars. He passed them around, though we didn’t need them to see when the army drew near.

  The sound came first, almost familiar now: the blended thunder of engines, boots and brutish snarls. Then the army came into view. Thousands upon thousands of footsoldiers. Uncountable. A tide untouched by the flames of Tempestora. Warbikes and battle­wagons, hundreds of them. Mobile artillery and other motorised weapons whose function was obscure from this distance. It was possible that they did nothing at all, or would explode at first use. Ork technology could be as deadly for the greenskins as for their enemies. But it could also be powerful in lethally unexpected ways. The horde was endless. It seemed we could stay here for weeks and never see it all, the rear guard still leaving Tempestora while the front ranks besieged Volcanus.

  I took Stahl’s magnoculars to focus on the leading elements as they passed us. Riding atop a battlewagon was the same warboss I had seen commanding the assault on Tempestora’s gates. The beast had survived the fire, though its armour had been burned black.

  ‘We achieved nothing,’ Stahl whispered.

  I lowered the magnoculars. I was about to answer Stahl when a distant shadow caught my eye. I raised the lenses again and trained them on the north-east. I was looking in the direction of the Claw of Desolation’s landfall. The space hulk was over the horizon, tens of kilometres from our position, and dust it had thrown into the atmosphere reduced visibility. But there was something. It was too far away for details, too far even to be anything more definite than a vague shape in the grey. I saw it again. I fought with the magnification. Stubborn, it remained a blur. But it was gigantic. And it moved. Then dust and distance hid it from view again.

  ‘What do you see?’ Setheno asked.

  I handed her the lenses and pointed. ‘It’s gone now.’

  She looked for a minute before giving up. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Something very large. The size of a Titan.’

  Mora started. He peered back along the passing army. ‘Nothing like that here,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the problem.’

  ‘They’re still holding back,’ said Setheno.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Where was it heading?’ Stahl asked.

  ‘Impossible to say. Not this way.’ I shrugged.

  ‘Then whatever it is, they aren’t using it against Volcanus.’ Gunzburg was grasping for hope. He was the same age as Mora, but thinner, and more worn. His family was minor nobility, enough for him to hold a product of the manufactoria like Stahl in deep contempt. At this moment, though, he seemed to have little interest in moving up the chain of decision making.

  ‘What they have isn’t enough?’ Boidin asked. He was the youngest of the captains. Low-born, ambitious, he was a compact brawler. He had led his company well, but he too had been shaken by the siege of Tempestora.

  ‘We did nothing,’ Stahl said again.

  ‘Nothing?’ I snapped. ‘Would you add thousands more greenskins to that mob? Is the time we held the orks occupied pointless? Your colonel’s gratitude is empty? Is this what I should understand?’ I directed each question to a different officer.

  ‘No, commissar.’ Stahl reddened with shame. The other captains shook their heads.

  ‘Safeguard your faith,’ Setheno warned them.

  The four men eyed us both warily.

  ‘We are outnumbered so badly that our survival alone is miraculous,’ I told them.

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ Setheno said. Her cold tones made the words truth and threat.

  ‘We have hurt the orks,’ I continued. ‘And now we know what is heading for Volcanus. That puts us far ahead of where we were even a day ago.’

  But a day ago we had not sacrificed a city. The smoke was a huge black cloud rising in the north. ‘We did nothing,’ Stahl had said. He was wrong. What gnawed at me was the possibility that we had done worse than nothing.

  I stamped down my doubts with the same anger I had turned on the captains. What mattered was Volcanus.

  We watched the army pass for hours more, and at last it did have an end. The orks were not infinite in number. There were other forces out there, but they were heading elsewhere.

  I saw an opportunity.

  We spoke to Brenken again as the Chimera caught up to the rest of the companies and we continued to shadow the ork advance. We described what we had seen.

  ‘Hit and run attacks would be pointless,’ I said. ‘The enemy contingent is too large for us to slow by such means.’

  ‘But it could be by other means?’

  ‘Slowed, no. Defeated perhaps.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Ghazghkull has divided his army. Its full strength is not heading for Volcanus.’

  ‘What is coming is bad enough.’

  Brenken was careful not to state that we could not defend the hive. The conditions as they stood, however, were not hopeful. ‘It is a major assault,’ I agreed, ‘but your defensive position is much better than the one we faced in Tempestora.’

  ‘It is,’ she said.

  ‘We just have to hold them long enough for reinforcements to arrive. A strong counterattack, delivered swiftly, trapping the orks between Princeps Mannheim’s hammer and our anvil would take out one ork army. The initiative would be ours at last. The greenskins would be forced to react to our moves.’

  ‘Much depends on the overlord changing his mind,’ she pointed out.

  ‘It will require a strong voice, true. We have one now. Tempestora cries for justice.’

  I hoped that cry would be enough.

  2. Mannheim

  The Claw of Desolation had smashed Armageddon’s orbital defences. Some remote augurs still circled the planet, though. What they could transmit of events on the planet’s surface was fragmentary. It was tactically insignificant. But the death of Tempestora registered. The fire was visible through the atmosphere as a bright red wound. Mannheim saw the picts in the command centre of the Legio Metalica. He stared at them while he spoke with Brenken over the vox. He transferred them to his data-slate and kept looking at them as he made his way to von Strab’s quarters. They were an obscenity. One that could have been avoided. They must be the goad to preventing other disasters on this scale.

  He carr
ied his data-slate because he would not allow von Strab to look away from the results of his military leadership. Mannheim knew the overlord would have seen them. But there would be refuge in a pretence of ignorance.

  Von Strab had turned his throne room into a centre of operations. Lithographic tables radiated outward from the throne. Rows of pict screens had been installed on the periphery of the chamber. The hive governors were in attendance, as were the Steel Legion’s regimental colonels and General Andechs. The room buzzed with debates and arguments. Ingrid Sohm of Tempestora, looking grim, was speaking with von Strab. The overlord had composed his face into a careful facsimile of sympathy.

  Mannheim stopped beside Andechs while von Strab listened to the governor. The general stood beside the largest of the tables. A lithograph of the western region of Armageddon Prime glowed from its surface. It showed the latest reported position of the orks and the companies from Tempestora. The hive appeared as it had before the disaster. ‘This map is out of date,’ Mannheim said pointedly.

  The general sighed. ‘We know.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘No one expected anything like this.’

  ‘We should have. Commissar Yarrick tried to warn us.’

  ‘I don’t recall his saying anything about the destruction of an entire hive by our own troops.’

  ‘Circumstances,’ Mannheim said.

  ‘Yes,’ Andechs conceded. His experience in the field was more limited than the princeps considered adequate for an officer of his rank, but it didn’t take many battles to appreciate the perversity of circumstances. It usually took only one.

  ‘Princeps Mannheim,’ von Strab called out. He left the throne and walked over. ‘Dark news from Tempestora, isn’t it?’

  He did not sound concerned. Mannheim couldn’t tell if he genuinely wasn’t, or was keeping up a front of absolute confidence for the benefit of the other governors. Perhaps von Strab didn’t know either. Appearance became reality. The façade became the soul. Worry might imply doubt in his strategy, and that would be a sign of weakness. Von Strab had not shown weakness once in his adult life. Take note, Mannheim told himself. Be careful how you try to convince him.

  ‘Desperate measures, I agree,’ he said, even though von Strab had mentioned nothing of the kind. Mannheim hoped he could lead von Strab to a decision in such a way that the overlord believed it to be his idea. Or at least that others would. ‘The enemy surprised the regiment.’

  ‘I expect better from my officers,’ von Strab said.

  Mannheim fought to keep from grimacing in anger. ‘So you should,’ he said, half-choking on the words. ‘And I have good news. The regiment has found its footing at Volcanus. Colonel Brenken has a plan that, in theory, could turn the tide in our favour.’

  ‘Princeps, you are a welcome presence here!’ von Strab exclaimed. He slapped Mannheim’s back. ‘Tell me more!’

  Mannheim’s right arm trembled. Striking von Strab would save his honour, but not the planet. His conversation with the overlord was drawing a crowd now. That might help his cause. ‘Half the regiment has established a strong defensive position at Volcanus,’ he said. ‘The remainder is tracking the enemy’s advance. The orks have divided their strength. They have left themselves vulnerable to a pincer attack.’

  Von Strab nodded approvingly. ‘Excellent. Precisely what I would have had our forces do.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, overlord. Then shall I tell Colonel Brenken–’

  Von Strab cut him off. ‘To proceed as planned. Yes. Better yet, I will speak with her myself. She should know that Armageddon thanks her. She will redeem her failure with this action.’

  No, Mannheim thought. No no no. The exchange was slipping from his control. Von Strab had taken the initiative, as if he had guessed what Mannheim was trying to suggest. The princeps tried to reclaim some ground. ‘I will prepare the Iron Skulls for immediate departure,’ he said. He turned as if the conversation were over and he had been given his orders.

  ‘You’ll what?’ von Strab said. ‘One moment, princeps. You have misunderstood me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, overlord,’ he said. He looked at Andechs. ‘And yours, general. It is, of course, only right that the glory of this battle belong to the Steel Legion. Which regiments will you be sending?’

  Andechs coughed, buying himself seconds before an answer.

  ‘He won’t be sending any,’ von Strab said.

  Mannheim cursed him, and he cursed Andechs. If the general had committed to more regiments, any number, it would have been difficult for von Strab to contradict him. Did Andechs feel he owed von Strab this much deference? Was he so incapable of initiative? What Mannheim knew of Andechs’ record away from Armageddon suggested he knew what he was doing in the battlefield. But so close to the reason for his elevation, he was passive. Von Strab controlled the conduct of the war, but that did not mean Andechs could offer nothing.

  Except it did.

  Caught between despair and rage, Mannheim played his role in the black comedy to the end. ‘None?’ he asked.

  ‘I have assured the governors that the Steel Legion will stand guard over the hives of Armageddon Secundus. The regiments have their assignments.’

  ‘But if you’re right that the orks will not be able to cross the Equatorial Jungle, why keep the Steel Legion locked down?’ He thought von Strab’s faith in the jungle was ridiculous, but he tried to engage with the man using the terms of his flawed logic.

  ‘The jungle will keep them from us,’ von Strab asserted. ‘But we must be prepared for all contingencies. The last few days have brought us some unwelcome surprises, after all.’

  ‘Then we should surprise the orks.’

  Von Strab patted his arm with genial condescension. ‘And so we shall, princeps. So we shall. You said yourself that the two cohorts of the 252nd Regiment are in the correct positions.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Then Colonel Brenken is to go ahead with the attack.’

  ‘Without reinforcements?’

  ‘From what you have said, her tactical situation is superb. Now is the moment to act. If we ask her to wait, the window of opportunity will close.’ He shook his head. ‘No, princeps, we cannot delay and risk defeat.’

  The reasoning was astounding in its perversity. Mannheim felt numb as he tried to refute it. ‘With respect, overlord, the orks outnumber the regiment many times over.’

  Von Strab raised his eyebrows in mock dismay. ‘You do the Hammer of the Emperor an injustice.’

  ‘I have the greatest respect for the abilities of the Steel Legion.’ Mannheim nodded to Andechs, as if there really was a chance he had given offence. He didn’t know why he was still playing this charade. He had lost. But he couldn’t retreat from any field of battle. Not even this false one. ‘I respect them enough that I will not ask them to perform the impossible.’

  ‘Are you so reticent in the demands you make of the Legio Metalica?’ von Strab asked.

  ‘I…’ Mannheim began, then stopped. He had no good answer. He and the Iron Skulls would fight against all odds until they had won or had shed their last drop of blood. But the idea of defeat when he was one with Steel Hammer was absurd. The Steel Legion had tanks, it had artillery. It was a formidable fighting force. But there was a great difference between even a Baneblade tank and the God Machines. And the 252nd was not equipped even with the super-heavies. Courage and determination were irrelevant in the face of the numbers Brenken was reporting. Von Strab was going to abandon the regiment to a slaughter, and with it Volcanus.

  That would leave Hive Death Mire. If the expeditionary force failed, Mannheim could not imagine von Strab sending any help to Death Mire. Apart from its militia, the hive would be defenceless. The orks might have full control of Armageddon Prime early into the Season of Shadows.

  Von Strab wasn’t finished. ‘You know what you are abou
t, Princeps Mannheim. But believe me, demanding the impossible of your troops is an excellent way of achieving just that.’ He smiled like the veteran commander he most certainly was not. ‘Besides, the 252nd will not be fighting alone. Volcanus is an important centre of armament production. Brenken will have more volunteers than she could possibly need.’

  ‘Untrained ones,’ Mannheim pointed out.

  Von Strab shrugged. ‘If they can aim and pull a trigger that will be enough.’

  Mannheim looked around the chamber. Otto Vikman of Volcanus and Dirne Hartau of Death Mire were looking at him anxiously, hoping he would carry the day. But they weren’t speaking up. The others were very happy to accept the protection von Strab was providing. He was turning Secundus into a fortress, and abandoning Prime. No one was going to stand up against the overlord.

  ‘Have faith, Princeps Mannheim,’ von Strab said. ‘There is nothing to be gained by sending Colonel Brenken help she does not need that would reach her when the battle is already won.’

  ‘And if Volcanus falls?’

  Von Strab looked serious. ‘I hope General Andechs’s colonels are more competent than you seem to be implying.’

  Andechs winced as any defeat that occurred suddenly became his responsibility. Mannheim was disgusted by von Strab’s rhetorical strategy, but it was as brilliant as his military moves were dismaying. You could have spoken up, general, Mannheim thought. Too late now.

  ‘But the fate of Volcanus has no bearing on Armageddon Secundus,’ von Strab continued. ‘I think I’ve made that clear.’

  He had. His delusion was unshakeable. The overlord’s faith in the barrier of the Equatorial Jungle was bizarre, Mannheim thought. He guessed it was a result of his refusal to conceive of a threat to Secundus. Von Strab could not or would not credit the idea of his reign overthrown by orks.

  ‘I understand,’ Mannheim said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, overlord.’ The battle was over. There was nothing to be gained here. He took a step away from the table.