Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon

by David Annandale

  We left the bunker. The rear hatch of Sword of the Wastes was open, the Chimera’s engine idling and ready for departure. ‘We’ll need all the armour we can salvage,’ Brenken said.

  ‘Your driver has the skills?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Then we’ll meet again beyond the walls,’ I said. Brenken was needed in Volcanus to hold what strategy we still had together. My place was with the troops.

  Brenken nodded. She and her command squad boarded the Chimera.

  Setheno and I ran past the tank and dropped into the trench a few metres beyond.

  We became a part of a flow of rats. I saw no shame in the comparison. We kept low, we were fast, we survived, and we bit. Squad structure still held. Fire discipline was solid.

  The roofs of the tunnels shook and dropped dust as the ork armour thundered overhead. When we were in the trenches, we were rushing through canyons whose cliff faces were moving iron. We did what we could. Heavy weapons teams launched rockets at the battlewagons. The troopers who still had krak grenades tossed them at the wheels and treads. We killed some vehicles, and immobilised others. There was still some infantry from the first cohort that hadn’t been destroyed by the initial defence. We killed some of these footsoldiers, but more we had to ignore. Three quarters of the way through the warren, in a trench between two tunnels, I stopped a squad from shooting at a cluster of orks running on the ground ahead of us. They had their eyes on the walls of Volcanus, and weren’t looking down.

  I seized the sergeant’s arm as he was about to give the signal to shoot. Startled, he whirled on me, then stumbled back a step when he realised he had almost struck a commissar.

  ‘Too many,’ I said. ‘We don’t want them in the tunnels with us.’

  We could damage vehicles without slowing down. Pitched ­infantry battles would keep us from the walls, where we would be needed soon enough. I could hear the scream of las and the rattle of ork stubbers some distance from our position. The greenskins were into the network already. I had to hope they hadn’t infested it.

  Sometimes, small hopes are met. We had a clear run the rest of the way to the wall. Setheno and I were among the last of the troops to make it through before the narrow passages through the rockcrete were sealed. There were still troops out there, and they were fighting. But because they would not make it to the wall before the main force of the orks, now they would never reach Volcanus at all.

  The hive was like all the others on Armageddon in that it was as dense with industry as it was with inhabitants. Millions lived to toil, but their toil shortened their lives. The air was filled with toxic grit. Where the atmosphere of Tempestora had been harsh with the stench of promethium, Volcanus was overheated by the abundance of its forges. Its particular specialty was guns – every­thing from small arms to artillery, lasrifle to Earthshaker. The rockcrete of its walls was stained like those in Infernus, and Tempestora, and Hades. Its gutters ran with the half-molten detritus of the city’s production. The streets were narrower than those of Infernus, and the arches higher. Flying buttresses soared from chapels, habs and manufactoria. The density of construction was such that it was difficult to determine which support was part of which building. The honeycomb of walkways further fused the structures together. The hive was a dense maze in three dimensions. Its character might be an advantage.

  Most of the regiment’s battle tanks had completed the retreat. After the few Chimeras that could be salvaged had arrived, the main gates were shut and reinforced. The barrier was strong. If Volcanus withstood the siege, it would be no small task to open those gates once more. Brenken deployed troops along the ramparts to every point the orks were approaching. The arc of the siege extended over almost a third of the circumference of Volcanus. When Setheno and I joined Brenken above the main north gate, the army stretching left, right and before us appeared infinite.

  The minefields were minor irritants. Ghazghkull had so many vehicles that the orks simply rode through the traps, losing as many tanks as it took to clear the explosives. We made sure he lost many. Now positioned on the inside of the wall, the Basilisks added their cry to that of the rampart guns. Shells blanketed the land before Volcanus. Fire and explosions wracked the battlewagons, but the orks continued the operations without pause. The tanks shrugged off all but the most direct hits by the biggest ordnance. They advanced at full charge, destroying obstacles, levelling the terrain.

  The advance was relentless. It was also selective. The bulk of the army, a sea of giant shapes and swarming troops, waited beyond the outer defences. For now, the orks attacked the defences with obsessive purpose and alarming specialisation. The battle­wagons carrying out the demolition were not troop carriers. Their reinforced armour, their siege blades and their rams made them perfect for this goal. They drew fire and they resisted it. Few of our salvoes reached to the rest of the army. We had no choice but to concentrate on the immediate threat.

  ‘We’re doing exactly what they want us to do,’ I muttered.

  Brenken gave me a sharp look. ‘Orks with strategy?’ she asked, sceptical.

  I pointed. ‘The evidence of your eyes, colonel. They’re using a specific tool for a specific job.’

  As the battlewagons drew closer to the wall, ork footsoldiers moved in behind. Red icons in the crude likeness of a horned bull rose from the black plates of their armour. They wielded flamers. Hundreds of jets of flame pierced the gloom. The orks were purging the trenches.

  I swept my gaze over the panorama of eruptions, demolition and fire. And in the distance, the greater strength of the army waited for the first act to be completed. ‘They’re levelling the ground,’ I said.

  ‘And losing armour.’

  ‘Not enough, and they have plenty to spare. They’re preparing the terrain for something. When have you ever seen orks mount a siege like this?’

  ‘Never,’ she admitted.

  I couldn’t guess what was coming. I knew it would be deva­stating. We had limited time to prepare, and doing so involved more than physical reinforcement of the wall. I would prove Setheno wrong. I refused to concede to the inevitability of the hive’s doom. But sooner or later, the orks would breach the walls. We had to be ready for that.

  ‘Where is Somner?’ I asked.

  ‘Overseeing the distribution of weapons,’ said Brenken. ‘Getting ready to address the people too, I would think.’ She directed me to the Kasadya complex, a manufactorum a kilometre uphill from the main gate. I moved as quickly as I could through a dense crowd of armed civilians. They were pouring out of the bay doors at the base of the building. It was one of the main production sites of lasrifles in Volcanus, and a massive storehouse. Across the hive, the scene was being repeated. The entire population had been mobilised. There hadn’t been time in the few days since the start of the crisis to arm every citizen, but millions had been. Many had never held a gun before, though the more desperate knew their way around weapons. I found myself hoping that the dwellers of the underhive had been among the first to reach the armouries, and that they had not been turned away. They had no love for the authorities of Volcanus, but they would have still less for the invader.

  The crowd parted. My uniform drove a wedge of fear before me. I reached the base of Kasadya. The aquila spread iron wings fifty metres wide above the vaulted doorways. From the roof, between smokestacks, rose a Departmento Munitorum tower. A wide balcony jutted out, supported by the aquila’s heads. Hans Somner stood there, arrayed in the finery of the nobility, now adorned with his medals and seals of service. With him was a tech-priest who was making adjustments to a bank of devices set up on the right side of the balcony. As he worked, feedback whines echoed in every direction.

  A mass vox-caster. Good.

  I made my way through the frenzied activity in the Kasadya complex and up the tower. The tech-priest had finished as I arrived on the balcony. He stood to one side, servos clicking. So
mner was motionless. I thought he was staring at the vox unit on the stand before him. When I reached him, I realised he was gazing beyond the wall at what was coming. The wall seemed smaller from this perspective. Weaker. The ork horde was a massive claw making ready to crush Volcanus.

  Somner looked at me. His lips pulled back in a rictus. ‘I can’t find the words,’ he said. The admission was code for a greater failure. He was cracking. The hive was his responsibility. He retained enough instincts from his days as an officer to know his duty, and to realise he was failing it. ‘Will you speak?’ he asked.

  He was ceding his authority to me. Whether that was an act of dereliction or realism was not something I had to decide on at that moment. I gave him a curt nod and took his place.

  ‘Citizens of the Imperium,’ I said. My voice, amplified by thousands upon thousands of vox-casters in every corner of the hive. Below, I saw the crowd look my way. ‘Today you are the defenders of Volcanus. Today you become heroes of Armageddon!’ The cheers began. ‘I am proud to stand with you. The Steel Legion is proud to stand with you. You stand with the Emperor, and you will hurl his anger on the heads of the xenos foe.’ A great shout answered. For a brief moment, it drowned out the artillery. ‘The greenskins dare to set foot on this ground? On a single stone of Volcanus? Will you show them the scope of their folly?’ Another shout, louder yet, a massive YES that rolled up the sides of the buildings, a wave ready to sweep away the orks. ‘Every street!’ I shouted. ‘Every doorway! Every window! Every roof! There we will be, with our guns and our wrath. The orks will pay with their blood for every step they take!’ I paused. ‘I call on you now! By will, by flesh and by faith, transform Volcanus into a great weapon of war! Make it the death trap that ends the arrogance of the greenskin forever!’

  The shout, the roar, the wave rose past me. It climbed to the dust-laden clouds. It was a determination born of fear. It was a collective strength forged in a desperate search for hope. The ­people of Volcanus would fight. They had no choice. But they had each other. And they had weapons.

  If there was to be sacrifice here, it would be in battle.

  The shout faded, and so did the sounds of battle. Our cannons did not let up, but the ork battlewagons were withdrawing. They pulled back to the edge of the defences.

  ‘We haven’t beaten them,’ Somner said, hoping I would contradict him.

  ‘No,’ I said. The prologue was done, that was all.

  For the space of one long breath, the ork army was motionless. Then its war beat began once more. Hundreds of engines snarled with growing anticipation. The earth began to shake with the pounding of monstrous footsteps. The high shadows I had seen before gathered definition as they moved forward and began their ponderous advance towards the city wall.

  Stompas. Clanking, grinding embodiments of ork aggression, grotesque expressions of their unholy faith, belching smoke and fire. They were twenty metres tall, and they were squat and wide. They had none of the majesty of Titans, but as they marched, the air cracked with terror. They were taller than the wall. They were monsters come to break everything down.

  The stompas advanced along a wide arc. They were separated by hundreds of metres. Each could only be targeted by one of our primary turrets. And they left the approach to the main gate clear for something else.

  Far to my left, an Earthshaker cannon struck a vulnerable point in a stompa. The machine burst apart in a fireball so huge I could feel the heat from this distance. The monster’s limb weapons tumbled through the air end over end. The crowd below cheered at the sound of the blast. They could not see what was almost upon us.

  When the stompas were mere steps away from the wall, a pair of heavily armoured vehicles came up the slope and stopped about halfway to the gates. They were behind the mounds of smashed redoubts, difficult targets for our guns, and the stompas were the more obvious, oncoming threat. What I could make out of the vehicles was strange. Their upper portions were huge, doubling the size of the battlewagons. They were enclosures, slapped together with welded metal plates.

  Brenken must have realised their importance as I did, because shells landed near the tanks. Close hits, but not close enough. And there was only time for that salvo. Then the disaster began.

  The attack came on so many fronts I didn’t know where to look. Yet it had the unity of a single will. It was a masterpiece of coordination. No ork should have even conceived of it. But this ork achieved it.

  The stompas assaulted the wall with wrecking balls larger than Chimeras. With each blow, rockcrete exploded into powder. Cracks became breaches.

  From behind the massed ranks of battlewagons, troops shot upward. Strapped to their backs were the ork versions of jump packs – flaming hybrids of rockets and engines. The devices were crude, barely controlled. They should have killed their riders on lift-off. But they worked well enough for the orks, and their howls of glee merged with the shriek of propulsion. The trajectories were high. The assault troops would come down well inside the wall.

  A column of battlewagons raced forward. They came for the gate in a straight line. They would hit it at high speed. I had a blessed moment to think Ghazghkull had made a mistake. The gates were strong. They could withstand the ork battering rams, and the chain reaction of collisions would create a greater barrier to the enemy.

  The battlewagons drove up between the two stationary vehicles. The covers of these blew off, revealing what had been concealed, and mocked my faint hope. Each vehicle sported a huge rear-mounted turret. The weapon arm was as long as the wagon. It ended in an eight-pronged claw surrounding an energy node.

  The weapons were already powering up.

  ‘What…?’ Somner whispered.

  ‘Tractor beams,’ I said.

  The synchronisation of the components of the attack was ­perfect. In the midst of my horror, I felt the stab of envy. The tractor beams fired. Crackling, coruscating beams lashed out and struck the gates. A foul nimbus enveloped them. Troops on the ramparts scrambled away. Steel ten metres thick screamed. The tractor beams wrenched the gates from the wall.

  The battlewagons stormed through the breach, guns blazing.

  Once more, the cacophony of war resolved in my ears into a single sound: the laughter of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.

  1. Yarrick

  For several hundred metres up the main road from the gates, the only resistance the battlewagons encountered was from the sheer mass of bodies they crushed. They came in such numbers they had to split up. Even the principle thoroughfares in Volcanus were too narrow for a mechanised force on this scale. The lead tanks began to slow, pushing through the corpses of thousands. Others headed up other roads, grinding other crowds into the pavement. Behind the tanks, the infantry rushed in.

  In the first few seconds of the flood, the return fire was hap­hazard, confused. The people tried to retreat from the huge vehicles, their guns and the terrifying, toothed visages of their siege blades. At the wall, the Steel Legion and militia were struggling to respond to the multiple attacks.

  And further into the hive, the greenskin jump troops were ­coming down. They were out of my sight, but I could picture the panic as they began their massacre.

  Beside me, Somner was slack-jawed with shock. On the far right, the tech-priest had turned from the devastation, shutting it out, and was adjusting his vox banks with the fixation of a mind whose courses of action have been reduced to none. Instinct urged me to head for street level and engage with the enemy. Reason held me where I was. ‘Keep the vox working,’ I told the tech-priest.

  I used the only effective weapons I had at my disposal: my voice and my mind.

  ‘Get off the streets,’ I ordered. Amplified by every vox-caster in the hive, my words were still drowned by the thunder of the ork war machine. ‘Get off the streets,’ I said again. I repeated the order until I saw movement in the citizens nearest the Kasadya complex. They had heard
and were trying to obey.

  ‘Citizens of the Volcanus, you number in the millions, and you are armed. You are more than the orks. You are greater than the orks. From the high ground, in ambushes, from dead ends and byways, you have the strength to turn the streets into killing zones. You will stem the green tide.

  ‘By your numbers, you must stem the tide.

  ‘In the name of the Emperor, stem the tide.’

  I had the voice of a god. My commands were heard by every soul in Volcanus. Yet I felt helpless. Below, the battlewagons were sweeping their cannons back and forth. People ran for the doorways. Bullets and flamers cut them down. Articulated arms swung out from the tops of the vehicles, battering facades and destroying ground floors. I repeated my speech, and then again, and again. For several minutes, all I saw was slaughter and the endless flow of enemy strength into Volcanus.

  Then the 252nd Regiment’s counter attack began. Rockets and cannon fire cut across the gap in the wall, hammering the flanks of the battlewagons. The miracle began a few minutes later. I heard las fire. For it to be audible over the booming reports of the ork weapons, the roar of the engines and the howling, thundering inferno of the stompa assaults, the las had to be coming from a tremendous number of rifles. The citizens of the hive were fighting back.

  My role was clear, then. I stayed where I was. I repeated my call. I summoned the spiritual fire of millions. I sought to inspire the ingenuity of desperation, and the fury of urban warfare. I could only guess at the levels of success. Higher up the honeycomb, the people would have more time to prepare for the orks. Closer to my position, as long as I could hear the bursts of las fire, I knew the fighting was not over, and that was a victory.

  I was barely aware of Somner. I hadn’t given him a thought since we had last spoken. But now he clutched my shoulder. I blinked. Trying to hear and visualise a battle stretching over many kilometres in three dimensions, I had withdrawn my attention from the immediate area. The orks had been concentrating their fire on the ground level.