Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon

by David Annandale

  ‘Without support.’

  ‘Yes. Princeps Kurtiz Mannheim wishes to speak with you. You won’t be disturbed here.’

  In other words, we would be free to speak about subjects Helm suspected even he should not hear. ‘Thank you, colonel,’ I said, impressed.

  Helm nodded and left. I sat. I reached to my right, to the vox bank on the wall and flicked the switch to open the channel. ‘I’m here, Princeps Mannheim,’ I said. ‘Are you already within sight of the orks?’

  ‘Not yet. Our reconnaissance flights have spotted them. We will meet no later than early evening tomorrow. Commissar,’ he said, ‘it has occurred to me that of us all, you are best positioned to have a positive effect on the outcome of this war. You have the experience of Armageddon Prime. Based on what I know of Lord Tritten and Colonel Helm, you have greater latitude for action than von Strab expected when he exiled you. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hades will not fall while I live.’

  ‘Then I will ask you to bear witness to our struggle. I’ll leave this channel open during the battle. I’ll relay everything I can. May it prove to be useful.’

  ‘You don’t expect to survive,’ I said.

  Mannheim didn’t answer. His silence spoke for him. It spoke of insane decisions and of vanity taken to the point of treason. I seethed at the thought of all the Steel Legion regiments held idle at Infernus.

  ‘General Andechs still refuses to stand up to von Strab, then,’ I said.

  ‘Colonel Brenken tried to convince him to break with the overlord. He’s hiding behind the chain of command.’

  Enough. The scale of Andechs’ craven inaction meant I could finally do something to halt some of the madness. ‘You’ll hear from me again shortly,’ I said. ‘There is something I must do now.’

  2. Brenken

  She entered the general’s quarters in the company of Setheno, Colonel Kanturek of the 167th Regiment, Colonel Vollbrecht of the 203rd, and Taliansky, one of Vollbrecht’s vox operators. Taliansky looked nervous, as if he’d sensed being asked to accompany these senior officers was not going to be a simple honour.

  Andechs stood up from behind his desk. He’d been studying a map of the western reaches of Armageddon Secundus. Envisaging the sites of the coming conflict, Brenken guessed. And little else. Andechs had not indulged in luxuries. The office he used in the administrative tower was large but spare. Shelves of maps and reports, a row of devotional texts, a personal shrine. The map on the desk was unmarked. There was no data-slate.

  He was doing nothing.

  ‘General,’ Brenken said, ‘we have come to urge you, once more, to order heavy armoured support of the Legio Metalica.’

  ‘Our regiments are ready for immediate deployment,’ Kanturek said. She and Vollbrecht looked like the tanks they commanded. They were solid, square, bull-necked officers and were as honest as they were stubborn. They lived for the forward momentum of battle and were straining against the leash imposed by von Strab, and held by Andechs.

  ‘The overlord has made his campaign plan clear,’ the general said.

  ‘The overlord is wrong,’ said Brenken. ‘You know this, sir.’

  Andechs sighed, tired of them all. He turned back to his map. ‘There is nothing more to be said. Leave now.’

  ‘No,’ said Brenken.

  Andechs looked up sharply. ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘Taliansky,’ said Vollbrecht.

  The vox operator shuffled forward.

  ‘Turn it up,’ said Vollbrecht. There was no joy in his tone, but there was the satisfaction that came of knowing justice would be done.

  Taliansky adjusted the volume. Static spat. Brenken said, ‘You heard, commissar?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yarrick’s voice crackled from the speaker. ‘General, you are abdicating your responsibilities. In this time of war, that is desertion.’

  ‘Is this your excuse to have the Adepta Sororitas do your dirty work, Yarrick?’ Andechs was staring at Setheno.

  ‘I am here as a witness,’ the canoness said.

  ‘We are here to follow the laws of the Astra Militarum,’ Brenken said. She unholstered her laspistol. She trained it on Andechs. She accepted what might happen yet, but she still hoped it would not come to pass.

  ‘This is your chance for repentance,’ Yarrick said. ‘Will you deploy in support of the Legio Metalica?’

  ‘No. Colonel, lower your pistol. This is mutiny.’

  ‘No,’ said Yarrick. ‘I am empowered to sanction any officer, of any rank, who fails in his duty to the Imperium. General Andechs, you are following the orders of a man who is manifestly unfit for command. If you continue to do so, you prove yourself unfit as well. For the last time, deploy your troops.’

  ‘Lower your pistol, colonel. That is an order.’

  Brenken’s aim held steady. The only sound in the pause was Taliansky’s gasp.

  Yarrick said, ‘Colonel Brenken, I find General Andechs has failed in his duty, and turned his back on his oaths of office. Shoot him.’

  The las struck Andechs in the centre of his forehead. It burned his brain to a cinder. He toppled forward. His head cracked hard against the edge of the desk on the way down.

  ‘It’s done,’ Brenken said.

  ‘Colonel Brenken,’ Yarrick said, still speaking formally, still passing sentence. ‘You are the senior-most colonel. In the absence of other generals, I declare you commander of the Steel Legion regiments on Armageddon.’

  ‘And so I have witnessed,’ Setheno said.

  ‘So witnessed,’ said Vollbrecht and Kanturek.

  Brenken holstered her pistol. To Taliansky she said, ‘Go. Get a detail in here to remove the body.’

  ‘What are your orders?’ Kanturek asked.

  ‘You know what they are.’

  Vollbrecht grinned. ‘We leave at once.’

  3. Mannheim

  At first, it seemed that a mountain chain advanced over the horizon and into the Death Barrens. At this distance, the gargants were conical silhouettes. They rocked from side to side with each step. The smallest were twenty metres high. The largest were as tall as Steel Hammer, but much broader at the base.

  And there were so many.

  Closer, and the details of the stompas and gargants became clearer. There were different colours to the armour, and different icons mounted atop the monsters. Most common was a deep rust associated with a horned symbol, but there was a foul yellow too, and icons of sunbursts and moons. There were several ork clans in the host before him, Mannheim realised. They were marching with a unity of purpose that was monstrous to behold.

  ‘Are you there, Yarrick?’ he said.

  ‘I am, princeps.’

  ‘You were right. We have never seen orks like this before.’

  After the savage excess of life that was the Equatorial Jungle, the orks were now in a land of heat and ash and rock. There were no settlements here. There was no water and no life for hundreds of kilometres. This was the dead land, the great emptiness to which all of Armageddon advanced, year by year, as it was consumed by the needs of the Imperium. To attempt a crossing of the Death Barrens on foot was not an act of folly – it was an act of despair. It was suicide. But the ork infantry was a carpet spreading across the barren terrain. The footsoldiers swarmed between and ahead of the gargants and stompas. Even from this height, even from this distance, where the individual orks were insects, dots on the landscape, Mannheim knew that the infantry would cross the Death Barrens and reach Infernus not weakened, but hardened by survival and eager for war. He could see the monstrous energy of the greenskins in the movement of that carpet. The orks were running. They did not see a desert. They saw a wide, unobstructed path to rampage.

  ‘They don’t know despair,’ he muttered, forgetting he’d left the vox channel open.

  ‘No, they don’t,’
Yarrick said. ‘As a race, they’re incapable of it. Which isn’t to say they can’t lose morale.’

  ‘I will choose their outright extermination.’

  Ahead, the battlewagons and warbikes raced past the infantry. The vehicles too were beyond counting. Mannheim turned his eyes from the tide of smaller enemies. In those numbers, they were threats too. But he could not let his focus be taken away from the gargants.

  He changed vox channel and hailed Kanturek and Vollbrecht. ‘How far are you?’ he asked.

  ‘We are closing,’ Vollbrecht answered. ‘We caught our first sight of Steel Hammer a few minutes ago.’

  ‘We are out of time,’ Mannheim said. ‘I suggest you begin your artillery fire now. We will provide you with coordinates.’

  The orks were already unleashing salvoes, whether their weapons had the range or not. The biggest cannons did, though their accuracy was poor. Their shells chewed up the land before Steel Hammer, punching craters as if an invisible force slouched towards the Iron Skulls.

  Mannheim looked straight ahead. ‘The gargant in a straight line from us,’ he said. ‘Plasma annihilator.’

  ‘As you command,’ said Valth.

  Mannheim’s muscles flexed to raise his right arm. Held fast to the throne, it did not move. The Imperator lifted its right limb in its stead. The moderatus’s will worked in tandem with his own, and the weapon charged, pulling directly from the Titan’s reactor.

  Blood from the heart.

  ‘Fire,’ Mannheim said, and the machine-spirit roared.

  The plasma annihilator launched the rage of a sun. The red-tinged darkness of the afternoon flared savage white. The ork lines were etched with jagged shadows. The beam hit the core of the gargant.

  ‘Fire,’ Mannheim said before the glare had faded.

  Drawing from the reactor, the plasma annihilator was capable of salvoes in quick succession, though speed came at a price. The energy feed to the Imperator’s other systems fluctuated. Steel Hammer slowed in its stride. But the gun fired, and the great light came again, and the beam hit the gargant in precisely the same spot.

  Steel Hammer’s blow could have punched through the armour of a cruiser. The gargant’s explosion was so huge, and so bright, the ork lines vanished for a moment.

  Mannheim savoured the beautiful illusion.

  The Iron Skulls wedge spread out behind him. The Titans unleashed a salvo that would have reduced a hive to cinders. Volcano and melta cannons, multiple rocket launchers and gatling blasters, and more; the full range of the Imperium’s greatest weapons of terrestrial war turned their anger on the orks. The greenskins, as eager and wrathful, sent a storm of missiles and shells and energy beams towards the Legion. The space between the lines of god machines became an inferno. Steel Hammer marched forward through the explosions and fire. The slow, rhythmic sway of its gait was untroubled by the holocaust. The Imperator was majesty itself. As ever, Mannheim felt the awe of the mortal before its sublime power, and he felt the wrath of the machine-spirit as it advanced towards its prey. The void shields flashed, spiking towards their limits. They held.

  The intensity of the firestorm faded long enough for Mannheim to see the state of the battlefield. More gargants were burning. Several were smoking, blackened wrecks. One took one last step and succumbed to a chain reaction of inner explosions. Flames burst from the jaws of its idol skull, and it came to a halt, sixty metres of dead metal in the barrens. Craters were spread over the landscape, and Mann­heim saw a dull gleam where the weapons had melted rock into glass. Countless ork infantry and smaller vehicles had been destroyed.

  But there were countless more, screaming towards the Iron Skulls as if nothing had happened. The Skitarii Rhinos drove forward to meet them, but they were a sword blade striking at an avalanche. One Warhound had vanished, and a Reaver to the right was badly damaged on one side. Its left arm was twisted slag, and the left leg moved in fits and starts. The wedge was still intact.

  The gargants and stompas marched past their wounded or destroyed kin. Behind them, still more arrived. And behind them were more shadows, silhouetted by the angry red throb of the sky. Mannheim now understood the scale of the battle. The orks had hundreds of their barbarous god machines.

  After the two quick shots, he had to let the plasma annihilator cool. But the Imperator’s shoulder-mounted missile pods were armed and ready. Mannheim raised the left arm. Its extremity was formed by the five barrels of a Hellstorm cannon. ‘Dammann,’ Mannheim said.

  ‘Charging period complete.’

  Then, into the breath between the two lines’ salvoes, a devastating artillery barrage fell. It blanketed the ork advance. Battlewagons exploded. Bikes sailed end over end through the air, disintegrating as they flew. Huge holes opened up in the infantry.

  The armoured regiments of the Steel Legion had spoken.

  ‘Princeps,’ Vollbrecht voxed, ‘we will be with you soon.’

  ‘You will be welcome,’ Mannheim said.

  The inferno returned to the Death Barrens. The Iron Skulls advanced with measured, even relentlessness. The huge strides of the Imperator and the Warlords were timed so as not to outdistance the Reavers and Warhounds. The Legion was a single unit, its attack a precise, target projection of immeasurable force. The orks were a vortex, a chaotic burst of all-consuming destruction.

  The Hellstorm fired. The gargant in the centre of its blast became a cascade of molten metal. It poured itself halfway to the ground before its armaments exploded, spreading the devastation still farther. The beam scythed stompas to the left and right of the gargant. They flew apart as they were caught in the death blast of their larger brother.

  The vox filled with shouts of damage reports from the other princeps. The volume of ork fire overwhelmed void shields. It battered open the armour of more of the smaller Titans. Mannheim sensed a sudden wave to the right. His body registered the explosion as if the pressure and the heat were against his own flesh. The Warlord Fornax Mortem had exploded. Its plasma reactor, fatally breached, had melted down. Where the Warlord had stood, now a mushroom cloud rose, its anger a mirror for the crimson fury of the sky above. Somehow, the crew had managed to direct the worst of the blast forward, wreaking still more havoc in the ork ranks. It also incinerated several Rhinos. The shock wave crashed through Steel Hammer’s void shields. The shields tried to distribute the energy evenly, but even then it was too much and overwhelmed the system. Mannheim’s teeth slammed together as the shields collapsed and the power feedback flooded back into the Titan, jolting the machine-spirit with agony.

  The shields rebuilt, but before they did, ork missiles slammed into Steel Hammer’s torso. The armour held. Shells the size of tanks struck the left-hand spire of the cathedral. Iron and stone shattered. Mannheim gasped in pain and outrage. The rubble fell past the eyes of the Titan. The bodies of tech-priests, killed at prayer, tumbled by, bouncing limply off projections.

  The war horn raged. The shields came back.

  ‘Princeps,’ said a voice from the torso of the Imperator. ‘I have a damage report.’

  Mannheim barely listened. He knew it was not critical, except in the outrage committed. He thought of the scarred place of worship, of the dead above, and retaliated in kind. Plasma annihilator and shoulder rocket launchers ripped into another gargant. The lower half of its skirt disintegrated. The towering monster tottered, stability gone. It crashed to the ground, crushing hundreds of orks beneath it.

  The artillery barrage continued. The precision of Vollbrecht and Kanturek’s troops was exemplary. The rain of shells advanced ahead of the Titans, pounding the greenskin mechanised infantry. Some of the enemy forces had gone around the Iron Skulls’ formation, coming up behind. They were hit by the tanks of the 167th and 203rd as they came closer yet to the battlefield.

  The distance between the two lines of colossi diminished. Short-range weapons came into play. The speed of
the battle and the intensity of the bombardments increased. The brilliance of destruction swallowed the armies. Mannheim marched Steel Hammer through an unbroken maelstrom of energy and projectiles. The light was blinding, obscuring, annihilating. He heard more of his troops fall. Some had time for a brief valediction before the silence took their feed, but two more, a Reaver and a Warhound, died as Fornax Mortem had. Those ends were sudden and destructive to all.

  Far more gargants and stompas fell than Titans. The orks had more, and still more, but they were fighting the Legio Metalica on its terms. The Imperial fire hit what it was aimed at. The artillery and tanks prevented the other ork elements from tackling the Titans while they were engaged against the gargants.

  The ork advance slowed. Momentum bled away. The gargants walked to meet the march of the Iron Skulls, but though their numbers were greater, they did not use the advantage to flank the Imperials. They converged on the conflict, and the storm of annihilating fire became ever stronger. Footsoldiers and vehicles went in circles, caught between the iron rain of artillery and the iron wind of tank shells.

  More ork machines died before the Iron Skulls. The enemy losses mounted faster than those of the Legion. The monsters of war were almost within striking distance of each other.

  ‘Maintain formation and keep up the pressure,’ Mannheim ordered. ‘Coordinate fire. Our priority is always the nearest ­target.’ The ork power fields absorbed punishing damage, flaring with emerald light. When they went down, though, they stayed down, and the gargants’ armour was weaker than the Titans’. Their patchwork excess was no match for the divine forgework of Mars. As the range shrank, the orks brought more and more weapons to bear. The closer they were, the more dangerous they became. So keep them at bay. Blast them to slag, make their deaths destructive to others.

  And still the wedge advanced. And still the gargants came, endlessly emerging from the smoke and flame, trudging behemoths in the shape of raging idols. In the aftermath of another blast of the Hellstorm cannon, when the destruction was so pure it cleared the air for a space, Mannheim saw the largest gargant in the middle distance. It was as tall as Steel Hammer, and was so wide it travelled on tracks. It was a tank grown to godlike proportions. Mannheim promised it a suitable end.