The Last Wall

by David Annandale

  Occillax cursed him, but obeyed. Kalkator and Caesax left the Vindicator behind. The slow beat of its cannon resumed. It hit the walker again, and this time the ork Titan responded with its hammer. It struck the Olympia hard enough to make the ground shake again. The ork machinery roared louder, in triumph and anger. Another blast from the cannon, another hit to the walker, but the orks crewing the monster were focused on victory, not on the casualties they suffered. The hammer came down again and again, and the third time was when Kalkator heard the shriek of compacting metal. The gun fell silent.

  He was the last to reach the landing zone, a few steps behind Caesax. They ran up the ramp to the final gunship, the Meratara. Not all of the Thunderhawks had taken off again – the battle fortresses had demolished three of them on the ground. Kalkator didn’t know how many troops he had lost in each one. The reckoning would wait until later, if there was a later.

  The ramp raised as he reached the top and the Thunderhawk took off. He made his way forward to the cockpit to witness the end. He saw the Barban Falk join the Olympia in destruction, and another gunship blasted out of the sky. Then they were in the clouds, and though the ship rattled through the turbulence of the atmosphere, there were a few minutes of calm.

  They weren’t welcome. They gave him time to think, to feel the humiliation of the loss scrape at his pride.

  The Meratara shot up from the clouds. A new vision appeared before Kalkator. Another humiliation, another great power smashing a weaker one. The Scythe of Schravaan was under heavy attack. Squadrons of ork fighters swarmed around it. From the star fortress came an unending stream of rockets. The strike cruiser’s void shields flashed and flashed, surrounding the vessel in an aurora of desperation. Its armaments lit the void with anger. Ork vessels died, and rockets exploded short of their target.

  Drops in the ocean. There were so many more orks on the way that the space between the moon and the ship seemed full. The Schravaan’s death was minutes away.

  ‘Make for the Palimodes,’ Kalkator told Lerontus, the gunship’s pilot. The other strike cruiser, more distant from the star fortress, was holding its own. The orks were amusing themselves with taking down one large prey at a time.

  Not all of them were satisfied with the Schravaan. Three fighters came at the Meratara. Their salvoes hit hard. Warning runes lit up as the hull was pierced in multiple places. Kalkator heard the shriek of atmosphere venting. He drowned it out with his own roar of rage. As Lerontus pulled the gunship up sharply, Kalkator grabbed the controls for the weapons systems.

  The fighters looped back for a second pass.

  ‘Straight at them,’ Kalkator told Lerontus.

  ‘With pleasure.’ The pilot’s anger was the mirror of his own.

  Kalkator held his fire. Lerontus turned the Thunderhawk into a head-on course towards the ork ships. The orks misjudged the relative speed of the approach and the smaller profile the gunship now presented. A few shots still hit. Kalkator ignored them. He would hold the vessel together with his will if he had to.

  The orks bunched closer together, jockeying for the better angle on their prey.

  Kalkator fired all forward armament. Thunderhawk cannon, heavy bolters and lascannons struck the centre fighter. It vaporised. The blast washed over the other two ships. Their pilots overcorrected and collided.

  The Meratara slammed through the cloud of debris, and raced on towards the Palimodes.

  The other gunships still in flight were following the same path. The mathematics of defeat cascaded through Kalkator’s mind. How many had headed to the Schravaan first? How many had been taken out before reaching either vessel? How many beyond capacity would Attonax try to take on board? Did he even have to make that decision?

  We have been besieged, Kalkator thought. And our citadels have fallen. The bitterness of the reality filled him with frustrated violence. Had there been a serf within reach, he would have torn the mortal apart just to see the blood.

  The Thunderhawk was on the final approach to the Palimodes when the end came to the Scythe of Schravaan. Kalkator didn’t see what caused the fatal blow. It happened on the ship’s starboard, which faced towards the moon. Searing white lit the void. It engulfed the Schravaan’s midsection, a fist of suns. The bow and stern began to move independently, and the light faded, resolving into a halo of individual explosions. A gap formed between the fore and aft halves of the ship before the bow began a spiral away from the stern. The movement was slow, graceful. The lights of the void shields went dark. In their place, lines of flames, the angry red of infected veins, raced down the bow’s length as it fell towards Klostra’s atmosphere.

  The reactor blew, a second wound of light in the void. The reach of the blast was enormous, wiping the near space clean of ork fighters. That death-cry bought the Palimodes a bit more time. Kalkator dared to think a portion of the Great Company might extract itself from the system. The loss wouldn’t be total.

  Then he watched the Schravaan’s bow become a torch as it hit Klostra’s atmosphere, and he thought he could hear the laughter of the orks even here.

  The Palimodes’ engines were going hot as the Thunderhawk docked. Attonax had ordered the run. The ship was racing to the system’s Mandeville point when Kalkator walked onto the bridge. He joined Attonax at the command throne. The other Iron Warrior nodded to him and vacated the throne.

  ‘The ship is yours, warsmith,’ he said.

  For as long as we have one, Kalkator thought. The first rocket hits were beginning. The rear shields were holding strong, though, and the Palimodes was picking up speed. ‘Set course for the Ostrom System,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t,’ Attonax told him. ‘We’ve lost it too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s why we returned.’ His face was a patchwork of metal and flesh, iron replacing the mutations excavated from his skull. Expression was difficult. His bitterness was profound, for it to be so apparent. ‘We were retreating.’

  ‘The orks hit us there too?’

  ‘No. The Black Templars.’

  The Great Company was caught between two fronts. Kalkator’s forces had lost their holdings. He grimaced.

  ‘Get us to the point and make the jump,’ he ordered.

  ‘Where to?’ Attonax asked.

  Kalkator didn’t answer. He watched the strategium screens, noting the damage reports as they came in, measuring them against what he knew the ship could take; tallying still more casualties, still more strength leeched from his command.

  The deck vibrated: rocket hits overwhelming the void shields. The sensorium array registered ork torpedo ships in pursuit. The Palimodes accelerated. The Mandeville point drew closer.

  ‘Our integrity…’ Attonax began.

  ‘Will be enough,’ Kalkator finished. ‘If we’re breathing, we jump.’

  The other Iron Warrior nodded. If the ship died, it would not be in the sight of the orks.

  The moment of the transition came. The writhe of the warp appeared on the primary oculus. The Palimodes was racing through nothing to nowhere.

  ‘The Navigator will need a destination,’ Attonax said.

  ‘I’m aware of that.’ He stared at the violence of colliding absences and clawed potential. ‘We can’t fight them both,’ he said.

  There was a long silence. At last, Attonax asked, ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That we can’t fight them both.’

  Thirteen

  Terra – the Imperial Palace

  Juskina Tull had a view of the Fields of Winged Victory from her quarters. The armourglass window stretched across the entire width of the reception chamber. The room was the largest of her suite, occupying half of the top floor of the Pharos Tower. The size was not an indulgence. Nor was its collection of tapestries that draped the opposite wall. This display, drawn from holdings of works from across the Imperium, changed daily. A ne
cessary ritual. The furniture underwent a similar change. There was always a large dining table, and seats for dozens. It was the individual identities of the items that altered.

  Sometimes Tull took an active part in the selections of the day. Sometimes she left it to the serfs. What was important was the display. Any guest would see the riches of Imperial trade, and the vast reach of the Chartist fleet. Repeat guests witnessed ever greater wealth through perpetual variety. The more important the visitors, the more often they came, and the more they would be dizzied by the unending parade.

  The symbolic, Tull understood, was not weaker than the real. The symbolic shaped the real. In the right hands, it was a weapon. Some of the other High Lords grasped the principle. Mesring certainly did. But his view was blinkered. He couldn’t see beyond the icons. He could only understand symbols that derived their potency through connection to the God-Emperor.

  Then there was Lansung. A hopeless case. He could see the symbolic value in military action. He couldn’t imagine the reverse.

  ‘Gazing upon your good work?’ the Lord High Admiral asked.

  Tull turned away from the window. She nodded at Georg Steinert, her majordomo. He withdrew.

  ‘I was,’ she said to Lansung.

  ‘Proud of yourself, aren’t you.’

  ‘Proud of us all. This is a great moment.’

  He snorted. ‘Well, you can enjoy it without me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I won’t have any part of the deployment.’

  ‘The Autocephalax Eternal…’

  ‘It will remain on station.’

  ‘You realise what that will look like.’ She was pleased that she answered without pause, as if his decision made no difference. Perhaps it didn’t.

  ‘Yes.’ The exhaustion in that single syllable was immense. At some point, Lansung appeared to have crossed the line between humiliation and apathy.

  ‘You’re a coward,’ Tull said, making sure Lansung understood what was heading his way.

  ‘I’m not here to posture,’ he said.

  ‘I know you’re not. I’m telling you simple truths. If you back out of the Proletarian Crusade, I’ll destroy you.’

  ‘Threats now.’

  ‘Just the truth. Like I said.’

  Lansung shrugged. ‘Threats,’ he repeated. ‘Empty ones.’

  ‘Is that a dare?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Just the truth, since that’s what we’re speaking. You won’t destroy me. The orks will take care of that when they arrive. I’ll outlive your fleet of fools, though. I notice that you’re not accompanying them.’

  ‘I’m not a military commander.’

  ‘No. You most certainly are not.’

  She smiled. ‘I sense there is a point you’re making, Admiral.’

  He gave her a hard, tired stare. ‘I’ve already made it.’ He turned to go.

  ‘You know I will destroy you,’ she said.

  He stopped. ‘I know you can. But why? Out of spite?’

  ‘You know me better than that.’

  ‘I thought I did.’

  ‘You are sabotaging something too important.’

  ‘Bold words.’

  ‘The truth.’

  He walked to the door. ‘As you say. But important to Terra or to you?’

  ‘Get out.’

  She went back to the window. She heard Steinert show Lansung out. She looked towards the Fields of Winged Victory and took a breath. Lansung would have been pleased to see that it was unsteady.

  He would be wrong to think he had rattled her. She had been bracing to face hard questions when he arrived. No, she wasn’t a military commander. She was aware of that. Yet this was a campaign that she had mounted, and that she was directing. She had Verreault and Zeck on board, but she had to be cautious about using them as resources. She had arranged to have the Astra Militarum regiments spread out through the Armada as a means to provide some structure to the civilian troops. But the move also diluted Verreault’s leverage. He, Zeck, Mesring, Ekharth – all of the allies in the Crusade had some pull, but only she had control of the Armada itself. The captains answered to her, so she had final say on disposition and launch.

  And tactics.

  The plan of attack was not a sophisticated one. Then again, if it was, it couldn’t be carried out. The ships were crewed by merchants. There were able pilots aboard many, pilots who had brought their ships through threats as lethal as any faced by the Imperial Navy. Their skills, though, were individual. They had no experience fighting in formation. They fled conflict. They didn’t seek it out.

  She asked herself the question she had been avoiding since first announcing the Proletarian Crusade. Was she making a mistake? She made herself think through the consequences. She ran through possible balance sheets, measuring investment against risk, potential gain against possible loss.

  She was oddly reassured.

  If the Crusade failed, political damage would be the least of her problems. Retribution would be far from anyone else’s mind. Defeat would mean the loss of everything. Success, however, would place her in an unchallengeable position. That was the equation, then: victory of the Armada meant her personal victory, while defeat meant no one else would be the victor. There was no question. This was the smart move.

  It was also so much more than that. She believed in what she was doing.

  The crowd in the Fields was the biggest yet seen. The people there now were not volunteers. The last of those had embarked hours ago. Gathered now were celebrants, well-wishers, families. The excited, the curious, the hopeful. The desperate. They were all the desperate.

  Tull had given them hope. She had given all of Terra hope. That was a singular achievement. She was proud of it. This was Terra’s greatest crisis since the Siege, the worst moment in the living memory of every human being on the planet. The plague of despair had been upon them, Zeck’s Adeptus Arbites had been unable to end the panic, and she, with a single speech, had turned the tide. She had given the billions determination, direction, purpose. An endeavour of legend had sprung into being at her urging, and despite the doubts of Vangorich and Lansung, it was not a folly. Lack of action would have been a folly. And what other options were there? The cry for help had gone out, but there were no elements of the Navy or the Adeptus Astartes that could reach Terra in time.

  How do you know? That was the question she could not answer. It kept prying open her doubts. She closed them again with reason. Whatever cause the orks had for waiting, they would not wait until help had arrived. Tull thought it likely that the orks believed they had already won, and had the leisure of invading when it best suited them.

  She walked across the chamber to the door. It was time to head to the Great Chamber. Time for another speech. Time to show the orks that they were wrong.

  Time to launch.

  ‘We’re going in on that?’ Kord asked.

  Their shuttle was drawing up to the Militant Fire’s landing bay.

  ‘What did you expect?’ said Haas. ‘A grand cruiser?’

  ‘Of course not. But this… It’s so small.’

  He was right.

  ‘I can see even smaller,’ she pointed out.

  ‘That makes me feel a lot better.’ He craned his head to look up through the viewing block next to his bench. He squirmed in the grav-harness. ‘I was hoping for maybe one of the mass conveyors.’ He pointed to something Haas couldn’t see from her angle. ‘They’ll be carrying thousands.’

  ‘No room for everyone on them. They’re mainly reserved for Imperial Guard companies, from what I heard.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said, irritable. ‘I was just saying what I’d hoped. Those ships are strong. They can take some hits. This will get swatted in the first seconds of the attack. We’re cannon fodder.’

  ‘T
hat’s a revelation to you?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t look at her, watching as the shuttle entered the Fire’s bay.

  Haas said, ‘What did you think was going to happen when we joined this endeavour?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘Look at me,’ she said.

  He did. His jaw was set. There was doubt in his eyes.

  ‘I didn’t want to join the Crusade,’ she said. ‘I thought our duty was to the maintenance of the law, and nothing else.’

  ‘I’m sorry–’ he began.

  She held up a hand. ‘Let me finish. You were right. I was wrong. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. If we win, we preserve Terra and the law. If we lose, both are gone. I’m proud to be here, Ottmar. You should be too. I don’t have any illusions about what’s going to happen, though. Nor should you. Yes, we’re cannon fodder. Of course we are. So is every single member of the Crusade. No exceptions.’ The shuttle came to a halt with the bang of landing struts on the deck. The engines cut out. Haas undid her harness and leaned forward. ‘That’s why this might work,’ she said. ‘No one element of the Armada is more important than another. It doesn’t matter who gets through, as long as enough of us do.’ She stood up. ‘There’s a reason cannon fodder is used. It works.’

  Kord remained seated. The shuttle’s side door opened. Hydraulics hissed as its boarding ramp lowered to the deck. The squad of Jupiter Storm disembarked first. The other thirty passengers followed. Other than Haas and Kord, they were all civilians. Haas wanted to be out in front of them, but Kord was unmoving. ‘Ottmar?’ she said.

  ‘So glorious deaths await us,’ Kord said. He was hoarse. His voice was thin.

  She clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Important ones, anyway. Let’s go.’

  His face looked as it did when the ork moon had become visible over the Fields of Winged Victory. Haas had never had cause to question Kord’s courage or his dedication to duty. She was dismayed that he was forcing her to do so now. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. Death had been no stranger in their years of enforcing the Emperor’s law.

  His lips moved. His whisper was too faint.