by Henry Zou
‘Yes, I definitely hear horses,’ the Guardsman agreed. He stood up, craning his head as if he could still see.
Tanks in the reverent brown of the Canticans were cutting across the enemy flank. Between their thickly armoured bulks, mounted CantiCol Guardsmen fired upright from the stirrups of charging horses. Their angle of approach allowed them to spear at the softer flank of the Ironclad armour. Detonations erupted everywhere. Turrets began smoking.
‘It’s our cavalry,’ muttered the Guardsman.
The squadrons powering across the rubble were mostly ancient, obsolete tanks. Siegfried siege-tanks, Centaurs, several Leman Russes. The Canticans did not possess many armoured vehicles at the beginning of the war and they did not now. What cavalry, motorised or organic, they had, they assembled it into a motley armoured regiment. Roth saw before him now – the Cantican First Mech-Cavalry Regiment.
Ancient engines of war, their plates held together with bolts and reverence rumbled alongside the thunderous hooves of Lancer cavalry. Yet as they blazed through the enemy attack, clashing steel on steel, it was the most beautiful sight Roth had ever seen.
‘Be advised, command element is dead. Be advised, command element is dead. Over.’
The same message was relayed a thousand times over the Imperial vox-net. The channels buzzed with the frantic chatter of news. Lord General Faisal was dead.
Doctrine should have warranted a restriction of information. No one, especially not demoralised rank-and-file, should have learnt of their general’s death. Yet a corporal who had witnessed the event had released the word and now it spread like an incendiary bomb.
Corporal Bacinda had been the closest one when it happened. He was also the vox-operator of Echo Company of the 46th. The lord general had been touring the lines, resplendent on his horse and his traditional dress, and standing high in the stirrup on his painted shoes.
The troops had been dug in behind a breastwork of rubble and
furniture, their rifles pointed towards the smoking western front. The morning’s engagement had been predictably brutal and Bacinda’s platoon had been cycled back to the secondary lines in order to rest briefly. The men had been eating what food they could forage and slumping asleep while leaning on rifles. Then Faisal had come and they had all staggered to attention. Bacinda remembered seeing the throbbing glow of explosives in the horizon and the lord general ride against it, administering words and stern, knowing looks to his men. It almost made Bacinda forget his hunger as he watched.
No one saw it coming. The artillery shell landed thirty metres away, exploding in a mushroom of dust.
Faisal was killed by a small piece of shrapnel that entered his ear. The shrapnel exited the forehead and Bacinda remembered looking up at the general’s face. It was serene. Faisal never knew what killed him. Perhaps he never knew he had died.
The general’s blood, hot and arterial, spurted into Bacinda’s face. It fell into the mess tin he was cradling in his hands. His meal of boiled grains was ruined. It came as a great surprise to him that the sudden shower of blood into his meal upset the corporal so much more. He tried to cover the tin with his hands. It had been his first meal in three days. Ludicrously, Bacinda even considered whether the meal was still edible.
Faisal’s horse panicked, carrying the general’s body away down the breastwork. In a final show of the macabre, the general’s body stayed upright in its saddle. The platoon line didn’t react. They didn’t know how. Even old Sergeant Habuel looked shockingly still. Of all Echo Company, it was Bacinda who put down his tin of bloodied grains with weary resignation. He sighed, lamenting the loss of his rations, then picked up the handset of his vox-caster.
The towers of Angkhora. Or so Asingh-nu told Silverstein.
The burial-centre of Aridun, placed at the axial centre of the Fortress Chain. From their vantage point on the scorched tin of a production mill roof, they could see the skyline of Angkhora. It was hazed by a shimmering screen of heat – heat emanating from the embers and hot, molten rubble of shattered cities.
Although the rural labourer had never been there, he had heard stories of the Fortress Chain from a wealthy cousin. The man had coveted a finely woven rug that depicted the lotus-bud towers where the ancestors of Aridun rested forever. It had made Asingh-nu very jealous.
‘The enemy have been pressing towards that central stronghold ever since the first shot. Why?’ Silverstein asked as his bioptics clicked and whirred, capturing still images for photo-analysis.
‘A man of my education is not meant to know these things. But anyone can tell you it’s bad luck. Places where the dead go are not places for the living,’ Asingh-nu said, tightening the grip on his autogun.
‘Do you hunt, Asingh-nu?’ Silverstein said, changing the subject smoothly. He turned to regard the guerrilla with his sutured yellow eyes.
‘I was a rural. Of course we did. My sons and I did often. At night we’d walk through our lagoon paddies with a good blunderbuss and track swamp pigs. They were small, but very fat and very delicious with good vinegar.’
‘Did you ever lure them, bait them to ensure the fattest, largest bull-swine would appear for the show?’
‘Small clumps of stale grain would do the trick. The staler, the yeastier, the better. Sometimes we’d lure three or four of them together at once, fighting over the bait.’
‘Well, look at it this way, Asingh-nu. Angkhora is the bait for the Archenemy. It’s something they want. That usually means the big game is there, the bull-swine, if you will, of the den.’
‘You mean their leader? I’m rural, not stupid,’ Asingh-nu shrugged.
Silverstein laughed. ‘Of course. But we can really hurt them there. Maybe tag ourselves a few Chaos generals. Would that not be grand?’
Asingh-nu surreptitiously made the sign of the aquila at Silverstein’s mention of Chaos. He tapped the mapwood stock of his Garlan auto for good measure.
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll find the one who killed my sons.’
The fighting was so close that if Madeline was at certain points of amplification in the cavity tunnel, she swore she could hear the individual gunshots from the city above.
‘Captain Silat, have your men prepare the thermal charges. If we – if I – am unable to decipher the text on this entrance seal–’
The captain snapped his heels in salute. ‘Already executed, ma’am. I’ve posted a section of my men around the excavation perimeter. We’ll be ready to do it if the Archenemy comes.’
‘Thank you, captain, your aid has been invaluable.’
Satisfied, Madeline turned back to trawling the disc-seal with her jeweller’s lens. It was a monumental effort as the inscriptions were minuscule and her lens, which fitted over one eye, was no larger than the circle formed by her thumb and forefinger. She had not slept or eaten since the Last War had begun. Climbing the scaffolding to study the disc was all she had done.
The disc itself, once unearthed, was exactly seventy seven point seven metres in diameter, and geometrically perfect. The surveyance laser, when it measured the size of the disc, had displayed a mathematical constant. What was more alarming was that the disc was formed entirely out of one solid medallion of bone. In her years of archeotech knowledge, Madeline knew when to recognise bone when she saw it. A well-aged bone was neither dense nor brittle. Soaking up the terroir of its surrounding earth, bone tended to become a waxy, matured ivory that deepened in colour with age. The colour of this bone was tarred brown. She couldn’t fathom what kind of creature had bones of such gargantuan width.
‘One more thing, ma’am.’
Madeline turned reluctantly from her work and looked down the scaffolding to see Captain Silat standing to attention below.
Madeline rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘Yes, captain?’ She said wearily.
‘My company. We’ve been working on this excavation for d
ays and now – well now I’ve sent most of them upside to defend it. They’ll probably die doing so. What I’m trying to say is, ma’am, could you tell us what this is? My boys want to know what they’re dying for.’
‘Of course, captain,’ Madeline said softly. She began to edge her way down the scaffolding.
‘What the inscriptions say, and there are many, is that the Old King sleeps within. He will only be awakened at the proper alignment of the ancient planetary schematics and their relation to the stars. It’s all very ritualistic. They worshipped the stars here, before Him on Earth, these people worshipped stars like the very old tribes of Terra.’
‘Are the stars aligned?’
Madeline bit her lip. She was not sure how much intelligence she should share with a field officer. As she debated with herself, she heard the clatter of bombs through the thick stone overhead. It sounded like a truck had dumped a cargo of anvils onto rockcrete. She concluded that they would not have long anyway. The captain and his men had a right to know.
‘Yes. They are. It’s what the Archenemy have been planning since the beginning of their invasion. They were marking out the lines of ritual on each conquered planet and waiting for the proper orbits. They were fighting this war on a schedule.’
Silat was stunned. His face was evidently trying to understand. ‘They knew?’
Madeline nodded.
‘So, if we break the seal, will we wake him – it?’ the captain asked.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to decipher. Much of this is written in an old Terran language I have not been properly schooled in. It seems to be recurring that the Old King is captured within some sort of containment vessel beyond this disc. If my translations are accurate, some kind of a “bell” within this tomb.’
‘So we should set demo charges to it then?’
‘Gosh no!’ Madeline said. ‘We do not know what is on the other side. We could damage, or worse, somehow wake the Old King. No, no demo!’
‘Well what then, ma’am?’
‘Give me one or two hours, there is some more text I would like to examine before we attempt to open this seal.’
‘What should I prepare then?’
‘Prepare a drill. An orthodontic bone drill would be perfect,’ Madeline said.
‘We’re engineers. We have a powered drill-tractor,’ the captain offered.
‘That’ll do, captain. And also, if you could spare at least twenty of your best men. I want them to be here when this disc is breached. Just to be sure…’
The captain saluted with a renewed sense of purpose. ‘Of course, ma’am. I’ll bring forty.’
Chapter Thirty
The final offensive was mustered at the crematorium district. It was the only sizeable tract of land on which Imperial forces could consolidate without the presence of heavy enemy fire and the threat of repeated ground assault. The intense heat and clamour of war raged in the surrounding districts, but this area was still and quiet.
It was a square plaza, dotted with funereal kilns, arrayed in a pattern that mathematically matched the major constellations overhead. Most of the kilns had been rendered to dust by shelling, and those which had been unscathed were crushed by the heavy tracks of the assembled vehicles.
The assault of the First Mech-Cav had broken the main spear of the enemy advance not ninety minutes past, allowing the infantry battalions enough respite to regroup. Now, as the street-to-street fighting renewed, Cantica’s only armoured division ranked together for one final assault. It would be all they’d have left.
The soldiers of the First Mech-Cav sat on the hulls of their tanks, the Lancers nursed their steeds. All stood to attention as Inquisitor Obodiah Roth clambered atop the turret of a Siegfried siege-tank. Standing up there, Roth looked as hardened and tattered as any of those Canticans before him. The inquisitor, they all knew, had bled and fought hard to save their home. He had given them the chance to use all of their training to inflict as much punishment on the Archenemy as possible. As far as the Guardsmen were concerned, the inquisitor was one of theirs now.
Roth still wore his fighting-plate and his black scale tabard. The plate was battered, scorched and rashed with pock-marks, and the obsidian was broken-toothed. Over that, he wore the ceremonial longcoat of a Cantican officer. Intelligence staff had instructed him to wear it unbuttoned, so it streamed in the wind like a ragged cape of brown felt. His right hand was loosely viced under the segments of his Tang War power fist and the Sunfury MKIII in a shoulder rig under his coat. To everyone else, he appeared unarmed, utterly in command of himself. It was a time when these men needed the morale, and the intelligence staff had executed their job perfectly.
Roth pulled his long, lupine frame up to full height, standing atop the turret. The suns glinted off his wiry shoulders and made his armour gleam silver. He surveyed the mustered regiment before him. All of the machine-powered war engines that the CantiCol ever had at their disposal, even before the Medina Campaign, had been assigned to the 1st Mech-Cavalry Regiment. The tanks were exceedingly rare and the months of fighting had drained them to their limits. Every tank showed the scars of on-the-run repairs. In all, there were over six hundred tanks – a majority of Leman Russes, a solid lance of Siegfrieds, a scattering of ageing Salamanders, Kurtis tanks and even Centaurs. Escorting them were two battalions of mounted Lancers. Roth knew not all of those were true Lancers; some were Guardsmen who had adopted a spare horse in the heat of battle. But they would suffice, thought Roth. If the last several days of fighting were anything to go by, Roth was sure they would not fail him.
In view of the assembled Guardsmen, an officer of the Aegina Prestige hoisted himself onto the frontal hull of the Siegfried. He snapped up his face visor of diamond polyfibre, in the way of an Aegina salute.
‘Major Sebastion Glass of the Seventh Muster, Aegina Prestige, sir.’
‘Inquisitor Roth of the Ordo Hereticus.’ Roth shook the major’s hand and bowed low.
Major Glass, like others of the Prestige, was clad in the bulky accoutrement of urban combat. Grey fatigues, flame retardant boots, thigh holsters, dump pouches, chest harnesses, all made the standard-issue CantiCol canvas satchel look positively spartan. Over this, he wore an outer tactical vest of hand-sewn diamond inserts, complete with throat and groin plates. The vest of diamond sheets had a frosty sheen that showed a subtle contempt for enemy fire.
‘Inquisitor Roth. With the fatal wounding of Lord General Faisal, command is granted to you on request of Inquisitorial authority. The Aegina accepts this, and I pledge all the men and arms I have remaining under your command structure.’
Roth bowed formally. ‘Thank you, major. How many men do you have?’
‘Only two platoons, sir.’
The major gestured to four slate-grey Chimeras. The Aegina Guardsmen were making final weapons checks in two neat rows. Even their standard-issue lasguns were complicated pieces with additional scopes, bipods, folding stocks and even underslung grenade launchers. Others were cleaning and greasing mortars and lascannons. The Aegina were motorised heavy infantry who worked in organic fire-teams. Their platoon-level support weapons and their combination of precision ordnance and lascannon had been invaluable during the last three days of urban fighting. Despite their techno-finery, Roth knew they were good soldiers who had suffered badly. Two full battalions of them had made landfall on Aridun, just four days past.
‘You must have suffered heavy casualties in this war, major. The Emperor appreciates the sacrifice the mothers and wives of Aegina have made.’
Major Glass nodded and snapped the clear visor down. As he descended from the tank, Roth turned to address his men.
‘Gentlemen. I am not of worth to address you for this coming battle. You have all been soldiers far longer than I ever will. There is nothing I can tell you that you will not already know. Rather, I will tell you intelligence has pin-pointed the l
ocation of the Chaos commander, by the preceding movement of his elite retinue. It is a chance to clash our iron against theirs. That is all. Go to your vehicles, gentlemen, and grace be with you.’
Roth hopped down into the turret of the Siegfried as the crew of 1st Mech-Cav scrambled to their stations. The plaza flooded with the harsh, throaty burble of gunning engines. The air was cut by the sweetly toxic stink of petrol. As one, the entire fleet of Cantican armour rolled out to the fighting in a three-pronged column.
The advance rumbled through the streets at full power, hurtling over rubble and pounding through walls. Their tracks churned through the ruins of mausoleums, throwing up a cloying storm of corpse dust and limestone. The Siegfrieds – a hybrid armoured bulldozer and light tank – forged a path at the front of the column, their dozer blades ploughing through the rubble.
In some sectors they encountered unorganised resistance, but speed and combined firepower pushed the Ironclad infantry on the back foot. Their battle cannons, pintle-mounted weapons and auxiliary support guns threw out a wide, branching chain of fire before them. Their advance could be tracked by the streams of tracer, las and shell smoke that latticed the air as the column weaved through the old city.
‘Command, this is call-sign Starlight. Repeat Big Game’s location. Over,’ Roth shouted into the radio speaker over the creaking and thrumming in the tank’s confines. ‘Big Game’ was the code for the Chaos commander, a code Roth was sure that Silverstein would have used had he been with him.
‘Starlight, this is command. Our trackers show you are on course, keep moving north, about half a kilometre out. Expect thickening resistance as you near designated zone,’ crackled the anonymous intelligence officer over the vox-net.
Roth thought he heard gunfire in the background of the vox, but he could not be sure over the roar of his tank. ‘Loud and clear. Can you give us a vox warning as we move within one city block of Big Game? Over,’ Roth shouted with one hand to his ear.
