If the Imperial Fists were successful in gaining control of the communication systems, they would gain the ability to reroute some of the communication capacity of the system’s vox-network for their own use, and would have an instantaneous communication array that blanketed the entire planet. But without the communication system, that wasn’t a possibility.
What was possible, though, was that Captain Taelos and his Scouts could take advantage of the network architecture itself, essentially “stealing” part of the efficiency of the broadcast array for their own purposes without ever gaining access to the central controls themselves.
Which was why Scouts du Queste and Rhomec were now shimmying around in the arteries of a web of tiny passages that were threaded throughout the bulk of the Bastion a short distance from the outer surface of the mountain.
The architects of the Bastion had known that an external antenna on the outer skin of the mountain would be vulnerable to attack by ground or aerial elements, and the cost in power-consumption of a force-field to shield such an antenna made protecting it from such an attack unfeasible. Which is how they hit upon the notion of burying the antenna.
The signal loss due to scatter through the flint and shale on the surface would mean that any antennae buried beneath the surface would be rendered all but unusable. But the signal loss would not be complete, and some percentage of the signal would still get through. The architects of the Bastion had reasoned that they could work within this slim margin of throughput, if they made the “antenna” sufficiently large. And thus the Bastion’s broadcast array.
The skein of metal and machinery was threaded through nearly the entire surface of the mountain, only a few metres beneath the outer skin. And though the resulting signal strength was only a mere fraction of what an antenna of that size could effect in the open air, the broadcast array was more than powerful enough to reach the overlapping network of relay links which dotted the western hemisphere and rebroadcast the data on to the rest of the planet’s surface.
As Veteran-Sergeant Hilts had explained it to Jean-Robur and Rhomec, Captain Taelos’ plan was a simple one. The Imperial Fists could attach their own vox-communication equipment directly to the structure of the immense broadcasting array buried within the skin of the mountain. That way, even if they were unable to utilise the Bastion’s communication systems, they could nevertheless amplify the broadcasts of their own vox-caster through the very same array.
It was nearing evening, and Jean-Robur had been squirrelling his way through the access conduits of the broadcast array since late afternoon. Hours spent squirming through the narrow tunnels to reach the various points where the Bastion’s technicians had formerly been able to access the structure of the broadcast array directly. In a pack he dragged behind him through the tunnel, Jean-Robur had hauled a collection of small repeater units, keyed to pick up vox signals of the vox-caster Veteran-Sergeant Hilts was setting up near the mouth of the tunnels far below. The repeaters would then transmit the signals to the broadcast array, which would then, in theory at least, carry the signals out across Vernalis. They would not be able to make use of the relay network used by the automated defence system, since the Imperial Fists’ signals would lack the proper prefix codes, but it was believed they would still be able to blanket most of the western hemisphere with their signal. And if the repeater units functioned as they were intended, and also picked up signals received by the broadcast array and transmitted them back down the tunnels to Hilts’ vox-caster, it was possible that they would be able to receive return communications from the Thunderhawks, as well.
There was only one more repeater unit left in Jean-Robur’s pack. Once it was in place, he would signal readiness down to Veteran-Sergeant Hilts.
And then they would see what they could hear.
Down below, a few dozen paces from the control room, Veteran-Sergeant Hilts stood before the jury-rigged vox-caster which had been positioned beneath the largest branch of the access tunnels, listening to the communications device hum to life. Scouts du Queste and Rhomec had signalled that all of the available repeater units were in place on the broadcast array, and the vox-caster was now in the process of initialising connection with each of them. In another moment, they would know if the effort had been successful, and the boosted amplification allowed the vox-caster to punch through the interference of Vernalis’ mineral-rich atmosphere.
Scout Rhomec slid out of the tunnel and thudded to the ground a short distance behind Hilts, landing squarely on his massive boots and managing to maintain his balance perfectly. As Rhomec came to stand at the veteran-sergeant’s side, Scout du Queste followed, perhaps not as controlled in his landing as his squadmate, forced to pinwheel his arms briefly on either side to maintain equilibrium.
“Good work, Scouts,” Veteran-Sergeant Hilts said without turning around, his attention on the vox-caster’s controls. It had now established contact with all of the repeater units, and indicated readiness to begin transmission. “Now to see if the captain’s theory can be put into practice.”
Hilts toggled the vox-caster’s controls, initiating a full-band broadcast encrypted to the Imperial Fists Chapter’s standard battlefield keys. And though the pickup was sensitive enough to detect a whisper from across the room, Hilts found himself leaning forwards slightly, speaking directly into the pickup’s grill.
“Operational HQ to Thunderhawks Ferrum and Pugnus, Operational HQ to Thunderhawks Ferrum and Pugnus, this is Veteran-Sergeant Hilts transmitting from the Bastion. Affirmative?”
Static hissed from the vox-caster’s speakers.
Hilts straightened up somewhat, thoughtful. “Perhaps it was too much to expect success on the first try. We should test on short range and then calibrate, see if that affects the results.” Before jury-rigging the connection to the broadcast array, vox-comms between the interior of the Bastion and the surface immediately surrounding it had been problematic, the signal scattered by the dense material of the mountain itself. With the boosted amplification, communication from the control room to the mountain’s exterior should have been greatly improved. It remained to be seen if it was. Hilts twisted a dial, and spoke. “Team leaders of Squad Pardus, this is Veteran-Sergeant Hilts transmitting. Sound off by vox.”
Hilts glanced over at Scout du Queste, and could see the neophyte resisting the temptation to reply by vox in jest. Had it been Rhomec in charge of the two-man team, Hilts was reasonably certain that the ex-pitfighter would have sounded off, smiling that scarred-cheek grin all the while, but his visits to the pain-glove had curbed du Queste’s sense of humour somewhat more successfully.
“Scout s’Tonan,” came the first reply over the vox-caster, the signal strong and clear and only slightly ringed by static, “team is present and accounted for.”
Hilts nodded in satisfaction, hands hovering over the controls.
“Scout Zatori,” came the next reply. “Sergeant, I’ve been unable to raise you by vox and am en route to deliver a report. There is something you should…”
“…repeat… Vulpes… Bastion… Affirmative?”
Hilts tensed in anticipation, hearing the new voice cutting across Zatori’s transmission.
“Scout Zatori, hold silent until signal,” Hilts quickly replied, then boosted the vox-caster’s gain. “Hilts to last unit to transmit, please repeat.”
There was a high-pitched whine and a brief crackle of static, and then the voice came through again, echoing slightly as though speaking from the other end of a long gallery. “Karn of Squad Vulpes responding, Bastion. Thunderhawk Pugnus is grounded, and we…” The voice of Veteran-Sergeant Karn paused for a moment, and in the background could be heard the sound of an explosion, perhaps the detonation of a frag grenade. “We are engaging an unknown number of daemons a thousand kilometres…” Another pause as a chatter of bolter-fire sounded, and then Hilts could hear the faint strains of something that sounded almost like an ethereal chorus of female voices, “…a thousand kilometres north-nor
th-west from your position. Over.”
“Heeded, Vulpes,” Hilts said, his jaw set and his mouth pulled into a tight line. “Do you require assistance?” he asked, though he knew there was little chance that any of Squad Pardus could reach them in anything under a few days, and they had still not heard any word from Veteran-Sergeant Derex of Squad Ursus.
The only sound from the vox-caster’s speakers was the chatter of bolter-fire, accompanied by the descant of the unearthly singing, punctuated occasionally by the coughing sound of a grenade launcher firing. Then there was another high-pitched squeal of feedback, and a momentary hiss of static.
“Vulpes, do you require assistance?” Hilts repeated as the hiss of static faded.
“Negative,” Veteran-Sergeant Karn replied, his voice sounding strained. “We are… holding position… and…” The static surged louder, like the sound of a verging tide, and then subsided for a moment, “…continue to the Bastion when able…” The static surged louder once more, drowning out Karn’s words entirely.
Then another high-pitched squeal rang from the speakers, and after that was only static.
“Dorn be with them…” Hilts straightened from the vox-caster. He was thoughtful for a brief instant, considering what he had heard, when his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy footfalls fast approaching up the corridor.
He turned to see Scout Zatori slewing around the corner towards them.
As Zatori came to a halt before the veteran-sergeant and arranged himself into something that closely approximated standing at attention, Hilts waved him at ease. “Report, Scout Zatori,” Hilts said with some urgency.
“Your pardon, sergeant, but I continued on after you ordered silence—”
“Report!” Hilts interrupted. He knew that if it was too important a matter for Zatori to simply wait for the opportunity to vox, there was nothing to be gained from standing on protocol.
Zatori drew a heavy breath, and nodded. “There is something outside I think you should see.”
* * *
The sun had set, and a thick blanket of darkness covered the western wastes of Vernalis. But with magnoculars set to view far into the infrared end of the spectrum, Captain Taelos was able to see clearly the column of dust approaching the mountain Bastion from the south-east.
“There’s no doubt about it,” Taelos said, lowering the magnoculars and turning to Veteran-Sergeant Hilts and the Scouts gathered with him. “There’s a mixed force of enemy troops approaching, several thousand of them.”
The captain handed the magnoculars back to Veteran-Sergeant Hilts, who trained them unerringly on the points in the darkness he’d scanned a few moments before. “I make at least four Traitor Marines among their number, possibly more.”
Taelos nodded. “Agreed. Emperor’s Children.”
The figures he had seen through the magnoculars had once been Space Marines, Taelos knew, though it was difficult now to see the resemblance, whether with their armour or with the bodies within. Emblazoned somewhere on each of the suits of armour was a ring surmounted by a cross topped with a crescent—the symbol of the Pleasure Lord, Slaanesh. Taken together with the colouration and barbaric decoration displayed by the figures, the dedication to Slaanesh indicated that these were renegades of the Emperor’s Children Legion. And the sonic weaponry they carried meant they were Noise Marines, slaves of Slaanesh who hungered for any and all manner of visceral sensation.
“The rest appear to be of the same Traitor Guard we encountered en route to the Bastion,” Taelos continued, “though these Roaring Blades appear considerably better armed.”
Hilts lowered the magnoculars, for a moment peering with his naked eye out into the gloom, though even the enhanced vision of an Astartes was not equal to the task of seeing so great a distance in such little light. He turned to Scout Zatori, who had been the one to fetch the magnoculars after bringing Hilts from the control room. “Zatori, when do you estimate that they will reach our position, assuming they do not stop in the night?”
Zatori scanned the horizon with the magnoculars for a moment, and then briefly considered his answer. “I estimate they will reach the Bastion by dawn, Sergeant Hilts.”
“I agree,” Captain Taelos said, still peering out into the night himself. Taelos turned to regard Hilts and the others. “It will be dawn.”
The Scouts exchanged glances, their expressions commingling excitement and anticipation over the prospect of the coming battle.
Taelos put his hand on the handle of the sword hanging at his side, and cast his glance over the Scouts of Squad Pardus and their commanding officer. “As most of you will know, we have received word that Squad Vulpes has engaged the enemy to the north, reporting an encounter with a band of daemons. And that we have as yet not been able to re-establish contact with Squad Ursus. Which means, unless the situation changes drastically in the coming hours, that we ten will be all that stands between the refugees sheltered within the Bastion and the approaching army of Chaos.”
Taelos paused, gesturing towards the open hatch, indicating the chambers and corridors beyond.
“But it will not be merely for the lives of civilians that we will fight,” the captain continued. “Housed within this mountain are the controls of the automated planetary defences, which are all that stands between Vernalis and a full-scale orbital invasion and assault. It is likely that the only thing that prevented the enemy from overrunning the planet in their previous attempt were those self-same defence systems. Why the enemy has waited until now to launch a follow-up attack I cannot say, but what I can say with confidence is that if the enemy should somehow manage to gain control of the automated planetary defences or, failing that, should simply destroy the system from within, there will be nothing to prevent the Ruinous Powers from invading en masse and taking the planet by force. Nothing, that is, except for however many Imperial Fists remain on the planet’s surface.”
Taelos raised his hand in a fist, and noted with satisfaction that each of the others balled their own hands into fists at their sides, defiantly.
“But it will not come to that,” Taelos said proudly, “for we will not allow the enemy to gain control of the Bastion! We will stand fast and defend all approaches, and not give a single centimetre to the enemy that they do not purchase with their own unnumbered dead. When dawn breaks, we will stand ready to defend the Bastion and all who shelter within. Which means we’ve no time to lose!”
Scout Taloc s’Tonan stood beneath the starry skies of Vernalis, lit starkly from below by the white-hot glow of the lascutter in his hands.
“Taloc!” shouted Scout Jedrek from the other side of the pipeline, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of Scout Fulgencio’s melta gun firing only a few paces away. “How much longer until you’ve cut through?”
Taloc thumbed off the lascutter and bent to inspect his handiwork.
“A few more minutes, perhaps,” he called back over his comm-bead. “Continue working on your end, and we’ll see where we stand when I finish with this first pipe.”
“As you say,” Jedrek answered, and went back to cutting.
It was the middle of the Vernalian night, with hours to go before dawn—before dawn and the anticipated arrival of the enemy army. Veteran-Sergeant Hilts and Captain Taelos had been over the data gathered the day before by the three teams of Scouts, and in the final hours remaining before the expected attack the Scouts were being put to work shoring up the Bastion’s defences, entrenching in those locations which were most defensible, and barricading those areas which were considered weak points in the mountain’s defence.
The blockhouse on the mountain’s north face had been deemed by Taloc’s superiors to be a weak point, and he and the team that had previously surveyed it, and who were considered the most familiar with the location of all of Squad Pardus, had been dispatched to begin work on fortifying and barricading the blockhouse, in order that it would be better equipped to resist an enemy assault.
Which w
as how Taloc, Fulgencio and Jedrek had come to be standing out in the frigid night air, cutting and scorching their way through pipeline and panelling, and melting solid rock to molten slag.
“Fulgencio, watch your angle of incident,” Jedrek shouted. “That last spray almost hit me.”
Scout Fulgencio waved from his position a few dozen paces off and slightly higher on the mountain’s slope, and went back to heating up the flint and shale of the upper slope with prolonged blasts from his melta gun. Taloc was sure that Fulgencio knew better than to waste time in bickering with his squadmate, given the time constraints they operated under.
The task laid before Scout s’Tonan and his team was simple. Taelos and Hilts had determined that the hatches and access panels built into the blockhouse were too vulnerable to enemy attack. A Roaring Blade with a lascutter and unobstructed access could make short work of one of the hatches, and once within the blockhouse could gain entry into the Bastion itself in a relatively short amount of time. And the three side-by-side pipes of the pipeline themselves were likewise a vulnerable spot, as they were wide enough in diameter for even a Noise Marine in full armour to traverse; if the enemy were to somehow breach the pipes further out in the grey desert unnoticed, they could march unseen right into the heart of the Bastion.
The solution hit upon by Taelos and Hilts would no doubt be unpopular with the self-appointed leaders of the refugees, or would be at least assuming they all survived the coming encounter. But once it had been determined that the pipeline was not essential to the continued functioning of the Bastion itself, it had been deemed expendable. Once the forces of Chaos were scoured from the face of Vernalis and the petrochem pumping facilities were once more in full operation—and some mechanism was put in place to get the refined petrochem off the planet, which would not be easy without the orbital elevators in place—then the Vernalians could repair the damage the Imperial Fists were about to inflict on the pipeline. But in the meantime, it was targeted for destruction.
[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn Page 22
