by Thorpe, Gav
Further introspection was curtailed by a wave of surveyor alerts announcing the arrival of considerable traitor aerial assets. Deployed from deeper within the mountains, the flotilla comprised several high-altitude bomber aerostats and a large number of ground attack craft. Visual trackers locked on to the rising whale-like bombers while smaller, dart-shaped aircraft powered nearer, dangerously close to the ground to avoid surveyor detection until the last moment. Sonic warnings alerted the regular crew of the Titan while the noosphere trilled to the alert of missile locks.
Gevren’s presence loomed large within the noosphere and the Imperator’s guns barked their retort. The defence laser – an armament capable of striking orbital starships – spat forth a ruby beam that instantaneously obliterated a strategic bomber. The blast left nothing but energy residue scorched across the sensor panels.
Smaller gun turrets spat their fury at the incoming attack wings, filling the sky with shrapnel bursts and flickering lasbeams. The flare of rockets streamed in return, fanning out from the swooping attack craft. A few targeted the Casus Belli, their volleys exploding ineffectually against the massed banks of void shields. The majority were aimed at other engines of the battle group. The flare of overloading void shields surrounded the Woundwalker, a Warhound that had been circling the left flank, and the central Warlord Indomitable Guardian, while long-range lascannon shots from other ground attack aircraft scoured lightning welts across the energy defences of a Reaver, the Victorious Endeavour.
The Imperator’s anti-air batteries snarled in reply, guided by Gevren’s will. Flak detonations stitched black clouds around the incoming squadrons and rapid-firing autocannons laced the air with slashes of tracer rounds. The spiralling trails of damaged craft told of a handful of successes, but as the Imperator continued to forge up through the outskirts of the city the survivors spiralled around the colossi of the Machine-God, their guns ablaze.
Ghelsa continued up with Harkas just behind her. The crude ladder took them above a massive conduit of plasteel hanging from the structure of the shoulder works. It shook constantly as the autoloader belt within carried shells the size of battle tanks up from the magazine store in the Casus Belli’s midsection. Its course turned vertical as it passed into a sheath of articulated metal, inverting a level above them to meet the cannon mounting somewhere in the darkness of the shoulder mount. Glimpses of sunlight shone into the gloom as the building-sized weapon swung around, highlighting a profusion of metres-thick plasteel struts and artificial fibre bundles as broad as trees.
‘We cannot scale that,’ said Harkas, looking up at the sheer surface ahead. Fist-sized rivets held it together but were too far apart to be of any use.
‘We’re not going to,’ Ghelsa said, hooking her multi-tool into the lever-lock of an inspection hatch. The square of metal hinged outwards, leaving a gap large enough for a person to enter. The belt was currently empty of shells while the princeps and moderatus sought a target. The massive clasps were ideal as an improvised elevator, though they clattered past at hazardous speed.
The tributai and inquisitor stood side by side at the opening, judging the moment to leap. Ghelsa crouched, creating tension in the exo-struts implanted into her legs. The fabric of her coverall bulged with hard lines.
Harkas jumped and she followed a heartbeat later, reaching for an empty shell bracket. Harkas landed with a shout and wrapped his arm around a jutting bracket. Ghelsa thudded into the belt more heavily, knocking the air from her lungs. As she slipped down the corded fabric she threw out a hand, seizing hold of a strut.
Carried upwards, darkness swallowed them and the din of their passage drummed within the confines of the belt canopy. Ghelsa hauled herself alongside Harkas, teeth gritted, and then pushed ahead. She clambered onto one of the open bracket arms and grabbed the multi-tool, pressing a release catch so that it telescoped out to its full length. Ghelsa held it out, the hooked blade for cleaning chain links pointed towards the side of the autofeed. She turned, leaned against the corrugated belt and thrust her other hand towards Harkas. She knew from the twin circles of paleness that he could see her far better than she could see him.
‘Grab hold.’
The inquisitor did as asked, gripping her wrist, her calliper-assisted fingers curling around his arm in return.
Ghelsa hauled him alongside her and looked up, straining her eyes for a telltale sliver of sunlight that marked the boundary point between the feed and the cannon housing.
‘You know, if I miss this we’re going to get dragged into the firing breach and crushed to death.’
‘I trust you,’ said Harkas. Three words that sang in Ghelsa’s ears.
So shocked was she by this rare praise that she almost forgot to jump. At the last moment, just as the belt started to invert, she hurled herself outwards. The multi-tool clanged against the compartment wall, its sharpened claw piercing the sheet plasteel. One hand rigid around its haft, the other locked on Harkas, Ghelsa thudded into the side, jarring her shoulder and banging her head against the metal.
She looked up. A gleam of sunlight bounced from the passing shell brackets about a metre above the head of the multi-tool.
‘Use me as a ladder,’ she said, ‘and then help me up.’
With her back against the plasteel, she lifted Harkas as best she could and braced her foot so that her reinforced thigh formed a step. Harkas grabbed hold of the strut of her right shoulder through her coverall and pulled up with a grunt, his foot finding her thigh bar. She wrapped an arm around one of his legs, steadying him as he placed a foot on her other shoulder, reaching with both hands.
He stood there for a second, silhouetted against the brightness, and then vanished. A heartbeat later he reappeared, reaching down to Ghelsa. She flexed her exo-skeleton and hauled herself into his grasp. He pulled, holding her at the edge of the opening while she worked the multi-tool free. She swung a leg into the gap and half-rolled out of the ammunition chute.
Ghelsa lay on the support girder for several seconds with her eyes closed, sucking in lungfuls of crisp air. Opening her eyes revealed the underside of the immense akropoliz, and to the left the armoured bulk of the hellstorm cannon housing. She turned her head slightly and blue sky came into view.
Cold air stung her eyes and the wind caressed her face. She sat up and smiled. It was the first time in two years she had been outside.
CHAPTER 5
THE GOD-MACHINE
From her position upon the flank of the hellstorm cannon Ghelsa had a panoramic view of the battle, but it lasted only moments. Even kneeling caused vertigo to spin through her, sending her back to her belly for several seconds. The crisp air was bitterly icy in her lungs and the openness threatened to sweep her away like a mote on the wind that streamed across the hellstorm cannon mounting.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, attempting to master the sensation. Instead of the startling emptiness, her senses instead focused on the alien movement. Though she was only a few metres from where she had spent most of her life inside the downdecks, the rolling sensation of the Imperator’s gait was even more pronounced on the exterior. The hellstorm swayed for several seconds after each movement, its ponderous pendular motion quite nauseating for the first few moments.
When she looked again Harkas was standing next to her, arms crossed as he surveyed the vista around them. Hesitantly she gained her feet and joined him, the sharp edge of temporary agoraphobia blunted by his presence.
The void shields that encased them distorted the view, like a heat shimmer edged with blue and grey. Ghelsa had never been outside while the energy defences were operational. The air felt oddly heavy on her skin, the hairs on her arms tingling with static. There was a distinctive clinical smell on the breeze, reminding her of the ablutions downflues after a full cleansing.
Her eyes were drawn to the fortified city around and ahead of the Casus Belli. It was closer to an artificial mountain than a settlement, tier upon tier of armoured walls and towers rising
out of the foothills. Dark thunderheads swathed the peaks beyond the fortress settlement, flashes of lightning in their depths. Anti-aircraft fire streamed into a bright spring sky, tracer rounds and the blossom of airbursts chasing squadrons of Imperial bombers across the dark blue. Missiles streaked groundwards in reply, their detonations carving fiery welts into the ferrocrete walls.
The flash from concealed muzzles betrayed the presence of heavy guns in the central keep. Every few seconds a blossom of fire and shrapnel splashed across the view, accompanied by a halo of purplish light as the void shields swallowed the detonation.
‘Az Khalak, it is called,’ said Harkas, shielding his eyes against the glare of twin suns. ‘It means “The Last Defiance”, although it merely holds the pass to the mountains. It might be the largest enemy stronghold, but it is not the last. It has to fall before any meaningful attack can be launched against the traitors taking shelter in the highlands.’
Ghelsa shuffled to the edge of the platform. She was used to crawling over the service ladders and maintenance gantries during reconsecration, but she had never been outside the Imperator while it was in motion. She looked down.
Beneath them swayed the banner for the hellstorm cannon. More than four times her height, the standard was woven from red and gold, threaded with over a thousand battle honours around the iron skull symbol of the Legio Metalica.
The ground moved past with surprising speed despite the ponderous nature of the mechanical giant’s stride. An armoured torso that concealed the downdecks stretched towards the ground, shadowed by the Imperator’s akropoliz. She followed the course of an immense foot, its huge toes splayed beneath a building-like greave large enough to house half a company of soldiers. The foot threw up a cloud of dust as it settled on the hard dirt, sinking several metres into the ground. As effortlessly as if it were a living person, the Titan’s weight shifted from one hip to the other, pushing it forward.
Craters and burning war engines littered the outskirts of Az Khalak. Levelled buildings and broken defence towers spilled their shattered blocks down the slopes. The ragged remains of streets were dotted with charred tank hulls by the score, many of them little more than slagheaps in the midst of glassy furrows ripped by the annihilator and the plasma weapons of other Titans.
When dizziness threatened to topple her again she turned her attention to the Titan’s structure, something closer and more tangible. To her left the head jutted from the God-decks. She wondered if a bridge crew member might look out of the closest eye-like canopy and see two figures on the cannon like ants crawling up a skitarii soldier’s arc rifle.
Beyond the mass of the upper torso the plasma annihilator hung on the other mount, gleaming with the power of a trapped star. Vapour coiled from dozens of vents, swathing the weapon in its own cloud.
Past this mist Ghelsa saw other machines of the battle group advancing. Warhounds sped ahead, their mega-bolters and inferno cannons terrorising the infantry companies fleeing back towards the citadel. A little closer advanced a Warlord Titan – Ghelsa recognised the banners of the Will of Iron. Though a majestic, towering destroyer of the Machine-God in its own right, the Warlord was dwarfed by the Imperator.
She could not see the other Titans of the battle group, but knew there to be more. Nearly half the Legio Metalica’s current strength had been deployed to Nicomedua – a demonstration that the Omnissiah’s power had not been eclipsed even in such benighted times.
Wheeled recon vehicles preceded the Casus Belli, partly to ensure adequate footing for the behemoth and partly to clear away small pockets of resistance that were not worth the attention of the main guns or secondary batteries. These in turn were only a vanguard for the hundreds of skitarii tanks and walkers that followed in the wake of the Titan’s advance, their mission to seize the ground once the enemy had been routed.
The first support line that followed consisted of two dozen tall walkers of varying patterns and armaments painted red and black, flying a profusion of kill banners and family flags. They were the Knights of House Raven, auxilia from the world of Kolossi whose alliance dated back to the distant conquests of the Great Crusade. At the centre strode Lord Lucitas in his heraldry-decked Knight Atrapos, itself a relic of this ancient past. Upon his left and right advanced two Knights Warden with immense back banners carrying the standard and trophy icons of the house.
The bulk of the House Raven forces were Knights Paladin, split into battle-squadrons among the Metalican tech-guard. The slower but more heavily armed Knights Warden followed with the skitarii, ion shields casting shimmering shadows from the accompanying tracked troop carriers.
Gears each a storey high and more ground into motion with a rumble of huge motors. The building-sized breach chamber swung left towards its next target. Looking along the length of the hellstorm – each of its six barrels wide enough to drive a tank into – Ghelsa saw a battery of defence turrets studding a curtain wall of Az Khalak.
‘It’s going to open fire!’ she yelled, herding Harkas towards the grip-rungs that ran up the side of the main housing behind them.
The inquisitor needed no encouragement, all but flying up the ladder in his haste. Ghelsa came after him, a little more laboured, fatigued by her efforts. They gained the top of the cannon’s breach casing and dashed towards the rear, where a web of slender traverse lines gave access to the exterior of the Imperator’s uppermost superstructure. Together they leapt onto the cabling and crawled spider-like to a small observation ledge right beneath a promontory of the akropoliz.
The hellstorm boomed into life as they scaled the last leg of their climb, the fire of its muzzles lighting the underside of the carapace, illuminating ferrocrete that looked more like the bedrock of a mountain than something that belonged on a war engine.
Gasping as shockwaves pounded her against the Casus Belli’s armoured skin, Ghelsa gritted her teeth, one hand hooked around the ratlines, and grabbed Harkas as he was flung bodily against her by the pressure waves from the hellstorm’s muzzle.
He gripped her arm and they hung together like a pair of spiders whose web had been caught in a gale.
The bombing attack was timed alongside a renewed bombardment from the remaining citadel guns, which laid down a blanket of detonations around the war machines. A flow of noospheric pressure agitated Exasas as the shields of the Omnissiah’s Temper failed and the Warlord Titan took hits directly against its armoured hull. A pulse of secondary sensation coursed through the minds of all the noospherically linked when a carapace multi-launcher exploded, its remaining missiles tearing apart the mounting.
Exasas’ articulated limbs twitched in empachronicity as more shells tore chunks of armoured flesh from the Omnissiah’s engine of battle.
The Casus Belli’s defence laser stabbed out again, slicing through one of the remaining gun towers. A magazine filled with plasma-warhead shells erupted like an artificial volcano, molten metal and ferrocrete flowing like lava down the sloped streets of the inner city.
Attack craft circled, guns spitting rounds at the Titans trying to restore their void shields. No single bullet or las-bolt could pierce steel-like skin, but the continuing torrent of incoming fire was enough to overload a void shield as soon as it was brought back online.
Exasas was surprised when a third aspect to the ambush revealed itself. Sudden plasma fire erupted from infantry concealed within the rubble around the Will of Iron. Faced with this unexpected attack, the Warlord was forced to back down, its energy output devoted to recovering its shields, its gatling blaster only capable of laying down short bursts of suppressive fire until the Warrior Hammer of Nyziroz moved up in support with its own salvo of plasma blasts.
The aircraft quickly diverted from one end of the battle group to the other while the high-altitude squadrons dropped their immense payloads. This time there were no distinguishing targets. The Casus Belli, Laodoniz Vanguard, Victorious Endeavour and Omnissiah’s Temper were all caught in the conflagration as incendiary bombs covered the
whole right flank of the advance. Sinews that would have gritted Exasas’ teeth tightened and a clawed appendage flexed with anxiety as slews of white-hot fire poured over the shields. Several collapsed in quick succession as though the flames burned through layers of flesh.
Overshots from the bombers detonated among the following skitarii troop carriers and walkers, incinerating them in globular expansions of brightness. The directional ion shields of accompanying knight squadrons flashed while bursts of cruel flame scoured along the line of walkers. The slick of fire seemed to crawl onwards, flowing like a swarm of burning wasps as it consumed more of the battle group’s support.
Monderas [imperative]:
Gevren:
Exasas:
There was no reply from Iealona, and Exasas was forced to surmise that she was too intently involved with the battle to spare a thought for his suggestion. It was Gevren that responded instead. His transmission was curt, interspersed with fragments of orders to the gunnery positions as they continued to target the swirling aircraft squadrons overhead. Among the chatter Exasas detected the outwave of a longer-ranged broadcast from the moderatus prime but was unable to trace its destination.
