by David Guymer
All of it stopped as Koorland entered. The only sound was of the doors hissing shut and the seclusion field re-engaging with a hum. With one exception, those yet to be seated abandoned their conversations and found chairs.
Koorland’s muscles instinctively tensed for combat as Bohemond strode towards him and grabbed his forearm. He clasped it tight, and closed the fingers of his left gauntlet over his right hand, pulling Koorland in close. The High Marshal’s witch-burned face was a grimace of uncompromising wrath, but the embrace was fit for a brother.
‘I tire of waiting,’ he said.
‘Part of me doubted that you would wait,’ said Koorland, returning the pressure to the other warrior’s vambrace. ‘We did not part on best terms.’
‘Time spent alone with the void is time spent alone with one’s thoughts. That is why it is to be avoided.’ His augmetic eye clicked as it focused on Koorland’s. ‘But I came to question the direction you might lead us all without me beside you. I will be your Chaplain, brother, your evangelist, particularly if you tell me that you do not want me.’
Koorland smiled stiffly and gestured Bohemond to his seat. ‘I welcome it, brother.’
It was only then, as he pulled out his own chair at the head of the table, that Koorland noticed the expectancy that hung over them, camouflaged beneath the quiet. All eyes, all ears, were on him: the Emperor’s finest, all hanging on his word. Leading the Senatorum had been little preparation. These were people he respected.
‘Where is Euclydeas?’ Tyris asked before Koorland had sat down. ‘Antares and Iaros of my squad took the third ork psyker to the Soul Drinkers’ rendezvous coordinates. Iaros was to become sergeant of the new Kill-Team Ultima.’
‘The best we can assume is that for some reason the Soul Drinkers never received our message, or that their voyage against the Green Roar has proven longer and more turbulent than ours.’
The absence of a third of the combined fleet’s strength sunk in with a moment’s solemnity. The worst that they could assume needed no reminder from Koorland. He had been exacting in assigning the Black Templars and Soul Drinkers to rendezvous coordinates in the most strategically unimportant and underpopulated sectors in the vicinity. But the Segmentum Solar was close to being overrun. The possibility that Euclydeas had been killed or had destroyed the meme-bank containing the coordinate fragments to prevent its capture could not be discounted.
That was why he had separated the fleets in the first place.
‘What we have will suffice. It will have to, because there is nothing else. We are already out of time.’ His gaze moved down the table, two opposing rows of hardened faces. ‘Most of you will have observed the test on Incus Maximal. Some,’ a nod to Tyris and Issachar, ‘witnessed it first-hand. Others,’ a glance to where Wienand and Bohemond sat, ‘will have received the logs.’
A pantherish panting, something like a laugh, came from Kjarvik’s throat. He leaned forward, bone-braid dreadlocks knuckling across the table. ‘And impressive watching they were. It surprises me to say, but it actually made the effort of capturing them in the first place worthwhile.’
‘Agreed,’ said Tyris, to much solemn nodding from his brothers-in-black.
‘Incus Maximal was a test,’ Koorland said and the approving mutters dropped away. ‘Densely populated, lightly defended, but numbers enough to make any undertaking by conventional forces too costly to contemplate. Until now, of course. Laurentis, please.’
The magos rose slightly, not sitting so much as squatting into his tripod. ‘Magos Urquidex and I have thoroughly analysed the results of the first test detonation. Impressive though the results were, and in accord with our expectations from the Dzelenic IV data, my colleague and I are in agreement that the output could have been greater. The trial subject suffered a grievous injury in the moments prior to detonation, which we conclude may have dampened its connection to the ork psychic field. Furthermore, the greenskins native to Incus Maximal were not the largest specimens thus far encountered, nor was Lord Issachar’s force given the resources or the remit to stoke the orks’ psychic strength more fully. It is our conclusion that complete planetary wipe-out could be a possibility.’
‘You mean to cleanse a planet – good.’ Asger Warfist nodded approvingly. ‘Which is to be the lucky world?’
‘Magos,’ said Koorland and gestured with an empty hand across the table.
Laurentis pivoted on the spot and and telescoped a digital manipulator to activate the panel of switches mounted on the wall behind him. The lumen points dimmed. The hololith crystals in the table flickered and began to brighten, emitting a fuzzy white light from which emerged the ghost shape of a rotating spheroid. It was a planet, and the stuttering projection slowly began to stabilise as it spun about its slightly tilted axis.
Shocked murmurs from around the table. Even the Adeptus Astartes had not been engineered beyond a mortal’s capacity for surprise.
The planet was crenellated, buttressed, ironclad, mountains of rockcrete and plasteel rising from the pole-to-pole spread of inhuman habitation where mountains had no natural right to stand. Vast orbital rings of manufactories, dry docks and weapons platforms girdled the planet’s equator like crude analogues of the great space ports of Mars. Power fields and atmospheric distortions induced by the planet’s artificial seismology were displayed as periodic washes of colour. As the cogitators built into the table warmed through, the hololith filled in the projection with surface definition. Brackets locked on to features of interest, turning with the world as it spun: field projectors, megabatteries, a tangle of wire-trace lines showing tectonic boundaries where powerful xenos technologies could manoeuvre those surface plates to effect the rearrangement of whole continents or the rapid redeployment of billions.
Ullanor.
‘Vulkan threw everything the Imperium could give to him at that world and he failed,’ said Asger, voice soft. ‘What do you hope to achieve by trying again with a fraction of what the primarch had?’
‘There is no denying that the Imperium no longer has the men or the ships to launch an invasion on that scale again, or that there can be no replacement for Vulkan. I am not he. Those of us that are left to try and succeed where those heroes failed must become more than the numbers we bring with us.’ Koorland spread his hands to gesture not just to those present, but to the ships beyond and the many thousands they carried. The misshapen leer of the Beast, built in colossal facsimile into the very face of his throneworld, glared from the hololith with each rotation. ‘Here is where mankind stands. Or here is where it falls.’
‘I’m almost afraid to ask,’ said Wienand. ‘But how?’
‘I have to agree,’ said Kale. ‘We have less than a tenth of the fleet strength that the primarch commanded. Ullanor’s ground-to-orbit batteries will cripple us before half our troops can be moved planetside.’
‘Those weapons were devastating only because we were unprepared, an element of surprise that they will not enjoy a second time.’ Koorland turned to Asger. ‘We know the location of the orks’ defences, and it will be the responsibility of the Deathwatch to neutralise them.’
‘I’d like to help coordinate that, if I may,’ said Wienand, to a few chuckles from the Deathwatch sergeants sat nearest to her. Her expression in reply was frosty.
‘Ullanor will be no place for civilians,’ said Koorland. ‘Certainly not for High Lords.’
‘I am not the highest Lord in attendance, Lord Commander, and I know how to look after myself.’
Asger grinned through his fangs, looking sideways at the inquisitor. His chuckle was rather more approving than that of his subordinates, but then the Space Wolves had always been impressed by nerve. ‘She has you there, Koorland. What is that now, twice?’
‘Very well,’ said Koorland. ‘If you must, then on your head be it. You will take your lead from Asger. What commands he gives, you follow.’
; ‘Of course.’
Asger nodded to the hololith. ‘If the fleet is to remain out of weapons range then we will not be able to deploy from drop pods.’
‘We have gunships.’
‘What of the brute-shield?’ spoke Dominus Gerg Zhokuv, the voice arising from the waxen-faced servitor that stood by his pteknopic vessel. ‘It was impenetrable, and undoubtedly restored to full operation by now.’
‘As we discovered, the orks must lower the shield for a few seconds each time they fire their guns. While the bulk of the fleet remains out of range, some… sacrifices will need to be made to ensure the orks lower their shields. Long enough for a gunship to get through.’
‘Do not neglect their fleet-based defences, brother.’ Issachar pointed to the weapon silos and fighter launch bays that studded the hololithic world’s orbital ring.
‘They will be your responsibility,’ said Koorland. ‘You will have full command of the combined fleet while ground forces deploy into the beachhead that the Deathwatch will secure. Fists Exemplar, Black Templars, Excoriators – they will be the second wave.’ He nodded to Dorr, Rawketh, and Zhokuv. ‘Adeptus Militarum and the Mechanicus war machines to follow. Meanwhile, the Deathwatch with support from the Sisters of Silence will seek out and secure corridors through which the main force can proceed to assault the palace complex.’
‘I find no fault in your courage, Koorland,’ said Asger. ‘But a bold heart notwithstanding, this plan is little different to Vulkan’s. The Deathwatch alone will not tip the scales and nor will your new weapon. Whatever the magos believes, it is a stretch to imagine one witch eliminating every ork on Ullanor.’
Koorland’s stern expression twitched as murmurs of agreement arose from the other Deathwatch sergeants and the Astra Militarum. Koorland suppressed whatever empathy he might have felt for their situation, but he did not enjoy dispatching brave men, brothers, to almost certain death. He leaned forward, silencing the hubbub with no other gesture than that.
‘None of you are wrong. Overwhelming force has not given us victory before today and it will not now. We must deliver our weapon to the place at which it will be most devastating, to the one thing that the orks cannot afford to lose.’
Extending his palm outwards he summoned the rotating hololith, the planet shrinking as it moved towards his hand. It continued to rotate, the perspective hovering above it, parts of it beginning to fall away: zooming and focusing onto the fortified palace complex that the great Vulkan had died trying to crack. It looked like a crouching idol, four hundred metres tall, slabbed into ork features with metal and stone. Those outer fortifications faded back as the image passed inside. The interior mapping was good. Ongoing in-situ scans by embedded carto-savants of the Adeptus Mechanicus during the prior invasion had seen to that. The fact that Krule had personally verified much of it was invaluable.
The hololith continued to strip away layers until what remained, still turning in time with the spin of the world, was a single, huge room. The poorly defined outline of a giant throne stood in the centre of it.
‘Now, let me tell you what I will be doing.’
Thirteen
Ullanor – Gorkogrod
The second invasion of Ullanor began with a sacrifice. A shower of meteors marked the offering: fireballs, some hundreds of metres across, burned through the upper atmosphere and blasted against Gorkogrod’s brute-shields in a blaze of elemental colour. Some of them were recognisable as voidship remnants. The Dark Angels cruiser, Herald of Night. The Navy frigate, Cyzicus. The Inquisitorial escort, Perseus Banshee.
Skeleton crews, crippled ships, but losses keenly felt. Sacrifices painfully offered.
But they were willing, and they had fulfilled their role.
Penitent Wrath descended hard through a web of metal plankways and scaffold-like flak-towers. Glowing crossfire stitched across her hull and over her dorsal cannon. Combat thrusters burned white from driving evasive manoeuvres through a terminal descent. A black-painted gunship of the Aurora Chapter, Lance of Ultima, lost a tail-wing to a torrent of flak and crashed through the flat, oxide-red roof of an ork block where it exploded. Another was eviscerated mid-air, spilling Space Marines and crew over the abyssal drop like chaff dropped from the belly of a fighter craft.
Like planetary reformations in miniature, segmented metal shutters were clunking up to reveal secondary firepoints, huge-barrelled guns emerging from riveted walls and scaffolds and cranking into position. The opening phase of the first invasion of Ullanor had been quiet, characterised by Imperial circumspection and orkish cunning. Not this time. The Imperium knew now what surprises the orks had in store and where they were hidden.
And the orks knew that they had no reason to hold back.
A Blood Angels gunship met a cloudburst of fragmentation rockets and auto-fire and disintegrated as though it had been driven through a wall.
With no ordinary skill on the part of Atherias, the pilot, Penitent Wrath dropped between the crisscrossing lines of fire and responded in kind. Heavy bolters strafed the gun ports, hammering on the hardened metal, lascannons punching through as the Thunderhawk pivoted around her centre and dropped landing struts. Retro-thrusters fired, scorching the metallic surface beneath and bringing the gunship shuddering to a hover.
Two metres off the ground, turbofans howling with vertical strain, her assault hatch whined open and Kjarvik Stormcrow finally felt his boots on the ground of Ullanor. He took a deep breath of the burned, carcinogenic air. He had missed the last invasion, fighting back the greenskins in the Segmentum Obscura under the Fell-Handed.
He would not be so unlucky again.
The polluted sky was ashen and thick, riven by fire. It was raining metal, crumpled casings and bits of aircraft pattering down over the circular iron platform onto which Stormcrow and his kill-team swiftly deployed. It was some kind of landing pad, large enough to accept one of the big twin-rotor ork ’copters or a supply boat. Three ramps ran off from it, only a line of barbed-wire spikes that flexed in the turbofan outwash between them and a stupefying fall. One each to left and right led down towards partially fortress-fronted shacks. The third ramp was twice as long, slightly wider, and wobbled upwards to the primary objective.
Tactica-savants had designated it a collapser beam, for reasons that Kjarvik did not need explaining. It was a lumpen bristling of defensive ironwork surmounted by a towering edifice of suspensor rods and power transfer coils. An enormous cannon, longer again than its entire housing, pointed belligerently up at the sky. Entrance was via a set of heavy red doors plastered with glyphs. A great bar had been set up across them, spiked, wired in, and sparking with alternating current.
With a burst of propellant, twin missiles shrieked from the Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints and blasted the door to smithereens.
Kjarvik was already sprinting for it as the gunship lifted off, a parting burst of heavy bolter fire chewing up the walls around the fort’s firing slit windows.
‘Bring them the Emperor’s wrath,’ voxed Atherias, as the Thunderhawk swung back into the web of tracers.
Kjarvik did not reply. His attention was focused on gunning down the two leather-strapped greenskins that stumbled out of the smoking ruin of their doorway.
More were pouring out of the blockhouse structures to either side and piling onto the walkways, and straight into the storm bolter and eviscerator of Phareous and Zarrael. The sounds from that direction reminded Kjarvik of lumps of gristle thrown at a wall to see what would stick.
He ignored them, dropped his shoulder, and charged through what was left of the gate.
His vision became smoke, tangled spurs and spitting flame. The roars and gunfire merged and then morphed into the pop of cooling metal. And then he was inside. Baldarich, none improved for his humbling on Plaeos, was already there, power sword flashing in the dark. Flames licked the Black Templar’s armour. Smoke coiled through Kjar
vik’s beard and hair like fishbone clips. His lungs shut themselves down. His next breath drew an oxygen-poor stew of ash and explosive compounds into his multi-lung.
It was the firing chamber, directly beneath the collapser beam. Ork mechanics crowded ladders and gantries. Gretchin wielding wrenches ran at the Space Marines with hissing faces and fell to contemptuous sweeps of Baldarich’s blade.
Automatic fire from Kjarvik’s bolt pistol drilled through thick ork skulls and hunched shoulders, painting the smoke with explosive splashes of red. His aim shifted from ladder to ladder as the orks dropped down, as fast as he could think. Half-second burst and move. Howls and thunder. Half-second burst and move. The air reeked of fyceline. His ammo counter blinked a warning. He squeezed off another burst, a charging mechanic so close that its forehead almost touched the muzzle.
Bad luck. He activated his power fist.
There was a clang of metal on metal, and Kjarvik glanced sideways to see Bohr beside him. The Iron Hand had planted his staff into the ground as if to make of himself a tripod and deploy the full arsenal of his servo-harness. Kjarvik made a laughing sound in the back of his throat as bolt-rounds, hell-beams, plasma ejectiles and raging gouts of flame finished off what he had not been able to. The burn painted the Iron Father a harsh white, steeping the cavities of his complicated bionics in shadow as though the ancient veteran could smile again.
