Helsreach

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘What is that?’

  The knights leaned forward at their leader’s words. Grimaldus gestured down at a vast stretch of rockcreted roadway, wide enough to accommodate the landing of a bulk cruiser or a wallowing Imperial Guard troop carrier.

  ‘A highway, sir,’ the pilot said. He checked his instruments. ‘Hel’s Highway.’

  Grimaldus was silent for several moments, just watching the colossal road and the thousands upon thousands of conveyances making their way along it in both directions.

  ‘This roadway splits the city like a spine. I see hundreds of capillary roads and byways leading from it.’

  ‘So?’ Priamus asked, his tone indicating just how little he cared about the answer.

  ‘So,’ Grimaldus turned back to the squad, ‘whoever holds Hel’s Highway holds the beating heart of the city in their hands. They will have unprecedented, unstoppable ability to manoeuvre troops and armour. Even Titans will move faster, at perhaps twice the speed than if they had to stalk through hive towers and city blocks. ’

  Nerovar shook his head. He was the only one without his helm covering his features. Insofar as it was possible for an Astartes to look uncertain, he was doing so now.

  ‘Reclusiarch.’ He spoke Grimaldus’s new title with hesitancy. ‘How can we defend… all this? An endless road that leads into to a thousand others.’

  ‘With blade and bolter,’ said Bastilan. ‘With faith and fire.’

  Grimaldus recognised his own words spoken from the sergeant’s mouth. He looked down in silence at the city below, at the insane stretch of road that left the entire hive open, accessible.

  Vulnerable.

  CHAPTER III

  Hive Helsreach

  The Thunderhawks touched down on a landing pad that was clearly designed for freight use. Cranes moved and servitors droned out of their way as the gunships came down in a hovering shower of engine wash and heat shimmer.

  Ramps clanged onto the landing pad’s surface and the four gunships disgorged their living cargo – one hundred knights in orderly ranks, marching into formation before their Thunderhawks.

  Watching this display, and desperately trying not to show how impressed he felt, was Colonel Sarren of the Armageddon 101st Steel Legion. He stood with his hands clasped together, fingers interlaced, over his not inconsiderable stomach. Flanking him were a dozen men, some soldiers, some civilians, and all nervous – to varying degrees – about the hundred giants in black armour forming up before them.

  He cleared his throat, checked the buttons on his ochre greatcoat were fastened in correct order, and marched to the giants.

  One of the giants, wearing a helm shaped into a grinning skull mask of shining silver and steel, stepped forward to meet the colonel. With him came five other knights, each carrying swords and massive bolters, but for one who bore a towering standard. Upon the banner, which waved lazily in the dull breeze, a scene of red and black depicted the skull-helmed knight bathed in the golden purity of a flaming aquila overhead.

  ‘I am Grimaldus,’ the first knight said, his gem-like eye lenses staring down at the portly colonel. ‘Reclusiarch of the Helsreach Crusade.’

  The colonel drew breath to make his own greeting, when the hundred knights in formation cried out a chant in skin-crawling unity.

  ‘Imperator Vult!’

  Sarren glanced at the ranks of knights, formed up in five ranks of twenty warriors. None of them seemed to have moved, despite their cry in High Gothic: The Emperor wills it.

  ‘I am Colonel Sarren of the 101st Steel Legion, and overall commander of the Imperial Guard forces defending the hive.’ He offered a hand to the towering knight, and turned the gesture quite smartly into a salute when it became clear the knight was not going to shake hands.

  Muted clicks could be heard every few seconds from the helms of the knights standing closest to him. Sarren knew full well they were speaking with each other over a shared vox-channel. He didn’t like it, not at all.

  ‘Who are these others?’ the first knight asked. With a war maul of brutal size and weight, he gestured to Sarren’s staff arrayed in a loose crescent behind the colonel. ‘I would meet every commander of this hive, if they are present.’

  ‘They are present, sir,’ Sarren said. ‘Allow me to make introductions.’

  ‘Reclusiarch,’ Grimaldus growled. ‘Not “sir”.’

  ‘As you wish, Reclusiarch. ‘This is Cyria Tyro, adjutant quintus to General Kurov.’ Grimaldus looked down at the slender, dark-haired female. She made no effort to salute. Instead, she spoke.

  ‘I am to act as liaison between off-planet forces – such as yours, Reclusiarch, and the Titan Legion – and the soldiers of Hive Helsreach. Simply summon me if you require my aid,’ she finished.

  ‘I will,’ Grimaldus said, knowing he would not.

  ‘This is Commissar Falkov, of my command staff,’ Colonel Sarren resumed.

  The officer named clicked his heels together and made an immaculate sign of the aquila over his chest. The commissar’s dark uniform singled him out with absolute clarity among the ochre-wearing Steel Legion officers.

  ‘This is Major Mordechai Ryken, second officer of the 101st and XO of the city defence.’

  Ryken made the aquila himself, and offered a cautious nod of greeting.

  ‘Commander Korten Barasath,’ Sarren introduced the next man, ‘of the Imperial 5082nd Naval Wing.’

  Korten, a lean figure still dressed in his grey flightsuit, saluted smartly.

  ‘My men were in the Lightnings that guided you down, Reclusiarch. A pleasure to serve with the Black Templars again.’

  Grimaldus narrowed his eyes behind his helm’s false grin. ‘You have served with the Knights of Dorn before?’

  ‘I have personally – nine years ago on Dathax – and the Fifty-Eighty-Twos have on no fewer than four separate occasions. Sixteen of our fighters are marked with the heraldic cross, with permission given by Marshal Tarrison of the Dathax Crusade.’

  Grimaldus inclined his head, his respect solemn and obvious, despite the helm.

  ‘I am honoured, Barasath,’ he said.

  The squadron leader suppressed a pleased smile and saluted again.

  And on it went, through the ranks of senior Steel Legion officers. At the end of the line stood two men, one in a clean and decorated uniform of azure blue, the shade of skies on worlds much cleaner than this one, and the other in oil-stained overalls.

  Colonel Sarren gestured to the thin man in the immaculate uniform.

  ‘The most honourable Moderati Primus Valian Carsomir of the Legio Invigilata, crewman of the blessed engine Stormherald.’

  Grimaldus nodded, but made no other outward show of respect. The Titan pilot inclined his gaunt face in turn, utterly emotionless.

  ‘Moderati,’ the knight said. ‘You speak with the voice of your Legion?’

  ‘A full battle group,’ the man replied. ‘I am the voice of Princeps Majoris Zarha Mancion. The rest of Invigilata is committed to other engagements.’

  ‘Fortune favours us that you still remain,’ the knight said. The Titan pilot made the cog sign of the Mechanicus, his knuckles interlinked over his chest, and Sarren finished the final introduction.

  ‘And here is Dockmaster Tomaz Maghernus, lead foreman of the Helsreach Dockers’ Union.’

  The knight hesitated, and nodded again, just as he had for the soldiers. ‘We have much to discuss,’ Grimaldus said to the colonel, who was sweating faintly in the stifling afternoon air.

  ‘Indeed we do. This way, if you please.’

  Tomaz Maghernus wasn’t sure what to think.

  Back at the docks, as soon as he walked into the warehouse, his crew flocked around him, barraging him with questions. How many Astartes were there? How tall were they? What was it like to see one? Were all the stories true?

  Tomaz wasn’t sure what to say. There had been little grandeur in the meeting. The towering warrior with his skull face had seemed more dismissive than anythin
g else. The ranks of knights in their black armour were silent and inhuman, utterly separate from the hive’s delegation and not interacting at all.

  He answered the questions with a level of vagueness lessened by a convincing false smile.

  An hour later, he was back in his crane’s command cabin, strapped to the creaking leather seat and turning the axis wheel to bring the loading claw around again. Levers controlled the claw’s vertical position and the grip of its magnetic talons. Tomaz slammed the claw onto the deck of the tanker ship closest to his station, and hauled a cargo crate into the air. The markings alongside the sturdy metal crate marked it as volatile. More promethium, he knew. The final imports of fuel for the Imperial Guard’s tanks were arriving this week. Dried food rations and shipments of fuel were all they’d been unloading on the docks for months now.

  He tried not to dwell on his meeting with the Astartes. He’d been expecting a rousing speech from a warrior armoured in gold. He’d expected plans and promises, oaths and oratory.

  All in all, he decided, it had been a disappointing day.

  A city.

  I am in command of a city.

  Preparations have been underway for months, but estimates pit the Great Enemy arriving in-system within a handful of days. My men, the precious few knights that remain with me on the surface of Armageddon, are spread across the sprawling hive. They are to serve as inspiration to the human soldiers when the fighting becomes thickest.

  I recognise the tactical validity of this, yet lament their absence. This is not how a holy crusade should be fought.

  The hours pass in a blur of statistical outlays, charts, hololithic projections and graphs.

  The food supplies for the entire city. How long they will last once nothing can be brought in from outside the hive. Where the food is stored. The durability of these silos, buildings and granaries. What weapons they can withstand. How they appear from the air. Ration projections. Sustainable food ration planning. Unsustainable food ration planning, with appended lists of estimated sacrificial casualties. Where food riots are likely to break out once starvation is a reality.

  Water filtration centres. How many are required to be fully operational in order to supply the entire population. Which ones are likely to be destroyed first, once the city walls fall. Underground bunkers where water is currently stored. Ancient wellsprings that might be tapped in times of great need.

  Estimates of disease once the city is shelled and civilian casualties are too heavy to be dealt with efficiently. Types of disease. Symptoms. Severity. Risk of contagion. Compatibility with the ork genus.

  Lists of medical facilities. Endless, endless screeds of how each one is supplied as of the most recent stock reports, to the most minute detail. New stock-checks are constantly performed. Updated information cycles in all the while, even as we review the previous batch.

  Militia numbers, conscripted and volunteer. Training regimes and training schedules. Weapon supplies. Ammunition supplies for the civilian population currently under arms. Projections for how long those supplies will last.

  Hive Defence Forces, straddling the line between militia and Guard. Who leads the individual sector forces. Their weapons. Their ammunition. Their proximity to significant industrial targets.

  Imperial Guard numbers. Throne, what numbers. Regiments, their officers, their live fire training accuracy records, their citations, their shames, their moments of greatest glory and ignominy on a host of distant worlds. Their insignia. Their weapon and ammunition supplies. Their access to armour units, ranging from light scout vehicles such as Sentinels and Chimeras, through to super-heavy Baneblades and Stormswords.

  The Guard figures alone take two days to file through. And this, they say, is merely the overview.

  Landing platforms come next. Hive Defence landing platforms, civilian sites already in use by the Guard, and civilian sites currently in use for the importation of essential supplies, either from Navy vessels, traders in orbit, or elsewhere on the planet. The access to and from these sites is critical, regarding reinforcements making it into the hive, refugees making their way out, and the enemy capturing them as bases when the siege begins.

  Air superiority. The numbers of light fighters, heavy fighters, and bombers at our disposal. The records of every pilot and officer among the Imperial 5082nd Skyborne. These, I skip past. If they wear the Templar cross with permission of a marshal, then there is little need to review their acts of valour. It is already clear. The projections move on to simulated displays of how long our air forces can prevent enemy landings, and what situations would merit the use of bombers beyond the city walls. On and on, the simulations roll in flickering hololithic imagery. Barasath is relieved to go when it is complete, complaining of a dozen headaches at once. I smile, though I let none of the humans witness it.

  Helsreach heavy defence emplacements. What anti-air turrets are stationed on the walls, and where they are. Their optimal firing arcs. The make and calibre of each barrel and shell. The number of crew appointed to man these positions. Estimated projections on damage they can inflict upon the enemy, run through countless scenarios of varying greenskin offensive strength. The teams resupplying their ammunition, and from where that ammunition comes. Freight routes from manufactories.

  And the manufactories themselves. Industrial plants churning out legions of tanks, all of various classes. Other manufactories where shells are made and dispatched for use. Which industrial sites are the most valuable, the most profitable, the most reliable and the most likely to suffer assault in a protracted siege.

  The Titan Legion, most noble and glorious Invigilata. What engines they have on the Ash Wastes outside the city. Which ones will walk in the defence of Helsreach, and which ones are promised to reinforce the hordes of Cadian Shock and our brother Astartes, the Salamanders, out in the wilds of Armageddon.

  Invigilata keeps its internal records from our sight, but we are fed enough information to thread into yet more hololithic charts and simulations, adding the might of Titans – of various grades and sizes – to the potential carnage.

  The docks. The Helsreach Docks, greatest port on the planet. Coastal defences – walls and turrets and anti-air towers – and trade requirements and union complaints and petitions arguing over docking rights and warehouses appropriated as barracks for soldiers and complaints from merchants and dock-officers and…

  And I endure this for nine days.

  Nine. Days.

  On the tenth day, I rise from my chair in Sarren’s command centre. Around me in the colonel’s armoured fortress at the heart of the city, three hundred servitors and junior officers work at stations: calculating, collating, transmitting, receiving, talking, shouting, and sometimes quietly panicking, begging for aid from those around them.

  Sarren and several of his officers and aides watch me. Their necks crane up as they follow my movement. It is the first time I have moved in seven hours. Indeed, the first time I have moved since I sat down this morning at dawn.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Sarren asks me.

  I look at the sweating, porcine commander; this man unable to shape his body into a warrior’s fitness, confined as he is – and totally at home – with this relentless trial of a million, million numbers.

  What kind of question is that? Are they blind? I am one of the Emperor’s Chosen. I am a knight of Dorn’s blood, and a warrior-priest of the Black Templars. Is something wrong?

  ‘Yes,’ I say to him, to them all. ‘Something is wrong.’

  ‘But… what?’

  I do not answer that question. Instead, I move to walk from the room, not caring that uniformed humans scatter before me like frightened vermin.

  With a volume that would put a peal of overhead thunder to shame, a siren starts to wail.

  I turn back to the table.

  ‘What is that?’

  They flinch at the rough bark from my helm’s vocaliser. The siren keeps whining.

  ‘Throne of the God-Emperor,’
Sarren whispers.

  ive Helsreach did not have city walls. It had battlements.

  When the citywide siren began to ring, Artarion was standing in the shadow of a towering cannon, its linked barrels aiming into the sick sky. Several metres away, the human crew worked at its base, performing the daily rituals of maintenance. They hesitated at the sound of the siren, and talked among themselves.

  Artarion briefly looked back in the direction of the tower fortress in the city’s centre, blocked as it was from view by distance and the forest-like mess of hive spires between here and there.

  He felt the humans casting occasional glances his way. Knowing he was distracting them from their necessary mechanical rites, he moved away, walking further down the wall. His gaze fell, as it did almost every hour since coming to the hive a week before, on the endless expanse of wasteland that reached to the horizon and beyond.

  Blink-clicking a communication rune on his visor display, he opened a vox-channel. The siren rang on. Artarion knew what it signalled.

  ‘About time.’

  From vox-towers across the city, an announcement was spoken in deceptively colourless tones. Colonel Sarren, not wishing to incite the populace to unrest, had tasked a lobotomised servitor to speak the words to the people.

  ‘People of Hive Helsreach. Across the planet, the first sirens are sounding. Do not be alarmed. Do not be alarmed. The enemy fleet has translated in-system. The might of Battlefleet Armageddon and the greatest Astartes fleet in Imperial history stands between our world and the foe’s forces. Do not be alarmed. Maintain your daily rites of faith. Trust in the God-Emperor of Mankind. That is all.’

  In the control centre, Grimaldus turned to the closest human officer sat at a vox-station.

  ‘You. Hail the Black Templar flagship Eternal Crusader, immediately.’

  The man swallowed, his skin paling at being spoken to so directly and with such force by an Astartes.

  ‘I… my lord, I am coordinating the–’

  The knight’s black fist pounded into the table. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘Y-yes, my lord. A moment, please.’