Honour Imperialis - Braden Campbell & Aaron Dembski-Bowden & Chris Dows & Steve Lyons & Rob Sanders

by Warhammer 40K

  A textbook boarding operation.

  Petty Officer Ovor Werland laboured shirtless in the prow armament chambers of Depth of Fury. He was forty-three years old, and would never see forty-four. In his right hand was a laspistol, its ammunition expended. In his left hand was a whip, the leather cord slick with blood.

  He’d lashed them, he’d shot some of them, but he’d done it. His team of slaves, now down to barely a hundred men, had reloaded the nova cannon in just under seven minutes. The mouth of the great turret had been fed with the huge warhead it would unleash.

  Werland sprinted across the wreckage-strewn deck, leaping at the last moment over the still-twitching body of a man he’d shot himself. He dropped his weapons, keyed the wall vox-speaker active and shouted over the wailing sirens that the captain could fire the main armament.

  His last duty done, Werland turned from the wall.

  And froze.

  The remaining hundred men of his slave team ringed him in an impenetrable semicircle. As the ship shuddered and came apart, the men stood there, pieces of wreckage held as weapons.

  Petty Officer Ovor Werland paid the price many slavemasters have paid since time out of mind. With nothing left to lose, his property rebelled and took their vengeance.

  Depth of Fury was doomed. Although it would end its honourable but understated career in less than a minute, Ovor Werland was quite dead by then.

  ‘Their cannon amasses power once more, great Herald.’

  Typhus nodded his horned helm once.

  ‘End them. Now.’

  ‘Main armament ready!’ crackled the voice over the vox. Ovor Werland’s last words.

  Straden’s mouth fell open for a moment. For one insane second he wanted to get back on the vox and ask that officer’s name, in order to recommend him for special citation.

  ‘Fire my damn gun!’ he roared at the surviving weapons officers.

  They tried. Depth of Fury twisted slowly, exploding as it turned, bringing its cannon to bear with agonising slowness.

  Their bridge. Straden breathed fast, unable to believe what he saw. The Archenemy flagship was filling the viewscreen now. And he saw…

  Their bridge!

  ‘It’s too close to fire, sir,’ spoke one of the ratings. ‘We’ll be caught in the implosion.’ Straden couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

  ‘Do I look like I give a shit? We’re dead already! Fire! Fire, fire, fire!’

  The magnetic fields powered up. Straden could feel them. He didn’t care that it was impossible. He could feel the magnetic fields charging, heating his blood, vibrating his bones. He ignored the bridge detonating around him.

  ‘Kill them!’ he cried out with a savage brightness lighting his eyes. ‘For the Emperor! Kill them!’

  Depth of Fury’s plasma drives finally exploded under the last sustained lance volley from Terminus Est and its support cruisers. The explosion sent shockwaves that rocked the nearby Chaos vessels, creating a great cloud of plasma residue and debris, hanging in space like a bruise-coloured nebula.

  Terminus Est parted the dust cloud like a shark cutting through water.

  ‘That was close, Lord Typhus,’ said one of the Death Guard flanking the Herald’s throne. ‘If they had fired…’

  Typhus ignored him. ‘Make for The Second Shadow. That dies next.’

  Chapter X

  Survival

  Solthane, Yarith Spire Graveyard, Monastic sector

  Thade crouched with his back against the ruined wall. Las-fire made little hissing sounds as it chipped the other side of the stone.

  ‘I hate this planet,’ he said, reloading his bolt pistol without looking. Crouching in the mud of a sprawling garden estate, using waist-high marble walls and huge trees for cover, several squads of the 88th were engaged with the Remnant, and engaged hard. Thade was used to his fair share of battles that began when the enemy came from nowhere. This time, the bastards came from everywhere.

  They spilled from the tower at the centre of the ten-kilometre-square estate, then flooded in from the edges, running from every direction. The 88th had been surrounded in a heartbeat, pinned between the enemy coming from behind them and from their objective.

  Yarith Spire. The saint’s fingerbones were supposed to be here. The tower itself rose up like a spear splitting the sky. It was black – some hideously rare and expensive black stone, Thade guessed – and as overly ornate as the rest of this tomb city. Rings of gargoyles and angels leered down in all directions. It looked like a particularly unfriendly nightmare.

  Nine hours deep into the city, and enemy resistance was supposed to be light. Not medium, not heavy and not medium-to-heavy thank-you. Light. The Vednikan 12th Rifles had swept this area clean only a few days before.

  ‘There shouldn’t be a soul here,’ Corrun said as he reloaded his rifle next to the captain. ‘Nothing ever goes right on this planet, eh?’

  Thade wiped a bleeding slice along his cheek – a gift from shrapnel when the last wall he’d been behind had exploded. This resistance was neither light nor medium. In fact, it even left ‘heavy’ some way back in the dust.

  His dirty glove smeared the dark facial blood across his cheek, and it kept coming from the cut. That’ll leave a scar, he thought. An ugly one.

  The squads had scattered at Thade’s order, taking shelter in the modest domed chapels and graveyards dotted around the huge garden estate. The horde of Remnant came on, the rear elements slowed by the heavy weapons they carried.

  A stalemate now. At best, temporary. At worst, already breaking. The Cadians were holed up in detached pockets, many soldiers using gravestones for cover, holding off Remnant forces with far superior numbers. A solid slug clanged off Rax’s chrome flank, and the beast growled low. Its photoreceptor eyes sought the shooter, calculating his location from the angle of the incoming fire.

  ‘Take cover, idiot,’ Thade said. The dog retreated further behind the wall.

  Taan Darrick hurled himself into Thade and Corrun’s cover, crawling on his belly until he was next to the captain.

  ‘Join the Shock, they told me.’ Taan was reloading his battered lasrifle. ‘Serve the Emperor. Meet overwhelming numbers of arseholes…’ the lieutenant kissed his rifle once it was rearmed, ‘…and shoot them in the face.’

  ‘Considering the number of heretics howling for our blood,’ Thade said, ‘you’re in good spirits.’

  ‘I heard there’s a pay rise if I get made into morale officer.’

  ‘Shut up, Taan.’

  ‘Shutting up, sir.’

  ‘Captain?’ Thade’s vox-bead crackled. The sound was distorted. As reliable as always, then.

  ‘Thade here. Identify.’

  ‘Squad Vigilant: Unbroken.’ Commissar Tionenji’s voice, his accent adding an exotic twist to the regimental words. ‘Thade, I need Sentinels. I have armour incoming.’

  Throne in flames. ‘Confirm that you have armour incoming.’

  ‘Confirmed. Armour incoming. They look like Repressors and Chimeras. Riot-control… Troop transports… Fitted with additional weapons. Captain? Captain?’

  ‘I’m here. Dead Man’s Hand will be routed to you.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’ The link went dead.

  ‘Who was that?’ Taan asked as he kneeled up, firing around the edge of the wrecked wall.

  ‘Vigilant sighted armour. Tionenji’s unit.’

  ‘Still…’

  ‘Still what?’

  ‘It’s good the new boy is getting his hands dirty on his first day.’

  ‘Shut up, Taan.’

  ‘Shutting up, sir. What do you say about a brisk run back to the Chimeras?’

  The transports had been abandoned at the edge of the graveyard several hours before. They were several kilometres distant from the Chimeras.

  ‘I’m fairly certa
in I said you should shut up.’

  ‘You say a lot of things.’

  Thade raised an eyebrow. Taan grinned. ‘Shutting up, sir.’ Any other time, Thade would have laughed.

  ‘We’re being ringed. Take Alliance further down into that graveyard to the west. If the Remnant takes that ground, they’ll split us up from Loyalty and Adamant.’ The inquisitor was with Adamant. It wouldn’t do to be split up from him, of all people.

  ‘Sir.’ Taan took out his viewfinders, holding them up to his eyes and panning across the western graveyard. Dozens of Remnant, dressed in their filthy PDF uniforms, were already running across the dead grass. ‘You always give me the fun jobs,’ he said with a grin. Then he was running, voxing his squad to follow.

  Thade keyed his vox again. ‘Vertain, acknowledge.’ Static. ‘Dead Man’s Hand, acknowledge.’

  More static.

  This is tremendous. ‘Janden!’ Thade called.

  Thade’s vox officer was kneeling behind a gravestone some thirty metres away. Las-fire flashed over his head as Janden hunkered down, gripping his laspistol. His bulky vox-caster backpack was on the ground, kept safely behind cover.

  ‘Sir?’ Janden called.

  ‘Signal to Dead Man’s Hand. Reinforce Vigilant in the north, immediately.’

  Janden nodded and started punching keys. The strength and range on the vox-casters far exceeded the personal micro-beads carried by individual soldiers, especially with the interference on Kathur so eternally harsh.

  ‘Sir, I’m getting scrambled signals.’

  ‘That’s not news to me, Janden.’ Thade kneeled up, firing his bolt pistol two-handed. It bucked as it banged in his hands, round after round, again and again. Remnant soldiers died each time the gun sang. Thade nailed seven of them in quick succession, picking them off as they broke cover to run forward.

  The Remnant was using the low walls and gravestones as shields, too. Except they had the numbers to take horrendous casualties and still run right up to the Cadians’ faces in a swarm.

  ‘Sir, it’s the fleet!’

  Thade crouched to reload again. Throne, he was running out of clips.

  ‘I’m listening, Janden,’ he called. ‘Get over here. Eighty-Eight, covering fire!’

  The hunkered-down soldiers from Thade’s nearby squads rose as one, letting rip with rifles on full-auto. Short bursts: just enough for each man to kill a target or two and get the rest of the wretches ducking. For a moment, the Remnant’s advance across the mass graveyard halted.

  Janden made a break for it. He sprinted the distance between his cover and the captain’s wall. When he was within arm’s reach of Thade’s cover, a las-round tore across his chest, shattering his body armour. He hurled himself next to the captain, the way Taan had only minutes before. His chestplate was a smoking mess.

  ‘Close,’ he grinned.

  ‘Close,’ Thade agreed. ‘You’ve had worse. The fleet?’

  Janden offered Thade the speech horn, and the captain listened.

  A storm of voices. Panicked, angry and pleading – all to a background of vicious static. Thade covered his other ear to keep out the sharp cracks of lasrifles.

  ‘…hull breach at…’

  ‘…engaging unsupported…’

  ‘…seconds left… Dead in…’

  ‘…the Emperor… Laser batteries f…’

  ‘…too many!’

  ‘…abandon… Reactor critical…’

  ‘…Fury is gone! She…’

  ‘…ing destroyed! The Fury is…’

  ‘No,’ Thade said breathlessly, and then in a stunned whisper, ‘Throne of Terra, no.’

  An explosion nearby jolted him back from the horror of what he was hearing on the vox. Now the Remnant was using frag grenades.

  ‘Zailen?’ Thade spoke calmly into his vox. Another detonation nearby elicited fresh screams.

  Zailen was flat on his front some fifty metres away, his temperamental plasma gun hidden behind a gravestone in favour of his standard-issue lasrifle. Thade saw him roll back into cover, hidden from view, and heard his voice come over the vox.

  ‘Captain?’ Zailen was from Kasr Novgrad, on the other side of the world from Kasr Vallock, where Thade was born. His accent turned the word into Keptane.

  ‘Zailen, you need to kill the ones with grenade launchers. All our heavy weapons are with the squads in the north and east. You’re it, Zailen. Copy?’

  ‘Yes, captain. It will be done.’ Yiz, keptane. It vill be done.

  ‘Good hunting.’ Thade was looking around the edge of the wall, bolt pistol in hand. ‘You see the domed chapel to our north? Look in the tower. They’re up there.’

  ‘Consider them dead, sir.’ Conzider zem dead, suh.

  Thade ignored the sun-bright spears of plasma burning from Zailen’s gun a moment later. He was already focused on his vox-officer. ‘Janden. Janden, eyes on me.’

  ‘Sir?’ Janden’s pockmarked face, acne-scarring ruining his good looks, was set in a worried scowl.

  ‘Get me Maggrig if you can. If not, get me Colonel Lockwood.’

  ‘Sir.’ Janden started working, hitting keys and turning dials to reach some semblance of clarity on his vox-caster. Headphones on, mic extended, he repeated the same call, hoping for an answer with each new frequency he tried.

  Thade resorted to his vox-bead for squad-to-squad contact.

  ‘Venator to Adamant, Thade to Horlarn, respond.’

  ‘Adamant: Broken.’

  First Lieutenant Horlarn had to shout above the gunfire. His platoon was still taking position in the graveyard, the men setting up around small mausoleums and the unluckier ones using gravestones for cover. The Remnant came on in a horde, thankfully without heavy weaponry. The few heretics that sought safety used similar cover to the Cadians. The rest just ran on, closing fast.

  Amongst the men, fighting with a borrowed lasrifle, was Inquisitor Bastian Caius. Evidently he had no desire to use his psycannon on these wretches.

  Streams of angry red las-fire flashed across the distance between the two forces, scything down Remnant as they ran. The return fire hammered into the Cadian position. Not ten metres from Horlarn, Trooper Ceale flipped onto his back, spasming on the dry grass. A solid round had taken him in the right eye.

  ‘Horlarn?’ came Thade’s voice again.

  ‘I’m a man with a problem, sir,’ Horlarn racked his rifle’s slide to single-shot. Killing these scum was chewing through his ammo reserves. He risked a glance over the gravestone he was kneeling behind. Remnant everywhere. Just ahead, several of his men were getting into some serious bayonet work, duelling with Remnant soldiers over gravestones and low walls.

  ‘We all are. The fleet is gone.’

  ‘Say again, captain.’

  ‘The fleet is gone, Horlarn.’ Thade’s voice muted and the throaty whine of a chainsword took over. After a moment, the captain returned. ‘Get me the inquisitor now. We might be getting a dose of orbital bombardment in short order.’

  Horlarn yelled for the inquisitor, who disengaged from his half-hearted combat with an expression somewhere close to amusement. He acted (even smirked) like this bloodshed was somehow below him. Moving from wall to wall, Caius hunched and ran to Horlarn. His bionic eye whirred to bring the lieutenant into focus, adjusting from range-finding moving enemies.

  ‘Lord Inquisitor, Captain Thade has urgent news.’

  ‘Give me your vox-bead,’ the inquisitor said without preamble. Horlarn complied. Caius attached the input mic to his throat and put the output bead in his ear.

  ‘Thade?’

  Janden was getting contact now. The other unit commanders of the Reclamation ground forces were touching base, and every story was the same. The fleet was being annihilated and screaming distress calls across every frequency. The soldiers on the surface were enco
untering an uprising of Remnant that came from everywhere at once. Across the city, the Archenemy’s forces were massing to repel the Imperial Guard.

  Janden logged reports from the Kiridians that primary threats were being sighted as the Guard assaulted the hab-blocks in the city’s residential district. The Uriah 303rd was doing nothing but yelling for immediate reinforcement to the south-east. They’d encountered intense resistance as they advanced down Solthane’s main avenue. The Imperial Boulevard, flanked by chapels, false reliquaries and rentable pilgrim habs, had disgorged floods of plague-slain. The Vednikan 12th Rifles were reporting armour contacts – Remnant riot pacification tanks and troop transports corroded by poor maintenance, converted to bear heavy weapons.

  There was no word from the Third Skarran Rangers. Nothing but silence from Overseer Maggrig.

  ‘Inquisitor?’ Thade kneeled in the shadow of the mausoleum, his chainsword purring in his hands. Next to him, Janden spoke rapidly into his vox-caster’s speech horn, repeating himself as Kathur’s interference stole the sense from his words. The vox-officer was still trying to establish contact with the rest of the 88th.

  ‘Inquisitor Caius?’ Thade asked again, leaving Janden to his work.

  ‘What ails you, captain?’ crackled the inquisitor.

  ‘Lord, get to Lieutenant Horlarn’s vox-officer immediately. The fleet is under attack. The Guard on the ground is being hammered city-wide by this resurgence of the Remnant. We need to consolidate our forces immediately. I recommend regrouping and abandoning the spire objective. I’ll be in contact soon.’

  At that moment, Janden turned to Thade and mouthed the word ‘Lockwood’. Thade cut the link, snatching the offered speech horn. Such was his haste, he almost crushed it in his augmetic hand without realising.

  ‘Colonel Lockwood?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said the other voice. ‘Who is this?’

  Thade didn’t answer. ‘Where is Major Crayce?’

  ‘Also dead. Who is this? Confirm status of Captain Thade.’

  Thade swallowed. ‘Confirmed alive. This is Thade.’

  ‘Sir!’ the voice on the other end of the link was muffled by violent distortion. ‘…Lieutenant Reval… We’re being overrun, capt…’