by C. L. Werner
Acestes considered the grim revelation. He turned and gazed at the mechanisms already assembled atop the causeway, his optics focusing on the immense cylindrical housing taking shape in the shadows. ‘When will the traitors be aware of its failing?’
‘If the Omnissiah smiles upon our labour, they will not know anything until they try to activate the ordnance,’ Heroditus said, his optic senses gazing up reverently at the housing the servitors were building. ‘I think only one of our own, or the arch-blasphemer Oriax could understand the omissions in Lartius Maximus. If Oriax does not interfere, by the time the traitors know it will be too late. By then, Lartius Maximus will be lost behind the xenos advance.’
Logis Acestes’s voice dipped into a thin whisper. ‘Then let us pray that the Omnissiah favours us and keeps Oriax inside his sanctum.’
Huge blocks of ferrocrete exploded into the murky sky, hurled dozens of kilometres by the relentless punishment of the ork artillery. The city of Aboro was burning, entire blocks enveloped in flame as fuel stores and industrial waste caught fire. The conflagration roared like a hungry beast as it devoured the factories and processing plants, devouring the very heart of the city with its crimson fangs.
Captain Rhodaan watched the holocaust unfold from the shelter of a ferrocrete pillbox, one of hundreds lining the streets of Aboro. On his back, Eurydice shivered in bloodthirsty anticipation. The Iron Warriors had poured half a million troops into Aboro, along with attendant artillery and armoured support. Even Morax’s diminished Air Cohort had played a role, engaging in fierce aerial skirmishes to deny the enemy control of the skies. Street by street, block by block, the humans had defended their city, blunting the momentum of the ork onslaught, forcing the beasts to fight for every centimetre of ground.
Rhodaan was certain the janissaries fought under some delusion of heroism and accomplishment. Such phantasms were a part of Gamgin’s relentless training pogroms, things which became a part of the slave-soldier’s psyche. They were always there, lurking in the subconscious, waiting to be exploited.
The Flesh would obey, that was all they were good for. Let them believe the battle was of consequence. Let them remain ignorant that Warsmith Andraaz had decided to concede Aboro to the enemy weeks ago. Knowledge could only dull their efficiency. For all their frailty and weakness, men clung to the belief that their lives had value. If it would make them fight harder, Rhodaan was willing to allow them their little fantasy.
The defence of Aboro was inconsequential in its own right. With the orks across the Mare Ossius, holding the city could only weaken the resources available to the defence of Vorago. But if the Iron Warriors could not hold the southern city, they could still exploit its doom. By making a powerful stand in Aboro, they had drawn the full attention of the invaders. Columns of enemy had diverted from their incursions in the north to take part in the battle, ignoring soft targets of opportunity in their savage lust for a worthy fight. By the sacrifice of Aboro, dozens of outposts and camps had been granted a reprieve, time to evacuate their resources to Vorago.
Now, the fighting in Aboro was reaching the critical stage. The ork warlord, tiring of the bloody slog to exterminate the human defenders, had finally decided to settle the question in typically brutal fashion. Every cannon in the alien warhost had been turned against Aboro, pounding it in a merciless barrage without respite for the past three days. It didn’t seem to bother the ork warlord that thousands of its own troops were still fighting in the ruins. The city had become an annoyance, an impediment to the warlord’s grand scheme. As such, it would be obliterated.
Rhodaan smiled within the ceramite casket of his helm. Everything was going according to plan.
Dust rained down from the ceiling as Rhodaan descended the steps leading from the pillbox to the vault-like cavern which formed the terminus of Aboro’s main rail-line. A metallic trail of mag-lev plates stretched away into the subterranean vastness, glistening with a greenish gleam in the fitful illumination of suspended flood lamps. With each fresh salvo from the ork artillery, each tremor that groaned down the tunnel, the lights flickered and threw the passage into momentary darkness.
The tunnel was swarming with Flesh, janissaries and slaves frantically loading supplies into the freight cars of a monstrous train. Despite the barrage, the terror which glistened in the eyes of each man, the Flesh operated with discipline and restraint. The crazed desperation of other evacuations had no place here. Because here, in this tunnel, the Flesh were in the presence of their masters. The Raptors of Squad Kyrith marched along the loading ramps, the lenses of their gruesome helmets watching the throng for the first sign of panic. The first hint, the first suspicion, and the Iron Warriors would act, cutting down the malcontent before he could spread his disobedience to those around him. It was a duty the Space Marines had performed several times already, the mangled remains of their victims tossed unceremoniously into the waiting freight cars.
Rhodaan returned Pazuriel’s salute as he marched along the ramp. ‘The ork barrage is beginning to lessen,’ he told his minion. ‘We can expect the filthy xenos to launch another assault soon.’
Pazuriel nodded his head. ‘We will be ready,’ he said, turning his gaze onto the slaves. ‘The Flesh will be herded to the prepared positions. Those sections designated to protect the train will be loaded onto the garrison carriages. Everything will follow Captain Gamgin’s plan.’
Eurydice twitched as it registered Rhodaan’s annoyance. ‘No plan is exact,’ he reminded Pazuriel. ‘It remains perfect only until it has encountered the enemy. Remember that, brother. Always guard against the unexpected. More so when the foe is as unpredictable as orks.’
‘But the xenos vermin have acted exactly as predicted,’ Pazuriel persisted.
‘Yes,’ Rhodaan agreed. He spun around, his armoured gauntlet striking out and smashing the face of a janissary who had dared step in the Iron Warrior’s shadow. The stricken man collapsed, his burden of protein-paste spilling across the ramp. Empty eyes stared blindly at the trembling roof. Rhodaan’s blow had snapped the wretch’s neck. The other Flesh in the vicinity hurriedly scattered, pushing against the mass of their fellows until they had widened the perimeter surrounding the Raptor’s position.
‘The xenos are performing exactly the way Ipos and Oriax said they would,’ Rhodaan continued, turning his back on the murdered soldier. ‘That is why I want you to be ready for any surprises.’ He left unspoken his belief that it wasn’t the orks alone they had to be wary of. Over-Captain Vallax and his Squad Vidarna had been a bit too gracious in allowing Squad Kyrith the honour of conducting the Aboro operation. Such beneficence from his commander brought Rhodaan’s suspicions to the fore.
Prowling along the ramp, dust and debris clattering from his armour, slaves scrambling to clear his path, Rhodaan approached Captain Gamgin’s command centre in the staff carriage just behind the train’s enormous mag-engine. The car was a bulky mess of armour plate and gun turrets, a forest of antennas bristling from its roof. One side of the carriage had been swung open, the titanium doors lashed to hooks set into the base of the car’s frame. The exposed interior was without partition, a single room stuffed with terminals and workstations. Dozens of pict screens displayed various views of Aboro, scores of cogitators rumbled and chattered as they analyzed the reports streaming in from the vox-casters. Mobs of janissary officers, their shoulders festooned with garish strings of braid and brass, scurried about the command centre, their pace growing ever more frantic as they turned from one work station to another. Every report made it clear that the complete breakdown of the city’s defence was imminent.
Through it all, like a primordial god, stalked the huge shape of Captain Gamgin. The Iron Warrior held his helmet beneath his arm, exposing his scarred visage and glowering countenance. His expression remained implacable as he read the reports and studied the image relays. Amid the barely suppressed panic of the Flesh, Gamgin was a rock of calm calculation, digesting each new report before dispensing his ord
ers in a voice as cold as steel.
Rhodaan was not deceived by Gamgin’s air of invulnerability, of emotionless logic and careful calculation. He was also a legionary and knew the strange alchemy of duty and honour which governed the mind of an Iron Warrior. Devoid of fear for their own lives, absolutely without empathy for the sacrifices of others, an Iron Warrior cared about only one thing: the Legion. To fail the Legion, to disgrace the Third Grand Company, this was the secret terror that smouldered deep inside their hearts. Gamgin had failed to hold the Witch Wall, failed to keep the orks isolated on the far shore of the Mare Ossius. That was a shame which burned within him with the intensity of star-fire. Rhodaan could almost see it blazing from Gamgin’s eyes. To atone for his failure, to redeem himself, these were the things that mattered to Gamgin now, not the defence of Aboro or the lives of half a million slaves.
‘Lord captain,’ Rhodaan’s voice growled from the vox-casters in his helm. He slammed his fist against his chest plate in salute as Gamgin turned away from a bank of pict screens and faced the Raptor.
‘The time is at hand,’ Gamgin declared. He waved an armoured hand at the pict screens. ‘The Steel Blood maintain their vigil. The orks have ignored thirty-seven per cent of them, leaving many of them transmitting well behind enemy lines.’ The Space Marine’s face twisted in a derisive sneer. ‘Simple brutes, incapable of appreciating the value of intelligence!’ He pointed to one of the pict screens, his finger stabbing at the broadcast image as though thrusting a sword into it. For Gamgin, the image was as familiar as it was despised.
‘The artillery barrage is being lifted,’ Gamgin said. ‘This is why. The orks are moving for the final push, bringing up one of their battlefortresses.’ The Iron Warrior’s eyes took on a cold glint. ‘Their warlord wants to be in on the kill personally.’
‘They might still use their big cannons,’ Rhodaan cautioned as he studied the grotesque ork machine. Bigger than a strike cruiser, the immense vehicle straddled the railway, exploiting the mag-plates to aid its propulsion. The mammoth barrel of an orbital cannon jutted from the front of the machine’s hull. It had been such weapons which had broken the Witch Wall and pulverised the Charybdis Line. With a range of several hundred kilo-metres, it might still prove an insurmountable obstacle to their plans.
Gamgin nodded in understanding. ‘It is time for Squad Kyrith to play their part,’ he said. He turned and gestured at a detailed map of Aboro, the underground networks of service tunnels and industrial sewers clearly picked out in neon ribbons of gold and azure. ‘The battlefortress is moving through quadrant alpha-seven. When it crosses into alpha-nine, it will be poised fifty metres from this sub-station.’ Gamgin’s finger pointed to a crimson smudge linked to one of the golden lines.
‘The orks have become callously arrogant in their push,’ Gamgin said. ‘Convinced they have crushed all but a token resistance, they have forgotten even the most rudimentary security protocols.’
Rhodaan clenched his hand into a fist. ‘I will give them reason to regret their confidence. The gun will be silenced.’
‘Do not compromise the enemy’s mobility,’ Gamgin warned.
The reminder brought a curl to Rhodaan’s lips. ‘I am no half-seed,’ he hissed back. ‘I do not forget my orders. I do not fail in my duty.’
The last barb brought a flash of colour to Gamgin’s features. ‘Your ability had better equal your boasting,’ he snarled, ‘because I will be waiting for you in the Eye!’
Rhodaan slammed his fist across his chest in salute. ‘A long wait, brother,’ he growled as he turned his back on the command carriage. As he marched back along the ramp, he scolded himself for his anger. Gamgin was of no consequence. His career was over.
It was wasteful to squander hate on the dead.
The nexus of quadrants alpha-seven and alpha-nine was a scene of ruin and desolation. Fires raged unchecked, sewage bubbled from ruptured pipes, waste-gases vented from shattered collection vats. The charred husk of a reclamation tower leaned precariously against the burned-out rubble of an ore-smashing facility. The skeletal framework of a servo-crane lay strewn across the street, its cybernetic operator still pawing mindlessly at the charred control column.
‘The xenos have done a good job flattening this sector,’ observed Brother Gomorie, his afflicted hand flowing into a cleaver-like appendage in emulation of the image. Strange reflections played across the infected mess of flesh and metal, too suggestive in their resemblance to coherent images to be merely a trick of shadow and flame.
Crouched within the exposed sub-cellar of a shelled warehouse, the Space Marines of Squad Kyrith shifted away from Gomorie, uncomfortable with this reminder of their battle-brother’s affliction. The taint was a symbol of the raw, undisciplined nature of Chaos. It was a reminder of the menace that lurked inside each of them, the unfocused power which might rise up to overwhelm them in mind and body. It was a warning of what it meant to fail the Legion, to be consumed by the weakness of mere humanity. Mankind was the prey of such forces, only a Space Marine had the force of will to resist and restrain such power. Chaos was a power to be harnessed by those with the strength and vision to use it. Yet each of them knew that few, even among the Space Marines, had such strength. Gomorie was an example that even among the Iron Warriors there was weakness.
‘Inefficient,’ Baelfegor grumbled with contempt, keeping his eyes turned from Gomorie’s hand. ‘With all the ordnance they’ve fired, we could have smashed an entire world.’
‘Perhaps you should offer your services to the xenos as military advisor,’ Uzraal sneered. ‘They’d probably make you a general, half-seed. If they didn’t shoot you outright for your incessant complaining!’
Baelfegor bristled at the insult, his hand clenching tight about the grip of his meltagun. ‘We must discuss this again, brother. At a more appropriate time.’
Uzraal leaned into the other Space Marine’s face. ‘I welcome it,’ he hissed. ‘You are little more than a flesh-maggot in my eyes.’
‘Don’t let the orks shoot you, brother,’ Baelfegor growled back, enjoying the way Uzraal grew tense when their kinship was addressed. ‘I should hate to be cheated because you were clumsy.’
The whirring edge of Rhodaan’s chainsword suddenly sliced down between the two Iron Warriors, missing the masks of their helms by a matter of centimetres. Baelfegor and Uzraal cringed away from the menacing blade.
‘Keep your focus on the mission,’ Rhodaan snarled at them. ‘I will tell you when you have permission to die.’ He could feel the hatred of the reprimanded Iron Warriors stabbing at him from behind the optics of their helmets. Good, he thought. Let them hate, so long as they fear. Fear was obedience, no different for his fellow Space Marines than it was for the miserable Flesh who fed their war machine.
The walls of the pit-like sub-cellar trembled, sending scorched beams and shapeless lumps of heat-blasted
ferrocrete tumbling into the depression. Rhodaan focused upon the tiny display of the data-slate he held, the feed from a nearby Steel Blood. The transmission depicted the gigantic ork battlefortress ploughing through the ruins, its enormity far in excess of the trains the tracks had been designed for. Buildings were brushed aside by the oncoming behemoth, its hull pulverising walls into rubble as it forced its way onwards. Rhodaan could almost hear the ground whining in protest as the prodigious weight of the machine pressed down upon it. That the mag-plates could afford any kind of support to such a monstrosity was grim testament to the genius of the Iron Warriors’ engineering.
The orks had profited long enough from such genius. Now the xenos would become victims of it.
‘Stand ready!’ Rhodaan barked, loosening the catch on his plasma pistol’s holster. The other Space Marines followed his example. Soon the pit resounded with the metallic whine of idling turbines as the Raptors activated their jump packs.
The tremor’s violence continued to rise, the roar of collapsing buildings becoming a deafening clamour. A smog of dust and debris bill
owed across the mouth of the pit, blotting out the Space Marines’ view of the polluted sky. Now, the groan of pulverised architecture was accompanied by the mechanical shriek of mighty engines, the bellow of driving pistons and the crazed chatter of firing guns.
Rhodaan’s horned helm stared straight up into the obscuring dust. ‘Iron within! Iron without!’ he shouted as his thumb depressed the launch rune and his pack’s thrusters launched him into the sky. He could hear the battle cry repeated by the other Raptors as they flew after him.
It took only the blink of an eye to clear the gritty smog of dust and wreckage. One instant, Rhodaan’s vision was consumed by a grey oblivion. The next he was hundreds of metres above the burning streets of Aboro, staring down at the Cyclopean enormity of the ork battle-fortress. Turrets and weapon batteries protruded from every corner of the colossus, scattered about in random disarray. Tall towers, ornamented with scrap-metal glyphs and primitive clan heraldry, bristled from the top of the hull, a crazed forest of gun emplacements, observation posts and communication hubs. As the Iron Warriors shot up into the sky, they could see clusters of orks firing their weapons into the ruins, venting their bloodlust in a display of mindless aggression. Those few who were observant enough to notice the Raptors as they rocketed into the sky could only blink in open-mouthed confusion, their savage brains losing precious seconds as they struggled to comprehend what they were seeing.
Before the orks could react, the Iron Warriors were diving down upon them. Pazuriel smashed into the tallest of the towers, pulverising the face of a stunned ork with his boot as he descended. An instant later and the Raptor’s chainaxe was transforming the observation post into an abattoir. Gomorie landed upon the flat roof of an anti-aircraft emplacement, his bolt pistol rupturing ork flesh with a steady fusillade of explosive rounds while his afflicted hand lengthened into an eviscerating tendril of flailing bio-steel.
Leaving his battle-brothers to spread alarm among the xenos and keep their focus upon the towers, Rhodaan spread his demi-organic wings and dived upon the yawning mouth of the main gun, its bore a full ten metres wide. Baelfegor and Uzraal followed in his wake. All three Iron Warriors struck their objective at the same moment, the mag-clamps within their boots gripping the surface of the cannon. The three Raptors had only a second to gain their bearings before bullets began ricocheting off the surface of the cannon. From a confusion of gantries and catwalks fixed to the hull of the battlefortress, a swarm of orks appeared. The aliens hooted and howled as they fired down at the Iron Warriors.