by C. L. Werner
The remaining janissaries took advantage of such pauses, retreating down the hallway. In an act of duty he knew to be futile, the major drew his laspistol and fired into the controls for the elevator behind him, desperately hoping to contain the escaped monster on this level of the tower. An instant later, one of his own soldiers, horrified to see their only hope of retreat destroyed, exploded the officer’s skull with a burst from his shotgun.
With nothing left to lose, the men trapped at the end of the corridor threw grenades at the oncoming giant. The concussion wave from the confined blast dropped a dozen men, their ears burst by the fury of the explosion. Their comrades didn’t spare them any attention, focusing instead on the smoke-filled hallway, desperately trying to see if their ploy had worked. Their hearts sickened after a moment as they heard Merihem’s ponderous tread once more. Through the smoke, the hideous giant appeared, the corrupt substance of his body already flowing back into the wounds inflicted by the grenades.
The last fifty janissaries opened fire. Merihem waded through the barrage as though it were no more threatening than a light rain. The Iron Warrior’s left arm lengthened, shaping itself into whirring blades not unlike the industrial saws in a manufactorum. The pallid face was soon darkened by spattered blood, but the vicious smirk remained.
It took the Obliterator only a moment to wrench open the armoured door to the elevator, a moment more to fuse his palm to the interior controls and allow his will to dominate the simple cogitator within. Something the little Flesh had said about his battle-brothers coming for him governed the command Merihem sent racing through the wires.
If Iron Warriors had come to the Oubliette, they would be on the roof. Merihem sent the lift speeding upwards. After so many years, he was eager to see his battle-brothers again.
‘It is free!’ Warden Zhroah shrieked. Desperately she tried to form her janissaries into a battle line, but even her threats were having a hard time overcoming their terror. Some fool in the command centre had broadcast images from the hallway to the pict screens on the landing pad. Every man on the roof had seen them before the warden cut off the transmission. Rather than face what was coming, seven of them had jumped off the tower. One of Rhodaan’s Raptors had been compelled to guard their assault boat and prevent the frightened men from stealing it.
The warden turned towards Rhodaan, falling to her knees as she begged the armoured giant for help. ‘You can stop him!’ she pleaded, trying to make herself believe her own words. ‘You have to stop him!’ she added when the Space Marine failed to take notice of her.
Rhodaan’s horned head turned, his optics glaring down at the woman. ‘We came here to bring back our battle-brother, not to destroy him.’
‘But he will kill us all!’ Zhroah cried.
The Iron Warrior stared back at the elevator, watching as the indicator sped towards the roof. ‘All Flesh dies,’ he said.
The heavy steel doors slid open as the carriage reached the top of the shaft. Zhroah’s janissaries sighted down the barrels of their weapons, each man tense and ready for action. The warden crept behind the soldiers, biting her lip to keep from giving the command to fire. The Iron Warriors wanted their corrupt brother alive, to take any action against Merihem would be to sign her own death warrant. Besides, she had seen the transmission. She knew how hopeless it was for mere men to defy something like the Obliterator. Rhodaan and his Space Marines were their only chance.
‘Brother Merihem,’ Rhodaan called out, his empty hands held away from his body in a non-threatening display. ‘We have come to bring you back to Vorago.’
The immense bulk of Merihem stalked out onto the landing pad, his movements wary as those of a wild beast. The Obliterator towered over the other Iron Warrior, neck sinking into his viscous body so that the lowered head might stare more easily at the Raptor. For an instant, as he advanced, Merihem’s body jerked backwards, his arm extending back towards the elevator. There was a sound of tearing metal. In the next instant, the extended arm was slithering back towards the Obliterator, the hand encased in the twisted remains of the control panel. Before the eyes of the onlookers, the debris began to corrode, bubbling into a molten mess that seeped into the monster’s body. Torn wires whipped away from the shaft, sinking into Merihem’s wrist.
The pallid face smiled coldly at Rhodaan. ‘It has been a long time,’ the Obliterator said, his voice sounding like slime sloshing in a sump pit. The black eyes narrowed. ‘I have not forgotten you, Rhodaan.’ Colourless lips peeled back, metal teeth gleamed. ‘This time, I will not leave enough of a leg for them to stitch back on.’
Rhodaan felt his hearts go cold at the reminder of what he had suffered the last time he had encountered the Obliterator. The abomination should have been destroyed then, but the Warsmith had dictated otherwise. The monster should have been left to rot in his cell regardless of the orks, but again, the Warsmith had decreed otherwise. Seldom had Rhodaan been more tempted to disobey an order, but his sense of duty held him back. Whatever his feelings, he had to obey Andraaz’s commands.
‘The Warsmith sent us,’ Rhodaan said, maintaining his composure as the hulking Merihem loomed over him.
‘Kind of him to remember me,’ Merihem sneered. ‘When I am finished with you, it will be his turn.’
Rhodaan shook his head and sighed with mock disappointment. ‘I had hoped you would be cooperative,’ he said.
While Merihem was still focused upon Rhodaan, Baelfegor and Pazuriel sprang into action. With incredible speed, the two Iron Warriors dived at the monster, their armoured fists pounding against the viscous morass of metal and wire. As they dashed away, they left behind fist-sized bombs magnetically clamped to the Obliterator’s body. Before the giant could react, the bombs detonated, engulfing Merihem in a blaze of crackling energy.
‘Haywire grenades,’ Rhodaan explained. ‘You might remember them from the last time you defied the Warsmith.’
The pallid face wailed in pain, the Obliterator’s huge bulk reared back as electricity crackled about it, sizzling along wires and dancing across plates. An ozone reek rolled across the roof.
Rhodaan stared up at the screaming monster. Haywire grenades were designed to disrupt energy transmissions, to shut down the electrical circulation within any machine, even one infested with the techno-organic Obliterator virus. ‘I am disappointed in you, brother,’ he told the writhing giant. ‘I had expected more of a fight.’
Merihem’s arm came whipping around, smashing into Rhodaan and flinging him across the roof. A half-dozen janissaries collapsed beneath the hurtling Space Marine, cushioning his fall and preventing him from pitching over the edge.
Electricity continued to crackle about the monster’s body, but the pallid face was no longer screaming. Instead, there was an expression of daemonic delight. Lurching forwards, the Obliterator started after Rhodaan, pausing only when Pazuriel and Baelfegor rushed at him, another set of bombs clenched in their fists. Merihem’s arm contracted into a muzzle and series of energy coils. As the two Iron Warriors ran at him, he sent a sonic concentration smashing into them. The Obliterator’s body had partially absorbed the first set of bombs, allowing him to understand their mechanism and the frequency by which they were armed. The sonic projection detonated the bombs the Raptors held, felling both of them as the servo-motors inside their power armour shorted out.
The delay was enough for Rhodaan to regain his feet. Grimly, he drew his chainsword and plasma pistol. ‘The Warsmith wants him alive,’ he called out. The reminder was for Uzraal, creeping around Merihem’s flank with a meltagun rather than the terrified janissaries and their puny efforts to bring down the monster.
‘Your concern is touching,’ Merihem growled, crushing the head of a janissary in one hand while raking three more with the autocannon that had formed at the end of his other arm. Energy still crackled around the monster’s body, as though the haywire grenades were still trying to bring him down.
‘Alive doesn’t mean unharmed,’ Rhodaan g
rowled back. With a fierce cry, he lunged at the Obliterator, a superheated shot from his pistol sizzling across the beast’s knee. Wires bubbled, metal burned as the star-fire scorched its way through Merihem’s leg. The Obliterator wobbled uneasily for a moment, then the two halves of his leg knitted back together. While Rhodaan’s pistol was still cooling down, the monster struck at him with his claw.
‘That might have worked before,’ Merihem jeered, not entirely surprised when Rhodaan dodged beneath the sweep of his claw. ‘But the gift has had a long time to work on me since last we met.’ The Obliterator’s chest bulged outwards in a cage of wire as Rhodaan chopped at him with the edge of his sword. The Raptor pulled back before he could become snared in the nest of metal, springing away as the monster’s left hand slashed at him.
‘The old tricks won’t work,’ Merihem scoffed. The Obliterator drew back, the metal of his arm parting to expose a mush of raw, pulsating flesh. ‘I have insulated myself, bundled my core within living flesh. So much for your disruptors!’ The monster’s smile became even more malignant. His arm bulged into a ring of autocannon muzzles. ‘So much for you!’
‘Brother Merihem! Remember you are an Iron Warrior. Remember your duty and your honour!’
The Obliterator’s head swung around, oozing along his neck until it faced backwards. The black eyes narrowed with scorn as he saw a lone Iron Warrior rushing towards him. The fool’s hands were empty, he hadn’t even remembered his weapon.
Just as Merihem was shifting his autocannon to address the interloper, the Obliterator noted one of the Space Marine’s hands. His smile collapsed as he recognised the infection. He froze, his gaze locked on to Gomorie’s hand. It was like looking into his own past, at the man he had once been. Duty, honour, the things that had once been the core of his identity, the things that had been so important before the virus had consumed him.
Rhodaan hesitated, studying Merihem’s reaction to Gomorie. He could almost see the training and hypno-conditioning reasserting themselves. There was a chance, just a chance, the monster would listen now.
‘Brother Merihem,’ Rhodaan called out, lowering his sword. ‘Castellax is besieged by xenos hordes. The abominable orks think to steal this world from the Iron Warriors. We will not allow that. We will slaughter every last one of them. Your place is with us, brother, fighting at our side. Reclaim the honour that is your right as an Iron Warrior!’
Merihem was silent for a moment, his gaze shifting between Rhodaan and Gomorie. At last, the monster relented, the autocannon disintegrating, melting back into the morass of his body. ‘I remember my duty. I will see the xenos driven from Castellax.’ The black eyes grew sharp, stabbing into Rhodaan’s optics. ‘But afterwards there will be a reckoning,’ the Obliterator promised. His head twisted around, staring across the roof. His little face curled into a malicious smile. From the end of his hand, a spear of metal shot forth, hurtling across the landing pad.
Warden Zhroah writhed on the end of the harpoon, blood bubbling across her lips as Merihem dragged her to him. Callously, he ripped the metal spike from her chest, studying her as she tried to suck air into ruptured lungs. As the warden expired, Merihem fixed Rhodaan with a menacing stare.
‘A reckoning, brother,’ the monster hissed.
Chapter XI
I-Day Plus Ninety
In the early dawn, as the sun’s rays struggled through the murk of Castellax’s diseased sky, the ork assault on Vorago began. For days the city had watched the aliens assemble on the polluted plains, a numberless horde that boiled up out of the desert like a hurricane. At first, small mobs of the invaders had charged directly for the gigantic perimeter wall which surrounded the city, throwing themselves upon the rings of defences that guarded Vorago in a display of brute aggression. Chainwire, minefields, pits of industrial acid, trenches lined with razored shards of scrap-metal, concealed deadfalls, ferrocrete barriers – all of them took their toll upon the impetuous attackers. In only a few hours, the outskirts of Vorago came to resemble a junkyard strewn with the broken wrecks of alien machines and the mangled shapes of alien carrion.
There was little real fighting in those first reckless attacks. From their positions on the walls, the Flesh could fire down into the orks with relative impunity. The few ork aircraft that put in an appearance were quickly shot down by the Castellax Air Cohort and the anti-air batteries strewn across the roofs of Vorago.
Algol knew that there would come a time when the Flesh of Vorago would look back upon those initial attacks as the ‘happy times’. If the aliens had been capable of deliberate strategy, he would have called those first charges probing attacks, but the reality was they were simple blind aggression, the wildest of the orks expending themselves in a reckless advance without plan or purpose. The result wasn’t a battle. Upon the formidable rings of traps and barriers the Iron Warriors had erected, the aliens died in their thousands.
Yet the defenders could take small comfort from the slaughter, for beyond the waves of ork buggies and trucks, the mobs of infantry and armour throwing themselves against the walls, Algol could see the real storm gathering. A vast encampment was taking shape, a great sprawling mass of orks that stretched across the horizon. Not in their hundreds or their thousands, but in their millions. It was almost like watching another city sprouting up from the parched dirt of the plain, a city peopled with giant monsters devoted to razing Vorago and killing everyone within its walls.
Distinct amid the sprawl of machines, tents, trenches and bivouacs, the grotesque bulk of the battlefortress towered. The second of the immense behemoths that had broken through the Witch Wall, the gargantuan machine formed the core of the ork encampment. An effort by the Air Cohort to bomb the thing had proven futile, only two planes had escaped from the murderous anti-air fire concentrated around the fortress. A Deathstrike missile had been launched from the Iron Bastion itself, but the weapon had detonated without effect against the crackling void fields protecting the battlefortress.
For three days, the orks waited and gathered their strength. On the third night, the darkness was violated by the fierce war cries rising from the alien camp, primitive howls and chants that were punctuated by the sound of weapons being discharged into the sky. All through the hours of darkness, the clamour continued unabated, sometimes growing louder, sometimes dropping to a dull roar, but always the noise was there. Until just before dawn, when an eerie quiet descended upon the ork camp, a brooding stillness that sent a chill into the weak hearts of the Flesh.
The stillness shattered as the first rays of dawn stabbed down onto the roofs of Vorago. From the ork camp came the deafening bellow of thousands of guns. The sky was torn by the shriek of shells as the titanic artillery barrage hurtled overhead. The city shook as death rained down upon it, tons of ferrocrete and stone flung into the air as explosions erupted throughout Vorago. Streets became choked with rubble, factories and hab-pens collapsed, fires raged unchecked.
Billowing outwards from the ork camp, rushing forwards beneath the roar of artillery, the xenos came. Tens of thousands of machines, advancing in a great mass of snarling engines and black promethium-smoke. After them came millions of infantry, mobs of hulking green warriors howling and bellowing, sometimes firing their weapons at the distant walls despite the extreme range. Vicious ork aircraft flew into the sky, not the handfuls that had been so easily dispatched before, but in their hundreds, entire squadrons of bombers and fighters, whole wings of box-like gunships and transports.
Algol felt a sense of exhilaration rush through him as he watched the battle begin. Simple, brutal creatures, the orks nevertheless possessed a degree of cunning. With callous opportunism, they concentrated their attack on those sections of the perimeter where the wreckage of their own comrades was thickest. In these regions, the traps laid by the Iron Warriors had already been expended, claiming their toll in casualties. By driving over the very bones of their own dead, the orks eased their passage through the outer defences.
Steadily, r
elentlessly, heedless of the fire being hurled down upon them from the walls, the orks ploughed closer and closer to Vorago.
The Skintaker smiled. It was going to be a good fight.
Taofang’s view of the attack abruptly became far more personal. A trio of ork gunships swept along the length of the perimeter wall, spitting death across the parapets with boltguns and heavy stubbers. Janissaries and conscripted slaves returned fire, peppering the bulky aircraft with a desperate fusillade of solid-shot and las-beams. The rattle of bullets and shells against the heavily armoured fuselages crackled down the length of the wall, mocking the horrified men below.
Contemptuously, the orks refused to withdraw in the face of the effort to repulse them. Instead, the doors set into the sides of the gunships rolled back, exposing compartments crammed with hulking green monsters. Barking their savage glee, the ork troops didn’t even wait for the gunships to descend to the parapets. Firing their weapons as they fell, the brutes dropped the four metres between gunship and wall. Their powerful bodies absorbed the shock of the impact, for the most part. Even those who suffered injury clung to a stubborn urge to fight. Taofang saw one ork, his body draped in plates of metal wired together in the crudest semblance of armour, land in such a way that its legs snapped like twigs beneath it. Rather than consider its hurt, however, the alien dug a big pistol from its belt and began shooting at a squad of janissaries. His last sight of the monster was watching it crawl after the squad, its broken legs dragging behind it.
Another of the gunships hovered only twenty metres from where Taofang and his platoon were positioned. The gunship was venting smoke and flame from a huge rent in its hull, the result of a missile fired at it from one of the flak towers inside the city. The pilot seemed to be making a concentrated effort to keep its ship airborne, its bloodied face visible through the glass cowling over the cockpit.
Taofang watched with horror as the door in the side of the gunship slid back. Smoke billowed from the compartment, the orks inside were black with burns and many were scarred with slivers of shrapnel. The janissary could imagine the carnage that had taken place within the gunship when it had been struck. By rights, these creatures should be counting themselves lucky and slinking back home to tend their wounds. Instead, their beady eyes were glowing with hate and a primal lust to destroy.