by C. L. Werner
‘Iron within! Iron without!’ the other Raptors roared, marching towards the doorway. One by one, the Space Marines leapt from the assault boat, hurtling into a sky blackened by clouds of flak, plummeting hundreds of metres before igniting their jump packs and launching themselves at the gigantic hull of the battlefortress.
Rhodaan waited until each Iron Warrior was deployed. He hesitated in the doorway, glancing back at Merihem’s imposing bulk. ‘If the transport can land close enough, I will see you inside, brother.’
‘You will see me inside,’ Merihem assured him. ‘Flesh will not fail Iron,’ he assured, his face peeling back in a daemonic leer.
Rhodaan turned his back on the monster, flinging himself out into the polluted sky. As he descended, he felt an uncharacteristic twinge of pity for the crew of the assault boat.
If the orks killed them, they would be lucky men indeed.
Without warning, the orks resumed their artillery barrage, pounding Vorago even more viciously than before. It was wild, erratic fire, spread throughout the city without any strategy or concentration. Shells exploded in the destroyed Omicron-Sigma with as much frequency as they did within the ‘secure’ districts beyond the firebreaks. Even the Iron Bastion was victimized, the megalithic tower’s void shields crackling with a spectral glow as xenos ordnance detonated against the force field.
Yuxiang covered his ears and opened his mouth as he crouched in the bottom of the firing pit, aping the actions of some janissaries he had seen caught beneath the fury of an artillery strike. He kept his eyes open, however, stubbornly refusing to close them even when smoke and dust skittered through the narrow slit in the wall, coating the slaves inside with a layer of gritty filth. All but deaf from the thundering guns, he was determined he would at least see death when it came for him.
Shenlau, displaying even more stubbornness, kept himself at the firing slit, the lasgun thrust through the opening. The man exhibited such unwavering commitment and resolve that even the Iron Warriors could have found no fault in the slave’s courage. With the firebreak itself shaking and trembling under the fury of the barrage, Shenlau maintained his vigil, immovable as a statue, as steadfast as a mountain.
It took Yuxiang several minutes to realise the reason for his companion’s composure was that the man was dead. Little beads of blood dripping down the wall, that was his clue. Timidly, he reached out a hand and tugged at Shenlau’s leg. When there was no response, he recoiled in disgust. Yuxiang was no stranger to death, no man of Castellax was ever far from its shadow, but to be trapped alone, within the narrow confines of the pit… It was a thing that awakened horror in his mind.
As though sensing Yuxiang’s fear, the corpse abruptly lost its poise and toppled from where it had been standing, spilling across the pit and trapping Yuxiang beneath it.
The slave shrieked in terror, squirming under the morbid weight, trying to push it off of him. Every effort was thwarted by the confines of the pit, the corpse invariably striking a wall and sliding back down upon him. Yuxiang could see the grisly gash in Shenlau’s forehead where a sliver of shrapnel had split open his skull. A greasy slime of brains and blood oozed from the wound, turning black as it absorbed the ferrocrete dust coating the cadaver’s face.
Many horrible minutes passed as Yuxiang struggled with a dead man. It was only by squeezing himself against the back of the wall and using his legs to lever Shenlau to one side that he was finally able to extricate himself from the abhorrent weight. More minutes passed as Yuxiang stared in loathing at the body, trying to force his brain to accept its disgusting presence and closeness.
The violence of the ork artillery began to slacken, dropping from a deafening thunder to a sporadic rumble. The comparative silence came almost as a shock to Yuxiang. Suddenly, it seemed, he could hear again. Faintly, dimly, voices drifted down to him from above. There was another sound as well, a wet, meaty sound that he couldn’t account for, but which sent a chill down his spine all the same.
Frightened into action, Yuxiang forgot his loathing of the corpse and instead crouched over it, trying to roll it away from the wall in a frantic search for the lasgun. Shenlau was already starting to grow stiff, making the effort doubly difficult. Only by pressing his entire weight against each leg and breaking it at the knee was Yuxiang finally able to move the corpse and slip past it towards the firing slit.
The lasgun was there! Eagerly Yuxiang grabbed the weapon, his fingers wrapping about its grip with the desperate gentleness of a lover. The sounds drifting down into the pit were closer now, resolving themselves into words.
‘Post three-forty-two,’ a nasally pitched voice cried out. ‘Two conscripts.’ There was a pause, then the voice continued. ‘Two subjects for disposal. Forward a claim for replacements to central processing.’
Disposal. The word made Yuxiang’s stomach lurch. The voice he was hearing belonged to corpse-collectors, making their rounds and fishing the dead from the firing pits.
He looked aside at Shenlau. At least he would soon be spared the noxious company of a corpse. The disposal team would pull him out and then a new conscript would be sent to replace him.
How will that help me? Yuxiang wondered. He stared up at the lip of the pit, watching as shadows began to play across the surface. He hefted the lasgun, aiming upwards. Quickly he lowered the weapon, disabusing himself of the reckless and suicidal impulse. Even if he killed the men in the disposal team, it wouldn’t get him out of the pit. Janissaries would just come along and shoot him like a rat for daring to rebel. The most bitter irony was that such a small act of defiance wouldn’t even be noticed by the Iron Warriors, rendering the very gesture worthless.
No, the only way Yuxiang could make his life count for something was to survive. To do that, he had to get out of the pit.
Staring at the body of Shenlau, a daring idea came to him. Fighting down his repugnance, he brought his hand sweeping down the corpse’s forehead, coating his palm in the dead man’s gore. Yuxiang hesitated a moment, staring in disgust at the filth, but the sound of the disposal team marching away from the nearest pit settled his repugnance. In one quick motion, he wiped the crud across his face, then threw himself to the ground.
‘Post two-forty-two,’ the voice called down. ‘Two conscripts.’ The corpse-collector peered down into the pit, his features obscured by a brutish gas mask and rebreather. ‘Anyone alive down there?’ he shouted. He paused a moment, then spoke to his comrades who were just out of sight. ‘Two subjects for disposal. Forward a claim for replacements to central processing.’
Behind his mask of gore, Yuxiang watched as a pair of burly, thuggish looking men wearing plastic dusters and ugly breath masks peered down into the pit. In the next moment, one of them produced a long, hook-headed spear. Yuxiang watched in silent horror as the men stabbed the weapon downwards, scraping it along the floor of the pit. He felt the cold steel rasp along his leg, cutting the skin as it progressed towards Shenlau. When the hook was close to the corpse, the man wielding it gave it a deft twist, slipping the barbed curve of the hook up and under the body’s arm. There was a revolting, meaty sound as the hook stabbed into the flesh. The next instant, both men were struggling with the spear, pulling it upwards hand-over-hand and dragging the body skewered on the end of the hook out of the pit.
Yuxiang’s insides went cold. They were going to do the same to him! He was committed now, he hadn’t called out when the overseer asked if anyone was alive. If they found out he was alive, he’d be shot as a coward. Yet if he tried to play dead, the terrible hook would come for him, sticking him like an insect on a pin. Hungry steel would tear his flesh…
There was no other way. He had to escape the pit. What he would do after that, Yuxiang didn’t know. All the mattered right now was getting out. Biting down on his own tongue, he waited for the bruisers to return. Now that he had resigned himself to the ordeal, everything seemed to move with excruciating slowness. The hook descended at a slothful rate, sliding clumsily along the floor i
n its advance. The disposer missed him on the first pass, compelling him to repeat the procedure. Yuxiang braced himself for the agony when the–
It was all he could do to keep from screaming when the blade stabbed into his body, slashing through skin and muscle, lodging itself against bone and sinew. Spots flashed before his eyes, he could hear his own blood pounding in his ears. Consciousness flickered; it was a fight to retain his awareness. If he submitted to the lure of oblivion, he might give himself away by some unconscious action, alerting the disposers that he was alive.
He had to stay awake. He had to stay aware and alert. It was the only way he could be certain.
Then the disposers began to extract him from the pit and all of Yuxiang’s weight came to bear on the hook embedded in his body. He thought he knew what pain was, but until that moment, he didn’t even have a clue.
His last conscious act was to clench his teeth against the scream he so desperately wanted to utter. Then the red agony overwhelmed him and awareness fled into some dark corner of his being.
Yuxiang didn’t see the overseer give him a cursory inspection as he was lifted from the pit. The man saw nothing different about Yuxiang than any of the hundreds of other corpses he had hauled away. With a shrill command, he led the two bruisers to a small, tank-like tractor, its bed piled with human carrion.
‘Those last two make a full weight quota,’ the overseer said.
The larger of the two disposers dumped Yuxiang unceremoniously on the top of the heap. ‘Back to processing?’ he asked, his tone making it clear the prospect didn’t please him.
‘Unless you want to stay around here and wait for the next ork attack,’ the overseer said.
That prospect seemed to disturb the disposers even more. Without a glance at their macabre cargo, they closed the gate at the rear of the tractor’s bed and scrambled around to the driver’s cabin. The combustion engine sputtered noisily into life and the tractor began its long journey into the bowels of Vorago.
An immense cliff of rusted metal, exposed wires, dangling chains and apparently random jumbles of scrap, the hull of the ork battlefortress towered before Captain Rhodaan as he dropped through the smoky sky. It was like a small city, if that city had been designed by an inattentive child with an overabundance of sadistic imagination and a little aptitude for symmetrical construction. Towers rose from slab-like masses of metal in seemingly random disorder, their sides bristling with spikes, guns and pipe-work gantries. Massive glyphs cut from sheet metal were bolted to every available surface, grinning in brutal glee at the destruction wrought by the aliens. From stem to stern, the battlefortress was nearly five kilometres long, its tallest towers and communication masts reaching at least a kilometre into the sky. Rhodaan could almost weep for the opportunity such a target would have offered their now vanquished orbital defence stations. Something so colossal could have been targeted from orbit with the naked eye and obliterated in a single bombardment.
A veritable curtain of firepower sizzled through the air around Rhodaan; occasionally a lucky shot would strike his power armour, glancing off the thick ceramite plates. It was as well for the Iron Warriors that the heaviest ordnance invariably found its way into the paws of the biggest orks. They were apt to be the most arrogant and belligerent, their vicious enthusiasm rendering their accuracy wild and erratic. Precision was left to the smaller breeds and these were forced to make do with whatever weaponry they could steal or scavenge.
Still, there was always the possibility of some xenos having the wit to take advantage of a human-crafted targeter system. Certain elements within the ork horde had displayed a propensity for aping human strategy and armament. An Iron Warrior did not march through millennia of unending warfare by leaving anything to chance if he could avoid it. As he hurtled through the sky, Rhodaan reached to his belt, thumbing small coin-like discs from the grenade dispenser. Touching their surface, he powered the tiny bombs into action, tossing them into the air around him. Instantly, thick black smoke billowed from the discs, choking the sky in inky darkness, further obscuring him from the deranged marksmanship of the orks.
Judging the distance between himself and the battlefortress, Rhodaan estimated he would need to repeat the procedure one more time. The Space Marine’s armoured bulk was dropping much faster than the grenades spewing his smoke screen. In a few seconds he would fall beyond the inky cloud and be exposed to the vision of his enemies.
Within his helmet, Rhodaan smiled coldly. The orks wouldn’t take advantage of that brief opportunity. Most of their fire was concentrated on the assault boat. It was typical of the xenos mentality to concentrate their attack on the biggest target, ignoring any other menace until it was too late. Through gaps in the smoke, Rhodaan could see the transport ship, its fuselage aflame, its nose a mass of twisted wreckage. While he watched, the ship smashed into the side of the battlefortress, its wings shorn away instantly by the impact, a great ball of fire welling up around it.
Nothing human could have survived the impact. The thought came to Rhodaan with a mixture of worry and relief, his feelings conflicting with his determination to carry out his mission and achieve his objective.
‘Brother Merihem?’ Rhodaan transmitted across the inter-squad vox-channel.
There was a moment of silence, then the gruesome crackle of Merihem’s voice slithered across the vox. ‘I… function,’ the Obliterator said.
Rhodaan deployed the second bunch of smoke grenades, exploiting his moment of exposure to orient himself with the layout of the hull. This close to it, he was again reminded of an Imperial cruiser dragged from orbit and cast adrift upon the desert. The similarity gave him inspiration. Before the smoke engulfed him once more, he used his demi-organic wings to steer towards a gun emplacement high upon the machine’s central superstructure.
‘Hone in on Squad Kyrith’s identifier,’ Rhodaan ordered. ‘Rendezvous with us at your first opportunity.’
Rhodaan could hear the chatter of gunfire across the vox-channel. ‘I obey,’ Merihem replied, his words almost drowned out by screaming aliens in the background.
No need to tell the Obliterator to kill everything in his way, telling the monster to do anything else would have been the problem. If they had sent a rabid tyranid hive tyrant rampaging through the belly of the battlefortress, the Raptors could have asked for no better diversion. Merihem would march through the orks like some primordial devil, flinging death at anything that dared show its face. The orks, with that wonderfully simple, savage lust for combat, would converge upon the marauding monster by the hundreds.
While the xenos were trying to stop Merihem, they would expose and neglect other sections of the battle-
fortress, easing the progress of the Raptors. In the long run, it was of no consequence if the orks destroyed Merihem or not, by drawing the aliens to him, the Obliterator would have served his purpose.
Rhodaan’s diving form ploughed through the last stretch of smoke. The Iron Warrior’s wings unfurled, arresting his descent almost instantaneously. He found himself directly above his objective, the flattened paddock where the orks had slapped together a flak battery. Leathery green faces gawped at him in surprise.
The armoured giant didn’t give the aliens a chance to recover from their shock. His plasma pistol blazed in his hand as he fired into the ork gunners, the super-heated gas melting through organ and bone with the ferocity of an enraged sun. Mortally wounded aliens collapsed in shuddering heaps, upsetting the belts of ammunition strewn about the platform.
Descending the final few metres to the deck in a graceful dip, Rhodaan’s boot crunched down on the skull of a mangled ork, grinding it into pulp. Folding his wings, Rhodaan fired his pistol at an ork huddled behind one of the flak guns, spraying the alien’s face with molten metal as the shot scorched along the creature’s cover. The injured ork hopped away, one paw covering its melted face while it fired blindly with the massive stub-pistol clenched in its other hand. A second shot of plasma settled the alien, dro
pping its steaming carcass over the railing which bounded the platform on three sides. Rhodaan could hear its coarse scream as it plunged down the side of the battlefortress to the desert far below.
‘Squad Kyrith, report,’ Rhodaan snarled over the vox, spinning as another lurking ork came rushing at him from behind a flat-bedded ammo cart. The alien’s momentum kept its body plunging towards the Iron Warrior even after a ball of plasma evaporated most of its head. Rhodaan side-stepped as the ork neared him, letting the corpse pitch over the side and hurtle after its comrade.
‘Brother Pazuriel. Have effected entry at missile emplacement one hundred metres east of your position.’
‘Brother Gomorie. Securing maintenance corridor fifty metres west.’
One after another, the other members of his squad reported to him across the vox. Rhodaan fitted each of their positions to the map he was drawing inside his brain. The cogitator inside his data-slate would perform the same function, but he knew no machine could ever match the mentality of a legionary. Cogitators could provide logistics and summations but they did not possess a Space Marine’s experience or the intuition born from the cauldron of war.
A hoarse bellow of rage brought Rhodaan sweeping towards the side of the gun emplacement. The egress hacked into the side of the hull opened with a hiss, exposing a massive ork with steel-capped tusks and an enormous steam-driven spanner clutched in its paws. Coldly, the Iron Warrior fired his pistol full into the alien’s face, then pushed the twitching body to one side. Beyond the dead ork was a long corridor, its deck uneven, a motley confusion of doors and stairs opening into it almost at random.
Almost, but not quite. Rhodaan could see the echo of a familiar pattern, as though he was peeling away layers of vandalism to peer at the defiled original. He felt no fear as a rabble of aliens came rushing down the corridor, barking and shooting as they came. Calmly, he aimed his pistol and began picking off the maddened brutes.