by Gav Thorpe
‘Fifteen seconds!’ he called out to his troops.
Ortor connected the key-box to the rune pad and the lead squads advanced several more strides, almost to the gates themselves. Shields crashed together, forming a wall inside the conveyor.
‘Ten seconds!’
Every warrior had a visor chronometer but there was nothing like an insistent voice in the ear to concentrate the mind. Rann took a moment to push power through the auto-senses of his armour, blanking his vision whilst boosting the aural signal. Through the mess of machinery and detonations he thought he could pick out bolter fire nearby. If he was right, it meant the vanguard had arrived just at the right time.
‘Five… Four… Three… Two… One…’
There was a pause, two more seconds, before the conveyor thudded to a halt, dipping ever so slightly so that the whole company tilted. Armour whined, compensating for the motion.
‘Doors!’
Ortor activated the connection and the great portal groaned open, revealing an expansive chamber as large as the one they had left, lit by strip lumens and the flare of bolt shells. A waft of lubricant, bolt propellant and stale sweat flowed past Rann.
Rounds started clanging against the doors and zinging into the conveyor. Detonations sparked along the front line of legionaries’ shields. Beyond them Rann could see the metal armour and yellow-and-white stripes of Iron Warriors squads, many of them turned to face a blur of yellow emerging from a distant stairway. Others had kept their weapons trained on the conveyors – Rann couldn’t fault the enemy fire discipline.
‘Advance!’ he bellowed, lifting his axe.
The conveyor filled with thunder as a hundred and fifty legionaries pounded out through the doors, soon joined by the clamour of bolters and the snap of plasma. A roar emanated in unison from four hundred external address grilles.
‘For Dorn and the Emperor!’
Varanzi approaches, thirty-five days before assault
It was hard to remember if this was the fifth or sixth day since the blizzard had begun. At least it spared them any more strafing runs from passing aircraft. The integrity officers had given up trying to marshal everybody into a single column; there were simply too many stragglers and they were losing their own in sudden flurries of snow or down unseen crevasses.
They’d been forced to leave the locomotive behind three days earlier. The track had simply stopped, running into a blasted plasma crater that shone like glass. It was impossible to know whether the hit had been deliberate or simply collateral damage from the ongoing bombardment of the Imperial Palace.
Now and then Zenobi thought she could see the towers among the half-seen mountain peaks, but Menber assured her it was impossible. Just more mountains, he said. The aurora of the defence screens still danced beyond the horizon, tinging the snowstorms with a blue-and-purple aura, flickered with the gold and silver of orbital attack. The rumble was constant, broken every few minutes by the higher-pitched whine of some other kind of projectile or the drawn-out, excoriating snarl of a plasma detonation. That they could hear anything over the strengthening winds was testament to the fury of the attack.
The cold reminded Zenobi of the first time she had been taken to the upper levels of Addaba by her aunties. The hive was nothing like the towering spires of some other cities, most of it spread a hundred and sixty kilometres outwards in the cradlespurs across the plains. Even so, its highest point was several kilometres above sea level, the air bitter.
She’d cried, only seven years old, her face stinging, gloveless hands bitten to the bone by the chill. She had wondered why her aunties had taken her there, but had been too upset to ask, thinking it was perhaps a punishment. She’d certainly appreciated the view, such as it was from freezing, scrunched eyes. And she’d been very fond of the heat of the forge line when she’d returned, reminding her that she belonged there.
Now she realised they’d just been showing her something different. They’d said nothing, faces wrapped in oil-stained rags as scarves, but she remembered now their look as they gazed far across the wastes of Afrik. It was a lesson that not everywhere was the same. Zenobi looked back and thought how different, how much bigger her world was now. They’d tried to show her a glimpse of what could be, of the lands beyond the walls of her home. Back then there might have been a chance she’d leave Addaba, either by herself or on a caravan, maybe meet someone she loved and travel to their home.
That had ended with the war. Nobody was allowed off the line without good reason. Dorn, and through him the Emperor, had needed Addaba to labour hard and unceasingly, dreams of distant cities and strange shores forgotten.
She almost stumbled over something at her feet. Zenobi thought it was a rock at first, dark beneath a thin layer of snow. Kettai stopped and pushed it with a foot, revealing it to be a coat-swathed corpse. It wasn’t someone from Addaba: the skin was far too pale, the hair straight and brown, not curled and black. He wore a blue uniform, a long dress coat of black with silver braiding hiding most of it.
‘Guess we’re… not the only ones that… came this way,’ said Menber, teeth chattering. His face was almost hidden between collar, improvised scarf and hood. He folded his hands under his armpits and stamped his feet.
Zenobi planted the banner pole in the snow and crouched beside the body. She reached out a hand covered with three layers of glove – the two larger pairs salvaged from companions that had succumbed to the elements. There was something on the man’s chest, almost hidden by ice.
‘Cut open,’ she said, pointing to a horrendous wound that ran from shoulder to gut. The injury was a wide, ragged cut that had splayed his ribs and chewed through internal organs. ‘What could do that?’
‘Keep moving!’ Okoye told them, emerging from the snow, his right side clad in white from the wind-blown ice. ‘If you stop you might not start again.’
Nobody had strength enough to protest. Zenobi retrieved the banner and plodded on, following in the larger footprints made by Menber, her shorter legs making harder work of the snowdrifts.
They found other mounds in the snow, more corpses. All of them were dressed as Imperial Army conscripts. Advancing with lasguns at the ready, about half a kilometre later they came upon the broken wreckage of tanks and transports, thirty in all. The vehicles had tried to form a circle but were heavily damaged, some of them with their roofs blown out, others with shattered track guards, links scattered beneath the snow waiting to trip the unwary.
There were hundreds of bodies, most of them still inside. Everything was frozen solid like a pictograph.
General-Captain Egwu had stopped amid the carnage and was in conference with Jawaahir and several others. Zenobi caught snippets of their conversation through the wind as she and the others trudged past.
‘…moved on by now. So many bolt impacts, it had to be the Warmaster’s legionaries,’ Egwu said. ‘We haven’t any choice but to push on. There’s a road about forty kilometres further along, we’ll follow that towards the Palace proper.’
‘And if we get attacked, captain?’ countered one of the attending lieutenants.
‘We fight, of course,’ answered Jawaahir. ‘We’re not here to martyr ourselves. The Addaba Free Corps will fight for its people, in whatever way it has to.’
Hers was the final say and the cabal of officers moved to continue on their way.
‘You!’ Egwu called out through the blizzard. Zenobi stopped and looked around, trying to see who she was shouting for. The general-captain pointed directly at her and turned, forging through the snow.
‘Trooper Adedeji!’ Egwu’s face was burnt down one side, the scar tissue twisting strangely as she grinned. ‘Zenobi, isn’t it?’
She nodded her reply, not sure what to say. Jawaahir loomed out of the snow beside the general-captain, brow furrowed.
‘What’s this?’ Egwu asked, pointing to the pole across Zenobi�
��s shoulders. ‘You’re still carrying the banner?’
‘Of course, bana-madam. I’d never leave this behind!’
‘See?’ said Egwu, rounding on her officers, proving some point that Zenobi was not aware of. ‘Trooper Adedeji has carried the company standard for two hundred and thirty kilometres already. Nothing’s going to stop her getting to the battle.’
Zenobi saw an opportunity to ask a question that had been nagging at her and her companions for several days. There were quite a few of them nearby, having stopped to witness the conversation.
‘How much further, bana-madam? How long until we reach the Imperial Palace?’
Jawaahir replied first, waving a hand to the north. There were frozen droplets on her eyelashes, her cheeks even more sunken than before.
‘Are you sure that’s where you want to go, Adedeji?’ she asked. ‘The wrath of Horus falls with a thousand shells an hour. The Emperor’s aegis weakens by the day. You know it is only a matter of time before it fails and the Palace will break under the Warmaster’s anger.’
‘Where else would we fight?’ said Zenobi. She turned her gaze back to the general-captain. ‘How far is it?’
Egwu glanced away and for a moment Zenobi thought she was not going to answer. Then she looked back at the trooper, her expression intent.
‘Nearly a thousand kilometres, Zenobi. Over mountains and valleys, higher and higher, the air thinner and thinner, as winter grows colder.’
‘Thank you.’
Zenobi shifted the weight of the company standard and turned to the other troopers. She met the gaze of a few, Menber included. Some looked worried, confronting the challenge ahead. Others matched her look of determination.
She said nothing else but started walking, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the next, for as long as she needed to.
Attrition
Iron within
Amon and the Neverborn
Lion’s Gate space port, stratophex core, six days since assault
The darkness was split by the flare of bolts snarling back and forth across the lading hall. The vast space echoed with the discharge of weapons and the crack of impacts, cut through with the hiss of plasma bolts and high-pitched whine of melta weapons. Every flash threw stark light onto the rows of Iron Warriors that held the upper gantries and walkways, and across a black void a solid barrier of shields emblazoned with the device of the Imperial Fists. Half-seen chains and lifting rigs lurked in the shadows, the floor and mezzanines scattered with the broken remains of the IV Legion’s last attempt to cross the open ground.
That assault had been ten hours earlier. Since then Forrix’s Iron Warriors had been caught in an ever-tightening noose of Imperial Fists and Imperial Army auxiliaries. The latter were a lesser threat, the confines of the chambers and passages around the reactor relays a poor environment for massed platoons. Unable to make their numbers count against their far superior opponents, the Emperor’s soldiers were being used to slow down breakout attempts, selling their lives for just long enough to allow the Imperial Fists to bring more potent opposition to bear.
It was a callous tactic, and Forrix found himself admiring the commander that employed it, whoever that was. Perhaps Sigismund, the famed First Captain, though there had been no report of Dorn’s Blade in any of the encounters so far. It might have even been the hand of Dorn himself that pulled the defenders’ strings.
It didn’t matter. Forrix had only two concerns as he stood on the line with his warriors, firing his bolter down at the shield-bearers below. Concerns he voiced when Captain Gharal voxed a request to withdraw several squads to the rearguard.
‘If we weaken here, the Imperial Fists will push us into the anterior channels. They will be able to set up a secure picket across five levels of the transfer station, blocking all access to the reactor conduits.’
‘If we continue to engage at this intensity, triarch, we will run into logistical issues within seven hours. Better to withdraw and temper the level of battle, and fight for longer. The lead companies of the aerial assault force are only two kilometres away.’
‘Logistical issues? You mean ammunition supply?’
‘Stimulant infusions are reaching unsafe levels. Armour recycling systems need flushing before they start passing toxic elements back into our bodies. Nobody has slept. At the ninety-six-hour mark mental fatigue starts to accelerate rapidly.’
‘You want to rest?’ Forrix poured all of his scorn into those words, then regretted the rebuke immediately. Gharal was leading the upper elements of the force, half a kilometre away. If he chose to make a breakout – not an unreasonable strategy – he would leave Forrix utterly bereft of support. He assumed a more accommodating tone. ‘Your attention to the longer-term viability of our force is commendable. And yet, survival is only one of our two objectives, captain.’
‘What do you mean, triarch?’
A lascannon pulse burned through the wall just above Forrix’s head showering droplets of molten plasteel onto his armour. He shifted to his left, allowing Merrig and his reaper autocannon to take position and return fire. The pound of the twin-barrelled weapon shook the walkway for several seconds until the gunner stepped back, lifting his smoking weapon.
‘Enemy heavy weapon eliminated, triarch,’ he said with a hint of pleasure.
Forrix banged a fist against the warrior’s shoulder guard, a mark of praise, and then pointed for him to move further along the walkway to find another target worth expending his precious ammunition upon.
‘What was I saying? Survival. I don’t plan to simply be the bone these dogs of Dorn chew on while Kroeger takes the bridges above. I aim to live long enough to see them all dead. To do that, odd as it seems, we have to make ourselves as much trouble as possible. We’re not getting out of here alive by ourselves, Gharal. We need that relief column.’
‘It’s no good to us if we’re all dead when it arrives,’ said the captain, voice strained.
‘The wave attacks through the lower levels ran out of momentum six hours ago. Thirty thousand of the Fourth that followed the lesser formations are engaged in brutal back-and-forth with Dorn’s sons. Most of them are new recuits, barely worth the armour they wear. They are not coming. That leaves just the suborbital attack force. If they are going to reach us, we need to draw away as much opposition as possible. We have to remain a mobile and relevant threat.’
‘I understand, triarch. If I relocate westwards by three hundred metres there is a maintenance conveyor shaft. We’ll be abandoning the upper perimeter but we can flank the defence of the plasma conduits.’
‘So commanded,’ Forrix said without hesitation. ‘I will pull back a company on my left as a feint, to draw more enemy inwards towards the central force. That will give you time to break off engagement and move.’
‘Affirmative. Will commence manoeuvre in ten minutes.’
The vox crackled into inactivity, replaced by the cacophony of the battle that raged around Forrix. Once he’d ordered Lieutenant Sarpara to pull back on the flank, his mind’s eye shifted from the wider area to his immediate locale. The warriors of the IV Legion needed to get across the open ground between the conjunctions of stairwells and walkways, but the Imperial Fists were content to defend the opposite side of the hall, ready to cut down anything that ventured out from cover.
‘Lieutenant Dreik, have your Iron Havocs ready,’ he voxed. ‘Assemble on me for dedicated strike force. All other legionaries maintain fire discipline.’
He mustered together eight squads from his surroundings, moving them down several levels towards the floor of the lading hall while squads of Iron Havocs with lascannons, plasma cannons, multi-meltas, autocannons and other support weaponry made their way to him from across the force. At the ten-minute mark, as Sarpara and Gharal would both be making their moves, Forrix ordered the attack.
Targeting a narrow front of the
Imperial Fists’ line, about a hundred metres wide and five storeys high, the ad hoc Iron Havocs company unleashed a torrent of shells, las-bolts and plasma, while Forrix’s squads burst down the remaining steps and loading ramps.
‘Hold bolter fire!’ he bellowed at his warriors. The fusillade above masked their energy signature and he didn’t want anyone to give away their position in the darkness. ‘Wait for my command.’
Plasma bolts smashed into shields and armour, slashing through both while salvos of reaper rounds and heavy bolter fire tore into the gaps carved by lascannon hits. Pounding across the ferrocrete floor, splashing through puddles of blood and oil, Forrix panted hard, hearts and lungs pushed to capacity.
The first sparks of bolter fire sliced down into his force, passing over him into the squads behind. There were several shouts from injured legionaries.
‘Keep moving!’ Forrix ordered, straining even harder, his armour carrying him forward in three-metre strides.
The heavy weapons flared hard for several more seconds, punishing those foes that had remained in the arc of fire. By light of lascannon bursts and detonating bolter rounds, Forrix saw yellow-armoured legionaries ripped apart, their plate no match for the power of the weapons levelled against them.
Through the flare of the Iron Warriors’ heavy weapons poured more bolter fire from the Imperial Fists above – but not directly ahead. The brief but massed fire of the heavy weapons had done its job, carving a narrow but telling wound into the defence line. Forrix and the lead squads gained the stairwells opposite unhindered, crashing over the bodies of Dorn’s sons.
‘Split by combat squad and provide cover to gather weapons and ammunition,’ Forrix ordered. Half of his warriors set upon the corpses of the Imperial Fists, ripping free bolters and magazines, tearing boarding shields and blades from their dead hands. The others pushed outwards as more squads piled into the breach, securing the level above.
‘Lieutenant Uhaz, what are the enemy doing?’ he voxed.