by C Z Dunn
‘Where are they landing, Serpicus?’ Ezekiel said, easily spotting the Techmarine towering above the assortment of Mordians and Vostroyans taking up their positions. Alongside him, Arch Magos Diezen chattered uncontrollably, a mixture of binaric gibberish and High Gothic numbers.
Serpicus looked skywards, augmetic eyes rapidly flicking in all directions. His visage grim, he turned to Ezekiel and spoke a single word.
‘Everywhere.’
The gun designated KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771 by Arch Magos Diezen and his explorator team tracked the rok’s descent, only firing at the optimum moment – the point when its destruction would also take out several similar craft dropping alongside it. Independently of the main guns, the battery of anti-aircraft defences sought out ork flyers and smaller roks, firing on near full auto as the skies became ever more crowded. Cogitator units sprang to life, back-ups installed millennia before as fail-safes called into use to bolster the weapons system’s processing capabilities, such was the volume of targeting data it was gathering.
The flow of data between Aurelianum’s defence turrets was constant, a river of information unseen by all but Serpicus and Diezen, further enhancing each battery’s computational power and streamlining the process of target allocation. Every single ork craft that survived the massive heat and gravitic stresses of entry was fed into the system, the distributed process determining which of the turrets would be responsible for its destruction.
A looted Navy Thunderbolt, repainted red and daubed with iconography indicating its new pilot’s tribal allegiance, became yet another line of binary as its threat was acknowledged by the turret network. In mere nanoseconds its extermination became the task of one of the anti-aircraft arrays slaved to KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771 and a volley of solid shot was fired to bring it down. Whether by accident or design – KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771’s machine-spirit cared not – the barrage clipped the wing of the ork flyer, whipping it into a spin as thick oily smoke spewed from one of its engines. Aware that the craft had not been destroyed, two more of KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771’s guns took aim, their shots also missing as, at the crucial moment, the Thunderbolt slammed against the side of a rapidly descending rok, altering both the speed and direction of its spin.
KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh45/5295331 was the next to try to bring it down, its anti-aircraft missiles well-suited to medium-range threats, but it too failed, both projectiles whizzing harmlessly past the Thunderbolt, unable to compensate for its erratic roll. KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh11/111112, KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh61/030502 and KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh22/987841 all tried in vain to down the craft, by now zig-zagging as well as tail spinning, but the predictions of the massed cogitators were undone by the unpredictability of its descent.
With no turrets able to offer an effective firing solution that would not risk harm to friendly forces or the city itself, the line of code representing the charmed Thunderbolt simply disappeared from the targeting system. KV/678H/PFXZ-2356677-srh89/777771 and its networked counterparts forgot it ever existed, all weapons freed up to eliminate the ever-increasing number of greenskins crowding the skies.
Meanwhile, the burning Thunderbolt spun ominously towards the heart of Aurelianum.
Ladbon Antilov was standing at the door of his cell, attempting to pick the lock with the makeshift tools he had bartered from his fellow prisoners, when the vision of the rapidly descending ork flyer overwhelmed him.
‘Back away! Back away!’ he yelled, dropping the eyelet from a Mordian standard-issue boot that he had shaped into a needle and throwing himself against the back wall of the cell. ‘Get away from the bars!’
The other inmates stared at Ladbon like he had gone mad, some even openly mocking him. When the Vostroyan repeated his warning, louder and with more urgency, several of his doubters slowly edged towards the corners of their cells.
The crash was heralded by the whine of dying engines, followed by the deafening thud of the initial impact into the upper floors of the Administratum building. The corkscrew motion of the Thunderbolt’s descent drove it downwards through the levels, its wings and tail shearing off as it drilled through solid masonry before coming to a halt embedded in the roof of the cell block.
Ladbon had closed his eye and covered his mouth and nose with his tunic to prevent dust and debris from blinding or choking him. It was a good minute before the haze started to clear and the same amount of time again before Ladbon was able to see clearly. During that period the only sense he could rely on was his hearing, the moans of the dying and wounded keeping him company in the darkness, but there was another sound too: metal being forced against metal.
With enough light pouring in through the thick cloud of motes, Ladbon could see the damage wrought upon his cell, bars twisted and bent from where building wreckage had clattered against them. One bar had come away from its mountings entirely, the snapped and burred pole driven into the rockcrete floor in the exact spot where Ladbon had been standing when the vision came to him.
With some effort, he removed it from its resting place and placed it into the gap it had left in the front of the cell, forcing the opening wider so that he could slip out of his prison. Breathing in, Ladbon squeezed through the opening, brass buttons tearing away from the fabric of his tunic. Now free of the confines of his cell, he finally realised where the sound of metal grinding on metal was coming from.
Perched perilously atop a mound of rubble, the remains – barely more than the fuselage – of the Thunderbolt rocked from side to side, as the pilot struggled to free itself from the cockpit. Beneath the shattered canopy, the enraged greenskin pushed with both of its meaty hands, occasionally contributing with its forehead, as it tried to free itself from a space never designed to accommodate the frame of an ork.
With a groan of stressed metal and a roar that was equal parts rage and relief, the canopy burst apart from the rest of the cockpit, the blood-soaked ork hauling itself out and groggily turning its head to get its bearings. The few surviving prisoners and guards, either stuck in their cells or looking for an escape route that didn’t involve navigating the debris-choked stairs, froze in abject terror. Ladbon did not.
Reaching back into his cell, Ladbon retrieved the bar he had used to free himself and started up the slope of rubble towards the ork. Though smaller than others he had encountered, the greenskin was no less of a threat – it was perhaps even more dangerous in its present, bloodied state. It bared its red-stained teeth, smiling in anticipation of the kill, and roared again. Then, lowering its head, it charged down the slope, its feet sliding beneath it as the debris shifted underfoot. Ladbon ducked beneath a flurry of blows as it swung blindly with both fists, and drove his makeshift spear up through the greenskin’s protruding chin and out of the top of its skull.
As he had anticipated, the thing did not die instantly, the pain of its fresh wound spurring it on to flail even more wildly. A vicious backhand caught Ladbon between the shoulder blades, sending him face first into shattered masonry. The ork bellowed once more, its savagery drowned by the blood in its throat, and it tore the bar from its head, raising it high ready to drive it down into the prone form of the Vostroyan. Ladbon flipped himself over just in time to witness the ork’s final moments.
As its brain finally registered that it was dead, the ork went limp, its eyes rolling back in their sockets. Gravity took over and it fell forwards, Ladbon barely getting out of its path as it crashed down onto the wreckage.
He lay there for a moment recovering his breath through shattered ribs until a Mordian hove into view above him, proffering a hand. Ladbon took it and raised himself to his feet. He surveyed the ruins of the cell block.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the rest of them out.’
Within the hour, the few survivors were free, pulled through prised-apart cell bars or rescued from under mounds of debris. Those who had managed to walk away relatively
unscathed helped those who were bleeding or had broken limbs. Ladbon was the last of them to make it to the top of the slope, clambering over the remains of the Thunderbolt to reach the floor above.
‘Are you coming with us, sir?’ said the Mordian who had helped him earlier. Ladbon was just about to respond in the affirmative when another vision engulfed him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s something else I need to do.’
Retracing his steps as best he could given the path of destruction torn by the errant ork flyer, Ladbon navigated the ruined corridors back to the governor’s office. He already knew what to expect when he got inside, which made the unsullied state of the exterior all the more surprising to him.
He twisted the handle and pushed the door open, the heavy plasteel coming to rest against fallen masonry, leaving an opening barely wider than the one he had slipped through to escape his cell. Once he had stepped over the threshold, the scale of the devastation hidden within became apparent. The entirety of the front wall was strewn across the floor, the tip of a wing sitting proudly amidst the rubble it had created.
Ladbon scrambled over the detritus to the spot where the governor’s desk had once been. There, just as the vision had shown him, was a section of roof, beneath which lay Marita’s father. Though exhausted from his efforts down in the cell block, Ladbon found the strength from somewhere to slide away the heavy block of stone. The governor blinked, the whites of his eyes stark against his dirt-streaked face.
‘I’m here to get you out,’ Ladbon said, lifting some smaller pieces of debris from the governor’s chest and shoulder.
‘No…’ the governor rasped. ‘It’s too late for me…’ He raised his arm weakly and gestured to the lower half of his body, or at least where it should have been. Pools of slowly drying blood emanated from another piece of roof that had crushed both his legs.
Ladbon forced a smile. ‘You’ve survived worse than this, you old warhorse. You told me yourself. You’d be surprised what they can do with augmetics these days.’
The governor smiled thinly, his laughter at the grim humour wet with blood. ‘Marita chose well, Ladbon. You are a good man, to comfort me like this in my dying moments.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like this, I can get you out of here.’
‘I am already dead, captain, but I pray to the God-Emperor that my daughter is not.’ The governor’s voice was barely more than a whisper and fading fast. ‘Go to her… Keep them both safe…’ The governor closed his eyes. He did not open them again.
Ladbon sighed heavily, grimacing at the reaction from his broken ribs. He carefully removed his tunic, reverently placing it over the corpse of Marita’s father.
Standing up, he made his way from the Administratum building determined to fulfil a dead man’s last wish.
Chapter Ten
The five-strong Dark Angels command squad sat in the troop hold of the Thunderhawk studying the fragmented data being relayed by the Sword of Caliban. Selenaz was leading the Imperial fleet in hit-and-run attacks, the strike cruiser’s sensors scanning the surface of Honoria only when it was in range to do so. The hololithic globe projected between them was incomplete but the information it relayed was grave.
‘They’re deploying in their entirety,’ Puriel said matter-of-factly, his words punctuated by the staccato chatter of the flyer’s heavy bolters as they cleared a path through the crowded skies.
‘Selenaz, what’s the situation up there?’ Zadakiel voxed.
For the next few moments, nothing but static fizzed across the Thunderhawk’s vox-caster. ‘We’re running out of targets,’ the shipmaster said eventually, voice laced with interference. ‘We’ve decimated the ork fleet but most craft made it planetside before we got to them.’
Zadakiel was thoughtful. ‘Disengage the Sword of Caliban and run reconnaissance. We need a complete picture of where the greenskins are deploying. They’re spreading out all over the planet but we need to know if they’re concentrating anywhere. Leave the Navy to pick off stragglers and maintain the blockade. If more reinforcements arrive, on no account are they to make it into orbit let alone to the surface.’
‘Affirmative,’ Selenaz said. The vox cut out with a hiss.
‘What’s the word from the outlying gates, Turmiel?’ Ezekiel asked.
The young Codicier was knelt at the end of the troop hold, eyes closed deep in concentration. His armour and robes gained a coat of frost as he reached through the aether to gather information from the scattered brothers of the Fifth Company.
All reports are the same,+ Turmiel communicated psychically to his superiors. +Ork forces are probing the defences at each gate, but all of them are holding so far. The only exception is the Tamhdu Gate. The defences are being probed in the same manner but the bulk of the ork forces there are holding back.+
‘Where is the Tamhdu Gate?’ Rephial asked, studying the hololith. As the assembled Dark Angels looked on, blank spots on the flickering globe turned red as the Sword of Caliban’s sensors revealed more and more of the ork deployments.
‘There,’ Serpicus said, jabbing a finger towards one spot in particular on the slowly rotating sphere.
The gate, like all others, was denoted on the schematic by a yellow triangle, but the area directly in front of it was a more concentrated shade of red.
‘Does Tamhdu overlook a steppes region?’ Puriel asked from behind his skull mask.
‘Yes. It’s surrounded by plains on three sides. The trenchworks are longer and deeper to compensate, but it could still be vulnerable,’ Serpicus said. As he spoke, the area of red around the gate on the globe grew darker.
‘That’s it. That’s where they’re massing,’ Zadakiel said. The pitch of the engines shifted, the Thunderhawk pilot already adjusting course.
‘Who’s stationed there?’ Ezekiel asked.
Brother Shadrach of Seventh Squad,+ Turmiel replied.
Ezekiel too reached out through the aether, hastily warning Brother Shadrach of what he was about to do. The Librarian closed his eyes, the temperature around him dropping by double digits.
When he opened them again, he was looking through Shadrach’s eyes. Either side of him, Vostroyan, Mordian and Honorian troops stood at the battlements, guns trained on the sea of green spread out before them. Ezekiel could feel the chill wind blowing against Shadrach’s face, smell the burning in the air from crashed ork roks and flyers, hear the battle-cries of the besieging force. The plasma cannon in Shadrach’s grasp felt strange to Ezekiel, his hands more accustomed to wielding a force sword and bolt pistol, and the Mark V power armour the warrior wore seemed more cumbersome than the Mark VI plate the Librarian had been given after his previous suit had been destroyed on Korsh.
Ezekiel turned Shadrach’s head, making full use of his battle-brother’s enhanced vision to gather as much information as he could: estimated troop numbers, any tanks and artillery pieces deployed alongside them, likely angle of attack. Ezekiel was just about to do a second sweep when something caught his attention on the very limits of Shadrach’s vision.
Originally yellow, the looted Land Raider had been crudely repainted in red, and had new apertures gouged into its hull, through which an assortment of additional weapons protruded. Thick, greasy smoke billowed from the multitude of exhaust ports added to the rear of the vehicle, and other adornments, both practical and inexplicable, broke the once clean, straight lines of the Land Raider’s silhouette. The top hatch was open and the upper torso of an ork – larger than any Ezekiel had seen before – poked through it, a primitive set of magnoculars in its hands, it too surveying the soon-to-be battlefield.
Spotting Shadrach atop the battlements of the gate, the ork stopped scanning from side to side and stared intently at the green-armoured figure, twiddling cogs and dials with fat fingers. The ork passed the magnoculars to a smaller subordinate sat on the Land Raider’s hull, revealing its savage
visage. Its lower jaw was made entirely of metal, serrated at the top to form a wicked set of razor-sharp teeth, and its left eye was surrounded by a star of lighter green tissue, lasting reminders of old wounds. Its bald, green scalp was a latticework of scars, many thick from where it had likely survived a blow from some kind of blade or axe, others like pockmarks left from shrapnel or a shotgun blast. Inlaid into the top of its skull was an offset row of long spikes, a Mohawk of metal dulled by dried blood.
It opened its mouth in a smile, revealing yellowed tusks behind the set of metal teeth, and slowly ran its finger across its throat, pointing to Shadrach with its other hand.
Ezekiel had seen enough. He broke the psychic link.
‘It’s there,’ Ezekiel said to his brother Dark Angels stood around him in the Thunderhawk. ‘The ork general is at the Tamhdu Gate.’
The Dark Angels disembarked from the rear ramp of the Thunderhawk and were greeted by an unexpected figure.
‘Arch Magos Diezen,’ Zadakiel said. ‘And it looks like your skitarii have finally decided to reveal themselves.’
In the days since the Dark Angels had arrived on Honoria, they had not seen a single warrior of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they had been able to monitor their movements and picked up the occasional burst of binaric cant across open vox-channels. Twenty of the more-machine-than-man warriors flanked the tech-priest, their robes and armour the same black and purple as Diezen’s robes.
‘The arch magos arrived at the Tamhdu Gate shortly before you did, company master,’ Shadrach said. Diezen himself was seemingly oblivious to the new arrivals, instead fussing and fiddling over Shadrach’s plasma cannon.