Kenjari had been taken out onto the moon’s surface and ordered to dig.
He had been surrounded by hundreds of other men with axes and shovels, doing the same. He hadn’t been introduced to any of them and none had spoken to him; few would even meet his gaze. They were intent upon their work. With their eyes, their faces, shrouded, they hardly seemed human. He was dressed the same as they were, he had realised; he must have seemed as inhuman to them.
His new co-workers were nothing if not efficient. They had soon dug a trench, a metre and a half deep and several kilometres wide, out of the obdurate black ground. Dropping down into it they had begun to extend tunnels from it, leading eastward towards the xenos’ castle. He was inching his way back towards the one place he had been desperate to avoid.
Kenjari hadn’t known that his helmet contained a comm-bead until a voice sounded in his ear, informing him that his work shift was over. He followed the others’ lead, waiting for someone to take his axe from him before he joined the throng clambering out of the trenches and returning to their campsite.
The voice had spoken again, requiring a Trooper 3117-Delta to report to a Commissar Dast. Kenjari had recalled being given a number and, fumbling for his dog tags, had found it. He had had to ask where Dast could be found, and was pointed towards an eagle-shaped drop ship, one of several on the ground.
Dast had turned the ship’s passenger compartment into his temporary quarters and office. He had been the first – and was still the only – soldier here who seemed to have a name; inside his air-conditioned sanctum, he had taken off his mask too.
The commissar had heavy jowls, pasty skin and an unnerving, narrow-eyed stare. He was also possessed of a brusque, impatient manner. He had asked Kenjari his name, age, occupation, height, weight, birthplace and medical history, while an aide tapped his answers into a data-slate.
There were no ships available to take him home, Dast told him. Nor could the Astra Militarum afford to feed a useless mouth. Kenjari had hurried to assure him that he would earn his keep. Dast had nodded, grimly, brought a stamp down hard on top of a sheaf of forms, thrust the forms across his desk towards Kenjari and informed him that now he belonged to the 319th Krieg Siege Regiment.
He was told to report to the quartermaster to be issued with arms and ammunition. Kenjari had felt his throat drying up. He had tried to explain that he hadn’t been trained to fight, but Dast had dismissed him sharply. He had stepped out of the drop ship’s hatchway in a daze. Suddenly, he was a soldier.
He had grown to hate Dast almost as much as he feared him.
His was a constant, interfering presence in the newly-dug trenches; with the drop ships returned to their orbiting cruiser, he wore his mask at all times, but was recognisable by his broad frame and commissar’s cap.
It was the commissar’s job to enforce discipline, though it seemed to Kenjari that few of the Krieg men needed it. In contrast, Dast could always find fault with Kenjari’s conduct: he wasn’t working quickly enough, hadn’t cleaned his lasgun thoroughly enough or saluted the commissar smartly enough.
He had threatened to have Kenjari flogged or shot.
Once, Dast had pressed his bolt pistol up against a Guardsman’s temple and squeezed the trigger. The safety catch had been on; the commissar had called it a warning. Kenjari had learned later that his victim was another non-Krieg citizen, another Agides miner, one whose name he vaguely recalled. He too had escaped the crash of the xenos castle relatively unscathed, to find himself enlisted.
At last, he had thought, someone he could talk to, someone who might understand.
By the time his shift had ended, however, the other man had faded into a crowd of black greatcoats and blank-eyed masks, and Kenjari couldn’t find him again.
He had longed for the sound of conversation, to begin with, if only to break up the monotonous rhythm of the cannons. He had come to appreciate that rhythm, however, and to fear the sounds that disturbed it: the occasional answering crumps from the turrets of the castle; the drones of xenos bombers overhead; or an officer’s voice, coldly feeding life-and-death instructions through his earpiece.
Thus far, Kenjari had been lucky. He hadn’t been sent over the top of the trenches yet. He hadn’t had to draw the gun that sat so uncomfortably at his hip. When the xenos – ‘orks’, the voices in his earpiece called them – had attacked, he had been left to man his Earthshaker cannon against them from a comfortable distance.
The closest he had come to the sudden, explosive death he so feared had been when a shadow had passed over his head and his failing ears had thrummed with the roar of aircraft engines. He had dived, instinctively, for cover. His sergeant had hauled him to his feet, screaming in his face – Dast hadn’t been present, fortunately for him – but Kenjari hadn’t been able to hear the reprimand.
The bomb that had been meant for their emplacement exploded on its lip instead, lighting up the sky and showering them with dirt and shrapnel.
Kenjari, still shaken, had been thrust back into work. The Earthshaker had been loaded and its barrel cranked skyward, waiting for the enemy to make another pass.
Instead, the xenos bomber had wheeled around and flown back towards the castle, venting black smoke from an engine pod. It must have been hit by one of the other cannons. Kenjari’s heart had been beating like a hammer, and his face had been drenched in cold sweat behind his mask.
An hour later, he had been digging again: not a trench this time, but a pit, a mass grave for those who had been less fortunate than he had; rather, for their bloody, dismembered limbs and mangled heads and torsos.
These past few weeks, he had done a great deal of digging.
This morning, there had been new stars in the sky again: more xenos, he had feared, until he had learned the truth. The newcomers were more servants of the Imperium: Adeptus Astartes, humanity’s much-vaunted defenders. He had wondered, briefly, if they would defend him too; if they might be the ones to rescue him, after all.
He had chased the thought away: a foolish dream.
He knew there was no saving him now. Kenjari knew how he would likely die; at least, where his mortal remains would come to rest: in a burial pit like this one, unidentified, un-mourned and indistinguishable from all the others.
His future was becoming more certain to him each day.
And yet, still it scared him witless.
CHAPTER V
The tanks advanced on Sergeant Lucien’s mark.
His Predator Annihilators and Vindicators separated into two columns, grinding their ways around the north and south ends of the Krieg trenches. Their guns had shorter ranges than the static Earthshakers, but would do more damage to their target when they hit it.
Lucien stood outside the command dugout, reluctant to be confined within it. Inside, the Krieg captain and his commissar pored over a tactical hololith, which was constantly updated by tireless aides as voxed field reports were received.
Lucien only had to raise his head to overlook the trenches, to see two lines of bright blue ceramite and plasteel converging upon their objective; as always, the sight spurred a patriotic fervour in his hearts.
‘Sergeant, what is our mission?’ a slightly slurred voice rumbled inside his ear. It was Ultracius, voxing him from the surface.
‘We are to take the star fort,’ he answered.
‘An Imperial star fort?’ the Dreadnought queried.
‘In ork hands,’ Lucien reminded him, patiently. When his body was blasted to pieces, Ultracius had lost some of his brain functions too. His long-term memory had survived intact, and he liked to reminisce about campaigns from many centuries past. More recent events, however, often proved elusive to him.
‘Have you been briefed on the ork theft of the star fort?’ asked Lucien.
There had been a fleet review in the Ultima Segmentum, so the story went. In the midst of a thousand Imp
erial Navy ships, the Indestructible had had its shields down, conserving power, and the orks had swooped on it.
It was whispered that the star fort shouldn’t even have been there. It had been brought out of hiding at the insistence of a vainglorious Lord High Admiral, overriding the objections of the tech-priests to whom it had been assigned. The orks had been searching for the Indestructible – for the Emperor knew what reason – and now they had known exactly where to find it.
‘They towed it away,’ recalled Ultracius with an effort.
The orks had been flying hijacked vessels themselves, and had not been detected until it was far too late. They had boarded the star fort and quickly seized control of it. A protective energy bubble had flared around its ramparts and its crew had ceased to respond to urgent hails. The rest of the fleet had reacted too slowly to what was happening in front of them. They had destroyed a handful of the orks’ tugs, but not enough to stop them. The Indestructible had plunged into the warp and was lost.
It had not been seen since that fateful day – until now.
‘Orks!’ cried Ultracius, as if Lucien hadn’t just said so. ‘Greenskins hijacked the Indestructible.’
‘Now we’re taking it back,’ said Lucien. Now I’m taking it back, he thought. Sicarius had placed him in command of the operation, at least the above-ground part of it. He had reserved the most dangerous assignment for himself, still eager to make his mark. When the story of this incident was told in future, Lucien would be named in it, although his captain would probably be the story’s hero.
That alone, he thought, was reason enough to fight this battle. He didn’t have to know anything more. It didn’t matter why Khargask wanted the Indestructible, nor why the Adeptus Mechanicus wanted it back. It only mattered to him that they did.
More voices were breaking over the vox-net now.
He picked out a report from the battle-brother at the head of the northern armour column; he was closing into weapons range of his looming target.
Lucien told him to start firing as soon as he could, and reminded him to aim for the gun emplacements in the star fort’s north-west-facing quadrant.
He watched as the tanks, having bypassed the trenches, began to fan out into two lines in front of them. The Indestructible’s guns – according to Techmarine Renius – had a long range; once they were close enough to start shelling the star fort, so would it be able to shell them in return.
The Krieg captain voxed Lucien: ‘Let me send my men over the top.’
Lucien scowled. ‘Not yet.’ What was the man thinking of, he wondered?
A rumble of gunfire swelled from the east, like approaching thunder, almost drowning out the rhythmic crumps of the Earthshaker cannons. Staccato flashes lit the sky like lightning. The orks had fired first, the vox-chatter informed Lucien, the gunners behind their walls succumbing to their own impatience. He ordered his tanks to hold their positions, let their enemies waste as much ammunition as they wished.
For twenty seconds or more, the orks obliged. Then, as the thunder died down, Lucien gave the order, ‘Armour, advance and fire at will!’
The tanks advanced, their main guns blazing; within seconds, a smoke cloud had descended over no-man’s-land and Lucien could see nothing but hazy, slowly-shifting silhouettes through it. He had to rely on the vox-chatter to tell him what was happening. His tank commanders were reporting strike after strike against the Indestructible’s ramparts, but little visible damage being done to them.
In contrast, it didn’t seem at all long before the first Vindicator took a direct hit which ripped its roof off. Its crew of three survived, thank the Emperor, but were forced to bail out of their burning vehicle. They found themselves in the heart of a veritable firestorm, caught in the crossfire between two inexorable forces. The Ultramarines power armour would do little to protect them from the shells that were whistling around their ears; nor were there any enemies in range of their handheld weapons. The only thing they could do was run for cover.
‘My men should be out there.’ It was the Krieg captain’s voice again.
‘No. I’m holding back our infantry,’ said Lucien, ‘until the biggest guns have been disabled. Then they might stand a chance of actually making it across that killing field to the enemy. That applies to Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines alike. Right now, there’s nothing they can do out there but die.’
There was the briefest of pauses before the captain said, tonelessly: ‘That is what the Death Korps of Krieg does best.’
Lucien wasn’t sure he had heard correctly; but then, the captain continued, ‘Each shell that a Korpsman intercepts is a shell that doesn’t hit one of your tanks – which in turn means the tank can keep on firing. I have many hundreds of men and they are easily replaceable. You have only a handful of tanks and we cannot afford to lose them.’
He couldn’t argue with that logic.
Lucien remembered what Captain Sicarius had told him. He only had to keep the orks occupied, he had said, while his combat squad dug their way into the star fort from below. The plan seemed risky to him, though, and he could win the battle on the surface, he was sure of it.
Sicarius couldn’t be contacted any longer; but anyway, he had left Lucien in command. Lucien knew that, if he agreed to the Krieg captain’s suggestion, let the Korpsmen form a human shield for his artillery, then the casualty rate would be horrendous – but then, wasn’t that the Krieg captain’s call to make?
And wasn’t he also right? Human lives – the lives of Krieg men, especially, from what Lucien had heard tell of them – were the Imperium’s most expendable commodity. The Indestructible’s value, it seemed, was inestimable.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Imperial Guardsmen on this moon, in addition to the Ultramarines themselves, the Emperor’s finest – but they couldn’t defeat their enemies, nor even keep them occupied, if they were cowering in holes in the ground.
A Predator commander reported a glancing blow that had cracked his vehicle’s armour and crippled its engine. Its weaponry, however, was still functional, which, against a static target, was all that mattered.
A moment later, there was rather better news. Two of the enemy’s guns had fallen silent. There was too much smoke for anyone to tell for sure, but the assumption had to be that they were damaged or destroyed.
‘Target the guns around them,’ Lucien ordered.
The star fort’s cannons were well-protected, built into its walls as they were, but that meant they had a limited field of fire. If his tanks could take out enough of them in a row, he thought, then they might create a blind spot on the battlefield through which his infantry could advance with relative impunity.
It was a realistic hope, but regrettably one short-lived.
A new sound, an angry scream, sliced through the other sounds; a new light, blinding, white, turned the fog transparent for an instant. The vox-channels were clogged by a dozen voices, each trying to describe what they had just seen: ‘–beam of energy–’ ‘–from one of the star fort’s towers–’ ‘–cut through the Imperial Thunder in a–’ ‘–armour plating just melted like–’
The Indestructible had a lance, an ultra-powerful energy weapon.
Of course it did. It had a battery of lances; they were right there on the schematics, it was just that Khargask hadn’t seen fit to use them until now. Sicarius had hoped that they had been damaged in the crash, or that they simply devoured more energy than the star fort could currently generate.
Lucien tried to contact the Imperial Thunder, but received no reply, only a telltale hiss of static. He counted forty-one seconds – of recharging time? – before a second energy beam lashed out; but, thank the Emperor, this one was off-target and only ploughed a new trench into the ground.
In the meantime, two more of the star fort’s main guns had been put out of action.
‘We could pull th
e tanks back,’ suggested Dast from inside the command dugout. ‘We certainly have the orks’ attention. If we regroup at the edge of the lance’s range and keep up the Earthshaker bombardment, then I’m sure we can hold it.’
Perhaps, thought Lucien.
‘No. Send them forward,’ said the Krieg captain. ‘The lance is mounted inside the star fort’s basilica. The closer they get to it, the harder it will be for the orks to target them – until eventually, the angle becomes impossible.’
He was right. The problem with his plan was that the Imperial tanks would find themselves pinned down, at the mercy of the star fort’s cannons, though possibly not for very long. If they could just do a little more damage themselves, thought Lucien, knock out a few more of those emplacements…
It could mean the difference between a frustrating stalemate and a glorious victory – or perhaps, he had to admit to himself, a terrible defeat.
It was the captain’s next words that convinced him: ‘My men are still at your disposal, Sergeant Lucien.’
He set his jaw grimly and gave the order. ‘All Imperial forces, full advance. Krieg infantry to take the vanguard and protect our tanks to the best of their ability. Artillery commanders, don’t stop until you reach the star fort’s walls and break them down. Ultramarines, bring up the rear, and be ready to board the Indestructible as soon as you see an opening. The Emperor is with us and, with his strength in our arms and his fury in our weapons, we can vanquish his enemies today and reclaim what is rightfully His. Courage and honour!’
He could do this, he thought. He could visit vengeance upon the upstart xenos, expunge the Imperium’s very public shame – and be the hero of the story, after all.
CHAPTER VI
The orks had blocked the mine tunnel with broken props, razor wire, scraps of rusted machinery – and the badly decaying corpses of Death Korpsmen.
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