The orks were back, but the injury inflicted on them before was real, Adnachiel thought. The base was weaker.
The Herald of Night’s run was a wager. There was no pretending otherwise. But if the aftershocks of the weapon were still being felt, it had been used very recently. Adnachiel disliked wagers. War had too much chance in it already. To willingly engage with it was a form of moral carelessness. His hand was forced, though. And everything about the Deathwatch mission was a wager.
But the fading gravity effects were promising. If he must wager, perhaps he was making a good one. The Herald of Night ploughed onward through the debris field, speed undiminished. Ahead, Adnachiel saw a path to the curve of the attack moon’s surface. ‘Hard to port,’ he ordered. ‘Fire at will.’
‘Hard to port,’ Aelia confirmed.
The Herald’s bow turned from the darkened path towards the cloud of lethal light, and its batteries acquired targets and fired. The first ork interceptors came into range and died. The hull shook as the ship entered a zone of overlapping shockwaves. Hostile targets closed in.
‘Master of the Vox,’ Adnachiel called, ‘begin a broadcast to all Imperial vessels.’
‘Transmitting,’ Master of the Vox Enger confirmed.
‘Ships of the Imperial Navy,’ Adnachiel said. ‘We come to drive a blade through the heart of the greenskins. Hold the xenos. Do not allow them to deflect the blow.’ He paused. ‘End vox-cast,’ he told Enger.
Now the surviving officers of the blockade knew their situation. The Herald of Night had not come to reinforce them. Instead, their role was to support its mission.
If any still lived at the end of this day, they would receive the gratitude of the Imperium for their service.
The view in the oculus shifted, reflecting the changes to the Herald of Night’s course. The orb of the attack moon moved to the centre. It was partially obscured by the explosions of ships and the pinprick flashes of guns. Its maw snarled, hate made of stone and iron. The base grew larger.
‘How close…’ Aelia began.
‘As close as we are able,’ Adnachiel said. He shifted his stance in the pulpit, bracing for the inevitable lash of the gravity weapon, balancing risks, riding the lethal edge of the wager. If the Herald of Night took the full force of what the orks were capable of, the mission would end before it had begun. But he had to get the Deathwatch into proximity with the target.
‘Get us in a direct line with the jaws,’ Adnachiel said. If the gravity weapon fired, the orks would destroy all the ships they were launching. He did not think they would use it unless desperate. The war was still running their way. The blockade was coming apart like the rotten wall it was.
More and more interceptors closed in. The Herald’s batteries could not take them all down – they were fast. Their construction seemed crude, brutal shapes hurtling through the void, and they were not agile, but they absorbed more damage than Imperial ships of comparable size. They came at the strike cruiser with the murderous intent of guided meteors.
The Herald had left the false calm of the gap for the heart of the storm. Vast engines of destruction warred with machines of shrieking speed. Death lashed out over distances of tens of thousands of kilometres. The strike cruiser became the centre of gravity of the conflict. Ork and Imperial ships converged in response to its movements, and leviathans and lightning found a single focus. The space of the battle constricted.
Beam weapons and torpedoes slammed into the Herald. Crippled ork fighters hurled themselves against its shields as they died. In the oculus, the void became a strobing storm of explosions and energy discharges. The void shields rippled and flashed, red and searing violet.
The attack moon was huge. Its circumference surpassed the edges of the oculus.
‘Lord Commander Koorland,’ Adnachiel voxed. ‘Are you ready to launch?’
‘We are.’
‘Opening bay doors.’
Adnachiel stared straight ahead, at the void and the gaping rage of the target. In the corner of his eye, he saw the multiplying red of damage icons. He ignored them. He felt each shake and tremor of the ship as a personal blow. He stood fast, willing his ship forward. He knew its injuries. Let it know his determination.
The jaws were opening again. The interior of the ork moon filled the centre of the oculus. Adnachiel glared at the hunger of fire and darkness.
‘Launch!’ he shouted. ‘Launch!’
One more klaxon added its voice to the cacophony of warnings on the bridge. It was the only sign of the departure of the Thunderhawks until Koorland spoke again.
‘You have taken us to the threshold, brother,’ he said. ‘Now we have crossed it.’
‘Strike hard.’
‘The orks will feel our blow even on Ullanor.’
‘Bow up!’ Adnachiel roared. ‘Take us over the pole.’ He would make the orks pursue the prize of the Herald of Night. He would be their target. He would draw their eyes away from the insignificant ships flying into the moon.
Strike hard, he thought again. Strike hard.
Four
The ork attack moon
The three Thunderhawks flew into the maw. They came in low, beneath the flights of the ork fighters, and close to the port side of the jaws. They entered the throat of the monster, a colossal shaft reaching straight down to the centre of the moon. Energy flashed outside the viewing blocks as they crossed the threshold.
Inside the Reclaimed Honour, the Ultramarine Simmias said, ‘Some form of containment field. They’re maintaining their atmosphere.’
‘You’re impressed,’ said Koorland.
‘I am respectful of an opponent’s capabilities,’ the Techmarine said. ‘Doing less would lead to faulty theoreticals and disastrous practicals in battle.’
‘And what do you deduce that we don’t already know?’ Hakon Icegrip asked. The Space Wolf had not donned his helmet yet, and the low snarl of his breathing was audible in the hold. He was taut with impatience.
‘I deduce that all aspects of this base are receiving large amounts of power,’ Simmias said, unmoved by the challenge in Icegrip’s question. ‘Theoretical – much of the damage we inflicted before has been repaired, at least in terms of tactical effects. That is a lot of energy to devote to the preservation of atmosphere in a launch shaft.’
The Honour shook. Proximity warnings sounded. Koorland looked through the viewing block. The Thunderhawk was flying so close to the inner wall that it had clipped protruding scaffolding. The walls were crude, uneven, and they whipped by at such speed there could be no evading minor obstacles. The three gunships were travelling through thickets of ragged ends of iron and rock. They were not taking fire yet. Koorland dared to hope they had entered undetected.
‘What do you think, Simmias?’ the Blood Angel Vepar asked, pointing to the teleport homer on the Techmarine’s back. ‘Will it work?’
‘I can’t say. Too much of this technology is unfamiliar.’
He sounded suspicious. Koorland couldn’t blame him. The Imperial device had been modified so heavily it was barely recognisable. It was less bulky than the standard model, but had sprouted a tangle of cables and brass spheres.
‘The device is xenos-tainted,’ said Hanniel.
Koorland turned to the Dark Angels Librarian. ‘Of course it is. And we will use its taint to purge the larger one.’
‘While teleporting ourselves back to the Herald?’ said Icegrip. ‘There isn’t even a platform.’
‘Once powered, the machine will respond to the signal from the ship’s teleportation pad,’ Simmias said. ‘It is the Herald’s device that will call us back, while the ones we place on the moon will send it away. Theoretically.’
‘Theoretically,’ Vepar repeated.
Koorland glanced at Haas. She had said nothing since the launch from the Herald of Night. She stared out the viewing block, her
face grim with pain and stony determination as she returned to her prison. As he watched, he saw her jerk, as if in bleak recognition. He didn’t think it could be. She had never seen the launch shaft.
Even so, at the same moment, the pilot Nithael voxed, ‘Approaching primary target.’
‘How close can you get us?’ Koorland asked.
‘I see a major avenue. It looks clear.’
‘Take it.’
The Reclaimed Honour slowed. The wall became less of a blur. Its details became clear as the gunship turned into a passageway wide enough for a battalion of tanks. The edges of the opening were broken, as if the tunnel had been cut here by violent action. The kill-team shed grav-harnesses and stood. The Thunderhawk came to a rapid halt, landing with a blast of exhaust nozzles. The forward ramp dropped, and the first of the Deathwatch squads stormed down onto the tunnel floor. Koorland led his squad and Haas off while the gunship lifted off again.
‘Good hunting,’ said Nithael. ‘I will await your return.’
‘Fly well, brother,’ Koorland told him. He watched the Honour turn back towards the shaft. There was a glow coming from it, dark and red illumination from the engines of the passing interceptors still heading out to fight the blockade. The other two Thunderhawks should be finding their landing targets very soon. The Reclaimed Honour’s departure was a good omen. Perhaps all three would exit the moon and return to the Herald of Night.
Perhaps this mission was not completely mad.
The tunnel they were in was almost wholly dark. A few guttering lumen globes dangled from cables. They were widely spaced. Between them hung the broken husks of many others.
‘This region is no longer used,’ Simmias said. He gestured at the cables. ‘There is illumination here by chance, not design. The power is going everywhere, even where it is no longer needed.’
‘But what was this used for?’ said Vepar. ‘Wherever it begins, it leads only to the shaft. What use is that for vehicles?’
‘The tunnel is for construction,’ Haas answered. ‘They build fast. The big passages allow them to mobilise quickly.’
‘Indeed,’ said Koorland. ‘Look how quickly they rebuilt after our attack.’ To Haas, he said, ‘There have likely been considerable changes. We have an approximate location on the auspex. Do you think you can take us there?’
‘I haven’t been there, but I can show you the best way to get around.’ She moved further along the tunnel, sticking to the right-hand wall. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing up.
There was an opening just below her head height on the wall. Haas reached up and pulled herself inside. Koorland and the others followed. It was just large enough for a Space Marine to walk in a crouch. There was no light here at all, though Koorland’s helm lamp picked out more tangles of cables and conduits on the low ceiling of the passageway.
‘I’ve seen the little creatures use these,’ she said. ‘There’s room for many of them, and these shafts keep them out of the way of the large orks.’
‘Vermin,’ said Icegrip.
‘Cunning vermin,’ Hanniel answered. ‘They will need to be silenced quickly. The point is not to bring the full horde down on us. We are coming as a shadow among the greenskins.’
The Space Wolf grunted, acquiescing. ‘A shadow with teeth,’ he said.
Koorland showed Haas the auspex. The readings were marked by numerous power surges. Three were singled out – two were close together, one much larger than the other. The energy source furthest away was the known quantity. It fluctuated moment to moment, winking out of existence then becoming explosively bright, more intense than any other signal on the screen. It was the gate. The orks had reopened it. The third kill-team would close it again, this time forever.
The other two targets were the ones whose locations were approximate guesses, reached through a combination of analysis of power signatures and Haas’ memories of her imprisonment. Koorland pointed to the larger of the two clustered targets. This, he hoped, was the attack moon’s power source. ‘Can you find the way?’ he asked.
‘I think so. I only saw it once. But there is a kind of order to the pathways here. Things flow to and from that location.’
‘Show us, then,’ said Koorland.
The shadows with teeth moved off.
The Penitent Wrath dropped Thane’s squad on a rough platform just outside a tunnel so ragged it would have seemed natural if the walls had not been made of patched-together stone and iron. The five Space Marines entered the crevice. It made a sharp turn almost immediately, then another, its path nothing more than a fault line between walls. Within seconds, the squad vanished from sight of the launch shaft.
The passageway angled left, then dropped down, and kept sloping downward.
‘This is taking us in the wrong direction,’ Asger Warfist said.
‘I know,’ said Thane. The extrapolated target was a control complex, located above the presumed power source. The mission was already riddled with uncertainty and guesswork. Moving down and away from the goal only added to the frustration. Thane played his helm lamp over the walls ahead, looking for any kind of exit.
‘There,’ said Abathar.
Thane stopped and looked up at the spot the Dark Angels Techmarine had isolated. Twenty metres up, where the sloping walls of the tunnel almost met, two openings faced each other.
‘No bridge,’ said Straton, the Ultramarine. ‘Do the greenskins leap over the gap in the dark?’
‘I suggest this passage is a result of a shift in the walls,’ Abathar said. ‘That tunnel is not likely to be still in use.’
‘I think you’re right,’ said Forcas. The Blood Angels Librarian pointed to a spot on the floor of the fissure, directly below the broken tunnel. Three ork bodies lay broken, smashed open against the raised, jagged edges of metal plating.
‘How do we get up there?’ Straton asked.
Thane watched Abathar examine the right-hand wall. Its surface was rough, a contusion of folds and cracks. He fired up the plasma cutter on his right servo-arm and played it against the wall. The light stabbed at the eyes in the gloom. It took only a few seconds for the cutter to melt through the stone and metal and form a rough handhold. Abathar looked at his handiwork, then back upward. ‘The lean of the wall is unfortunate, but acceptable. We can climb.’ He raised the servo-arm and burned another ledge into the wall.
It took ten minutes for Abathar to cut a ladder all the way to the top. Once inside the tunnel, Thane found the path hewing much more closely to the desired heading. Warfist strode at his side. Though he wore his helm, Thane could sense the Space Wolf’s impatience for battle in the quick jerks of his movements. He was holding himself back, though, and Thane noticed him checking on the movements of the rest of the squad, especially Abathar, weighed down by the cumbersome teleport homer. Given the history of tension between the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves, Thane was pleased to see this automatic gesture on the part of Warfist. It made the black of the Space Marines’ armour more than a gesture. They were functioning as a team.
The creation of the Deathwatch livery had struck a resonant chord in Thane’s soul. He had seen an echo of the formation of the Last Wall. But that had been the coming together of Chapters who were all sons of Dorn. The Deathwatch was something else again. He did not know if it was more profound, or more meaningful. He did not try to guess at its consequences, though he knew they would be real, and far-reaching. He had pondered whether he too would change the colour of his armour. He had decided against it. He was part of the Last Wall, and its continued existence was necessary. It was about more than victory. It was about rebuilding.
The Deathwatch, he thought, was both simpler and more complex. It was the forging together of forces so disparate, in some cases so alien to each other, that loyalty to the Emperor was the only common bond. It did not exist to build, Thane thought. Not in the same sense as the Last Wall. B
ut as he travelled the darkness of the attack moon, the colours of his own armour almost as shadowy here as the black of his squad, he was part of the Deathwatch blade. We do not stand guard, he thought. We are not the sentinels on the rampart.
We watch only to find the moment to strike. We are destruction.
They reached an intersection. The tunnel split into five paths. Thane stopped and consulted the auspex. The energy reading was to the left of their position, and two of the paths looked promising. All had cables running down them.
Since disembarking from the Penitent Wrath, Thane had heard the heartbeat of the attack moon. It was as deep and hard as a continent, irregular in its rhythm yet colossal in its strength. It had grown much louder since they left the crevice, booming now down all the tunnels. Dust shook from the roof of the passageway. There were other sounds too – a clamour of bestial snarling, the clangs of heavy blows, the high-pitched squeals of the vermin-like creatures that swarmed in menial servility around the feet of the orks.
‘We should wait,’ Straton said.
‘For what?’ Warfist asked, his patience stretching taut.
‘A frequency of traffic might point us to the correct route.’
‘That’s leaving things to chance at best,’ Warfist scoffed. ‘And wait how long? The success of the other two operations depends on us.’
‘Five minutes,’ Thane said.
Two minutes passed. Koorland’s voice came over Thane’s helm vox. ‘Squad Gladius, this is Sword. What is your status?’
‘Still searching.’
‘We have found the power source. Awaiting your action.’
‘Understood. What about the gate?’
‘Squad Crozius is also in position.’
‘We will take the target shortly.’ He vowed they would, if he had to punch his way through the interior walls of the moon.
Watchers in Death Page 6