Helsreach (warhammer 40000)

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Las-rounds sliced up, punching dozens of the scrambling beasts back. The remnants of the first wave were joined by the second, and the creatures dropped in amongst the dockworkers, scrap-pistols barking and heavy axes swinging.

  'Fall back!' Andrej shouted, firing his hellgun at point-blank range, using it to slash a way through the erupting melee. 'Run!'

  The dockworkers were already in a panicked flight. 'With me, you idiots!' the storm-trooper yelled, and for a wonder, it actually worked. The dockers with enough presence of mind to clutch their lasguns in the chaos moved with Andrej, adding their fire to his again.

  He left a third of his team in the shelter of the containers and crane struts. Screaming dockworkers, unable to escape the invaders. Andrej sensed a momentary hesitation in those that remained with him; a handful of seconds where they ceased against all logic, some freezing rather than open fire on their dying friends, and others mesmerised in astonished fear by the sight of such slaughter.

  'They're already dead!' Andrej slammed his gloved palm into the side of Maghernus's head, jolting him back into the moment. 'Fire!'

  It was enough to break the spell. Las-fire opened up again, streaming into the embattled aliens.

  'Fall back only when you must reload! Stand and fire until then!'

  Andrej swore under his breath after he gave the order. The orks were already scrambling closer in an avalanche of green flesh, axe blades and ragged armour. Around the retreating team, the docks burned and thundered with the sounds of more submersibles beaching themselves. Andrej caught a momentary glimpse of another team of dockworkers through the smoke some distance away, breaking into flight as they were chopped to pieces by the orks in their midst.

  The same was about to happen to his ragtag gang, and he swore again. He hoped Domoska was faring better.

  What a stupid place to die.

  Kilometres away from Helsreach, beneath the sands of the wastelands to the north-west, there was a loud and unprecedented clunk of heavy machinery.

  Jurisian, Forgemaster of the Eternal Crusader, rose to his feet with a slowness born of exhaustion. Tears stood in his eyes - a rarity indeed for a being that had not wept in over twenty decades. His mind pulsed with a thundering ache, a dull and thudding heat that had nothing to do with physical weakness.

  He could smell his servitors now that his senses were returning from their focusless lock on his primary task. Turning to regard them where they lay, Jurisian could smell the decay setting into their organic parts. They had been dead for weeks, starved of sustenance. He hadn't noticed. They had proven useless after the first few hours, over a month ago, their internal cognitive processors unable to keep up with the ever-evolving code. Jurisian had needed to work alone, cursing Grimaldus all the while.

  Another deep clunk of grinding machinery restored his attention to the present. His joints ached - both the mechanical ones and his still-human ones - from such a period of inactivity. He had been a statue in place for four weeks, his mind alive and his body in hunched, tense stasis by the console.

  He had not slept. He knew that on several occasions, as his closing, exhausted mind had drifted close to shutting down, he had almost lost grip on the code. With his thoughts moving sluggishly, the code had outpaced him just as it had done to his servitors. In these moments of panicked intensity, he had resisted by silencing sections of his mind with clinical meditation, operating at a lessened capacity, but at least he was still awake.

  Jurisian stared ahead at the vast doors.

  - OBERON -

  That word burned itself into his core, written in towering letters, more a warning than a tomb marker.

  A last resonant machine-sound signalled the grinding rollback of the final interior lock. Pressurised coolant vapour flushed into the corridor as the door's seal systems vented it. It reeked of chlorine - not poisonous, but stale from being cold-cooked for so many years while the door remained silent and still. In a ballet of rumbling, shuddering technology, the portal began to open.

  'Reclusiarch,' Jurisian voxed, horrified at the dull scratchiness of his voice. 'The defences are broken. I am in.'

  CHAPTER XV

  Balance

  The chamber offered nothing at first. Nothing except a powerless darkness that was blacker than black, even to Jurisian's visor lenses. A whispered keyword cycled his vision filters through a thermal-seeking infrared, through to a crude echolocation that falsified an auspex scanner's silent chimes to detect movement. He had made these modifications himself, with the proper respect to the machine-spirit of his wargear.

  It was this last sense that produced a response. A vague grey blur passed his vision, and with it, the whirring of internal mechanisms. Hinges. Cogs. Fibre muscles. The sound was as familiar to Jurisian as his own breathing, but brought with it an edge of disconcerting curiosity.

  Joints. He was hearing joints.

  Something was wrong. The suggestion of static interference at the edges of his vision display told a tale of interference, obfuscation, more than a darkness born from a lack of light. He was being jammed, and the manipulation was insidiously subtle.

  Jurisian's bolter came up in steady hands, panning left and right in the darkness as his eye lenses continued to cycle through filters. At last, a targeting monocle slid over his right eye lens - the mechanical echo of a lizard's nictitating membrane.

  Better. Not perfect, but better.

  'I am Jurisian,' he said to the creature before him, as it resolved into focus. 'Master of the Forge for the Eternal Crusader, flagship of the Black Templars.'

  The creature didn't answer immediately. The size of a man, it smelled of ancient machinery and sour breath.

  It was likely the thing had once been human - or some part of it was organic, even if only the smallest aspect. Hunched, robed in a ruined cloak of woven fabric, misshapen lumps in its surface area suggested additional limbs or advanced modification. It remained faceless, either refusing to look up or unable to do so.

  Jurisian lowered his bolter. The servo-arms extending from his back-mounted power generator still clutched a host of weaponry, aiming it at the robed being before him. He voiced his next words through his helm's vox-speakers, letting his armour's spirit twist the human language into a universal, bluntly simple machine code - a basic program for communication which he had acquired during his long years of tuition and training on Mars, home world of the Mechanicus.

  'My identity is Jurisian,' the code pulsed, 'of the Astartes.'

  The reply came in a burst of snarled code, the words and meanings bleeding into each other. It was akin to machine-slang evolved from the viral program that sealed the doors. This creature, whatever it was, had an accent born of hundreds of years of isolation here.

  'Affirmative,' Jurisian responded in the foundation code. 'I can see you. Your interference should be aborted. It is no longer relevant.'

  The creature raised itself higher, no longer lurking on all fours. It now reached Jurisian's chestplate, though it came no closer, remaining a dozen metres away. The weapons in the Forgemaster's servo-arms tracked the being's movements.

  It pulsed another tangled mess of accented code.

  'Affirmative,' Jurisian replied again. 'I destroyed the sealant program.'

  This time, the creature's response was rendered through a more simple code. Jurisian narrowed his eyes at this development. Like the chamber's virus lock, the creature was adapting and working with new information at a faster rate than standard Mechanicus constructs.

  'This is the sanctuary of Oberon.'

  'I know.' The Forgemaster risked a panning glance left and right, seeking any resolution in the artificial darkness. His targeting monocle couldn't pierce the gloom more than a few metres ahead. Flickering static was beginning to crawl across his eye lenses. 'Deactivate the interference,' Jurisian raised his bolter again, 'or I will destroy you.'

  Against his will, emotion coloured the code-spoken declaration. To be limited like this was an affront to his sen
se of honourable conduct - there was no glory or prudence in allowing oneself to be kept at an enemy's mercy.

  'I am the guardian of Oberon. Your presence generates negligible threat to me.'

  Jurisian tasted anger on his tongue, bitter and metallic. His finger tensed on the thick trigger of his bolter.

  'Deactivate the interference. This is your final warning.' Static mottled his vision now, like a thousand insects clustering on his eye lenses. He could make out no more than the barest silhouette as the Mechanicus warden moved closer.

  'Negative,' it said.

  Jurisian's servo-arms, answering his mind's impulses a fraction of a second after his true limbs, had raised his axe and other weapons in a threatening display, almost akin to some feral world arachnid predator increasing its size to warn off prey.

  The knight's final threat was spoken with conviction, the machine-cant laced with numerical equations indicating emphasis.

  'Then die.'

  Their saviour was one of the black knights.

  He charged the enemy from the sky with a whining howl of protesting thrusters. Fire streaked from his flight pack as he landed in the aliens' midst, a dark blur of movement outlined in flame.

  Andrej immediately scrambled back, ordering his gang into the relative cover provided by an overturned cargo loader truck.

  'Do not dare cease fire,' he shouted over the sound of alien bellowing and thousands of guns crying out. He doubted any of them heard him, but they went back to firing as soon as they slid into cover.

  The Templar cut left and right with his chainsword, ripping stinking green flesh from malformed orkish bones. His bolt pistol sang out in a thudding refrain, embedding fist-sized bolts in alien bodies which detonated a moment later. Andrej, who had seen Astartes fight before, did all he could to keep up his rate of fire in support of the suicidal bravery taking place. Several of his dockworker crew lowered their guns in slack-jawed, frightened awe.

  Perhaps, Andrej cursed, they believed the Astartes would actually survive unaided.

  'Keep firing, damn you!' the storm-trooper yelled. 'He's dying for us!'

  The ferocious advantage of surprise did not last long. The greenskins turned to the deadly threat among them, laying about with their crude axes and firing their clattering pistols at close range. Several of them hit each other in their fury, while stragglers and those on the edges of the melee were punched down by las-fire from Andrej's gang.

  The Templar screamed - a vox-distorted cry of wrath that went crawling across the skin of every human in earshot. His chainblade fell from his black hand, hanging loose on the thick chain that bound the blade to his forearm.

  Behind the staggering warrior, one of the few remaining greenskins tore a crude spear back out from the knight's lower spine. The beast had no more than a moment to enjoy its victory: a searing lance of headache-bright energy dissolved its face and blew the contents of its skull over the dying knight's armour. Andrej recharged his weapon without even needing to look away from the melee.

  The Templar regained his balance, then recovered his grip on the revving chainsword a heartbeat after. He lasted for three more savage cuts, tearing gobbets of flesh and shattered armour from the orks closest to him, before the remnants of the alien pack impaled him on their spears and bore him to the ground. His flight pack crashed to the floor, rent from his body. They aimed with brutal efficiency, ramming blades into his armour joints and using their immense strength to force him to his knees. The Templar's pistol came up one final time to hammer a bolt into the chest of the nearest beast, spraying those nearby with inhuman gore as it primed and exploded.

  The last three orks were scythed down by Andrej's dock team, collapsing next to the Astartes they had slain.

  The scene before them was a slice of eerie calm, the heart of a storm, while the rest of the clocks burned.

  'Throne,' the storm-trooper hissed. 'Stay here, yes?'

  Maghernus didn't even have time to agree before the soldier was making a break across the rockcrete platform, crouched low, moving to the downed knight's body.

  'What's he doing?' asked one of the dockworkers.

  Maghernus wanted to know that himself. He moved after the storm-trooper, doing his best to mimic the crouching run Andrej had just performed. Something hot and angry buzzed past his ear, like the passage of a poisonous insect. It took several seconds to realise he'd almost had his head taken off by a stray shot.

  'What are you doing?' He knelt by the storm-trooper.

  What he was doing seemed obvious to Andrej. His gloved fingers quested under the chin of the knight's helm, seeking some kind of catch, or lock, or release. Throne, there must be something…

  'Seeing if he lives,' the soldier muttered, clearly distracted. 'Ayah! Got you.'

  With a muted hiss almost drowned out by nearby gunfire, the helm's seals parted and the expressionless helmet came loose. Andrej pulled it off, handing it to Maghernus. It was about three times as heavy as the dockmaster had been expecting, and he'd been expecting it to weigh a hell of a lot.

  The knight wasn't dead. His face was awash in blood, the dark fluid filming over his eyes and darkening his features as it ran from his nose and clenched teeth. Astartes blood was supposed to clot within instants, so the tales told. It wasn't happening here, and Andrej doubted that was a positive sign.

  'Can't move,' the Templar growled. His voice was wet from a burbling throat. 'Spine. Hearts. Dying.'

  'There is something inside you, I know,' Andrej spared a glance around, making sure they weren't in immediate danger. 'Something important inside you, that your brothers must reclaim, yes?'

  'Progenoid,' the knight's breathing was as raw as a chainsword's snarl. The warrior's oversized armoured hand gripped the front of Andrej's armour. It was strengthless.

  'I do not know what that is, sir knight.'

  'Gene-seed,' the Templar spat blood as he forced the words through numbing lips. His eyes were lolling now, half-closed and rolling back. It was clear he was blind.

  'Legacy!'

  Andrej nodded to Maghernus. 'Help me move him. Do not argue. It is important that his brothers find his body. Important for their rituals.'

  'Emperor…' the knight grunted, 'Emperor protects!'

  With those words, the hand gripping Andrej's chest-guard went slack, thumping to rest on the heraldic cross on the warrior's own breastplate.

  Their eyes met once, and the dockworker and the career soldier started dragging the dead knight.

  We are dying.

  We are dying, scattered across kilometres of docks, mixed in with the humans, torn from the unity of brotherhood.

  'Wear your helm,' I say to Nero without looking over my shoulder at him. 'Do not let the humans see you like this.'

  With tears in his eyes, our healer does as I order. The list of failing life signs is transferred from his wrist display to his retinal readouts. I hear him draw a shaking breath over the vox.

  'Anastus is dead,' he says, adding another name to those that came before.

  I lean forward, the racing wind clawing over the surface of my armour, sending my parchment scrolls and tabard streaming in its grip. We are several hundred metres up, making ready to drop on the beasts below. The Thunderhawk's turbines lower their growl as they throttle down.

  The docks below us are already in ruin. They burn - black and grey, amber and orange - making the view from the polluted skies like staring down into the mouth of some mythical dragon. Percussive thumps signal the crash landings of more submersibles, or our own munitions stores going up in flames.

  'Helsreach will fall tonight,' Bastilan says, giving voice to something we must all be thinking. I have never, in over a century of waging war at his side, heard him speak such a thing.

  'And do not lie to me, Grimaldus,' he says, sharing the bulkhead's space with me. 'Save your words for the others, brother.'

  I tolerate such familiarity from him.

  But he is wrong.

  'Not tonig
ht,' I tell him, and he doesn't look away from the skull I wear as my face. 'I swore to the humans that the sun would rise over an unconquered city. I do not mean to break that vow. And you, brother, will help me keep it.'

  Bastilan turns away at last. What closeness had been near to the surface cools fast, leaving us distant again. 'As you command,' he says.

  'Make ready to jump,' I vox to the others. 'Nero. Do you stand ready?'

  'What?' He lowers his narthecium, retracting surgical saws and cutting blades. I see the empty sockets for gene-seed storage withdraw and lock under smooth armour plating.

  'I need you, Nero. Our brothers need you.'

  'Do not lecture me, Reclusiarch. I stand ready.'

  The others, Priamus especially, are taking note now. 'Cador is dead. Two-thirds of the Helsreach Crusade will not live to see the coming dawn. You will carry their legacy, my brother. Grief has its place - none of us have suffered such losses before - but if you are lost in sorrow then you will be the death of us all.'

  'I said I stand ready! Why do you single me out like this? Priamus is likely to see us all dead because he cannot follow orders! Bastilan and Artarion are not half the fighters Cador was. Yet you lecture me about being the weak one, the crack in the blade?'

  My pistol is aimed at his head, at the faceplate marked white as a symbol of his expertise and valuable skills.

  'Bitterness is taking root within you, brother. Much longer, and it will bore through you, hollowing out your heart and soul, leaving naught but empty bones. When I tell you to focus and stand with your brothers, you respond with black words and treacherous thoughts. So I tell you again, one last time, that we need you. And you need us.'

  He doesn't stare me down. When he looks away, it's not in defeat or cowardice, but in shame.