by Guy Haley
The gates were stronger than the walls. It would have been safer to bombard them from afar, one at a time, until they were all rubble.
But he needed to win a war, not a battle. Destroying the gates would send a message, as would a speedy conquest. Drawn-out sieges multiplied strategic risk, even if they lessened tactical danger. He needed the fear of his enemies more than he needed his men alive. He supposed he should feel regret for their inevitable deaths, and had been ready to stamp down hard on the feeling. With a certain amount of concern, he found he did not need to, for he felt no remorse whatsoever.
The booming of shell on steel suddenly changed, rising in pitch, becoming ragged.
‘The gate is breached,’ Perturabo said. ‘Our men will be through shortly.’
He nodded at his ensign again. The man waved out another round of orders. From screens set out across the road further down, trucks began to drive quickly up.
‘What are you doing?’ said Miltiades in alarm. ‘You can’t send them into that cauldron!’
‘I can, and I have,’ said Perturabo coldly.
‘Then you have killed most of them.’
‘Their deaths are the means to an end.’
The first trucks entered the firing zone at full speed. Several were immediately destroyed.
‘They are men, not munitions, damn it!’ said Miltiades. ‘There is no sense in victory if we all die achieving it.’
‘Every living thing is a tool in the right hands,’ said Perturabo without looking at him. ‘And with them I shall fashion peace so that no others must die. Can you not see?’
‘This is not the Olympian way,’ said Miltiades.
‘It is not,’ said Perturabo. ‘I will break Olympia, and remake it better and stronger.’
‘This world is not your plaything.’
‘I am not playing a game.’
With a screeching yawn, the gates gave in. Thick white smoke billowed outwards. The tanks advanced into the gate tunnel through a storm of fire flashing from the walls. Murder holes opened, and more flashes and bangs echoed from the gate tunnel as the defenders dropped bombs on Perturabo’s vehicles. They emerged, all of them, into the ground separating the first wall from the second. Olympian technology was held back by a lack of resources rather than knowledge Perturabo’s ingenuity had found a way around this, creating novel alloys and engineering solutions that advanced Lochos’ weaponry far beyond that of its enemies. This was a good thing, because with the unprovoked attack on Kardis, they now had a great many foes.
Automated heavy-calibre machine guns emerged from the tanks’ hulls, cutting down the defenders coming into the square. Horns blared, and the second gate dropped down, blocking the way once more.
Troop compartments opened. Hundreds of men of Lochos poured out of the backs of the tanks and ran for the first wall. They went within and began a slaughter of the defenders. The flicker of lightning guns lit up the clouds of battle. There were three hundred of these precious weapons in the arsenal of Lochos. Perturabo had emptied it before he had left.
The cannon fire from the wall subsided. Perturabo’s tanks began to fire upon the second gate Protected by the first wall from the Guardian, they could fight in relative safety, weathering only the attentions of the troops manning the second wall. The surviving trucks had reached the first wall, and they sped into the courtyard, disgorging their passengers. Dragging ladders from the sides of their vehicles, the men mounted an escalade on the second wall under the cover of the men in the first, dividing the defenders’ fire Explosions boomed from the base of the Guardian as the men of Lochos attempted to blast their way in through the reinforced doors of its supply tunnels. Fighting broke out along the parapet of the second wall. All was proceeding to Perturabo’s plan, as precise as the workings of his clockwork models.
‘Send orders that the artillery stand down and prepare to move to the first wall,’ said Perturabo. A messenger bowed and ran off immediately. The order was also relayed by semaphore.
‘It’s taking too long to take the Guardian,’ said Miltiades.
‘The guns will be silent within minutes,’ replied Perturabo.
‘It’s never been taken,’ said Miltiades. ‘Though I admit, your plan is working.’
‘I am not going to take it. I will destroy it so Kardis is aware of our intentions.’
‘Impressive,’ said Miltiades grudgingly. ‘But there are six walls in total in the Kardikron pass. It will take too long to breach them all. The allies of Kardis will soon be on their way here Many of the other cities are itching for a chance to cast Lochos down. There is a danger here, warlord, that you have done nothing more than give them excuse to destroy us.’
‘How long do you suppose it will take me to break the walls and take the city?’ asked Perturabo. He looked up the pass where four more walls joined cliff to cliff, each higher than the last. The pale shapes of the city’s bastions were behind, shrouded by the dusty air.
‘The citadel, too? A fortnight,’ said Miltiades. ‘I’m being very generous, and assuming you don’t run out of men. This assault was reckless.’
‘It was perfectly calculated and played out exactly as I planned. You saw it. I will have this city in my hands within three days.’
Miltiades shrugged. He didn’t seem to care either way.
Perturabo smiled to himself. The fighting was subsiding along the first two walls. The rear of each wall was vulnerable to the attentions of the next, but the first courtyard was safe, and his tanks would prevent Kardis from retaking the second.
A tremendous explosion blew out from the bottom of the Guardian Tower. Huge pieces of masonry tumbled down the outward face of the fort The guns were still firing as the whole of the outer side heeled sideways and slipped down the cliff, sending massive chunks of masonry bouncing down the pass like a child’s set of blocks kicked over.
‘It may be that you prove to be right,’ conceded Miltiades.
Perturabo cast aside the dead body of Adophus, the Tyrant of Kardikora, and sat himself upon the throne. The hall of the tyrant was very different to that of Lochos in appearance, its architectural flourishes determined by the local geology and the quirks of the Kardikron national character. In every other way it was exactly the same, a monument built at stupendous expense to show a tyrant’s power. It was a fitting place for Perturabo to exercise his own.
Crowds of nobles, generals and the richest of Kardis’ merchants filled the hall. Smoke rose all over the city, the tang of it penetrating even into the tyrant’s throne room. Terror added its own acridity to the fug. The noble’s nervous eyes strayed to the tyrant’s bloody corpse.
Perturabo stared at them, calculating their worth to him. Their deaths would please him, he could not deny it. They were so proud, so arrogant. He had had enough of such hauteur, and though he could not kill all the preening lords of Lochos, he could destroy these here It was in his power to do so. Their deaths would have their own effect on the war he had planned. Some of the cities would capitulate quickly through fear; others, driven by the same emotion, would have their resolve stiffened. He thought on it while they stood in silence, too cowardly to ask their fate while their city burned around them.
The four-hour looting was underway, as custom demanded. Perturabo would let his men sate their desire for trinkets and mayhem. There were precious few other laws of battle that he intended to obey. This was a new kind of war.
Clemency or ruthlessness? He could see the merits of both. He sat back in the tyrant’s throne. It was so oversized that it fit him perfectly. His bloodied fingers slipped on its armrests.
Finally, Perturabo spoke. ‘You have seen how quickly we overcame you,’ he said. ‘I sit here wondering upon your fate. I am a proponent of logic. I ponder whether your deaths are more useful to me than your lives.’
He paused to let what he was saying sink in. He need not leave it long; they understood full well already.
‘But not every variable can be inserted into a calculatio
n of war, and I have to ask myself instead, how will I be seen? And, you must wonder, how do I wish to be seen? Logic dictates that I set aside all emotion and make my decisions based on what is verifiable alone. I cannot. I try, but success eludes me, for as much as I strive to leave behind the concerns of the flesh, and as different to you as I am, I am still a man. I have no desire to be a tyrant. I have victory, and no need for vengeance. The war I bring to you unexpectedly, and regretfully, is prosecuted in the name of a higher ideal - that of peace, not savagery.’
Some in the crowd made faces of contempt. A couple of them looked as if they would speak. Perturabo spoke louder.
‘For peace can come from war. Not the short peace that Olympia enjoys, but a long and total peace where no man needs raise his weapon against another. I speak to you of a new era.’
‘Peace from iron!’ called an elderly man. ‘That is no peace at all.’
‘It is peace.’ Perturabo paused. ‘You are Antibus of Kardis. I know your books. I know your mind from reading them. You speak, too, from your heart, as I am forced to do now. Your writings have taught me how to do so, and for that I thank you. We understand each other. It behoves me to be merciful. None of you shall die. You shall keep all your offices and properties, and such political powers as you possess. But these shall be employed within the greater realm of Lochos.’
‘He proposes satrapy!’ scoffed Antibus. ‘Listen to him! This goes against all our customs. We are not a minor city, but one of the twelve!’
‘No more,’ said Perturabo. ‘Submit to me, and you shall prosper alongside Lochos. Your men shall serve in our armies. Your mines will be open to us. I will bring you riches and advances in your sciences that you cannot as yet comprehend.’
‘And if we decline?’ said Antibus.
‘Then I shall kill you all. And after I have wiped your blood from my hands, I will bend all my efforts to tearing this city down, stone by stone, until nothing remains and all its people are gone into slavery.’
‘That is not peace!’
‘Death is the greatest peace of all,’ said Perturabo. ‘Unending and total. I prefer other lands, but I can give you death’s peace, if that is the peace you would prefer.’
Not long after, the flag of Lochos rose over the parapets and broken towers of Kardis. A wealth of scarce minerals was Perturabo’s from that moment, and he had such plans for them.
The unification of Olympia had begun.
TEN
MIGRATION
999.M30
THE IRON BLOOD, GUGANN SYSTEM, SAK’TRADA DEEPS
Perturabo stood alone in the middle of the featureless iron sphere of the strategium minoris that opened high up the wall of the command deck. There was a podium at the centre, railed around by simple steel.
From his position he could observe everything that happened on the multistoried bridge. Tiers of servitor choirs banked high around the shipmaster’s dais, as if an audience at an amphitheatre with their backs to the stage. The shipmaster was a small thing from so far away, embedded in the fabric of the ship at the centre of the dais.
The great hololithic displays turning in the airy voids of the deck were at Perturabo’s command. If he chose, he could scrutinise the efforts of the transmechanics as they tended to the Iron Blood’s machinery, or oversee his legionaries pacing the decks in full armour or attending to the tasks of long-range destruction at the weapons banks.
But he looked on none of it.
Perturabo’s ice-blue eyes stared into a distance only he could apprehend. To the casual observer, he would appear to be struck dumb, or paralysed with indecision. Multiple data-streams fed directly into his cerebral cortex by the input cables adorning his skull. A hundred vox-streams played through his mind from his ships, many carrying the screams of his men. Screams were unimportant to him. He concentrated on the data-screed pouring through his consciousness, a thousand viewpoints of the battle, in every conceivable form. He picked apart the information, rendering it down to its rawest form. Life and death were reduced to numbers. There was no space for equivocal variables. The integers of existence danced through the halls of his mind.
Victory was a one, defeat a zero. These were the only two results he cared for. His men died for their determination.
Via his connections, he lived the death of ships. An escort was caught in an entropy beam, all matter within the compass of its temporal field forced into an unvarying baseline heat state. Atoms dispersed. With the radioactive rush of fleeing neutrons, the craft collapsed, leaving behind it a brief window into the death of the universe. Pain afflicted him as the animal parts of his mind assigned sensation to the information received. Perturabo bathed in agony, but he locked it away. His prodigious intellect swept through the battle, directing his ships with flair while his soul burned under a million different stimuli.
There was no viewport, of course. The front portion of the command deck was panelled by blank slabs of plasteel armour, stamped with the grinning skull badge of his Legion. Hololithic displays showed a true pict-feed of Gugann and the war around it the for the benefit of his men.
The 125th Expeditionary Fleet was arrayed about the hrud world, committed to a preliminary bombardment before an assault on the prime hrud warren. Every day more hrud arrived in the system.
Most passed through, but some remained to reinforce their capital world. Hrud ships hung in a petalled defensive arrangement directly over the underground city. Their ships were indistinct smears, nearly invisible behind their layers of shifting time fields. Solid munitions impacted these temporal wave fronts, vanishing as bright bursts of annihilated matter. Only las-beams and nova shells - the latter detonated close by the ships to avoid their simpler brethren’s fate - seemed to penetrate the hrud’s esoteric shielding.
Several xenos vessels drifted lifelessly, fires burning weirdly fast in their failing entropic fields. The others were implacable. Like time itself, the vessels were an enemy that could not be overcome. From their flaring weapons blisters came temporal rays that enveloped the ships of the Iron Warriors and spirited them forwards in time to the death of all things.
The stasis tactic had worked well - too well. Things had changed. The hrud had been provoked into flight, and they were countering even as they ran.
Perturabo’s servants went about their work with the cold efficiently characteristic of his Legion. However, they did not have the ruthless certainty of their lord, and their eyes strayed with concern to the casualty count. They were distracted by the bright lightning flashes of ship death.
The Iron Blood trembled to the ceaseless discharge of macro cannon batteries. Winking explosions peppered the surface of the planet, spreading concentric rings of fire through its thin atmosphere. The wrath of the IV Legion did not seem to be enough to steady the Space Marines. In the hearts and minds of the ruthless siege masters, the fear of defeat once again raised its ugly head.
Perturabo saw none of this. His thoughts were turned ever inwards into the four-dimensional construct his brain had fashioned from battle inputs. Less than real, it nevertheless dispensed with distractions such as the life and death of the men under his command. War was an equation, whose total sum was of no consequence, as long as it remained above zero. Anything over that denoted victory, and he would have it at any cost.
His crew were a distraction also. Though they toiled and shouted from their gunnery command pits and servitor arrays, where he could the primarch bypassed his deck officers and their tiers of authority, instead sending his orders directly via hardline to the gun-team captains or the enginseers of the enginarium; sometimes he cut even them out of the process and directed individual servitors himself.
The crews of Iron Warriors warships were smaller than those of other Legions. All unnecessary hierarchy had been stripped out of their organisation. Where possible, the Lord of Iron avoided the use of purely human crew, preferring instead to rely on his own legionaries, with menial tasks taken up by the cyborg dead. Not for him the dupl
ication in duty of legate and admiral, or captain and shipmaster. His warsmiths were the backbone of his Legion and his fleet. It enabled him to manage everything himself, the way he liked.
‘As above, so below,’ he said through gritted teeth.
His mind moved impossibly quickly, faster than the finest Mechanicum cogitator array. It was not fast enough. Were it not for his profoundly stubborn nature, Perturabo would also have admitted that there were simply too many of the hrud to deal with. Defeat stared him in the face. He refused to acknowledge it.
They came in swarms from the worlds of the Sak’trada Deeps; not only from Gugann, but all the other planets in that strange cluster. There were no measurable communications between the xenos worlds, nothing to indicate that they shared information at all, but shortly after the use of the temporal bomb on Gugann, the hrud had begun to move en masse.
At first, Perturabo had taken their panic as the first signs of victory. He anticipated the campaign’s end by wiping out the xenos as they ran. It was not to be so. Billions of hrud were passing through the primarch’s position in their rout from the sector.
The Iron Warriors were being overwhelmed.
First came the foray parties, projected through time and space upon the tips of focused spears of temporal energy. Many of these had attempted to stow away on the 125th Expeditionary Fleet’s ships, as was the hrud’s racial habit. Cannily, they targeted the vessels of the Legion’s penal auxiliaries, but the xenos were no safer from persecution there than aboard Space Marine vessels. Hourly purgation teams swept the decks of Perturabo’s fleet, seeking out infestations that had slipped the bonds of reality to take up residence in out-of-the-way corners.