Astra Militarum

by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)

  We began to move forward, and we were marching into the jaws of a meat grinder. But the choice now was to advance and die, or wait and die. We advanced, the only route of honour, and the route of our only hope.

  A hope that took us through battle fortresses and Stompas. I had to stifle bitter laughter.

  ‘If we find Colonel Rogge,’ Lanner’s voice crackled on my ear-bead, ‘please grant me the privilege of killing him myself.’

  ‘That honour will be mine,’ I snapped. We needed armour to fight armour, and we had already lost the regiment that should have been, at the very least, holding back the orks long enough for the Baneblades to arrive. Mechanised infantry was nothing against what Thraka had unleashed.

  And still we headed for the slaughter, picking up speed. Within minutes, I could see the shapes of our destruction. The Stompas towered over our forces. A Titan would have blasted the monstrosities back to scrap metal, but our god-machines were still distant, still caught in unwavering stalemate. And here, the Stompas were the kings of the battlefield. They were horned beasts, with pipes jutting up from their shoulders, spewing smoke. At irregular intervals, taking turns, they would shake the valley with a deafening sound, part howl, part furnace roar, part raging horn. Every time a Stompa roared, the swarming foot soldiers took up the cry and hurled themselves at us with renewed war-fever.

  My Chimera reached the fullness of the chaos. The green tide lapped at the vehicle’s treads. I manned the turret’s stubber. I was an awkward gunner, with only one arm, but with the harness holding me firmly to the gun, it turned where I did, and it was impossible to miss. I pulled the trigger and scythed down the rushing beasts. My body shook with each shell, the rapidly heating gun burned my hand, the acrid stink of fyceline fumes stabbed my nostrils, and it was all good pain, honest pain, the purging hurt of war that meant my enemies were dying. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an ork boss flank the Chimera and launch himself towards the roof. A quick twitch to the right and I would have cut him in half. But suddenly that wasn’t good enough. I was thrumming with hatred for Rogge, for myself, for the orks. The xenos filth were revelling in their triumph, and I would be damned if I did not make them suffer. So I let the boss land. I unhooked myself from the harness as he took a step towards the turret. Then I jumped up from the hatch and stood on the roof, too, making myself as visible as possible. I raised my right arm, brandishing the battle claw that had been mine since Hades Hive. ‘You dare?’ I shouted. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I was Yarrick, who had sent the orks fleeing from Hades. I was Yarrick, who killed with an evil eye. And so I did.

  The ruby laser from my bale eye pierced upward through the ork’s gaping maw and blew off the top of his head. The beast’s jaw sagged with idiot surprise and the body twirled heavily before toppling from the Chimera. I turned my gaze on the orks below. They knew me, and they hesitated. Lanner drove through that hesitation, crushing greenskins to paste beneath our treads. I took the stubber again while the gunner, a trooper by the name of Koben, opened up with the cannon. We blasted our way clear. We created a path to our doom.

  But I would not accept that conclusion. Nor would my crew. Nor would any of the men who marched with us. We were not Space Marines. Individually, we were nothing. Collectively, we were the will of the Emperor, and His will acknowledged no obstacle. We would smash through the orks.

  That is, if will alone were enough.

  We closed in on the full crush of the battle, and it spread to envelop us. I was surrounded not just by the green tide, but by the rising, turbulent flood of war itself. In that vortex, organisation broke down, giving way to the random, the chance, the improvised, the chaotic and yes, sometimes, the fated. But the vortex didn’t mean the abandonment of strategy. I looked ahead, at the reality of the orks’ giant war machines, and sought my strategy, because, by the Throne, I would find one.

  I saw it. The exit from the valley, the route we had to follow, lay to the east. A Stompa, striding off the pace from the others, blocked the path. Between it and the Chimera, there was a company of Basilisk mobile artillery platforms. Their earthshaker cannons might penetrate the Stompa’s armour. But they weren’t tanks. Their own armour wasn’t designed for front-line combat, and they were open-topped. I could see that their crews were trying to manoeuvre them into firing positions, dropping the cannons for short-range destruction, and the orks were hitting them hard before they could become a threat. The air was thick with rockets. Several of the vehicles were already burning wrecks. The crews of many others were being cut to pieces.

  ‘Make for the Basilisks,’ I told Lanner. ‘To all within reach,’ I spoke on the regimental channels, ‘protect the artillery crews. Give them the chance to save us all.’

  Infantry and Chimeras converged on the Basilisks. Men ignored their own safety to gun down the orks clambering over the gun crews. But the orks were numberless, and a cannon-boasting battlewagon smashed into the fray. In the time it took our vehicle to arrive within range, the artillery company had been decimated. Vehicles, the battlewagon among them, were massive, twisted metal corpses. The shafts of the guns reached, useless and mute, for the blind heavens. Ahead of us, the men of one of the last Basilisks grappled with the orks, their doom a simple matter of seconds away.

  Koben fired. The Chimera’s main gun was as nothing beside a Leman Russ’s battlecannon, but it still packed an explosive punch, and the shot was a colossal risk. He could have finished the orks’ job for them. But he placed the shell with a precision that showed there had never been a risk after all. There was a geyser of shredded greenskin bodies a few metres from the rear of the Basilisk. The orks just beyond the explosion staggered, stunned. The artillery crew pushed their besiegers back. Stubber rounds and las-fire slashed in from all sides and cut deeper into the ork assault. Then the Basilisk’s gun was trained on the Stompa.

  The report was deafening. The recoil was a giant’s blow on the ground, and the Basilisk jerked back a few metres. The shell was designed to shatter bunkers. Even so, against this kind of a foe, we needed something very close to a miracle. We received one. The Emperor’s hand guided that shell. It hit the Stompa, and I blinked as day seared the night. There was a gigantic bloom of fire, as if a volcano had erupted over the battlefield. The upper half of the Stompa vanished. Chunks of metal, and some of flesh, rained down. I called for a concerted rush at the gap we had created. The order was hardly necessary. The moment of victory called all eyes and hearts. A roar of hope and faith louder than the orks’ rabid howling came from the men of Armageddon and Mordian and Aighe Mortis. With the strength of desperation and renewed purpose, we pushed the larger ork army back. We pushed through the orks. The speartip of the infantry reached the mouth of the valley.

  And ran straight into a battle fortress.

  The ork superheavy’s arrival had all the grotesque flair of that race. It charged in from the pass faster than any tank should move. It was as if a voidship engine had been mounted in the vehicle. Its front actually rose in the air as it crested a low rise, and didn’t descend before the fortress had raced over another several dozen metres. Men vanished beneath it and were smeared over the crude teeth of its front armour. I found myself staring straight at the mouth of its immense turret gun. The cannon dwarfed the Basilisk’s weapon, and it gave us the ork answer to our blow.

  Day again, much closer. I was in the heart of day, and the boom of the cannon was so huge it seemed to issue from inside my head. The blow felt like air that had turned to granite. I was flying. The world spun. I couldn’t think. Everything was fire and wind and hammering. I hit the ground as if dropped from space.

  Chapter Three

  Arrogance

  1. Yarrick

  Pain was a million jagged fragments. I took a breath, inhaling scorching heat and dust, and the fragments glowed red. Get up, I told myself. This is nothing. You’ve known worse. You aren’t going to let a minor irritant stand in the way of your
duty. Now get up!

  I staggered to my feet, squinting at the maelstrom around me. The battle fortress’s shot had blown away the central core of the Chimera and knocked the transport end over end. I had been thrown clear. The vehicle was on its back, its flanks gaping with fire, its front armour buckled and torn like tin. The Basilisk had vanished. Where it had been, there was now a field of warped and blackened sculpture. Flames guttered on all sides. Bodies of men and orks lay burned, smashed and torn. The air was still filled with the din of combat, but in this space, in the hundred or so metres in any direction, there was a pause. It was the peace of the murdered, the quiet of scorched earth. The battle fortress had come to a stop when it fired. Its turret swivelled, looking for new meat, but here and now, there were only tiny figures like me scurrying around. Nothing of interest. The engine rumbled as the gigantic tank’s attention turned to fresh killing fields.

  I scrambled through the blazing hell to the Chimera. There would be nothing to salvage there but lives, and likely none of those, but I had to try. My duty, in this moment, had shrunk to the few metres around me. They were all I could reach, along with, Throne have mercy, maybe some of the men who fought by my side. As I came up to the wreck, I saw Lanner fighting his way out of the hole in the front armour. I rushed to him and pulled him out. The right side of his face was burned, and he was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but nothing was broken. He took a few steps away from the Chimera. I turned back to it.

  He stopped me. ‘There’s no one else, commissar,’ he said.

  I turned to face him. ‘Down!’ I yelled. Lanner dropped flat. The charging ork swung a massive chainaxe, missed, and overshot, momentum carrying the filthy xenos to me. I hit him in the face with my power claw. I punched clean through his skull.

  The corpse fell. Behind it, I saw the battle fortress. It had not left. It was heading for us, gun at the ready. I remember that I wondered, sourly, why we were worth killing. Perhaps the crew had recognised me, and I was the recipient of a grotesque honour.

  The turret erupted. But not because it had fired. A massive armour-piercing round had struck it. Flames shot out of the hatch, and the gun was suddenly askew. I whirled around. A shape burst through a wall of flame. It was as huge as the ork tank, its treads alone as high as a man. It was a shadow made of steel. It was death.

  The Fortress of Arrogance fired again, catching the battle fortress in the flank, tearing open a gaping hole in the armour. The tank ground to a halt. Unbelievably, the turret rotated, the torqued gun aiming at the Arrogance. Even the orks weren’t stupid enough to attempt a shot, I thought, even as I realised that they were easily stubborn enough to do so. I hit the ground beside Lanner.

  Time and again, I have seen ork technology that functioned for no other reason than the sheer belief of the greenskins that it would work. But even their mad confidence couldn’t overcome this basic a physical reality. I heard a muffled fffwhump, and the entire battle fortress shook with the force of the blast that was channelled back inside the tank. Then two more explosions, gigantic concussions as first ammunition, and then the engine, blew up. The pressure wave of the superheavy’s destruction pressed us hard into the red dirt.

  Then we were up, sputtering, before the ringing had faded from our ears, or the dazzle of the glare from our eyes. The Fortress of Arrogance had stopped. Its hatch opened for us as we climbed up. As we did, I noticed that the Baneblade bore some wounds of battle. Its armour was gouged and scorched, and had been penetrated in at least one spot. Inside, there were more wounds. An ork shell had pierced the Arrogance’s hide and, fortunately, gone right through the other side without detonating. But it had killed the driver, and the tank’s commander, Sergeant Hanussen, had taken the controls. He relinquished them to Lanner with visible relief. Lanner was a man in love as he settled into his seat.

  I turned to Hanussen. ‘How are our communications?’

  ‘Spotty, commissar, but workable. I have already sent out word that you are alive.’ When I nodded for him to continue, he said, ‘There are at least three more Stompas and an equal number of battle fortresses against us. Some are already in the valley, and some are still coming up the pass.’

  I grunted. ‘We can’t fight them there. Too confined. We’ll have to wait for all of the primary threats to reach the valley, and try to break through. How are the other Baneblades faring?’

  ‘The Final Dawn is still fighting. We’ve lost the others.’

  I cursed. The Fearful Sublime was gone, too, along with Captain Hantlyn. The leadership of the regiments kept being decapitated. ‘Who took command?’ I asked.

  ‘I did,’ said Hanussen.

  And he had made it this far. ‘Good.’

  ‘There’s more, commissar. Colonel Helm has been trying to reach you. Something about orbital bombardment.’

  I frowned. ‘What are we targeting?’

  ‘We aren’t the ones doing it.’

  I grabbed the vox. Seconds we didn’t have were slipping away. But I put my trust in the men in the fray while I learned the broader situation. The curse of seeing the greater panorama of war is that one can never look away.

  Static of one relay after another, the chain still blessedly functioning, and I was through to the Hadron Plateau and speaking to Helm. ‘What is happening, colonel?’

  ‘Commissar, the orks have a space hulk.’

  It took an effort not to close my eye in despair. I kept my face rigid. A space hulk? When we had arrived in-system, the orks had had only a few transports at high anchor over Golgotha. We had summarily dispatched them. The orks had no forces except the surface ones, so no reinforcements, no resupply… Only they had. Thraka had a space hulk. It was one of those monstrous agglomerations of stolen and salvaged ships attached to an asteroid core that had been the primary source of troops and materiel for Thraka’s invasion of Armageddon. We had destroyed it, and so dealt a crippling blow to his power.

  We’d been naïve. It seemed that we were always so when it came to that ork.

  He had another. It was a chilling testament to the extent of his power and influence that he could have two such bases. And that he had managed to conceal it until now, hitting us on yet another front at the worst possible moment, was an even more frightening sign of not just strength, but skill.

  Helm was still speaking. ‘The fleet is being hit hard, sir. We don’t have the ships to fight something like that. It’s also bombarding the surface, primarily the sites being contested by our Titan forces.’

  ‘What is your evaluation?’

  ‘Sir, we are losing.’

  There was a charged quality to his silence as he waited for my answer. To speak so openly of defeat to a commissar was normally suicidal, and I have shot men for expressing sentiments much less definite than that. It took a brave man to be honest at such a high risk to himself. But I had asked him for the truth, and he had given it to me. Helm had proven himself an officer of integrity on Armageddon, when he had risked his military career and worse by standing against the treacherous idiocies of Governor von Strab. I appreciated that he was just as willing to tell me what I did not wish to, but absolutely must, hear.

  In this case, he told me what I had already deduced. The facts were horrific in their simplicity. With a space hulk, Thraka had more than the upper hand. The outcome of this war was decided. The only question that remained was what, if anything, we could salvage. The next words I spoke tasted like ash and deadened my soul. They hurt all the more for the ultimate responsibility I bore. This was my crusade. I still did not doubt its righteousness or its vital necessity. But I had led us here, to Golgotha. It was under my command that disaster had befallen us. Whatever the role individual officers had played (and I did wonder about Rogge’s total silence), this was my war, and the hated words were mine to speak. ‘I am issuing an order for immediate evacuation. Colonel, take the men and materiel you can and abandon the Golgotha sys
tem. Do it now.’

  There was a pause. In it was the weight of Helm’s despair. Then he said, ‘Commissar, the men will refuse to leave without you.’

  I was simultaneously honoured, humbled and outraged by the promise of disobedience. I knew better than to bluster or threaten. The situation required a solution, not a tantrum. ‘Have any transports landed in the last few minutes?’

  ‘Three,’ he answered.

  ‘Then I was aboard one of them. I am directing the evacuation. I am departing with our heroic troops. Understood?’ There was no answer except a disbelieving silence. ‘Understood?’ I demanded.

  ‘Yes, commissar.’

  ‘Maintain the fiction as long as you can. I’m sorry, Teodor.’ I was ordering an honest man to lie. And the poor bastard was going to be stuck with the responsibility of preserving my legend longer than I would be. ‘The Emperor protects.’

  ‘The Emperor–’

  A huge burst of static that became an unending gale. There would be no further contact with Hadron Base. Outside the Fortress of Arrogance, I heard another kind of gale build to a frenzy.

  2. Helm

  Teodor Helm threw down the vox-unit and ran from the communications centre of the Hadron garrison. He didn’t know if the static meant that Yarrick was dead. He had been unable to regain contact with any of the vox-relay posts. The entire network was down. Between Golgotha’s electrical storms and its dust, vox-traffic was immediate area only. The Hadron Plateau was cut off from the rest of the army.