Astra Militarum

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

  It didn’t land the blow. Castel sprinted over the space between them. With a rasping ‘Hhhhaahhhh’ of hatred, her arms straining, she swung the snarling eviscerator into the back of the ork’s neck. It was a good blow, one born of rage, a repayment for all the atrocities she had been forced to witness aboard the space hulk. The chainsword sank in almost to the width of the blade. The ork collapsed, its spine severed, blood spraying over Castel, slicking the floor of the cavern. The medic, triumphant in her butchery, jumped over the corpse and caught up with Polis.

  The laughter stopped. The orks yelled, and all but a handful took off after the two humans. They were a mob of muscle and aggression, coming to rend their prey into shreds. Castel and Polis had a lead measured in seconds. They didn’t pause, didn’t fire again. Their last mission consisted in nothing more now than staying alive long enough to be a useful distraction. They disappeared down the tunnel. Polis’s litany was multiplied by echoes, merging with the snarls of the orks. The sounds of the pursuit receded, plunging into darkness and silence. Rogge didn’t hear a scream.

  Yarrick and Behriman exchanged a look, then readied their weapons. There were only four orks left guarding the gate. Yarrick turned his gaze on Rogge.

  The silence from the other tunnel wrapped a frozen grip around his soul. There had been no ending, no final agony, only the drop into the unknown. A terrible vision unfolded before him, a vision of an endless flight through the undermaze of the planetoid, with nothing to anticipate except the delayed, raging inevitable. The image was a nightmare whose waking was worse, and Rogge wanted no part of it.

  He ran. He ran back down the way they had come. He ran towards the certainty of capture. He ran from the judgement of Yarrick.

  He ran towards surrender.

  Chapter Nine

  Crucible

  1. Yarrick

  And then we were two. A mutilated old man and a cook. Behriman and I grinned at each other. I was as aware of our absurdity as he was, and he knew our strength like I did. I don’t think either of us had expected Rogge to be true to his oath. I wasn’t surprised when he ran, but I was still angered. Betrayal and cowardice should always be met with immediate, unalterable justice. Rogge had confirmed my worst suspicions about what had gone wrong on Golgotha. That we had been outmanoeuvred by Thraka was still my failing to expiate, but more might have been saved if not for Rogge, a link weak with the rust of selfishness. If there hadn’t been the mission before me, I would have tracked the colonel down and put a bullet in the back of his head. I found satisfaction in the certain knowledge that he was running to a fate far less merciful than the worst I could do to him.

  We were the stronger for his absence. We could have used the fire of Castel, Bekket and Trower, but we still had the synchrony of warriors focused on a single task. Our goal awaited, and there were only four orks standing in our way. I was still grinning as I took aim from behind the boulder. I was eager for what was coming. I heard Behriman snort, unable to hold back violent mirth.

  I squeezed off three shots from the laspistol. My target jerked twice, hit in the neck and chest, and then a third time as the centre of his face imploded. I jumped out of cover and ran forward as Behriman fired behind me. He had a rifle. It had a lot more punch, and needed it. His target was the leader, a massive brute made bigger yet by the spiked plates of his armour. A fanged metal jaw protected his neck and lower face. Behriman’s first shot glanced off the jaw as I closed with the nearest greenskin. He did better with the rest of his salvo. The second shot took out the ork’s left eye. The monster roared agony and rage. The slug had to have penetrated his brain, but he wasn’t dead. He struck without sight or thought, his gigantic axe decapitating the ork in front of him. I dropped to a crouch, and my opponent’s blade swished the air just over my head. I fired up, draining the rest of the power pack. The greenskin’s chin and nose exploded. Blood showered down on me as the ork rocked back and forth on his heels before toppling over on his back.

  There was only the leader still moving. He was an automaton, whirling and slashing at nothing with every random step. I scrambled back, out of the way. It took Behriman another seven well-placed shots to drop him.

  The battle had taken seconds. No alarm had been raised. Shots being fired were too mundane an occurrence in ork life to draw attention. The rest of the squad hadn’t returned from chasing Castel and Polis. I muttered a prayer under my breath for the medic and the clerk. I stopped to loot the nearest ork corpse of ammunition. Behriman joined me and did the same. We found a few power packs that fit our weapons. We found long-handled grenades. Then we turned to the gate. Its mechanism was basic. It was an effective barrier only if it had guards to back it up. Otherwise, it might as well have been nothing more than a morbid bit of sculpture.

  We opened the gate. We entered the temple.

  Here I am, Thraka, I thought. Are you still enjoying this?

  We walked down a long, straight, low-ceilinged corridor. Behriman and I both had to hunch down to avoid banging our heads. It must have been an infuriating passageway for orks. After about fifty metres, it opened up onto the central shaft of the temple. The space was circular, about fifty metres in diameter, and many times that in height. A central column ran an iron elevator car up and down. Spiralling up the walls was a rough metal staircase. It had no railing. It was no more than an endless series of metal planks welded to the wall. There were no exits off the shaft. Stairs and elevators went from the ground to the distant ceiling with no interruptions.

  The elevators were in use, but there were no orks on the stairs.

  ‘Well?’ Behriman asked.

  ‘To the top,’ I said. ‘If he’s here, he’ll be there.’

  We ran to the wall. We began to climb the stairs that would take us to the heart of power.

  2. Rogge

  He didn’t run long. He fled for about a minute, taking tunnels at random. He was not being tracked by their earlier pursuers. He knew that much. He didn’t hear anything in front of him. So when he ran into the patrol, he was more surprised than they were. He had intended to present his rifle to the first ork he encountered, and so signal his submission to slavery. Instead, dumb instinct betrayed him, and he raised the gun, finger on its awkwardly placed trigger.

  The lead ork batted the rifle out of his hands, and backhanded him on the return swing. His left cheekbone and nose shattered. The pain filled his eyes with a sudden nova. He fell into darkness with something very like relief.

  The greenskins denied him the refuge of oblivion. Rough shaking woke him. His head jerked back and forth so hard it felt like his spine was going to snap. He howled, and the shaking stopped. He fell to the ground. The jar of impact rattled the length of his frame. He looked around, blinking rapidly. He was still beneath the surface of the planetoid, still in the warren of tunnels. The space was an intersection of several passages. It wasn’t as large as the cavern before the temple, but it was big enough to contain the monsters that towered over him. They were laughing at him. Tears of hopeless frustration sprang to his eyes. He couldn’t even succeed at surrender. They were going to kill him now.

  Only they didn’t. The ork who had been holding him looked back over its shoulder. It grunted, the noise sounding to Rogge like a mixture of religious fear and religious joy. From behind his captors came booming, metal-on-stone footsteps. Something was coming that could crush worlds beneath its tread. The other orks parted, making a wide berth for the being that strode forward. Rogge whimpered as Thraka, bent forward to fit in the tunnels, loomed over him. The ork prophet leaned down. Thraka eyed him dismissively, then began to turn away.

  He was going to leave. Suddenly, Rogge feared Thraka’s departure more than his presence. If he was beneath Thraka’s notice, he wouldn’t be worth sparing. ‘Wait!’ Rogge cried.

  The ork couldn’t have understood Gothic, Rogge thought. But he seemed to recognise desperation. Thraka turned aro
und. Rogge was abruptly conscious of the silence of the orks. That such a thing was even possible terrified him. He found himself thinking in a new way about the warlord. The idea at the forefront of his mind was propitiation. He was face to face with a terrible god, and he was desperate to give the deity what he wanted.

  What did Thraka want?

  ‘Yarrick!’ Rogge gasped. ‘I can give you Yarrick! I know where he is!’

  Thraka continued to regard him. The hideous face, that primitive savagery made more brutal by adamantium skull, didn’t alter its expression. Thraka was waiting.

  How do I make you understand? Rogge thought. He stood and pointed down the tunnel that his instinct chose to believe was the way back to the temple. ‘Yarrick,’ he kept saying. Did the orks even know the commissar’s name? Rogge tucked his right arm in and flapped his elbow. Thraka let out a short bark of amusement. A mountain laughed. Rogge quailed. He fell to his knees. Thraka’s troops followed the cue of their ruler and fell about with cruel guffaws. But Thraka only laughed the once. His single real eye looked in the direction Rogge was pointing. Yes, Rogge thought. Yes, that’s right. You know what I’m trying to tell you. I can take you to Yarrick. Let me show you the way. He forgot, in his need, that he didn’t know where he was.

  Thraka’s gaze returned to Rogge. The ork’s jaw split into a smile, the kind of smile that accompanies the torching of solar systems. Rogge did his best to return it. Thraka delighted in his effort, and the ork’s grin grew wider yet. The monster nodded, once, and then turned to speak to one of his underlings. Thraka’s voice rumbled and sawed at Rogge’s ears. The ork language could only have been produced by throats gargling glass, rage and broken bones. Rogge had no idea what was being said, but he heard a pattern of syllables repeat a few times. It sounded like ‘Grotsnik.’ Rogge hoped this was a good thing.

  His answer wasn’t long in coming. After a minute, a different ork battered his way to the front. Anyone who didn’t move from his path quickly enough was sent flying by his grotesquely huge power claw. His presumption of superiority ended only when he drew abreast of Thraka. He abased himself before his lord, and growled something interrogative. It occurred to Rogge that the word he had heard was a name. His hopes frayed.

  Thraka pointed at him. Rogge now saw the massive syringes that Grotsnik kept stored in bandoliers and in his flesh itself. He saw the scars and the sutures. He remembered Castel’s stories of ork surgeries, and of the vanished line between experimentation and torture. He took a step backward.

  Thraka reached out with his claw. He picked Rogge up by his arms. The colonel whimpered as he felt his shoulders dislocate. Thraka tossed him into the arms of Grotsnik. The ork medic laughed. Rogge began to scream.

  For all the terror he had experienced, it was a fact that Rogge had never screamed before. Now, he would never stop.

  3. Yarrick

  I don’t know if I can say that we were lucky. I don’t know if I can say that luck ever had any role in the Golgotha catastrophe. I can see too much destiny at work in the events of those days. There was also too much will. I will not blaspheme and pretend to know the Emperor’s, but mine and Thraka’s decided much, and destroyed more.

  So I don’t know if Behriman and I were lucky or cursed. But we were better than halfway up the height of the temple’s central shaft before the klaxons started. We had done well to make it this far without incident. But we were both winded. My legs were heavy with pain. Even in the dimness of the shaft, I could see Behriman’s face looking pale and shiny with exhaustion. But then the warning sounded – a brain-shredding, metallic roar that rattled in the chest. Seconds later, orks streamed in through the ground floor entrance. While most of them pounded up the stairs after us, a small group waited for the elevator. Within seconds, there were over a hundred greenskins in pursuit, and the Emperor knew how many in the upper levels of the temple, alerted now and waiting for the mad little humans to show themselves. We had no hope. None at all.

  The feeling was oddly liberating. It gave free rein to our determination. Behriman’s face hardened with a cold exhilaration. I know what he felt, because the same dark fire suffused my being. We ran. Adrenaline from some hidden reserve coursed through my veins. I pushed through pain, exhaustion, and the impossibility of what we were attempting. We had no chance of breaking through to kill Thraka even if he was somewhere above us. But we would try, and we would fight. I knew my duty to my Emperor and to my species. There was no price too high to be paid, by me or by anyone within my reach, in the execution of that duty. To know this, as I did, was to render irrelevant such concepts as hope and probability. The way forward was clear. That was enough.

  Up, faster somehow, but the goal stubbornly refusing to come any closer. The orks shot at us, but they were running as they fired. The distance was still too great. The rounds whined against the metal wall and left us untouched. But now the elevator was rising. It would reach us in less than a minute. If it could be brought to a halt, the greenskins inside would be within a few metres of us. Their fire would rip us to pieces.

  I shoved my pistol into my belt and grabbed a grenade. I kept climbing, taking every granted second to take another step up. Behriman followed my lead. He didn’t wait for the elevator cage to arrive. He tossed his grenade behind us. The explosive flew in a fine, long arc. It exploded as it hit the stairs, blowing open a gap several metres across. ‘The xenos filth are adaptable,’ he wheezed between ragged breaths. ‘Let’s see them grow wings.’

  I grunted approval, but didn’t answer. He was younger, had more breath to spare. He was also more right than he knew. The orks were adaptable. They wouldn’t learn to fly, but they would find some way over the gap.

  But maybe not before it was too late.

  My eyes flicked back and forth between the rising cage and the stairs before me. If I tripped, I would fall, and if I fell, it would be off the stairs and into the void. I had already experienced the death comfort of a great plunge. I had no need of its touch a second time. I maintained the careful rhythm of my climb. I defied the exhaustion of my ageing flesh. I moved up and up. I let the cage rise closer. I waited as it began to slow and the orks fired through the bars. I waited as Behriman cursed and we both crouched and ducked. The rounds were a hard danger now. But still I climbed. Still I waited.

  The elevator cage stopped. Its door opened. The cluster of ork guns looked close enough to touch. I gave them the grenade. I threw it to the back of the cage.

  The orks in the front had time to squeeze their triggers once before they realised what I had done. Behriman gave a liquid curse as a round tore through his cheek. It spun him round and he crashed against the wall. He stumbled, sagged, but did not collapse, and did not stop moving. The burn of a shell slashed at my scalp. I took pride in the pain. I kept moving.

  Movement, too, in the cage. The movement of panic. Orks jumped, some trying to reach the staircase that was close, but not that close, some forgetting they were well over a hundred metres up and simply jumping from one death to another. Then the grenade went off. It blasted the cage away from its pillar. The metal crate shot forward, smashed into the staircase, and fell. It turned end over end, banging against the wall, smearing some orks and dragging others off their perches. The shaft echoed with the crash of the tumbling cage and the howls of the plunging orks. The elevator hit the ground floor with a satisfying impact.

  The howls grew louder, now the rage of the frustrated horde. Gunfire sought us, an insect swarm of rounds blackening the air. Sheer volume overcame inaccuracy. If I still had a right arm, I would have lost it again. A shot exploded off a step as I brought my foot down. I stumbled, lost my footing. I threw my weight to the left, and slammed against the wall instead of hurtling into space. The instinct was to curl into a ball, to be the smaller target. The instinct was as cowardly as it was wrong. I dismissed it and started moving again. Neither Behriman nor I could run anymore. My legs were columns of
lead. They felt as useless as the twisted wreck of the elevator column. I moved them by will alone. I was in the well again, rising endlessly through a nimbus of pain and exhaustion. It would have been easy to fall into a numbness, to keep going by detaching myself from my agonised flesh. But I had to remain alert, had to be ready to counter the next threat.

  Below us, the orks raged, their anger louder than the report of their guns. Behriman used two more grenades, destroying more of the stairs behind us. The orks were hauling lengths of scrap metal from the destroyed elevator and were using that to cross the first of the gaps, but the process was eating up time. We were pulling ahead.

  I looked up for the first time in a century. The stairs ended at a landing. We were there. A few more steps, and the climbing would end. Relief turned into a last shot of strength to my legs, and I started running again.

  The rocket hit the wall just beneath the landing. It tore the world apart. I was flying, eyes filled with light, ears stuffed with sound, mind battered empty of anything except a furious denial. I would not surrender to such a perversity. I reached my arm into the heart of the dragon’s breath that enveloped me. I closed my fist, expecting nothing but fire, air and defeat. I found metal. I gripped with the ferocity of rage. The blast washed over me, the jaws of the dragon clamping down hard on my bones. Then the dragon departed, leaving behind pain and, with the return of conscious thought, despair.

  I was holding on to a strut sticking out from the damaged landing. The stairs beneath me had vanished. The explosion had pushed me out, and I was dangling off the projecting lip of the landing. There was nothing below but the long fall and final rest.