No, the right thing to do was to take out the subordinate hives, one by one, to clear the way forward. At the least, Axis could be destroyed. Nethata had the means to do it – the tanks, the guns, the troops – he just needed time.
He also knew, of course, that Rauth had a problem with time, but that was his issue to deal with.
‘Sir, the Warhounds are heading west.’
Nethata maintained concentration on the tactical display. His forces had spread out, company by company, hammering the enemy back, clearing the way for the assault on Axis. Ahead of them, twenty kilometres distant, the two Warlord Titans were bludgeoning spire-based targets with vicious abandon.
‘Why?’ he asked absently.
‘I don’t know,’ said Heriat. He had reproach in his voice then. ‘Should we not make some attempt to find out?’
Nethata looked up. He didn’t like hearing disapproval from his advisor. They had been through too much together for that.
‘You have something to say, Slavo?’
Heriat looked evenly at him. The man’s skin had got worse during his time on Shardenus. How much longer, Nethata wondered, did he have? Heriat’s continued existence was something he had a direct interest in; something, after all, that he’d paid heavily to extend.
‘This is a dangerous game,’ Heriat said. ‘Rauth is not a man to be toyed with.’
‘He is not a man at all.’
‘He will wish to know why our course has deviated.’
‘When he asks, I will tell him.’
Heriat’s sore-laced mouth pursed.
‘I understand, sir,’ he said. ‘I understand why you’re doing this. Think, though, how far you can take this, and all for pride.’
‘Pride?’
‘Examine yourself,’ said Heriat. ‘Please. You’ve achieved everything a mortal could hope in the service of the Imperium. What test could remain, except, perhaps, defying the Emperor’s elect?’
Nethata felt his cheeks flush with anger.
He held Heriat’s gaze a little longer. Further down in the cramped command chamber, he heard men go about their business, affecting not to hear the strained conversation between their superiors.
‘Is that truly what you think this is?’
Heriat didn’t blink.
‘Not wholly,’ he said. ‘Like I said, examine yourself.’
Nethata felt an uncomfortable pang then, right in his torso, like nerves before the first experience of combat.
They only respect strength.
Perhaps that was it. Perhaps this was just some futile trial of wills, human versus transhuman. He’d always told himself it was about the lives of his men, the integrity of the Ferik Tactical, the triumph of ordered military planning over a headlong dash into disaster.
Heriat knew him about as well as any man alive. He knew his foibles, his weaknesses, the little tics and habits a man picks up over centuries of service.
That didn’t mean he was right.
‘We’ll maintain course,’ said Nethata at last, affecting more certainty than he felt. ‘Once we’ve blunted the long-range guns on Axis, we can head back to Melamar. Rauth can wait a little longer – if he objects, I shall speak to him myself.’
He let his eyes fall away from Heriat’s soft, critical gaze.
‘This is about tactics, Slavo,’ he said. ‘This is about prosecuting this war the way it ought to be prosecuted.’
He turned back to the tactical display. The three Warhound Titans under Princeps Lopi’s command were indeed heading west, away from the larger Warlords and towards the northernmost point on Melamar Primus. Deployment runes from the Ferik brigades under Rauth’s supervision clustered at the same location, deep underground.
Nethata knew he should query that. He should have queried it earlier, back when the first signals began registering. That, though, would require opening a vox-channel to Rauth, something he wanted to postpone as long as possible.
So he shifted his attention back to the columns of tanks and tracked guns, watching as they ground onwards, driving a wedge north-east and slowly coming within range of Axis’s long-range weaponry.
‘They only respect strength,’ he breathed, watching the lights on the hololith dance like ghosts.
Chapter Twelve
Recall the principal lessons.
Naim Morvox mouthed the words to himself slowly, just as he had done many times before. He felt his chapped lips move against one another, brushing against the steel wire that ran down the edge of his jawline and into his helm gorget.
Only the spirit is pure.
The mind may be swayed, the body may fail.
Only the soul cradles vengeance purely.
Become the weapon of the soul.
His clave stood behind him. He could hear the hum of their armour – a tinny, sparse sound in the darkness. The life-signs of his troops registered on his lens display as nine Medusan sigils, badly rendered by the Martian creators of his suit’s visual system. For all that the fabricators of the Red Planet professed to understand the psyche of the Iron Hands, they still fell short where it mattered.
Where the mind hesitates, overcome it.
Where the body fails, replace it.
Aspire to the condition of the Primarch.
Emulate his union with steel.
He stood in a gigantic hall at the very base of Melamar Primus. The ceiling was lost in darkness – it could have been over a hundred metres up. Colossal pillars of ferro-crete soared up into obscurity, marching in long ranks along the immense width of the chamber.
Never waver.
Never retreat.
Never doubt.
Morvox turned his head slightly, casting his gaze behind him.
High up the walls, ancient inscriptions had been carved into stone panels. Most were unreadable, scrubbed near-clean by the wearing millennia. Morvox could still make out a broken passage over on the far right – majoram portam ad Capitolis Shardenus – though only because his helm lens magnified the resolution.
The flesh is weak.
The weak shall be purged.
What remains is strength.
The hall had once been an embarkation hub for the transit tunnels running under the wasteland between the Melamar hives and the mighty Capitolis spire. Before war had come to Shardenus, it would have been swarming with workers, each destined for the heavy grav-trains that ran into the heart of the megapolis. In recent days the area had echoed with the crash and thunder of weapon discharge as Rauth’s forces had driven the last of the defenders from their positions.
The flesh is weak.
What remains is strength.
Now only loyalists remained. They stood in ranks of thousands all across the vast floorspace, company after company of them. Morvox could sense their exhaustion – the fug of stale sweat rising through the hall, a product of days-long combat in the stinking pits of Melamar. Some wore the olive-green of the Ferik, stained with blood and oil; others the black of the Galamoth Armoured. Irregulars from loyalist Shardenus units stood at the rear, still wearing their old pearl-grey fatigues. For all Morvox knew, the mortals he’d saved in Melamar Secundus were among them, ready to enter action once more on behalf of the Emperor.
Tank columns ran up the centre of the space, their engines idling and filling the air above them with fumes. Rauth had assembled hundreds of vehicles for the main assault, drawn across the entire width of the front line, lowered from the wasteland surface on industrial elevator shafts and sent roaring down the transit passages towards the muster points. Morvox knew that many more had been due to arrive – the second wave of heavy armour, commanded by the mortal Nethata. They hadn’t come, though he had no idea why.
Beyond the tank columns, towering high into the gloom at the back of the army, were the three Warhound Titans. More than anything els
e arrayed in that hall, they radiated an aura of complete dominance. They stood immobile, hunched on two backwards-jointed legs, weapons hanging low from broad, sloping shoulders. Their blunt heads, fashioned into the snarling muzzles of dogs, glowed with orange illumination from cockpit lights. They reared up over the troops below, standing sentinel, frozen into attitudes of poorly contained aggression.
The Mechanicus tech-adepts had barely been able to squeeze the Warhounds into the embarkation chamber’s precincts, even after thousands of tonnes of masonry had been demolished to give access from the surface and the full ingenuity of the Martian war machine had been employed to bring the sacred engines into the perpetual twilight of the hive underworld.
But there they stood, hissing steam gently from colossal limb-joints, issuing a low, thudding growl from their huge drive units. Once down into the enormous underground caverns, they somehow seemed more massive, more intimidating.
Morvox knew their names. Gaius Thyrsus, Quis Odio, Ferus Arma. He could respect such power. As a Medusan, as an Iron Hand, as a servant of the Imperium, he relished the sight of it.
The flesh is weak.
What remains is strength.
He turned his head back, away from the massed ranks of waiting soldiers, armour and war engines.
In the vanguard, surrounding him, were the Iron Hands of Clan Raukaan. Nine claves stood ready, each arrayed in night-black power armour and with their weapons held ready. Morvox’s own unit, Clave Arx, stood third from the left, as rigid and unmoving as all the others. Their red eyes glowed in the velvet dark.
In the centre was Clave Prime. Rauth was there, as were Khatir and Telach. Three subordinate Librarians stood with the clan commander, their dark blue armour wreathed in subtle flickers of aether-light. None of them moved. None of them spoke.
Huge doors soared up before them all, over thirty metres high and braced with thick bars of adamantium. The doors had been closed by the last of the defenders before they had retreated into the tunnels, then welded shut and braced with supporting buttresses on the far side. The Imperial aquila that had once adorned the door faces had been defaced and daubed with purple stains, but was still perceptibly there.
On the other side of those doors were the tunnels themselves, kilometres-long and crammed with defending troops.
Morvox felt his primary heart beating, long and slow. Despite days of near-constant fighting, he felt alert, aware, prepared. The task ahead would be the sternest test of Rauth’s strategy, and everyone assembled in the hall knew it.
Warriors of Raukaan.+
The voice in his head was Chief Librarian Telach’s. Morvox knew that the same voice was being heard by every member of the clan.
I have seen what lies beyond these doors. At the far end of the tunnels, where the tunnels meet the foundations of the Capitolis, the gates are still open. Through them spill creatures of the arch-enemy. Those gates are our objective. Any other considerations are secondary.+
None of the Iron Hands responded. Each absorbed the information silently, remaining as still as the air around them.
Whatever Khatir says to them, the mortals will wither before the creatures in those tunnels. Let them wither. Reserve your wrath for the enemy. We must take the gates.+
An image of the Imperial Guard officer’s face – the one called Marivo – flashed across Morvox’s mind then. He remembered how hard the man had been fighting, how determined he’d been, how the blond hair had framed his eager eyes.
We are ready to serve, lord.
Morvox pushed the image to the back of his mind. Telach’s sending echoed in its place.
Let them wither.
‘Loyal fighters of Shardenus!’ roared Iron Father Khatir, a single voice in the immense space. He, alone of the Iron Hands, had turned fully to face the assembled war host, and his eyes burned red. His tarnished battle-plate glinted in the endless shadows of the Melamar underworld as if edged with faint lines of steel.
‘The test comes! Glory in it! Glory in what is to come!’
His voice resounded from the high places, amplified by war-vox relays in his helm. It thrummed up from the ground, echoed from the pillars, rushed out into the void beneath the enormous, unseen roof spaces.
‘Hate them,’ he thundered, raising his lightning claws high. His blades shot out, sheathed in fire. ‘Hate those who have sullied this place. Let your anger burn, let it make your blows strike true. With every stride you take, their corruption weakens. You shall be the instruments of Shardenus’s salvation. You will be the immortal heroes of this world!’
Morvox remained still. The words washed over him. He could hear a low murmur of assent from the men standing behind him.
He knew what was happening. Khatir’s voice, laced with subtle neuro-markers, would be stirring them. Their tired limbs would be feeling lighter. Their slack jaws would be tightening, as would the grip on their lasguns.
Morvox was hardly immune to the affect. He felt his heart-rates pick up. His blood flooded with adrenaline, primed to send him into full battle-readiness. All across his body, augmetic nodes ran final introspections, priming themselves to contribute properly to the totality of his killing power.
‘For those who have turned from the Emperor’s holy light, there is nothing but death!’ Khatir fed his claws with more flame. The rippling, blue-tinged tongues wrapped around the metal of his armour. ‘And beyond death, annihilation. For the traitor has forgotten the first and holiest truth: that the Emperor protects His own.’
At the utterance of those words – the Emperor protects – the ones that every child in every city on every planet across the boundless Imperium knew, the mortals stirred into a low growl of assent.
‘And those who die this day will be martyrs!’ thundered Khatir, curling one enormous claw into a fist. ‘Their souls will cleave to the Master of Mankind, joining in union with His holy presence. Those who waver, those who falter, those who retreat, they will be traitors, no better than those we have come to slay.’
The growl turned into a wave of angry muttering. The men were roused. Khatir’s neuro-oratory was doing its work. Morvox narrowed his eyes, impatient for the signal to advance.
‘Take no backward step!’
Khatir clenched his other fist.
‘Show no pity!’
His eyes blazed.
‘Show no weakness!’
Flames raged across his ceramite, engulfing him and flaring like the corona of a dying star.
‘For the Emperor: death to the traitor!’
Death to the traitor!
The response was deafening. Men thrust their fists into the air, roaring out their defiance and hatred. They stamped their feet, and the echo of it lashed out like a blast-wave.
‘Death to the heretic!’
Death to the heretic!
‘Death to the witch!’
Death to the witch!
Khatir flung his arms out wider and fresh flames arced up high, writhing like the necks of dragons.
‘By He who rules in glory,’ he roared, letting his mighty voice reach a fresh, blistering crescendo, ‘follow me, and bring oblivion to them!’
His final words rang around the hall like the report of a nova cannon, vast and booming. Men surged forwards, chanting in unison, driven into a frenzy of bloodlust.
Then the charges blew. Whole lines of thermo-explosives went off at once, cascading down the centre of the colossal doors, showering the Iron Hands standing below them with debris. The crack and echo of the detonation rocked the doors, and one gigantic panel buckled inwards.
Morvox tensed, ignoring the detritus raining down around him, ready for the charge that would carry him over the threshold and into the tunnels beyond. Behind him, the mania reached new heights.
DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!
More explosives crashed out into the dark, blazin
g along the doors’ joints. From the far side, in the cavernous tunnels beyond, something like screaming rushed out.
With a final, rolling boom, the final batch of charges exploded, shattering what remained of the doors in an orgy of flame and magma. The entire structure dissolved into a crumbling, sliding, toppling mass of ferrocrete, adamantium and steel.
Behind Morvox, thousands strong, the war host of Territo surged towards the breach, hurling invective at the enemies they couldn’t yet see, desperate to rush through the walls of flame and into the unknown horror beyond.
Now,+ sent Telach, giving the signal. +Now.+
Morvox broke into a run, bounding towards the smouldering remnants of the gate. All the Iron Hands did the same, responding instantly and accelerating to full speed. They swept onwards like onyx ghosts in the flame-licked dark, as silent as death-masks, power weapons shimmering amid the clouds of smog and ash, bolters primed and ready to bring death to the faithless.
The flesh is weak.
Morvox mouthed the words as he ran, feeling his boots crush the broken slabs underfoot. Beyond the vast maw of the doorway, under the cavernous shadow of the tunnels beyond, he picked out the first of his targets.
He took aim.
What remains is strength.
Daemonspoor.+
Morvox suppressed the ghost of a smile when he heard Telach’s mind-voice. The Chief Librarian didn’t control his emotions as completely as the other members of the command clave, and his relish for the upcoming test was poorly hidden.
Morvox swung round on the ball of his foot and fired a bolt at point-blank range into a flabby-cheeked mutant. Before the spinning fragments of bone and flesh had fallen to earth he was already moving, striding through the ranks of the enemy and laying about him with his chainsword. The curve of the tunnels soared away above him, echoing with gunfire. His clave stalked alongside him, fighting in the calm, methodical way that was the hallmark of the warriors of Medusa.
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