by Mark Clapham
Lissica froze, paralysed by the enormity of what was happening.
‘Well?’ shouted Trakhanov. ‘What are you waiting for? Light the beacon, I’ll sound the alarum.’
Lissica ran across the rooftop to where a pile of salvaged junk from within the habs had been piled high. There was a harsh smell of cheap accelerant from the pile, and she kept her distance as she lit a match and tossed it on.
The signal fire burned high and fast, but the crackling of the flames was drowned out by the plaintive wail of Trakhanov hand-cranking the alarum.
Shouting could be heard in response to the alarum, and as Lissica looked across to the next block she saw another huge fire appear, then another in the distance.
The alarm had been raised and answered. Nulstrom was waking to war.
‘There!’ hissed Huron Blackheart as a line of fires appeared in the distance. ‘The city awakes.’
Garreon had been alongside Huron for most of the voyage across darkened seas. The Tyrant had prowled the deck of his personal galleon, the Unyielding Fist, throughout that time, looming over the mutated crew, the overwhelming power of his presence making the open space seem cramped.
The galleons were hulking vessels of oily black metal, propellers at the rear churning beneath the water to move them. Every surface of the Fist seemed oily, blackened, decayed, as if the galleon had been pulled from the depths of the ocean only seconds before. Huron had ordered all lights extinguished so as to approach the coast by stealth, and the deck was a glistening surface disrupted by the huddled shapes of gun batteries and equipment.
‘Give the order,’ Huron told Garreon, not moving his eyes from the distant fires. ‘Light the fleet and strike fear into these mortals.’
Garreon nodded, and strode towards the bridge where the mortal, corrupted crew of the Unyielding Fist piloted the ship.
‘Captain,’ Garreon called out. ‘Vox all ships. Light the decks, fire on coastal defences at will.’
‘Aye, my lord,’ said the captain, an elderly mortal in a uniform streaked with red.
As the captain relayed the order, Garreon turned on his heel and returned to Huron’s side. All around him, gaslights spluttered into life, illuminating the deck with a sickly green flame. The torches were fed from pockets of poisonous, flammable gas somewhere deep below decks, and Huron seemed even taller and more menacing lit by the eerie glow.
Garreon could hear the great cannon mounted on the deck begin to grind into action, slaves sweating to turn the wheel that rotated the huge weapon. Out of the silence came a babble of voices in a dozen languages, mutated creatures driving the slaves, passing on orders issued by the Red Corsairs controlling the targeting.
Pallid, corpse-like humans, some mutated with crab claws and scales, slaving under the whip of bestial gangmasters, manned the smaller gun batteries on the foredeck.
Huron turned to the Corpsemaster, one side of his mouth twisted up in an insane smile. ‘Now they’ll see what nightmare comes for them.’
They were like no ships Lissica had seen in a life lived on the coast. In response to the watch-fires burning across Nulstrom, the barely visible ships had lit themselves up, or set themselves ablaze, or… Lissica wasn’t sure, but they burned with an unearthly green glow, a fleet of hulking vessels advancing on the shore.
‘Emperor save us,’ said Trakhanov. ‘Emperor save us all.’
Lissica looked across to him. The motivation he’d had a few minutes ago seemed to have drained out of him. ‘Let’s not throw ourselves on the Emperor’s mercy just yet,’ she said firmly.
Trakhanov looked at her blankly, only to jump in shock as the coastal defences opened fire.
Five giant defensive lascannons were embedded in turrets across the coast. The nearest to Lissica and Trakhanov’s position was on the next rooftop, and as it fired the night was briefly day again, and the sound of the shot smacked into Lissica’s chest like a physical blow.
The galleons began defensive manoeuvres the moment the giant lascannons on the shore began firing. On the deck of the Unyielding Fist cogs ground and orders were shouted as the weaponry on deck was brought to bear on the massive guns. Garreon shifted his weight to compensate as the ship turned, bracing himself as the deck tilted beneath his boots.
The Fist shook as a las-shot caught its hull, the air to port filling with steam as most of the blast hit the sea, vaporising a mass of water.
‘Too close, captain!’ roared Huron Blackheart, but his warning was drowned out as the gun batteries of the Fist opened fire.
Garreon watched the streaks of fire from the gun batteries as they arced towards the coast. Then he felt something heavy clamp down on his shoulder, a colossal pressure even through his power armour. His eyes snapped back to find Huron Blackheart staring at him, organic eye twitching, the Tyrant’s Claw gripping Garreon’s pauldron.
It took incredible effort for the Corpsemaster, who had brought nightmares and torments to so many, who revelled in despair, not to flinch.
‘Give this order…’ hissed Huron Blackheart.
The response from the fleet out at sea was an unholy roar of weaponry, and while each shot from the coastal defences was a thunderous report, the retaliation was instead the cacophony of many, many smaller weapons firing at once. The sky lit up again as fiery points of light arced high into the air while beams of las-fire criss-crossed the space between the galleons and the coast.
From where Lissica stood she could not see where on the walls the las-fire had impacted, and she moved to run towards the rooftop’s edge, to look over the lip and assess the damage to the coastal wall, but Trakhanov caught her elbow.
‘Are you insane?’ he shouted. ‘We need to get back from–’
His words were drowned out as one of the glowing shapes that had arced up into the sky from the galleons hit the other side of the rooftop Trakhanov and Lissica were standing on. The impact whiplashed up Lissica’s spine as she and Trakhanov were thrown off their feet, a ball of fire and shattered masonry spewing upwards from the point of impact.
Blinking, deafened, aching, Lissica tried to force herself back up again, and she didn’t know whether the shifting feeling beneath her was real or the result of concussion.
Trakhanov helped her up. He was pointing to the nearby lascannon on the next roof, indicating they should go to it. It made sense; the heavy weapon was surrounded by a cluster of bunker-like structures, and they might prove more useful there, and be more protected.
Lissica glanced across the city and saw habs and factories ablaze, shells continuing to rain down. Then the assault stopped.
Fire from the sea had battered the walls, and the rockcrete beneath their feet was scorched black. There was a sickly smell of burning in the air, and Lissica didn’t look too closely at the charred, slumped forms of the many dead Jandarme.
A single survivor, half his face horribly reddened, one eye closed and weeping, was trying to pull a mortar into position, even though his left arm was limp and clearly broken.
‘Help me,’ said Trakhanov, and Lissica joined him in moving the heavy barrel into place.
‘We need to be ready,’ said the wounded man. His relatively good eye looked unfocused, and Lissica wasn’t even sure he could see any more. ‘For when they come back.’
She thought he was blind, or had just gone mad, but when she looked through the gap in the wall she realised what the wounded man meant – the enemy ships had put out their lights, and the smoke from the battle hung over the sea, obscuring the view.
To all intents and purposes, the enemy ships were invisible.
‘Lord Huron,’ said Garreon. ‘All ships report their main cannons are targeting coastal defences. If we wait we risk expo–’
‘Hold fire,’ Huron snapped back, and Garreon knew from his tone that it would be very, very dangerous to dispute the order. ‘We are not close enough.’<
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The galleons were drifting silently through the darkness and smoke, mortal crew spluttering and coughing as they worked. The bombardment of the coast had set much of the city ablaze, and even through the smoke the gun placements high on the coastal walls were clearly visible, silhouetted by flame. A great clanking and grinding could be heard on the deck of the Fist as slaves used chains to adjust the barrel of the galleon’s most powerful weapon, a huge gun capable of firing monstrous shells. As the Fist and the other galleons moved towards the coast, the large guns would be adjusted to keep targeting those defences.
To hold fire was a risk – while closer proximity to the targets would enable a surer shot and greater damage, any adjustment to such large guns was difficult, subtle adjustments near impossible.
‘Hold, hold,’ said Huron, slowly raising the Tyrant’s Claw. Then he brought it down in a slashing motion.
‘Fire!’ he shouted, a terrifying roar that carried over even the screaming gears as the giant gun barrel continued to move.
The order was meant for the whole of the fleet, but it was the great gun on the Fist that fired first, the report of the shot so great that the sound of it felt like a blow.
The shot reached its mark and one of the coastal towers exploded in a burst of promethium, the coastal wall beneath it collapsing as the explosion tore solid rockcrete to pieces and the shock wave spread through the entire structure.
‘We’ve lost a tower!’ someone screamed, but Lissica didn’t need to be told. Although she could not see the destruction from her position at the base of one of the five huge lascannons, she heard the explosion, saw the sky light up, and felt the collapse of part of the coastal wall through her boots.
‘In the Emperor’s name,’ said Trakhanov. ‘They’re nearly under us.’
Trakhanov was right; the enemy ships were now visible again, the large guns on their decks firing on the towers, smaller gun batteries blazing at the coastal wall. They could be targeted now, but they were close – so close that they would soon be past the point where the lascannons could target them from their high position.
There were ragged cheers from the crew of the Fist as the third tower fell, cut off abruptly when a shot from one of the two surviving lascannons hit the hull of the Whip Hand. As the other galleon capsized, foul liquid spreading around it as the ruptured promethium tanks leaked into the sea, Huron Blackheart batted Garreon aside to take matters into his own hands.
As he marched to the rear of the deck, Blackheart shouted up to the bridge: ‘That tower is mine. Vox all galleons to target the other tower, but leave that one to me.’
Across the fleet, gun batteries and small cannon were firing, but the largest guns were silent. The giant cannons, the barrels of which were half as long as the decks of the galleons that carried them, took many minutes to reload and move into position for another shot.
Garreon was right behind Huron as he descended upon the dozen slaves who were dragging a trolley carrying a giant shell into position.
‘Ready the chamber!’ yelled Huron, backhanding three of the slaves out of the way. One was caught under the jaw by the blow and didn’t get up again, the mortal’s head twisted back at an unnatural angle. Huron stepped over the corpse, kicking it aside.
There was a distant explosion and cheers, presumably the fall of the fourth tower, but Huron was preoccupied. With a grimace of exertion he gripped the shell, which was almost as tall as he was, and lifted it to shoulder height. Slaves were heaving open the round, rusty hatch that gave access to the gun’s chamber as Huron stepped across to it, each step a struggle against the tremendous weight bearing down on him.
With a final grunt Huron tipped the shell over and it crashed into the chamber. Slaves rushed to close the hatch. ‘Fire in five,’ he ordered.
‘But, my lord, we have not adjusted the–’ began a mortal officer, but Huron gave him a glare that caused the human to step backwards.
‘Fire in five,’ said Huron. ‘Leave the targeting to me.’
‘My lord,’ said the officer weakly. ‘Begin launch. Firing in five…’
Garreon had seen the slow movement of gears and pulleys that moved the gun into position to aim at a target. Huron ignored this equipment, smashing one of the chains and kicking the barrel of the cannon.
It didn’t move.
‘Four.’
‘Garreon,’ said Huron as he shoulder-slammed into the barrel. It moved very slightly, a shower of coppery rust falling off the gears.
‘My lord,’ said Garreon, rushing to Huron’s side to join him in the next push.
‘Three.’
The Tyrant and the Corpsemaster slammed into the side of the gun and the barrel moved with a screeching of metal. Looking down the length of the barrel Garreon could see it was almost aligned.
‘Two.’
‘Again,’ said Huron and they charged the barrel, and it moved once more, the shock of the blow vibrating through Garreon’s armour.
Huron was now under the barrel, pushing upwards, trying to lift it to better target the cannon on the tower.
‘One.’
Garreon moved to assist his master but it was too late; the gun was about to–
‘Fire!’
The galleons were close enough now that Lissica was deafened by the blast from the enemy ship, its great gun firing a shell straight at her position. Trakhanov and Lissica fell to the rooftop, shaken off their feet by the impact. Lissica knew they were at the foot of the last of the big guns defending Nulstrom, that they were the last major target.
Flat on her back, body still shaking, Lissica looked up at the lascannon. It still stood, the barrel aiming out to sea. Had the enemy missed? If so she and Trakhanov needed to get on their feet, to get the gun and–
Everything began to slide. The rooftop she lay on was crumbling, and as she looked up the cannon began to lurch to one side, the whole structure unstable as the rooftop beneath it fell away.
They hadn’t missed. Whatever weapon those monstrous ships wielded had torn the block beneath them to pieces, ripping apart the hab and the factorum and all of the rest. The walls were falling, the defences were down and Lissica was falling with it.
She fell, tumbling downwards in a torrent of broken rubble as the building collapsed, and the colliding chunks of debris broke her body and killed her long before it reached the sea and sank to the bottom.
Lissica’s last thoughts, in painful darkness, were not of herself but the fact that Nulstrom had fallen.
Nine
Rotaka picked up a handful of loose gravel from the ground. He rolled the burned fragments of stone and rockcrete around his palm with his thumb, then poured it out of his hand. The lighter fragments were caught by a wind from the sea and blown away; the heavier chunks fell to the ground, lost amongst a rocky beach of such tiny fragments that stretched as far as the coast curved away in both directions.
This was Nulstrom, the dawn after the Red Corsairs had begun their attack, the sea walls and the habs and factorums that supported them reduced to dust and scorched pebbles by the Red Corsairs’ bombardment.
A shadow fell over Rotaka as the galleon he had been aboard during the battle, the Merciless Strike, rolled slowly over the beach on its great wheeled tracks, crushing the debris even finer. Rotaka’s squad were still belowdecks, no doubt complaining about being away from the action, even though the destruction of the previous night left little ‘action’ to be had.
Rotaka had been summoned to shore after the Fist had made land, along with Huron’s other officers.
They gathered by the Unyielding Fist, incongruous armoured figures on what was now a quiet stretch of shoreline. Huron Blackheart himself was absent, until a screech of metal against metal came from the galleon, and a hatch began to open in its hull. Slabs of encrusted murk and mutated crustaceans fell from the hull as the long-closed hatch opened,
and with a further grinding of gears a gangplank extended to the shore.
Huron Blackheart marched down the ramp, his boots pounding the metal which reverberated with each step. His gaze swept across his gathered officers, and many instinctively bowed their heads to avoid his baleful gaze.
‘My Red Corsairs,’ said Huron, his voice a guttural rumble. ‘From here, we could conquer this world. We could enslave its peoples, strip it of its riches, but this world is not enough. If we are to take the system, we must push on to the next world, and the next beyond that, before we can pause to plunder what we have conquered.’
There was a supportive murmur through the gathered officers, though Huron required no affirmation.
‘Inland from here lies the walled city of Rubicon, and within that wall lies the Archway to the world of Kerresh,’ said Huron, lifting the Tyrant’s Claw as if seizing the planet in its pincers. ‘Once we take Kerresh, then the inner worlds are at our mercy.’
There was a cheer from the officers, and a voice shouted, ‘We will reduce Rubicon to dust, as we did Nulstrom!’
‘No,’ snarled Huron. ‘We will not strike in any way that might damage the Archway. We must take the city with minimal bombardment, lest we destroy all we aim to capture.’
The lone voice silenced, Huron explained what they would do once they reached Rubicon.
As Huron dismissed his officers, he made one exception.
‘Anto,’ he said. ‘Speak with me.’
‘My Lord Huron,’ said Anto, bowing deeply as he approached the Tyrant. Looking at the rocks beneath his feet as he approached, Anto could feel two gazes upon him: Huron, and it.
Even looking up, Anto wouldn’t have been able to see it – the Hamadrya, Huron’s constant daemonic companion. Although Anto couldn’t see it, his sensitivity to sorcery allowed him to feel its presence. As he stood straight, Anto could see the Hamadrya’s trail like a miasma around Huron Blackheart, swirling over and around him.