by Toby Frost
Straken saw steps ahead. ‘We’re here,’ he said. ‘Kill the light.’
He climbed the first few steps, reached up and tried the trapdoor. It would not move.
‘Locked.’ Straken crept up further and put his back against the metal. Lavant raised his lasgun and crouched down, covering the top of the stairs.
Straken gritted his teeth and pushed down with his legs. His metal shoulder strained against the door. He felt the machinery within his body start to grind, reaching its limits. He thought of his spine, like a jointed steel whip, struggling to straighten out…
The trapdoor began to give. Halda squeezed in beside Straken and helped. Slowly, the door started to rise.
The bolts ought to have burst open now, Straken thought. There must be something on top of it.
A sheet of metal tore loose above them. It shook as it came free, vibrating like a saw-blade. Straken stopped pushing and listened. Very carefully, shotgun first, he opened the trapdoor.
He was in a small room, much like the one at the other end of the tunnel. Here, though, it looked as if a hurricane had struck: wires dangled from walls, prayers and offerings lay smashed on the floor. Nothing electronic remained.
They followed him out. A sheet of thin plasteel had been welded to the floor and a couple of lockers put on top of it to hide the trapdoor. Overalls hung in one of the lockers.
They must have tried to keep it a secret, Straken thought. He wondered who they were – surely there couldn’t be another resistance group, hiding out so close to the enemy – and thanked the Emperor anyway.
Straken crossed to the door. The others drew back into the shadows, and he turned the handle.
It swung open silently. He looked out into a vast junkyard.
It took a moment to adjust to the sheer scale of the place. The cavern was, he guessed, several kilometres across. He saw a whole complex of workshops, refineries and repair yards, linked by roads and parking bays big enough to hold ten-wheeled all-terrain trucks. That would have been awe-inspiring enough. But the orks had heaped the place with raw materials: groundcars, tram carriages, plant machinery, mining trucks and huge containers still stamped with purity seals by the customs authorities. It was as though an immense hand had poured a bucket-load of machines over the cavern, shoving them into rough piles.
The place was alive with activity. Ork mechs clambered over the junk, directing teams of gretchin to haul out prize pieces. Several dozen masked orks sliced through sheets of plasteel with stripped-down blowtorches, the blue flames throwing an evil glow over their sweating bodies. They worked like butchers, tossing scrap into iron tubs as though carving meat from bones. Their voices hardly carried over the hiss of their burners and the clang of falling metal.
Mayne whistled softly. Straken said nothing: the lad was inaudible over the chaos outside.
Straken opened the door a little further and slipped out. He ducked down, took a deep breath and slipped behind a heap of pistons, each the height of a temple column. A moment later Lavant tore out of cover, raced the nine metres across the open ground and dropped into a crouch beside him.
Something boomed on the right. Straken looked back and saw Halda’s face in the doorway behind them. He quickly raised a hand before the sergeant could emerge. Halda nodded and waited, his long hair and beard fading into the shadows around him.
‘Look!’ Lavant whispered, but Straken was already looking.
A scree of household goods slid down the side of one hill-sized pile of junk. A massive walker lumbered into view. Four times the height of a man, bodged together out of crane arms and ancient tank turrets, the machine waddled forward, each footstep sounding like the fall of a gigantic hammer. The thing strode between the heaps of machinery, reached out and plucked a groundcar from a great pile of vehicles. It turned the car over, as though it were looking for a weak point, and a colossal buzz-saw whirred into life on the end of the Dreadnought’s right arm. Neat as a fisherman gutting his catch, it slit the car’s front end open in a flurry of sparks, plucked the engine out and tossed it onto a mound of similar engines. Then it stomped on, claws flexing as it assisted its smaller brethren in tearing a tram car to bits.
Lavant breathed out. Straken tried to understand what he had seen. For a moment he watched as the Dreadnought loaded an ork truck with a heap of axles, the way a man might fill a cart with sticks. He felt as if he had been shrunk. Then he looked back and motioned for Halda to advance.
They crept out, one after the other. Tarricus ran out second to last, his short legs pumping. Marbo was swift and casual, almost sliding out of cover.
Straken looked at the guildsman. ‘You know this place?’
Tarricus gawped at the back of the Dreadnought as it stamped a pylon into scrap. ‘I thought I did. But now…’
Lavant said, ‘I don’t see any of our tanks.’
‘Then we move on,’ the colonel replied. He pointed with his flesh-and-blood arm. ‘That way. Follow me.’
Straken checked that the coast was clear, and ran from one pile to the next. He rushed into the shadow of a mass of sheet plasteel. Doors ripped off vehicles, the walls of prefabricated buildings, off-world freight containers stomped flat by ork machines, all piled up like the sheets of documents heaped on an Administratum bureaucrat’s desk.
Emperor, he thought, if the tech-priests could see this… Like most Catachans, Straken had little time for the Adeptus Mechanicus, even if they had pieced him together after the land shark had bitten off his arm. Better to trust your own skill and a good knife than some metal contraption that might break down if its spirit took a dislike to you. But there was something terrible about this place, beyond mere size. It was a kind of blasphemy. The sight of orks working so methodically like this, turning humanity’s machines against their former owners, was as unnatural as a Chaos cult.
He waited for the others, then ran to the next heap of cover.
It was a pile of tyres, each taller than a man. They stank of rubber. Several had the Imperial aquila moulded into the tread. He felt tiny, as though he were one of the rats that infested the holds of the Radix Malorum. For a moment Straken was almost bewildered, his mind struggling to take it in.
Mayne whispered, ‘What in Holy Thor’s name are they doing with this stuff?’
‘What do you think?’ Halda growled back. ‘Making weapons. That’s all they do.’
‘Quiet,’ Straken said. ‘You all ready?’ He looked them over, his gaze settling on Tarricus. The little man nodded. ‘Then let’s move.’
Straken ducked out of cover – and an ork stared back. It carried a metal box in one hand, its burner slung over its shoulder. Under the raised mask its tiny eyes widened as it saw the human before it.
Straken’s hand flicked out into its neck. His fingers snapped shut like a trap, and he snatched his hand back, plucking the windpipe from its throat. In a second he grabbed the alien and yanked it towards him, as if to embrace it, then hauled the monster into the shadows.
The brute might be about to die, but it fought. Marbo dropped down and pushed his long knife into its chest – even then, it thrashed and spat, head shaking from side to side like a dog tearing off flesh. The ork finally stopped moving. Straken nodded at the tyres.
They heaved the body up between them, muscles straining, and pushed it into the middle of a pile of tyres as if shoving it down a well. The corpse slid into the makeshift tube, hidden except for a pair of boots jutting from the end. It would do, Straken thought. If the orks ever found their comrade, they’d probably just smile at the indignity of its death.
The truck was loaded now. The driver snarled something at the orks still cutting scrap, and one laughed. Then the vehicle rolled away, engine growling. It turned right, behind a column of rock, and disappeared from view.
‘That way,’ Straken said.
The Dreadnought stomped past, each footfall like an explosion. Straken watched it, recalling the days when he’d learned to hunt on Catachan, hiding from beasts a
s large and brutal as any ork walker. As soon as it had turned back to the piles of junk, he signalled to his men and crept out.
The six men slipped out of cover and hurried towards the turning point where the truck had gone. They had run ten metres when Tarricus said, ‘I hear something!’
‘Yeah, your own voice,’ Halda growled.
Lavant said, ‘No, he’s right. A vehicle.’
‘Move it,’ Straken snapped. ‘Into the shadows, now!’
They rushed towards the cavern wall. An overhang of rock threw a shadow across the road; they pressed against the stone as though sheltering from a storm. An ork truck turned the corner and rumbled past, belching thick black smoke. The wagon shook and rattled past them, bouncing on armoured tyres.
Tarricus pulled a rag out of his belt and wiped his bald head.
‘You all right?’ Straken asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes – yes, I’m fine. That was a bit close, that’s all.’
‘Then let’s go.’
They moved up, following the road, ignoring the bangs and rumbling that rang through the cavern. Straken crouched down, checked that the way was clear and turned the corner.
Row upon row of battered armoured vehicles lay before him. They were parked as if in some huge tailback, in rough lines that obscured the view beyond. Straken saw Leman Russ battle tanks, the flat rear hatches of Chimera personnel carriers, the loading platforms and huge artillery cannons of Basilisk self-propelled guns, all ranked up as though waiting to embark on a gigantic ship. All had been gouged and dented by gunfire; several were little more than hulks.
The orks had parked the tanks with enough space to slip between them. It’s like a maze, Straken thought, and he ducked down and crept into the ranks of armour.
The sides of the tanks surrounded him like walls. The ground was slicked with spilt oil. The smell of promethium and greased metal filled the air.
‘Watch the turrets,’ he said. ‘The orks might be sitting on top.’
He advanced. At the end of each tank, he took a careful look to check that the enemy were not near – whatever the xenos planned to do with their loot, they clearly hadn’t got round to it yet. A great drumming rumble grew around him. Something big was ahead.
‘Emperor,’ Mayne whispered. ‘How many tanks are there?’
‘Quiet,’ Straken said, but the lad had asked the question in his own mind. How many vehicles had Killzkar captured? How large was this army of his?
There were at least a hundred tanks, Straken realised, in various states of repair. Enough to win a battle – enough, perhaps, to tip the entire Ryza warzone in the orks’ favour. Killzkar’s operation was simply vast.
Then Straken heard something else – an ork voice amplified by some kind of vox-array, and under it a sound that made him freeze.
A man was screaming. A gabble of words came out, some sort of plea, and then another louder shriek. Then the amplified voice roared again, and a boom accompanied it: the beating of a drum. Straken gritted his teeth, steeling himself for what was to come. He strode past the last few vehicles and looked into the cavern beyond.
The orks had turned it into a sort of hell. It was like some Ecclesiarchy sermon about the engines of the damned.
A gigantic steel idol rose against the rear of the cavern, almost scraping the roof. Smoke wreathed a head the size of a Baneblade super-heavy tank, its front crudely shaped into a caricature of an ork face. Hundreds of welding torches gave the monster a daemonic, glowing outline. Greenskins stood in the mouth, shouting instructions to the rickety cranes mounted on the scaffolding that surrounded it. Three copters carried a Chimera turret between them, lifting it to join the mass of heavy guns mounted on each shoulder.
‘They’re making a gargant,’ Halda said.
Straken stared at the thing, repulsed. The monster’s chest and belly was a patchwork of tank armour, punctuated by flaps from which guns protruded. Straken saw bits of Imperial vehicles, tiny against its body. A barrel wide enough to hide a Sentinel jutted from the belly.
The right arm was a mass of guns and missiles. The left was still being assembled.
At the beast’s feet, at least a hundred men were chained together. Some wore tattered uniforms, others miners’ gear. Many wretches had dressed themselves in sacking, their uniforms long since fallen apart. Between them they dragged a huge drilling machine, the size of a railway carriage. It ended in a tapering screw.
Tarricus made the sign of the aquila. He looked like he was about to faint. ‘Saints protect us,’ he gasped.
Four other drills were already in place. Orks stood on top of them, welding and blasting huge rivets into the girders that connected them. Pistons and hinges linked the rear portions of the drilling machines, so they could be moved.
It’s a hand, Straken realised. It’s the gargant’s hand.
Several men flagged in their chains; one or two actually looked dead, dragged on by their fellows. The drum sounded again, and they strained, scrawny arms hauling the drill a few metres closer while the orks bellowed.
Straken had seen men’s faces like that before, but never away from the battlefield. The gargant loomed over the slaves like a wrathful god. The captives’ labour, and their death, was a sacrifice to it.
Very quietly, Halda said, ‘You think the Emperor can see this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lavant replied.
Marbo spat.
‘No, no.’ Tarricus seemed suddenly to collapse. He staggered to one side, and flopped against a Hellhound tank. ‘Emperor save me.’ He turned to look at the colonel. ‘These are my people, Straken.’ He caught his breath. ‘And to think we hid! There we were, all that time – hiding – when this was happening.’ Tarricus raised a hand and covered his eyes. ‘“Essential personnel!” We thought we were lucky when the Guard didn’t take us off to Ryza.’ Grief twisted his voice as well as his face; his mouth was wrenched downwards, like the masks Straken had seen Chaos cultists wear. ‘Essential? They should have taken us all to Ryza!’
The Catachans stood there, five heavy, muscled soldiers, while the small man in overalls put his head in his hands.
Marbo glanced at Straken and raised his eyebrows. Straken shook his head.
‘Easy, man,’ Straken said. ‘Easy.’
‘Emperor pity us,’ Tarricus moaned.
Straken looked at Lavant. ‘Have we got enough explosives to destroy that thing?’
‘Back at base,’ the captain replied. ‘Provided we can get a truckload of them up here.’
‘We can. Tarricus, we’re going. I need you to keep quiet. Think you can do that?’
The guildsman stared at Straken as if he had never seen him before.
‘I said, can you do that?’
Tarricus swallowed. He took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘We’re coming back,’ Straken said. ‘We’re going to blow that thing sky high. Then we’ll take our tanks and run these xenos scum off the planet.’
‘What about my people?’ Tarricus demanded. ‘We can’t just leave them, Straken. Not like that. Throne, it’s better to die than–’
‘Them too,’ Straken said. ‘We’ll bring them back as well. Let’s go, people. Marbo, lead the way.’
He watched as the others turned. The drum was sounding again, the orks roaring and grunting over the whine of motors and the banging of hammers on metal. With a sound like the slamming of a colossal door, the copters dropped another turret onto the gargant’s shoulder. Immediately, a team of orks scrambled onto it, spraying red paint over the Imperial markings. A voice snarled over a loudspeaker. Straken turned away and followed his team.
He took half a dozen steps and looked back. The gargant loomed up, as gross and brutish as the ork gods it was supposed to represent. Aliens stood on the war machine’s head, outlined against the red glow of engines and orkish blowtorches. Straken boosted his vision.
They were the mechs, the architects of this monstrosity. Several held up tattered plans. Most wore
helmets festooned with lenses and sighting gear. Gretchin assistants swarmed around their knees, holding up blueprints and oversized tools.
A huge mech rubbed its chin with a metal hand. Two jointed arms folded down over its shoulders like the claws of a mantis, ending in what looked like welding torches. It wore a Space Marine’s shoulder pad strapped to its left arm, the cog-and-skull symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus embossed on the ceramite. That meant that it had killed a Techmarine. Even a large ork would find that extremely difficult. Straken realised that he was looking at the boss of the mechs.
He remembered the ragged men slaving at the gargant’s feet, sweating and dying under the ork whips, and thought, I will kill you. All of you, even if I have to pull the whole planet down on your heads to do it. Your precious gargant will be scrap once I’m done. None of you will leave this world alive.
He turned away and followed his men.
The guardposts were heavily manned. Behind them, a converted groundcar was doing the rounds, carrying gear and food between the lookout points. When he’d finished monitoring the day’s patrol, Tanner caught a lift with the driver and his assistant and headed south.
The men chatted among themselves. Tanner made a bit of small talk, laughed at a couple of jokes about hab-dwellers, but the business he had planned hung over him like a cloud. The men see it, Tanner thought. They knew that he was preoccupied with something. Well, let ’em think what they like.
They passed twenty of the survivors of Dulma’lin, now its militia, advancing down the street in combat gear under the eye of a lieutenant called Korth. It must be strange, Tanner thought, to practise fighting in the same streets where you’d once lived. Perhaps, when the orks were all dead, the Dulmalians would live there again.
The car dropped him off at the edge of the mushroom forest and swung away, heading for the guild headquarters. Tanner gave the soldiers on board a cheery salute and set off alone, his face hardening as soon as he looked away.
He felt much more nervous than he had expected. As he walked between the white trunks of the fungal trees, he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder, although he knew that no one was there. Had somebody been following, he would have noticed them long ago.