Straken

by Toby Frost

  The gargant’s head exploded. White light burst out of the melta bomb like a tiny sun. Straken twisted away, the shutter flicking closed over his bionic eye. A rippling ball of fire enveloped the gargant’s head. Ork crew beat on the portholes as flames ate them up. For a moment the big mech was silhouetted against the fire, the coils of wire like tentacles around its hulking body, and then the inferno swallowed it up.

  Lavant whooped and shook his fist. He grinned crazily at the gargant’s burning head. Something creaked and dropped inside the great metal body, crashing from its throat to stomach. The scaffolding, such as it was, groaned.

  ‘Let’s get off this damn thing,’ Straken said.

  ‘Right,’ Lavant replied, taking control of himself with an effort. The captain would probably have just stayed up there if left, dancing and cheering in triumph, Straken thought.

  Carefully, struggling to get down quickly without triggering a total collapse, they descended.

  It was chaos on the ground, but their chaos. The Catachans were raising hell against what remained of the ork force – it looked as much like a fireworks display as a military operation. Several dozen orks had taken refuge in a row of workshops, and as Straken gladly stepped off the gantry, mortars blew the thin roof in. Tripod-mounted autocannons punched through the plasteel walls, and the Guardsmen poured las-fire in after them. A truck rolled up, carrying more soldiers to help finish the job up close, and Tanner jumped down.

  ‘Nice work!’ he laughed. His combat vest was open, his bare chest flecked with alien blood. He looked past Straken at the burning gargant. Several Catachan guns still fired at the war machine’s chest; as they watched, a lascannon shot blew one of the emplacements open. ‘By the Emperor, that’s a pretty picture.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Straken said. He glanced at the row of buildings, where the orks were holed up. Catachans and locals formed a loose circle and closed in, like a net being pulled tight. ‘Kill the rest of the orks and carry out a full sweep – auspexes, the lot. None of them are getting away.’

  Tanner grinned and saluted. ‘With pleasure.’ He climbed back up onto the truck and thumped the metal with his fist. ‘Let’s go!’

  Straken folded his arms, not sure what to feel. It seemed to have moved from battle to celebration, almost without pause. He felt satisfied but still wary, as if the gargant might suddenly come back to life.

  He looked round and saw Lavant resting against a powered-down Sentinel, looking as if he’d just run fifty kilometres. Lavant met Straken’s eyes, and there was guilt in his face as well as exhaustion.

  Whatever craziness there is in you, Straken thought, it came out back there. But that was a matter for later. Right now, there was an area to secure. ‘Check the gargant and plant charges on its joints and main guns. Get men up on those cranes – see if you can pull the armour off the front of it. And check the tanks for booby traps.’

  Lavant said, ‘I lost a lot of my team back there, up on that scaffolding. They were good people.’

  ‘I know. But we need this place secure, or we’ll lose even more. Take some of Tanner’s lads, or the locals. I’m sure they’ll love the chance to smash some ork stuff.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lavant said. He stood up straight and saluted, then walked away.

  Straken looked back at the gargant, to savour his victory. Something caught his eye: at the bottom of the machine, pale, scrawny figures were emerging from a hole in the ground. They wore rags, and moved as if being above ground confused them. Straken boosted his vision, and saw that some of the rags had once been uniforms of the Imperial Guard. Suddenly he felt not just triumph, but a deep and justified rage.

  The militia had caught an ork. It had taken half a dozen las-shots to the body and legs, and whilst still alive, was unable to stand. It raged at the men around it, beating its fists on the ground, snarling out what could have been curses or promises of revenge.

  Most of the people around it were Dulmalian. Someone threw an empty can at the ork. It bounced off the creature’s shoulder. The ork roared and tried to crawl forwards, and the circle changed shape as the humans stepped away.

  Straken stepped over to Tarricus. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘We caught one of them.’

  ‘So I see. Why?’

  The miner scowled. ‘You’ve seen what they did to our people. We’re going to make it pay.’

  ‘How? You going to make it apologise? Just blow its brains out and let’s get going.’

  Tarricus stared at him for a moment, and Straken saw a depth of fury in the man’s eyes that startled him. Tarricus glanced away.

  ‘In the name of the people of Dulma’lin, and the immortal Emperor – death to the orks!’ Tarricus raised his autogun and pumped four shots into the alien’s head. It flopped onto the ground, freshly spilled blood mingling with that already there.

  Straken looked at the broken red mess that had been the ork’s head. ‘You missed a bit,’ he said.

  Tarricus laughed. His comrades cheered. Straken remembered the miserable, broken-looking man he’d met when the Catachans had first arrived. What a change some good honest fury could make. He’d have to be careful, though. This was a Guard operation, and the last thing the Catachans needed was a bunch of locals deciding that they were too important to follow orders any more.

  On the far side of the cavern, the orderlies were doing what they could for the wounded. They’d be busy, Straken thought. The orks had been quick to beat their prisoners, and, perhaps worse, had barely fed them. No doubt there would be more fatalities.

  ‘Know the xenos by the foulness of his works,’ said a voice behind him.

  Straken looked around. With his dark clothes and pale face, Morrell looked like some kind of revenant, doomed to haunt the battlefield.

  ‘You’ve got a point,’ Straken said, watching as the prisoners were led off by the medicae. A fair few were seriously ill; some couldn’t stand unaided. Straken wondered how many would survive.

  ‘They will be a considerable drain on our facilities,’ Morrell said. ‘Liberating these people gains us nothing. Militarily speaking, of course.’

  Straken felt a rush of contempt. He pushed it down. Commissars: all the same.

  ‘I get the feeling it wouldn’t much help morale if I left them to die. Just a thought, commissar.’

  Morrell nodded. ‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘in some regiments, men who were captured by the enemy would be assigned to a penal battalion for allowing themselves to be taken alive. Prolonged exposure to the alien invariably corrupts the soul.’

  ‘That’s not how we do it here,’ Straken replied.

  The commissar said, ‘No, I gather that we don’t.’

  The remaining orks were leaderless and outgunned, but they could not and would not surrender. Straken joined a team of men searching the workshops on the eastern wall of the cavern. They found nothing except dirt and junk; it seemed that all the orks had rushed outside to join the fight.

  As Straken concluded his sweep, something huge exploded outside. He froze under a swinging bulb, the steady trickle of dust from the ceiling raining around him.

  Then he grabbed his shotgun and ran outside.

  Straken spun round, half expecting to see the gargant come waddling towards him, flattening buildings under its massive feet, but it was motionless. The head and shoulders were covered in soot, the torso riddled with holes where armour had been dragged or blasted off the body.

  A young militia soldier stood nearby, eating half a ration bar. She looked entirely at ease. If there were orks on the loose, the girl was about to get a nasty awakening.

  ‘You!’ Straken called. ‘What’s going on?’

  She jerked to attention and stuffed the ration bar into her pocket. ‘Colonel. They’ve blown the maglev tunnels, sir. The demo crew put a bomb on one of the wagons and pushed it down the tunnel. Excelsis is cut off now. It’s that way, sir,’ the soldier added.

  Straken strode towards the sound. He passed the rows o
f tanks, previously awaiting conversion by the orks. Catachan teams were still searching them for booby traps. Behind them, a mixed group looked over the vehicles, searching for workable machinery. Straken saw Catachan Sentinel pilots, local repairmen and even a couple of sickly looking tank crew from the Selvian Dragoons freed from ork captivity. Straken wondered when his men had last slept, and felt a rush of admiration for all the people under his command. They might be exhausted or half starved, but they wouldn’t rest, not while there were orks to fight and Iron Hand Straken was in command.

  Further on, a trio of battered trucks belonging to the mining guild were loading up with captured guns and ammunition. With a little repair work and a lot of rededication, the machine-spirits of the heavy bolters and autocannons captured by the orks could be appeased. And what better way to return them to the service of the Emperor, he thought, than to turn them on the greenskins?

  A gang of Catachans was cutting apart the gargant’s enormous fist. Sparks filled the air as they wielded their blowtorches, their faces hidden behind masks. Each finger of the gargant’s hand ended in a rock-drill the size of a railway carriage – thank the Emperor, Straken thought, that the xenos scum hadn’t been able to attach it. As he passed, the men stopped, raised their visors and saluted, and Straken shouted at them to stop slacking and get back to work. They laughed and carried on.

  The maglev station took up most of one of the smaller caverns behind the manufactoria, not far from the ruins of the gargant. The walls were covered in machinery, and even now technocrats of the mining guild were busy anointing the workings with sacred oils. The orks had covered the walls with clan markings like gangers marking their turf – a glyph depicting a skull on two crossed spanners seemed particularly popular. No doubt it symbolised some powerful mech, Straken thought. The sooner the alien scrawl was erased, the better.

  The entrance to the maglev tunnel was broad enough to fit a whole company of the Guard, walking side by side. Straken boosted his vision and saw a great heap of rubble in the shadows further down the line, choking the passage off entirely. Try getting through that, Killzkar, he thought.

  The militia woman had been right: with storms raging overground, and the maglev line cut off, Excelsis City truly was on its own. For now, anyway.

  Straken wondered whether any of the orks had escaped the fight around the gargant, and were currently trudging down the maglev line to bring the news to their counterparts in the lesser cities of Dulma’lin. Well, let ’em. Let them know what we did here. They deserve to be afraid.

  ‘Quite a thing,’ someone said beside him.

  He looked round. The man beside him was Catachan. His tattoos identified him as a corporal.

  ‘Certainly is,’ Straken replied. ‘You don’t see that back on Catachan.’

  ‘The wildlife would just eat it,’ the corporal replied, and he smiled. ‘That’s not the best of it though, sir. We’ve got the communications relay up and running. The locals reckon they can patch up a transmitter to send a vox-comm off-world.’

  It seemed only right that Straken should send the message. One of the local techs led him to a small, cramped room whose walls rumbled with the throb of motors. The orks had detuned the array and daubed the housing with their foul glyphs, but the machine-spirit of the transmitter was still strong, as though it had returned to celebrate the fall of the gargant.

  Straken sat in an ancient, throne-like chair, and the vox-comm was lowered in front of him. An engineer nodded to him and made the sign of the aquila. The vox came alive, and the crackling of the comm-link was like a fighter cracking his knuckles before making a fist.

  ‘This is Colonel Straken, of the Second Catachan Regiment. I am speaking from the industrial transmitter in Excelsis City, Dulma’lin. We have made contact with local guerrillas and are purging the orks cavern by cavern. We request assistance from any Imperial Guard or Navy forces hearing this message. I repeat, we are alive and fighting. If you are receiving this transmission and you want to help us kill some orks, converge on this signal. Believe me, there’s enough enemy to go round. This is Straken, signing out. Emperor protect.’

  17.

  Strange, Straken thought as the groundcar rolled through the empty streets, how things change. Parts of the city were almost deserted now, where a few months ago vicious gunfights had raged. He remembered the purging of the hab-zones, charging up one flight of stairs after another, kicking in door after door while his legs ached as if there were acid in his veins. Now, by Catachan terms, the place was safe. Of course, you went armed – he had ordered that everyone was to carry a weapon, even if it was just an autopistol, to encourage the locals to think of themselves as a fighting force.

  The car turned at a corner and a Guardsman lowered his weapon and let them through. The city was still full of guardposts and improvised bunkers, chokepoints and bottlenecks where an ork force could be lured up close and shot down. It was only a matter of time before they came back.

  The orks had tried to stage a counter-attack to retake the manufactoria, but it had been a comparatively weak affair. They had come bellowing out of the Mommothian Vault, but had lacked numbers and tactical skill, and the Catachans had simply mown them down. Seeing the aliens rush forward, straight over Lavant’s traps and into lasgun range, Straken had wondered whether they lacked any real leadership.

  But they still held the Mommothian Vault. The great central caverns, the heart and mind of the city, were still ork territory. That meant that the orks controlled the Great Gate and, therefore, large-scale access to the surface. They could bring reinforcements in and, unless the Catachans destroyed Killzkar, they would.

  Straken leaned forward in his seat, the civilian plushness of the car feeling unnatural to him, and wondered how many of the hab-blocks they were passing would ever be occupied again. Well, there’d be a lot more fighting before they were.

  The car stopped outside the enforcer station. He climbed out, glad to leave the stifling comfort of the vehicle, and greeted the men at the door.

  His team waited for him upstairs, sitting round a map like generals planning a campaign: Morrell, standing a little way back; Tanner, big and uncompromising on the opposite side, deliberately not looking at the commissar; Lavant, quietly leafing through a wad of paper, his combat vest fastened all the way to his throat. Also present were the two local heads: Tarricus, fresh from the factories, and Jocasta Ferrens, looking as if she’d just run a kilometre through a high wind.

  Straken stood beside the map table. ‘First up,’ he said, ‘damn good work on the gargant. That was a hell of a fight, and you all did well. I ask for the best from my people, but it’s not often that I get it. Make sure your soldiers know that.’ He leaned forward, ‘Now that the hangovers have worn off, we’ve got work to do. First up, what are the orks doing?’

  Tanner said, ‘Since we took the manufactoria? One of my teams ambushed a group of them yesterday. They’d come down in one of their trucks, probably looking to collect something from the workshops. None got away.’

  ‘Good. All forward teams are to go on alert. I want people watching every entrance to the Mommothian Vault. They’ll know full well what happened at the manufactoria. Now their gargant’s so much scrap, they’ll be looking to gather their troops and come down here. Lavant, how’s the map looking?’

  ‘Good, sir,’ the captain replied. He gestured to the plan spread out across the table. ‘With the exception of the Mommothian Vault, Excelsis City is ours.’ He frowned. ‘That’s a very big exception, though.’

  He was right, Straken thought. The vault took up almost a sixth of the city. More importantly, it ran down the centre of Excelsis like a fault line. And most significantly of all, it contained the Great Gates. Straken remembered the moment that he had briefly captured the gates, and the sight of the orks advancing on his position instead of the Imperial Guard. It felt like a decade ago.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if we wanted to get Killzkar’s attention, we most certainly will hav
e it now. I can’t imagine any ork ignoring the loss of a gargant.’

  Tanner laughed. ‘Yeah, now baby’s lost his favourite toy, he’s probably having one hell of a sulk.’

  Ferrens laughed. Tarricus grinned. The corner of Morrell’s mouth twitched.

  Straken did not smile. He said, ‘And that means that he will come for us. Even if he didn’t need the gargant, the humiliation of losing it will be more than he can take. I don’t know much about orks, but I’ll bet his soldiers are seeing this as a sign of weakness. We may have annoyed him before, but back then he could afford to ignore us. Now we’ll have the whole damn lot after us.’

  Tarricus had stopped smiling. ‘So… what’re you saying? That they’ll attack?’

  ‘Yes. And not just whatever they’ve got left in the north city. They’ll call in everything they’ve got. I don’t know how many orks there are in the other cities, but we should prepare for at least four or five times the numbers we’ve seen so far.’

  Lavant ran a hand through his hair. He let out his breath slowly, as if to prevent himself calling out. ‘Well then,’ he said.

  ‘By the Throne,’ Tanner said, ‘that’s a lot of orks you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, great.’ Tarricus ran a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s just great. What the hell are we going to do? You’ve been telling us that we’ve got to hit and run because we’re outnumbered. Now there’s going to be five times the number of greenskins as before. That’s just great. Where are we going to run to?’

  Morrell said, ‘I don’t like your defeatist attitude, citizen. You would do well to remember that the Emperor provides for the valiant.’ He paused, scowling, as though there were something sour in his mouth. ‘Although, in all honesty, you may have a point. It sounds, colonel, as if you’re telling us that the game is up.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Straken looked around. ‘Any fight with Killzkar is going to be hard, that’s for sure. But if everyone fights, and nobody backs out of this, we could do it. We’ve got some advantages.’