by Toby Frost
So what now? He looked his metal hand over, flexing the fingers. It could be possible to pull back to the outer caves, hide out in the power station where they had entered Excelsis City all those months ago. The locals will want to hide down there, he thought, but that’s not happening. Even the supplies of local food were dwindling. If the fleet was delayed, or ambushed again, they would be as good as finished.
He looked across the yard. In one of the workshops, soldiers were repairing the tanks. They were Catachans, brawny men hauling great slabs of metal between them. They worked under the oversight of a thin woman in tanker gear, one of the Selvian Dragoons. She looked half starved, and there were dark scabs on the side of her jaw.
Straken licked his lips. He felt tired, but certain. Killzkar was coming, reinforcements or not. If Greiss’s army and these Purbech fellows – whoever they were – got to Dulma’lin in time, then so much the better. But Killzkar wouldn’t be deterred. It was far better to be waiting for him when he arrived than to hide starving in the dark and hope he wouldn’t look too hard. It wasn’t just a matter of honour, although honour came into it. No matter what, when Killzkar came, Straken would meet him head on.
A truck rumbled into the yard a little too fast and braked hard. A familiar figure climbed down from the passenger seat: big, broad even by Catachan standards, his face round and his body a little less toned than most, but still massive and strong.
‘Tanner.’
The captain saw Straken and grinned. ‘I heard the news. Am I hoping for too much to think that the Guard’s going to get us off this rock?’
‘Once Killzkar’s dead, yes. I need you to do something for me.’
‘Sure.’
‘Get everyone together that you can spare. I want a full meeting as soon as possible. And in the meantime, I need a list of your best men – hard cases, real killers.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Tell Lavant to do the same. We’re going to get a welcoming committee ready for Killzkar.’
Tanner shook his head. ‘You know what the men’ll say. Only Iron Hand Straken would go hunting orks when there’s a perfectly good fleet on the way.’
Straken shrugged. ‘If people don’t want to fight, I’d rather they didn’t. I mean that – I don’t want any dead weight on this. Better not have a man at all than one who’s worse than useless. Besides, if they wanted to take it easy, they got born on the wrong planet.’
Tanner laughed. ‘They’ll come. I’ll put the word out.’
The commissar was the last to arrive. Straken, Lavant, and Tanner waited for him in the rear offices of what had once been Parceltis and Son, Artisan Fabricators. Tanner drank cold Barabo tea from his flask, while Lavant drew slowly on a lho-stick and watched Straken watching the timepiece.
Morrell lurched through the door at oh-eight-hundred hours. The commissar pulled his cap off, jammed it under his arm and said, ‘Apologies, gentlemen. The drive from the power station took longer than I’d expected.’
‘Let’s move,’ Straken said. ‘Tanner, put that flask away. Lavant, stub it out. You look nervous smoking those things.’
Straken led them from the office, through the factory floor, past rows of rusting machinery. Voices filtered through from outside.
They stopped at a chipped iron door. Straken looked back, glancing over each man, and nodded. ‘Yeah, you’ll do,’ he said, and he opened the door.
They walked into the great shared yard of the manufactoria. The artificial morning hit their eyes, and as they emerged the fighters yelled and cheered.
The soldiers stood in teams in the yard, not drawn up into lines. As they saw their leaders the men stood up straight, ground out lho-sticks and turned to face them. Near the front, Jocasta Ferrens, self-appointed standard bearer of the Dulma’lin militia, sat on the front of an armoured car and grinned ferociously. Larn Tarricus raised his fist and shouted. The troops became harder, more alert, as if the sight of the commanders had filled them with discipline.
Straken very much hoped that it had. He walked towards the salvaged Chimera that had been converted into an ad hoc command vehicle, stuffed with comms gear and rigged with massive loudspeakers like blunderbusses on the roof. Without breaking stride he leaped onto the front and clambered up onto the armour. Tanner followed him, then, more cautiously, Lavant. Morrell approached, but stopped at the base of the Chimera.
Straken tapped the vox. Behind him, the speakers made a muffled booming sound. ‘Everyone hear me?’ he asked.
They yelled back their approval. Men cheered; boots drummed on armour. A short civilian gunner, perched on one of the Leman Russ battle tanks like a mascot, lost her footing and was just caught in time. A boy no older than ten held up a laslock above his head the way noble citizens did in Munitorum propaganda posters.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Straken said. ‘I’m not much of a one for speeches – the way I see it, if something’s worth talking about, it’s worth doing – but I reckon I ought to say a couple of things to you while we’re all here.’
While I’ve got the chance, he thought. While you’re all still alive. For a moment he looked across the mass of fighters, and wondered how many would be left by the time the Guard arrived. It would be like scribbling faces off a photograph. He shoved the thought aside.
‘First, I’ve not had the chance to say that you’ve done a good job. You’ve stuck it out for months down here – some of you, more than that. We’ve all taken a kicking from the greenskins, one way or another, and I’m pleased to say that you’ve given them one hell of a beating in return. The Emperor only knows how many of the green scum you people have taken out. Make no mistake – the orks fear us, and every one of you is part of the reason for that. You’ve done well, and any one of the men I command will tell you that I don’t say that very often.’
‘Too right!’ one of the sappers yelled, and around him people laughed. Straken smiled.
‘By now you’ll know that we’ve got visitors coming to this fair city. The way I see it, the orks are on their way, and, in case any of you don’t know it, the Imperial Guard are coming too.’ He stopped as applause broke out. By his side, Lavant made chopping gestures, to no avail. Straken held up a hand, and at last the noise died away. ‘I don’t know who’s going to reach here first, but whoever does get here, it’s not going to change our plans. No matter who comes through the gates, we’ll be giving them the warm welcome they deserve. The Guard’ll be getting a helping hand, and the orks’ll be getting something a little bit… different.
‘What that means is this. You are all now on high alert. All of you have a job to do and will do it. My people here,’ he gestured to the men around him, ‘will be leading you, depending on your position. I myself will be taking the front.’
‘There’s a surprise!’ a woman shouted, and there were laughs. ‘Go, Iron Hand!’
‘The plan is to get the whole district around the Great Gates sewn up – but quietly. When Killzkar comes in, he’ll think he’s walking into a friendly neighbourhood. Then we’ll jump him, and the filthy animal who did all of this – who trashed your city and took my army out – will finally get what he deserves. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking a team up to start scouting the area. In the meantime, get ready. You’ve taken this war to the orks – now it’s time to take it to their leader.
‘Now get to it!’
19.
‘I’ve got Gorsen, Naas, Rickel, Poole and Lodder,’ Lavant said. ‘They’re demolitions people, all very good. Then from the other teams, you’ve got snipers. Maddox, Halski, Aduro, Kerriksen and, er, Serradus. All of them have the marksman’s badge.’
‘I know most of ’em,’ Straken said. ‘And if you vouch for the rest, I’m sure they’re a good crew.’
They stood outside the enforcer station, in the north end of their territory, close to the entrance to the bottom of the Mommothian Vault. The infiltration team numbered thirty men, hand-picked for their skill not just in fighting, but stealth. Those few who
Straken did not know by name, he knew by sight; even by the standards of the men he commanded, they were all tough and capable. They wore heavy packs, and for men used to living by their wits seemed overladen, but Straken knew that they would need all the equipment they could carry.
At the edge of the group, a single figure waited, next to the team but not quite part of it: Marbo.
Halski clapped Serradus on the shoulder. ‘Hey, Grim. Ready to work your magic on the greenskins again?’
Serradus adjusted the straps on his pack. His sniper rifle was strapped in sections to the side, ready to be assembled. ‘I think I could manage that,’ he said, his voice slightly muffled by his mask.
Behind the team, the Sentinel Wild Boy waited, its exhausts filtered and legs fat with muffling gear. Its pilot, a bearded trooper called Albric, tossed the end of his lho-stick out the window and used the Sentinel’s padded foot to grind it out. The machine carried bulky panniers full of high-density mining explosives as well as a scatter laser.
Tanner looked up from the comm. ‘Weather report, colonel,’ he said, handing the comm-link back to the trooper. ‘The boys topside say the storm’s easing down.’
Straken nodded. ‘Then the orks’ll be here soon.’ He took a deep breath. ‘All the more reason to roll out. Tanner, tell Morrell that I want progress reports every six hours until I give the order to go quiet. Got me?’ They nodded. Straken checked the land shark skull on his belt. It had brought him luck so far – hopefully, it still would in future. ‘Well then, let’s move it, Guardsmen!’
They moved out – thirty men, heading north, the Sentinel following like a tame beast. As they reached the entrance to the Mommothian Vault, they split from the road into two thin columns and picked their way between wrecked vehicles, from one piece of cover to the next. When they stopped, they hid.
The archway was easily eighteen metres tall. Two statues held up its sides, their raised pickaxes crossing over the keystone. In the road, vehicles lay scattered like thrown dice.
Straken glanced back at his men. ‘Marbo, Pharranis, with me. The rest of you, move up in threes on my signal.’
The two troopers hurried to his side. Sergeant Pharranis looked as rough and grimy as ever. Only his bionic eye was clean. He clutched his meltagun in scarred hands and scowled at the way ahead. Marbo looked the same as usual: sullen, cold, unimpressed.
Straken ran up to the first car. Something had flipped it onto its side. He peered around the edge, watching the road before them.
This was the most dangerous moment. The vault belonged to the orks – it was their last stronghold in Excelsis City – but Straken didn’t know how much of it they still controlled. If they spotted his team entering, they could use the archway as a chokepoint, where even ork gunfire could be murderous.
Nothing moved ahead of them. Straken ran to the next vehicle, a pedlar’s electro-cart, and ducked behind it. Pharranis and Marbo followed a moment later, covering the road while the colonel boosted his bionic eye and scanned their route. The pain of zooming in had worsened; he gritted his teeth at the whine that bored through his head.
‘It’s clear,’ Straken whispered. He looked back and gestured for the rest to follow. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and he jogged into the shadows at the side of the arch.
The men dropped in behind him. They moved up in little groups, Lavant and his sappers taking the lead. The Sentinel loped along at the back, using cover to hide its outline. Straken looked around the corner.
The wide streets were deserted, the plush hab-blocks and administrative buildings empty and windowless as if burned out. A few statues flanked the road, most of them without heads. One or two buildings had been reinforced with a frantic patchwork of plasteel plate, but nothing moved inside them. In the far distance stood the two great statues of Lord Solar Macharius and Saint Helena, sculpted from the columns that held up the roof.
The place looked abandoned, and somehow alien. Straken thought, This is xenos territory.
They advanced.
They met their first orks on a side road called Via Calgaris. Three aliens lumbered into view, scowling under steel helmets. Straken let them pass him, gestured for Marbo to follow and hit them from behind. He grabbed one and clenched his steel fingers around its windpipe. As Straken lowered the corpse to the ground he saw Marbo toss his own victim aside. The third ork turned to run, and one of the snipers, Kerriksen, took it down with a shot to the neck.
They dragged the bodies aside and moved on. Straken kept to backstreets, only bringing up the Sentinel once the coast was clear. Progress was steady, but careful. Twice Straken noticed smoke up ahead and led the team around.
At one point, they heard roars and shouts, as if a fight had broken out. Straken crept forwards on his own. About fifty orks stood around a deep crater where a building had once stood. Gretchin swarmed round the edge of the crater, watching something going on in the bottom of it. As Straken sneaked away, bestial snarls came from the pit.
Further on, they found sentry posts and crude alarms, strings tied across pathways, mines scattered over roads. They might have caught out an inexperienced Guardsman, but Straken doubted there was a fighter under his command who would have been fooled. They disarmed the traps and moved on, noting the way they had come.
The architecture became grander and more formal. They passed Administratum offices, courthouses, even a museum. Two hundred and seventy-five metres away, the wrecked dome of the Dulma’lin Senate House looked like a smashed egg rising out of the city. Straken consulted the map. They were on course.
Some of the buildings were obvious ork strongholds, bristling with guns, the roofs covered in rockets. The greenskins had created a few compounds, throwing up barricades to turn city blocks into metal castles. Straken avoided them. He had bigger targets in mind.
As the lights dimmed above them – the orks had shot out many of the illuminators, throwing the vault into twilight – they reached the edge of the Triumphal Gardens. The park was hopelessly overgrown, and stretched almost to the Great Gates. The tangled foliage had been of no interest to the orks, and was now a mass of brambles and fungal trees.
‘You could hide a whole army in there,’ Lavant said, lowering his magnoculars.
Straken nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’
Tanner was in the mess room of the enforcer station when the call came through. He’d been playing a hand of Heretic’s Wake with the militia commanders, and was losing badly. Jocasta Ferrens was a crafty player, and had just cleaned out Tarricus and one of the lieutenants of the militia when the vox-trooper called him over.
‘Straken here,’ said the crackly voice on the end of the headset. ‘Your people all set, Tanner?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Get ’em moved up by squads. I’m going to give you the locations of ork camps we’ve passed. Hit ’em hard and quick, understand?’
‘Will do.’
‘Good.’ Straken read out coordinates, and the captain marked them off on his map with a stub of pencil. ‘Nice and quietly, Tanner. Make sure none of them get away. I don’t want anything to put Killzkar on edge.’
‘Right. I’ll get the armour moving.’
‘Do that. Good luck.’
‘Emperor protect, sir.’
Straken set up camp in the park overlooking the Great Gates. In many ways, it was the safest place there was, especially for jungle fighters: although overgrown, it was easy terrain for men who had grown up on Catachan. He helped set up tripwires and booby traps along the edge of the park facing the gates, from which an ork attack might come. At nightfall, he sent patrols to clear out the neighbouring buildings, to give clear avenues of fire for snipers and heavy weapons.
More teams joined them, encircling and destroying the scattered ork units they met along the way. Now that the mechs had been killed and the gargant factory wrecked, the greenskins in the main vault were without leadership, clinging to their patches of territory and squabbling with each other. The first of Tanner�
��s crews, led by tough, wild-looking Sergeant Halda, surprised a pack of orks that had been using a Basilica Administratum as a barracks, and cleaned it out with grenades. They reached Straken’s team later that afternoon and joined them in reinforcing the park district. Slowly, piece by piece, Straken began to bring his army in.
If there were any serious numbers of orks left in the vault, they were lying very low. The converging human units hunted down a few small forts, so that the orks could not attack them from the rear as they passed by. As teams brought their reports to Straken, it became clear that the orks had either died, hidden or fled into the wastes above, seeking to escape the city in whatever vehicles they could find, presumably with the aim of joining up with the main horde.
It made sense, Straken thought as he sat in the verdant shambles of the park, consulting his map. Killzkar had never wanted Dulma’lin itself; the planet had been a stopping-point for his main attack on Ryza. Killzkar’s main interest had been in the engineering faculties provided by the manufactoria, and now that the industrial caverns were in human hands, his main purpose for being on Dulma’lin was thwarted.
Which made it all the more certain that he would try to wreak revenge.
Lavant’s sappers moved up to the gates. They laid traps, set explosives and readied the roads around the entrance for Killzkar’s arrival. With a little effort, the once-grand avenues leading into Excelsis City would be turned into a bottleneck of broken ork armour, and a killing ground for the Catachans. Lavant supervised the work, unloading the Sentinel with his own hands and sending it back for extra thermite charges. Then he turned his attention to the great pillars that supported the roof, the fail-safe to be detonated if all else was lost.
The nose of the drilling machine was a thrumming blur. Generators fired along the length of the machine, all eighteen metres of it, throwing blue light over the nose cone. The massive teeth whirred past, sending shadows strobing across the yard.