by Toby Frost
‘Back!’ Lavant shouted. ‘Fall back and regroup with first team!’
Straken whirled. The captain still looked absurdly neat, despite the fang-knife in his hand and a gout of ork blood that ran diagonally down his front, like a sash. ‘We have to fall back,’ Lavant said. ‘There’s too many of them.’
‘Damn you,’ Straken snarled, ‘I’m getting Killzkar.’ He pulled his shotgun up and fired from the hip. An ork careened into the side of the building, roaring and tearing at its gas mask. ‘Whether you like it or not.’
Lavant aimed carefully through the smoke and fired. His aim was perfect; an ork gunner’s head exploded. ‘We will,’ Lavant replied. ‘Both of us.’
Straken looked at the captain who smiled fiercely. ‘Good plan. Let’s–’
‘Straken, look out!’
Lavant jumped forward. Straken turned, sensing the huge form behind him as much as seeing it, and an ork bellowed like a wounded bull. Lavant grappled with a huge beast almost two metres tall, driving his knife down into its thick neck, stabbing like a maniac. The ork screamed, and Straken saw the mass of lenses on its face, the dog tags wrapped around its arms.
‘Snikrot!’ He rushed forward, but the alien shoved Lavant aside. The captain staggered into Straken, and the ork was away, clutching its neck, alien blood pouring between thick fingers.
Got you, Straken thought, and as he lined up a killing shot, Lavant fell onto him.
Straken caught him. Blood covered Lavant’s midriff. As he had stabbed Snikrot, the ork had driven a blade into the captain’s gut.
Grunting, Straken dragged Lavant back from the fight. As the men retreated, the orks pursuing them, he heaved Lavant into a side entrance to the Senate House. The captain sagged against a pillar.
‘I’m done,’ he gasped, clutching himself. ‘Leave me.’
‘I don’t leave people behind,’ Straken replied. ‘Come on.’
In the street, dead men and greenskins lay scattered as though they had fallen from the cavern roof.
Lavant pointed. ‘There,’ he whispered.
Straken saw only a corpse, and then noticed the canvas bag slung across the man’s chest. A medic. Still taking Lavant’s weight, he guided the captain over to the body. Lavant dropped down, teeth gritted.
Straken covered him. Lavant tore the medical pack open and rummaged around. He gasped, and for a second Straken thought the captain was going to drop dead. The battle roared around them, deafening and yet distant, as if they were creeping through some enormous machine.
Lavant jabbed himself with a syringe. A moment later he let out a slow sigh and said, ‘Yes… that’s good stuff.’ He fumbled with the cast spray, pulled his shirt open and hosed down the wound. Straken frowned; it was the wrong treatment.
‘You need to bandage that,’ he said. ‘Use the wound tape.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Lavant replied. ‘Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.’
‘What? You need a medic.’
‘I’m Catachan, for the Emperor’s sake. The last thing I need,’ Lavant said, giving Straken a broad, painless smile, ‘is to go down in history as the man who stopped Iron Hand getting the job done.’
‘Nobody’s going down in history. I’ll make sure you get back.’
The captain nodded. ‘Do it.’ The morphia had done its work. If anything, he looked too relaxed.
A shower of grey brick slid down the side of a luxury hab-block as the squiggoth brushed against it. The monster was starting to move.
There was no time to waste. Straken ran into the Senate House.
Shadows fell over him like a curtain. The inside of the Senate House was cool and bad smelling. Dust swirled lazily in the air. Straken stood in an entrance hall, next to a shattered vid-screen. The desiccated upper half of a corpse lay across the reception desk. A massive brass aquila on the opposite wall had been riddled with bullet holes.
Grimacing with pain, Straken boosted his vision and checked for booby traps. He saw nothing. Besides, there wasn’t enough time to stop and make sure. Delay meant failure now. He strode across the room.
A body lay beside the doors, curled into a ball. It was so dusty that he barely noticed it. Straken opened the doors.
He was under a huge dome. Seats lined the walls in rows, as though in an amphitheatre. A podium had stood in the centre, but now lay on its side. Light streamed in from above, through a hole in the domed roof; it looked like the egg of a gigantic bird that had flown the nest.
Ropes hung from the ceiling, almost all of them frayed where the weight of the bodies they had supported had been too much. The floor was covered in corpses. A couple of senators, slow to decay, still dangled from the rafters where the orks had strung them up.
Straken ran between the bodies, towards the stairs. He bounded up the steps three at a time, slowing to check the signs on the walls before rushing upwards.
The building rumbled. The squiggoth was moving. Straken quickened his pace, his muscles starting to ache from the strain.
Panting, he reached a landing. He’d run out of stairs. A corridor stretched off into some sort of offices. Banks of cogitators stood unused. A deactivated servitor hung its head sadly.
How the hell did you get onto the roof? Straken glanced around, trying not to let his fury rise. Gunfire flickered outside the window. A cannon boomed. There had to be a way out of this damned place.
He ran into the maintenance room, past a row of dead-eyed servitors locked against the wall, to a sign with the Mechanicus cog sigil at the top. Yes – this was it. There were rungs against the wall, leading to a trapdoor. He climbed.
Straken punched the lock out of the trapdoor and scrambled onto the roof. Suddenly, he was on top of the building, surrounded by the empty vastness of the cavern. The battle spread out below him, the soldiers as small as insects. Tanks the size of matchboxes rolled to and fro. He gazed down, hypnotised by the sheer scale of it all, as though toys had taken life before him.
The air stirred at his back.
Straken whipped round and saw a massive, bare-chested shape. He glimpsed a cluster of lenses in place of eyes, a snarling mouth below them, and a huge knife slashed down. Straken darted aside, nearly slipping on the subtle curve of the roof, and Snikrot’s blade flashed past. The ork laughed, jumped forward – and Straken dropped to his knees.
He swung the shotgun like a club into Snikrot’s kneecap. The ork howled, Straken leaped upright, pushed the barrel of his gun into the alien’s back and fired.
Snikrot’s midriff seemed to burst. He lurched forward in a flurry of alien blood, slipped and fell. And then the ork was rolling, clutching at the roof, flailing wildly as he slid towards the edge, faster and faster...
He dropped off the edge of the dome. Snikrot fell, bellowing, seeming to twist and shrink in mid-air as though shrivelling in a flame. And then he fell into the chaos below, and was lost to view.
Straken found that he was panting for breath. It must’ve followed me up. Almost, he thought. You almost had me there. I was lucky.
The ground shivered under his boots. The squiggoth’s footsteps cracked the road, dislodging slews of brick from the weakened buildings around it. Slowly, the great metal howdah appeared around the edge of the dome, as vast and serene as a galleon. The red armour was dented and singed. Several armour plates dangled off like broken limbs; black smoke poured from an immense howitzer.
But Killzkar still rode it. He stood at the front, metal arms lifted up, ranting and bellowing at his legions below. He was not just the commander but the soul of his army, like one of the ork gods made flesh, and while he lived the orks could not retreat.
Now or never. Straken took a deep breath, ran to the edge and jumped.
Twenty-five metres in, Lavant wondered whether he had given himself too big a dose of painkillers. He felt disconnected from the battle; it went on around him, but he was somehow not in it. Screams and gunfire filtered through his ears as if he were underwater. Lavant moved down the street, his legs
numb, feeling as if he was being propelled on rails, like a cart. He could do this. He was Catachan.
But you didn’t take a gut wound like his and laugh it off, no matter what planet you’d had the misfortune to grow up on. He had to keep going, no matter what. Straken was right: if you wanted something done, you did it yourself. That was how wars got won.
He turned a corner and was in a firefight. A ragged squad of Catachans, backed up by local militia, were battling a squad of ork commandos. From the looks of the red markings on their heads, the aliens were Snikrot’s troops. ‘Cover me,’ Lavant said, not knowing whether they heard, and limped on. Nobody paid him much notice – they probably thought he was as good as dead already.
The cast spray was hardening. He seemed to be wearing a plaster corset around his waist. It didn’t matter, so long as he could move.
Fifteen metres further on, he passed a heap of ork soldiers in an alleyway. A figure moved out of the shadows as he approached, knife in hand. Lavant recognised the man as Guardsman Marbo, and waved him away. The man stepped back and disappeared.
Lavant staggered on. The great statue loomed up before him, carved out of the pillar supporting the roof. Saint Helena held her pick over one stone shoulder, lantern raised to ward off the dark. He steered towards her.
A sudden jolt of pain shot through his leg. His knee gave way and he fell, the saint tilting in his vision. A pair of gretchin scurried out to get to work on him, screeching with glee. Lavant pulled his pistol and blew the first alien’s head to mush. The second shrieked and ran. The captain struggled upright, pain sparking deep inside him despite the drugs, and lurched onwards.
For a long, long second Straken felt as if he were hanging suspended mid-jump, the air rushing around him – then he crashed down onto the deck of the howdah. Rows of artillery stretched away on either side. Generators throbbed and crackled. Alien gun crews laboured around him. A gretchin saw Straken as it reached for a shell, pointed and squealed.
Straken blasted it with the shotgun, turned to see an ork with a peg leg lurching towards him and brained it with the butt of his gun. The gretchin cringed and drew back, hiding behind the artillery pieces, and Straken looked down the length of the howdah at Killzkar’s back.
The warlord had not noticed him. Killzkar was still ranting at his minions, pausing every few moments to bash the squiggoth’s head with his power claw. Clearly the beast was still half concussed. Pistons worked furiously in the warlord’s armour, and between them Straken glimpsed fat, snaking cables.
Tear those out, and Killzkar would be a prisoner in his own armour.
An ork slaver leaped out from behind a howitzer. It grabbed Straken’s metal arm with its left hand and swung a cleaver down in its right. Its drooling mantrap of a face lunged forward, trying to bite Straken’s throat.
For a moment they were locked together. Straken yanked the ork close and stamped into its shin. It was not enough to wound the brute, but the distraction was sufficient. The ork flinched for half a second – all the time Straken needed to twist aside and shove the barrel of his shotgun under its chin.
As the ork slaver fell to the ground, Killzkar turned and looked back down the length of the squiggoth. He saw Straken, and a strange sort of understanding came into the warlord’s little eyes.
It recognises me, Straken thought.
‘Killzkar!’ he called. ‘You know who I am? Then you know I’m going to kill you!’
He rushed at the ork. Killzkar braced his legs and swung up his left arm. It ended in a mass of rockets and gun barrels, like a caricature of heavy weaponry.
Straken threw himself aside. The sound of half a dozen weapons letting rip almost deafened him. Bullets tore through the air. Gretchin screamed as one of the ammunition stores caught light above the squiggoth’s tail. The beast let out a bellow and jolted into life, sending the howdah lurching to the side. Killzkar staggered. Straken sprang to his feet and rushed in.
He rammed his knife into a wad of cables on Killzkar’s flank. The warboss swung his huge arm down, and Straken darted out of range, pulled his shotgun up and blasted the ork in the head. Killzkar stumbled back, towards the edge of the howdah. He stopped, his face covered in small, oozing wounds.
The warboss spat and came at Straken with both fists flailing. He was like a Dreadnought gone wild, a construction machine possessed by daemons. Snapping claws cut the air, and the colonel darted left, right, then back from the huge arms and the snarling, bleeding head between them.
Straken felt his back hit the edge of the howdah, and Killzkar let out a burbling laugh. He threw an arcing punch, and Straken sidestepped, rolled on his metal shoulder and came up as the ork’s fist smashed the side of the howdah apart.
Tank shells struck the squiggoth’s flank and it lurched forward. Fire raged in the rear of the howdah. In the back of his mind, Straken realised that the force field was down. The beast lumbered into the ork ranks.
The howdah listed like a ship in a hurricane. Killzkar stumbled, almost overbalancing. Straken leaped onto the warboss’s back.
He drove his knife into Killzkar’s neck. The warboss howled, and, as if to answer him, a stash of ammunition exploded on the squiggoth’s spine. Armour, guns and gretchin burst into the air, and the squiggoth slammed its flank into a building.
A cascade of bricks dropped onto the howdah. Killzkar staggered backwards and Straken twisted the knife. The ork twisted, leaned, leaned too far, and the squiggoth, maddened with pain, tossed its head.
Straken felt the world spinning away from him, felt the knife torn out of his grip, and suddenly Killzkar was falling, and he was falling after him.
The ground dealt Straken a tremendous blow. Pain shot down his chest as if his bionics were being wrenched out of his body. He groaned and rolled over.
His metal arm was twisted back at an impossible angle. The fingers twitched open and closed. Cursing, he heaved himself onto all fours.
Killzkar lay two metres away. The ork rose up clumsily, limb by limb. Pistons whining, he clambered upright.
The squiggoth turned to look at the tiny figures before it. Its armour was askew; a single mean eye peered down at Straken as he climbed to his feet. The beast could have swallowed a tank.
Killzkar picked Straken’s shotgun off the ground. He closed his hand around it, and the steel claws scissored the gun into bits. The warboss watched the pieces drop to the ground, and his patchwork face broke into a grin.
‘Come on,’ Straken muttered. His metal eye was dead; his damaged vision swam.
Killzkar licked his lips.
‘Come on!’ Straken yelled. ‘Over here! We’re over here, you dumb alien!’
Killzkar strode forward, towards the human commander. The little man was, for some reason, shouting at a point over and behind Killzkar’s head.
The warlord stopped just short of his enemy, and reached out with his claw.
A great shadow fell over them both. Straken shouted and beckoned, and Killzkar’s eyes widened as he realised that Straken was not addressing him.
The squiggoth stamped on Killzkar’s head. One moment the warlord was there, and suddenly he had disappeared. The squiggoth paused, glaring at the battle zone. Then it lifted its foot and walked forward. Its great shadow passed over Straken, and then it was gone.
Straken stood beside the ruin that had been Killzkar. Blood and oil leaked from the crushed yellow armour. The metal had been wrenched into scrap. The flesh was pulped.
Dead, Straken thought, and the world around him lurched.
He felt his legs buckle. His metal side hit the ground, but it didn’t hurt. The squiggoth’s footsteps were like muffled explosions around him. Orks bellowed, not just with rage but panic too. It was all so far away, growing further and dimmer by the moment.
Lavant stumbled through the door at the base of the column. Inside was a shop, where visitors could buy maps and tacky images of local saints. The orks had left it alone, as he had expected: too insignificant to loot.<
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It was pure luck that he had made it here at all – no, not luck, he told himself. The Emperor’s will, expressed through the patron saint of Dulma’lin. He had shot four greenskins to get here, but it had been good fortune that most of the xenos were busy elsewhere, driven to the thickest fighting. Without their masters, the gretchin stayed back – an injured man was good prey for them, but not one with a sharp knife and a loaded gun.
Lavant shoved the door closed behind him. It seemed very heavy. He glanced down, and saw that the cast spray covering his midriff was sticky with fresh blood. It had seeped through, partially dissolving the spray, turning it into a gluey mess.
It didn’t much matter now. The captain looked around like a pilgrim at the end of his journey, past shelves full of prayer scrolls and plaster saints. None of that mattered either. The real substance of importance was packed against the main joists, heaped in piles like packets of cement. Mining explosives, the one weapon on Dulma’lin of which there had never been a shortage.
Cables ran from the main cache into a dozen other stockpiles secreted at other key points. Lavant knew that the whole lot would go once the circuit was connected.
He dragged a chair back – the effort of doing so made him feel faint – and sat down beside the main detonator. Two wires, a set of circuit breakers and fail-safes, and a little switch in the middle of it. He pulled the detonator panel onto his bloody lap and thought about the Emperor.
Somewhere, far away, a battle was raging. The orks would be clearing a path through their wrecked vehicles, struggling to bring more armour into the fight.
Lavant knew that he had done some good things for the Guard, and made a few errors, too. All of his successes and mistakes seemed as far away as the ork horde. As he checked the switches one last time, he wondered whether what he was about to do would be enough to blot out his sins.
He deactivated the fail-safes and put his gloved hand on the switch. One turn, and that would be it. He had installed the bomb personally, and he didn’t make mistakes.