‘And the suborbital anti-air batteries?’ Kantor asked.
‘Much the same, lord,’ said Anais. ‘Some appear to have been dismantled. Power readouts are favourable, however. The orks did not dismantle or disconnect the on-site plasma generators.’
‘Get these systems up and running as soon as you can,’ said Kantor. ‘Then open a link to our brothers in the air traffic control centre. I want you to coordinate everything with them. The moment we are ready, I want a message sent to Lord Admiral Galtaire. The sooner he starts ferrying support down to us, the better. And tell Ruzco to keep trying to raise our forces at the citadel. We need information. Those void shields had better be holding.’
Kantor had barely drawn breath after finishing his sentence when there was a deep rumble from outside, getting louder. It was the unmistakable sound of high-power turbines and they were very close.
Kantor just had time to shout ‘Down!’ at the others before something strafed the windows of the defence control centre, blasting in those that were not already shattered. Shells ripped into the room, not stubber shells, but something far heavier. Autocannon rounds. The orks must have salvaged the guns from a looted Chimera or Hydra.
Broken glass blasted inwards. Consoles and cogitator banks against the far wall disintegrated. Anais, Daecor and Lician had thrown themselves to the floor the moment Kantor had warned them, and it had saved their lives. But Kantor himself was right in the line of fire. The heavy armour-piercing shells battered at him, rattling off him, sparks showering outwards with every impact, but they did no damage.
He’d had only a fraction of a second to activate the power-field device embedded in the golden halo that jutted up from the top of his back-mounted generator, but that fraction of a second had been enough. All it took was a single neural command, a thought, and the so-called Iron Halo, actually made of adamantium and coated with gold, shielded him in its powerful energy field, turning aside the lethal hail of shells.
The device was a last resort, but he’d had no choice. Activating the device was a huge energy drain, and the power levels of his armour dropped dramatically while it protected him. The temperature inside his suit went up. Alarm runes glowed red in his visor, but it saved his life. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to rely on the halo in half a century.
The hail of shells stopped, and Kantor flicked off the energy shield with a thought. The warning runes blinked off. Internal temperature evened out. He looked beyond the edge of the jagged window frames.
Hovering drunkenly in the air outside the defence control room, swaying back and forth on roaring jets of blue flame, an ungainly ork gunship faced him down. He saw two goggled ork pilots laughing uproariously, their hideous faces lit from below by the glowing instruments of their cockpit. They stopped laughing when they saw Kantor standing there unharmed, glaring back at them, radiating raw hate and anger.
The Chapter Master expected them to open fire again, but instead the pilots turned the gunship ninety degrees and presented its left side.
There, standing in an open bay-door in the middle of the craft, was a massive figure with red eyes. It glared back at Kantor, and something indefinable passed between them.
Kantor knew instinctively it was Snagrod. He had never seen a larger ork. The warlord emanated an aura of incredible physical power. No wonder he had united so many disparate ork tribes under his banner. Dominance was hard-coded into his genes.
The beast roared, throwing its huge jaws wide, and pointed down towards the landing plate two hundred metres below: the Nolfeas Plate.
Kantor understood. This was between the two of them, leader against leader.
He nodded, and the warlord bellowed something to the pilots.
The gunship swung away. Snagrod and Kantor kept their eyes locked to each other until the gunship moved out of sight.
Kantor turned to the others.
‘Anais,’ he said. ‘Did we lose any critical systems?’
The Techmarine was already checking. After a moment, he said, ‘Nothing critical, my lord. I can still get ninety-seven per cent of the remaining defensive systems back online.’
‘Do it,’ said Kantor, and he strode towards the elevator. ‘The moment we have the defence grid back, coordinate with Ruzco and the fleet. Start bringing the reinforcements down. Dorn only knows how the citadel is faring.’
He stepped into the elevator cage.
‘My lord,’ said Daecor, moving to join him. ‘You can’t mean to go alone.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lician. ‘Take us with you.’
In the cage, Kantor turned and faced the two sergeants.
‘This is my fight,’ he said. ‘Should it be my last, you will follow the instructions I left with the Chosen back at the Cassar.’
He closed the elevator gate and pressed the rune to descend. Daecor and Lician watched him go, reluctant, but knowing they could do nothing to stop him.
Ten
Atop the Nolfeas Terminal, New Rynn Spaceport
There were few ork flying machines on the Nolfeas Plate, and those there were, sitting silently a few dozen metres from the plate’s edge, looked to be in bad shape. Their sides were pocked with holes, their diameter consistent with the damage Hydra rounds inflicted. These craft had been struck by the guns of the Imperial defenders, and had limped back here for repairs. A few gretchin hovered around them, but, when they saw Kantor crossing a covered walkway and stepping onto the edge of the plate, they panicked and disappeared down a small service ramp, screeching and chittering in their crude alien tongue.
Above the plate, the sky was lightening, turning from darkest, star-speckled blue to pale rose. With this colour shift, Kantor could no longer see the tiny lights that told of the battle in space. He prayed to Dorn that Lord Admiral Galtaire was as good in combat as his service record attested.
He did not like it that so much of his future, and the future of the whole Chapter, rested in the hands of others. No Astartes could be comfortable with that. A Space Marine was used to controlling his own fate. Even in the heat of his most intense battles, he had always known that, live or die, others would fight on. He had always known that the Chapter would go on without him.
Would the coming day see them saved or obliterated?
He crossed to the centre of the Nolfeas Plate. So far, there was no sign of the ork warlord, nor of the gunship, but Kantor was certain he had not misinterpreted the massive ork’s intent.
He scanned the skies, senses hyper-alert…
…and heard the roar of jets just a second before the ork gunship surged upwards over the lip of the plate and opened fire on him, stitching the ferrocrete with shells that traced a lethal line towards him.
His dive was almost too late. Chips of ferrocrete smashed against his right side as the hail of fire ripped past him.
He rose to face the craft.
He tracked it as it swung left and loosed a burst from Dorn’s Arrow, but the cockpit was heavily armoured, and the bursting bolter-shells left only smears of black on the clear armaplas bubble. One of the ork pilots yanked on the craft’s controls, and the gunship swung its nose around to face him head-on again.
Kantor knew only too well the power of the weapons that bristled from under the craft’s stubby wings. He saw now that they were indeed looted autocannons. There were two of them, fed by thick, heavy ammo drums that he guessed contained tens of thousands of rounds.
The guns fired again, and again he narrowly avoided being torn apart. Employing his halo again would have cost him power, slowing him down. He couldn’t afford that. He had a sense that the ork pilots were toying with him. Snagrod wouldn’t let them steal the glory of killing an Astartes Chapter Master. He would want that victory for himself.
The gunship unleashed a third rippling volley, and Kantor tested a theory. He did not move.
It was a deadly gamble to take, but, sure enough, the rounds stitched a path in the surface of the Nolfeas Plate that passed right by him.
The ork pilots were snarling and cursing him. One hauled on his control sticks, and the craft veered away moving to the far edge of the landing plate. Once there, it turned side-on, and again saw his huge nemesis.
The craft lowered unsteadily towards the plate on its vectored jets. When it was still six metres up, the beast called Snagrod dropped from the bay door, landing so hard and heavy that Kantor imagined he felt the plate tremble. Of course, that was impossible. The Nolfeas Plate used anti-gravitic suspension just like the others. Nothing short of a Naval transport could shake it.
Now that Snagrod had landed on the plate, he rose to his full height, and the gunship pulled up into the air, hovering there, drifting drunkenly from left to right as the pilots tried to keep it steady.
Kantor’s eyes were on the warlord. Snagrod wore no suit of power armour like other warlords did. His hulking, muscle-bound torso was bare of everything save deep scars and burns, crude stitches and rippling veins as thick as a man’s thumb. This lack of armour was the most overt sign of pure confidence and power Kantor had ever seen in an individual ork.
Kantor knew then that he had never faced a beast like this in mortal combat.
For weaponry, the monster wielded no power claw, but he gripped a single massive heavy-stubber in the fingers of its right hand, box-fed with a cruelly serrated bayonet slung underneath the barrel. There were close combat weapons slung on the creature’s back, too, but Kantor didn’t have a good view of them.
The two enemies glared at each other, frozen for a moment, each silently assessing his foe. From around Snagrod’s thick waist, a collection of Space Marine helmets hung, swinging on short iron chains that rattled from a squiggoth-skin belt. There were four helmets, each coloured differently, each taken from a battle-brother belonging to a different Chapter. One was decorated with the gold laurels of a veteran sergeant.
Inside his armour, Kantor flexed his muscles and felt blood rushing through them, blood and adrenaline. The latter would make him faster, inure him to pain, help him fight fatigue and make his opponent’s movements seem slower than they really were. But how fast could this monster move? Unhindered by tonnes of iron plate, like that worn by Urzog Mag Kull, Snagrod was a different prospect altogether.
The moment broke suddenly, like glass, and it began.
Snagrod raised the barrel of his gun straight at Kantor and pulled hard on the trigger. Kantor raised Dorn’s Arrow and opened fire a fraction of a second later. Shells hammered through the air in both directions… and struck their targets.
Kantor had flicked on the shield of his Iron Halo again, just in time. The ork rounds danced on the energy field, sparking and ricocheting while he fired back.
The bolts from Dorn’s Arrow struck true, but Snagrod suffered no damage at all. He, too, seemed to be shielded by some kind of power-field. It was another reason he didn’t need a hulking mass of metal plate. The storm bolts exploded harmlessly, sending ripples of strange green energy out over the warlord’s body.
They stood there, unleashing the full fury of their weapons at each other, both roaring in hate at rage as they did so. Then, almost simultaneously, their ranged weapons ran dry.
Kantor deactivated the halo’s energy field. His armour’s power levels had dropped dangerously low. They climbed again now, but never quite reached optimum. He knew he couldn’t rely on the halo again. If he came too close to overloading his armour’s generator, his systems would lock out to prevent an atomic explosion.
Ammo spent, Snagrod threw his heavy-stubber aside in disgust and charged.
Damn, but he was fast!
His impossibly muscular legs halved the distance to Kantor in scant seconds.
Kantor loosed a battle cry and raced forwards to meet him, drawing his sword left-handed from the scabbard at his lower back and activating the power fist on his right.
Snagrod drew the close combat weapons from the slings on his broad back as he ran, two huge chainaxes decorated with roughly painted black and white checks. They growled into motion, teeth blurring.
The two enemies clashed hard, right in the middle of the Nolfeas Plate. Kantor slipped a blistering blow and struck at Snagrod’s belly with his blade. Green sparks flew. The monster’s energy shield was still in play. Where did it get its power? It had to come from somewhere, but Kantor’s eyes couldn’t find any sign of a device. It had to be somewhere on Snagrod’s body, but there was no time to search in earnest for it. Another whistling swipe almost took the Chapter Master’s head off. The blade of the left chainaxe missed him by a hair’s breadth.
Kantor tried to stay in close. His reach was far shorter than the ork’s. It wouldn’t help him to pull back. If he stayed here, he stayed within his own striking range, but what good would that do him when the monster was still shielded?
Another swing of the warlord’s axes gave Kantor a brief opening, and his power fist flashed forward, a devastating hook that would have killed just about any living thing. The fist’s power-field snapped like lightning, and Snagrod’s personal shield flashed bright, but the force of the blow was spent on the shield, and the warlord barely even stumbled back a step.
Kantor’s adrenaline surged even higher. He felt like a child battling this thing, powerless to hurt it.
Snagrod kicked out while Kantor was focussed on the swings of the monster’s deadly blades. The kick caught him square in the stomach and launched him ten metres backwards, skidding along the surface of the landing plate.
Kantor grunted. Even through his ceramite plate, the blow had winded him.
Snagrod charged straight in while the Chapter Master was still on his back. The beast lifted both chainaxes at once and put all its formidable might into a vertical killing stroke.
Kantor rolled left, every fibre of his body committed to the motion, and the axes bit deep into the plate, lodging there hard. The motors that drove the weapons’ wicked teeth whined in complaint.
Snagrod roared and yanked at them, while Kantor leapt to his feet and slipped around to the monster’s side. There, at the warlord’s back, attached to the squiggoth-skin belt, was a curious-looking module.
The shield must come from there, thought Kantor.
In the split second before Snagrod pulled his axes free, Kantor’s sword stabbed towards the module, his movement deliberately slowed. Most shields resisted objects travelling at high speeds, but allowed slower intrusions. This was no different. The tip of Kantor’s blade pierced the energy field and skewered the module.
There was a snap of ionised air and the green shield flickered off.
Snagrod felt it immediately. With a roar of rage, he swung and batted Kantor aside with the butt of his right axe.
The blow sent Kantor skidding along the plate once more, his right pauldron almost entirely shattered, chunks of ceramite spinning away from him.
But he had achieved more than he’d hoped. The warlord was vulnerable now, and all Kantor’s fury and lust for vengeance bubbled up, spilling over his self-control like a torrent of boiling lava.
He was on his feet instantly, ignoring all his pain. His conscious mind retreated, giving way to raw, untempered aggression. With a battle cry that rang out across the landing plate, he launched himself at the ork warboss one last time. There was no holding back. His killer instinct took over everything. He would rip the beast apart or die.
Snagrod loosed a roar of his own and stormed forwards to meet him, axes high. The warlord had been undefeated in battle for a thousand years, slaying every last challenger to his rule. No mere human would change that.
They slammed against each other like crashing trucks, ceramite armour against flesh tougher and thicker than old leather. The axes whistled through the air, motors growling greedily again, hungry for meat to rip apart. Snagrod tried to cut Kantor in half with a scissor-like double backhand, but he cut only empty space.
Kantor slipped under in a blur and, at last, had the warlord right where he wanted him. His sword thrust deep into the monster’s side
and twisted. Snagrod howled in pain and anger, and tried to knock Kantor away, but the pain robbed the blow of speed and Kantor evaded it, staying inside the creature’s guard. He yanked out his blade. Hot blood poured onto the landing plate. Snagrod swiped again and staggered back, his right leg drenched in slick crimson.
Kantor followed the ork’s movements, pressing his attack. He launched a savage overhand blow with his power fist, aimed straight at the warlord’s head, but the beast rolled with the blow, catching it on his huge shoulder.
The thick deltoid muscle exploded in a grisly spray, revealing the bone and sinew beneath. The impact staggered Snagrod, dropping him to one knee. Kantor leapt at him, kicking him down onto his back and straddling the beast’s huge chest. He raised the power fist again for a killing blow, but Snagrod caught it, fingers wrapping iron tight around the wrist.
Kantor’s reaction was immediate. He brought his left hand up, still gripping his sword, and stabbed down at the monster’s throat.
Snagrod’s left shoulder was almost obliterated, almost useless, but not quite.
Through the pain, the ork managed to bring his ruined arm up just in time. He caught the blade of Kantor’s sword in his right hand, the edge biting deep into his fingers. With a roar of pain, the warlord wrenched the blade from Kantor’s grip. It skittered away across the ground.
Kantor snarled and launched a barrage of punches with his gauntleted left hand instead. There was no deadly power-field over that hand, just hard knuckles encased in armour. It was enough. The fury of his blows was terrible. He rained punch after savage punch on the warlord’s face, smashing the beast’s tusks, tearing deep red gouges in its cheeks and brow, blinding one of its eyes and breaking its massive jaw.
Snagrod scrambled to defend himself, but, from his back, one arm greatly diminished in strength, the other locked in a death grip around the Chapter Master’s power fist, he could do little to resist Kantor’s unrelenting fury.
The War for Rynn's World - Steve Parker & Mike Lee Page 36