by Guy Haley
‘Group Ultra will comprise Lux Imperator. It is to join the Eighteenth Atraxian’s Shadowswords Indominus and World Burner under Lieutenant Askelios – he’s liaison with the Atraxians. Ultra will be led by Honoured Captain Parrigar and the Righteous Vengeance from the Eights. He’s in overall charge, but Askelios is the man to listen to when it comes to shooting war engines. Ultra will begin the engagement concealed here to the east, well out of the line of attack, and is to work in close conjunction with Princeps Gonzar and Princeps Yolanedesh. Their plan is to draw the enemy engines from the city, where they might be flanked and brought down by our Shadowswords.’
‘Titan hunting,’ said Hurnigen, a gleam in his eye.
‘And us, sir?’ asked Marteken. ‘Can you give us any more specifics at this time?’
‘We’re going right for the heart of Magor’s Seat. There’s a void shield up around the palace that has to come down. We’re to lead the spearhead to take the generatoria. We need to finish this quickly. If we let the Traitor Space Marines establish themselves here, we’ll be fighting this war for decades. It’ll be a close fight, but it needs to be done.’
‘What about Cortein’s Honour, sir?’ said Bannick with rising dismay. ‘We can get it up and ready for battle again within five hours.’
‘Not according to Brasslock.’
‘Brasslock is wrong.’
‘You will not be at full operational status,’ said Hannick. ‘Without full communications you’ll be sitting kree birds ready for the poacher’s gun. I won’t send a wounded tank into battle just to lose it.’
‘Sir!’
‘Don’t worry, Bannick. You’ll get your fight.’
‘Sir?’
Hannick took in a rasping breath and looked at the table. ‘Bannick, I want you and whatever of your crew you see fit on Lux. You are to join group Ultra. Hurnigen, you are to remain here.’
‘But, sir!’ protested Hurnigen.
‘Bannick has experience facing Titan-class engines, thanks to that scuffle back on Kalidar. You have not. He also has more experience working with the Atraxians. Furthermore, you are injured.’
‘But I have the training. Bannick’s never been in the–’
‘Experience has the edge,’ said Hannick. ‘Bannick is a veteran super-heavy tanker of the war against the orks. As newest member of this company, you are not. I–’ He lapsed into a coughing fit so severe that Marteken fetched a chair, folded it out and put it behind him. Hannick gratefully sat in it and doubled over. The coughs this time lasted more than a minute. ‘Those are my orders, Hurnigen,’ he gasped.
‘I’ll take Meggen, Epperaliant, Leonates and Shoam,’ said Bannick.
‘Epperaliant is injured too!’ protested Hurnigen. ‘And Meggen.’
‘Neither of them are as badly hurt as you are,’ said Bannick. ‘Meggen’s cut was shallow and is well on the way to mended. Epperaliant won’t be left behind.’
‘Sir!’ said Hurnigen.
‘I’ll need Starstan, of course,’ said Bannick.
‘You’ll not take one of my men apart from the tech-priest?’ said Hurnigen. ‘Are you trying to insult me?’
‘No. Your men are good fighters,’ said Bannick. ‘But it is my crew’s ability to work as a team that is paramount. To mix crews now when we do not have to would be foolhardy. However, a Shadowsword needs an enginseer.’
Hannick nodded, and slowly stood again, leaning for support on the tac table. ‘If that’s what Bannick wants, that’s the way it has to be, Hurnigen. I’m inclined to agree with him. You’re a main gunner down, and Shoam is a fine driver.’
Hurnigen’s face went tight, but he nodded.
‘You’ll be here, Hurnigen. I need you to liaise with the Munitorum adepts, the Eighteenth’s support units, whoever, to scrape together whatever you can to keep our tanks firing and in the field.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Hurnigen, standing to attention and staring ahead, his jaw clenched.
‘There’s more you men need to be made aware of. An inquisitor arrived this morning on a sloop, a tiny little ship, but fast. Inquisitor Lord Militant Vesh, he’s called. He’s attached himself to Iskhandrian, which shores up the general’s position, but he has begun issuing orders of his own. There will be commissars arriving to be attached to each unit for the duration of this war. I heard a rumour, not that you should give credence to it, that they fear corruption from the foe. Expect at least two or three per squadron.’
‘That’s... unusual,’ said Marteken.
‘These are unusual times. Fighting men is one thing, transhumans is another. The danger these traitors pose goes beyond their martial power. You must be vigilant, and you must be pure. Make no mistake, these are the most terrible enemies we could face. You might think them ogres from fairy tales, but what you might have heard is one hundred times worse in reality.’
The tank commanders nodded gravely. ‘Yes, sir,’ they said in unison.
Hannick looked them each in the eye, giving them a solemn look that imparted the seriousness of the situation far more effectively than words could ever manage. ‘You have your orders, gentlemen. Prepare your crews. We are to deploy at oh-six-hundred hours. You need to get some food and rest. Get to it.’
The honoured lieutenants saluted.
‘Bannick, a moment.’
Hurnigen walked out stiffly, then Marteken. Bannick waited.
‘Sir?’
‘There is a further reason I have removed Hurnigen from command of Lux Imperator. Sit.’ He gestured to a chair. Bannick took to it. Its back legs sank into the soft mud. ‘Brasslock tells me that the machine-spirit of Lux Imperator is unhappy. Some nonsense about its soul being stained by the treatment it underwent at the hands of the orks on Kalidar.’
‘Sir...’
‘Bannick, we’re both from Paragon. We make machines on Paragon. And while I am willing to believe that there is perhaps a spark of life in the more sophisticated mechanisms, I do not believe that pistons and bolt-shell racks and so forth come together in spiritual union to form a gestalt entity with a will of its own. The Emperor is a god I know exists, but the Omnissiah? Let the tech-priests cling to their religion. We’ve enough experience back home to know a lasgun will fire just as well whether it was sung to during assembly or whether it was not.’
‘Sir,’ warned Bannick. His hand went unconsciously to his twin pendants.
‘It’s bad enough that we let the machines choose the crew,’ he said with a speculative look at Bannick. ‘Anyway,’ Hannick said hoarsely. ‘Brasslock believes there is a disconnect between Hurnigen and the tank, that Lux chose him while it was still shaken after Kalidar, and that they lack sympathetic resonance or something. Brasslock says Lux no longer trusts him. Maybe it would were it not so traumatised, as he puts it. But to regain its fire it needs someone of a different quality. According to Brasslock, that person is you.’
‘What does Starstan say?’
‘He beeped at me for a while. As far as I could tell, he was worried. I assume that means that Brasslock is right. Prove to the adepts that Lux will function in battle. Then Brasslock will be happy and Hurnigen can go back to his command. But I have to say I am glad that you are going to be there with the Atraxians rather than he, if I am completely honest. You’ll be working on your own with non-Paragonians and forge-worlders. You’re better suited to that than he is. He’s stuck in his ways and can be prickly. Let the Emperor turn His face from me if I’m pleased to be bruising the man’s pride because a machine said so. He’s a good officer, just a little young.’
‘He’s older than me,’ said Bannick.
‘You know what I mean. A man’s wisdom cannot always be measured in years.’
Hannick coughed again. There was a moment of silence when he finished, then came the boom of artillery, very close.
‘They’re firing the big guns.’
/> ‘From within the camp,’ said Hannick. ‘Not ideal but if they were out of the fleet’s protective umbrella they’d be gone in seconds.’
‘They’re targeting the city?’
‘The ones with the range. Forget about taking this planet with the minimum of human loss. All that’s gone down the river. We’re to take it as quickly as we can now. If we must smash it, so be it.’
The first shells and rockets were landing on Magor’s Seat. The rumble of their explosions were just audible over the next salvo. The ground trembled.
Hannick’s breath rattled in his chest. ‘That’ll be all, Bannick.’
Bannick stood and saluted. ‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you’re so certain that the machines don’t have spirits, then why do you make obeisance to them along with the tech-priests before battle?’
Hannick reached for a sheaf of paper covered in Astra Militarum and Departmento Munitorum symbols and began to flick through it. ‘I’m a sceptic, Bannick. It doesn’t mean I’m a bloody idiot. Always assume you could be wrong. Dismissed.’
The camp erupted into activity like a hive of social insects prodded by a stick. Men ran in all directions. Engines roared and grumbled. Orders were shouted, and platoons of soldiers marched in neat ranks down the sucking mud of the streets. Priests were everywhere, wailing and singing, processions of icon-bearing acolytes trailing in their wake. In the marshalling yard of the Seventh, men hurried about. Hurnigen might not have liked his orders, but he set to them after the briefing with a will. A steady trickle of invaluable supplies came into the yard. The clouds cleared before evening. Darkness fell and the spot-lumens atop their spindly towers came on, bathing the yard in hard light that threw the churned mud into stark relief, so that it resembled the scarred terrain of a battleground in miniature. The sky flashed with orbital weapons discharge.
Bannick was checking over the cannon on Lux Imperator when the latest batch of supplies arrived. Hurnigen rode a trailer pulled by a small, tracked tractor piloted by an integrated servitor. Another scrounged asset, borrowed from the enginseers attached to the 42nd. Meggen rode behind Hurnigen next to a pallet of battle cannon shells. Once, Bannick had had a crewmate who could find just about anything. He was from the same clan as Ganlick. Now they were both dead along with so many others.
The tractor pulled up alongside the Shadowsword. Hurnigen handed up a thick bundle of cabling.
‘You’ll need this,’ he said. Bannick nodded his thanks and passed the cable up to Gollph. ‘You will take care of Lux for me, Bannick?’
‘Of course I will,’ said Bannick.
Hurnigen gave a worried smile and ordered the servitor on. Meggen jumped down.
‘Any news?’
‘Nope,’ said Meggen.
‘You can go rest if you like, Meggen. We’ll all need to be on our best tomorrow.’
‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to go over the firing drill for the volcano cannon. It’s been a while and this thing hasn’t been playing nice with its operators recently.’
‘Be my guest,’ said Bannick. He followed Meggen into the tank through the main hatch on the roof of the hull, a large rectangle at the back. There were a few openings on the top, including a cupola hatch. The space where the gunner’s hatch might go was occupied by a powerful ranging augur whose red glass eye shone with malevolent intent. A second, smaller augur unit was located over the cannon, into which it was directly plugged. There was only one other hatch on the body of the tank, over the driver’s station. This lack of exit points made the marque unpopular with tank crews. If it was hit and caught fire, there was no way out.
The interior of the Shadowsword was even more closed than that of the Baneblade, being laid out across two cramped decks. Everything was built around the massive volcano cannon; much of the structure was taken up by the capacitors needed to power it. All this meant that there was little room available for the crew, which numbered seven to the Baneblade’s ten. Upon the command deck were stations for the commander, commsman and third gunner. The Shadowsword was a design without a secondary armament. Paragonian sponson gunners all had the same rank of third gunner no matter which vehicle they served on to equalise ranks. This custom was not employed by every world, but it was common enough. The communications and tactical desk was wrapped around the rear corner on the right-hand side, behind the commander, who had a dedicated, armoured viewing loop over his instruments. The cannon’s huge refraction array took up most of the command floor. On the other side of that was the third gunner’s station. Unlike on a Baneblade, the third gunner was expected to run both sponsons – and the bow gun if necessary – without the aid of a loader. To the rear was a square hatch that led into the bowels of the tank. Down in the centre of the hull were the powerful dynamo and giant capacitors that provided the energy to power the Titan-felling blasts of the volcano cannon.
The enginseer had a station behind the dynamo. His main duty was to control the switch between motive units and dynamo to charge the cannon. Unless the capacitors were already charged, the Shadowsword could either fire or move, but not both. In the bow was another compartment housing the driver and first gunner. The driver’s station was raised up and at the opposite side to a Baneblade driver’s, and he shared responsibilities with the third gunner and commander for the operation of the bow gun. As on a Baneblade, this was a twinned set of heavy bolters, although they were not mounted in a dedicated turret and therefore had a limited range of traversal. A Shadowsword was not expected to engage the enemy at close range, but still its array of supplementary weaponry was formidable. By the driver, the first gunner fought surrounded by specialised displays and ranging units, his seat set well below the level of the driver’s chair.
The power feeds and tops of the capacitors could only be accessed via a number of removable plates in the command deck. These were currently up. Bannick and Meggen were therefore forced to brace themselves against the low ceiling as they stepped carefully from strut to strut, as one wrong move might result in electrocution. Bulky Adeptus Mechanicus diagnostic devices, plugged directly into the reactor couplings, provided further impediment to safe progress. A painful blue glow shone from the capacitor arrays. The interior was sharp with the tang of ozone.
Inside, Epperaliant manned the comms desk. Starstan and Brasslock worked side by side on the lower floor, their bulky, augmetic bodies an encumbrance in the tight spaces of the Shadowsword.
‘Toggling quinternary auxiliary power bypass. Powering up augur arrays,’ said Epperaliant. ‘Sir,’ he said when Bannick dropped through the commander’s hatch.
‘How are your wounds? If you wish to remain I will take Second Lieutenant Jinereen.’
‘You wanted me, you shall have me, sir. My arm’s a little sore, that’s all. Skin’s tight, but the medicae got some gel packs on there and the burns aren’t too deep. I can use my arm. I was lucky. Not like Ganlick.’
‘Good. I do need you, Epperaliant.’
‘Ah, honoured lieutenant. You have come to gauge our progress?’ Brasslock stood. His age and his odd, altered body should have made him the most uncomfortable of them all in the claustrophobic space, but he appeared more at ease inside the tank than out of it, despite the contortions he was obliged to adopt.
‘I have.’
‘Then I report that all is functioning as it should. The rest is dependent on our prayers. Starstan and I go soon to begin the benedictions of rousing, to prepare the engines for war. Should we beseech Lux Imperator correctly, I judge we shall have no more problems, not with you at the helm.’
‘I need to familiarise myself with Lux’s equipment,’ said Bannick doubtfully.
‘Trifling differences, honoured lieutenant. You will experience no difficulty.’
‘I’d be more comfortable on Cortein’s Honour.’
‘Lux is grateful that you are aboard, and ther
efore so am I. You and it share a certain affinity. It will work for you.’
‘Thank you. I am glad to have the tank’s blessing. I would have thought the same of you, Brasslock, that you would work well with it, after what you both underwent. Why do you not serve aboard as the enginseer?’
‘My position is higher than mere keeper of a single machine.’ Bannick hid a smile. He had never heard Brasslock be so haughty. ‘Even if it were permissible, the memory is too raw for both of us,’ said Brasslock sadly. ‘My presence only increases Lux Imperator’s sense of humiliation. Starstan is better suited. He and Lux Imperator have a long history together.’
Starstan twittered binaric, then remembered himself and switched to an ugly, machine-synthesised Gothic. ‘We are both at your service, honoured lieutenant. May we together smite the enemies of mankind. Preferably at maximum range, where the weapons of this medium-weight tracked engine are best able to inflict damage without repercussion to continued functionality.’
‘Indeed.’ Bannick did not find Starstan’s precise reply as amusing as he normally would, for the image of Brasslock pinned to a Lux Imperator mutilated by the orks flashed into his mind, and would not easily be banished. Bannick’s face froze. Starstan was too far gone from the state of base humanity to notice the change in Bannick’s expression, but Brasslock, who maintained a degree of empathy for men, did.