Until they landed the Titans, the sheer mass of the tower was proof against their available weapons, and the Warsmith himself had impressed upon Forrix the need for swiftness in this campaign. He could not risk bringing the massive bulk carriers, essentially vast barrack ships, down into low orbit until the control tower was theirs. It was entirely likely that there were torpedo silos or orbital batteries concealed within the mountains just waiting for the chance to down such valuable targets.
Once Kroeger had taken the tower he would begin the landings.
And then this world would burn.
KROEGER WATCHED THE Dreadnought rip the bludgeoned door from its frame and hurl the massive piece of metal through the air. The mad howl of the machine echoed across the spaceport as its keepers dragged its massive bulk away from the low-ceilinged interior of the tower.
He snarled and leapt through the shattered remains of the door, blood pounding through his veins in hot excitement. His bloodlust was up, stoked by the infuriating delays in achieving entry to the tower. Screams and roars followed him, as a tide of armoured killers poured inside the last bastion of the Imperial defenders.
Las-bolts burst around him and ricocheted from his armour, but nothing could stop his powerful form. Around fifty men defended the internal space of the tower, cowardly wretches who had allowed their comrades to be butchered while they had prayed for a deliverance that would never come.
Kroeger charged straight for the heart of the defence as Iron Warriors armed with gargoyle-mouthed heavy bolters took up position either side of the tower's door, spraying the defenders' barricades with shells.
Five powerful strides and Kroeger was amongst the Imperial soldiers, chopping and hacking with his sword. Blood fountained and cries of terror echoed from the gore-spattered walls as the Iron Warriors slew every man that stood before them. It was an uneven struggle and as Kroeger wrenched his sword from the belly of the last man, it was with a snarl of displeasure. Where was the sport to be had in slaughtering such weaklings? The lmperium had grown soft.
Not one of these soldiers could have stood on the walls of Terra in the last days and held their head high. Kroeger shook his head, clearing his mind of ancient memories. There was battle still to be had.
ADEPT CYCERIN SAT at his monitoring station and awaited death. He listened to the shrieks of the dying echoing from the vox-speakers, and felt his terror rise once more, suffocating in its intensity. His hands shook uncontrollably and he had not been able to move his legs for the last few minutes. He was going to die. The logic stacks in his engineered brain could offer no other probable outcome, no matter how often he pleaded and prayed.
The staff of the command centre huddled, shaking, at the far end of the room, holding one another as death approached. Koval Peronus stood alone, holding a pair of laspistols pointed at the door. Cycerin was under no illusion now as to how flimsy a barrier it truly was and was impressed by the determination that shone from his underling's features.
Suddenly the awful shrieks and clamour of battle ceased from below and Cycerin knew that the soldiers were all dead. Strange how inviolable he had felt here, and how quickly that security had been stripped from him. Watching Peronus, he saw beads of sweat gathering on his forehead, muscles bunching along his jaw-line and noticed the barely perceptible tremor to his arms. The man was terrified, yet stood his ground in the face of insurmountable odds. Cycerin was no soldier, but recognised true courage when he saw it.
Stiffly, he rose from his seat, forcing his trembling body to stand beside Koval Peronus. He may be about to die, but as an adept of the Machine God, he would die standing before the enemy with chin held high. Koval turned his head as the adept stood alongside him and smiled weakly, nodding briefly in gratitude for his superior's support.
He reversed the grip on one of his pistols and offered it to Cycerin.
'Have you ever fired a weapon in anger?' he asked.
Cycerin shook his head. 'I monitored the production of them in a weapons forge on Gryphonne IV for fifty years, but never managed to actually fire one.'
He swallowed hard. It was the longest sentence he had ever uttered to one of his staff.
'It's easy. Just point and pull the trigger,' explained Peronus. 'I've set the power to maximum to give us a chance of actually hurting one of these heretics, so you'll only get three, maybe four shots at the most. Make them count.'
Cycerin nodded, too scared to even reply. The pistol felt heavy in his hands, but reassuringly lethal. Let the enemy come, he thought. Let them come, and they will find Adept Etolph Cycerin ready for them.
KROEGER CROUCHED AT the end of the corridor leading to the control room and watched as two Iron Warriors planted shaped melta charges across the door's centre. They turned to him and nodded, retreating and taking cover as the timers activated, detonating the charges in a ball of incandescent light.
Kroeger was momentarily blinded as his auto-senses darkened his receptors to compensate, but when they reactivated, he snarled in satisfaction as he saw the door and half the wall had been obliterated.
Nothing came through the door, not a single shot, grenade, or warrior intent on dying with some measure of honour. Angry now at having been cheated of the chance for glory, Kroeger smashed his way through the smouldering remains of the door, his bulk taking a portion of the wall with him and wreathing him in smoke.
Two figures stood before him, pistols held wavering before them. Perhaps here he would find a foe worthy of his blade. He grinned as he smelled their fear.
The smile faded as he saw that neither man was a warrior. One was a tonsured technician, while the other was one of the deluded priests of the machine.
What then could they offer him that he had not already ripped from five score men already? The robed machine priest shouted and fired his pistol, the blast punching a hole in the wall beside Kroeger. The technician fired a heartbeat later and Kroeger rocked back on his heels as the impact blasted a crater in his power armour. Before the Imperial could shoot again, Kroeger was upon him, backhanding his fist across his face and decapitating him in an explosion of blood and bone.
The adept fired again, the blast scoring across Kroeger's back. He spun, plucking the pistol from the man and tearing the hand from his wrist. The adept dropped to his knees, open mouthed in horror as blood jetted from the ragged stump.
Kroeger drew his pistol, ready to finish off the fool, when a sibilant, velvet voice hissed from the blasted doorway.
'You would cost me my victory, Kroeger? That would be unwise of you.'
Kroeger spun, the blood surging to his head as he lowered his weapon.
'No, my lord,' he stammered, dropping to his knees, awed and humbled at the unexpected presence of the Warsmith.
The darkness within the room swelled as one of the mightiest leaders of the Iron Warriors entered to claim his victory. Kroeger had a barely perceived vision of armour of darkest iron, almost black, and a ravaged face glowing with pale light. Horrible vitality pulsed from that face. Kroeger fought to keep from vomiting inside his helmet, such was the force of his leader's presence.
The Warsmith's burnished armour was magnificent and, eyes cast down, Kroeger could see writhing shapes and leering faces swimming up from its translucent depths. Their agonised wails clawed at the edge of his hearing, bound forever within the blasted stuff of the Warsmith's body. His footfalls fell with the weight of ages, imbued with the authority of one who had fought alongside the Legion's Primarch, the great Perturabo, on the accursed soil of Terra.
Wisps of ghostly smoke smouldered where he walked, each twisting like a tormented soul before fading into nothing. Kroeger dared not look at the Warsmith without first being commanded, for fear of instant death at the hands of one of his infernal Terminator bodyguards. They stood a respectful distance from their lord as he slowly circled Kroeger.
The Warsmith brushed his gauntleted fingers along his scarred armour and Kroeger felt intense clamps of nausea seize him in a burning g
rip. Every cell in his body seemed to recoil at the Warsmith's touch and only through a mantra of hate did Kroeger remain conscious. Though the pain was intense, he felt a powerful yearning for such power. What must it be like to command the power of the empyrean, to have its unimaginable power pump through your veins like blood itself?
'You are reckless, Kroeger. Have ten thousand years of battle taught you nothing?'
'I desire only to serve and to kill those who would deny us our destiny.'
The Warsmith chuckled, the sound like earth falling on a coffin. 'Do not talk to me of destiny, Kroeger. I know why you fight and it is not for anything so lofty as that.'
Kroeger felt blinding waves of pain lance through his skull as the Warsmith leaned in close to the back of his head.
'That you kill the lackeys of the corpse-emperor is enough for me, but have a care that your own needs do not interfere with mine.'
Kroeger nodded, unable to speak, again feeling the roiling sensation of the Warsmith's impending change wash over him. He fought to retain consciousness.
The Warsmith turned from him and Kroeger sighed in relief. The master of the Iron Warriors stood over the still-twitching form of the adept who'd shot at him. From the corner of his eye, he saw the blurry outline of the Warsmith bend and scrutinise the howling adept with the bleeding stump.
'My sorcerer, Jharek Kelmaur, spoke of this man. The servant of the machine with only one hand. He is important to me, Kroeger. And you almost killed him.'
'I… I beg your forgiveness, my lord,' gasped Kroeger.
'See to it that he does not die and you shall have it.'
'He will not die.'
'If he does, you will follow him screaming into hell,' promised the Warsmith, stalking from the room.
As his master departed Kroeger felt the nauseous contractions in his gut subside and pushed himself to his feet. He turned to the mewling form of the bloodstained adept.
He lifted the whimpering man roughly by his robes and dragged him from the room.
Why the Warsmith should want this one saved was beyond him, but if it was his lord's will that the enemy be spared, then so be it.
FOUR
THE LAST SOUNDS of battle had faded as the commanders of the three grand companies of the Iron Warriors that had come to Hydra Cordatus gathered at the behest of their lord and master.
The Warsmith stood, resplendent in his monstrous suit of power armour, pleased with the bloodletting wreaked in his name. His three champions knelt before him, each man's armour spattered with blood, hued orange by the high midday sun. The Warsmith ignored them, casting his gaze out over the blasted wasteland that had once been a spaceport. The devastated appearance was deceptive, however.
Lumbering, earth-moving machines, brought down from orbit less than an hour ago, were already bulldozing wrecked aircraft and drop-pods from the runways and landing platforms. Bodies were crushed under their grinding tracks or gathered up in vast dozer blades and dumped unceremoniously in giant craters. He cast his eyes to the fiery sky, remembering the first time he had set eyes on this world. Both he and the planet had been very different back then, and he wondered if those who called this place home even knew how it had come to resemble such a pleasing vision of hell.
Far above him he saw a bloated shape, blurred and indistinct, but visible to his enhanced and changing eyes, floating in the fiery haze of the upper atmosphere. The massive star-ship strained against the oppressive attraction of gravity, disgorging hundreds of landing craft from its belly like some vast sow giving birth to her litter.
Each of this craft's spawn was hundreds of metres in length and crammed with a mixture of slaves, soldiers, ammunition, weapons, siege engines, tools and all manner of materiel required for a besieging army. Forrix knew his trade and the Warsmith was confident that this complex and demanding operation would proceed without problem.
He knew that time was his greatest enemy. Abaddon the Despoiler had bidden them complete this task before his great machination unfolded in return for settling the debt of the Iron Warriors' withdrawal from his designs. To the Warsmith, the Despoiler's plans reeked of the same betrayal that had forced their hand so long ago and driven them to the fold of the dark gods. Perturabo had made the mistake of trusting one he thought was his friend and lord. The Warsmith would not make that mistake himself.
Abaddon may have his plans, but the Warsmith had his own as well.
There was a pleasing synchronicity to his return to Hydra Cordatus. Just now, as he stood on the brink of greatness, he had returned to the world where he had first put into practice the skills he had learned as a novitiate on Olympia.
What he had once helped create, he would now tear asunder.
He returned his gaze to his war leaders, scrutinising each in turn.
Forrix, captain of the foremost of his grand companies, with whom he had held the last gate of the Jarelphi Palace, who had led the retreat from Terra and whose oath of loyalty had been sworn above the clone body of Horus himself.
His experience was second to none and the Warsmith valued his counsel above all others. The fires of glory had long since burned out in his one-time brother, but ten thousand years of war had not dimmed his strength, the saturation of Chaos imbuing his ancient frame with incredible power. His crafted suit of Terminator armour had been struck in the forges of Olympia itself, each greave, vambrace and cuissart hand-tooled by artificers whose skill was now all but a whispered myth.
Beside Forrix: Kroeger, the young-blood, though such a term seemed laughable now, given that Kroeger had fought the long war almost as long as Forrix. But he had always been the young firebrand, with a physical need to plunge into the crucible of combat. His armour was dented and burned in a dozen places - testimony to his ferocity in battle - yet the Warsmith knew that Kroeger possessed a cunning beyond that of a simple butcher. No Kharn of the World Eaters this one, but a killer possessed of single minded drive. Had he simply been another one of those who succumbed to the hunger of the Blood God he would never have lived this long.
Even though they dared not look at each other in his presence, the Warsmith could feel the hatred between Kroeger and the half-breed Honsou. The blood of Olympia flowed in his veins, but he had also been implanted with gene-seed ripped from the bodies of their ancient foes, the Imperial Fists. His blood was tainted with the seed of the corpse-emperor's lapdog, Rogal Dorn, and for that Kroeger would never forgive him. No matter that he had proven himself time and time again, some hatreds were carved on the heart. No matter that his dark deeds were at least the equal of Kroeger's. Honsou had led the Forlorn Hope through the breach in the Cadian bastion of Magnot Four-Zero after a volley of Basilisk fire had obliterated his captain. He had personally broken the siege of Sevastavork and led the Lorgamar Rebellion to ultimate victory. Yet nothing could atone for the hated blood that flowed in his veins and for this, and other reasons, the Warsmith had not named Honsou as captain of the grand company, despite his utter suitability.
The Warsmith could smell the stench of belief and ambition on Honsou, and its sickly aroma pleased him greatly. This one would risk much for the honour of his captaincy. The rivalry he had carefully cultivated between his commanders was a pungent sweetmeat that nourished his senses.
The Warsmith no longer saw as other men did: his gaze was increasingly drawn into the realm of the immaterium, perceiving things beyond the ken of mortal men, things that would drive them to insanity. In every twisting weave of air he saw hints, suggestions and lies of the future. Every dancing particle of matter whispered tales of things to come and things that might never be. He saw a myriad of futures emanating from his champions, the roar of toxin-ridden filth flashing through nightmare darkness, a terrible explosion like a new born sun, and a mighty battle with a one-armed giant whose eyes burned with icy fire. What they were he did not know, but the promise of death they imparted made him smile.
'You have done well, my sons,' began the Warsmith, lowering his eyes to his cha
mpions. None answered, none dared to utter a word unless so bidden by their master.
Pleased at their awe, the Warsmith continued. 'We come to this world at the behest of the Despoiler, but it is for my purposes that we do what we must. There is a fortress here that contains something precious to me, and I would see it in my possession soon. You, my sons, shall be my instruments in its obtaining. Great reward and patronage awaits the man who brings me what I desire. Defeat and death await us all should we fail.'
The Warsmith raised his head to the rocky slopes that stretched upwards to the west of the smouldering spaceport. A well-maintained road wove its way towards their goal, the reason for the coming battle. At the road's end, the Warsmith knew that the culmination of everything he had striven for lay secreted below the world - a prize so valuable and so secret that not even the highest and mightiest within the corrupt Imperium knew of its existence.
Without waiting for his champions, the Warsmith set off towards a chevroned Land Raider with thick armour plating bolted to its side and bronzed tracks. The adamantium door slid open with a grating hiss, and the Warsmith turned to address his champions. 'Come, we shall gaze upon the enemy we must destroy.'
HONSOU STEADIED HIMSELF on the cupola of his command Rhino, scanning the skies for any airborne threats to their column of vehicles. He did not really expect anything, the spaceport was in their hands and the skies above it were filled with craft launched from the orbital landers. But Honsou's natural caution made him wary.
Dust gathered in his throat and he hawked a morsel of phlegm over the side of his vehicle, the neuroglottis implanted in his throat assessing the chemical content of the air.
The organ no longer functioned as effectively as it once had, and many of the faint echoes of toxins he could taste were unknown to him. But he tasted enough foulness in the air to know that this planet had once been poison to any living thing that set foot on its blighted surface.
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