He couldn't see the citadel from here, but the knifeback ridge that ran north-west from the listening post climbed another thousand metres or so, and should provide him with a fine view down onto both the valley of the citadel and Jericho Falls spaceport.
He slung the lasgun and picked his way over the rocks to where the ground became steeper and more rugged. He sucked in a deep breath, coughing as the dusty air caught in the back of his throat, and took stock of his situation.
Stranded on the mountains with nothing but a portable vox, a rifle with six clips and a combat knife to his name.
Enemies of the Emperor beware, he thought grimly, and began to climb.
THREE
FORRIX WATCHED AS yet another column of flatbed trucks carrying sallow-faced troopers roared across the runway towards the gateway in the outer wall of the spaceport. All manner of conveyances rumbled in an endless line from the vast bellies of scores of transports as they touched down and disgorged convoy after convoy of tanks, trucks, supply wagons, armoured carriers and mobile artillery pieces. Thousands of vehicles passed him, directed at each stage of their journey by an Iron Warrior from Forrix's grand company. Nothing was left to chance: every aspect of this logistical nightmare had been foreseen by Forrix and planned for.
Each craft descended in a precise pattern, landing in blinding clouds of ash and retros, disgorging their cargoes before lifting off in a carefully ordered sequence. Forrix knew exactly which ship captains were cautious and which were reckless in their approaches, how long each would take to land and how efficient each one's ground crew were. The noise was deafening and most of the humans landing on this planet today would never hear again.
To the uninformed observer's eye, the spaceport was a heaving mass of bodies and machinery, but had that observer looked closer, they would have seen an underlying structure to the movements. No random Brownian motion this, but a carefully orchestrated manoeuvre whose complex patterns could only be perceived by those with centuries of experience in moving such gargantuan volumes of men and machines.
The sheer scale of the operation and the speed with which it was being undertaken would have amazed Imperial logis-ticians. Were it not for the Iron Warriors' damnable purpose, those same logisticians would have willingly prostrated themselves before Forrix and begged him to teach them his skills.
As well as overseeing operations from within the spaceport, Forrix had his warriors directing operations from without. The pitiful excuse for defence that had been broken open during the initial attack was even now being repaired and lines of contravallation were being erected to defend the spaceport from any external threat. Not that Forrix particularly expected any, but it was procedure and thus was done. If history and his long years of war had taught him anything, it was that the minute you thought yourself safe from attack was when you were at your most vulnerable.
With a speed that would have put the finest Imperial engineers to shame, a nightmarish assembly of trench lines, razor wire fields and armoured pillboxes were being constructed in defensive formations around the spaceport's perimeter. By nightfall, Forrix expected the lines of contravallation to be complete and Jericho Falls to be as secure as it had ever been in its long existence.
The spaceport was his responsibility and he would not allow it to remain unprotected, no matter how much the Warsmith had assured them that there was no way the Imperial forces could summon aid, that their psychic link to the rest of the galaxy had been terminated.
Forrix was not so sure. Jharek Kelmaur, the Warsmith's cabal sorcerer, had looked uneasy as the Warsmith glibly dismissed the Imperial telepaths and Forrix wondered what guilty secret the sorcerer might be keeping. Had the Imperial forces been able to make some communication with the outside world that the sorcerer's machinations had been unable to prevent? It was an interesting notion and Forrix would store that nugget away lest it prove a valuable bargaining tool at some later date. The passion for intrigue had long since left Forrix, but he was astute enough to realise that knowledge was power, and it never hurt to have some potential advantage over your rivals. For now he would assume that there was at least the remote possibility of the citadel being relieved and he would plan his defences accordingly.
A rune flashed on his data-slate and Forrix put aside the paranoid intrigues that were the meat and gravy of the Iron Warriors and watched as the main runway was smoothly cleared of soldiers and vehicles as yet another vast ship hauled its bulk through the deep amber sky in shrieking clouds of engine fire. No sooner had the vessel cleared the outer markers of the landing field than a ponderous shadow slipped slowly across the spaceport, its inky blackness spreading across the entire facility like an obscene oil slick.
Forrix knew without looking which craft had entered the approach pattern, and while more easily impressed heads craned skyward to gawp at the leviathan descending towards Jericho Falls, he was merely irritated that it was almost thirty-six seconds behind his schedule. A groaning like the sound of the world cracking open split the air, the grinding screech of massive organic pistons and gears overcoming the bass thrumming of the mechanisms that kept the bloated craft aloft. These ancient and arcane devices, a hideous mix of what had once been organic components and ancient technology, had been created specifically for this craft and there was nothing in the galaxy like it. Their construction owed as much to the power of hyper-evolution and sorcery as engineering, and the physics of their operation should have been impossible. Forrix knew for a fact that their manufacture had only been possible within the Eye of Terror, that region of space where the warp spewed into real space and all laws of reality ceased to have meaning. That region of space called home by the Legions of Chaos.
As the ominous shadow stopped moving and the deafening grinding noise continued, Forrix glanced up to check that the ship was maintaining the correct altitude.
The cargo now being delivered here was vital to the success of the campaign.
The massive vessel resembled a vast spire of rock pitched on its side and left to lie for millennia at the bottom of some depthless ocean. Its ancient surface was a loathsome, glossy black, like the carapace of some vile insect, pitted and encrusted with lesions and fluid-leaking orifices. Its underside was studded with sphincter-like caverns that shimmered in a monstrous heat haze.
Once, long ago, this vessel had plied the icy depths of space in the unutterable vastness between galaxies, home and locus to billions of creatures linked together in a gestalt consciousness, enslaved to the imperative to consume biological matter and reproduce. It had drifted from world to world, stripping each bare of life, each creature within its shared mind acting in perfect concert with the vast over-mind. That had come to an end when the Warsmith had caused its neural pathways to become infected with the same techno-virus that infested the insane Obliterators, severing the vital link between the massive parent vessel and its offspring, stripping away the smothering blanket of belonging from the swarm.
No one knew how long the leviathan had fought the infection before the Warsmith's sorcerers had defeated its defences and dragged the barely sentient carcass to the Eye of Terror. Perhaps the creature-ship had thought it was to be granted succour, but in that regard it was to be sorely mistaken.
Defiled and perverted to serve instead of rule, it had been enslaved to the Warsmith's desires and became yet another cog in his grand design.
Like some bloated sea monster from legend, the gargantuan vessel's vast belly hung open, geysers of putrescent gases venting from its interior. Over two thousand metres in length, it hovered impossibly above Jericho Falls.
From the sweating darkness of its ribbed interior, two shapes slowly descended from the vessel, cries of terror and welcome rising in equal measure as the human soldiers pressed into the service of the Iron Warriors screamed a welcome to their gods of war.
Their upper reaches swathed in metres-thick cable-like tentacles, two vast Battle Titans of the Legio Mortis descended to Hydra Cordatus. First came their
massive legs, each like the tower of a castle, their surfaces studded with gun ports and scarred by millennia of war, followed by wide torsos and armoured chests.
Shaped in the image of Man, their resemblance to their creators ended there. Powerful arms, bearing guns larger than buildings, hung inert from wide, turret-like shoulders. Then came the heads, and Forrix, for all his weariness of battle, could not help but be struck by the terrible power inherent in these glorious creations. Whether they had been carved, moulded or shaped by the will of the dark gods themselves none could say, but their daemonic visages shone with the very power of Chaos, as though a fragment of that raw energy might be contained within their hellish features.
The ground shook with thunderous vibration as the feet of these glorious machines slammed down like the tread of an angry god. The glistening cable-tentacles, slipped free of their charges, coiled back into the belly of their host and vanished from sight as the next two Battle Titans were readied for landing.
Forrix watched as the two Titans stood motionless on the landing field, their power and majesty palpable even in their stillness. A sinuous tail, bearing a spiked wrecking ball larger than the greatest super heavy tank, twitched at the back of the largest Titan and a massive cheer burst from the assembled warriors.
A powerful whine burst suddenly from the Titans as the mighty weapon-arms began to move, a fierce and monstrous anime enlivening each of the war machines with vigour. The first war machine, once an Emperor-class Titan in the service of the corpse-god, now known and feared as the Dies Irae, took a ponderous step forward, its mighty foot crashing down on the ground with teeth-loosening force, its daemonic princeps eager to plunge into battle lest his monstrous war machine turn its fury upon its allies.
Its companion in death, the Pater Mortis, raised its guns to the heavens, as though saluting the gods for delivering it to war once more and roared its battle lust across the world. Smaller than the Dies Irae, it followed its massive sibling like a devoted acolyte.
Forrix allowed himself a tight smile as he watched the two mighty engines of destruction stride from the spaceport towards the mountains. Tanks and infantry swarmed around their legs. Those who had fought alongside these lethal machines before kept a sensible distance from them while those unused to seeing the power of their masters so physically manifested clustered around to pay homage. Many of their foolish human soldiers paid the price for their unwise devotion, as whole swathes of men were crashed underfoot with each step of the gigantic machines.
Two more Titans were even now descending to the planet's surface and there would be many more before this day's operation was complete. Forrix had much yet to do, but was content that everything was proceeding on schedule.
Within another two hours there would be an army of conquest ready to take this world apart in a storm of iron.
FOUR
LARANA UTORIAN FOUGHT to keep the pain of her ruined arm at bay just a little longer. Even if she lived through this nightmare, which she acknowledged was unlikely, she knew she would lose it. The giant who had brought them here had seen to that, crashing every bone and ripping every tendon in her arm. Each step sent bolts of pain shooting through her and it took a supreme effort of will not to drop to her knees and just give up.
She had seen what happened to those who had done that, and had no wish to end her days as a screaming, eyeless wreck, nailed to the chassis of a traitor's tank. She would face death on her feet like a true soldier of the Emperor.
Painfully, she shuffled uphill, keeping her eyes focussed on the neck of the man in front, concentrating on putting one foot before the other. She glanced up as he suddenly stopped and felt a hot, roiling sensation of fear work its way through her gut as she saw the formidable, rocky slopes of Tor Christo before her. The grey bastions on the rocks above were over a kilometre away, but Utorian fancied she could make out the faces of the gunners and soldiers on the firing steps. What must they be thinking, she wondered? Were they afraid, or were they full of bravado, confident that nothing could breach their high walls? Larana hoped they were afraid.
Their column began moving forwards as smoke-belching trucks roared alongside them. The tracks skidded to a halt at the head of the columns and sudden hope flared in Larana's heart as she saw men in crimson overalls with crude eight-pointed stars stitched over their left breast on the back of the tracks handing battered, but serviceable looking rifles to the startled prisoners. If these traitorous curs thought that the men and women of the Jouran Dragoons would fight for them, then they were even more deluded than she had thought. As soon as she was given a weapon, she would turn it on their captors and damn the consequences.
But any hope of a swift death in a glorious last stand were dashed as Larana took hold of one of the rifles and discovered it was nothing more than a hollow framework, the internal workings missing. She felt tears of frustration well up inside, but suppressed them viciously. Hands pulled at her, dragging her and the others forward and lifting them onto the backs of the trucks. Too numb to resist, she allowed herself to be packed into the vehicle, biting her lip to avoid screaming as more and more prisoners were pressed inside the truck. The stench of fear was overpowering. Soldiers vomited and soiled themselves in terror as their reserves of courage finally reached their limit.
Larana, pressed at the side of the truck, caught only glimpses of what was happening outside. The revving of engines built to a deafening crescendo and she could see hundreds of trucks, all as crammed as this one, lined at the edge of the plateau. Interspersed between the trucks, Larana could see boxy, armoured personnel carriers, similar to the ones she had seen Space Marines using. She knew they were called Rhinos, but these bore little resemblance to the noble vehicles she had seen members of the Adeptus Astartes employ. Their armoured sides had a disgusting, oily texture, as though somehow alive, their every surface festooned with spikes, chains and skulls. The roar of their exhausts was like the bellowing of some impatient predator, and each bucked madly, as though chafing at the delay enforced upon them.
Larana bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as the truck lurched forward, its wheels churning the dusty ground as its wheels fought for purchase. Her vision spun crazily and she gripped the stock of her useless lasgun trying not to imagine the next horror that awaited her.
GUNNER FIRST CLASS Dervlan Chu watched the approaching line of vehicles through the gunsight of his Basilisk artillery piece mounted behind the walls of Tor Christo's Kane bastion with undisguised relish. The image was grainy and static interference washed through the sight, but its beauty was unmistakable. It was an artilleryman's dream. He tried to get a count on the number of targets approaching the fortress, dividing the approaching line in two and then halving it again. He made out roughly three hundred trucks, no doubt laden with traitorous scum eager to dash themselves against the bulwark of Tor Christo, and perhaps two dozen APCs.
These fools hadn't even bothered to commence their attack with an artillery barrage or under cover of smoke. If this was the calibre of their opposition, then the warnings of their company commanders had been largely unnecessary. They would send these incompetent idiots home in pieces.
Chu already had his zones of fire mapped out, he knew the precise ranges of his gun, and his loading team already had one of the metre-long shells loaded in the breech of the massive artillery piece. He allowed himself a quick glance along the line of emplaced artillery, pleased to note that every other gun appeared to be locked and loaded. Jephen, the commander of the next Basilisk in line, gave him a smiling thumbs-up.
Chu laughed and shouted, 'Good hunting, Mr Jephen! A bottle of amasec says I tally more than you and your boys!'
Jephen sketched a casual salute and replied, 'I'll take that wager, Mr Chu. Nothing tastes as fine as amasec another man has paid for.'
'A fact I shall no doubt rejoice in later, Mr Jephen.'
Chu returned to his gunsight as the line of vehicles rumbled closer, the roar of their engines little more than a di
stant growl from his elevated position. Smoke and dust billowed behind the attacking vehicles and soon they would be in range.
Chu swivelled on his gun-chair to watch the senior officers of the Christo, together with the omnipresent priests of the Machine God, gathered far behind the guns, consulting an attack logister that was no doubt wired into the gunsights of their artillery pieces.
A liveried aide passed round crystal glasses of amasec to the senior officers from a silver tray as another handed out ear protectors. The officers laughed at some private joke and toasted the success of the venture, downing their drinks in a single gulp.
The officers removed their peaked caps and donned their ear protectors. One officer, who Chu recognised as Major Tedeski, stepped towards the guns and raised a portable vox to his mouth.
The oil-stained speaker beside Chu hissed and Tedeski's harsh, clipped tones announced, 'My compliments to you, gentlemen, you may fire when ready.'
Chu smiled and returned to his gunsight, watching the range counter unwind as the enemy approached.
HONSOU DUCKED INSIDE the crew compartment of his Rhino and spun the locking wheel of the hatch behind him. There was little point in manning the bolters now, and he would only expose himself to unnecessary risk by riding with the hatch open.
He returned to his commander's seat as the Rhino bucked over the undulating ground, the driver easing back on its speed and allowing the trucks carrying the prisoners to take the lead. There were sure to be minefields before the hill fort, and it was the tracks' job to find them first.
The warriors accompanying him chanted a monotonous dirge - a prayer to the Dark Gods, memorised and unchanged these last ten millennia. Honsou closed his eyes and allowed it to wash over him, his lips moving in time with the words. He clutched his bolter tight, though he knew that it was not yet time to sate its battle hunger with the blood of traitors. The only deaths likely this day were those of worthless prisoners, men who deserved to die anyway for their stubborn refusal to follow the only true path that could save mankind from the multifarious horrors of this universe.
Iron Warriors - The Omnibus Page 7