by Cl Werner
fortress, staggering from side-to-side like drunken mutants. The stompas stood taller than the perimeter walls, scrap-metal effigies of the ork physique. Where their arms should be, immense gun carriages and power claws swung on crude armatures. Even from this distance, Rhodaan could see the scaling ladders bolted to the hulls of the primitive machines. Like all ork strategies, the deployment of the stompas was simple and direct. The aliens would march their machines right up to the walls, then use the ladders to swarm up their hulls and drop down onto the battlements. With Morax’s Air Cohort routed from the sky, there was little the defenders could do to interfere.
‘Lord captain,’ Pazuriel’s voice crackled over the vox. ‘Should we prepare to assault the walkers?’
‘Negative,’ Rhodaan answered almost automatically. ‘We might stop one of them, but while we were doing it, the others would be free to reach the wall.’ His tone was grim as he made that assessment. ‘Uzraal, relay our situation to the Bastion. Ask Ipos for further orders.’
‘I already have,’ Uzraal answered. ‘He says our position has been determined to be critical to the overall defence. We have to hold, regardless of opposition.’
Rhodaan didn’t deign to respond. Furious, he strode to the battlements, sending a burst of bolter-fire into the orks massed below, venting his frustration upon alien flesh. Critical to the overall defence? That assessment aroused his suspicion. He couldn’t forget the reception Squad Kyrith had received on their return. Upon investigation, the battery that had fired on them was found to be littered with dead janissaries, victims, it seemed, of a malfunctioning servitor. That, Rhodaan felt, was far too convenient. Everything smelt of some hidden adversary trying to cover his tracks. The senseless order to hold the perimeter against impossible odds carried the same stink.
Over-Captain Vallax hadn’t returned from Dirgas. It was assumed that he and his Faceless were casualties. It was as well, because if he had made it back to Vorago, Rhodaan felt he would need to look no further for the enemy trying to stab him in the back.
Pain had become its own reality. Dull and throbbing or sharp and burning, pain had risen to consume Over-Captain Vallax’s senses. It pulsed through the corridors of his mind, pounded through the marrow in his bones, crackled down every nerve. Never had the Iron Warrior been subjected to such suffering, even during the extensive battery of surgeries that had transformed him so long ago from a mere human into a legionary.
The ork painboy had done everything its sadistic brain could conceive to break Vallax. Anything merely human would have been killed ten times over by Gorflik’s tortures. Vallax, however, remained steadfast, defying the ork. ‘Iron without. Iron within.’ The mantra of the Legion drummed through Vallax’s psycho-conditioned mind, demanding fealty to his oaths, loyalty even the Chaos gods could not break.
The room was filthy with Vallax’s blood. His tormentor’s green hide was mottled with splotches of gore. Shreds of the Iron Warrior’s flesh were caked about the vivisectionist instruments stuffed in the ork’s work belt, strips of his skin clung to the assemblage of saws and knives arrayed about the little table resting beside the cross-frame. Only the little glasses gleaming from Gorflik’s face remained clean, their sheen reflecting each atrocity visited upon the Raptor’s body when Vallax stared at the ork.
He accepted the burden of his wounds with pride. The more he suffered, the stronger his determination to defy his tormentor. The ork could ruin Vallax’s body, but it could not ruin his honour.
Far more agonising to Vallax than the violation of his flesh by the orks was the profanation of his armour. From where he was bolted to the cross-frame, he could see the segments of his power armour strewn across a workbench, lying in the dirt and filth of Gorflik’s surgery. Sometimes, when the painboy tired of Vallax’s defiance, it would retreat to the workbench and tinker with his armour, opening its ceramite shell to fiddle with the mechanisms within. It had made the Space Marine’s hearts crack to see the brutish alien pulling fibre bundles from the hollowed out vambraces, dumping the synthetic muscles onto the floor like so much trash. It had made his blood boil to watch the brutish alien tinkering with the breastplate, defiling it with crude tools. Often the ork would withdraw from the room in the midst of its sacrilege to consult with Kaptain Grimruk when the beast was lurking about the doorway. Always, after such conferences, Gorflik would return to the workbench with a notable attitude of excitement.
Vallax knew better than to throw himself into a rage. Fastened to the frame, all his fury could accomplish was the amusement of his captor. Instead, the Iron Warrior buried his anger deep inside himself, letting it fester in his hearts, letting its strength burn in his veins. Like pain, anger was power, fuel for the Space Marine’s indomitable will.
Slowly, with a cold deliberation that bespoke his iron discipline, Vallax worried at his bonds, sliding his body back and forth, weakening the grip of the bolts binding him to the frame by enlarging the wounds around them. He was careful in his efforts, always waiting until Gorflik’s vigilance was at its lowest ebb – when the creature was lost in the thrill of administering its tortures or busy with Vallax’s power armour.
After weeks hanging upon the frame, Vallax was held to the bars only by the grip of his fingers and toes. Grimly, he bided his time. He knew that his prison had been moving, could feel the vibration shivering through the frame, see the sway of the chains and tools hanging upon the walls. There could be only one destination, the only objective the orks had yet to conquer on Castellax: Vorago.
Black hate surged through Vallax whenever he thought of the city. It was there, buried deep beneath the Iron Bastion, that he would find the one who had betrayed him to the orks, the one who had so carefully engineered this fate for him. Every torture, every humiliation and indignity inflicted upon him – all of it was another score to settle with Oriax. Revenge sustained Vallax when duty and honour threatened to fail him. He would see the Fabricator pay for what he had done, would cherish the sound of his screams as he cherished the memory of the Warmaster’s voice.
Gorflik’s surgery was buried inside some vast machine, perhaps one of the ork battlefortresses. Every second he could feel the motion coursing through the deck, Vallax knew he was drawing closer to his own objective. In the name of revenge, he clung to the frame and endured the tortures.
It was only when the room grew still, when the rumble of motion vanished, that Vallax knew the time to act was near. Now he kept his attention on Grimruk and the camouflaged orks, who were often in the hallway outside the surgery. The Iron Warrior’s body had suffered hideously under the attentions of the painboy. He was under no delusion what his chances would be against one ork, much less a dozen. To have any chance at escape, he had to wait until Gorflik was alone and unobserved.
His wait wasn’t a long one. Never very disciplined, the orks in the hallway showed a marked disinterest in their vigil once the battlefortress stopped and they reached their destination. Faintly, from beyond the walls, Vallax could hear the crump of artillery and the crack of gunfire. Somewhere outside there was a furious battle being fought, one the ork guards desperately wanted to be a part of. One after another, they began to desert their post until at last there were no more leering faces peering at him from the hallway.
Vallax’s body grew tense, his savaged muscles burning as he flexed and tested them. Gorflik’s back was to him, the alien once more probing the components of his armour, vandalising it with primitive tools and perverse mischief.
Clamping his teeth tight, Vallax kicked out with his leg. The limb flashed from the cross frame, ripping clear of the bolt that had once pinned him in place. The wet, slippery noise of the metal bolt sliding through his flesh brought Gorflik spinning around. There was an almost comical expression of wonder on the ork’s face as its brain tried to come to grips with what it was seeing.
The need for caution gone, Vallax opened his mouth in an inarticulate howl and tore himself down from the frame, using his already freed leg to push away and turn
his fall into a dive. Gorflik bleated in confusion as the Space Marine’s mass slammed into him, smashing the alien back against the workbench.
Blood streaming from his newly opened wounds, the Larraman cells in Vallax’s veins struggling to seal his injuries, the Iron Warrior wrapped a mangled hand around the ork’s throat, choking off the frightened bark the alien started to utter. With his other hand, he reached for one of the ceramite sabaton lying on the bench just behind the reeling ork’s ear.
Gorflik flailed in Vallax’s grip, one meaty paw clutching at the hand around his throat, the other digging into his filthy coat for an instrument that looked more bayonet than scalpel. Viciously the ork stabbed the blade into his enemy’s chest, penetrating the black carapace and digging into the fused ribcage beneath. Before the painboy could finish driving home his attack and put his full weight against the blade, Vallax cracked the armoured sabaton against the creature’s skull. There was a gratifying crunch of bone, a pungent reek of alien blood.
The ork continued to struggle, but its strength waned each time Vallax brought the ceramite armour smashing into the side of its head. Again and again he struck the alien, relenting only when the thick skull collapsed and Gorflik’s body fell limp.
Vallax staggered back, glaring down at the monster. Almost absently he noticed the surgical blade still embedded in his chest. With a savage wrench, he pulled it free. Vindictively, he brought the razored edge down to the ork’s forehead. In a single downward sweep, he slashed the keen blade across the leathery green flesh, slicing away the painboy’s face in a dripping sheet of skin.
The Iron Warrior rose from his victim, casting a wary glance at the doorway then at the killa kan standing in the corner of the room. The sounds of the brutal struggle had gone unnoticed. No guards appeared in the hallway. The gretchin pilot implanted inside the miniature dreadnought continued to snore. For the moment, at least, his escape was unnoticed.
Hastily, Vallax gathered the segments of his armour from the workbench. It sickened him to see the abuse they had suffered. Many of the intricate mechanisms built inside the suit – neural connectors, protein injectors, servo-motors, air purifiers, synth-muscles – had been ripped out with indiscriminate zeal. The interfaces that would bind the armour to the black carapace implanted beneath Vallax’s skin were gone. Their loss, above all else, troubled the Iron Warrior. Without the interfaces, he would be unable to properly manipulate the power armour. Instead of wearing it like a second skin, it would be a dead weight dragging him down and straining his endurance.
The Iron Warrior glared at the piles of vandalised components strewn about the surgery. Strain or not, he wouldn’t abandon his armour to these brutes. His decision made, he began fitting the ceramite segments about his body. It felt strange, without the synth-muscles and servo-motors assisting him when he moved, to have the armour reducing rather than enhancing his strength and agility.
Except for his helmet, every piece of Vallax’s armour was represented on the workbench. Soon, he resembled an Iron Warrior once more, encased from neck to foot in sleek ceramite plates. He scowled as he felt his head, the exposed section of his brain feeling raw and somehow withered. Resolutely he wrapped his fingers around the metal probe, pulling it free with an agonising tug. The Space Marine glared at Gorflik’s machine. Choosing an ugly hammer from the tools at hand, he lost himself for several minutes in smashing the dead ork’s invention into so much scrap.
When he finished, Vallax scolded himself for such excess. Dropping the hammer, he stepped away from the ruined machine and turned to the crate of weaponry and recycled cybernetics. It took him a few minutes, but at last he dragged free a boltgun that appeared in working condition. A few minutes more and he had the weapon separated from the cyborg arm it was bolted to.
As a last gesture, Vallax bent over the dead painboy, stripping the coat from the ork and wrapping it around his head like a turban to protect the grey tissue of his exposed brain. He stole towards the hallway, peering outside to assure himself there had been no alarm. The corridor was deserted, the door on the other side of the hall shut. No orks moved upon the stairway at the head of the passage.
Checking the chamber of his scavenged weapon, Vallax swept into the hall and sprinted up the stairs. He knew he would have to fight his way clear of the battlefortress, that an army of enemies lay between himself and the Iron Bastion. Between himself and his revenge. For the moment, at least, the Chaos gods smiled upon him and he was unobserved.
Vallax’s head pulsed with the each step as he raced for the stairs, strange sensations rippling through his body. Despite the dank, sweltering humidity he had felt a moment before, his flesh prickled with a sudden chill. A tart taste filled his mouth, blues and blacks leapt out in painful vibrancy in his vision. His ears shuddered under the impression of brutish laughter.
The Iron Warrior fought down his treacherous senses. Nothing would stop him from reaching the Bastion and his revenge. Not even his own infirmities.
The tractor came rumbling down the murky tunnel, its lights dimmed and hooded to prevent their gleam from carrying too far into the darkness. Corpses were piled high in the bed, carrion recovered from the battlements. Dozens of tractors were making the circuit between Processing Omega and wall, trying to keep the battlements clear of the mangled waste of war.
Yuxiang smiled beneath the ghastly snout of his mask. In the confusion and carnage, no one was paying attention to the disposers. They weren’t watching them with the same degree of vigilance as usual. The lack of supervision allowed the rebels to scavenge weapons and ammunition from the dead, stuffing their plunder deep beneath the bodies where no one would look.
Combined with what they had stolen from Colonel Nehring’s supply cache, Yuxiang estimated they had enough weapons and ammunition to equip three hundred men. As yet, of course, their numbers weren’t even close to that size. Including the two slave-recruits hiding in the cargo bed with the bodies, the rebel force was only fifty-four strong. But they were strong. They were determined, committed men and women who would fight to their last breath against the tyrannies of the Iron Warriors.
‘We’re starting to look like an army,’ Taofang commented. The janissary was marching beside the slow-moving tractor with Mingzhou walking at his side.
Yuxiang digested that observation, feeling a strange pride at the compliment. As a slave, he had despised the soldiers who exacted the dictates of the Iron Warriors, had loathed everything that smacked of war and violence. As a rebel, however, he appreciated the need for violence and understood the value of martial discipline and training.
‘It doesn’t matter what we look like,’ Yuxiang observed philosophically. ‘What matters is how we fight.’
‘Leave that to us,’ Taofang said, wrapping an arm around Mingzhou’s shoulder. ‘Every man you bring down from the wall will be trained by two of the…’ The janissary’s words broke off, his body growing tense. Reaching a hand to his face, he pulled down the gas mask and stared in alarm at the tunnel ahead.
Beneath the glow of an overhead lamp, a body lay sprawled, dressed in the tatters of a scavenged uniform. It was the sort of uniform the rebels had been issuing to their new recruits. How the man had come to be here, so far from their hidden refuge was a question that was of less importance to Taofang than what had brought the man to his current condition. For there was no question that he was dead, his arm nearly ripped from its socket, a pool of blood staining the ground around his prostrate form.
‘I think that’s one of ours,’ Deacon exclaimed from the other side of the tractor, his voice pitched with excitement.
Yuxiang brought the tractor to a halt. As he started to emerge from the cab, a chilling sight strode into the little circle of light cast by the lamp. It was the figure of an enormous man, his already gigantic frame further bulked by the ornate ceramite power armour that encased his body. The helmet that enclosed his head was cast into the snarling semblance of a skull and from his shoulders hung a ghoulish cloak o
f flayed human skin.
Algol the Skintaker. Not a soul on Castellax could fail to recognise the most sadistic and terrifying of the Iron Warriors, by reputation if from no more direct an encounter. Watching the slavemaster stalk into view from the darkness was like seeing Death manifesting itself. Yuxiang trembled at the wheel of the tractor. From the corner of his eye, he could see Taofang shivering in his boots.
Only Mingzhou kept some measure of reason in her head. ‘He’s over twenty-five hundred metres away,’ she assured them. ‘Someone with the best lasrifle on Castellax couldn’t pick off a target from that range. We have to get out of here before he can close the distance.’
As she spoke, Algol raised his arm, the graceless bulk of a bolter clenched in his fist. Without pause or hesitation, the Space Marine fired. From the other side of the tractor, Deacon screamed and fell, his chest ripped to splinters by the bolter’s explosive shell.
‘Get on and keep down!’ Yuxiang shouted to Taofang and Mingzhou, throwing the tractor into reverse. It had barely started to move before Algol fired again, the legionary’s shots smashing into the engine block. Smoke and steam erupted from the shattered engine.
The slaves hiding in the cargo bed rose and tried to run. As each tried to leap clear, he was picked off in mid-air by a shot from Algol’s bolter, their mangled bodies flying across the tunnel.
Mingzhou dropped down to the ground, rolling under the carriage of the tractor, aiming her lasrifle at the distant Space Marine. As she squinted down the sight, she cursed. ‘No one can shoot like that,’ she swore, pulling back the trigger and sending a crimson beam of light flashing down the tunnel. Hundreds of metres from its target, the beam faded into nothingness.
The flash of light caused Algol to pause. The skull-faced helm tilted to one side, peering more intently at the tractor. Almost casually, the Iron warrior adjusted his grip on the bolter, tilting the barrel downwards ever so slightly.
‘Mingzhou!’ Taofang screamed at the sniper. ‘We have to get out of here!’ Yuxiang leapt down from the cab and added his voice to the janissary’s.