‘You see there?’ asked Jennika, highlighting several key runes so that they flashed upon her comrades’ retinal displays. ‘Markos has relieved the besiegement of the Arbites Precinct. And there, the greatest concentration of the foe is pushing straight up the centre.’
‘And they’re dying in droves,’ said Luk with relish.
‘There, Jen, converging on our target coordinates,’ said Danial, fingers twitching unconsciously as he highlighted runes of his own. His cockpit shook and swayed with every great stride his steed took, but the information stood out clear as day to him. ‘We’ve enemies ahead.’
‘Well spotted, brother,’ said Jennika. ‘You’ll get your fight, Luk. But be careful, both of you. I read armour amongst that rabble. Shields fore, weapons ready, lengthen stride. Let’s get to the next intersection before they do.’
Danial followed his sister’s commands instantly, seeing the wisdom in her words. The foe was moving up the Tetrae Processional from the south with their armour at the fore, and whoever reached the intersection first would be able to bottleneck their enemies between the Pentakhostan hab-blocks. The kingsward returned his attention to the immediate combat, but left the wider strategic map underlying his perceptions. It intrigued him to see where their fight slotted into the broader tapestry of the battle, and even as he focused his mind upon the task at hand he continued to watch the swarming runes flow across the wider stage.
The first enemy fire whipped in at them just as Fire Defiant surged from between the towering hab-blocks and out into the open space of the crossroads. Shells and las-fire splashed from Jennika’s ion shield as she trampled over heaps of wrecked administratum groundcars. As his sister slowed to a stop at the centre of the intersection, Danial guided his steed onto her right flank and registered Luk doing the same to her left. With booming footfalls, the three Knights came to a halt, drawn up in a shield wall to meet the onrushing foe.
Planetary militia tanks were roaring as fast as they could up the processional – mostly infantry transports, with a few battle-tanks churning along in their midst. Crude slogans had been daubed across the defiled machines, while ragged banners flapped above. They bore twisted symbols, icons whose precise meaning Danial did not need to know to recognise them as evil. From a few dangled the wire-wrapped corpses of those who had presumably refused to turn traitor along with their comrades. Behind this armoured fist, the auspex read the runes of an infantry rabble, a couple of hundred foes at least. Danial felt his throne’s ghosts stir, and with an effort he pushed them back.
‘Not. Now,’ he hissed, focusing on targeting solutions and the firepower hammering against his shield.
‘Knights Draconis and Chimaeros,’ intoned Jennika solemnly. ‘Fire at will.’
The power in Danial’s thermal cannon surged as his will became fire. Clenching one haptic gauntlet, he punched it forward to loose his first shot. The killing heat leapt outward, spearing from Danial’s fist to tear through the enemy tanks. A traitor Leman Russ took the main brunt of the blast, its armour flashing from grey to red to white hot in an instant before vaporising into scalding, super-heated mist. Other renegade tanks around it caught the edge of the blast, their tracks melting as they slewed out of control. Armour plates buckled and ran like wax. Engines and ammunition stores exploded, while exposed crewmen didn’t even have time to scream before they burst like blisters. So great was the thermal cannon’s fury that it gouged a great crater into the road, leaving a vitrified ditch into which two more traitor tanks skidded. They crunched to a stop, smoke rising from their engines. Between vehicle wreckage and the still-glowing crater left by Danial’s shot, the processional was as good as blocked.
Danial’s ears rang and his mind was numbed with shock. He had done that. He had killed, for the first time, extinguishing the lives of a slew of heretics as easily as he might crush worms beneath his boot. The surge of exhilaration was overwhelming. The kingsward was jolted back to reality as a cannon-round punched through his shield and exploded against his Knight’s chest, staggering it. Sparks drizzled from several cockpit systems, and Oath of Flame gave a rumble of mechanical protest.
‘Shield, brother!’ barked Jennika, hammering battle cannon rounds into the stalled enemy tanks with precision. Danial hurriedly adjusted his ion shield to protect his steed. Despite the jarring impact, he was grinning like a lunatic. He could hear Luk laughing.
‘What a shot,’ crowed his friend as he let fly with his own thermal cannon into the remaining enemy tanks, ‘Danial Tan Draconis, master marksman and slayer of heretics.’
More traitor vehicles exploded, trapping the enemy infantry between the flaming wrecks to their fore and the hungry wildfires now sweeping up the street behind them. Enemy runes scattered on Danial’s auspex as traitors smashed through shop fronts and hab windows in their desperation to find safety.
‘Don’t let them disperse,’ said Jennika.
‘Understood,’ responded Danial, striding forward to get a view over the top of the blazing traitor tanks. His heavy stubber kicked to life, hosing high calibre bullets into the ragged traitors still caught in the street. At the same time his thermal cannon flashed again, burning through the front of the nearest building and annihilating the infantry trying to escape through its corridors and chambers. Rebar supports melted, masonry evaporated, and a great slab of the hab-block’s frontage sheared away to crash down upon the processional like an avalanche. Danial’s auspex showed Jennika and Luk wreaking equal havoc, as enemy runes snuffed out like candles in a high wind.
Danial’s strategic overlay showed that the story was the same all along the battlefront. The renegade rabble of Pentakhost were no match for the Knights of Adrastapol, and were dying by the thousand. A handful of Knights showed minor battle damage on their manifolds, but it was nothing that the Sacristans would not soon fix. Tertiary vox data flashed back and forth amongst the Astra Militarum as they prepared to deploy their artillery batteries and blast a firebreak through the middle of the city. The wildfires had done their job, and now the Imperial forces would preserve what they could of Pentakhost for their own use.
As the last localised enemy runes blinked out, Danial slowly backed Oath of Flame into the intersection to survey the annihilation that he and his comrades had wrought.
‘Is this what it means to be a Knight?’ he breathed in awe.
‘It means victory,’ replied Luk, burning with pride and excitement. ‘It means death to our enemies.’
‘It means duty,’ said Jennika, though Danial could hear the exhilaration in his sister’s voice also. No one could wield power like this and not feel something. His heart was hammering in his chest. The whispers of his ancestors had grown to a clamour, still indistinct but surely congratulatory and full of bloodthirsty excitement. Danial wanted to fight again, to feel the godlike power at his fingertips. But the battle was won and the flames closing in.
‘We should return to the keep,’ said Jennika, her voice steady again. Danial pipped his vox in acknowledgement and turned his steed. They had claimed victory here, but as his natural pragmatism beat out the newfound flames of battle-lust Danial remembered that this was just the beginning. They had their beachhead, but there was a world out there yet to be re-conquered.
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For Margaux, and the odysseys of summer.
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