by Paul Kearney
‘And what is full capacity, Lord Fennick?’
‘Four thousand cells a day, my lord, plus a hundred thousand bolter rounds.’
‘It is not enough. It is not nearly enough.’ Calgar frowned. ‘The manufactoria must work round the clock, and the production of bolter ammunition must be quadrupled, at the very least. What of artillery ammunition?’
Fennick grimaced. ‘We have no facility on the planet capable of making it.’
Calgar shook his head slightly. ‘What store do we have?’
‘A quarter of a million shells of all types.’
‘We will burn through those in a matter of weeks. You must find a way to make more, Fennick. The Basilisks and mortars must be able to fire without rationing their munitions. Promethium?’
Fennick consulted his list again. ‘Two thousand gallons.’
Calgar said nothing. He set one fist on the map table and the stout timber creaked under it.
‘I see we have our work cut out for us,’ he said at last, in that quiet tone of his which made them all straighten their spines a little – even the Ultramarines who stood behind him.
There was a silence. Finally, Calgar bent and studied the map table once more, and the gauntleted fist unclenched.
‘Lord Fennick, I look to you to be my quartermaster. Your responsibility is to keep the troops supplied with arms, munitions and the means to sustain life. From here on in, every single commercial and industrial activity on this city will be geared towards the war effort. Every workshop capable of turning out a screw, every mechanic who can tinker with an engine – they all work for you now, and are as much under your command as my battle-brethren are under mine. The city is from this moment on under martial law.’
He looked at Fennick. ‘Equip the men, my lord governor, and I will see that they are trained, and I will lead them in battle. Is that acceptable to you?’
‘Of course, my lord.’ Fennick felt his shoulders sag a little with relief. There was a tiny part of him that resented the way Calgar simply assumed command, but mostly he was glad to leave the decision-making to the Lord of Macragge.
The last two weeks had been a hellish series of improvisations and mistakes and bloody setbacks. Eight thousand men lost already – they barely even counted the bodies any more – and he had not had more than two hours’ sleep a night since the first day of the invasion. Nor had Boros. The two men looked at one another now and he saw in Boros’ eyes that same conflict of resentment and relief.
Calgar missed nothing. A tight smile played across his face. ‘This is what happens when you invite the Adeptus Astartes to come calling, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘As I have noted, you have done well, but my people and I are trained for this, bred for it. You must trust me – I have been here before.’
Fennick met Calgar’s steel gaze. He nodded. ‘We are most grateful to you, my lord,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I am only sorry that my invitation has brought you to this place at such a time.’
‘Places like this, times like this – they are what I was made for,’ Calgar replied. Then he tapped the vellum map that sprawled across the table before him.
‘Now, let us go into the detail,’ he said.
The word went out all across the sprawling expanse of the city, a rumour that seemed to grow wings and flit the length of Zalathras’ great walls, permeating every district, spreading through the exhausted workers in the munitions manufactoria. In the low-level slums below the towering hive-spires, it ran like wildfire. Marneus Calgar had landed, and was in Zalathras with the Ultramarines.
The news mutated as it travelled, and his escort grew from a dozen Ultramarines to a company, and a regiment of the famed First Ultramar Guards. People who had been under artillery barrage for days lifted their heads and began to hope again, and at the offices set up throughout the city men began to queue up to enlist in the new militia divisions that were forming, whilst in the crowded taverns others spoke of having seen the Ultramarines themselves marching through the city or upon the walls, blue-armoured giants that spread awe and hope in their wake.
Broadcasts were made across the city vox system, and Fennick finally announced publicly that the Lord of Macragge had come to Zalathras to share and lead their fight. Now the struggle would begin in earnest, and the orks would be broken before the tall walls of the city, as Marneus Calgar had broken their armies countless times before in campaigns that spanned the galaxy.
There was a sense of a great fist taking hold of life in Zalathras. Things became organised. The frantic improvisation and inefficiency of the first days vanished almost overnight. Militia patrolled the streets, rounding up every artisan and mechanic they could find and delivering them by the thousand to the great Vanaheim trade warehouses below Kalgatt Spire. Here a long series of workshops was set up, and men began constructing from scratch the machinery necessary for turning out the sinews of war, while in the long-established manufactoria, shifts of workers laboured round the clock. Production doubled in the first week after Marneus Calgar’s arrival, and doubled again in the second.
To save fuel, the long trailers of raw materials that drove daily out of the city arsenal and other warehouses were now drawn by teams of petty criminals and deserters, harnessed to the long vehicles like draught animals a hundred at a time.
Those who protested or tried to evade their duties were taken aside and shot out of hand, and after the first few dozen had met this end the rest grew rather more cooperative. Mercy, like fuel, was in short supply.
But there was at least a sense of purpose, of order. As the rainy season drew on, and the downpours washed across the muddy plain before the Vanaheim Gate, so the tired inhabitants of Zalidar took hope and began to scan the grey overcast skies as if at any moment they expected an Imperial fleet to arrive in their relief.
And beyond the perimeter the encampments of the orks grew day by day, and desultory artillery barrages continued to sweep across districts of the city. But the Zalathi picked their dead out of the ruins and went about their daily business. The walls would hold, now that they were manned by the Ultramarines, they said. Zalathras would not fall, could not fall. Marneus Calgar would see to that.
‘Hope is a wonderful thing,’ Roman Lascelle said to Fennick.
The young nobleman was no longer the dandified gentleman he had been. Appointed captain of a militia company, he had seen his share of fighting on the walls already these last weeks, and now he wore plain camouflage fatigues and body armour. The only remnants of his old life seemed to be the rapier he still bore at his hip and the sneer he wore on his mouth.
‘Long may it last,’ Fennick replied.
‘They can’t dig trenches, not at this time of year,’ Ghent Morcault told the other two. He pulled his raincloak tighter about his shoulders, though there seemed little point; the rain was blood warm, and in the end it saturated everything. In the gaps between downpours the air was filled with steam as moisture rose from the warm plascrete walls.
Down in the city, they were growing mushrooms on every vacant plot, and the fungi were already becoming a staple of the daily ration, along with anything else that could be grown quickly and harvested with a minimum of effort. Meat was already at a premium, and there were enterprising teams of men who worked in the sewers beneath the streets, snaring the great rat-like rodents that thrived there and bringing them up to sell in the bazaars, neatly gutted and skinned. Private enterprise: it was a wonderful thing.
Fennick, Morcault and Lascelle stood now on the walls of Zalathras, looking south. To their right loomed the huge barbican of the Vanaheim Gate, thirty storeys high and bristling with gun emplacements, half of which were empty. The barbican was blackened and pitted from four weeks of wild shellfire, but such was the strength of its construction that it was essentially undamaged. Kurt Vanaheim had made it to be his monument, and he had built well.
There were over a thousand men
stationed within the Vanaheim Gate, and the enemy had launched assault after frontal assault upon it. All of these had been broken at little cost to the defenders. Now the orks were spreading out beyond effective range of bolter and autocannon, and formations were constantly on the march to the north, circling the huge walls of the city at a safe distance. They were harassed by intermittent fire from the city’s mortars, but every tube had a strict ammunition schedule to follow at the moment, and the orks seemed unperturbed by their attentions.
Zalathras possessed three other gates besides the Vanaheim, positioned at the cardinal points of the compass. To the north, the Cascari, to the west, the Rosquin, and to the east, the Buridian, all named after the noble families whose funds had part-sponsored their construction. But Vanaheim’s was the strongest, the most imposing. Fennick had filled in the other gates in the first week of fighting, pouring liquid plascrete behind the entryways so that they were now as solid and impenetrable as the walls they were set in. Only to the south did he leave the gateway intact, for he had intended to draw the orks in to attack it, and had largely succeeded. Until now.
‘Half a dozen Basilisk batteries would tear them to pieces,’ Fennick said, thumping his fist on the wall in frustration. ‘As you say, they can’t dig in, not in this weather. They’re just milling about out there in the rain. I never knew orks could be so patient.’
‘They have a leader who knows what he is about,’ Ghent Morcault said. ‘And he seems to be in no hurry. A singular type of ork indeed.’
‘He lost thousands in the first attacks,’ Lascelle said. ‘They rushed the walls before they even had all their forces on the ground. Now they are just rotted mounds in the mud, all those corpses. He will have to try something different to take Zalathras – the walls are too high and strong.’
‘Orks are aggressive to the point of mania, but they are not as stupid as many would like to make out,’ Morcault told them. ‘He is up to something, in those camps down by the river. You mark my words.’
‘The river is in full spate, and the ground is a quagmire,’ Fennick said. ‘Zalidar works for us. As long as the full force of the rainy season is in play, I do not believe he can launch another major assault. And if he does, it will have to be here, at the Vanaheim. Only here do the gates still open. And the walls are too high to scale with ladders, and over a hundred feet thick. To blast a way through would take weeks.’
‘Well, that is comforting… I wonder how long it will be before the Angels of Death come to the aid of their Master,’ Lascelle drawled, looking up at the impenetrable sky. ‘And if any of us lesser mortals will still be standing when they arrive.’
He smiled. ‘I used to think my father had sent me off here to fester in a dead-end spot at the back end of nowhere – no offence, Fennick.’
‘None taken.’
‘And now I find myself wearing uniform and commanding men in what may be one of the more notable wars of our times. Fighting alongside Marneus Calgar himself, no less. I wonder what my father would make of me now.’
‘He would be proud of you,’ Morcault told him, ‘or he is no kind of father at all.’
Lascelle gave the old voidsman a look almost of gratitude, but covered it with a harsh laugh.
‘You do not know him.’
‘I’ve heard enough of him, down the years, Lascelle. How you conduct yourself in the coming days will affect your family’s name forever. Your gambling and whoring will all be forgotten, as will all our lives prior to the arrival of the Lord of Macragge. In the years to come, all that will be remembered of us is that we were here, now, and that we fought alongside him. That is a kind of fame few men are allowed.’
‘Let us hope we live to enjoy it,’ Lascelle said.
Thirteen
They came in the night, and they struck at the Vanaheim Gate. But they did not come rushing across the body-strewn swamp before the walls. They came hurtling out of the dark, rain-filled sky, a cloud of tiny lights bearing down on the defences like a shower of errant meteors.
They were all over the battlements before anyone even raised the alarm. Ork assault troops, lighter-framed creatures of their kind wearing jump packs, came swooping out of the darkness and landed like a hammer on the upper works of the Vanaheim. By the time the alarm klaxons were ringing out they had already overrun half a dozen heavy weapons emplacements and were turning the guns on their erstwhile owners. A reinforcing company of militia was cut down as it pounded along the battlements to take on the invaders, some eighty of them blown to shreds by the fire of their own autocannons.
A hard, bitter, utterly confusing fight began at close quarters on the upper storeys of the barbican, as the orks fought their way into the massive structure of the gate itself. Once inside, the assault wave jettisoned their jump packs and closed with the defenders in the corridors and passageways of the fortress, tearing the defenders limb from limb in the confined spaces below.
But those who fought and died there bought time for their comrades, who shut the heavy blast doors that guarded the covered ways to the gate mechanisms and the very heart of the Vanaheim. The orks, stymied, massacred every one of the defenders in the upper levels, while to the south of the city a massive warband, five thousand strong, began advancing on the walls. From the entire southern circuit of Zalathras, the fire began to flash out from every defensive tower and from the newly recruited militia companies who were holding the battlements. A huge explosion rose up from the Vanaheim, smoke billowing out of the interior as the orks set charges against the blast doors within.
The entire city came awake, shocked by the sudden fury of the assault. Lieutenant Janus’ firefighting regiment clambered into their vehicles and thundered down the broad expanse of Dromion Avenue towards the south, Sentinels out in front, the bipedal war walkers striding along like woken monsters. Behind them thundered a long convoy of squat Chimeras, their tracks squealing and rattling on the paved road.
In a single modified vehicle with an open top, Sergeant Avila and five Ultramarines of his squad rode easily, their helmed heads sweeping the streets of the city to their front. Avila blinked on the command vox sigil in his heads-up display.
‘Attack on the Vanaheim. Looks like an aerial insertion. Word from the walls is that a host on the ground is following up. Heavy fighting within the barbican. We will debus there and work our way up to the roof.’
‘Secure the gate mechanisms,’ Calgar’s voice came back. ‘That is the priority. Once they are safe, then proceed with clearance.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Avila said. He looked at his brethren, who all nodded at him one by one.
The Ultramarines jumped off the Chimera a hundred yards short of the gate. Janus’ Sentinels had already established a perimeter and the other Chimeras were disgorging troops, while their turret guns ranged back and forth, seeking targets. Avila found Janus studying the barbican through a pair of magnoculars.
‘We will go in first,’ he told the Guardsman. ‘You follow up. Hold every junction and doorway in force. Defence in depth. Nothing must get through.’
‘As you say,’ the lieutenant said. He smiled. ‘Good hunting.’
The massive Ultramarine sergeant nodded. The two had known each other for years, and did not need to speak further. Janus was as indoctrinated in Ultramarine fighting methods as any ordinary man could hope to be, and he had proven his worth many times.
‘First Company!’ he shouted. ‘Form up on me. Prepare to move out. Flamers to the front.’ Beside him the half-dozen survivors of the Fidelis platoon stood in militia uniforms with the sigil of Ultramar painted on their body armour. The rest of the militia companies gathered around these veterans.
Avila and his brethren ran into the deeper shadow of the gate, the rain shining on their armour. The postern here had not been made for his kind, and he had to stoop to enter. Once inside, the schematic of the interior popped up on his helm display, and he f
ollowed the fastest route up to the gate control room, spurning the large elevators and pelting up the stairwells with his squad on his heels. The Space Marines took the steps four at a time, as fast as a lean man can sprint. Up they went, into the maw of the fighting above, and they switched to infrared as the smoke thickened around them.
Marneus Calgar studied the readouts on the vid-slates arrayed around him. The green arrowheads of his own forces were congregating on the area around the Vanaheim, whilst beyond the walls the ork host massed in its thousands. Clearly, the storm boys’ mission was to gain control of the gates and open them for their fellows outside. By his reckoning at least five hundred of them had dropped upon the barbican and the walls next to it, and they were now in possession of the upper three storeys of the massive fortress and fighting their way down level by level to the gate controls on the twenty-fifth. The Zalidari militia could not hope to match the orks in a fight at close quarters.
They were being slaughtered.
‘It looks like being one of those nights,’ Proxis said behind him.
‘Indeed. Avila will need to be reinforced. The situation is more critical than I had supposed. Proxis, take the balance of his squad and go there.’
‘It shall be my pleasure, lord.’ He turned to go.
‘Wait.’
Proxis paused.
Calgar scanned the screens. The fighting was two miles from where he now stood, high up in Alphon Spire. Clearly, this location was too far away from the heart of the matter to be an effective command post, despite the excellence of its communications hub.
Or is it just that I want to be down there in the thick of it? he wondered.
Ordinarily he could rely on his own brethren to handle any tactical situation, but they were so few here on Zalidar that his own presence might be worth more in the front line than up here. He scanned the rest of the perimeter. The orks had opened up with their artillery, but by and large the rest of the city was unthreatened. The Vanaheim Gate was clearly the point of main effort tonight.