by Paul Kearney
Brother Kadare’s heavy bolter opened up on full automatic, the belt at his hip whining as the rounds sped through it. He chopped down a great swathe in the foremost orks, and more of these were then consumed by a blast of promethium from Brother Antigonus. The transports hauled off again, but there were two more in the skies behind them, lumbering in from the west.
The orks sped forward. Brother Valerian activated his chainsword even while he dropped the enemy with aimed single shots from his bolt pistol. The Librarian summoned his powers once more – severely depleted by the episode in the tunnels, but not yet gone – and searched out the brains and psyche of the leading ork mob. Into the primitive creatures he sent a wave of despair, a projected hopelessness, a black echo of the grinning pit behind the immaterium.
It did not stop them, but dozens of them slowed, and their eyes dulled and jaws went slack as the vicious darkness invaded their minds. The rank behind them crashed into the dazed leaders at full tilt, and for a few seconds the orks were in a tangle, some even striking and shooting their fellows.
The Ultramarines took advantage of the moment, and opened up with a barrage of blazing fire that destroyed dozens, the heavy bolter rounds exploding within the ork carcasses, taking off heads and limbs, blowing strewn ropes of intestines clear across the field. And in the middle of that bright thicket of fire, the lasguns of the militia snapped out, burning through the ranks, bringing other orks wounded and roaring to their knees.
‘They’re coming up the tunnel behind us!’ one of the militia shouted out.
‘Kadare,’ Valerian said. ‘Aim at the tunnel roof – a good burst.’
The Ultramarine wheeled round and sent a hundred rounds pummelling into the roof right at the entranceway to the mine behind them. There was a moment when nothing happened, and then a great chunk of masonry and rain-rotted mortar collapsed on the lead ranks of the orks. He fired burst after burst until, with a hollow roar, half the entrance to the mine fell in. A tall cloud of dust puffed out into the rain, engulfing the Ultramarines and militia.
Into that choking cloud the orks from the transports thronged, and it became hand to hand with them all down the line. Gouts of promethium flame billowed out, men screamed, orks howled, and the Ultramarines fought with silent, deadly determination.
Brother Gauros was set upon by three massive xenos that grappled with him and bore him to his knees. He stabbed his combat knife into the eye of one, drove his fingers into the maw of another. The ork bit down, but could not pierce the ceramite gauntlet.
More piled upon him. They punched and tore at the prone Ultramarine until at last with a loud crack they wrested his head, still in its helm, from his shoulders. Gargling in triumph, they sucked at his blood and smeared it on their faces – until a well-placed grenade from brother Antigonus blew them all apart.
The militia were slaughtered, torn to pieces and flung aside like soiled rags by the raging orks. One unfortunate was spitted on a bayonet and raised into the air high above the fight, where he wriggled and screamed like a living battle-banner until he died.
Brother Valerian fought over Proxis’ body with the bulk of a heavy loader at his back, wielding the chainsword until its hissing song turned into a caterwauling of overstressed steel. He cut up one after another of the foe, and shot down more with his bolt pistol, his eyes glaring with a dark light. The others of his Chapter gathered about him, along with the surviving militia, and they fought there with the desperate tenacity of the doomed.
Brother Comus was pulled out of the tight knot of the defenders and engulfed by the enemy, shot, stabbed and torn to pieces on the ground. Valerian stumbled in the act of decapitating one great ork, and would have suffered the same fate had not Brother Kadare turned the heavy bolter on the enemy to his front, blasting them back from the Librarian, the rounds impacting so close that two of them clipped divots out of his shoulderplate.
‘My thanks, brother,’ Valerian said, regaining his feet.
‘I am on my last belt. You can thank me before the Throne,’ Kadare riposted, and opened up again to save two militiamen from being trampled by the foe.
Lascelle was there, pale and composed, firing bursts out of his customised bolter. Only a dozen of his men were still alive. The others were not even corpses, but mere body parts and stripped bones strewn all around them. Some of the orks were shot down in the act of eating the dead. Others impaled the limbs of the slain militiamen on their spiked armour as grotesque ornaments – and Valerian saw with a flare of fury that one particular ork had set Brother Comus’ head on a stick, and was shaking it as a trophy.
It was the end – they were finished, and knew it. But they did not stop fighting. When Brother Kadare’s heavy bolter ran dry he clubbed one ork with the now useless weapon and then fought on with knife and pistol.
But then a shadow appeared over them, massive and shooting flame. It came down with a mighty boom and the fire of its approach burned dozens of orks to seared meat. It crashed to earth with a tearing grate of overstressed metal, the muck exploding around it, the ground under their feet jumping with the impact.
The ork warband was dashed asunder by the impact of the Mayfly’s landing. More were flattened as its heavy cargo ramp dropped down, and in the hatch behind was Jon Gortyn, the ship’s engineer, and Jodi Arnhal. They waved wildly to the survivors of the ground party, gesturing them aboard.
Valerian turned to Brother Kadare. ‘Take Proxis – get him aboard.’ The remnants of the militia had broken and were running for the old freighter. Some threw away their weapons in their haste. Valerian looked back at the heavy loaders behind them. No Ultramarine could drive one – he would barely fit in the cab.
‘Lascelle!’
‘I know – get your folk on board. I’ll drive one.’ Roman Lascelle had a mirthless grin plastered across his face, like a death rictus.
The Ultramarines started firing at the orks who were still standing and clambering to their feet and collecting what little wits they had. Overhead, two more ork transports were coming in with a bright flare of afterburners.
One of the heavy loaders started up with a savage roar, and Lascelle nosed it up the ramp. An ork sprang onto the cab and hammered on the glass, shattering it, but Brother Antigonus hauled the creature off and put a bolt round in its head.
They staggered aboard, those who still could, firing as they came, knocking back the furious orks. Brother Antigonus, Brother Kadare and Brother Valerian held the line while the loader was driven aboard, and Antigonus booted off the lip of the ramp those who tried to climb over it as it rose.
It slammed into place, and the hatch doors closed. Gortyn hit the vox. ‘Now!’ he shouted.
The Mayfly rattled and shook and seemed about to come apart as the drives kicked in. There was daylight in the hold, a yawning hole in the starboard side, which orks were even now trying to clamber through, until Valerian cut off their hands and arms and kicked them out.
The ship lifted, creaking, the very fabric of the vessel groaning under their feet. Gortyn ran out of the hold towards the drive section, but Jodi Arnhal remained there, staring. ‘Is this all?’ he kept asking. ‘Is this all of you?’
The G-force of their ascent made even the weary Ultramarines stagger, and rain whipped in through the damaged hull along with the roar of the wind. Roman Lascelle climbed out of the loader cab, his face bloody where the shattered glass had sliced it open. He would have fallen, had not Valerian caught him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, as politely as if he were in a drawing room. ‘I am not quite myself.’
Seventeen
‘The void shield saved us,’ Morcault told Brother Valerian on the bridge. The old man had a field dressing wrapped around his head and his white hair was bloodstained.
‘It wasn’t much, but it was enough to deflect much of the blast down the side of the hull. We lost a chunk of the outer plating and one bulwark was punched right th
rough, but the rest of her held together.’ He thumped his chair arm lightly. ‘She’s a tough old girl.’
Valerian had never quite understood why humans referred to their vessels as females, but that was of no account right now.
‘How long until we are back in Zalathras?’
‘We can’t go back through that storm,’ Hester said waspishly as she grasped the yoke and stared out of the viewports. ‘The way she is at the moment, the Mayfly would be torn apart – we’re hanging together with prayers and duct tape – and you can tell your big axe-wielding friend that from me.’
Valerian’s eyes flickered darkly. ‘My brother Proxis is gravely wounded. I command this mission now.’
Hester blinked rapidly. She did not look round. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Morcault,’ the Librarian went on, ‘time is of the essence here, for many reasons. I need your best guess.’
‘Jodi?’ the old man said.
The Navigator punched up charts of the planet on his slate, and overlaid them with the augur relays. Red lights sprinkled his board. He did some calculations, pushing lines through the scarlet clutter on the screen, studying the scroll of figures that his course corrections brought up.
‘We could try going high,’ he said at last. ‘Take her up into a low orbit. Most of the ork fighters and interceptors between us and Zalathras are sub-orbital craft. If we can get above them, and yet stay below the main ork fleet, we have a chance.’
‘Like threading a needle,’ Morcault mused. ‘The question is whether we would survive re-entry.’
‘Captain, there is a rather large hole in your ship,’ Valerian said.
‘Exactly. But Gortyn is working on it,’ Morcault told him.
The Librarian looked over the Navigator’s shoulder. Then he blinked up the Ultramarine vox. ‘Brother Kadare.’
‘Yes, brother.’
‘Help out the ship’s engineer with whatever he needs to try and seal down the hold. But get the militia forward, out of that compartment. We are going to try for orbit.’
Kadare gave a mirthless laugh over the vox. ‘It shall be so. I applaud the pilot’s temerity, brother.’
‘Brother Kadare and Brother Antigonus can withstand vacuum in their power armour. They shall remain in the hold to help out your engineer,’ Valerian told the Mayfly’s crew. ‘Brother Proxis is in your sick bay.’
‘Scurrios will monitor his condition,’ Morcault said, looking up at the dark-eyed Librarian. ‘I’m sorry you lost some of your people.’
‘Your physician will not be able to do much with Adeptus Astartes physiology. The sus-an membrane in Proxis’ brain has activated as a result of his wounds, placing him in a state of hibernation. It will take one of our own Apothecaries to bring him round.’
Morcault shook his head slightly. ‘I forget how different you are to us.’
‘We are still human,’ Valerian told him. ‘Some may debate that, but in my Chapter at least, we are never allowed to forget it.’
He breathed out. Still human. That might well be true – but there was a gulf between his brethren and normal humanity, and it had never seemed so wide to him as it did now. Perhaps because he felt an unease at placing his fate and that of his brothers in the hands of these frail creatures before him.
Morcault and his crew had saved them, more than once. It did not sit well with Valerian to owe so much to ordinary men and women, but he had to fight such prejudices. It was in the Codex that his own primarch had written: the Space Marines were created to serve humanity, not the other way round.
He thought of the surviving militia, bolting for the safety of the Mayfly and leaving the object of their mission abandoned, and his mind flooded with fury at their cowardice, their utter uselessness.
But then he remembered the courage of Lieutenant Lascelle, who had stayed with them. Without him, the mission would have been a complete failure instead of the half-wrecked thing it was now.
Humanity. It infuriated and inspired. Men could not all be depended upon – perhaps most of them could not – but some rose above their failings. Just enough, perhaps, to keep some faith in humanity alive. It had always been thus.
They tore up the deck plates around the loader in the hold and Gortyn welded them over the gaping hole in the ship’s side while Brothers Kadare and Antigonus held them in place, manhandling the hundred kilo plates as though they were made of card. While they were doing this, the Mayfly sat hidden in a small jungle clearing some forty miles west of the Ballansyr Quarries.
‘We were lucky,’ Valerian told Morcault. ‘Most of the palladium was on the first loader – the one Lascelle drove out. At a guess I would say we salvaged at least four tons of it. The rear vehicle was loaded with mining charges and other material less vital to the manufactoria.’
‘What was down there – in the mines?’ Morcault asked the Librarian.
The Ultramarine frowned. ‘I sensed a great bestial psyche – an animal. But one which was linked into the overall mind-bloom of the orks. There was a sense of staggering power in it – not intelligence, but raw brute presence. Whatever it was, I think the orks were there to guard it and look after it. The mine was its cage.’
‘Let us hope the cage door stays locked,’ Morcault said.
‘No – it is not imprisoned there – it is merely being… managed.’ Valerian’s face twisted in a sour smile. ‘Whatever it was, I believe that we shall see it before the walls of Zalathras before long. The orks do not put so much effort into housing and feeding such a phenomenon merely to keep it hidden. It is part of their war effort.’
Valerian left the bridge and stepped into the Mayfly’s sick bay. He nodded at Scurrios; the little medic’s eyes were as large as those of some terrified insect behind his thick lenses. He was wiping bright red Adeptus Astartes blood off his hands.
‘Your friend – sir, lord – I have made him as comfortable as I could – I had to lay him on the floor. I am so sorry – he collapsed the gurney. The weight… the armour. I did not like to try and get it off him. It is…’ he faltered. ‘It is part of him. The breastplate had cables running into his very body. I never knew… not for a moment did I suspect–’ He swallowed. ‘Are you, you Ultramarines…are you robots of some kind?’
Valerian felt the first spark of amusement he had felt in a long time. ‘If only we were,’ he said. ‘We have been… modified. We have a symbiotic relationship with the power armour we wear, but by and large, we are flesh and blood just like you. We break, we bleed.’ He set a hand on Proxis’ shoulderplate. ‘And in time, we die.’
‘He is in a coma. His life signs barely register,’ Scurrios said.
‘Proxis is still in there. He has seen centuries of the Imperium come and go, and survived nightmares of folly and mayhem that you cannot even imagine. He will survive this also. Just make sure he is kept stable. We must get him back to Zalathras for our own Apothecary to work on.’ Valerian bent his head. He muttered a prayer.
‘I am glad you people are on our side,’ Scurrios said, polishing his glasses. His face had a shrunken look when he took them off. The top of his head reached barely to the aquila on Valerian’s breastplate.
They are such frail things, Valerian thought. How do they survive in this wilderness of pain? And yet they have spanned the galaxy. Their blood runs in our veins – in the veins of the divine Emperor Himself. In the beginning, we were all of us the same, and our hearts still beat to the same rhythms, the same furies and madnesses and flashes of nobility. There is courage in man, and his humanity stands alone in a universe of malice. That is why we were made, the Adeptus Astartes. Not to supplant man, but to protect him.
He had never really understood that before, but seeing Proxis lying there wounded and helpless, and the transparent compassion of the little medic who stood beside his great prone carcass, he felt the truth of it for the first time.
&n
bsp; Our Lord knows this, he realised. Marneus Calgar has always known it. It is what has made him great. He holds still to the vestiges of humanity that reside in us all.
The Mayfly took to the skies again an hour later. Brothers Kadare and Antigonus remained in the hold to keep an eye on the hasty repairs, but Valerian stood on the bridge while the ship’s crew went about their business, their efficiency masked by quips, insults and mocking threats. They were a family, he realised. Only people who knew each other intimately could be so flippant to one another in such a serious situation.
And he thought of Proxis, making a bad joke in the midst of a hellish battle. We are not so different after all, he thought.
‘One hundred thousand feet,’ the Navigator was saying.
‘How is the repair holding?’ Morcault asked, and Brother Kadare came over the ship vox.
‘It is hot, but in place. The hold is still not airtight – we are losing atmosphere somewhere. Trying to track down the leak to weld it over.’
‘Re-entry will find that leak soon enough,’ Hester murmured.
The heat of re-entry would do more than that. It would seek the hole, widen it, and flood the hold with fire, perhaps take down the ship.
‘One thing at a time,’ Morcault said.
Valerian engaged his magnetic bootsoles as he felt gravity left behind. As he looked out of the viewports he could see Zalidar now as it had appeared on their first sight of it: a rich green curvature filling half their sky with a thin haze of atmosphere clinging to it. And beyond, the star-filled dark of the void.
‘Engaging gravitics,’ Jodi said. He thumped the console. ‘Start up, you bastard.’
In the centre of the ship the gravitic generator came to life, and Valerian felt his weight upon the deck again.
As he did, he felt something else, also. Or rather the lack of something. The battering screech of the collective ork psyche that blanketed the planet was no more. He was outside it, looking in. He felt his mind clear of that extraneous noise for the first time since planetfall, like sudden relief from tinnitus.