Calgar's Siege

by Paul Kearney

  ‘Throne be praised,’ he whispered. ‘Captain, how long will we remain in orbit?’

  ‘A matter of minutes. I’m going to plan for re-entry a few miles south of Zalathras.’

  ‘We have ork ships on augur, forty thousand miles out,’ Jodi said. ‘They’re big. Cruisers. Lots of traffic between them and the planet. I don’t think they’ve picked us up yet.’

  ‘Hold off on re-entry until you have my word,’ Valerian said. Now – it had to be now. Once he was back on the planet, the ork gabble would fog his abilities once more.

  ‘Why?’ Morcault asked.

  ‘Just do as I say.’

  Valerian closed his eyes. His head tilted back in the blue-lit mechanics of the hood that enfolded his skull. He reached out into that cold, clear dark, his mind sending out a quicksilver tendril that quested over light years in seconds, sped past other, lesser minds by the million, and flashed past burning suns, past pockets of the immaterium close to the emptiness of ordinary vacuum. He was not navigating by stars, but by minds, and he followed the signature of one he knew, one of his own brethren.

  ‘Brother Carimus. It is I, Valerian.’

  He let his own identity saturate the images he sent wavering out into the void. He could not be specific – it did not work that way. But he lent his message a bright sense of urgency.

  And felt the recognition in reply, faint and far off. It was a long way. Carimus was with Seventh Company, in the Battlefleet Andronicus. It was clear across the Fringe, and the invisible currents of the immaterium wafted and coursed between them, battering Valerian’s psychic presence to tatters.

  Carimus.

  He let the memories and pictures slide through his mind, all dominated by Marneus Calgar, the Chapter Master. A great beleaguered figure, standing alone, and around him a sea of foes, and beyond them, the looming jungle.

  He could not fine-tune the image further, but he put into it every ounce of emotion he could muster, a flashing series of vignettes which made sense only if half-familiar. Marneus Calgar. Orks. Jungle planet. He pushed those facts as hard as he could, willing the pictures to flame bright and urgent across the intervening darkness.

  And at the end, there was an answering flash, a moment of realisation. He was sure he had not imagined it.

  And then the connection was broken, and Valerian felt his consciousness whip back through the intervening light years, the awesome, unimaginable distances across the glittering dark, and he staggered as he came back to himself and the humming bridge of the little battered freighter in which he stood. Like swapping a view from orbit for that of a look through a microscope.

  He oriented himself, breathed out slowly as he had been taught, and eased the hammering of his hearts. The secondary had woken, feeling the need for more oxygenated blood to course through his system and revive him.

  He had been trained in astropathy, but it had never come easy to him, and it sucked something out of the body as well as the mind.

  He had communicated something – he had sent some sense of events – he was sure of it. Carimus must work with it. It was up to him now.

  ‘Well, captain,’ he said, his throat dry, his tongue large and numbed in his mouth. ‘Let us return to the planet.’

  It had been done. He hoped it was enough. There was hope now; it flooded him along with the blood pulsing through his arteries. He had kept faith with his Chapter Master.

  If we can only hang on, he thought, then Seventh will surely come to us.

  ‘If we can only hang on,’ Morcault was saying. ‘Those repairs will not take a lot of abuse. I’m going for a shallow, powered re-entry. Hester, try not to get bounced back into space.’

  The pilot was hunched over her controls. She had eyes only for her slates and dials. The two servitors at the side of the bridge worked silently, but occasionally one would utter a swift flurry of binaric.

  ‘Ork ships closing on our position,’ Jodi said. ‘Twenty thousand miles. They’re in no hurry – perhaps they think we’re part of their fleet.’

  The vox lit up with a grunted flurry of words that were half animal growl and half Low Gothic.

  ‘I haven’t heard that tongue in fifty years,’ Morcault said. ‘Anyone speak orkish?’

  No one answered him. ‘Well, let’s hope we lose them on re-entry.’

  The bridge door opened and Roman Lascelle walked in. ‘The heat is building through the ship,’ he said, wiping sweat from his face. It was streaked with a staple-sealed gash that gleamed in the bridge overheads.

  A rumbling bang, and the Mayfly began to dance under them.

  ‘We’ll need a complete refit after this little stunt,’ Hester muttered.

  The ship plunged into the atmosphere, and Morcault brought down the titanium blast shutters that protected the viewports. Everything was shaking. Lascelle took a chair and buckled himself in.

  ‘Been a long time since I felt this,’ he said.

  ‘May be the last time you feel it,’ Hester said. ‘Jon, give me more power in the forward retros.’

  ‘You can have all you want,’ the engineer said over the vox. ‘We’re falling like a stone, and we’re damn near out of coolant. I might as well relieve myself on the drives.’

  ‘You do that,’ Hester snapped.

  The ship leapt under them, then tilted sideways. Valerian’s magnetic bootsoles gripped the deck, but even so, he had to grasp a safety rail to remain upright.

  ‘We’re getting an influx of heat here,’ Brother Kadare’s voice came up from the hold. ‘We’re stacking another plate on top of it, but it won’t hold for long.’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ Morcault whispered. ‘Hold together for me.’

  ‘Do you need help, brother?’ Valerian asked Kadare.

  ‘Negative. No point in us all getting roasted. Can’t weld – too much heat. But suit systems are coping.’

  The Mayfly plunged through the thick air of Zalidar like a meteorite with a flaming tail. For those inside the craft it felt as though they were careering down a rocky slope without brakes. Condensation began to drip from the deckhead, as though the ship were sweating around them.

  ‘The orks have turned off,’ Jodi said, running his sleeve across his face. ‘One torpedo launch, but it burned up in our wake.’

  ‘Small mercies,’ Morcault grunted. ‘Altitude?’

  ‘Hundred and fifty thousand feet and dropping fast.’

  ‘Retros have cut out,’ Hester said, and banged the console as though it had insulted her. She uttered a sentence of binaric to the servitors, and they went about their business with unhurried calm.

  ‘Restart,’ Morcault said. He touched the bandage on his head. ‘Jon, give the plasma engines a kick, will you?’

  ‘She doesn’t want to know,’ they heard Gortyn say, and there was a metallic clank over the vox. ‘Starting auxiliary power generator. It’ll give us twenty or thirty seconds, no more.’

  ‘Going to need some fancy flying here, Hester,’ Morcault said mildly, though the strain was etched across his face.

  ‘I know it, old man.’

  ‘Jodi, get Zalathras on the vox. I’d hate to get shot down before we crash.’

  No one spoke. The Mayfly groaned and lurched around them like a beaten animal. The heat became almost unendurable. Even Valerian had sweat pouring down his exposed face. He could have helmed up, but chose not to. He reached out with his depleted abilities and for a few moments it was as though he had left the ship and was watching it from the outside, seeing the fiery plume in the sky that they had become. The green jungle of Zalidar loomed up like a wall below them.

  ‘Try it now,’ Gortyn said, the vox crackling with interference.

  Hester was wrestling with the yoke, trying to haul it back into her lap. ‘Jodi… I…’ she grated.

  ‘I can’t move.’

  ‘G
ive us full retro, for Throne’s sake.’

  They could feel the G-forces working on them now. The crew rose in their restraints and the flesh of their faces writhed. It was Valerian who leaned forward and tapped the blinking button. At once, a massive roar thundered through the ship, and the Mayfly shuddered and shook. The streaming figures on the altimeter slowed, became legible again.

  ‘One hundred thousand feet,’ Jodi said, his lips pulled back from his teeth. ‘She’s slowing.’

  The nose of the ship came up. Hester’s hands were bleeding on the yoke. ‘I have her.’

  ‘Zalathras air defence, this is Omega Six Three Two,’ Valerian said, linking his own vox into that of the ship. ‘We are coming in for a hard burn landing.’

  ‘Six Three Two, we have you on augur. Regulate your descent. You’re coming in too fast.’

  ‘Doing our best, Zalathras.’ This was Morcault. Blood was soaking the dressing wound about his temples. ‘Clear us a path, will you?’

  ‘There are ork craft in our airspace, and thick flak. We cannot cease fire to let you in – you will have to navigate through it. Good luck.’

  Morcault raised the viewport shutters. The thick plexiglass was darkened with carbon. Zalathras was ahead of them, coming and going through boiling masses of cloud, and lights were winking above the city, a spattered field of anti-aircraft fire. Smoke rose in thick columns from Alphon and Kalgatt Spires.

  ‘There’s an old saying about frying pans and fires,’ Morcault said, awed and exasperated in equal measure by the spectacle.

  ‘Airspeed coming down, retros functioning. We have forty seconds of powered flight left in her,’ Hester said.

  ‘Get us below the firefight,’ Morcault said. ‘We’ll set down wherever we can.’

  They flashed over a mass of orks on the ground, the earth alive with the creatures. Then the tall city walls went by. The ship rocked with a near miss. They flew through a pillar of black smoke, heard shrapnel rattle against the hull.

  ‘We’re going down,’ Hester said. ‘Gear down, retros on full, airbrakes open–’ The ship screamed around them, as though it had finally had enough and could endure the pain no longer.

  The crew were thrown forward against their straps as the Mayfly yawed and pitched in mid-air, her forward momentum brought to a halt at last. Then she came down – for a moment falling with all the unguided aerodynamics of a dropped stone.

  At the last moment, Hester punched every button she could find on the retro panel and the dials lit and flickered. The ship bucked up, swayed, and descended more slowly, the very fabric of the little freighter moving under their feet, as though she were being slowly torn apart.

  Then there was a final crash that rang throughout the ship, and a great stillness. The drives were dead, and the lights flickered, died, and then came on again, a rusty amber hue. The air in the bridge was rancid with smoke.

  ‘Well, we’ve landed,’ Hester said in a whisper, before breaking into a fit of coughing.

  Morcault patted the arm of his chair. ‘The good old girl. I knew she wouldn’t let us down.’

  Eighteen

  It felt as though they had been in the sour subterranean stink of the abandoned sewer for days, but it had only been some five hours. The militia company were straggling behind, the men tired, laden down with the demolition gear that each carried in a backpack. Their officer, a recently promoted lieutenant in his forties, looked ready to drop.

  Sergeant Avila called a halt, listening.

  There was no mistaking it now. Above them, the earth trembled and the muffled thunder of artillery was a constant barrage of sound. A particularly loud impact close by made the militiamen flinch and crouch in the waist-deep water and filth they stood in.

  ‘That was an earthshaker shell, or I know nothing,’ Avila told Brother Parsifal.

  ‘If the Basilisks are firing, then it must be an all-out assault,’ the Apothecary agreed.

  ‘Where are we, brother?’

  ‘Three and a half miles south of the walls – we must be right under the ork batteries.’

  ‘I’m surprised the scum have guns that can fire so far,’ Avila grunted.

  ‘Another mile or so, brother, and we will be at the block point. We should start setting the charges in another four hundred yards.’

  Avila demurred. ‘I am going to start setting them now, one every thirty feet. If there is trouble up ahead, then I want them in place behind us, ready to be blown.’

  ‘Good thinking. Though the militia will not be happy at the thought of trapping themselves down here.’

  ‘The militia will do as they are told. Lieutenant Einar!’

  The rotund militia officer came wading through the noisome brown water up the column. He was too old for his rank, but had once served as a corporal in the Astra Militarum, which had resulted in his current elevation. Prior military experience was at a premium in Zalathras these days.

  That experience had been a quarter of a century before. Einar was an unfit relic now. But as he stood dripping in the shadow of the towering Ultramarines, Avila could see some remnant of the old discipline in the man’s eyes.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Detail your men. The charges are to be placed from here on in, every thirty feet on both sides of the tunnel, just above water level. The detonators are to be keyed into frequency sextus. You will inform me when the last charge is placed. Clear?’

  ‘Quite clear, sir.’

  ‘Then get to it.’

  Einar puffed away again.

  ‘I am glad we do not grow old as they grow old,’ Parsifal said.

  ‘We keep our strength until it is time to lay it down in service to the Emperor, and then we are remembered in the Chapter for the warriors we were. Our kind do not become age-crippled shadows of ourselves.’

  ‘By His Name,’ Sergeant Avila said.

  They moved out again, more slowly now. The Ultramarines drew ahead of the militia, deliberately putting distance between themselves and the human troops. Alone, they moved more quickly, despite their bulk, and they needed no light to see their way; the infrared filter in their helms was so finely tuned that even the pitch-dark tunnel was clear as evening daylight to them.

  ‘Contact signal, two hundred yards ahead,’ Parsifal said quietly. ‘It would seem our lord’s instincts were correct.’

  ‘Brother Gamelan, up front with Dextus,’ Avila said. ‘I want them suppressed as soon as you see a target.’ He called up Lieutenant Einar on the vox.

  ‘What is your progress, lieutenant?’

  The man was panting into the vox-bead. ‘Thirty charges set.’

  ‘Move back – set the rest to the rear of the first batch, back up the tunnel. And make haste, Einar. We have company down here.’

  ‘Affirmative, sir.’

  The charges would bring down almost half a mile of the tunnel once they went off – enough to block any ork infiltration.

  ‘We must buy the militia a little time, brothers,’ Avila told his squad. ‘Let us chastise these xenos. In His name.’

  A mutter went over the vox, that fine-toned mixture of eagerness and anger which Avila relished.

  ‘One hundred yards,’ Parsifal said. ‘They’re advancing fast up the tunnel. Should be coming up on helm auspex any second.’

  And they did. But before even that, the Space Marines could hear them, and their finely wrought sense of smell could pick up the peculiar reek of the orks, a mixture of base animal stink and fungal decay.

  The clink of masonry and the splash of water were interlaced with the clink of metal tools and the harsh gabble of the creatures, always one note away from open violence. Loathing of them rose up in Avila’s hearts. Of all xenos, he hated the tyranids the most. But the orks were a close second. They needed to be stamped out, like the vile disease they were.

  I am Thy instru
ment, he prayed. Guide my hand, Lord of Mankind. Let me send Thy enemies into the abyss.

  Brother Gamelan’s heavy bolter rang out, stitching the darkness with light. Beside him, Dextus’ plasma gun erupted in a flare of light as it propelled a bolt of superheated energy out towards the enemy. Not for nothing were such weapons known as sun-guns. For a split second the flare of it greyed out Avila’s auto-senses, as his armour protected his vision from the searing blast.

  The screams of the orks rang down the tunnel, strangely high-pitched for such massive creatures.

  ‘Grenades,’ Sergeant Avila said, and threw two of the deadly devices over the heads of his battle-brothers. They had been keyed for delay, and thus went off just as the orks ahead recovered and came charging forward again. The double explosion plastered the walls of the tunnel with ork entrails and body parts, and the tone of the shrieks beyond grew lower, descending into the fury of the xenos.

  ‘Back up, twenty yards, fast,’ Avila ordered his squad. They obeyed him, and a flash of promethium fire burned up the spot where they had stood moments before.

  The sewer filled with steam, as thick as smoke. Avila’s helm readjusted. He went to infrared for a second, and the enemy to his front came up on his targeting cogitator. The orks were milling and snarling in their accustomed manner, and wild autogun fire came streaking up the tunnel.

  Brother Dextus grunted as one round struck his shoulderplate and made him stagger. For a moment the plasma gun he carried dipped into the filthy water they were wading in, and the muzzle of the weapon sizzled. Then he raised it up again and sent another energy blast hammering down at the enemy.

  ‘Damage nominal – systems repairing,’ he said.

  ‘Brother Gamelan, give them a burst,’ Avila said on the vox. ‘The rest, back again. You stand still too long, you die, brothers.’

  The heavy bolter shredded the enemy, giving them no time to form up and target the Space Marines. Gamelan jogged back to rejoin his brethren. Autogun rounds were skittering down the passage, impacting on the walls, bouncing off the Ultramarines’ armour and ricocheting past them. The sigils of Avila’s squad were all flickering from green to amber and back again in his display.