‘We were trying to flank the ork column when the Kasadya fell,’ Wyda said. ‘We lost them in the dust cloud.’
‘But you know where you were heading.’
‘Yes, commissar,’ she said.
‘Then we have a direction. I need a working vox.’ I turned to the civilians. They were dust-caked wraiths, clutching their lasrifles and staring at us, waiting for any hope we could offer. I gave them purpose instead. ‘We will take the narrow passages,’ I said. ‘Do not engage with the enemy except on my command.’
We left the stompa and its rampage behind. The alley branched into others. Some were no more than accidental spaces created by the density of architectural growth. I took us uphill, deeper into the city, following the sounds of combat. I stopped a few times to listen carefully, wary of the difference between an ork column firing with impunity and an actual struggle. Sustained bursts of las fire called to me. So did the honourable boom of Leman Russ guns. It took very little training to distinguish Imperial cannons from the undisciplined, excessive concussions of ork weapons.
The alley curved ahead. An engagement was nearby. Las, solid rounds and ork snarls of rage echoed between the walls. The las fire was coming from above. On our right, iron steps zigzagged up the side of the hab block, leading to the arch of a walkway.
We went up, the sound of battle covering the clatter of our footsteps. On the walkway, a full squad of the Steel Legion was firing down on a large column of orks. They had taken down numerous footsoldiers. ‘Follow the example of your comrades,’ I instructed the civilians. ‘Whatever these warriors do, do likewise.’ Twenty more guns joined the assault. Lack of training was no issue. The enemy was impossible to miss. All the citizens had to do was aim down.
I found the sergeant. His name was Reithner. I drew him and his vox operator aside and we crouched low on the walkway. While the trooper worked to contact Brenken, I asked Reithner what he intended.
‘Kill the greenskins until their big guns arrive,’ he said. ‘Then we get out fast. Hit them again as soon as we can.’
‘Good,’ I said. I gestured to the civilians. ‘These people are now under your command. As will be any others who join this group. You aren’t just leading a squad now, sergeant. You have a company. Are you up to the task?’
‘I am, commissar.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
Reithner moved back to the parapet to resume command of the firefight. His trooper handed me the handset. ‘The colonel,’ he said.
‘Commissar,’ Brenken’s voice was muzzy with static, but clear enough. ‘I’m glad you’re alive.’
‘I’m as relieved to know you are,’ I said. ‘What is the situation?’
‘We’ve lost the wall. We slowed them for a bit, but they have total freedom of entry now.’
‘You’re moving to the interior?’
‘Yes. Street by street interdiction now.’
‘I’m afraid not, colonel,’ I said.
‘You’re siding with the canoness now?’
‘No. But we can’t block their access to the hive. They will advance no matter what we do. So let them. Draw them in. The ways of Volcanus are narrow. The deeper they go, the more spread out they’ll become. If they try to bunch together, they’ll slow down. The tanks will be limited in their range. With the citizens of Volcanus in the fight, we have the numbers. Draw them in,’ I repeated. ‘Draw them in and grind them down.’
‘Do you believe this can be done?’
‘I believe it is what we must do.’
‘We’re already having to break down into squad level,’ Brenken said. ‘That will give us more speed and flexibility of movement.’
‘Have them lead groups of civilians where possible.’ I was already seeing the multiplication of force that could occur.
‘Where possible,’ Brenken repeated, grim.
‘I know,’ I said. There would be hard decisions. There would be massacres. Endless massacres. They were unavoidable. The best we could do was make the orks pay with their own blood for the slaughter.
I have never enjoyed deciding how people will die. Neither have I turned from the necessity of doing so.
‘Well,’ Brenken said. ‘The Emperor protects.’
‘The Emperor protects.’
As I signed off, Reithner shouted a warning. The ork tanks were here. We ran to the far end of the walkway, furthest away from the arriving heavy armour. The entrance to a chapel awaited us. We were barely inside when the guns took out the centre of the walkway. The entire span collapsed a moment later.
We were inside the Chapel of Sacred Obedience. Its base straddled the roofs of three hab blocks. We had entered the north side of the transept. At the eastern door to the nave, stairs led down the habs. Reithert gestured in that direction. ‘We can reach the street that way.’
I shook my head. We were beside the steps leading up the north spire. More walkways led off it from the level of the bells. ‘The orks don’t hold the higher elevations yet,’ I said. ‘Use that advantage. We can pick our targets.’
And through a day of burning grey, and a roaring night, we did. We moved from point to point in Volcanus, hammering the orks’ infantry at choke points, ambushing them from above and moving on. By the time they had brought their heavy weapons to bear, we were gone. Civilians stumbled from shelled buildings and joined us. Before dawn, our group was two hundred-strong. Our wake was bloody. Morale was strong.
And as dawn broke, I knew we had lost.
1. Yarrick
The spires were coming down. Ghazghkull had tired of street battles. He wanted Volcanus to fall now. The orks are not a patient race. But they are also stubborn, and will persist in a task beyond all bounds of reason. The combination of those two characteristics makes them ferocious enemies, and their sieges are savage affairs. What was different and dangerous about Ghazghkull was his adaptability. His tactics were complex and fluid, and his armed might was overwhelming. If he wanted to bring the siege to an end, he had the means to do so.
And so the spires came down. The stompas became more coordinated in their assaults. They grouped in pairs, blasting the base of one tower after another. Any building where resistance was strong, or where there was even the potential for a real struggle, was felled. The dust clouds covered all of Volcanus. I felt the cannon blasts in my chest, and the vibrations of each collapse through my boots. Instead of fighting for control, the orks were simply razing entire areas of the city.
‘I’m sorry, commissar,’ Setheno said.
We were standing beside Sword of the Wastes. Brenken’s driver had managed to negotiate some of the narrowest streets of Volcanus and keep the colonel’s command post mobile and intact. Brenken had moved upwards with the flow of the war. Despite everything we could do, the orks had taken more and more of the city. Their tide had risen, unstoppable.
We were stationed in the lee of the burned out rubble of a hab block. The orks had already passed through. The location was a point of calm in the conflict, a purged wasteland. Brenken had called us here to face the unspeakable.
Less than a thousand metres away, the tower of Saint Pausanias, an Ecclesiarchal monastery, buckled and folded in on itself. Caryatids, stained glass and columns splintered like powdery twigs. Vaults gaped like screaming maws. Its base was three quarters of the way up the architectural mountain of Volcanus, and its spire had reached the cloud-brushing heights of the hive’s peak. Its death brought an end to many other structures. The collapses multiplied. A great rockslide rolled down the slope of Volcanus, killing orks and humans alike, but many more humans than orks. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. The echoes of the fall had not faded when, further up and to the west of our position, another tower shook, battered by cannons and wrecking balls. It leaned. It leaned too far.
And down.
‘I know you take no pleasure in this,’ I said
to Setheno. ‘But I wish you had been wrong.’
‘So do I.’
I was holding down the full scope of my frustration and rage. Two hives. Two defeats. I had known the odds were against Volcanus. The end had been preordained. And yet… And yet… We owed the Emperor the impossible. It was little enough to give the Father of Mankind. I had succeeded in doing so in the past. Now, when the need to do so was as urgent as it had ever been, I had been found wanting.
Over the course of the night, the orks had taken away the high ground. The squads of jump-packed greenskins had flown to the walkways, laughing as they tore through the defenders of Volcanus, knocking them over the parapets to their deaths. What the jump troops ignored, the tanks blasted apart. And then the felling of the spires had begun. Our every strategy was countered by a gigantic response.
‘If we had had the troops…’ Brenken had muttered a few minutes ago.
The thought was tempting and frustrating. There was truth in it. Von Strab had crippled our response. Had he doomed us from the start? Yes, he had.
But that was not a complete truth.
I should have done more. Somehow, I could have done more.
I would yet.
Brenken called to us from the interior of the Chimera. ‘I have Mannheim,’ she said.
Setheno and I boarded through the rear hatch as Kuyper left, giving us privacy. None of Brenken’s surviving captains were present. They would hear of the orders that would come out of this meeting. But only the four of us would know what was said.
‘How secure is the channel?’ I asked Brenken.
She shrugged, her face lined with exhaustion and despair. ‘The princeps is speaking to us from Steel Hammer. As secure as possible, I would say.’
We could not rule out the possibility that von Strab had found a way to monitor even that frequency. That changed nothing of what we would say. We had run out of options.
We approached the vox unit on the tactical table. ‘We’re here, Princeps Mannheim,’ Brenken said.
‘Volcanus is lost to us, then?’ Mannheim said.
I answered, speaking my shame. ‘It will be by the end of the day. At best.’
‘And then the orks will come for Armageddon Secundus.’
‘I suppose they might amuse themselves with Death Mire for an afternoon,’ said Brenken. ‘They’ve already shown they enjoy the entertainment of slaughtering our hive militias.’
‘What are the dispositions in Secundus?’ Setheno asked.
‘Unchanged,’ said Mannheim. ‘Entirely defensive.’
I clenched my fists. ‘That’s madness. The orks will take Armageddon down one hive at a time. They have to be countered by a unified force.’
‘I don’t disagree, commissar. But that is the situation we face.’
‘Not to be changed while von Strab is overlord.’
‘As you say.’ Mannheim’s response was careful, avoiding outright mutiny.
I thought about the regiments cantoned at Infernus, Hades, Helsreach, Acheron, and Tartarus. I doubted von Strab had concerned himself with the minor hives and other settlements. I pictured the combined strength of the Steel Legion and the Legio Metalica. Would even that be enough against what Ghazghkull had at his command? I knew enough now to speculate. And the question was moot. Von Strab had sabotaged any such effort. ‘We need help,’ I said. ‘We need the Adeptus Astartes.’
‘Von Strab has forbidden requests for aid,’ Mannheim said. ‘And then there’s the warp storm. But if you think the effort must be made…’
‘It must,’ I told him, ‘but not by you. We can’t risk von Strab relieving you of command. Short of execution, he has nothing left to use against me.’
‘He might well do that.’
‘Let him try.’
‘You will come to Infernus?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll do what I can to clear the way for you to the astropaths.’
‘Thank you, princeps.’
‘I’ll go too,’ Brenken said. ‘My command is ending with the regiment.’
‘You have my sympathy, colonel,’ said Mannheim.
‘We’ll be travelling by Chimera, if we’re lucky,’ I said. ‘That will barely keep us ahead of the orks. We need time. We have been fighting a reactive war, and losing it. We need the space to make some moves the orks cannot counter. Princeps, can you arrange for a Valkyrie to extract us once we’re away from Infernus?’
‘Should I speak to General Andechs?’
‘No,’ Brenken said quickly. ‘Where is Colonel Helm stationed?’
‘Hades Hive.’
Further than ideal, but if Brenken trusted Helm, then so be it.
‘Speak to him,’ Brenken said. ‘We’ll contact you later with our location. If we lose the vox…’ She looked down at the map. I pointed to a spot and she nodded. ‘We’ll make for the eastern side of Irkalla.’
The settlement had been abandoned for centuries. Records on Armageddon going back more than five hundred years were very unreliable. Much was missing, especially around 441.M41. Next to nothing was known about Irkalla beyond its name. The reason for its end had fallen into shadow. All that remained were the ruins of what had been a sub-hive city. But it was a landmark, and there was nothing there to attract the orks. It lay southwest of Volcanus, towards the Plain of Anthrand. Death Mire was northeast. We stood a decent chance of reaching Irkalla unchallenged.
I tried not to think of my course as another flight. I tried to think of it as a countermove. What my reason knew to be true, and what my soul believed were two very different things.
‘Time,’ Setheno said, musing. ‘Armageddon needs time.’ She nodded to herself. ‘I think we can gain another day. Not for Volcanus, but we can hold the orks here a little longer.’
‘What are you thinking?’ I asked.
‘Nemesis Island.’
I grimaced at the bleak humour of our situation. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘You aren’t offering salvation for Volcanus.’
‘I have no time for lost causes, commissar.’
‘Armageddon is not one.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not yet.’
2. Setheno
She reached the docks in the late afternoon. Movement through the hive was more and more difficult. Many of the maglev tracks had been destroyed, and power had failed over most of the city. Setheno descended into the underhive for part of her journey, and in its upper reaches she found a train that took her several kilometres in the right direction. But even here, below the surface, the damage was severe. Tunnels had been compacted by the fall of towers. Foundations had pancaked.
On the streets, what the orks did not hold they had reduced to rubble. Setheno stuck to the shadows, crossing heaps of wreckage, passing between burning towers. She went alone. She was beneath notice, a single figure slipping through the blasted landscape of Volcanus.
The dockside region was relatively intact. Warehouses had been incinerated by ork artillery, but the greenskin army was still concentrated in the centre, north and east of Volcanus. Most of the damage in its west end had been caused by panic. Not all the citizens had stood loyal to the Emperor. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, had turned to flight as soon as word spread that the siege was going badly. And with the end looming, millions were joining the exodus. They streamed out of all sides of the hive, the shattered walls letting them out as they had let the orks in. The west, though, was the site of the first great panic. It was natural for people to run here, far from the initial greenskin breaches. There was a choice of escape: on land, circling south away from the enemy army, running up into the Volcanus Mountains; or by boat, into the archipelago in the great bay beyond the hive.
Most had chosen the mountains. There was something in the islands almost as frightening as the orks.
It was Setheno’s destinati
on.
The docks swarmed with activity. There were still thousands upon thousands of refugees here, seeking any means of escape faster than foot. Few of the berths still had ships. In the near distance, the hulls of overloaded, capsized ships lay in the torpid waters of the bay.
Setheno pushed her way through the crowd. She had removed her helmet, and the people who met her gaze shrank away. They felt her judgement. Good. They should be fighting. They should be dying to buy Armageddon one more second with which to prepare its retaliation against the orks. If time weren’t the precious resource it was, she would have brought punishment to the cowards.
She strode to the far end of the docks, past freighters and oil tankers turning into passenger ships, past empty moorings, and through the haze and smoke and dust. There were no refugees on the westernmost pier. The ship there was not one they would ever willingly board, no matter how desperate their circumstances.
The Iron Repentance was a mid-sized transport. Its hulk was dark grey, rusted, its only adornment a massive relief sculpture of the fist-and-scales of the Adeptus Arbites. Two troopers stood guard at the foot of the ramp leading aboard. Setheno stopped before them.
‘You remain at your posts,’ she said, approving.
‘Until our orders change, canoness,’ said one. He was a small, thin man, bulked out by his armour. His partner, average in height, appeared much taller in contrast. Setheno towered over both.
‘They have changed,’ she said. ‘You will take me to Nemesis Island.’
To their credit, they hesitated. They would not disobey her command, but she was not part of their power structure.
She relieved their uncertainty by gesturing back at the burning city. ‘You have no other charges on the way. Your fellow Arbites are fighting and dying in the struggle against the greenskins. Honour their sacrifice. Honour the Emperor.’
They bowed, and led her aboard.
The crew worked fast. In a few minutes, the Iron Repentance left Volcanus behind. It steamed through the dense archipelago. The water depth varied wildly, the shoals were lethal, and the ship’s labyrinthine route took it through narrows so tight, the hull brushed against sheer cliffs on either side. In the background, the bleak music of the war continued, the dull beat of guns punctuated by the harsh crack of falling towers.
Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon Page 17