The Hunt for Vulkan

by David Annandale

  The armada disintegrated. It became small packs of minor predators.

  ‘The main body of the enemy is responding,’ said Thane.

  Koorland checked the hololithic display. The lines of projected trajectories were reaching out from the position of the attack moon. Estimated velocities and points of intersection floated next to each line, adjusting every few seconds as new readings came in.

  ‘They won’t abandon the moon completely,’ said Koorland.

  ‘They won’t have to.’ The estimated number of ships kept climbing. Already the fleet was almost the size of the one the Imperial ships had decimated.

  Koorland compared the estimated time of arrival of the enemy against the time to launch point. The difference was just enough. The Imperial forces would make planetfall before the void war was re-engaged. ‘All landing ships stand by,’ he said. He looked at Thane. ‘Vulkan awaits us.’

  The spear had punctured the wave.

  Five

  Caldera – Laccolith

  The city had suffered catastrophic damage. Many of its towers had fallen. Others canted, ready to topple, or leaned against smaller buildings. A pall of smoke hung over Laccolith. Entire districts had been gutted by flame. Rocket and artillery craters marked the city with the footsteps of monsters. The outer walls had been annihilated. Their traces remained as heaps of rubble dotting Laccolith’s perimeter. There was nothing shielding the city from the jungle, and saurian predators roamed the streets.

  But the city was more than a shell. Koorland was amazed by what he found. There was still a population prepared to fight. The people had not been enslaved or exterminated to the last soul. They emerged as the Imperial forces established their staging ground in the eastern sector of the city.

  The space port was a ruin. The control tower had taken a direct hit from an orbital strike, and where it had stood was the centre of a deep crater which occupied almost a third of the port’s area. A small fleet of lighters had been reduced to blackened, twisted corpses. The rockcrete landing zone was pitted with shell impacts and strewn with wreckage, but it had also been built to withstand the tectonic violence of the world. It was still a large, open, relatively level area. It would serve.

  Koorland had his command tent set up at the edge of the crater, out of the way of the landers and manoeuvring vehicles. He and Thane met with General Marga Imren of the Lucifer Blacks and Tech-Priest Dominus Alquist Arouar. The Lucifer Blacks made up the largest contingent of the Astra Militarum cohort, giving Imren supreme authority over the combined Guard regiments. She was visibly uncomfortable in the presence of Arouar. There was little of the Adeptus Mechanicus leader that suggested he was human at all. His body was a collection of multi-jointed limbs and metallic tentacles. His silhouette defied the eye. It recalled an ancient avian, stooped, but moved with the floating, scuttling grace of the arachnid. In her dark uniform, Imren had the rigid posture and cold pride earned by the regiment that supplied the Imperial Palace’s honour guard. She was the human at its most disciplined. Arouar was the human at its most absent.

  ‘This position is barely defensible,’ Imren said.

  She was right. Holding off the natural predators of Caldera was a simple matter. An ork attack would be something else again.

  ‘We are not here to defend Laccolith,’ Koorland said. ‘This is the point from which we launch our assault, and that will be as soon as we have a target.’

  ‘The strategy of the Veridi giganticus is puzzling,’ Arouar said. His voice box clicked and whistled with snatches of binharic. He was poised over the strategium table. It displayed a map of Laccolith, the surrounding region, and what had been recorded of the greenskins’ positions during the landings. ‘Their behaviour is anomalous.’

  ‘Everything about these orks is anomalous,’ said Thane. ‘That is their norm.’

  ‘Agreed. However, many of their non-normative actions are unusual because of their advanced technology, considered strategy and intelligent responses. Characteristics strange in the Veridi, but logical by any other sentient measure. The ambassador caste contradicts our understanding of the race, but not the conduct of war.’ His left arm unfolded. He spread his hand, telescoping its digits until they corresponded approximately to the various ork armies marked on the map. ‘Here I observe behaviour both anomalous and nonsensical. The Veridi have abandoned Caldera’s capital, its pillage incomplete. There are no significant population centres in the directions they are pursuing. There are no targets of strategic worth.’

  Imren said, ‘They aren’t conquering the planet. They’re tearing it apart.’

  ‘But they must have had some reason to come down,’ Koorland mused.

  ‘The primarch?’ Thane asked.

  ‘I refuse to believe they knew about his presence here before we did.’

  ‘And yet Ullanor…’

  Koorland shook his head. ‘Even so, that is a leap too far.’

  Thane did not pursue the point.

  ‘I agree the supposition cannot be supported,’ Arouar continued. ‘I would suggest their presence on the surface of Caldera is connected to the use of the planet we have already observed. This is the first time we have seen the construction of an attack moon.’

  Koorland found the speculation unsatisfying. ‘Even if Laccolith was a target of opportunity, why abandon it before they were finished with it?’

  ‘Quite.’ Arouar made a fist and spread his fingers, suggesting a purposeless radiation of the ork hordes.

  ‘Puzzling,’ said Imren. ‘Does it help us with our mission?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Koorland admitted. ‘I won’t discount its significance, though. We should also speak with local survivors.’

  He met with several of them a few minutes later. They were escorted onto the base by a squad of Lucifer Blacks, and waited outside the command tent. Their uniforms were almost as ragged as their bodies, patched with strips of leather and reinforced with scrap metal. The insignia of the Laccolith Defence Militia were still visible: two converging spears creating the silhouette of a volcano. One man had carved the lines into his forehead, wearing his pride on his flesh. They were young, but their faces were lined with the sudden age of brutal experience.

  ‘I salute you, citizens,’ Koorland told them. ‘You have resisted well. You are alive, and so is your city.’

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ the man with the carved forehead said.

  ‘How did you drive off the orks?’

  ‘We didn’t,’ said a woman. ‘We were saved.’

  ‘By whom?’

  The mortals shared a look of religious awe.

  ‘We don’t know,’ the first man told Koorland. ‘We only saw him at a distance.’

  ‘He wore power armour,’ Koorland guessed.

  Blank silence from the mortals.

  Koorland tapped his chest-plate. ‘Like mine.’

  They all nodded.

  ‘But greater,’ the woman said. ‘He is a giant. Taller even than you, lord. And he cannot die.’

  More nods. More awed looks.

  Curious, Koorland asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He fought so many. He should have died. I saw an entire hab fall on him.’

  ‘A rocket landed where he was standing,’ the scarred man said.

  Every one of them had witnessed these and other moments that would have meant death for any being who fell within these mortals’ conception of human.

  ‘He never died,’ the first woman said. ‘We all saw him die, and we were always wrong. He always returned. Never close to where we thought he’d died. Always somewhere else. In the end, he drew the greenskins away from us.’

  ‘They didn’t care about Laccolith anymore,’ said the scarred man. ‘They went after him. Their entire army.’

  Koorland pictured Arouar’s hand gesture over the map. The illogical pattern now mad
e sense. He thanked the group. They left to continue rebuilding Laccolith’s defences.

  And if we find the primarch, Koorland thought, and we depart with him, what happens to these people?

  He knew the answer. There would be no one guarding Laccolith. All of its walls had fallen. And as the orks sent more and more of the planet’s crust into orbit to join the attack moon, the point could very well come that volatile Caldera tore itself apart.

  He turned around. Thane was a few steps away. His face mirrored Koorland’s thoughts.

  ‘We’re fighting to save the Imperium,’ Koorland said.

  ‘I know. I have to wonder when the sacrifices will be enough.’

  ‘They are all too great.’

  The Finality’s starboard broadside took out the midsection of the ork cruiser as it turned to make a ramming charge at the Absolute Decree. Admiral Zdenek Rodolph savoured the moment. He saw the greenskin vessel’s own ammunition reserves trigger still larger explosions. The upper portion of the hull blew outwards. The ship continued on its trajectory, bleeding flame and wreckage, its shape distorted as if being devoured by a greater beast.

  ‘Come on, damn you,’ Rodolph muttered. ‘You know you’ve been killed. Die.’

  The engines had been ruptured by the spreading catastrophe. They erupted now, swallowing the rest of the ship with light of their destruction.

  Rodolph grinned. And then the proximity alert tocsins wailed. Captain Groth yelled, ‘Portside! Brace!’

  All too late. An ork frigate in full disintegration slammed into the side of the Finality’s command structure. The impact hurled Rodolph over the command pulpit. He bounced off a workstation. His right arm snapped and he landed on the deck with his limb twisted at the elbow and folded beneath his body. Slabs of plasteel from the bridge’s vault plunged to the deck, crushing equipment and officers. Power flickered, then surged. Electrical fires started in the smashed stations.

  ‘Admiral!’ Groth called. She helped Rodolph to his feet. His breath hissed through clamped teeth as his arm swung loose.

  ‘Get me back up,’ he said. He coughed, breathing smoke and pain.

  Groth led him back up the stairs to the pulpit. As she did, the auspex master warned of more vessels incoming.

  ‘Bring us above the Decree,’ Groth ordered. ‘We’ll shield each other.’

  The edges of Rodolph’s vision greyed. The rhythm of the grand cruiser’s barrage was muffled. He tasted blood in his mouth. This was more than a broken arm.

  Someone was giving a damage report, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  ‘Are we…’ he started to say.

  ‘Still in the fight, admiral,’ said Groth.

  Rodolph leaned against the pulpit. He gripped the aquila’s wing with his left hand. ‘Get me Broumis,’ he said. The feel of the iron in his hand grounded him. His head spun, but he could think.

  A moment later, the captain of the Absolute Decree was on the vox.

  ‘Our position is untenable, admiral,’ Broumis said. ‘The orks are…’ An explosion drowned his words.

  Rodolph could guess the rest of the captain’s sentence. ‘Agreed. We’ve done our duty here. The forces have made planetfall.’

  ‘You can’t be calling a retreat,’ said Groth.

  ‘No. An attack. Set course for the ork moon.’

  Broumis was silent for a moment. ‘Admiral,’ he began.

  ‘I understand the consequence of my order, captain.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Rodolph exchanged a look with Groth. She nodded, and relayed the command.

  On the oculus, a swarm of ork frigates closed in.

  ‘And if the forces on the planet find the primarch,’ Groth said, ‘how will they leave?’

  ‘If the fleet is destroyed in this location, they are no better off. We have to try to change the conditions of the war. At the very least, we’ll keep the ork fleet occupied.’

  More ork torpedoes shot through the defensive fire. The void shields held, but the kinetic energy of the hits still translated through them into a shudder that rocked the Finality. Rodolph winced and kept his feet. He clutched the aquila hard enough to cut his palm. His blood ran down the wing. ‘Let me speak to the Alcazar,’ he said. His vision was blurring again. ‘Someone get me some stimms!’ he shouted. He would not go dark before the ship. He would not. He would–

  He blinked, and Weylon Kale was on the vox. Rodolph shook his head, trying to clear it. A junior officer arrived with stimms. Rodolph downed them. His vision sharpened, but so did his awareness of troubling movement in his chest. He swallowed back another taste of blood, then told Kale what he had ordered. ‘The Alcazar Remembered is not under my authority, shipmaster,’ he said. ‘But I hope you see where necessity lies.’

  ‘You want us to pull out of formation and remain on station.’

  ‘Yes. I believe most or all of the greenskin fleet will follow us in defence of the moon.’

  ‘I do understand,’ said Kale, though his reluctance was clear. ‘The success of the mission is paramount.’

  The approaching ork frigates were joined by more. The Finality and the Absolute Decree led the Imperial fleet towards a wall of ships.

  ‘It is,’ said Rodolph. ‘You have our thanks.’

  ‘We will add our fire to yours for as long as the conflict is in range.’

  ‘My hope is that that will not be for long.’

  The fleet moved toward the jaws of the enemy, leaving the strength of the Alcazar Remembered behind.

  Early afternoon.

  The Storm Eagle Deathblow streaked over the Calderan landscape. Hemisphere flew just below the cloud cover. Koorland sat in the dorsal heavy bolter turret in place of a servitor. Below him was the jungle, its canopy torn by the huge wounds of the orks’ passage. He wished for more altitude, and the ability to see more territory at a glance. But the clouds pressed down, weighed by ash and smoke. Any higher, and he would see nothing at all.

  A short while ago, in the command tent, Koorland had said, ‘They’re searching for their enemy. We have to find him before they do.’

  ‘How will we do that?’ Hemisphere had asked.

  ‘That’s the question. Let’s observe what we can of separate ork forces. I hope we’ll know what we are looking for when we see it.’

  ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, Chapter Master, but the thread of hope is a thin one.’

  ‘It’s all we have. The anomaly is promising, though, and consistent with the reports of the surviving militia. So take us to the orks, Hemisphere. We’ll begin with a lateral cut across the columns as we find them. I’ll let you know if any warrant a second pass.’

  ‘So ordered.’

  Now Hemisphere flew in an outward arc towards the westernmost ork position. The greenskins were not hard to find. The swathe cut through the jungle by each horde was massive, and the force itself was visible from a great distance. First there was dirty smoke on the horizon, and then the shapes came into view: the silhouette of a walker, then the lower hulks of battlefortresses. Then the smaller tanks and trucks. And around the vehicles, the riot of the infantry. Hemisphere skirted the eastern edge of the horde. Its movement was confused. The path of destruction leading to this location followed a straight line, but now the march seemed to have stalled.

  ‘They don’t know where they’re going,’ Hemisphere said.

  ‘No, they don’t.’

  The orks were milling about, direction lost. There was what looked like the beginnings of a shift to the north-east, but some of the army was still trying to push west.

  The overflight of the Deathblow renewed the orks’ purpose. The gunship was outside the range of the infantry’s weapons, but they fired anyway. It was within the reach of the anti-aircraft guns. Solid ordnance and energy beams struck at it.

  ‘They’re no use to us,�
� Koorland said. ‘Take us to the next.’

  Hemisphere angled the Storm Eagle away, pushing the thrusters. The gunship left the orks behind long before the guns could take its measure.

  Koorland thought about the confusion he had seen and what the militia soldiers had told him about Vulkan’s appearances in Laccolith. ‘The primarch was here,’ he said. ‘But no longer. They’ve lost their quarry.’

  ‘We should watch, then, for similar patterns of behaviour with the other cohorts,’ said Hemisphere.

  ‘Yes. As soon as you see that symptom, move on. No point in giving them a target. And we don’t know how much time we have. These armies won’t remain separate for long.’

  Hemisphere flew east, angling towards the north as he picked up another swathe. The orks he and Koorland found were as confused as the first army. The gunship flashed over them, not slowing, the brief glance all Koorland needed. These orks reacted quickly. Some of the surface-to-air fire came very close.

  ‘They were expecting us,’ Hemisphere said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Koorland. ‘They’re communicating well. More of that damned coordination they’ve developed.’

  They flew past two more armies. More confusion, more chaotic pulling in two directions. Koorland saw a new pattern. The tension in the hordes was always between whatever route they had been following initially, and the north-east.

  ‘They’re receiving reports they don’t know whether to believe,’ he said. ‘The evidence of their senses conflicts with the communications from the other groups.’

  ‘If this is Lord Vulkan’s doing,’ said Hemisphere, ‘the strategy is brilliant. He’s single-handedly divided the greenskins into multiple, smaller groups that have no idea where they’re going. I wish we knew how he was doing this.’