The Hunt for Vulkan

by David Annandale

  The turrets had a precision Vulkan had never encountered in orks before. The need to preserve the control nexus governed their function. They caused no damage to the machinery. There were dozens of them, and they all fired on the primarch. If their rotation brought the precious mechanisms within their line of fire, they fell silent until their guns had a clear bead on the primarch once more.

  They hit him with a torrent of energy beams. The concentrated strength of a gas giant’s thunderstorm exploded against his chest. It forced him to take a full step back. He planted his legs and leaned into the attack. His breastplate began to glow. Lightning surrounded him as he moved forward against power that would have incinerated a Leman Russ. One step, then another. He held Doomtremor before him. It absorbed many of the hits, its head flaring and sending the excess energy outward. Vulkan directed it at the engineer. The ork’s personal force field flashed in turn. The beast raged as the onslaught did no more than slow the primarch.

  Vulkan advanced. His armour’s interior temperature rocketed upward. He was inside an active volcano. A mortal’s flesh would have started to burn. He marched on, implacable, a continental plate on the move. He passed between the immense coils. He was midway towards the pillar.

  He realised the ork engineer was not shouting. It was laughing. The beast pulled a lever.

  The weight of a planet fell on his shoulders. He withstood the crushing force for several seconds, and then it brought him to his knees. The ork had turned the gravity weapon against him. The greenskin hurled mountains at the sky, and now it forced Vulkan down. His lungs flattened. Drawing a breath was an act of supreme strength. He growled, denying the force that sought to grind his bones to dust. He would not capitulate. He would rise. He would advance.

  A power that had destroyed worlds held him fast.

  Then it reversed.

  He flew upward. The invisible hand whipped him against the slanted wall near the top of the cone and the impact dented the metal beneath him. Unseen mountain walls came together with him in between. His arms were flat against the surface. He strained to bring them forward. It was all he could do to keep his grip on Doomtremor. The ork laughed again, adjusted the controls, and slammed Vulkan to the floor, a meteor slaved to the greenskin’s will. Before Vulkan could get his bearings, he was flying once more. The battering and speed blurred his sense. Whether he was smashed against the wall or the floor, the crushing never relented. It grew stronger. He felt the crack of bones.

  He was trapped in the fist of Caldera, the planet’s own strength turned against its will to destroy its defender.

  The command nexus was visible from the wall. The structure was kilometres away, but its bulk loomed over everything around it. Now it flashed and pulsed. It cried out under the primarch’s assault. The orks reacted to its agony. The paused in their struggle to reach the breached defences. Koorland’s force kept up their bolter fire, killing dozens more in the moment of the pause. The orks milled about in momentary confusion, then began to retreat down the slope. They turned their back on the Last Wall.

  ‘They realise we are a diversion,’ Aloysian voxed.

  ‘Then we must be more than that,’ Koorland answered, speaking to the full squads. ‘The primarch must complete his mission. Ours is to keep the orks away from the nexus. We must be the threat they cannot ignore. Stop them, brothers. At any cost.’

  With a roar, the Last Wall charged from the tunnels. The Thunderhawks and Storm Eagle flew low down the rise, cannons and missiles hitting deep into the ork ranks, angling in for runs at the tanks. The two squads of veterans ploughed into the enemy rearguard. ‘Forward!’ Koorland shouted. ‘We are the gladius! Stab it into the heart of the foe.’

  Bolter fire annihilated the flesh ahead of him. The squad formation was narrow: two warriors abreast, sending punishing fire out on all sides. They were running downhill, with the urgency of desperate rage. The greenskins fell like chaff in the wind, before them and to either side. For a few more seconds, the orks tried to ignore the Space Marines, but too many were dying. Their speed was hampered by their numbers. The Last Wall moved faster by killing obstacles. Koorland’s double gladius strike sank deeper and deeper into the horde.

  The orks began to turn again. The wound was too deep for them to ignore. The green tide sought to close over the heads of the Space Marines.

  Koorland slowed to a stop. With bolter and chainsword he killed his way through muscle and iron. His foes lost distinction. It was as if he fought a single ork, killing it endlessly. He fought according the needs of each second. Block a descending axe with his blade. Shoot the brute through the chest. Turn and blast another through the head as it tried to flank him. Absorb the blow on his right. Retaliate with chainsword grinding through chest and heart.

  The rage of the orks grew. Perhaps their desperation too. The infantry close in began to drop, killed by the gunfire of the ranks behind. A hail of heavy-calibre bullets pounded the squads. A rocket struck the ground a few metres to the right. It was almost a direct hit on Absolution. The blast shattered his helm and he staggered, his face badly burned. Eternity supported him and he kept fighting.

  ‘Brothers,’ Koorland called, ‘we fight for a greater purpose and a greater victory. Hold the foe, and the primarch will save Caldera. Salvation here means salvation for Terra. And that is a victory beyond sacrifice!’

  As he spoke, he felt the truth was speaking through him. Sacrifice was a given in the existence of the Adeptus Astartes. It was the inevitable end of duty. There was no regret in such an end, but there was in meaningless sacrifice. That was no small part of the shadow of Ardamantua. The Imperial Fists had been thrown away. Their annihilation had served no purpose beyond the amusement of the Beast.

  So he had thought.

  He saw a different truth now. One whose reality was not assured, but he would willingly die to make it a certainty. He saw a chain leading from Ardamantua: the disaster becoming the means of uniting the Successors, the lesson he learned there fuelling his determination to call the other Chapters to Terra. Link after link of steel purpose, leading to this moment on Caldera. If he fell now but Vulkan succeeded, the defence of the Imperium would be taken up by the legend it needed. If his sacrifice led to the purge of the orks from Ullanor, that would be a reason to rejoice.

  ‘Fight for Vulkan!’ Koorland exhorted. ‘His victory will be the Imperium’s salvation!’

  He stormed into the ork fire, slamming into the body of the horde again. He smashed a foot soldier to the ground, crushed its skull with his boots and decapitated the next ork beyond. And then, coming up the slope, he saw a trio of hulking shapes. They were boxy, clanking monstrosities bristling with weapons and mechanical arms. They were grotesque xenos mockeries of Dreadnoughts, and they had come to accept Koorland’s sacrifice.

  The Adeptus Mechanicus forces split off to the east and west at the volcanic gateway to the Ascia Rift. They escorted heavy, treaded transports. Arouar had mobilised them from the space port as soon as Koorland had reported on the installation. The Fists Exemplar and the combined regiments of the Astra Militarum pursued the orks through the gap between the mountains. Thane called a halt at the top of the descent into the rift. Below, the vastness of the ork horde poured into the valley. Kilometres in the distance, flashes of tortured energy marked the nexus.

  The orks were rushing for the vulnerable centre of their machine, the centre they must attack but not destroy. In their rush to bring down the intruders, they demolished their own defensive wall. Past that barrier, though, they were forced into more cautious manoeuvres. The super-heavy vehicles had slowed to a stop as they reached the first of the conduits. The battlefortresses moved slowly through the narrow avenues of the facility. The giant walkers, too wide to pass without uprooting the clusters of pipes or crushing the walls of power plants, halted at the edge. They turned around to guard the approach into the rift, becoming the new line of defence. Beyond
them, the smaller vehicles and infantry swarmed forward.

  The entirety of the ork army had entered the Ascia Rift. The war hinged on a moment of enormous risk and opportunity.

  ‘They must be held,’ said Thane. ‘No reinforcements to the north wall. They must not retake the command centre, and they must not leave the canyon until Dominus Arouar has control of the gravity weapon.’

  ‘We are well positioned for an artillery strike,’ General Imren voxed.

  Thane shared her eagerness for retaliation on a massive scale. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We need the weapon operational. Damage must be contained. We will neutralise their Titans.’

  ‘Then we will deal with the rest.’

  ‘The battle will not be won on the floor of the rift,’ Thane told her. The mortals should labour under no illusions. The orks outnumbered and outgunned the regiments.

  ‘The undertaking is clear to me, Chapter Master.’

  ‘Then the Emperor guide your hand, general.’

  ‘And yours.’

  Lucifer Blacks, Orion Watch, Jupiter Storm, Granite Myrmidons, Auroran Rifles, the battered and the bloody regiments of Terra stormed into the rift as if answering the first call to war. Battle horns sounded, challenging the orks to turn and face their pursuers, announcing the arrival of Imperial vengeance.

  The Fists Exemplar tanks and assault squads took the lead, drawing the fire of the walkers to open the way for the regiments. The Rhinos carried the company. Thane rode in the upper hatch of his transport, watching for the moment to disembark. His target was the walker on the western side of the shattered wall. Its turrets and cannon arm fired, but their movement hesitated between a plethora of targets, the operators within the beast distracted by the strafing of Xiphon interceptors and the arcing flight of Thamarius’ assault squads. The shells hit. The ground exploded in flame one beat behind the roaring troop carriers.

  The full strength of the Fists Exemplar drew that much closer to the colossal war machines.

  ‘Now!’ Thane voxed to the company. ‘Now now now!’

  He leapt from the turret. The rear doors slammed open. The Fists Exemplar burst from the carriers.

  The walkers found their targets at close range. They fired.

  Thane ran through a holocaust of flame.

  Imren heard the world ending behind her. It had been ending all this long night. She had had enough. If the end had come for her and for the troops under her command, then it would come for the enemy too. To the rear was the cataclysm of super-heavy cannon fire. Before her was the inferno of the horde. She expected to drown in the green tide. But by the Throne, she would go under with honour intact.

  Wind buffeted the canyon. The banners of the regiments and of the Imperium flapped. Their ragged state only made their pride the fiercer. They flew high, and they were saluted by the full-throated roar of armoured fury. Leman Russ battle cannons, Taurox autocannons, Chimera multi-lasers and heavy bolters blasted the enemy infantry to shreds. Trucks and battlewagons exploded before they could turn. Rather than a walking barrage, Imren had ordered targets over a wide range, as far as the tanks could fire with enough accuracy that they would not cause critical damage to the facility. Geysers of fire and shattered bodies erupted across the canyon-filling mob. Confusion and rage rippled out of the impacts.

  Columns of infantry charged into the orks, stabbing with bayonets even as they burned with las. Thousands of men and women howled. Driven by repeated retreats, defeats and the festering humiliation of the Proletarian Crusade, they were starved for revenge. In their anger, they were as savage as the orks. No urging was needed from the commissars. Every trooper was on a personal vendetta.

  In the foe’s chaotic response, Imren saw contradictory orders. The facility was under attack from the north, the south and in the centre. The threats were everywhere, the priority targets unclear.

  ‘Choose us, xenos filth!’ Imren shouted at the burning night. ‘We are your doom! We are the great danger to your machine!’

  As if they heard her over her cannons and their snarls, the orks reversed course. The tidal wave came for the Astra Militarum. It boiled through the passages between conduits rising from the ground and the generators. It flowed around the columns of Imperial infantry. It rushed to all sides of the armour. Carried in the current, rocking as they ran over the slower brutes, the battlewagons rumbled forward, their guns firing with greater abandon the closer they came.

  Imren was yelling with her troops. Her throat was scraped raw. She could not hear herself over the ecstatic clamour of war. She could find no words for her rage. She gave herself over to the possession of fury. But her thoughts were clear. They were a prayer to the Emperor. As the vortex enveloped her, she thought, again and again, let this have meaning. Let this have meaning.

  Let us have meaning.

  ‘No,’ said Alquist Arouar. Along the east edge of the Ascia Rift, skitarii and electro-priests paused in their tasks. ‘Physical connections must remain pending. Complete operations until that stage. Proceed no further until confirmation of the primarch’s success.’

  He moved back from the cliff edge, tracing the web of cables running from the ork energy coil to the Mechanicus assembly. The control mechanism was large. It had taken four heavy transport vehicles to haul its components to this position, and three others had carried the means of conjunction. Kilometres of metre-thick cable spread out from the assembly, reaching out to four of the coils. Each of the ork structures was the height of a Warhound-class Titan. Each released enough excess energy to incinerate a division of infantry. The four Arouar was going to tap into were only a fraction of the total number. He extrapolated that their interconnection through the larger system would make them act in concert once he had control. Whether seizing four would be enough was the question to be tested.

  He looked back at the coil, and at the network of coruscating light in the depths of the canyon. The moment was extraordinary. His multiplicity of sensors struggled to keep up with the wave of data. To be this close to the ork technology, to have the opportunity to put the theoretical work done on Mars during the war to work – to have access to the coveted machinery itself – was beyond price.

  The flood of data had an undertow. In the terms of the flesh, it was temptation. It invited Arouar to submerge his consciousness in the study of the machine. If that was the final act of his being, and the data he processed made its way back to Mars, that would be a worthy form of worship of the Omnissiah.

  Princeps Tynora 7-Galliax moved into his field of view, and recalled him to the necessities of the present. Her heavily armoured form was more massive than Arouar’s and more compact, its mechadendrites smaller and withdrawn within the armour’s shell. Her form had been forged for war at the expense of almost all exploratory function.

  She was the reminder. The Mechanicus was at war. The Fabricator General had been explicit: the orks must be defeated. Terra must be saved. Data collection was a secondary priority. Koorland was Lord Commander of the Imperium, and his orders were to be followed.

  7-Galliax gazed over Arouar’s shoulder at the assembled control machinery. ‘What is our probability of error?’ she asked.

  ‘Considerable,’ said Arouar. The precise calculation changed moment to moment as he observed and evaluated the behaviour of the installation. ‘Our mimicry of the ork technology is approximate in its effects. In terms of power, greatly lacking. Interface between xenos work and our own is a fraught procedure. Contamination and failure are inherent risks.’ He paused, looking over his shoulder to consider the progress of the work behind him. The assembly was complete. Its core was a based on a teleporter control, surrounded by giant capacitors and convertors. It had no power source of its own. It would use that of the weapon itself when connected, as long as there was no countervailing force still functioning.

  ‘What is the most favourable evaluation?’

 
‘A crude form of control. And a brief one.’ Even that, though, would be an immense victory. The data collected from that action alone could be the greatest achievement of the war this far.

  7-Galliax nodded. She returned to the edge of the cliff. Below, battle raged. Energy flares mixed with the flashes of cannon fire and detonations, and the burning streaks of las. Arouar’s auditory receptors processed vast movement, analogous to clashing waves. The pulsations from the control nexus intensified. They became angry, their rhythm irregular. Deep, geologic vibrations travelled up from the centre of the rift. Puffs of dust rose from the ground. The edge of the cliff crumbled. The great coil trembled, its crackling bursts lashing out like the strike of a serpent.

  ‘Stand by,’ Arouar commanded his forces. ‘The moment of action or of defeat approaches.’ He advanced towards the core of his control assembly. It was inert but filled with gigantic potential. He settled into the throne, mechadendrites locking into place along its back and arms, fusing him with the machine. He observed the violent aurora of the canyon. He waited for its convulsions to reveal triumph or disaster.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. The gravity fist turning Vulkan into the clapper of a bell, the impacts more and more ferocious. The ork engineer showing no care for the integrity of the structure. The gigantic force turned to the single task of destroying one warrior.

  This is still not enough, he thought.

  The enemy fears you.

  The thought emerged from his deepest core. Beneath the battering pain, the constriction, and the confusion of the senses, was the immovable, the implacable, and the calm. Vulkan pulled his consciousness down into his absolute centre. There he had the patience and the resolution of mountains. He shut out damage and suffering. In the stony dark of that calm, he regained the coherence of his thoughts.

  The enemy fears you.

  You are a threat.

  The assault grows more desperate.