by Henry Zou
By now the Archenemy had reached the first line of defence, a cordon of razor wire three coils deep. Pradal hammered rocket-propelled bolt shells into them at a range of fifty metres, throwing up a mist of blood and fragmented metal wherever he raked the gun. The enemy answered with spikes of las-fire.
Pradal’s vision began to tunnel. He smelt the methane stink of fyceline as his weapon ejected steaming-hot cartridges. A las-round punched through an empty ammo pallet by his side. Smouldering splinters of wood drizzled the air, prickly warm against his cheek.
‘Come on you fraggers. This is my house!’ Pradal shouted. He clenched the spoon trigger hard, the long burping bursts of fire muting his words into angry grimacing.
Through the cross hairs, Pradal shot an Ironclad pawing through a clutch of brush-tail reed. The shell’s mass-reactive payload ruptured its target, throwing up a fan of blood and dry brown grass. His next shot went wide, hitting an arrow-headed slab of scree. It didn’t matter. The rocket-propelled round exploded into a boulder, sending fist-sized fragments of rock shearing through the air. It killed more Ironclad than a direct hit. On and on he fired as Private Chamdri fed a looping belt of ammunition into the chamber. Throwing out an automatic stream, Pradal was ignoring the standard Guard doctrine of tightly controlled bursts. There were too many enemies for that.
Further up the incline, other cave temples fired within their interlocking arcs, throwing up a solid curtain of fire. Bolters, autocannons and heavy stubbers, their elemental roars combining into decibels so deafening it reduced Pradal’s hearing to a soft tinnitus ring.
‘–fun without me–’ came a voice, muffled as if spoken through water. Pradal only caught broken snatches of it. Turning to his side, he saw Inquisitor Roth emerge from the connective tunnel at the rear of the gunpit and slide next to him.
‘Not yet, sir! You’ve only missed the prologue,’ Pradal yelled back. At least that’s what he thought he said. He couldn’t hear a damn thing.
Nonetheless he was correct. The infantry advance had only been a screen. Ensnared in razor wire and pulverised by heavy weapons at close range, the Ironclad infantry assault had withered. Now half a kilometre off, the mechanised assault was only just closing in. Growling, fuming, howling – no less than fifty fighting patrol vehicles, gun-trucks and Chimeras supported by a full lance of KL5 Scavenger-pattern light tanks. The eight-wheeled tanks, gleaming white and up-armoured, loomed like ghosts.
‘–light tanks are going to ruin our day–’ mouthed Roth. The Guardsmen cramped in the gunpit echoed the inquisitor’s sentiments with colourful language. In a way, Pradal was glad the weapons had dulled his hearing.
‘Can you crack them?’ Roth screamed, practically directly into Pradal’s ear.
Pradal shifted the heavy bolter and lined up one of the fast-approaching KL5s under the iron sights. He unleashed a long sustained blast that sent shockwaves rippling up to his shoulders. The heavy rounds spanged off the tank’s frontal hull, erupting in a chain of small explosions. Underneath the coiling smoke and punctured plating, the tank was not affected.
Despite their sustained fire the mechanised assault rumbled on. Now only three hundred metres away, the columns began to fan out into a cavalry line. Tracers flashed into them, the shriek of solid slugs impacting on metal. A handful of FPVs and gun trucks caught fire as fuel tanks combusted, shedding peels of flaming wreckage as they spun out of control.
Enemy fire intensified, chopping into the Guard positions. The Archenemy were upon them now. Ironclad infantry dismounted from their motorised convoy, struggling up the hill against the teeth of Imperial fire. To Pradal’s right, a light tank rolled in line with the forward pill-box. Its turret slowly traversed, lining up the fortification with a chain-fed autocannon.
‘We have to move!’ shouted Roth. He grabbed Pradal by the collar and dragged him away. Pradal didn’t see what happened next. He didn’t need to. The KL5 fired and he felt rather than heard the cataclysm, as sixty kilotonnes of kinetic energy split open thirty-centimetre thick rockcrete.
Half a kilometre up, a whickering salvo of enemy fire belted the highest defensive line. Defensive breastworks of interlacing logs, sticks and clay mortar bore the ruptured scarring of heavy-calibre rounds.
Celeminé threw herself flat as a javelin of las-fire fizzed into her cave bunker. It dissolved a neat hole into the pilgrim’s shrine at the rear of the cave. Jugs, candles and blessing dolls clattered off the rock shelf.
‘Anti-armour weapons, over there, give it to me!’ Celeminé shouted at the two troopers sharing her gunpit. In the panic of war, she lost all semblance of grammatical eloquence.
‘Are you sure? The enemy are too far out of range, inquisitor, it would be a waste,’ Trooper Jagdesh shouted back.
‘Yes, yes! Just hand it over,’ Celeminé beckoned as Jagdesh belly-crawled over with a shoulder-launched missile. He was right of course; at five hundred metres, the frag missile would likely propel away in a wild spiral at two hundred. She had a different idea.
‘Load me,’ she said, chewing on her lip in contemplation. Jagdesh held the launcher tube upright as Trooper Gansükh fixed the shaped-charge warhead. As they handed her the weapon they gave her a look that implied she was totally mad.
Shouldering the rocket, Celeminé peered over the breastworks. She saw tinder sparks flashing from camouflaged gun-holes, weapons nests and fortified cave-temples. She saw Ironclad dismount from their transports to storm the defences like tiny silver beetles below.
Celeminé adjusted the cross-hairs for angle and distance. She armed the fire control lever and took aim. A solid slug cracked past her shoulder but she was too deep in psytrance to notice. Resting the launcher over the edge of the breastwork, she aligned the sights on a KL5 light tank, two hundred metres and closing.
‘Watch for the back-blast!’ she warned.
The weapon clapped with a hollow bang. A cone of pressurised exhaust jetted into the rear of the cave, the thermal gas destroying what remained of the pilgrim’s trinkets. The warhead itself trailed a coiled serpent of smoke in its wake, stabiliser fins snapping. For over two hundred metres it stayed on trajectory, until the rocket lost momentum and crazed off target.
Celeminé concentrated hard and reached out with her mind, snagging the warhead and forcing it back on path. She could feel the whirr of the gyro motor, jumping against her control as if she were cradling the rocket in her hands. It flew up in a catapulting loop before spearing back down on the KL5. Celeminé hooked it down onto the turret and the missile did what it was designed for. Its copper rocket sheath punched through the enemy plating and high explosives rocked the tank from inside out. The turret flew off. Wheels collapsed. A side hatch popped open and flaming figures staggered out of the tank, before collapsing on the rocks. They writhed like tortured beetles before lying still.
‘That’s one,’ breathed Celeminé. As if in reply, a salvo of impact slugs chopped overhead. The inquisitor and her soldiers ducked into an exit tunnel, just as a volley of autocannon rounds hammered into the cave-bunker they had held scant seconds ago. The cave collapsed behind them with a seismic bellow and a mournful shudder.
In the central command bunker, deep within the heart of the Barbican, the command post pounded with activity. Signals officers hunched at vox-bays, screaming into headsets, each louder than the next. Battalion commanders surged back and forth, relaying orders and communiqués, scraping knees against supply crates and yelling over each other’s shoulders. Overhead, explosions throbbed through the thick stone. The single sodium lamp swung on its cord, casting wild claustrophobic shadows.
Roth and Pradal dashed into the command post through one of its many connective tunnels. Between them they dragged Private Chamdri, who was crying with fear, his hands held up above him like he was already surrendering.
‘Colonel Gamburyan!’ Roth bellowed. He juiced his words with psychic amplification, so h
e could be heard above the pandemonium.
From a circle of officers huddled around a map table, Gamburyan looked up. The colonel had shed his cavalry blazer and his braces hung from his breeches. Crescents of sweat soaked the chest and arms of his undershirt. The officer excused himself from his peers.
‘Inquisitor. How do you do?’
‘I’ve just had an autocannon almost rearrange my gentlemanly graces. But I’m otherwise in perfect health, thank you. What’s the situation?’
‘The situation is under control. Nothing we haven’t seen before,’ replied the colonel as he dragged on a tabac stick.
‘Sir, the perimeter bunkers are being overrun,’ Pradal interjected.
‘As is expected, captain. Defensive nests on the north and west banks are scrapping with a mounted infantry offensive. I’ve already ordered artillery to flatten the perimeter as our forces withdraw deeper into the Barbican. Trust me, we’ve seen much worse than this.’
As if to reiterate the colonel’s assurance, the low bass rumble of artillery thrummed like muzzled thunder. Deep within the cave complex, it sounded like an avalanche rolling down the escarpment.
The fighting continued well past sundown, ebbing and flowing in intensity. Three more times that day, the Ironclad mounted a concerted offensive of mixed-order advance – mechanised columns scattered with infantry platoons. They met tenacious resistance, scythed down in ranks by the furious torrent of Imperial fire. More than once, the Ironclad overran the first-line defences, breaching the bunkers with grenades and flamer. At one stage, a squad of Ironclad had even penetrated up into the tunnel network, massacring an artillery crew before they were put down.
The Canticans had manned their posts in short shifts, fingers tense, eyes glazed and shaking with adrenaline. They had fired a total of over sixty thousand shells, missiles, las-charges and solid slugs. By evening the enemy had receded, slinking away into the dusk-bruised horizon.
Sustained assaults on the north and western banks had inflicted sizeable casualties. Major Aghajan, the battalion’s deputy commander, had been one of those killed. He and five other senior officers had been on routine inspection during a break in the assault when a single enemy mortar had claimed them all. It was an irreplaceable loss to the battalion. In all, forty-one men of the 26th were killed in that day’s fighting. Many more were wounded.
Chapter Ten
For now the field was quiet. The following morning had passed without further enemy movement, or even gas or shell attack. Yet the weariness of battle was still fresh in Roth’s mind, while his ears were ringing with the hum of post-battle. At night the ringing had become so persistent that Roth had not slept, and now he welcomed the quiet. The fighting at the Barbican was by far the most confrontational and desperate siege he could have imagined.
He stood on the flat mesa plateau of the Barbican, watching the sweeping expanse of knotted rock that fell away like a stretched grey blanket. So high up, the wind fluttered against Roth’s plating, a stirring buffet that numbed the tips of his ears and nose. It carried with it a fine ashy dust from the tomb flats between Buraghand and the western coast, coarse and cold. Before the war, the ascent of the cave temples had been known as the Pilgrim’s Stairway.
It was not that any more. The bodies of the Archenemy littered the slopes like beached carcasses, tangled in razor wire and scattered between stones. Dark, scorched rings and jag-toothed craters scarred the earth. The scene was still and grey, trailing curls of smoke like every battlefield Roth had ever surveyed. But in its own way Cantica was also different. There was no hope here; the fighting was done, like the curtains had already fallen. The atmosphere was quiet, contemplative and deeply morose.
This was where he was going to die.
Roth picked up a wedge of flint and threw it towards the horizon where the Archenemy amassed. Out there, four hundred thousand soldiers of the Ruinous Powers prowled the landscape, burning and butchering. His work here was done. He would give the Conclave what he found and he would be allowed to die here, at least with some dignity and defiance.
He heard footsteps clapping up the tunnel steps that led onto the plateau. Roth presumed it was Celeminé, returning with the readouts from the cipher machine. But it wasn’t just her.
The hatch door, camouflaged with a nest of thorn-bush, slid aside. Colonel Gamburyan climbed from the hatch, dragging on tabac as always. Celeminé emerged after him, clutching a sheaf of wafers.
‘Marvellous view from here,’ said Roth, turning back to stare into the distance.
‘Always good to see the results of a hard scrap,’ Colonel Gamburyan nodded as they moved to join Roth at the edge of the precipice.
‘How many did we lose today, colonel?’
‘We lost Corporal Alatas in the infirmary just five minutes ago. He lost a leg from a tank round and bled out, poor bastard. That makes forty-one today.’
‘Oh,’ said Roth, his shoulders visibly sagging.
Gamburyan proffered a little envelope of waxed paper. ‘Would you like a stick of tabac? You look terrible.’
Roth laughed at the soldier’s blunt observation as he drew a stick. Roth had not seen a mirror in so long. He dreaded what he would look like, if he ever saw one again.
‘Where do you keep finding these anyway?’ sighed Roth.
At first, the big man almost looked sheepish. ‘Votive offerings. You’d be surprised how many pilgrims had left tabac for the pleasure of the God-Emperor.’
The inquisitor snorted. ‘The Emperor provides.’
A rustle of paper behind him reminded Roth of Celeminé’s presence. His mind had grown absent of late. It was not at all like him. He turned to her and bowed deeply.
‘How rude of me. I’m sorry, madame, was there something you wished to speak to me about?’ Roth asked.
She nodded, oddly straight-faced. Celeminé handed Roth the sheaf of papers. ‘I have the decrypted text from Delahunt’s research log.’
Roth took the papers and flicked through them absent-mindedly, not really reading anything. ‘What does he say?’ Roth asked, looking up from behind the wafers.
‘Delahunt seems to have thought the Old Kings cannot be on Cantica.’
Roth shrugged. ‘I thought as much.’
‘You did?’ Celeminé asked.
‘If they were, do you not think the Archenemy would have found them by now? Cantica has been their playground for well over a month.’
‘I did find something of importance in his research,’ said Celeminé. She rifled through the pages until she found it and held it up for Roth to see.
‘Here. He writes that, “It is with some degree of certainty, judging by historical evidence and geological composition, that relics from the War of Reclamation do not reside on Cantica. Rather, the myth of the Old Kings became a pillar of institutional identity, so embedded within the historical collective and creational narrative of the planet, that it has become difficult to separate myth from reality.”’
‘What does that mean?’ Colonel Gamburyan asked.
‘It means our work here is done. The Old Kings must reside on one of the other core worlds, colonel, one of the core worlds under the jurisdiction of another Conclavial member.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ Celeminé interjected.
Roth thought for a while. It was not that he needed to work out what he needed to do. No, he had given that much thought already. It was how he was going to propose it to Celeminé.
‘We stay here, madame. The colonel could do with our help, I am sure.’
‘We… stay?’ Celeminé repeated. She found it hard to roll the words off her tongue. Even Colonel Gamburyan was surprised. He let the stub of his tabac slip out of his fingers to be carried away by the wind, spinning and tumbling.
‘Yes. Of course. We are inquisitors. We fight the enemies of mankind until we die. That is our role. W
e accepted that the moment we became what we are. What good would fleeing do?’ said Roth. He couldn’t look into Celeminé’s eyes. Instead he kept his gaze level with the horizon.
Celeminé stopped talking. By the expression on her face, she was not prepared for his answer at all.
‘Inquisitor. You do not have to do this,’ the colonel began.
‘But we must. What other choice do we have? We cannot reach the stratocraft. Not surrounded as we are. Better to die here fighting than to be shot like dogs running.’
‘This is about Silverstein isn’t it?’ Celeminé snapped.
Roth didn’t say anything.
Celeminé shook her head softly. ‘Let me convene with Gurion.’
‘If you must. But I do not think the choice is ours anyway. Out there, the four hundred thousand killers disagree with your prognosis.’ Roth gestured into the distance.
‘I-I see your logic. But I will ask Lord Gurion as I relay him our findings,’ Celeminé replied in unconvinced, yet soft deference.
‘As you wish,’ said Roth finally. He took a drag of his tabac and turned away without another word.
At one hour past midnight, when the night was at its coolest and quietest, the Ironclad attacked again. A line of infantry waded out from the shadows of the prairie, flanked by fast-moving FPVs in a sweeping pincer. The forward observation bunkers, barely repaired from the previous day’s fighting, engaged the Archenemy at a range of no more than fifty metres. Above, the artillery banks on the crest of the Barbican did not fire, their muzzles threatening but silent. Ammunition was low as it was, and far too precious to squander on anything short of enemy armour.
By all accounts of the Guard at his side, Inquisitor Roth fought furiously. He led a thirty-man platoon on a counter-attack, bayonets fixed. They hooked around wide to pinch the flanks of the Ironclad pincer, disrupting their advance with enfilade fire. The Canticans under Roth’s command fought like men with nothing to lose. It should have been suicide, unarmoured Guardsmen on open terrain exchanging shots with Ironclad fighting patrol vehicles. They hammered away with shoulder-mounted rockets, and when those ran dry, they charged. It was rough, dirty fighting. Hand-to-hand, face-to-face.