by Henry Zou
By the time Vandus careened the vehicle down Angkhora’s gate causeway, the pillars of the Blood Gorgon’s legs were blackened and scorched. Fluid sprayed from fissures in the ceramite with each thundering step, either blood or machine fluid.
‘Keep him off us, this is going to be a tight stretch!’ Barq shouted from up front. Roth turned to see for himself and swore. The causeway was a broad and unbroken ribbon that snaked down two kilometres. There was nowhere to turn.
The Blood Gorgon caught them. He closed the distance with one last sprint and then leapt into the air with monumental effort. He swung the double-handed chainsword down in an executioner’s arc and took the entire rear plating off the Centaur in one crumpled sheet. Without pause, his next strike, a horizontal backhand, sheared the roll-cage off the Centaur with a rending shriek of metal and buzzing chain teeth, throwing out a fan of orange sparks.
Roth rolled backwards and kicked away lamely. The Blood Gorgon punched at Roth, a downwards hammer-fist. Roth managed to shrimp away from the ceramite fist as it bashed a crater into cab decking.
Roth would never forget what happened next. He would owe his life to it.
Captain Pradal rose before the Traitor Marine. He stood between Roth and the towering, armoured giant. The junior officer drew the bolt pistol and fired, two shots, point-blank into the Blood Gorgon’s helmet. The grille dented and warped under the impact of the shots. The force was enough to whip the Marine’s head backwards.
The staggering giant lurched, turning his head away. A gauntlet swung out, seizing the captain’s head between the vice of his segmented digits. Pradal didn’t even scream as the Blood Gorgon squeezed with iron-grinding strength. The good captain died without a word.
Pradal’s blood washed over Roth in a blinding mist of red.
Roth knew he had perhaps one heartbeat, perhaps two, before the opening was gone. The inquisitor stopped thinking – thinking would slow him down. He drove himself forwards and threw the single most important punch of his life, a lunging, overhand right. His Tang War power fist impacted into the Blood Gorgon’s sternum, at the point where the buttressing cables of his abdomen met the ceramite of his lower pectoral slabs.
There was a snap of negatively charged atoms colliding as Roth drove his fist into the giant’s chest. The Blood Gorgon roared. The decibels actually blew out his chest speakers. Roth doubted he would ever have full hearing in his right ear again. The power fist splintered the fused calcium growth of the giant’s ribcage and parted dense cables of muscle. It wouldn’t be enough to kill him.
Roth drove his glove upwards, sharply and to the right. He ruptured the Blood Gorgon’s secondary heart before spearing for the primary.
Finally, with a tectonic shudder, the Blood Gorgon died. He slid like an avalanche off the gaping rear of the Centaur.
Roth sagged to his knees, blinking the blood back from his eyes. It was getting into his nose, his mouth, sinking into his teeth. None of it was his own. As the V-8 Centaur pulled out of the final stretch of causeway from Angkhora, Roth keeled over onto his side, completely and utterly spent.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘The Archenemy knew. They knew all along. They were just waiting for their time,’ Inquisitor Barq murmured listlessly.
‘They tricked us then. They outplayed us,’ Roth agreed, staring vacantly into the distance.
They sat on a mesa, sixty kilometres north of Aridun Civic. Far enough from the savannah and deep enough into the wasteland to be surrounded on all sides by undulating dust plains. It was early dawn, and the sands gleamed a bone-polished ivory, the ridgelines ribbed by morning shadow. The V-8 Centaur, or rather the mangled remains of it, was parked some metres away, empty of fuel. They had ridden the vehicle as far it would go, as far as it would carry them from the southern belt. The body of Captain Pradal lay close by covered in a plastek sheet, his arms folded over his chest and rifle.
‘Tell me,’ Roth began. ‘Tell me again, how this came to be.’
Barq flexed his fists and closed his eyes, as if shutting out memories he didn’t want to relive. ‘Five days. Five days ago, they hit Aridun. Damn, were they good. They took out the communications first, took out the listening stations, comms towers, broadcast ports. Everything. Completely shut this place down.’
Roth scooped up another handful of sand and rubbed it into the dried blood on his armour, scouring away the red-tinged flecks. ‘Then the Guard?’
‘Yes. Without communications, isolated garrisons can’t muster much defence.’
‘Then the southern belt?’
‘Yes. Before cleaning up what isolated settlements lay outside the savannah region,’ Barq said, irritably. They were all feeling volatile. Roth felt the same way, the urge to curl up and sleep, and never to wake up, was overwhelming.
‘One company of Traitor Legionaries, you say?’ Roth pressed again.
‘In my opinion, at least one company, no more than two. Any more than two hundred Space Marines and there wouldn’t have been much of Aridun left.’
It was evident in retrospect. It was always evident in retrospect. The Archenemy had been meticulous in planning. They had seized Medina, one planet after another, preparing to wake the Old Kings, staying one step ahead of the Imperial resistance. Meanwhile, they had gathered mounting forces on Aridun, beyond the demarcation line, waiting. Lulling High Command, drawing resources away from Aridun onto other war fronts. Waiting until the alignments of the planets were true and proper before dispensing the Traitors to cleanse the entire inhabitable stretch of Aridun.
‘Is everyone dead?’ Roth hazarded to ask.
‘Some fled into the wastelands, but without water, I doubt they would have lasted long. For those who do, I have no doubt that they’ll run into Ironclad land forces coming across the subcontinent.’
‘That’s very bad indeed,’ Roth said. It was quite the understatement.
Barq opened his eyes and levelled his gaze at Roth. ‘It was nice of you to come back for me. It’s good to know that my friends do not think I’m trying to kill them any more.’
Roth looked away, suddenly aware of his friend’s inference. ‘I’m sorry, Vandus. I had no choice.’
‘I’ll beat you thoroughly when this is all over,’ Barq said, breaking into a slight smile.
Roth opened his arms and chortled softly. ‘Vandus, if this is ever over, I’ll gladly give you a free shot. You’ll need the handicap if we spar again.’
‘What do we do now?’ Madeline said suddenly. They were the first words she had spoken for several hours. Since she had seen Pradal killed.
‘As strange as it may sound, by the God-Emperor’s providence, we are fortunate,’ Roth announced confidently.
Madeline and Barq both looked at him as if he had gone entirely insane.
‘I will contact Gurion by vox, and request the immediate deployment of standby forces from the Ninth Route Fleet. Our first priority is to reclaim Angkhora from the Blood Gorgons, before the Ironclad can consolidate their grip on the region.’
‘How do you know the Archenemy do not have the Old Kings in their possession already?’ Madeline asked.
‘My dear,’ Roth began, ‘do you think any of us would still be alive if they did?’
The Ironclad on Aridun were mobilising. Across the Punic subcontinent, two thousand kilometres across the fossil plains, the armoured and motorised columns of the Archenemy trawled across the desert. Beyond the Cage Isles, a fleet of iron submersibles and propeller-driven barges set sail across the saline channels. From the furthest salt flats of west Aridun, to the endorheic basins in the continental tip, the Ironclad emerged from hiding, converging on the Fortress Chains.
Four figures, small and inconsequential, watched the mobilisation from the crest of a sand dune. The bone dust clung to their shaggy reed camouflage in powdery white. They looked to be nothing more than a bank of mossy
taproot.
‘We’re moving out with them,’ Silverstein declared.
‘What, with them?’ Temughan asked, pointing into the horizon with a dirty finger. Before them, the Ironclad were deploying in force. There was no need for camouflage netting or concealment any more. Even if they did, it would not have concealed the thousands of vehicles amassing on the continental sand sheets. Bone dust rose in solid, expanding walls.
‘Surely not,’ Asingh-nu echoed.
‘It would not be possible, we’d all be killed,’ Apartan argued. ‘How would we even follow their advance across the salt pans?’
‘Come on, men, where is your sense of adventure? The calling of Imperial endeavour? Plains to be conquered, worlds to be liberated,’ grinned Silverstein half-jokingly.
The huntsman shimmied back on his stomach, away from the ridgeline, before rising to his feet. He noticed his boots were dirty, and he remembered he had not taken them off since leaving the Carthage for Cantica, all those months ago. How long had it been? Silverstein couldn’t remember.
He crossed over to his quad-bike. The bare metal had been baking under the suns and was hot to the touch. Silverstein secured the jerry cans of fuel and water on the saddle-pouches, checking the locking straps for friction. The bullpup autogun he had liberated from the Ironclad Naik was buttoned down, running parallel to the bike’s rear chain and sprocket for quick access. Silverstein hadn’t stolen the bullpup at all; the weapon still bore the Munitorum script and serial of a Bastion Ward regiment weapon. Silverstein was simply returning the weapon to the Imperium.
Silverstein smoothed out his cloak of desert taproots and tied it over his head. ‘In all seriousness, gentlemen, the Ironclad are on the move. We can hide, but there will soon be nowhere to go. Have you thought about that?’
Apartan plodded through the bone dust and tugged the netting of xerophyte moss and tangle root from his bike. He too secured the camo shawl over his shoulders. ‘If the Archenemy are getting ready for a fight, I don’t want to miss it.’
Temughan and Asingh-nu crossed over to join them with some trepidation.
‘If we must,’ they chorused.
Silverstein laughed. ‘Follow my lead. We’ll make it fun, like tracking big game. Really big game.’
The call to deployment reached Gurion by long-range vox just minutes before his arrest.
Lord Gurion placed down the vox horn as the door to his stateroom was breached by provost marshals. Six provosts stormed into Gurion’s room, racking shotguns and barking at him. Following them at an unhurried pace was Lord Marshal Khmer, a cape thrown casually over one shoulder. At his heels came a trio of black-coated political commissars, clutching sheaves of edict warrants.
Gurion simply raised his hands.
‘Lord marshal, you’ve come for me, I see?’ Gurion said.
‘We’ll be asking the questions now, inquisitor,’ Khmer sniffed haughtily.
‘Oh I see. Can we do this after we deploy the forces onto Aridun? I have just received word from my Task Force that the situation has become most dire.’
‘No. Gurion, never. You are under arrest by power of military law,’ Khmer said. He clicked his fingers at a waiting commissar. The political officer clopped one step forwards with his polished jackboots and read from the warrant in his hands.
‘Inquisitor Forde Gurion. You are hereby charged with conspiracy to impede sound military strategy. Until your date of hearing, you are to be confined to the brig with temporary suspension of any and all powers. By written rule of Section 22 of the 599 Military Charter.’
‘I’m an inquisitor,’ laughed Gurion. ‘Your military laws do not apply to me.’
Khmer smiled. ‘That may or may not be true. It will be up to a council of sufficient authority to decide. Until then, you are to be confined for your own good, and the good of the Medina Campaign. I’m terribly sorry, but you will not be able to use your Imperial authority to deploy any of my troops until this matter is cleared.’
‘Well played, Khmer,’ said Gurion, nodding slowly.
The lord marshal dipped his head. ‘I am mobilising all resources to transit for the Bastion Stars as we speak. When and if this matter is decided by council, then you can feel free to pull my troops back from the Bastion and return here to Medina, in your own time.’
Gurion drummed his mechanical hand on his desk impatiently. ‘Are you finished, lord marshal?’
Khmer narrowed his eyes warily. The change in Gurion’s tone foreshadowed something else. Suddenly, the half-dozen provosts he had brought with him didn’t seem quite enough.
Gurion rose from his seat. ‘You don’t challenge me, Khmer. That is your flaw. I had long predicted you would try something like this. But it doesn’t really matter.’
In the corridor outside the stateroom, there was the sound of a scuffle – harsh, angry voices followed by the muffled grunts of men. There was a smacking sound and the thump of something hitting the carpet.
Khmer suddenly looked uncomfortable. He wasn’t sneering any more.
‘Don’t mind them. Those are just Inquisitorial stormtroopers overpowering the provost marshals you posted outside. Don’t worry, my men are very well trained and wouldn’t hurt yours unnecessarily.’
‘Is this a mutiny?’ Khmer snorted.
‘Of course not. It’s a denouement.’ Gurion pointed at the lord marshal with his mechanical hand. ‘Varuda Khmer. I have evidence beyond doubt that you have used your rank and authority in the perversion of Inquisitorial duties.’
The provosts and commissars in the stateroom edged away from the lord marshal. The uncertainty slackened their faces. Shotguns aimed at Gurion listed slowly towards the floor.
‘You infiltrated my Conclave with a compromised inquisitor. Whether you blackmailed her or what you offered her is beyond my care. You have tried several times to murder my staff. I’ve had enough, Khmer. The campaign will be better off without you.’
The lord marshal began to back towards the door. ‘We will see what the council has to say after they’ve heard your evidence.’
‘I don’t need anyone to hear my evidence. I am the Inquisition. The only reason I kept you alive was because I did not want to needlessly kill a veteran officer in the middle of war. I kept you alive, Khmer, remember that.’
The lord marshal snatched for the Lugos autopistol at his belt.
But Gurion was already armed. The brass tip of his index finger – the finger pointed squarely at Khmer the whole time – hinged upwards. A monofilament thread shot out and penetrated his chest, barely disturbing the fibres of Khmer’s jacket. The monofilament uncoiled inside the lord marshal’s ribcage. Massive internal bleeding and trauma to his internal organs sent him down immediately. Lord Marshal Khmer fell onto his face and never moved again. With a flick, the monofilament fibre retracted, leaving a pin-prick wound that resealed airtight. Not a drop of blood was spilled.
‘Put down your guns,’ Gurion said to the provosts. The men hurled their shotguns down obediently.
‘Khmer is done. Temporary authority of the 9th Route fleet is ceded to me. Does that conflict with military law, commissars?’
The political officers shook their heads. ‘No, sir, it does not.’
‘Good. In that case, give order for the chief of staff to mobilise and deploy to Aridun, according to the contingency plan. Don’t stand there nodding, go!’ shouted Gurion.
The commissars clicked their heels sharply, saluted and ushered each other from Gurion’s stateroom.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Last War began six days after the helical-lunar cycle. When the fringe world of Naga aligned precisely with the equator of Baybel, and the helio-lines of the core worlds drew a straight plane across the Medina Corridor.
All Imperial military power in the system was committed. Every last fighting man.
A quick-reaction
force of one hundred and twenty thousand Cantican Colonials on standby in orbit above Aridun was immediately deployed. Lord General Faisal, operations commander, wrote, ‘In the event of a full-scale defensive, Angkhora would be the target for this war of attrition but holding the Fortress Chain would be the key to victory.’
In the days preceding the reactional deployment, a further sixteen divisions of CantiCol Guardsmen hurtled down from the sky in a storm of troop carriers, braving the lashing storm of aerial defence across the Fortress Chains. Artillery, cavalry and, above all, infantry landed in masses. The Hasdrubel Fifth, heavy infantry from the neighbouring Seleucid subsector and elements of the famed Aegina Prestige regiment were committed to the Last War. Four hundred and sixty thousand men, all told.
The company of Traitor Marines holding Angkhora was dislodged only after a relentless campaign of aerial superiority. Imperial Marauder bombers of the Ninth Route Fleet strafed the dead city, pounding the prehistoric structures with kilotonnes of incendiary explosives. Even then, it took the combined strength of the standby reaction force to besiege and reclaim Angkhora and the site of the Old Kings. Casualties, even during the formative stages of the war, were very high.
Imperial scholars would later attribute the initial deployment of the Last War to air superiority; air superiority provided by the Ninth Route Fleet that the Archenemy did not have. Without it, the landing forces could not have been inserted directly onto the Fortress Chain. They could not have threatened the Traitor Marines with ground forces alone. Certainly, they could not have consolidated their position in the face of Ironclad deca-legions advancing across the subcontinent.
It was the greatest providence of the God-Emperor. Lord General Faisal highly commended the work of Inquisitor Obodiah Roth, Inquisitor Vandus Barq and Professor Madeline de Medici for the intelligence, which facilitated the Imperial deployment to Aridun before the Fortress Chains could be consolidated by Ironclad forces manoeuvring inland. Inquisitor Felyce Celeminé was posthumously awarded the High Lords’ Order of Gallantry for her work and remembered for her death at the hands of the Archenemy, so that others could live.