by Henry Zou
‘I’m taking fire to our flanks and front!’ Roth shouted down the turret at his crew. It wasn’t necessary. The crew knew it was all close quarters from here. The Siegfried’s multi-laser swivelled and unleashed a short cyclical pulse, hosing the enemy from left to right. Ironclad toppled and the rest scattered, trying to put some distance and other bodies between themselves and the spitting turret.
‘Everyone is taking fire everywhere!’ an anonymous crewman shouted back up at Roth from the interior.
By the time the fight had boiled into a close-quarter street fight, the column had already taken some heavy damage. Every vehicle was low on ammo; they had expended thousands of rounds just fighting their way through the city towards the objective.
The siege-tank to Roth’s immediate left had its turret disabled and could only fire along its axis of advance. The Siegfried to his right had blown both tracks and was being pushed along by the Leman Russ behind it. All of the Imperial tanks Roth could see were punched through with holes, so badly in places that the hulls looked like perforated mesh. A Kurtis tank several metres in front was smoking, a gaping rocket wound in its front. Ironclad were swarming over the vehicle, dragging the crew from the hatch.
Through the seething press, Roth could make out the throne of Khorsabad Maw. The Chaos lord looked child-like in his swaddling mantle of silks, plate and chain, his porcelain hands folded neatly atop each other. He did not seem at all fazed by the fight that raged around him. If it were not for the spinal quills that rose in majestic wreaths from his shoulders, Roth might not have recognised Khorsabad Maw at all. The guards who carried him took care not to jostle his throne, even as they lashed out with their pikes. The Chaos tank on which the warlord’s sedan was mounted rolled along at a lumbering pace, gouting sheets of flame at everything before it.
The sight of the Chaos lord made Roth’s breathing sharp and shaky. He had the architect of this entire hell-fight before him. Adrenaline coiled like a spring in his belly, pressurised and loaded. It compelled him to jump up and down, fury and anticipation thrumming from his fingertips. It was like a fist-fencing prizefight. Roth’s focus became singular. His vision tunnelled in on Khorsabad Maw; everything else became distant, detached and utterly incomprehensible.
Roth sharpened his words into a psychic spear: +Minion of the Apostles Martial. I have come for you!+
The words did not seem to startle the warlord. Instead Khorsabad Maw looked at him. Even without vision slits, Roth felt the Chaos lord actually look at him. Roth couldn’t shake the feeling he had incurred the attention of the Ruinous Powers at that very moment.
Roth lifted his Inquisitorial rosette in challenge.
Khorsabad Maw leapt from his litter with a tremendous jump. He went up high like an ordnance shell before coming down sharply, bouncing from tank hull to tank hull. He was moving at speed, clearing a distance of fifty metres before Roth could draw his pistol. As Khorsabad leapt, the multiple capes of his regalia flew out behind him. The carapace armour beneath could not hide the lithe, powerful body, fine-jointed and perfectly proportioned like a dancer’s.
He landed on an FPV, blowing out its windows and crumpling it flat like an anvil.
He must weigh at least half a tonne, thought Roth. He hit like a little wrecking ball.
The Siegfried opened up all its support weapons on the Chaos lord at a distance of less than ten metres: turret multilaser, hull-mounted heavy stubber and pintle-mounted storm bolter. The deluge of tracer had drummed Khorsabad’s force field like a deluge of molten orange rain. It was so bright that Roth had to shield his eyes away from the point of contact. Despite the slight twitch of electrical static, the ammunition cycled dry before the force field could short. Immediately the Chaos lord was on them, jumping onto the front hull with enough force to rock the tank.
The Chaos lord moved with such liquid speed that Roth barely had time to throw out a timid jab with his power fist. Restricted in his turret, the punch had no weight or vinegar behind it. It agitated the force bubble and staggered Khorsabad Maw. Suddenly wary, the Chaos lord circled the turret, stomping fracture dents into the top of the tank as he moved.
‘Are you done reloading this bloody thing?’ Roth screamed at his crew as Khorsabad stalked him in circles like a hungry predator. Those dainty hands – Roth was sure – could dismantle him like boiled poultry.
He had never seen such raw power before. The Blood Gorgon who had claimed Pradal had been a behemoth of strength and towering rage. But Khorsabad Maw did not possess the visual size and power of an Astartes. Khorsabad Maw was a full head and shoulders shorter than Roth and he was not in power armour, yet there he was, about to shred the tank with his bare, delicate hands.
The multilaser suddenly popped into life, juddering a spray of incandescence at Khorsabad. The Chaos lord bounded backwards off the tank and out of sight.
Roth slapped the side of the turret with his hands. ‘Reverse the engine!’
The Siegfried lurched backwards sharply before jolting forwards again.
The siege-tank ran into and over the Chaos lord. With a dull thump, the tank went over, heavy treads grinding. Roth could hear the squeal of mangled metal, yet when Roth turned to inspect the damage, the Chaos lord was standing. Roth fumbled to reload his plasma pistol.
Faster than Roth could react, Khorsabad Maw snatched the rear of the Siegfried in his hands, fingers denting buttery holes into the metal. The Siegfried’s gas turbine engines were pushed to their limit, grunting like a wounded bull. Khorsabad fought the tank, digging his heels into the rubble. Then with an explosive cleaning motion, Khorsabad Maw launched the entire vehicle over his head and into the air.
The Siegfried came down, bottom side up, after flipping cleanly in the air. The weight of the tank virtually destroyed itself. Armour plating flew, the engine block compressed the crew compartment. Tracks flipped high into the air. If the initial shock of crash-landing had not killed the crew, the physical trauma of six tonnes of steel imploding and exploding surely would have. Roth lay prone some metres away, having been thrown out of the open turret during the tank’s spiralling descent. He had landed badly.
When Roth came to, he was sure his leg was broken. It was the pain that roused him from unconsciousness. He felt the edges of his femur grate against muscle and test his sinew.
Khorsabad Maw stalked towards him. The Chaos lord’s force field was flickering in and out, but he was otherwise unscathed. The tank had done little to hurt him.
Khorsabad Maw spoke to him. The words had a soft metallic hum to them, like a wind being blown through the tubes of an iron organ. ‘You are a dead man. I am going to kill you, I am going to break you and I am going to pour molten silver in your ears.’
With a wild cry, two Cantican Lancers wielding their sabres overhead charged at the warlord. Khorsabad Maw dealt them one soft tap to the neck each. The movement was so casual that it was barely perceptible. Both Guardsmen fell sideways, their necks so utterly shattered that their chins rested in their chests. More Cantican Colonials rushed the Chaos lord. Horse cavalry ringed a rough box around them, pushing against the Iron Ghasts who formed a mauling scrum towards their lord. Sabres clattered against vibro-pikes. Guardsmen were fighting to form a desperate ring around the wreckage of Roth’s tank. They knew full well the outcome of engaging the Chaos lord but they did it anyway. Five or six Lancers rushed at the Chaos lord. Roth didn’t want to see. He closed his eyes, propped himself up on his elbows and reloaded his pistol.
As Khorsabad turned his attention back to Roth, the inquisitor shot him. The force shield blinked but held. The Chaos lord sprinted towards him, his acceleration inhumanly fast.
Roth braced himself. Khorsabad closed the distance. Roth shot with his plasma pistol. The spheres of energy warped as they made contact with Khorsabad’s force field, dissipating with bright flashes. Blue static convulsed across the shield’s surface.
&nb
sp; A fraction away from striking distance, the Chaos lord’s head snapped up. At first Roth thought Khorsabad Maw had tripped. Khorsabad Maw, Arch-heretic of the Rimward East, did not trip.
Someone shot him. Twice.
The two bullets had passed the flickering shield as Roth’s plasma rounds tested the generators. A neat entry hole opened up on Khorsabad Maw’s left temple and exited in a fist-sized crater out his opposite cheek. Another went through his neck. At first there was no blood. Then there was lots of blood. It burst in great arterial spurts, filming the inside of Khorsabad Maw’s force bubble. Someone had shot the great Khorsabad Maw.
Roth was lying at the Chaos lord’s feet. The inquisitor watched the four-thousand-year-old Arch-heretic fall to his knees, batting his hands weakly against his ruptured head. It was all that mattered. The rest was in the Emperor’s hands now. CantiCol and Ironclad swarmed around them in a surging mess, but Roth lay down with his broken leg. He had already done all that he could for this war and no one could ask any more of him. He lay down and watched Khorsabad Maw die.
Tap-tap.
It was an instinctive double shot. Silverstein had pre-empted his shots between the electrical convulsions of the Chaos lord’s force generators.
The huntsman had just claimed his one perfect shot. Twice. But that did not matter to Silverstein. He was already tracking with his scope. An Ironclad rushed towards Roth. Silverstein put a round through his sternum. The scope moved again, floating over an Ironclad charging at Roth with a maul. The huntsman shot him down too. The shots sounded with clarity from the minaret, putting down the Ironclad around Roth’s prone form.
‘Damn!’ hissed Silverstein.
The fight condensed into a roiling, heaving mass of bodies. CantiCol and Ironclad obscured Roth from Silverstein. He tried to pan in with his bioptics, zooming his vision into grainy pixels, but he could not see Roth. The Canticans were pushing forwards, the Ironclad momentum disintegrating with the demise of their Corsair King. Further back from the fighting, the empty paper throne toppled, its fluttering pennants crushed beneath the retreating tracks of an Ironclad super-heavy. The Ironclad were flooding back down the way they came.
Silverstein tossed a crumb of rubble in frustration. There was no way he could get to Roth through the killing down there. Reluctantly, the huntsman backed away from the stumps of the balcony. There would be no following Roth. Not through the dense lines of Ironclad. And he could not leave Asingh-nu to die by himself. Silverstein had grown rather fond of him. The huntsman stole one last look at the area where Roth had been.
‘Good luck,’ he whispered. With that, Silverstein returned to Asingh-nu to wait out the end.
The remnants of the 1st Mech-Cav and their Lancer escort withdrew hurriedly once the damage had been inflicted. The armoured columns, now substantially reduced in size and leaving a wake of burning wreckages, fought their way back to the last Imperial-held district in Angkhora – the excavation site.
A squad of infantry dragged Roth into the back of a Chimera. The ride back to the green zone was crowded and bumping. He could hear the enemy weapons bashing at the outside of the vehicle and wondered if a heavy weapon might score a lucky shot and smoke them all. Every bump in the road jostled his broken leg. He blacked out several times, and the journey back was lost.
Roth came to in a darkened tunnel, with a field medic shining a torch into his eyes and applying smelling salts beneath his nose.
‘Get that away from me!’ Roth said, a tad snappier than he had meant to.
He tried to rise and realised that his left thigh had been stripped and given a field splint. His leg throbbed, but he had stimmed enough painkillers to settle the pain into a dull glow. The acrid ammonia of the smelling salts were still fuming his sinuses, rousing his pain-addled mind.
‘Why am I down here? Where are my men?’ Roth started.
‘The lady, Madame Madeline, requested you be brought down here, away from the fighting,’ the medic said, stepping away. Roth realised he was startling the young Guardsman.
‘My apologies–’ Roth began.
‘Stow it, Roth. I don’t mean to be terse but I wanted you to be here when I open the seal.’
Roth craned his neck to look behind him, squinting at the sodium lamps that lit the subterranean darkness. Madeline de Medici was standing behind him. She was wearing a curious outfit that resembled a diving suit. Roth could see her face through the porthole window of her bulbous helmet. Hazard work-suits – he had seen Guard engineers working with them in chemically treated environments. The rubbery leather overalls were lined with lead, and the wrist and ankle cuffs were seamed to the gloves and boots.
‘You look good,’ Roth said.
‘You look a mess as usual,’ Madeline said. She crossed over to him and helped him up with thickly mittened hands. Roth wobbled slightly as he adjusted to his crutches.
‘Tell me that it’s opened,’ Roth said.
‘We’re about to open it. Once Medic Subah here helps you into one of these hazard suits.’
Roth raised a questioning eyebrow as the medic began to scoop the thick overalls and boots over Roth’s leg. ‘What is this for?’
‘It’s an embryonic star we are dealing with, Roth. Elementary knowledge of the galaxy would mean that there will be radiation if the star breaks free.’
‘Elementary knowledge would also suggest that a star is likely not going to be standing behind that rock-door waiting to greet us. It should be contained, remember?’
‘We don’t know that for sure. It pays to be careful, Roth,’ she said in a serious tone that concluded all argument.
The city-fight was so close to the excavation site that they could hear the echo of guns coming down the tunnel shaft.
‘You better hurry, we have enemies at the gate,’ Roth said, screwing the porthole of his helmet tight.
The industrial tunnel-boring machine was Guard-issue and no larger than a tractor. The driver gave a thumbs-up with his hazard mitten and the nose-coned drill started. With a monotone shriek it ground into the ancient bone disc. The drill spat a spray of sparks when molten bone shavings fizzed into the air.
There was no explosion, or sudden release of cataclysmic energy as Madeline had feared. The drill punched a wide hole into the thick disc and reversed its cycle as the tractor backed away. It revealed a circular cavity in the bone, rough and smoking where the polished bone had been drilled away. There was darkness beyond, and a hole big enough for a man to fit through.
The Guard platoon in their bulky suits all aimed lasguns at the smoking darkness. Madeline, aiding Roth on his crutches, hurried over to the break in the seal.
‘There is a whole other chamber in here,’ she said, shining a phosphor torch into the entrance.
‘I’ll go first,’ Captain Silat volunteered. Madeline stepped aside to let the captain shimmy through on his belly, rifle-first. They aided Roth through, passing the crutches over and then easing him through legs-first. Madeline and several other Guardsmen followed.
Inside, the chamber was immense. A perfectly cut cube inside the crust of Aridun’s rock mantle. There was a sense of perfect symmetry to it. Roth perceived it because he had never been surrounded by an artificial structure so precise in its execution. It gave him a strange sensation of humbling vertigo.
‘The carvings, look at the carvings,’ gasped Madeline in awe as she played her torch beam along the walls and ceiling.
There on the smooth stone were the constellations of Medina and its surrounding systems. Like a cartographer’s chart, lunar trajectories, planar cycles and heliocentric orbits were mapped out in sweeping lines and curves. Roth could see carvings of the Shoal Clusters, the Kingfisher’s Belt and even constellations in regions that the Imperium had not yet explored.
‘Are these carvings accurate?’ whispered Captain Silat.
‘Do you doubt them?’
Roth asked. The captain had no answer for him.
The smooth floors were marked with carvings, too. They were standing on a map of the Medina Corridor, its planets all in proper alignment, the ley-lines across every planet’s surface forming a conduit – according to Madeline’s notes – of polar energy.
At the centre of the map, where Aridun should have been, was a bell-shaped silo. It was planted squarely in the otherwise empty chamber. The silo was about the height of a man, not particularly large by any means. Formed from verdigrised copper, its bas-relief surface was coarse with rust and mineral deposit.
‘Is that it?’ Madeline asked.
Roth limped towards the bell for a closer inspection. Slowly, he edged his hand out to touch it. The surface of it was cold. In a patch of green copper, Roth could make out carvings of crude straight-lined men dancing beneath depictions of flying ships. There were also inscriptions, written in a flowing cursive script that Roth could not understand.
‘Madeline, this is ancient.’ Roth beckoned her closer. ‘Can you read it?’
The archaeologist pondered over the bell, examining it closely. ‘Some parts. It’s written in a very poetic form of Oceanic Terran language. It describes the correlation of the dormancy of this star-ancient, to the orbit of the star system and the helio-markings of each planet.’
‘Time, Madeline, time. Please hurry,’ Roth said, reminding her of the battle that threatened to overrun them.
‘These are not the exact words. But it seems to suggest that when the planets are not in alignment, the embryonic star is in a stasis state of condensation, shrinking towards itself. It becomes dense matter. They describe it as coiling slumber.’
‘Please, for us laymen?’ Captain Silat asked.
‘Dense space matter becomes immeasurably heavy. You would not be able to budge this silo anywhere with all your industrial machines. It would also be in a stasis-state of reduction.’