by Mike Lee
Several of the pod’s ramps had managed to open fully, while others, like Nemiel’s, had been blocked by piles of debris. Brother-Sergeant Kohl was braced against the side of the pod and helping free Brother Vardus and his cumbersome heavy bolter.
Brother Askelon came around the side of the pod closest to Nemiel. His powerful servo arm deployed above his shoulder with a faint whine as he placed his feet carefully among the rubble. ‘Stand clear!’ he called, then opened the gripping claw of his arm and extended it against the side of the pod. Servo-motors hummed with gathering power. Askelon slid backwards a few centimetres; Nemiel stepped forward and tried to help brace him. Then, with a grating of powdered masonry and a groan of metal, the pod shifted slowly upright. ‘Well done, brother,’ Nemiel said, clapping the Techmarine on the shoulder as the pod’s ramps fully deployed. ‘Sergeant Kohl, find us a way out of here.’
‘Aye, Brother-Redemptor,’ Kohl answered, his tone all business now. He snapped orders to his squad, and the Astartes went to work. Already, Nemiel could hear the snap and crackle of lasgun fire outside, followed by the hollow bark of bolters.
Within seconds the squad was scrambling up a fallen slab of permacrete to reach the building’s ground floor. Flaming debris fell amongst the Astartes like stray meteors; small pieces clattered harmlessly off their armour. At ground level, Sergeant Kohl pulled an auspex unit from his belt and took a compass reading in the smoky haze. ‘Orders?’ he asked Nemiel.
The Redemptor made a snap decision. ‘We go north,’ he said to Kohl.
Kohl checked the glowing readout once more, nodded curtly, and headed off into the blackness. The Astartes didn’t bother fumbling about for a doorway – when he encountered an inner wall he barrelled right through the flimsy flakboard with scarcely a pause. In moments, the squad saw a large square of hazy light up ahead. Kohl led the squad through the viewport at a run, emerging onto the street outside in a shower of glittering glass shards and a billow of dirty grey smoke.
They were on a narrow avenue running roughly east-west through the grey zone. Piles of debris and dozens of blackened bodies dotted the road as far as Nemiel could see. Most of the buildings fronting the street were little more than hollowed-out shells, their facades blackened and cratered by small arms fire. A smashed six-wheel military transport lay on its side a few dozen metres to the squad’s right, its tyres still burning. The air reverberated with the crackle and thump of weapons fire and the ominous whistle of mortar rounds arcing overhead. The roar of petrochem engines echoed up a narrow cross-street just twenty metres to the squad’s left. Nemiel recognised the sound at once: Imperial military APC’s, moving fast. It sounded like four vehicles – a full mechanised platoon.
‘Ambush pattern epsilon!’ He called out, waving half the squad to the opposite side of the street. Kohl followed after the warriors, his bolt pistol scanning for threats. Brother Marthes knelt behind a pile of blackened rubble to Nemiel’s immediate left, bracing his heavy bolter atop the pile. The Redemptor drew his bolt pistol and hit the activation stud on his crozius aquilum. The double-headed eagle atop the staff blazed with crackling blue energies.
The APCs reached the corner in seconds, rumbling fast up the cross-street towards the front line a few more kilometres north. They were lightly-armoured Testudo personnel carriers, armed with a turret auto-cannon and capable of transporting a full squad of troops. Their drivers were going all-out, kicking up thick plumes of black exhaust from their engine decks.
The Dark Angels had gone to ground with admirable speed and skill, concealing their presence behind piles of debris or in the entry niches of several ruined buildings. Just as the APCs appeared, one of the Astartes stepped out of cover and raised the muzzle of his stubby meltagun. Brother Marthes brought the antitank weapon to bear on the flank of the lead Testudo and touched the firing stud, unleashing a blast of high-intensity microwaves that converted the vehicle’s metal hull into superheated plasma. The APC’s fuel tanks exploded in a ground-shaking whump, blowing the Testudo apart in a shower of blazing fragments.
Brother Vardus opened fire a second later, raking the rear Testudo with an extended burst of heavy bolter fire. The mass-reactive rounds exploded against the APC’s armoured hide and gouged craters in its solid tyres. Here and there the rounds found a seam in the armour plates and penetrated into the APC, wreaking bloody havoc on the men crammed within. The Testudo lurched to a stop, smoke pouring from the holes punched in its side.
The two middle APC’s swerved left to try and avoid the burning wreck of the lead vehicle and escape the kill zone. Their turrets slewed to the right and spat a stream of high-explosive shells down the street, blasting more holes into the burnt-out buildings and digging up sprays of permacrete from the rubble piles. Brother Marthes switched his aim and fired at the next APC in line, but this time his shot went a little high, striking the vehicle’s small turret and ripping it open. Autocannon shells cooked off in the blast of heat, wreathing the Testudo’s upper deck in angry flashes of red, and the APC abruptly lost speed. The second Testudo, moving too fast to stop, rear-ended the damaged vehicle and spun it ninety degrees to the right, nearly flipping it over.
Vardus levelled the heavy bolter at the two immobilised APCs and hammered them with short, precise bursts. Nemiel watched the rear ramp of the second Testudo come down and raised his bolt pistol. As the panicked squad fled from the stricken vehicle, he and the rest of the squad cut them down with a volley of bolter fire. The last of the rebels had yet to hit the ground when Marthes fired another shot at the damaged APC, this time scoring a direct hit and immolating the men trapped inside.
It was a far cry from the old tales of chivalry he’d been taught on Caliban, Nemiel thought, surveying the carnage with clinical detachment. War was about butchery, plain and simple. Notions of glory came long afterward, he’d come to realise, imagined by those who had never seen the reality with their own eyes.
Nemiel’s vox-bead crackled to life. ‘All units, location and status check,’ Force Commander Lamnos said tersely.
Brother-Sergeant Kohl and two other squad members dashed down the street to check the wrecked vehicles and ensure there were no survivors. Nemiel called up a map of the landing zone on his tactical display and checked his coordinates. They’d come down just a kilometre and a half north of the tramway, close to the forge’s southern entrance. ‘This is squad Alpha Six. Status is green. Awaiting orders,’ he replied, providing their coordinates.
‘Affirmative, Alpha Six. Stand by,’ Lamnos answered at once. Less than a minute later the Force Commander came back. ‘Alpha Six, we’re getting a signal that Echo Four’s pod is down but failed to deploy. Enemy forces are closing in on Echo’s location from the south. Link up with Echo Four and ascertain its status immediately. Stand by for coordinates.’
Nemiel compared the coordinates to his tactical map. Echo Four had come down half a kilometre to the southeast, closer to the forge complex. ‘We’re on our way. Alpha Six out,’ he replied.
Kohl and his warriors returned from the killing ground. ‘There’s mechanised infantry with Testudo APCs coming up the street from the direction of the tramway,’ he reported.
‘They’ll have to wait,’ Nemiel said. ‘We’re heading east. Echo Four is in some kind of trouble; the pod probably came down inside another building, and the ramps won’t deploy. We’ve got to get there before the rebels do.’
Kohl nodded his helmeted head and addressed the squad. ‘Askelon, you wanted a nice walk in the sunshine, so don’t let me hear you crying if you can’t keep up. Brother Yung and Brother Cortus, you’re on point. Let’s move!’
Without a word the squad rose from cover and set off east down the street, their boltguns sweeping ahead and to the flanks in search of targets. Nemiel fell into step with Techmarine Askelon and Brother Marthes beside him, while Kohl and three other squad members brought up the rear. Farther east, the grey wall of the forge complex rose above the smoking ruins of the grey zone. Tall, blinking t
owers made a metal forest beyond that forbidding barrier, girding the flanks of the bound volcano at the heart of the Mechanicum’s domain. Plumes of orange and black smoke hung heavily about the complex, giving the place a nightmarish cast.
We came all this way to defend that? Nemiel grinned ruefully within the confines of his helmet. It hardly seemed like the kind of place worth dying for.
SIX
ANGELS OF DEATH
Caliban
In the 200th year of the Emperor’s Great Crusade
‘THIS IS EPSILON Three-Niner Heavy, lifting from zone four! I’m taking fire!’
The panicked vox-transmission cut through the hectic buzz of conversation in the fortress strategium, tearing Zahariel’s attention from the glowing panes of after-action reports projected above his desk. Gritting his teeth, he blanked his hololith display and stepped swiftly from his office into the bustling chamber beyond.
It was mid-afternoon of the fourteenth day since the insurgents’ global campaign began and so far the violence showed no signs of abating. The strategium had been in constant operation ever since, staffed by a mix of Legion officers and aides and senior commanders of the Jaeger regiments in action across Caliban. The men and women of the Jaegers struggled to cope with the constantly shifting nature of the enemy attacks, and the pressure of maintaining civil order while simultaneously trying to come to grips with insurgent cells that avoided direct combat as much as possible. They consumed pots of bitter tea and stim capsules and tried to match the stoic calm of the Astartes that loomed in their midst, but he could feel their frustration as the cargo hauler’s distress call broadcast from the vox-unit across the room. Zahariel caught sight of Luther standing near the vox-unit, listening intently. So far as he knew, the Master of Caliban hadn’t left the strategium for days on end.
A new voice crackled over the vox as Zahariel worked his way across the chamber. He heard a Legion air defence controller say, ‘Epsilon Three-Niner Heavy, be advised, combat air patrol has been alerted and is vectoring on your position. Time to rendezvous is thirty seconds. What are you seeing?’
Epsilon’s civilian pilot came back over the vox at once. ‘My co-pilot says he’s seeing red flashes to the north, out beyond the perimeter. My starboard engine’s been hit. Temperature is spiking! I need to divert and make an emergency landing!’
‘Negative, Three-Niner Heavy,’ the controller shot back. ‘Increase speed and altitude. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to land.’ Zahariel shook his head in irritation. The civilian pilots always tried to set their transports back down at the first sign of trouble, not realising that turning around and slowing down for landing only made them more vulnerable to ground fire. Thunder reverberated through the room as the combat air patrol roared past Aldurukh’s spires, heading north at full speed.
‘What are the rebels going after this time?’ Zahariel asked as he reached Luther’s side.
‘A Type II cargo hauler loaded with ten thousand tonnes of promethium,’ Luther replied grimly, his eyes fixed on the vox-unit’s grille. ‘They couldn’t have picked a better target.’
Zahariel’s eyes widened. Epsilon Three-Niner was, for all intents and purposes, a flying bomb. A direct hit on one of the pressurised promethium tanks in its cargo holds would turn the ship into a massive fireball, scattering wreckage and blazing fuel all over the northern landing zones. He thought of all the fuel substations and warehouses in that sector and tried to calculate the devastation such an explosion would cause.
The vox-unit crackled once more. This time, the deep voice of an Astartes sounded from the grille. ‘This is Lion Four; I’ve got a visual on Epsilon Three-Niner at this time. Stand by.’ Moments later, the pilot spoke again. ‘Contact! I’ve spotted a group of rebels operating a lascannon from the back of a civilian truck two kilometres outside the perimeter. Engaging now.’
‘Hurry up, Lion Four!’ shouted Epsilon Three-Niner. ‘We just got hit again!’
Lion Four didn’t respond. Seconds ticked by, and Zahariel realised the strategium had fallen silent. Then, moments later, the vox crackled once again.
‘This is Lion Four. Target destroyed. Repeat, target destroyed. Epsilon Three-Niner is clear.’
A relieved cheer went up from the Jaeger officers and Legion aides; any victory, however small, was worth celebrating under the circumstances. The Astartes in the chamber received the news impassively and continued with their work. Zahariel took a long breath and glanced at Luther. ‘The rebels are getting bolder,’ he observed. ‘That’s the third attempt in the last twelve hours.’
The Master of Caliban frowned thoughtfully. ‘We need to push the perimeter out another five kilometres or so, and increase our mobile patrols. Sooner or later they’ll realise that vehicle-mounted lascannons are too easy to spot and switch to shoulder-fired missile launchers, which will make our job that much harder.’
Zahariel nodded in agreement. So far they had been fortunate; two shuttles had been shot down over the past two weeks, but none of the larger transports had suffered more than minor damage. Clearly the rebels hoped to interdict all orbital traffic from Aldurukh to the waiting supply ships above Caliban, but Luther was determined to continue operations despite increasingly loud protests from the civilian pilots who were hauling the cargo. Of greater concern to Zahariel was the fact that no new supplies were coming in to replace those being launched into orbit.
‘We have four Jaeger regiments in training that are advanced enough to perform basic combat patrols,’ the Librarian suggested. ‘We could put them on perimeter patrol immediately.’
‘What about line regiments?’ Luther asked.
Zahariel shook his head. ‘All of our combat-capable units have been deployed. Right now the Jaegers are stretched thin.’ He paused. ‘We have almost an entire Scout chapter ready for action, brother. We could send them out in pairs to patrol the countryside around Aldurukh and hunt down rebel weapon teams instead of calling up the trainees.’
Luther seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘If the tempo of rebel attacks increase, I’ll consider it,’ he said at length. ‘In the meantime, set up a patrol rotation for the training regiments.’
‘Very well,’ Zahariel replied. He tried to keep any trace of exasperation from his voice. Violence had raged across Caliban for two weeks, and the Dark Angels had yet to stir from Aldurukh. He couldn’t fathom Luther’s reluctance to commit the Legion. Zahariel chose to believe that the Master of Caliban was holding them in reserve for a swift, decisive blow against the insurgents.
The only other possibility was that Luther wasn’t certain of his own allegiances, which was simply too terrible to contemplate.
‘THE SITUATION IS absolutely intolerable.’ Magos Administratum Talia Bosk’s metal-capped fingers sliced through the air in a gesture of Imperial pique. She sat perched on the edge of the tall, throne-like chair in the Grand Master’s chambers, her slight figure nearly swallowed by the bulk of her layered robes. ‘Our production quotas have slipped by sixty-three per cent at this point. Something must be done about these attacks at once, or we won’t be able to meet our commitments to the Emperor’s Crusade.’ From the dread in Bosk’s voice she might have been describing the end of life as she knew it – which, from her perspective, was probably close to the truth.
Bosk and most of her staff were from Terra, having been assigned to Caliban by the Administratum to oversee the planet’s growing bureaucracy and its breakneck industrialization programme. Gleaming, metal-sheathed cables ran from recessed data ports at the base of her skull and wound about her bird-like neck before disappearing beneath the wide collar of her robes. Her shaven head was adorned with tattoos etched in holographic ink, drawing on her own bioelectric field to project shimmering images of the Imperial Aquila a few millimetres above her skin. The haptic interfaces covering the tips of her fingers were ornamented with tiny jewels and delicate whorls, like fingerprints, etched into their platinum surface. Her augmetic eyes gleamed with a cold, blue light as
she regarded Luther across the massive oaken desk.
It was late afternoon, and the slanting light was creeping across the chamber floor from the tall windows on the west side of the room. The chamber, which normally seemed spacious to Zahariel, was crowded with regimental officers, staff aides and Bosk’s fretful retinue of bureaucrats. He stood patiently by the window, his broad shoulders outlined by the setting sun, a data-slate gripped loosely in his hand. The meeting, intended to provide Luther with a status report from the planet’s senior Imperial officials, wasn’t going well.
Luther sat back in the Grand Master’s enormous chair. Built for Lion El’Jonson’s massive physique, it made the great knight seem almost childlike in comparison. He rested his elbows on the chair’s broad arms and regarded Bosk coolly.
‘Rest assured, Magos Bosk, there’s no one on this planet more conscious of our obligations to the Legion than I,’ Luther replied. Only someone who knew him well could detect the undercurrent of tension in his voice. ‘General Morten, perhaps you could enlighten us on the current security situation.’
General Morten, outfitted in the dark green uniform of the Caliban Jaegers, cleared his throat and rose slowly from his chair. Like Bosk, he was a Terran, a decorated soldier of many years’ service who had been tasked with creating the planet’s defence forces. He was a short, stout man, with sagging jowls and a nose that had been broken so many times it was little more than a misshapen bulb in the centre of his weathered face. His voice was a steely rasp, thanks to a year fighting amid the toxic ash plumes of Cambion Prime.
‘Caliban’s major arcologies remain under martial law, with mandatory curfews in effect,’ the general began. ‘The riots appear to have run their course, at least for the moment, but we’re still seeing isolated rebel attacks on checkpoints, precinct houses and infrastructure targets like water pumps and power substations.’ He sighed. ‘A heavy troop presence in the arcologies has sharply reduced the number of attacks, but it can’t eliminate them completely.’