Hasik crashed into the fray again, swinging his guan dao two-handed. His vision was shaking at the edges now, his muscles throbbing. All that powered him was defiance, a rage almost as blind as that of the xenos who still charged at him, over and over, a rampaging bulwark of maddened flesh that just would not stop.
‘Hai Chogoris!’ he thundered, bitterly, his vox-augmitter briefly sending the battle-cry flooding up against the sonic wall before him.
‘Khagan!’ came the response, briefly immense, briefly dominating, before all was swept up by that devouring sweep of psychic battle-mania.
Hasik barely looked up. Sweat ran down the inner curve of his helm, salty from dehydration. They would make the ridge that night, they would fortify it and they would hold it – that remained within their power. But the Saddleback had been the goal that he had promised his primarch, and that would not be taken yet.
He spat a gobbet of his own blood, tasting it as it ran against the heated metal of his vox-grille. His breathing hammered in his ears, his hearts thudded.
A good enemy.
He remembered saying it eight years ago, as if it were a dream or half-remembered jest, something to be uttered under the sun while all things remained possible.
He fought on, jaw set against the pain, wading through the mire of alien screams that went on and on until madness seemed almost like a release.
Not any more.
The world was designated 4-68-99, though everyone save the fleet’s expeditionary cartographers called it Gar-Ban-Gar, which was as close as human lips could get to what the orks had named the planet in their own debased tongue. Perhaps it wasn’t even their name for it; perhaps their endless chant – gharra-bhanna-gharra – meant something else entirely. No one cared any more. Gar-Ban-Gar was what the legionaries called the place when they were not swearing at it, or cursing the hour it was brought into existence, or launching another round of orbital strikes to smash the life out of it and send its glassy surfaces skittering like thrown baubles.
It was the Khan who had determined it would be taken. The stellar empire carved out by the xenos warlord Gharluk compassed fifty worlds, a huge swath of the void comparable in physical scale – if not in culture or accomplishment – with growing Ultramar itself. Some strongholds were mere rocks infested with roving bands of feral greenskins; others were fortress-planets swollen with xenos nests, their rusting parapets crawling with legions of conquest-bloated warriors.
It was still a mystery how the orks had spread so effectively between systems. The creatures used technology of a sort, hulking constructions of scrap metal and looted parts, ramshackle and prone to catastrophic failure. It was understood that the xenos drifted from sector to sector in great hulks dating back to the dawn of interstellar travel, but how this process was coordinated to a degree sufficient for the construction of void empires was wholly unknown. However, by some means, Gharluk had nevertheless tightened his grip on an entire subsector, maintaining communications between worlds and organising offensive raids across multiple battlefronts. A planet would fall to Imperial assault, only for its defences to be swamped a month later by counter-attacks from a dozen bordering ork-held systems.
So the xenos knew. By some arcane means, they knew how their seemingly anarchic empire was ordered, and what had come to challenge it, and they defended that realm with both ferocity and invention. Early optimism from Imperial Army commanders had long since given way to weary acceptance – the many greenskin empires would not be like the other conquests, concluded in months and followed by triumphal compliance missions. In the early days, there were even those who believed the clash of such closely matched powers might herald the end of the Imperium’s expansion, and despaired of the vast resources required to take on such a massive and unending vortex of violence.
But the Legiones Astartes had been made for foes such as these, and finally the xenos defences began to crumble. Attack after attack was launched, smashing sentinel worlds in waves of meticulously prepared landings. It never became easy. It was always bloody, always hard-fought and nakedly vicious. But, slowly, the current of the battle began to turn, and gradually the borders of Gharluk’s fiefdom collapsed.
Thus came Gar-Ban-Gar’s turn for destruction. The crystalline planet stood at the confluence of warp routes linking a dozen other systems, three of which were already under attack by White Scars forces under Giyahun’s command. Annihilating it would negate the opportunity for flanking counter-offensives, crippling Gharluk’s ability to project power across the entire subsector. As Horus pushed on towards the ring of fortress planets at the centre, the White Scars would strike their blow here, clearing the way for the inevitable assault on the heart of it all.
Everything was interlinked, a delicate skein of time-critical moves that needed to take place in strict order. Delay here imperilled advances elsewhere. All knew this – the Khan, the allied forces, the Imperial high command, even the orks themselves. Thus, continual progress was of the essence, one way or the other. For one side, hesitation was fatal; for the other, every extra day gave them a chance to divide their enemies and recover lost ground.
Hasik thought on that as he slumped down to his haunches.
Not fast enough.
The sky was a deep black-red now, drained of all but the last rays of the long-departed sun. Stars scattered vividly across a thin-atmosphere sky, clustered more thickly than on either Terra or Chogoris, the product of a world sunk deeper towards the galaxy’s core.
The sounds of battle were still everywhere. Legion forces had taken the ridge four hours ago, and since then every effort had been expended in making the gains secure. The Auxilia’s engineers had responded admirably, quickly drawing up mechanised siege engines and pile-driving fixed defence stations into position. Troops held in reserve during the first push through the trench lines were deployed across the ridge’s northern perimeter, given Legion squads to stiffen their resolve and charged with keeping the newly won lines impenetrable.
Much of the rest of the Auxilia contingent were exhausted by several days of constant fighting and needed rest. Their tanks were charred and overloaded – power packs flatlining, ammunition chambers empty, their crews slumped across the carcasses of their charges. The orks had not gone away, but even they could not assault forever, and so they hung back out on the open ground, chanting that damnable roar over and over again to banish any sleep the humans might have hoped of getting. From the deeper distance came the roll and boom of metal-skinned drums, and green flickers of psychic force danced in the night’s depths.
The atmosphere of hostility never went away. After a while the Imperial troops heard it in their half-snatched dreams, saw it in every stray shaft of livid orange sunlight, felt it in their trembling fingers. Even the battle-hardened felt it. Even the Space Marines.
Hasik blinked away the fatigue, and looked up to see the familiar outline of Galkusa Rheor crunching towards him. The Luna Wolves captain was in a bad way, his right pauldron clawed and hanging off his shoulder, his knee-guards crackling from ripped powerlines.
Hasik rose. Others of the V Legion that were gathered around him saluted wearily, making the aquila in the standard Imperial manner.
‘Foul creatures,’ Rheor said grimly, his thick voice giving away his own weariness.
‘Foul indeed,’ Hasik agreed, speaking in Gothic. ‘Strong, though.’
Rheor activated a hololithic tactical display, and the night air between them shimmered into wireframes. ‘We are three days south of where we need to be.’
‘I know it. Ideas?’
Rheor and Hasik had conferred often during the previous six months of heavy campaigning. The Luna Wolves warrior was gruffer and harder edged, raised amid gangers and renegades, but still an accomplished commander with an open mind and an acute strategic grasp.
‘None from me. You?’
‘Renewed orbitals?’ Hasik offered, without conviction.
Orbital strikes were not a favoured weapon on Ga
r-Ban-Gar. For one thing, they were phenomenally expensive in terms of resources, which the fleet needed for low-orbit operations against the hundreds of ork-crewed scrap-ships that still plagued them. For another, the world’s unique landscape limited their effectiveness. Most of the terrain was a close-packed mass of huge geodesic outcrops; these translucent crystals were hard-wearing and offered plentiful cover, meaning that the only bombardments capable of causing significant damage required the Legion forces to pull back for several kilometres, giving the orks a clear warning that they needed to go to ground.
In any case, the devastation caused by such strikes made the subsequent advance almost impossible. It was hard enough fighting through the crystal canyons when they were intact; it was far harder when every square metre was choked with tangled, man-length shards of ceramite-piercing crystal debris.
Rheor did not demur immediately. He leaned against the nearest glittering column, and beckoned for one of his troops to approach. ‘If we have to. The Spite’s Hammer is within hail range for another twelve hours. But we both know the limitations.’
The Luna Wolves warrior approached. His ivory armour was scrawled in black lines, spidery like thrown ink. A blue symbol – an open book – had been daubed on his shoulder guards. His gauntlets were blackened, as if he’d held them inside a furnace for a long time.
‘This is Jereth,’ Rheor said. ‘Librarian.’
‘I didn’t think–’
‘He studies psychic powers. Doesn’t use them. We’re not bloody savages.’ It was hard to tell if Rheor was smiling under his helm.
‘We’ve analysed the sonic aegis generated by the xenos,’ Jereth said. ‘Again. We know they use it to fortify themselves. We know they have a shaman caste, placed beyond our reach, summoning the effect. The crystals, we think, are being used here as amplifiers. It makes this landscape a particularly troubling proposition.’
Hasik looked at the young warrior wearily. ‘I have snipers deployed to drop any shaman they can lock on to. They have not got close. The hain are not fools.’
‘But you have your own… shamans.’ Jereth sounded almost embarrassed to use the term.
Hasik smiled dryly. ‘And they’re kept busy. Borghal – tell them.’
A White Scars legionary emerged from the shadows, just as battered as the rest. He held a skull-topped staff in one hand, but was careful not to place any weight on it – it was a weapon, not a crutch. ‘We can fight the effect,’ he said. His voice was a soft Chogorian burr, far quieter than the others, and with a deeper accent. ‘But there are thousands in the soul-field, and we are few. That is the problem.’
‘But still, they’re the key,’ said Rheor. ‘Kill the shamans, the field weakens. We’ve seen it before.’
‘They’re getting better at protecting them,’ said Hasik.
‘Then we must become better at killing them,’ said Jereth.
Hasik laughed sourly. ‘Simple as that.’
‘It cannot be destroyed.’ Borghal said. ‘They… feed off conflict. Opposition. This world amplifies the effect. We can only resist it, not end it.’
For a moment the rest of them stood silently, saying nothing. The dull crump of mortar fire echoed out from lower down the ridge as the Auxilia kept up its defensive barrage. It was unlikely the xenos would try to assault the ridge that night – the slopes were steep and treacherous, and the dug-in defensive positions would make an attack ruinous. They were happy to wait, out on the plains, preparing and strengthening for the attack they knew the humans would have to make sooner or later.
More boots crunched through the crystal scree, announcing the arrival of the Auxilia commanders – Marshal Enelope Mothe and her tribune Fased Exandras. Both went helmless, and their drawn faces gave away the toll the attacks had taken on them.
‘My lords,’ Mothe greeted them, making the sign of the aquila, ‘defensive perimeter complete and operational. My thanks for the assistance from your warriors. Without them, this would not have been possible.’
She was worried. Mothe was a decent officer and a tireless soldier, but she was not a Space Marine. Fighting for so long against the blastwave of the orks’ psychic aegis and seeing one’s forces slowly mauled by its constituents would wear away at the strongest of souls. Supplies were low, and the chance of respite zero. The rendezvous at Saddleback had already been delayed, and a further setback could see the armoured units begin to struggle as fuel tankers and ammo haulers were drained dry.
She didn’t ask the question – she was too much of a consummate professional for that – but it was there in her eyes all the same, hovering behind everything she said.
What’s the plan now? When do we move again? Will we survive this?
Hasik didn’t have answers. He looked up at Rheor, and a sour kind of understanding passed between them.
‘Your service,’ Hasik said to Mothe, barely looking at her. ‘Exemplary. I wish I could give you time to recover.’
He looked up, to the north, out into the gathering night.
‘But that would be, sad to say, only slow suicide,’ he said grimly. ‘So prepare your troops. We assault again at dawn.’
TEN
‘Hasik gave you leave, then?’ asked Xu Han.
‘We devised the plan together,’ replied Borghal.
‘And Rheor?’
‘He does not know. The noyan-khan ruled that only we should take the risk.’
‘A dangerous course.’
Borghal shrugged. ‘We are running short of choices.’
‘Then we do it for honour, zadyin arga.’
‘Or the example.’
‘To refuse the chance, though.’ Xu Han grinned. ‘Unworthy.’
Borghal didn’t smile. He recalled then, just as he had recalled on and off for the last few weeks, Yesugei’s words to him at Quan Zhou, spoken before he had even completed his training more than eight years ago, and yet resonating still as if planted in his consciousness for this very purpose.
It is about limitation, and then understanding.
The western horizon was lightening quickly, a blush of ruby red that would soon swell into orange. All across the northern slopes of the ridge, embattled Legion forces were preparing for another attempt at driving north to the Saddleback. The objective was visible, a humpback of bristling crystals half-hazed by the predawn mists. It looked a long way away, every intervening kilometre blocked by the war host that clustered on the plains, already chanting, already drumming, beckoning them down to begin the carnage again.
Rheor thought there was a weakness on the eastern margin, a slight thinning of xenos emplacements. Hasik deemed that optimistic, but the Luna Wolves had nevertheless taken position there, deploying their remaining Land Raiders and Rhino transports into their familiar spear-tip formation and arranging air cover from Stormbird squadrons stationed fifty kilometres to the south. The Auxilia would be placed mostly in the rear, their shattered equipment barely able to trundle down the incline let alone contribute, though fifteen of the most intact squadrons had been taken by Hasik to cover his left flank.
That left the centre, the direct line across the plains. The brotherhoods saddled up for this, taking every remaining jetbike and grav-flyer and pressing them into service. Close to six hundred mounts remained serviceable, and now growled and shivered on top of the ridge like thoroughbreds, their smokestacks cracking and their repulsor plates whining up to full power.
Dawn was the signal. Every pair of eyes, human and xenos, flickered towards the west, to the spreading light. The roar was already back up to full pitch, the skies dancing with the first scraps of filmy, emerald fulguration.
Despite his relative inexperience, the heavy losses had made Borghal the most senior of the six remaining Stormseers attached to Hasik’s horde. Xu Han was next in rank; the rest were barely out of ascension on Chogoris. For weeks they had been contesting the aura generated by the orks’ hidden shaman-caste, thinning it with clustered lightning strikes and driving the full brunt back w
ith their summoned gales. Without those efforts, the Legion forces might still have been locked in the trench lines, but the toll had been crushing. Three of their original contingent were dead, their minds flayed and hollowed by the punishing effort required to go up against the xenos witches. For all that sacrifice, the respite they won from that gestalt harrowing was only ever temporary, a mere lessening of its full destructive power, and not the decisive stroke they needed to break the power of the psychic collective.
They could not get close enough to the origin. They could sense their shamanic counterparts from afar, even catching rare glimpses of them amid the grinding press of xenos bodies, but they could never fight their way to within range of a kill.
The six Stormseers saddled up, mounting the thrumming chassis of Scimitar-class jetbikes. They all wore full armour and carried their staffs one-handed, angling them like cavalry spears. Only their clattering ranks of totems and the more elaborate clan markings on their armour distinguished them from the mass of Chogorian warriors. On either side of them, more squadrons of jetbikes revved and bucked, as if straining for the order to loose. Out on the plain below, the orks jostled and stamped to get to the front rank, screaming and bellowing. Arcs of green lightning snapped across their tusked heads now, pinging and latching on to the thousands of crystal outcrops and making the hauntingly angular landscape shimmer.
‘Clear your mind,’ voxed Borghal, running through the exercises himself, bringing his psychic sense out of abeyance and into sharp focus. Just as he had every day since arriving on this malignant world, he felt the strange crystal formations humming in sympathy, sucking in the potential and coiling it deep within their reflective depths.
A blush of orange crept across the jagged west, catching on the orthogonal peaks and flashing softly. The roar grew. The front ranks of orks pressed forwards, shoving to gain the lower reaches of the ridgeline. As the light spread, their numbers were revealed again – thousands upon thousands, each of them huge and armour-crusted, swinging spittle-laced cleavers and hauling boxy projectile weapons. There was no end to them. It felt like teetering on the edge of an infinite, endlessly mobile cauldron of psychosis.
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