Scipio found himself in agreement. The one proclaiming itself the ‘Voidbringer’ had spoken to them during the assault in the Thanatos Hills, displaying an awareness and intelligence beyond that of the more ubiquitous necron constructs. And they had all heard the propaganda message of the so-called ‘Herald of Dismay’.
‘There is a hierarchy, a command structure,’ said Scipio.
‘I think it’s more than that, Sergeant Vorolanus. I believe it to be dynastic, and the older or the more aware the necron, the greater its influence upon the horde. A nodal structure, if you will. Remove that influence and the mass will revert to whatever basic protocols their lesser functioning brains possess.’
‘These things have no brains, Vantor,’ snapped Brakkius. ‘They’re machine, and neither flesh nor blood.’
‘A figure of speech, brother,’ Vantor replied, mildly placating. ‘As to them being flesh and blood, I think perhaps they were, once. No machine, however advanced, acts as the necrons do. That behaviour cannot be programmed, it can only be learned or known.’
‘If what you’re saying is true, Vantor, then the creature Agrippen vanquished at the gates must have been a general of some kind,’ said Scipio.
‘Not a general, brother-sergeant. A king.’
‘So we’re dealing with a kingdom of these things,’ muttered Brakkius, his displeasure increasing by the second.
Vantor met his disgruntled gaze. ‘That is a distinct possibility.’
‘So, where is this “kingdom” then?’ asked Scipio.
The Techmarine laughed, but without humour.
‘An excellent question to which I have no answer. If I were to posit a theory I would say it is below us.’
Scipio’s eyes narrowed. ‘Beneath the ice crust?’
‘I think it’s deeper than that,’ said Vantor. ‘It has to be, or the miners would have discovered something before now.’
The crackle of static presaging the activation of the hold’s vox forestalled further discussion.
‘Communication from Kellenport, brother-sergeant,’ came the voice of Kastus.
Scipio looked at the others, then replied, ‘Put it through, pilot.’
There was a short wait and a slight vox-modulation as an external channel was fed into the hold.
‘This is Commander Antaro Chronus. Respond.’
Scipio knew the veteran tank commander by reputation only. He had heard there was significant armour being deployed from the Valin’s Revenge but had seen none during muster or transit. Chronus and his vehicle squadrons had been lodged on a different assembly deck. Until Scipio’s commandos, assisted in no small part by Librarian Tigurius, had neutralised the necron ordnance on the Thanatos Hills, Chronus and his tanks had been trapped in low orbit.
‘Sergeant Scipio Vorolanus, aboard the gunship Gladius.’
‘Good to hear your voice, Scipio.’ The signal quality was relatively poor, but the tank commander had a dauntless quality to his voice and demeanour that came across in spite of the weak vox-return. ‘I have over twenty pieces of tracked armour on the ice plains. We’re looking for a fight, but in need of some direction.’
Scipio smiled and felt the faintest stirrings of hope kindle.
‘We have eyes on the enemy, commander, and can guide you in along with the Thunderstorm.’
The others shared his sudden optimism, the fire that had been waning inside them now stoked with fresh enthusiasm at Chronus’s words. Only Vantor remained pensive.
‘Glorious, brother,’ Chronus replied. ‘Our coordinates are being transmitted to your augurs as we speak.’
‘Augurs are down at present, commander. Please relay hard coordinates over vox instead.’
Chronus laughed. It sounded deep and hearty, but briefly overloaded the vox-link. He came back a moment later. ‘Such antiquated methodology. It gives me heart, Scipio.’
‘Commander?’
‘We of Guilliman’s blood, we always find a way. Do we not, brother-sergeant?’
Scipio nodded, and felt his smile broaden.
‘Indeed, commander.’
Chronus gave Scipio everything he needed to find the armoured column. The tank company was just outside Arcona City, which they had flown over on their way north. It was an empty shell now, devoid and abandoned of all life. Even the necrons had moved on, surrendering it to ruin and entropy.
The entire war so far on Damnos had felt attritional. Piece by piece, Scipio had seen the Second being chipped away like the ice encrusting their boots. No Ultramarine ever wanted to admit defeat. They were pre-eminent warriors and tacticians, even amongst their fellow Adeptus Astartes, but the necrons had driven them close. Perhaps closer than anyone dared to admit out loud. In his heart, Scipio had felt a deep weariness, one that afflicted the soul as well as the body. Endless winter had gripped Damnos, and there were monsters within the ice, ones that came back from the dead and were capable of killing Space Marines.
Now you know who you are, brother.
Tigurius had uttered those words to him. He had spoken of courage and self-sacrifice. Since the war had begun, there had been plenty of both. Standing in the wind-blown hold and surrounded by his brothers, Scipio had a feeling there would be more… much more, before this was done.
‘He sounds like he wants to win this war,’ said Garrik once the vox-link was severed.
‘Perhaps he thinks he can,’ said Largo, and Scipio could hear the desire to get back into the fight in his voice.
The Ultramarines had been battered in the opening salvos of the campaign. Now, they wanted to hit back. They needed to hit back.
‘We are badly in need of reinforcement, that I do know,’ said Scipio, sliding the hatch shut and returning the hold to some semblance of stillness again. ‘With an armoured company as our spearhead and the necrons seemingly debilitated, perhaps there is a slim hope.’
‘Hope of victory, brother-sergeant?’ asked Auris.
Scipio met the gaze of the warrior through his retinal lenses. ‘At the very least, revenge.’
Now you know who you are, brother.
The words of Tigurius echoed in Scipio’s mind. He only prayed he would not know himself a fool for trusting to hope.
CHAPTER FOUR
WATCHERS ON THE WALL
Falka stood alone on the wall, and tugged the collar of his storm jacket up around his neck to ward off the cold.
A bleak wind was rolling in from the north, one of the fiercest and most bitter he had ever known on Damnos. Kellenport was besieged by it, trading the necrons for the elements as its next oppressor. In the last half-hour the storm had intensified. Life had never been easy on this world. Throne knew, he had seen many men killed in the mines and known those lost to the drifts or dead of sickness. Damnos was a harsh world, but in hiding the necrons beneath its icy surface it had betrayed them more than the harsh weather ever could.
Thick drifts shawled the walls in snow but failed to hide the city’s ruination. Ice clung to its stunted bulwarks and beheaded towers. Frost lay heavy over stone and metal, grey-white like a funerary shroud. It was a fitting metaphor. The city was dead, inhabited by ghosts. Falka watched them as they went about their existence. When the necrons had retreated, disappearing in a flash of actinic, lurid green, it should have been met with jubilation. Instead, a mood of sullen acceptance had descended like a pall over Kellenport. It was pregnant with mordant anticipation of an end merely delayed and not averted at all. Falka saw it in every face, every deed. Their saviours had been humbled, their greatest hero fallen, some even said killed. How could they, the simple citizens of the Imperium, trust to hope when even their champions had succumbed to doubt? Yet still the Damnosians went on, because it was all they knew how to do. It was all they could do.
Labour teams toiled in silence to repair the city’s outer walls, shoring them up with fallen slabs of m
asonry or reinforcing unstable structures with metal struts salvaged from buildings inside the gates. Triage stations and makeshift infirmaries had been set up. Few actual medics had survived the initial assault, so unskilled but enthusiastic hands were put to use as orderlies in the improvised medicae teams that had evolved in the aftermath of the first siege. Soldiers not on watch huddled together around fires, muttering quietly, their faces as dark and bleak as the sky.
Falka saw Ultramarines striding through the groups of Damnosian workers and the disenfranchised Ark Guard but even sight of these cobalt Angels could not seem to stir the people’s spirits. The career soldiers looked worst of all, bereft of purpose and low-spirited. At least the workers could build and repair, losing themselves in the menial routine.
Falka scowled at a sudden thought that sent a deeper chill through his marrow.
We have become no different to the necrons. We are automatons now too, but ones of flesh and blood. Quick to die and easier killed.
What he would not give to see a gilded sunrise over the wastes and the light striking the high peaks of the mountains, casting all the way to Halaheim… But Damnos was slate-grey, the grey of tombs and unforgiving metal. Falka did not think he would see it different again during his lifetime. The old ex-miner was a hard bastard, hard as ice, but he wiped a gloved hand across his eye at that maudlin thought. In the time it took to reach his face, his solitary tear had already frozen to his cheek and broke apart as he touched it.
‘Throne, Jynn…’ he murmured, as more ice froze on his face. ‘I pray you are at peace now, girl.’
He shook, once, with an involuntary sob and then it was over. It was difficult to grieve when your life was being measured in minutes and seconds. It seemed a waste, somehow.
Falka was a soldier now, part of the ill-fated, if brave, ‘One Hundred’. It was an inaccurate name for the militia that had arisen to defend Kellenport in its darkest moments. There had never been one hundred of them… There were fewer than that now.
Despite his fear, he had caught a few hours of sleep since the siege had ended and exhaustion finally claimed him. But it had been a fitful, restive slumber in which Falka had dreamed of a cold, grey world and the metal-clad revenants who had once claimed it as their own. The passage of ages and the death of its nearest sun had veneered the world in ice while its old masters slept in their cages, dreaming of a better age when their kingdoms still thrived and they treated with the very gods themselves. Bitterness was all that was left to them now, and a remorseless desire to take back what was theirs.
They would kill everything on this world, everything on Damnos.
Feverish sweat had lathered Falka’s body as he had come to in the half-ruined barrack house, some of his comrades suffering the same nightmare.
He had recently surfaced from the dream to take his appointed watch upon the wall. Even a good twenty minutes later, memories of it still lingered and made his hands shake as he tried to light up the stick of tabac pressed to his frost-touched lips.
‘Here,’ said a man next to him, Ark Guard judging by his ragged uniform and the shoulder patch on his coat. So deep in thought was he, Falka had not noticed him approach. The newcomer took Falka’s small silver igniter and held it steady so he could light his tabac.
Falka drew deep with a shuddering, nerve-settling inhalation before expelling a plume of smoke.
‘I needed that,’ he said, his words ghosting in the air.
‘Tanner Greishof,’ said the man. ‘Ark Guard, corporal rank.’
‘Falka Kolpeck,’ replied Falka. ‘Old man freezing his arse off on this damn wall.’
He did not shake Greishof’s hand, it was far too cold for that. Both kept their arms as close as they could to their bodies, hugging their chests and rubbing their arms.
Falka offered the tabac stick, but Tanner refused.
‘It’s all yours.’
Falka nodded. ‘Your loss. But thanks, anyway.’
‘You fought at the gate?’ asked Greishof.
Falka grinned ruefully and his head drooped a little. I should have known he was a talker. ‘I was with the One Hundred.’
Falka expected surprise, perhaps even respect, but all he got was indifference. Greishof nodded, as if this was not really news.
‘We fought at the gate,’ he said, ‘my men and I. They died, every one of them. Mechanoids got ’em. Took the flesh right off the bone, then turned what was left to ash. Didn’t even have anything to bury.’ Greishof started to whistle, the tune light and carefree. Fearless. What he said next made Falka realise why. ‘No one’s getting out of this. We’re all dying here, Kolpeck. Every one of us. Dead men’s boots and ghosts walkin’ in ’em.’ Greishof looked over. ‘Another smoke?’ he asked, gesturing to the tabac stick that had almost burned to the nub in Falka’s hand.
‘No, thank you.’
Falka left him and went to another part of the wall. Greishof did not follow, he did not move at all. He just stared into the ice, whistling. He would be dead in the morning, either having jumped or slashed his wrists. Most preferred to jump, they did not have to take off their gloves for that.
Falka wondered how long it would be until his mind gave in, until he looked down over that wall and saw something appealing at its broken footings on the other side.
A runner caught his attention. Little more than a boy, he was wearing a medicae smock under cold-weather gear.
‘Kolpeck?’ the boy asked, breathless. He had obviously run up the steps to the wall and kept on going until he had found the man he had been charged to seek out.
‘Take a breath, lad,’ said Falka. ‘I’m Kolpeck, yes. What is it?’
‘Infirmary Seven,’ the boy said, pointing vaguely in the direction of a unit of warehouses beyond the courtyard. Denuded of all their machinery and raw materials to make barricades and plug gaps in the wall, the warehouses had been co-opted to act as medical stations for the many hundreds of injured.
‘What of it, lad? Tell me.’ Falka gripped the boy’s shoulders, firmly but not hard, in his frustration to hear whatever message he had come to impart.
‘A woman… injured. She’s asking for you.’
A thick lump swelled in Falka’s throat and he almost could not speak.
‘What’s her name, lad?’
The boy checked on a scrap of parchment that had been thrust into his hands. Falka saw there were several names on it and guessed the runner was making the identity of survivors known to their relatives and loved ones.
‘Evvers, sir. Captain Jynn Evvers.’
‘Let me see that.’ Falka snatched the parchment. Hurriedly reading down the list, heart beating hard in his chest, he saw the name the boy had given him. He almost did not dare believe.
‘She’s alive?’ he whispered, tears filling his eyes and freezing on his cheek. ‘Throne above…’
But he could not leave the wall, he could not leave his duty. Yet this might be the last chance, their last chance… Falka looked to Greishof, but discounted him immediately. The man was clearly imbalanced.
‘I cannot leave my station, lad,’ he said, ‘but get a message to her for me, would you?’
The boy nodded, but was only half listening. Now he had delivered the news, he had the rest of the names on that list to work through. Falka suddenly doubted his message would reach Jynn before… He shut his eyes, desperately wishing he could leave.
And then, as by some divine hand, his prayer was answered by an Angel.
‘I have your watch, Brother Kolpeck,’ said a deep, gruff voice.
Both Falka and the boy looked over to where an armoured giant clad in cobalt blue was striding up to the battlements.
He looked more grizzled than when Falka had last set eyes on him, if that were even possible, the stubble on his chin like asphalt and his face set like a granite cliff. His leg greave was battered
and recently repaired, but he carried the wound he had received at the gate well. If only they all had the constitution of Space Marines, perhaps then they would not all be staring down the prospect of an unpleasant death at the hands of the necrons. Despite his outwardly harsh appearance though, Brother-Sergeant Iulus Fennion was not unfeeling as stone. He had more heart than any of the Ultramarines Falka had met on Damnos.
When Iulus reached the top of the stairs, he towered over both of them and was twice as broad as Falka, who was built like a tundra-ox.
Trying not to weep in sheer awe and terror, the boy was about to take a knee when Iulus’s booming voice held him fast.
‘Don’t bow to me, boy. Never do that. Bow when you’re dead and your sword slips from your hand, but not until then, not to me. Are you dead yet, boy?’
‘N-n-no, sir,’ he stammered, standing again.
‘Then let’s try to keep it that way. Go to your duty. I’ll relieve Sergeant Kolpeck on this part of the wall.’
More than a little relieved, the boy nodded and quickly scurried off.
‘You’re not wearing your battle-helm, Sergeant Kolpeck,’ said Iulus, glaring.
‘I was always just a rig-hand, Brother-Angel,’ Falka answered with good nature, ‘and besides, a padded hood is much warmer.’
Iulus smiled, unable to keep the pretence going any longer. ‘Justly spoken.’ He nodded, something like pride in his shadowy eyes. ‘I am glad to see you still live.’
‘And I you, Brother-Angel.’
A brief silence descended, wherein the giant Ultramarine said nothing but merely stared.
‘Begone then,’ he said thunderously at last, and stood aside for Falka to pass. ‘You have relinquished your guard post to me, Sergeant Kolpeck.’
Falka nodded, before hurrying in the direction of Infirmary Seven.
Iulus watched him go, and thought how desperately the humans clung to what remained of their lives here. He did not know how much longer there would be threads strong enough for them to grasp.
A dull thud that came from the opposite side of the wall made him turn. Looking across, the battlements were empty, where before there had been a solitary Ark Guard trooper standing watch. An urgent shout from one of the upper towers told Iulus another one had gone to his death. He paid it little heed, taking up his post.
Damnos - Nick Kyme Page 36