‘Affirmative, commander.’ Sergeant Vorolanus cut the link.
Chronus addressed his crew. ‘Make all final preparations and adjust mission chronos. We disembark in under two minutes.’
‘Any word on Gnaeus or Fabricus?’ Vutrius asked from the gunner’s seat.
‘They should be engaging now. Focus on our part of the mission, brother. We’ll know of its greater success as soon as we return to the city. Courage and honour.’
Chronus’s crew echoed him.
Across the vox-link the transporter pilot issued a time warning. They were vectoring in on Gladius’s designated drop zone coordinates now.
Chronus opened the feed to the entire battlegroup.
‘Make this for Egnatius, and the engines we lost,’ he said.
The three battle tanks landed hard, tracks already whirring. They hit the fire-black earth running, spitting up clods of dirt and the accumulated slush that had somehow survived Gladius’s immolating missile strike.
Partially destroyed necron skeletons crunched and phased out under their treads. Chronus ignored them, heedless of the smoking ruins of skimmer-tanks and the hollowed-out remains of anti-gravitic weapon platforms. There was only one enemy weapon he was interested in as he drove at the front of the spear. It loomed before him on his retinal display, its crackling energy signature like a comet flare.
During the few hours they had spent in the city, the Antonius’s heavy bolter load-out had been replaced with a pair of lascannons. The full Annihilator-pattern was better suited to taking down a static emplacement. The Triumph of Espandor was equipped with identical armaments, while Atavian’s Devastators, dubbed ‘the Titan Slayers’, earned their honorific thanks to their armour-busting heavy weapon configuration.
The phasic generator was immense. Riding up in the turret’s cupola, Chronus regarded it with his own eyes. An extension of the necron form, it reminded him of a gigantic claw, albeit with three identical talons all cradling a jade crystal of energy at its centre. Alien sigils were embossed in gold upon the generator’s base, and three clawed feet extending from it provided stability. And flickering at the periphery of the foul machine was its shield.
From fighting the walkers and skimmer barges on the ice plain, Chronus knew this defence could be overwhelmed with force. Riding in hard and fast as Sergeant Vorolanus had advised, he gave the order to do just that.
Lascannons bristling from the turrets and side sponsons of the Predators, a sustained salvo broke against the generator’s shield. It endured this punishment for almost a full minute before collapsing under the strain. Vented power coils still charging, Chronus signalled Sergeant Atavian.
Disembarking in short order, the Titan Slayers unleashed their heavy weapons against the vulnerable necron machine and destroyed it.
It was swift, brutal and tactically exemplary.
Chronus allowed himself no satisfaction in the deed, however, as he recalled the Thunderhawk transporters. As the two massive drop-ships appeared in the sky above them and the magna-grapnels were descending, he reminded himself that they were merely delaying the inevitable.
‘A successful mission, commander,’ said one of the pilots by way of congratulation.
Chronus remained grim.
‘We have bought them days, if that.’
Leaving the wreckage of the phasic generator behind them, they made course back to Kellenport.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BATTLEMENTS
Standing sentry at the walls surrounding the Courtyard of Thor, Iulus Fennion looked out at the legions marching implacably across the ice towards Kellenport.
It had been days, days, since the successful sabotage mission conducted by Commander Chronus and the Ultramarines armour. The destruction of the phasic generators should have crippled the necrons – it barely broke their stride, and now here they were again, a few hours from the gates.
‘How many do you think are out there, Brother-Angel?’
At his own request, Iulus had taken up a position on the wall nearest the Ark Guard fighters, and dispersed his Immortals to do the same. Men needed courage at times like this. He resolved that they would find it in his example, and that of his warriors.
‘More than we have shells and bullets for, Sergeant Kolpeck.’
Iulus knew, of all the Guardsmen and militia who fought on Damnos, he need not lie to this one. Falka Kolpeck had survived the initial assault, he had lived through the first siege, he had even endured when others lost their minds during the attack on Infirmary Seven. He was a hard man, as hard as the Damnos ice he used to cut with his rigging tools. It did not make him a better soldier, but it did make him tough and that was something Iulus found he could respect.
‘You saw off her transport?’ asked the Ultramarine, watching the distant skeletal hordes. Perversely perhaps, the storms had abated in the last few hours. Behind the drifts and whiteouts, a vast arctic landscape had emerged, and upon it legions of necrons.
Kolpeck nodded and checked the iron sights of the heavy stubber he was charged with manning.
In the wintry skies above, Arvus lighters and a host of other atmospheric craft comprised a steady stream of traffic coming from the spaceport. Thousands had been evacuated already, but there had been losses in the hundreds too. Verdant gauss fire from the distant necron cannons, entrenched in the northern wastes, maintained a constant barrage that gave the Damnos night the illusion of pyrotechnics on Founding Day. It was, of course, much deadlier than that and not remotely celebratory.
Every ship sent from the port, its gunwales brimming with refugees, was directed on an easterly course first. They went low to the ground, beneath the lattice of enemy fire, until rising and striking for the Valin’s Revenge or one of its flotilla.
Iulus had heard from Vandar on the northern gate that an entire graveyard of destroyed vessels now languished out in those wastes. It was a cynical, if necessary, measure. The last thing the fragile courage of the Damnosian soldiery needed was falling skies.
‘She did not wake before her medi-casket was taken aboard,’ Kolpeck offered, ‘but I believe she knew I was there.’
Iulus gave the facial equivalent of a shrug. He had seen how Kolpeck had been willing to give his life to protect this woman. It was a form of brotherhood, he supposed. He chose not to disabuse him of the notion that she would survive the journey to the Valin’s Revenge, or warn him that she was most likely to be in a coma forever and the chances of them ever being reunited were remote in the extreme. That would dishonour this man, and Iulus had no desire to do that when he had earned so much more for his life.
‘You could have joined her,’ said the Ultramarine, turning to look at the ex-rig-hand, ‘but you chose to remain.’
‘How is it any different to your brothers staying behind for us?’
Iulus sniffed, incredulous. ‘We are Adeptus Astartes, much hardier than mortal men. It is our duty. Our honour.’
Kolpeck met his gaze, but had to crane his neck. ‘The oaths I have taken, the ones I swore to Jynn as she lay in her coma, are not so different. It is my world. I want to fight for it, even if it means my death.’ He turned back to continue his weapons check.
Iulus regarded him silently for a few more seconds, before deciding he had no answer to that. But as he returned to watch the metallic horde coming down on Kellenport, he vowed to do everything in his power to save this man. To Iulus’s mind, he had earned that much.
Engines idling noisily, Chronus stood up in the Rage of Antonius’s cupola and watched the necrons advancing. He suspected a great many, mortal and superhuman, were doing the same.
His battle tanks were assembled in three squadrons. The first, comprising all the siege engines, was ringed around the space port and would provide suppressing bombardment fire as soon as the outer walls were deemed no longer defensible; the second, which was made up of Predators a
nd Land Raiders commanded by Gnaeus, assembled behind the north gate; that left the third with Chronus himself at the west gate.
There were enough breaches in the outer walls to provide adequate apertures for unleashing their long-range guns. Once that was no longer practical, their orders were to withdraw into the warren of streets and provide armoured bottlenecks to slow the necrons down and give their infantry time to effect an ordered retreat.
Of course, that was assuming the enemy could penetrate the indomitable guard of Agrippen. The Ancient had taken position at the western gate and looked in no mood to relinquish it.
Chronus knew it was partly for show. An astute strategy in terms of human psychology. By the tank commander’s calculation, they were near reduced to half-strength, which meant just over fifty Ultramarines give or take pilots, crewmen and a few attached specialists. Roughly ten times that number were left in the Damnosian Ark Guard, and perhaps a further three hundred in conscripted militia. Kellenport was not a huge city by any standard, and with its outer districts abandoned, it shrank further still, but the Imperial forces were paltry in number and inhabited a virtual ghost town. The necrons were legions strong, tens of thousands, and with an abundance of esoteric heavy weaponry at their disposal.
Chronus was under no illusions about the outcome of this fight.
Fabricus pulled up alongside in The Vengeful, sitting up in the cupola like his commander.
‘Come to wish me well for the battle ahead, Sergeant Fabricus? I do believe they may write stories about this one. No doubt our exploits in destroying those phasic generators are already being immortalised,’ said Chronus, with more than a hint of irony. ‘I expect we will have thrown several necron war cells into defeat and nearly single-handedly turned the fates of this war by the time the ink is dry on its parchment. Stories do seldom reflect the truth, don’t you find?’
‘I had come to gauge your thoughts before battle, commander, but can hear they are only bitter and lacking in the inspiration I sought.’
Chronus gave Fabricus a sideways glance. He had yet to don his helmet, and left it sitting on the Predator’s roof. By the standard of most sergeants, Fabricus was youthful and bereft of scars. He also had a shock of close-cropped blond hair, which meant he must be young, but there was maturity in his eyes, born of hard experience.
‘I make you sergeant and all of a sudden you are questioning my demeanour.’
Fabricus was instantly contrite. ‘I meant no offence, commander–’
‘Stop, please.’ Chronus held up his hand. ‘A poor attempt at levity. I apologise. But you’re right,’ he added. ‘I am bitter. I don’t like to lose and although we are standing defiant at Kellenport’s gates, I cannot shake the feeling that we are already beaten.’
‘So what would your counsel be then, commander?’
It was a fair question, one which Chronus had already asked himself and subsequently answered.
‘We make them pay for their victory as painfully as we can.’
Hunkered down amongst the ruins by the north gate, Scipio closely observed a soulless robotic horde through his scopes.
Vast phalanxes of infantry, flanked by skimmers and walkers, descended on the city from its two gated aspects. Unlike a living foe, they did not shout war cries or even stare in that grim, determined fashion that Scipio had seen some warriors affect. It was cold, methodical, and calculated in every way. Necron strategy was a logic engine, a long and dispassionate equation that factored in nothing of courage or individual heroism. The only human facility they had ever accounted for was fear, and in that they were consummate masters.
The terrified faces of the Damnosian soldiery surrounding him attested to that fact. Scipio’s Tactical squad, the Thunderbolts, had been reunited for this last defence. There were some exceptions. Auris was dead and Brakkius had become an unlikely gunner for Vantor aboard Gladius. The gunship had used most of its ordnance payload by now and had been pressed into service, like all atmospheric craft, ferrying citizens from the surface to the ships at low anchor above.
Eighteen runs that ship had made so far. It had survived every one without a scratch.
Say what you will about the Techmarine, thought Scipio, but he is a determined and excellent pilot. He suspected Brakkius’s marksmanship might have something to do with the Thunderhawk’s Throne-blessed existence, too.
A flash of crackling lightning and the whip of turbulent storm winds manifested near Scipio’s position, causing some of the Guardsmen to turn and aim their guns fearfully. When they saw the figure that stepped from the psychic tempest, they had to resist the urge to kneel instead.
Scipio contented himself with a shallow bow.
‘My lord.’
‘It does our charges good to see that we still possess power, Sergeant Vorolanus,’ uttered Tigurius. He never just spoke, the Chief Librarian; he declared, and in this kind of mood he did so always in a resonant voice, redolent of his psychic might.
Tigurius was staring out into the icy void, but his eyes seemed far away, as if seeing far more than any mortal or Space Marine standing guard at that wall ever could. His staff, a ram-horned stave of master artifice, he clutched in one hand, sending a ripple of eldritch energy down the shaft.
‘You are most welcome at the wall, my lord.’
‘I am not merely on the wall, Sergeant Vorolanus. I am in all places, at once.’ He gestured with his staff. ‘Do you want to know what I have seen in the ether?’
‘If it is our demise, then no, my lord, I do not.’
Tigurius turned slowly, the trace of a smile playing on his inscrutable face. They had fought together on the Thanatos Hills, but he was deep into the warp in that moment, all of his attention bent towards his powers and unerring prescience. He barely seemed to recognise the sergeant.
Even for a Space Marine as veteran as Scipio, it was unnerving. To know such a being was by your side in any fight was ultimately galvanising, however, and so here Tigurius was.
‘You are a curious one, Scipio Vorolanus,’ he uttered. ‘I see greatness in you, a potential you might yet reach, or die in agony in the attempt.’
‘A sobering thought,’ Scipio replied, dryly.
The Chief Librarian lowered his voice. ‘Our paths here on Damnos are myriad, but none of them leads to victory. Not yet, not in this future.’
He turned away again, and Scipio was left to wonder at his meaning.
A shout ran out from one of the few watchtowers that were still standing, forcing the sergeant’s attention onto the immediate present.
The distant hills rumbled and flashed, heralding the inception of the necrons’ preliminary bombardment.
The final siege of Kellenport had begun.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DEFIANCE
Gauss fire crackled across the ice plain in an unending storm. It tainted the oil-black night, heating the air and turning it an ugly verdant green. It ripped apart the meagre defences, tore up the gun emplacements and rendered men to ash. It thundered from skimmer-tanks, implacable warrior-cohorts and the distant, pyramidal silhouettes of the largest terror weapons in the enemy arsenal. A green haze of atomisation hung over the ruins in the wake of rapid and collective particle fusion.
It reminded Scipio of a funeral shroud, and the corpse beneath it was Kellenport and all its desperate citizens.
Delivering valiant if mostly ineffective return fire, the defenders at the north wall had held for just under an hour. That staunch resistance had ended when the gatehouse and one of its watchtowers had collapsed into rubble, leaving a vast breach into which hordes of robotic infantry were now marching.
The skeletal faces of the necrons were pitiless as they emerged through the gloom. Their advance was slow and inexorable, preceded by a constant fusillade from their gauss rifles.
As soon as the wall came down, Scipio gave the order to fall back.
He saw Vandar do the same from farther up the battlements. His helmet vox crackled with the voices of Solinus and Octavian, also sounding the retreat. He had no line of sight on his fellow sergeants, the defence being stretched and necessarily ragged, but knew they would be heading deeper into the city.
Somewhere behind him the assault squads of Ixion and Strabo were already redeploying. Across the length and breadth of the city, Devastators would be occupying their predetermined strongpoints from which they could launch support fire. As he retreated with the others – the remnants of three Ark Guard formations, a band of militia and his own Thunderbolts – Scipio heard the heavy guns give voice.
Out beyond the walls, on the crowded tundra past the city’s outer defences, came a succession of missile detonations and the after-flare of a plasma ignition. Chugging heavy bolters and the hard-whine of lascannons kept up a steady chorus in the wake of these grander beats of war. And yet Scipio knew it was barely a scratch. There would be no holding here. The only way was back.
Kellenport’s streets were warrens, although many of them had been flattened by clustered enemy bombardments and were little more than blackened ruins now. Guerrilla fighting favoured the smaller, native force. It would slow the necrons down and thus give more time for the civilians to evacuate.
‘Fall back!’ he cried, vox-amplifying his words through his helmet. ‘Retreat to the commercia-districts. Quickly and in good order.’
Hit by a stray gauss beam, an old refinery shed combusted explosively. Guardsmen and Ultramarines too close to the blast were thrown skywards. Revealed in the sudden burst of flame Scipio thought he saw Praxor, sword raised, rallying his troops as they fell back to another part of the city. The vista died as quickly as it was born. Scipio did not linger, and signalled his own forces to pull back.
Some of the Guardsmen fled, militia too. They ran blindly, and without the support of their comrades would die swiftly. Some were even cut down during the initial act of flight. But the majority did as ordered, emboldened by the presence of the Ultramarines or simply too afraid to run. Either was fine by Scipio; in these final hours, he had learned to be pragmatic.
Damnos - Nick Kyme Page 45