‘Commander Korten Barasath,’ Sarren introduced the next man, ‘of the Imperial 5082nd Naval Wing.’
Korten, a lean figure still dressed in his grey flightsuit, saluted smartly.
‘My men were in the Lightnings that guided you down, Reclusiarch. A pleasure to serve with the Black Templars again.’
Grimaldus narrowed his eyes behind his helm’s false grin. ‘You have served with the Knights of Dorn before?’
‘I have personally – nine years ago on Dathax – and the Fifty-Eighty-Twos have on no fewer than four separate occasions. Sixteen of our fighters are marked with the heraldic cross, with permission given by Marshal Tarrison of the Dathax Crusade.’
Grimaldus inclined his head, his respect solemn and obvious, despite the helm.
‘I am honoured, Barasath,’ he said.
The squadron leader suppressed a pleased smile and saluted again.
And on it went, through the ranks of senior Steel Legion officers. At the end of the line stood two men, one in a clean and decorated uniform of azure blue, the shade of skies on worlds much cleaner than this one, and the other in oil-stained overalls.
Colonel Sarren gestured to the thin man in the immaculate uniform.
‘The most honourable Moderati Primus Valian Carsomir of the Legio Invigilata, crewman of the blessed engine Stormherald.’
Grimaldus nodded, but made no other outward show of respect. The Titan pilot inclined his gaunt face in turn, utterly emotionless.
‘Moderati,’ the knight said. ‘You speak with the voice of your Legion?’
‘A full battle group,’ the man replied. ‘I am the voice of Princeps Majoris Zarha Mancion. The rest of Invigilata is committed to other engagements.’
‘Fortune favours us that you still remain,’ the knight said. The Titan pilot made the cog sign of the Mechanicus, his knuckles interlinked over his chest, and Sarren finished the final introduction.
‘And here is Dockmaster Tomaz Maghernus, lead foreman of the Helsreach Dockers’ Union.’
The knight hesitated, and nodded again, just as he had for the soldiers. ‘We have much to discuss,’ Grimaldus said to the colonel, who was sweating faintly in the stifling afternoon air.
‘Indeed we do. This way, if you please.’
Tomaz Maghernus wasn’t sure what to think.
Back at the docks, as soon as he walked into the warehouse, his crew flocked around him, barraging him with questions. How many Adeptus Astartes were there? How tall were they? What was it like to see one? Were all the stories true?
Tomaz wasn’t sure what to say. There had been little grandeur in the meeting. The towering warrior with his skull face had seemed more dismissive than anything else. The ranks of knights in their black armour were silent and inhuman, utterly separate from the hive’s delegation and not interacting at all.
He answered the questions with a level of vagueness lessened by a convincing false smile.
An hour later, he was back in his crane’s command cabin, strapped to the creaking leather seat and turning the axis wheel to bring the loading claw around again. Levers controlled the claw’s vertical position and the grip of its magnetic talons. Tomaz slammed the claw onto the deck of the tanker ship closest to his station, and hauled a cargo crate into the air. The markings alongside the sturdy metal crate marked it as volatile. More promethium, he knew. The final imports of fuel for the Imperial Guard’s tanks were arriving this week. Dried food rations and shipments of fuel were all they’d been unloading on the docks for months now.
He tried not to dwell on his meeting with the Adeptus Astartes. He’d been expecting a rousing speech from a warrior armoured in gold. He’d expected plans and promises, oaths and oratory.
All in all, he decided, it had been a disappointing day.
A city.
I am in command of a city.
Preparations have been under way for months, but estimates pit the Great Enemy arriving in-system within a handful of days. My men, the precious few knights that remain with me on the surface of Armageddon, are spread across the sprawling hive. They are to serve as inspiration to the human soldiers when the fighting becomes thickest.
I recognise the tactical validity of this, yet lament their absence. This is not how a holy crusade should be fought.
The hours pass in a blur of statistical outlays, charts, hololithic projections and graphs.
The food supplies for the entire city. How long they will last once nothing can be brought in from outside the hive. Where the food is stored. The durability of these silos, buildings and granaries. What weapons they can withstand. How they appear from the air. Ration projections. Sustainable food ration planning. Unsustainable food ration planning, with appended lists of estimated sacrificial casualties. Where food riots are likely to break out once starvation is a reality.
Water filtration centres. How many are required to be fully operational in order to supply the entire population. Which ones are likely to be destroyed first, once the city walls fall. Underground bunkers where water is currently stored. Ancient wellsprings that might be tapped in times of great need.
Estimates of disease once the city is shelled and civilian casualties are too heavy to be dealt with efficiently. Types of disease. Symptoms. Severity. Risk of contagion. Compatibility with the ork genus.
Lists of medical facilities. Endless, endless screeds of how each one is supplied as of the most recent stock reports, to the most minute detail. New stock-checks are constantly performed. Updated information cycles in all the while, even as we review the previous batch.
Militia numbers, conscripted and volunteer. Training regimes and training schedules. Weapon supplies. Ammunition supplies for the civilian population currently under arms. Projections for how long those supplies will last.
Hive Defence Forces, straddling the line between militia and Guard. Who leads the individual sector forces. Their weapons. Their ammunition. Their proximity to significant industrial targets.
Imperial Guard numbers. Throne, what numbers. Regiments, their officers, their live fire training accuracy records, their citations, their shames, their moments of greatest glory and ignominy on a host of distant worlds. Their insignia. Their weapon and ammunition supplies. Their access to armour units, ranging from light scout vehicles such as Sentinels and Chimeras, through to super-heavy Baneblades and Stormswords.
The Guard figures alone take two days to file through. And this, they say, is merely the overview.
Landing platforms come next. Hive Defence landing platforms, civilian sites already in use by the Guard, and civilian sites currently in use for the importation of essential supplies, either from Navy vessels, traders in orbit, or elsewhere on the planet. The access to and from these sites is critical, regarding reinforcements making it into the hive, refugees making their way out, and the enemy capturing them as bases when the siege begins.
Air superiority. The numbers of light fighters, heavy fighters, and bombers at our disposal. The records of every pilot and officer among the Imperial 5082nd Skyborne. These, I skip past. If they wear the Templar cross with permission of a marshal, then there is little need to review their acts of valour. It is already clear. The projections move on to simulated displays of how long our air forces can prevent enemy landings, and what situations would merit the use of bombers beyond the city walls. On and on, the simulations roll in flickering hololithic imagery. Barasath is relieved to go when it is complete, complaining of a dozen headaches at once. I smile, though I let none of the humans witness it.
Helsreach heavy defence emplacements. What anti-air turrets are stationed on the walls, and where they are. Their optimal firing arcs. The make and calibre of each barrel and shell. The number of crew appointed to man these positions. Estimated projections on damage they can inflict upon the enemy, run through countless scenarios of varying greenskin offensive strength. The teams resupplying their ammunition, and from where that ammunition comes. Freight routes from manufactories.
&n
bsp; And the manufactories themselves. Industrial plants churning out legions of tanks, all of various classes. Other manufactories where shells are made and dispatched for use. Which industrial sites are the most valuable, the most profitable, the most reliable and the most likely to suffer assault in a protracted siege.
The Titan Legion, most noble and glorious Invigilata. What engines they have on the Ash Wastes outside the city. Which ones will walk in the defence of Helsreach, and which ones are promised to reinforce the hordes of Cadian Shock and our brother Adeptus Astartes, the Salamanders, out in the wilds of Armageddon.
Invigilata keeps its internal records from our sight, but we are fed enough information to thread into yet more hololithic charts and simulations, adding the might of Titans – of various grades and sizes – to the potential carnage.
The docks. The Helsreach Docks, greatest port on the planet. Coastal defences – walls and turrets and anti-air towers – and trade requirements and union complaints and petitions arguing over docking rights and warehouses appropriated as barracks for soldiers and complaints from merchants and dock-officers and…
And I endure this for nine days.
Nine. Days.
On the tenth day, I rise from my chair in Sarren’s command centre. Around me in the colonel’s armoured fortress at the heart of the city, three hundred servitors and junior officers work at stations: calculating, collating, transmitting, receiving, talking, shouting, and sometimes quietly panicking, begging for aid from those around them.
Sarren and several of his officers and aides watch me. Their necks crane up as they follow my movement. It is the first time I have moved in seven hours. Indeed, the first time I have moved since I sat down this morning at dawn.
‘Is something wrong?’ Sarren asks me.
I look at the sweating, porcine commander; this man unable to shape his body into a warrior’s fitness, confined as he is – and totally at home – with this relentless trial of a million, million numbers.
What kind of question is that? Are they blind? I am one of the Emperor’s Chosen. I am a knight of Dorn’s blood, and a warrior-priest of the Black Templars. Is something wrong?
‘Yes,’ I say to him, to them all. ‘Something is wrong.’
‘But… what?’
I do not answer that question. Instead, I move to walk from the room, not caring that uniformed humans scatter before me like frightened vermin.
With a volume that would put a peal of overhead thunder to shame, a siren starts to wail.
I turn back to the table.
‘What is that?’
They flinch at the rough bark from my helm’s vocaliser. The siren keeps whining.
‘Throne of the God-Emperor,’ Sarren whispers.
Hive Helsreach did not have city walls. It had battlements.
When the citywide siren began to ring, Artarion was standing in the shadow of a towering cannon, its linked barrels aiming into the sick sky. Several metres away, the human crew worked at its base, performing the daily rituals of maintenance. They hesitated at the sound of the siren, and talked among themselves.
Artarion briefly looked back in the direction of the tower fortress in the city’s centre, blocked as it was from view by distance and the forest-like mess of hive spires between here and there.
He felt the humans casting occasional glances his way. Knowing he was distracting them from their necessary mechanical rites, he moved away, walking further down the wall. His gaze fell, as it did almost every hour since coming to the hive a week before, on the endless expanse of wasteland that reached to the horizon and beyond.
Blink-clicking a communication rune on his visor display, he opened a vox-channel. The siren rang on. Artarion knew what it signalled.
‘About time.’
From vox-towers across the city, an announcement was spoken in deceptively colourless tones. Colonel Sarren, not wishing to incite the populace to unrest, had tasked a lobotomised servitor to speak the words to the people.
‘People of Hive Helsreach. Across the planet, the first sirens are sounding. Do not be alarmed. Do not be alarmed. The enemy fleet has translated in-system. The might of Battlefleet Armageddon and the greatest Adeptus Astartes fleet in Imperial history stands between our world and the foe’s forces. Do not be alarmed. Maintain your daily rites of faith. Trust in the God-Emperor of Mankind. That is all.’
In the control centre, Grimaldus turned to the closest human officer sat at a vox-station.
‘You. Hail the Black Templars flagship Eternal Crusader, immediately.’
The man swallowed, his skin paling at being spoken to so directly and with such force by an Adeptus Astartes.
‘I… My lord, I am coordinating the–’
The knight’s black fist pounded into the table. ‘Do it now.’
‘Y-yes, my lord. A moment, please.’
The human officers of Sarren’s staff shared a worried look. Grimaldus paid no attention at all. The seconds passed with sickening slowness.
‘The Eternal Crusader is making ready to engage the enemy fleet,’ the officer replied. ‘I can send a message, but their two-way communications are in lockdown without the proper command codes. D-do you have the codes, my lord?’
Grimaldus did indeed have the codes. He looked at the frightened human, then back at the worried faces of the command staff as they sat at the table.
I am being a fool. My fury is blinding me to my sworn duty. What did he expect, truly? That Helbrecht would send down a Thunderhawk and allow him to take part in the glorious orbital war above? No. He was consigned here, to Helsreach, and there would be no other fate beyond this.
I will die on this world, he thought once more.
‘I have the codes,’ the knight replied, ‘but this is not an emergency. Simply send the following message to their incoming logs, with no need for a reply: “Fight well, brothers.”.’
‘Sent, lord.’
Grimaldus nodded. ‘My thanks.’ He turned to the gathered officers, and leaned over the hololithic display, his gauntleted knuckles on the table’s surface.
‘Forgive me a moment’s choler. We have a war to plan,’ the knight said, and breathed out the most difficult words he had ever spoken. ‘And a city to defend.’
Until their dying nights, the warriors of the Helsreach Crusade bore their lamentations and rage with all the dignity that could be expected of them. But it was no easy feat. No easy feat to be consigned to a city of several million frightened souls while above the stained clouds, hundreds upon hundreds of their battle-brothers were carving their glory from the steel and flesh of an ancient and hated foe. The Black Templars across the city looked skywards, as if their helms’ red eye lenses could pierce the wretched clouds and see the holy war above.
Grimaldus’s own anger was a physical ache. It burned behind his eyes, and beat acid through his veins. But he mastered it, as was his duty. He sat at the table with the human planners, and agreed with them, disagreed, nodded and argued.
At one point, a whisper made its way through the room. It was a serpentine thing, as if it threaded its way from human mouths to human ears seeking to avoid enraging the black-clad Adeptus Astartes knight. When Colonel Sarren cleared his throat and announced that the two fleets had engaged, Grimaldus simply nodded. He’d heard the very first whispers thirty seconds before, of crackled voices coming over the vox-headsets of those at the communication stations.
It was beginning.
‘We should give the order,’ Sarren said quietly, to murmured agreement among the officer cadre.
Grimaldus turned to the vox-officer he had spoken to before. This time, he glanced at the man’s rank badge. The officer saw the silver skull helm nod once in his direction.
‘Lieutenant,’ the knight said.
‘Yes, Reclusiarch?’
‘Give the order to Imperial forces throughout Helsreach. Martial law is in immediate effect.’ He felt his throat dry at the gravity of what he was saying.
‘Se
al the city.’
Four thousand anti-air turrets along the hive’s towering walls primed and aimed their multiple barrels into the sky.
Atop countless spires and manufactory rooftops, secondary defence lasers did the same. Hangars and warehouses converted for use by the Naval air squadrons readied the short rockcrete runways necessary for STOL fighters. Grey-uniformed Naval armsmen patrolled their bases’ perimeters, keeping their sites enclosed and operating almost independently of the rest of the hive.
Across the city, recently-established makeshift roadway checkpoints became barricades and outposts of defence in readiness for the walls falling to the enemy. Thousands of buildings that had been serving as barracks for the Imperial Guard and militia forces sealed themselves with flakboard-reinforced doors and windows.
Announcements from vox-towers ordered the citizens of the hive who weren’t engaged in vital industrial duty to remain in their homes until summoned by Guard squads and escorted to the underground shelters.
Hel’s Highway, lifeline of the hive, was strangled by Guard checkpoints clearing the way of civilian traffic, making room for processions of tanks and Sentinel walkers, a rattling, grinding parade stretching over a kilometre. Clusters of the war machines veered off as they dispersed across the hive.
Helsreach was locked down, and its defenders clutched their weapons as they stared into the bleak sky.
Unseen by any of the humans within the city, one hundred knights – separated by distance but united by the blood of a demigod in their veins – knelt in silent prayer.
Eighteen minutes after the sirens started to wail, the first serious problem with force deployment began. Representatives of Legio Invigilata demanded to speak with the hive’s commanders.
Forty-two minutes later, born entirely of panic, the first civilian riot broke out.
I ask Sarren a reasonable question, and he responds with the very answer I have no wish to hear.
‘Three days,’ he says.
Invigilata needs three days. Three days to finish the fitting and arming of their Titans out in the wastelands before they can be deployed within the city. Three days before they can walk through the immense gates in the hive’s impenetrable walls, and station themselves within the city limits according to the agreed upon plan.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 35