While the captain had been issuing the order, Grimm had been checking the charge in his plasma pistol and warming up the flexors of his power fist. His own squad, which he had left under the command of Brother Santanos, was one of the squads in close proximity to the crash site. If the captain allowed it, Grimm would go to them and lead them in their elimination of the greenskin intruders. How many would have been on that craft? How many would have survived impact? If the orks got a foothold there, a critical resource would be lost all too early in the conflict. The manufactora were essential for ammunition resupply. It would be a disaster.
With his orders given, Alvez checked his own weapons, one a master-crafted power sword, the other a massive storm bolter, both Chapter relics awarded to him on his ascension to the captaincy, both exquisitely decorated with fine golden scrollwork and detailed chasings. Weapon checks and a brief prayer completed, the captain turned his head towards Grimm and said, ‘We are near enough to offer assistance, sergeant. Follow me.’
Alvez did not bother with the staircase for his descent. He stepped straight off the roof and plunged to the pavement, a drop of four metres, landing so hard that his boots shattered the flagstones. Grimm followed, the impact of his own boots markedly less. Then the two Crimson Fists were off, powering down the street towards the gate that linked the residential zone to the industrial.
Grimm hoped at least a few of the greenskins had survived. If what Epistolary Deguerro had said was true, he would revel in extracting payback. His armour, he swore, would be caked in xenos gore by the end of the day.
Four
The Western Slopes, The Hellblade Mountains
Kantor and his fifteen battle-brothers moved at speed down a sloping defile, loose stones skittering out in front of them. The Chapter Master was confident that the ork pilots hadn’t spotted them. None of the ugly, heavy-looking fighters had peeled off from the main group, not yet, but the noise of their engines was louder by the second.
Kantor hoped the site of the ruined fortress-monastery, all that body-strewn rubble, would hold the orks’ attention away from Yanna Gorge. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He pressed his Space Marines hard. Sergeant Segala’s makeshift squad were out in front, providing forward eyes. Viejo’s squad were at the rear, alert as they moved, ready to warn of ork pursuit. Cortez and his squad moved with Kantor.
Communication was brief and infrequent as they pushed on. That suited Kantor fine. There was little to say. Better that each man be left to his own private thoughts for now, each remembering the brothers that had meant most to him. He still wrestled with his own grief, of course, but, as the leader, he didn’t have the luxury of letting it dominate his mind. He had to get his Fists away from here. Soon, they would reach the foothills. There would be less cover there. Trees were sparse. Only hardy dry-grasses and thorny shrubs flourished. If the ork pilots opted to sweep the region looking for fresh targets, it would be on the foothills that Kantor and his men would be seen, out in the open with nowhere to run.
Cortez moved up beside him, fell into step, and, after a moment, said, ‘No time to cover our tracks. They will follow us sooner or later.’
Cortez’s helm hid his expression, but Kantor could hear his old friend’s inner thoughts clear enough in his voice: I want them to find us.
‘It cannot be helped, Alessio,’ said Kantor. ‘The best we can do is to hide our numbers. Keep to the tracks of our forward squad.’
Cortez looked north-west, eyes following the line of the gorge. Up ahead, Segala’s squad were moving quickly, eyes scanning the land for signs of any ground-based foe. He turned back to Kantor and said, ‘You have us scurrying away like mice, Pedro, when I would have us turn and fight like lions.’
Kantor frowned under his faceplate. ‘The ways of the mouse suit our purpose, brother. He is a survivor. The time for battle will come, but we will reunite with our brothers in the capital before that. It is the only logical path.’
‘Logic,’ repeated Cortez, but he spoke it like a curse word. ‘Ask the orks what they think of–’
Kantor raised a hand to hush him, his ears picking up a new sound on the air. Cortez listened, and heard it, too. Beneath the splutter and throb of the ork engines, something else was rising, faint but growing steadily stronger. It was a smoother sound, more rhythmic, more finely tuned.
‘Lightnings,’ said Kantor, his Lyman’s Ear implant filtering and enhancing the noise. ‘They’re coming in from the south-west. Three of them. It must be a fighter wing out of Scar Lake.’
Cortez tilted his head. ‘Closing fast. They must’ve seen the orks.’ He looked to the rocky slope on his left, then back at Kantor.
‘Go,’ said Kantor. ‘Report what you see.’
Around him, the other Adeptus Astartes stopped to await his command, bolters rising to the ready position by force of habit.
‘All squads, hold position,’ Kantor ordered over the link.
Cortez sprinted up the slope, his heavy boots crushing small rocks to powder beneath him and causing a miniature landslide of dirt and pebbles. Just below the ridgeline, mindful of his silhouette, he stopped, crouched, and peered over.
‘You were right, lord,’ he reported. ‘Three Lightnings vectoring in towards the mountains. The orks have seen them. Their fighters are breaking off to engage. I don’t like the look of it. Those Lightnings are outnumbered three to one.’
Ork flying machines might look clumsy, nose-heavy, and just about as aerodynamic as a Dreadnought, but therein lay the trick. Despite appearances, they were often lethally effective. No Rynnsguard air unit in active service had ever faced orks before. Imperial Lightnings, armed with autocannon and lascannon as standard, were crafted for performance, not durability. And ork pilots were as liable to ram them head-on as to fire on them.
‘They must have been sent here to investigate the explosion,’ said Kantor.
It made sense. The blast that had obliterated Arx Tyrannus would have been visible across almost the entire continent. Contact with Scar Lake Airbase had been lost hours ago, during the first ork strikes on the planet, but the appearance of the Lightnings suggested a slim possibility the airbase itself was still under Rynnsguard control. Kantor hoped so, but there was little he could do about it either way.
To Cortez, he said, ‘We cannot aid them from here, Alessio. Not with the weapons we have. Keep moving. Their arrival will buy us time to put more ground under our feet. Hurry.’
Though reluctant to turn his eyes from the imminent dogfight, Cortez left the ridge and half-skidded, half-strode back to Kantor’s position.
‘All squads, move out,’ ordered the Chapter Master.
‘Emperor be with them,’ said Cortez as he fell into step.
Five
Three thousand metres above the Hellblade Mountains
‘Falcon One, this is Falcon Three,’ said Lieutenant Keanos over the vox. ‘I have a lock.’
‘Falcon Three, you are clear to fire,’ came the reply. ‘Falcon squadron, engage, engage!’
Keanos flipped the red toggle on his stick and thumbed the fire button. From a pylon under his right wing, white fire flashed and raced off, painting an arc of smoke that curved in towards his still-distant target.
Two seconds later, a little ball of fire bloomed in the distance. Black trails fell from it towards the ground.
‘That’s a kill,’ said the voice on the vox. ‘First blood to Falcon Three.’
Keanos felt a surge of elation. He had just destroyed an alien aircraft. In all his ten years as a Rynnsguard pilot, he had never actually imagined he would see real combat. Most of the flight time he had logged was routine patrol or war games. He couldn’t wait to tell his wife, Azela, and their son, Oric, about this. It would have to wait until after the war, of course, when they could be together again.
He would have to embellish the telling a little, mind you. It was the AF-9 Airstrike missile that had done most of the real work. He had one left, slung under his left wing, and he h
oped to gain another kill with it before the skirmish was over. The orks hadn’t opened fire yet, so it looked like they didn’t have missiles with the kind of range the airstrikes had. But there were still eight of them left according to his forward auspex. Even if he and the rest of Falcon squad made a kill with every missile at their disposal, there would still be three ork fighters which they would have to eliminate in gun range, and that was another kind of combat altogether.
Up ahead, the ork fighters were banking to face him now. The numbers on his auspex’s rangefinder display were dropping fast, far too fast for comfort. The orks were making a beeline directly for the Imperial Fighters. A familiar alarm sounded in Keanos’s cockpit. Keanos spoke over the vox. ‘Falcon One, I have another lock. Alpha-Six. I repeat, I have a lock on target Alpha-Six.’
As he spoke, he saw two white trails streak out towards the orks, one from each of the Lightnings on either side of him. Keanos hoped they hadn’t fired at Alpha-Six. He wanted the kill for himself.
One of the missile trails started corkscrewing a second before it plunged towards the ground. A frustrated voice announced, ‘This is Falcon One. Missile malfunction. No hit. No hit. Falcon Three, cleared to fire. Light him up.’
Keanos hit the button on his stick and felt the last Airstrike drop away from below his left wing. The white trail curved off ahead and, a second later, a churning ball of red fire and black smoke started dropping from the sky.
‘That’s two for two, Falcon Three,’ said the squadron leader.
Keanos wanted to jump up and down. Second only to Oric’s birth, this was turning into one of the best days of his life. Two kills! How many more would he make by the end of the war?
With his main ordnance spent, he switched his targeting systems over to manual. Looking at his display, he saw that both his autocannon and lascannon were primed and ready, ammo counters at max. Up ahead, the rest of the ork fighters were almost in gun-range.
Come on, you alien bastards, he thought. I’ll be an ace for sure.
Six
Zona 6 Industria, New Rynn City
The fighting in the streets around the damaged manufactorum was already heavy when Alvez and Grimm arrived behind the hastily erected barricades. The moment the captain arrived, those not engaged in direct fire turned and threw him short, sharp salutes. He nodded, but did not salute back. Though he was a rigid traditionalist, he knew, too, that there was a time and a place to reinforce proper conduct and discipline, and here, under heavy fire from a large, confident warband, was not that time.
Solid slugs whined over his head as he strode across to Squad Anto where they were hunkered down behind thick sections of Aegis pre-fabricated walls.
A fellow Blackwaterite, Faradis Anto had served under Alvez for more than a century. He was relatively short for a Crimson Fist, but he had a quick mind, and was known for being decisive. Alvez had once considered Anto for Grimm’s position, but Anto and the captain were too similar in many ways. Huron Grimm was a contrast, and Alvez had opted for the balance that their dynamic allowed, though he had never said so to Grimm. So far, he’d had no cause to regret that choice.
As he approached Anto, he told Grimm, ‘Go, sergeant. Command your squad, but keep this channel open should I need you.’
‘My lord,’ said Grimm. He turned from Alvez, and crossed to greet his squad brothers where they sheltered behind the concrete corner of a processing mill that was being peppered by ork stubber-fire.
Anto saluted Alvez. ‘It is good to see you, lord.’
‘Status report, Faradis.’
‘The transport was large and very full. A great deal of damage was done to the manufactorum, but the superstructure remains intact. There are orks holed up inside. We estimate their number to be between sixty and eighty. Others are using the wreckage of their craft as cover. Still more are moving through the streets, killing all they find. They have attempted to flank us on this side of the district twice, but we have turned them back both times. If we are to dislodge them, we will need to storm their positions with a full frontal assault.’
Here, Anto paused, before adding, ‘It could be costly, my lord. The orks taking cover in the wreckage and the manufactorum have significant firepower. Scouts from Squad Bariax are acting as our forward eyes. They have reported signs of las and plasma analogues, and a number of xenos weapon types. The orks are highly alert, too. Sergeant Bariax and his men attempted to infiltrate the manufactorum eleven minutes ago. It was hoped he and his squad might be able to eliminate the warboss and throw the entrenched forces into confusion. I’m afraid it did not work, my lord.’
‘Losses?’ asked Alvez.
‘Two Scouts, good men I’m told.’
Not good enough, thought Alvez. We can’t afford to lose anyone, not if we are all that is left of the Chapter.
He still hadn’t made Deguerro’s dark revelation common knowledge, partly because he hoped it could still prove to be false, partly because there had been no time.
‘Do we have schematics for the area?’ he asked. ‘We need an access plan.’
There was a tremendous pounding from behind them, like a god hammering on a vast door, and Alvez and Anto turned to look for the source. They could hardly have missed it. There before them stood a gargantuan figure, his every angular surface etched with the deeds and glories of his past. On the right side of his massive armoured carapace, he bore the Chapter icon set within the stone cross of a Crux Terminatus, a symbol permitted only to those who had earned their place in the Crusade Company. Between his piston-like legs, a white tabard rippled in the breeze, decorated with an aquila embroidered in gold thread. And on his left leg, he wore a sculpted arc of silver laurel leaves surrounding a golden skull, yet another of the great honours he had gained throughout his six centuries as a member of the Crimson Fists.
He was a Dreadnought. His name was Brother Jerian and, when he spoke, his modulated voice was so deep, like the bellow of a massive bull brachiodont, that the air around him trembled. ‘You need no access plans, honoured captain.’
He raised his left arm into the air and spun his monstrous metal power fist through three hundred and sixty degrees.
‘Where you require a doorway, I shall make one.’
Now, he raised his right arm, and the air filled with a mechanical whine as he cycled the clustered barrels of his auto-cannon.
‘Where you require death, I shall dispense it.’
Alvez looked up at the ancient warrior. Inside the walking metal sarcophagus, there was a battle-brother much like himself. Or rather, he had been once. Jerian had been a hero of the Chapter before Alvez had known life. But the hero had fallen in the Battle for Emerald Sands, his body eaten away almost to nothing by the concentrated bio-acids of the despicable tyranid race. It was a slow, painful death, no death for a Space Marine. The Apothecaries had saved what they could of him, and the Techmarines had interred him in this venerable and ancient apparatus. If death ever tried to claim him again, it would find him a hard target. Alvez was sure of that.
Every brother in the Chapter knew the tales of Jerian‘s victories and heroics. Clearly, the Dreadnought sought to add to that list now.
Alvez walked towards the boxy metal giant, stopping five metres in front of him and fixing his eyes on the rectangular vision slit cut high on the hulking frame.
‘Very well, Brother Jerian,’ he said. ‘You will provide our heavy support. We will push in directly and slaughter the foe where they stand. Obey my orders. This will unfold as I command it. No other way.’
Alvez felt wrong addressing such a legendary figure in this manner, but he had to be sure that all, even Jerian, recognised his authority here as absolute.
If Pedro Kantor is gone, he told himself, the future of the Chapter is in my hands.
The thought was sour. It gave him no pride.
‘You understand, Old One?’ he said to the Dreadnought. ‘We will do this my way.’
‘We may do this any way you please,’ rumble
d Jerian, ‘so long as I get to kill orks.’
Seven
The Western Foothills, Hellblade Mountains
Kantor and his Fists emerged from Yanna Gorge onto a shallow slope that wound its way between the last of the foothills. The Eastern Steppes spread out before them, bright and glaring in the midday sunlight. To the west, smoke from a thousand fires rose into the air. The roiling black pillars were so large, the Adeptus Astartes could see them from a hundred kilometres away, rising just beyond the curve of the horizon. They did not know if the smoke represented crashed ork craft or burning townships. Kantor hoped it was the former.
As he ordered his Adeptus Astartes to continue north-west across the steppes, he heard explosions behind him. He turned, but his view was blocked by the bent backs of the hills. He hoped the explosion was not the death rattle of a Lightning fighter.
To the east, back the way they had come, the Hellblades rose up like a wall of jagged tusks, their sharp peaks bone white, their roots and ridges almost black. He had known these mountains almost all his life. Why did he feel that he was saying goodbye to them? Arx Tyrannus was gone, but the mountains would endure. He couldn’t explain the feeling.
Cortez’s squad had moved up, a kilometre ahead, to take its turn as the party’s forward eyes. Sergeant Segala and his squad had fallen back to march beside Kantor, but the men kept a respectful distance. They did not want to bother their Chapter Master, perhaps recognising the burden he now bore.
They knew he would call them to him when and if he needed them.
There was a sudden scream of rocket engines as one of the Lightnings streaked by barely a hundred metres above Kantor’s head. Sixteen pairs of visored eyes whipped up to follow it. A heavy-looking ork fighter roared past just a second later, spewing a hail of lead and las-fire from a bristle of forward guns. Kantor saw the Lightning dance from right to left, trying to shake its pursuer, but the ork was stuck to its tail. The Lightning pilot tried to swerve left, following the gradient of the land downwards, but the ork must have anticipated the move. The Lightning turned directly into a stream of shells that ripped its metal body apart.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 82