There were no Dreadnoughts in the room to argue the point, and Kantor was glad of that. He would go to them himself and explain all before he left.
‘Most of our squads,’ Kantor continued, ‘will exit the tunnels close to the inner perimeter of the spaceport grounds. They will retake the facility’s defensive walls and hold them against ork retaliation from outside. The rest of us will fight to secure each of the landing towers. Captain Cortez and I will be leading a further contingent into the control towers to reactivate the defence and comms networks. Dorn willing, we will have our reinforcements shortly after that. Lord Admiral Galtaire is confident in the forces he brings to our aid. There are entire companies of Adeptus Astartes from our brother Chapters waiting to join us in battle. The Adeptus Mechanicus have brought their mighty Titans to rip apart the Gargant abominations. And the Navy has enough Marauders to bomb the xenos back to the Age of Strife.’
He eyed them all as he spoke, one by one. ‘But it all depends on us.’
Serious faces nodded back at him.
‘Are you ready to take our world back, brothers?’ he asked them.
‘For the Chapter!’ they roared. Some pounded on the table, those standing clashed a clenched fist on their chests.
Kantor smiled a hard smile at them and stood.
‘Then get ready to move out. Take every bit of ammunition you can carry. Have the Chaplains bless your amour and weapons. I go now to give orders to the Dreadnoughts, and to tell the governor and General Mir that we are leaving.’
His Fists saluted him as he turned and left, then they turned to each other and clapped those nearest to them on the shoulders. Rough laughter sounded from some. Others grinned. They were going back on the offensive after so long. It felt right.
And none believed that more so than Alessio Cortez.
Five
The Underworks, New Rynn City
The tunnel along which Kantor’s assault group moved was dark and damp, the concrete walls covered with slick algae and thick ceramic pipes that had been broken open in places. Even in the glare of the lights mounted on the Terminators’ armour, the tunnel floor was invisible beneath a soupy black liquid some ten centimetres deep. It was impossible to move quietly, so the Crimson Fists didn’t try. They moved fast instead, or at least as fast as the Terminators on point.
It was a relatively smooth journey at first, not just for Kantor’s group, but for all the assault parties he had formed for the operation. Right now, there were more than twenty detachments of Crimson Fists making for the spaceport along the tunnel networks, each with their very own Terminator out in front, clearing the way with flamer and melta when the xenos bodies were heaped too thick to pass. The orks had been held back quite far out from the Silver Citadel. Over the months of the siege, they had slowly learned that any efforts to infiltrate via underground routes led to their immediate slaughter. Victurix and the other squads from Crusade Company had not relaxed for a moment. The role may have seemed inglorious to others, but the Terminator squads knew it was critical all along. They had never complained about spending days on end down here in the dark. They killed thousands of the foe down here.
Throughout the entire journey, the tunnels shook with the footfalls of the Gargants overhead, but it was only after two hours that this became a danger. Victurix himself, who had been charged with guiding Kantor’s assault group, called back to the Chapter Master when the tunnel’s shaking was at its worst.
‘We must be directly underneath one of them, my lord,’ he bellowed over the comm-link. ‘There are cracks in the tunnel ceiling, and they are getting wider.’
Kantor judged the sergeant’s words accurate. Step after massive step was knocking dust and small chunks of stone down onto his helmet and pauldrons.
‘Press on as fast as you can,’ he told Victurix.
Dorn forgive us if we’re buried down here without even a chance to fight, he thought.
But they were not buried.
Another two hours passed. The earthshaking power of the footfalls dissipated as the Fists pushed on, further and further away from them, and soon Kantor judged that he and his brothers would soon be within the outer perimeter of the spaceport grounds.
Communication was impossible with the other assault groups while everyone was underground, but they had their orders. They had synchronised their visor-chronometers. They would do exactly as he had asked of them.
Another hour brought Kantor and his group to the final junction before they must return aboveground. Where two tunnels met, there was a little more room to move, and Kantor stepped to the fore to look ahead between the shoulders of the Terminators. There was a dark archway set into the left of the tunnel about thirty metres from him. Cortez came up and stood by his side.
‘Through that archway,’ said Kantor, ‘is the stone stair that will take us up into the basement level of the Coronado Tower.’
‘I’m ready,’ said Cortez.
Behind him, four squads of Crimson Fists readied their weapons.
‘You want to be first in, Alessio.’
It wasn’t a question.
Beneath his helm, Cortez grinned wickedly. ‘You know I do.’
Kantor checked the chronometer display on his visor. The other assault groups would be in position within four minutes, explosives fixed to the access hatches and manhole covers they would rush from, bolters cocked and ready to rip their hated enemies apart. All across the spaceport grounds, the orks wouldn’t know what hit them.
‘Let’s get everyone onto the stairs,’ said Kantor.
His visor now told him he had thirty seconds to go before the assault began.
Behind him, his battle-brothers were coiled, ready to strike. He had brought three squads in standard Mark VII aquila-pattern power armour, one in Terminator armour, and two Techmarines – Brothers Anais and Ruzco. He knew their blood was up, all of them, knew they were anxious to be in among the foe, tearing them to pieces.
Twenty seconds… ten seconds…
He looked at Cortez and said, ‘When you go in, brother, go in hard!’
The captain barked out a laugh.
‘I always do!’
The explosive charges they had placed on the inner surface of the access hatch exploded with a bang, and stone chips and smoke blew back over the Adeptus Astartes.
They didn’t wait for the smoke to clear.
‘Charge,’ roared Cortez as he burst forward.
The assault had begun.
All across the spaceport grounds – in the lower levels of the defence towers, in basements and hangars and fuel storage buildings and more – the Crimson Fists exploded up from the tunnels with armour shimmering and weapons stuttering.
The spaceport had become a base of operations for the orks since the day they had overcome the small Crimson Fist and Rynnsguard contingent charged with defending it. Now, the tables were turned. The orks were the defenders and, in their confidence that this war was already won, they were completely unprepared.
Thousands of greenskins died as the Space Marines swarmed the inner walls and retook the defence towers. Outside those walls, the orks were unaware that anything was wrong. Most of the alien horde had their eyes locked to the Gargants and were following them as close as they dared. They did not want to miss the spectacle of their mighty metal monstrosities obliterating the final Imperial stronghold.
The groups assaulting the spaceport’s main buildings – the landing towers and control spires – had it harder, but not at first.
Cortez had burst into the basement of the Coronado tower to find scores of sickly-looking gretchin facing him, frozen in fear and confusion by the sudden explosion that had just interrupted their work. They had been hauling crates of ammunition onto elevators to be taken to the loading bays above. Now, most of that ammunition lay spilled on the ground, the shells rolling and clinking together.
Cortez started picking them off with his bolt pistol immediately. The first grisly death sent the others scur
rying for cover, whimpering and shrieking as they scrambled, but a good number were too slow.
Squads Lician and Segala, two of the four squads Kantor had chosen to go with him, were right behind Cortez, and their bolters began chewing the diminutive aliens apart.
The basement level was a single broad, high-ceilinged room littered with boxes and heaps of metal junk. The roof-space was thick with cable-bundles and pipes that snaked between steel girders. Hanging underneath the metal supports, large arc lights threw out a harsh white glare. It was clear the gretchin didn’t like those lights much. They had smashed more than half of them.
Still, the shadows offered no sanctuary. More Crimson Fists poured through the access hatch now until, finally, Victurix and four of his Terminator brothers stepped through, shaking the floor underneath their booted feet.
‘Clear and hold,’ barked Kantor, but he was glad to see his Space Marines already about the task.
More gretchin screamed as mass-reactive bolts punched into their bodies and blew them open a heartbeat later.
If there are gretchin here, thought Cortez as he killed, then there will be an overseer nearby, too.
Gretchin were disinclined to do anything for the good of their race without a particularly sadistic and violent brute standing over them with a prod or whip.
Sure enough, alerted by the sound of gunfire, a massive leathery skinned ork with one eye burst through a metal door at the top of the stairway that led to the next floor up. Seeing the Space Marines surrounded by dead gretchin, the beast charged into the fray bellowing at the top of its voice. It hadn’t gone three metres down the stairs when an Adeptus Astartes bolt detonated in its brain, spraying the metal steps dark red and causing the heavy body to tumble down them.
Brother Gaban of Squad Lician found the last of the gretchin hiding between two tall stacks of metal crates. A short burst of bright fire from Gaban’s flamer turned the creature into a blazing puppet that danced frantically on the spot as its flesh was consumed.
‘Up,’ shouted Kantor to the others. ‘They know we’re here!’
Cortez raced for the metal stair and pounded up it. Squad Daecor followed right behind him, boots ringing on the metal steps. At the top, Cortez and Sergeant Daecor took position on either side of the open door. The other four members of Daecor’s squad prepared themselves to rush through it, guns held ready, safeties off.
Cortez nodded to Daecor, and the sergeant ordered his squad in.
They rushed forward through the doorway, weapons firing on every target they saw as they moved. Once through the doorway, they immediately moved to the sides, two left, two right, and lay down a steady covering fire for all those that followed.
‘Go!’ Kantor ordered, and Squad Lician charged through next, adding their own lethal rattle of explosive rounds.
Cortez was firing into the loading bay from his position by the frame of the door. He heard Brother Ramos’s plasma cannon, its steady low hum now increased to a threatening whine. The weapon’s glowing coils channelled powerful electromagnetic energies in preparation for a shot. Moments later, there was a roar like fire as a blast of superheated plasma streaked from the weapon. Cortez didn’t see it, nor did he see the result of the blast, but he heard an explosion and the deep howling of full-grown orks in pain.
‘Moving in,’ said Daecor, ‘keep to cover brothers. Oro, watch the gantry above you. Greenskins! Padilla, give him some support, damn it!’
Cortez flexed his muscles and prepared to follow Daecor in. He felt his armour respond to every twitch and stretch he made. Beneath the thick ceramite plates lay a skin of synthetic fibres that acted much like human muscle, reacting to electrical impulses, to the motor commands sent by his brain. The response time was almost exactly that of his own body, making his armour feel like part of him, and he was part of it.
His power armour responded no less swiftly now as he surged out from the cover of the doorway with his bolt pistol kicking in his hand. Kantor was right behind him, Dorn’s Arrow spewing a torrent of death towards a trio of big orks firing down on them from a metal gallery above.
‘Segala and Lician, flank and eliminate,’ commanded the Chapter Master. ‘Anais and Ruzco stay by me. The rest of you, suppressing fire.’
This was Loading Bay Epsilon, the main loading areas serving Coronado Tower. It was here that incoming shipments of Imperial goods had once been loaded onto trucks and driven out for distribution. There were orks and gretchin all over the place. The Crimson Fists assault had caught in the middle of loading their ugly armoured trucks. Like the basement, the ceiling here was high and girdered. The huge metal shutters in the curving north wall were up, and beyond them lay a vast rockcrete expanse of road and runway. The ork trucks sat idling noisily, but even their spluttering engines couldn’t compete with the noise of battle.
Cortez saw movement to his left. Four barrel-chested greenskins were arming themselves from the back of one of the trucks. Inside, Cortez could make out ammunition crates stacked one on top of the other. He turned with his bolt pistol raised and loosed a tight, three-round cluster of bolts, firing, not at the orks, but at the crates just behind them.
For half-a-second, his rounds had no effect.
Then the truck exploded in a blaze of light and flame. The orks were blasted onto their bellies, backs studded with massive shards of hot shrapnel. Secondary explosions lifted the truck into the air before it slammed back down, nose first, into rockcrete.
Cortez didn’t stop to enjoy his handiwork. All around him, the Crimson Fists slaughtered anything green and animate. He continued adding his own fire, making every shot a kill shot. This was what he trained for. He never missed.
He saw a wretched-looking ork with a mechanical hand dash towards a doorway on the metal platform twenty metres above Squad Daecor. No doubt the ugly brute was racing to raise some kind of general alarm, but the Crimson Fists could not afford to get bogged down in a heavy firefight here. Their whole plan depended on their ability to stay mobile, and on the ork inability to coordinate a proper reaction. The spaceport control tower and defence grid control room were many floors above. Terminator Squad Victurix, slower than the other lighter-armoured squads, would stay here and hold this zone. Chapter Master Kantor was counting on them to keep the orks on the ground occupied while he, Cortez and the others climbed higher towards their two main objectives.
Cortez was about to fire on the running ork when a burst of fire from his right ripped the creature to wet red pieces. Cortez glanced towards the shooter.
‘Sorry, brother,’ said Brother Talazar, one of Victurix’s Terminators. ‘My kill.’
Cortez just laughed.
Kantor was ordering Squad Lician, Daecor and Segala up onto the gantries overhead. From there, they would proceed towards the next room, where they would gain access to the upper floors.
‘Stand strong, brother,’ said Cortez to Talazar as he left his side.
‘And you,’ Talazar boomed after him.
Barely two minutes later, Kantor and the rest of his force, minus the Terminators, were running along a black metal gantry twelve metres above the floor, moving towards an archway at the far end. Squad Daecor had point, and they mustered on either side of the opening, ready to go in strong. Ferragamos Daecor had once served a term as a member of a Deathwatch kill-team. Cortez could see it in the sergeant’s movements, in the cool surety with which he guided his team.
After all this, thought Cortez, when we rebuild everything we have lost, I’ll wager that one makes captain.
The fighting in the loading bay below was over for now, the rattle of the Terminators’ storm bolters temporarily ended, but Cortez could hear a great commotion up ahead. The brothers of Squad Daecor gripped their weapons tight and readied themselves to surge forward.
‘There should be a large elevator cage in the centre of the next room,’ Kantor told everyone. ‘Entry points are south and east. Make sure you cover them. Do not damage the mechanism of the elevator. We need
it. Are we clear?’
Affirmative responses sounded over the comm-link.
‘Good,’ said Kantor, checking the bolt-feed for Dorn’s Arrow, then returning his attention to the opening ahead. ‘Squad Daecor, enter and clear. Lician and Segala, follow on my command. Daecor, go!’
The battle-brothers of Daecor’s squad swung out from the cover of the arched entryway and sprinted forward. They slid back into the cover of a dozen metal crates just as a great hail of stubber-fire came their way. ‘Heavy stubbers!’ Daecor reported as shells whined past him on either side. More shells smacked into the face of the crate he was crouched behind. ‘Keep to cover,’ he barked at his squad. ‘Suppressing fire front and centre. Brother Cassaves, you and I will flank them. Do not move until their attention is locked on the others.’
‘Clear, brother-sergeant,’ replied the gruff Cassaves.
Kantor turned to Cortez and said, ‘You and I take cover on either side of the doorway. Supporting fire. Understood?’
Cortez nodded. Kantor dashed for the right side of the doorway, Cortez for the left. Their pauldrons hit the wall at the same time. Cortez leaned out briefly and surveyed the scene before him. It only took an instant.
The elevator cage was in the centre of the chamber, just as Kantor had said it would be. The orks beyond it were heavily armed and dressed in plate armour. Cortez did not see any powered suits among them, but the iron plate would be thick enough to stop a direct hit with a bolt. He saw Daecor and Cassaves moving around, following the line of the walls left and right while the other members of the squad kept the orks busy, but the torrent of shells the orks were pouring out presented a real problem. The greenskin heavy stubbers were spitting out spent brass like water from a fountain. The floor around them was ankle deep in shell casings already and the cover behind which the rest of Squad Daecor was sheltering was rapidly being chewed away.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 95