‘What’s next?’ said Cortez once he was on his feet. He turned his head to look across at the others.
‘Nothing for you,’ said Kantor. ‘You’ll rest until we can get an Apothecary here.’
‘Not likely,’ protested Cortez. ‘I’m still in this. I’m fine.’
‘No,’ Kantor boomed. ‘You lost an arm, Alessio. By the mercy of the Emperor alone, you’re lucky you didn’t lose your life.’
Cortez gestured over Kantor’s shoulder. ‘I haven’t lost an arm, brother. It’s right over there.’
It was. His severed arm, still wearing the glorious power fist that bore his personal arms, was exactly where Kantor had left it, close to the pillar against which the creature had thrown him.
Kantor shook his head, bewildered that his friend could consider this a time for levity.
Daecor, Verna and the others stopped beside them. ‘Your legend grows, Fourth captain,’ said Daecor with a salute.
Cortez kept glaring at Kantor, but the Chapter Master turned to the others and said, ‘Daecor, Lician, Anais… we proceed to the air defence control centre. Brother-Captain Cortez and Brother Verna will take the elevator up to the air traffic control room and wait with Lucevo, Padilla and Ruzco.’
‘With respect, lord,’ said Cortez angrily, ‘I told you I can still fight.’
Kantor shook his head. ‘Three brothers are holding the air traffic control room alone. It is critical to our success that it remains held. I am giving you an order, and you will obey it.’
I have granted you far too many liberties already, Alessio, Kantor thought, and the last was nearly the end of you. It is enough for today.
Cortez’s body language managed to convey his deep dissatisfaction and resentment without the need for words, but he did as commanded. He turned and led the limping Verna to the elevator.
‘I thought we were going to cut the cables,’ said Daecor to the Chapter Master.
‘It is just as well we did not,’ replied Kantor. ‘Neither of them are in any shape to fight now.’
‘Incredible,’ murmured Daecor. ‘Incredible that Cortez survived at all.’
Just as Cortez was about to close the elevator gate behind him, Kantor shouted after him. ‘What of Brother Oro? Did you see him?’
The doors had begun to close, but Cortez thrust out his hand and stopped them. He leaned out of the elevator and said, ‘He came back into the atrium and tried to aid me in my fight. I told him not to interfere, but he wouldn’t listen.’ He paused, then added, ‘For what it’s worth, he died bravely.’
Silence reigned for a moment.
Cortez let the door of the elevator slide shut. Seconds later, the winches whined and it began to ascend.
‘Gather up your weapons,’ said Kantor. He looked at the remains of Bacar, nothing more than three grisly parts clustered together on the floor to his right. ‘Take his ammunition. We may need it.’
Saying this, he turned and began walking towards a grand archway on the chamber’s south-eastern side. ‘Hurry,’ he told the Fists following behind him. ‘The Gargants may even now have broken through.’
Nine
Air Defence Tower, New Rynn Space port
Nothing else they encountered was quite as deadly as the ork boss Cortez had finally killed. Though Kantor moved with so few of his battle-brothers in support, they moved fast, killing the orks they came across with cold, ruthless efficiency. Inside, the south-east tower was much like the one they had just come from. Once they had crossed the connecting walkway, and had navigated their way through a series of filthy rooms and ruined hallways, they found themselves in a large chamber dominated by a central elevator shaft. The only difference between this chamber and the other seemed to be the absence of dead foliage here.
The air defence control centre was close to the very top of the tower, almost a full kilometre above ground level. Like the air traffic control room, it was occupied by orks and gretchin. Like those in the air traffic control room, they were unprepared for a sudden and decisive assault. Moments after they emerged from the elevator, Kantor and his makeshift squad found themselves pulling ruined bodies from the tops of the consoles.
The layout of the room was similar to that of the air traffic control centre, though fewer of the windows were smashed. Despite the season, it was cold up here. Night leached the heat away. Kantor ignored the temperature. Inside his power armour, it was well-regulated, almost constant. Some of the gretchin bodies on the floor wore raumas-wool coats and hats, spoils taken from the bodies of the Rynnite dead which must once have littered this place just as the gretchin themselves did now. Their larger ork brethren wore no such items. Their great swollen musculatures made the wearing of human clothes impossible.
Once the consoles were free of dead aliens, Brother Anais began his systems checks. Moments later, he crossed to the Chapter Master’s side. ‘The news is good, lord. They seem to have done little in the way of irreparable damage.’
‘How long until we have full control over the surface-to-orbit batteries?’
Anais tapped runes in front of him. Figures spooled across a green screen. ‘A number of weapons are out of commission. We shall need time to bring them back online. We can begin firing the others within the hour, perhaps even less.’
‘And the suborbital anti-air batteries?’ Kantor asked.
‘Much the same, lord,’ said Anais. ‘Some appear to have been dismantled. Power readouts are favourable, however. The orks did not dismantle or disconnect the on-site plasma generators.’
‘Get these systems up and running as soon as you can,’ said Kantor. ‘Then open a link to our brothers in the air traffic control centre. I want you to coordinate everything with them. The moment we are ready, I want a message sent to Lord Admiral Galtaire. The sooner he starts ferrying support down to us, the better. And tell Ruzco to keep trying to raise our forces at the citadel. We need information. Those void shields had better be holding.’
Kantor had barely drawn breath after finishing his sentence when there was a deep rumble from outside, getting louder. It was the unmistakable sound of high-power turbines and they were very close.
Kantor just had time to shout ‘Down!’ at the others before something strafed the windows of the defence control centre, blasting in those that were not already shattered. Shells ripped into the room, not stubber shells, but something far heavier. Autocannon rounds. The orks must have salvaged the guns from a looted Chimera or Hydra.
Broken glass blasted inwards. Consoles and cogitator banks against the far wall disintegrated. Anais, Daecor and Lician had thrown themselves to the floor the moment Kantor had warned them, and it had saved their lives. But Kantor himself was right in the line of fire. The heavy armour-piercing shells battered at him, rattling off him, sparks showering outwards with every impact, but they did no damage.
He’d had only a fraction of a second to activate the power field device embedded in the golden halo that jutted up from the top of his back-mounted generator, but that fraction of a second had been enough. All it took was a single neural command, a thought, and the so-called iron halo, actually made of adamantium and coated with gold, shielded him in its powerful energy field, turning aside the lethal hail of shells.
The device was a last resort, but he’d had no choice. Activating the device was a huge energy drain, and the power levels of his armour dropped dramatically while it protected him. The temperature inside his suit went up. Alarm runes glowed red in his visor, but it saved his life. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to rely on the halo in half a century.
The hail of shells stopped, and Kantor flicked off the energy shield with a thought. The warning runes blinked off. Internal temperature evened out. He looked beyond the edge of the jagged window frames.
Hovering drunkenly in the air outside the defence control room, swaying back and forth on roaring jets of blue flame, an ungainly ork gunship faced him down. He saw two goggled ork pilots laughing uproariously, their hideou
s faces lit from below by the glowing instruments of their cockpit. They stopped laughing when they saw Kantor standing there unharmed, glaring back at them, radiating raw hate and anger.
The Chapter Master expected them to open fire again, but instead the pilots turned the gunship ninety degrees and presented its left side.
There, standing in an open bay-door in the middle of the craft, was a massive figure with red eyes. It glared back at Kantor, and something indefinable passed between them.
Kantor knew instinctively it was Snagrod. He had never seen a larger ork. The warlord emanated an aura of incredible physical power. No wonder he had united so many disparate ork tribes under his banner. Dominance was hard-coded into his genes.
The beast roared, throwing its huge jaws wide, and pointed down towards the landing plate two hundred metres below: the Nolfeas Plate.
Kantor understood. This was between the two of them, leader against leader.
He nodded, and the warlord bellowed something to the pilots.
The gunship swung away. Snagrod and Kantor kept their eyes locked to each other until the gunship moved out of sight.
Kantor turned to the others.
‘Anais,’ he said. ‘Did we lose any critical systems?’
The Techmarine was already checking. After a moment, he said, ‘Nothing critical, my lord. I can still get ninety-seven per cent of the remaining defensive systems back online.’
‘Do it,’ said Kantor, and he strode towards the elevator. ‘The moment we have the defence grid back, coordinate with Ruzco and the fleet. Start bringing the reinforcements down. Dorn only knows how the citadel is faring.’
He stepped into the elevator cage.
‘My lord,’ said Daecor, moving to join him. ‘You can’t mean to go alone.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lician. ‘Take us with you.’
In the cage, Kantor turned and faced the two sergeants.
‘This is my fight,’ he said. ‘Should it be my last, you will follow the instructions I left with the Chosen back at the Cassar.’
He closed the elevator gate and pressed the rune to descend. Daecor and Lician watched him go, reluctant, but knowing they could do nothing to stop him.
Ten
Atop the Nolfeas Terminal, New Rynn Space port
There were few ork flying machines on the Nolfeas Plate, and those there were, sitting silently a few dozen metres from the plate’s edge, looked to be in bad shape. Their sides were pocked with holes, their diameter consistent with the damage Hydra rounds inflicted. These craft had been struck by the guns of the Imperial defenders, and had limped back here for repairs. A few gretchin hovered around them, but, when they saw Kantor crossing a covered walkway and stepping onto the edge of the plate, they panicked and disappeared down a small service ramp, screeching and chittering in their crude alien tongue.
Above the plate, the sky was lightening, turning from darkest, star-speckled blue to pale rose. With this colour shift, Kantor could no longer see the tiny lights that told of the battle in space. He prayed to Dorn that Lord Admiral Galtaire was as good in combat as his service record attested.
He did not like it that so much of his future, and the future of the whole Chapter, rested in the hands of others. No Adeptus Astartes could be comfortable with that. A Space Marine was used to controlling his own fate. Even in the heat of his most intense battles, he had always known that, live or die, others would fight on. He had always known that the Chapter would go on without him.
Would the coming day see them saved or obliterated?
He crossed to the centre of the Nolfeas Plate. So far, there was no sign of the ork warlord, nor of the gunship, but Kantor was certain he had not misinterpreted the massive ork’s intent.
He scanned the skies, senses hyper-alert…
…and heard the roar of jets just a second before the ork gunship surged upwards over the lip of the plate and opened fire on him, stitching the ferrocrete with shells that traced a lethal line towards him.
His dive was almost too late. Chips of ferrocrete smashed against his right side as the hail of fire ripped past him.
He rose to face the craft.
He tracked it as it swung left and loosed a burst from Dorn’s Arrow, but the cockpit was heavily armoured, and the bursting bolter-shells left only smears of black on the clear armaplas bubble. One of the ork pilots yanked on the craft’s controls, and the gunship swung its nose around to face him head-on again.
Kantor knew only too well the power of the weapons that bristled from under the craft’s stubby wings. He saw now that they were indeed looted autocannons. There were two of them, fed by thick, heavy ammo drums that he guessed contained tens of thousands of rounds.
The guns fired again, and again he narrowly avoided being torn apart. Employing his halo again would have cost him power, slowing him down. He couldn’t afford that. He had a sense that the ork pilots were toying with him. Snagrod wouldn’t let them steal the glory of killing an Adeptus Astartes Chapter Master. He would want that victory for himself.
The gunship unleashed a third rippling volley, and Kantor tested a theory. He did not move.
It was a deadly gamble to take, but, sure enough, the rounds stitched a path in the surface of the Nolfeas Plate that passed right by him.
The ork pilots were snarling and cursing him. One hauled on his control sticks, and the craft veered away moving to the far edge of the landing plate. Once there, it turned side-on, and again saw his huge nemesis.
The craft lowered unsteadily towards the plate on its vectored jets. When it was still six metres up, the beast called Snagrod dropped from the bay door, landing so hard and heavy that Kantor imagined he felt the plate tremble. Of course, that was impossible. The Nolfeas Plate used anti-gravitic suspension just like the others. Nothing short of a Naval transport could shake it.
Now that Snagrod had landed on the plate, he rose to his full height, and the gunship pulled up into the air, hovering there, drifting drunkenly from left to right as the pilots tried to keep it steady.
Kantor’s eyes were on the warlord. Snagrod wore no suit of power armour like other warlords did. His hulking, muscle-bound torso was bare of everything save deep scars and burns, crude stitches and rippling veins as thick as a man’s thumb. This lack of armour was the most overt sign of pure confidence and power Kantor had ever seen in an individual ork.
Kantor knew then that he had never faced a beast like this in mortal combat.
For weaponry, the monster wielded no power claw, but he gripped a single massive heavy stubber in the fingers of its right hand, box-fed with a cruelly serrated bayonet slung underneath the barrel. There were close combat weapons slung on the creature’s back, too, but Kantor didn’t have a good view of them.
The two enemies glared at each other, frozen for a moment, each silently assessing his foe. From around Snagrod’s thick waist, a collection of Space Marine helmets hung, swinging on short iron chains that rattled from a squiggoth-skin belt. There were four helmets, each coloured differently, each taken from a battle-brother belonging to a different Chapter. One was decorated with the gold laurels of a veteran sergeant.
Inside his armour, Kantor flexed his muscles and felt blood rushing through them, blood and adrenaline. The latter would make him faster, inure him to pain, help him fight fatigue and make his opponent’s movements seem slower than they really were. But how fast could this monster move? Unhindered by tonnes of iron plate, like that worn by Urzog Mag Kull, Snagrod was a different prospect altogether.
The moment broke suddenly, like glass, and it began.
Snagrod raised the barrel of his gun straight at Kantor and pulled hard on the trigger. Kantor raised Dorn’s Arrow and opened fire a fraction of a second later. Shells hammered through the air in both directions… and struck their targets.
Kantor had flicked on the shield of his iron halo again, just in time. The ork rounds danced on the energy field, sparking and ricocheting while he fired back.
&nbs
p; The bolts from Dorn’s Arrow struck true, but Snagrod suffered no damage at all. He, too, seemed to be shielded by some kind of power field. It was another reason he didn’t need a hulking mass of metal plate. The bolts exploded harmlessly, sending ripples of strange green energy out over the warlord’s body.
They stood there, unleashing the full fury of their weapons at each other, both roaring in hate at rage as they did so. Then, almost simultaneously, their ranged weapons ran dry.
Kantor deactivated the halo’s energy field. His armour’s power levels had dropped dangerously low. They climbed again now, but never quite reached optimum. He knew he couldn’t rely on the halo again. If he came too close to overloading his armour’s generator, his systems would lock out to prevent an atomic explosion.
Ammo spent, Snagrod threw his heavy stubber aside in disgust and charged.
Damn, but he was fast!
His impossibly muscular legs halved the distance to Kantor in scant seconds.
Kantor loosed a battle cry and raced forwards to meet him, drawing his sword left-handed from the scabbard at his lower back and activating the power fist on his right.
Snagrod drew the close combat weapons from the slings on his broad back as he ran, two huge chainaxes decorated with roughly painted black and white checks. They growled into motion, teeth blurring.
The two enemies clashed hard, right in the middle of the Nolfeas Plate. Kantor slipped a blistering blow and struck at Snagrod’s belly with his blade. Green sparks flew. The monster’s energy shield was still in play. Where did it get its power? It had to come from somewhere, but Kantor’s eyes couldn’t find any sign of a device. It had to be somewhere on Snagrod’s body, but there was no time to search in earnest for it. Another whistling swipe almost took the Chapter Master’s head off. The blade of the left chainaxe missed him by a hair’s breadth.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 100