He ducked beneath a half-collapsed archway and emerged into the light.
The Indestructible’s basilica towered, battered but defiant, behind him.
Sicarius looked out over the stepped layers of two of its quadrants, towards the labyrinth of Krieg trenches in the near-distance. The star fort’s brief flight had taken it right back to where it had started. It was cradled by the same impact crater that its first and more violent crash landing had created.
The damage, this time, was more extensive, as Ultracius had intimated. Many of the star fort’s hangars and weapons bays had crumbled into each other. There were bodies, hundreds of bodies, sprawled across them. Many of them belonged to Khargask’s brutish followers; more of them, the majority, did not.
He removed his helmet, to feel fresh air on his face again. He remembered that the air of this tiny moon was poisonous, so he couldn’t risk breathing it for long, though his genhanced body would filter the worst of it. Sergeant Lucien had already contacted their orbiting battle-barge and had them send the Thunderhawks. Sicarius would welcome their timely arrival.
He heard a skittering of adamantium chips above him.
A squealing, scrabbling something landed heavily on his shoulders. A gretchin, he realised, had concealed itself behind one of the decorative gothic mouldings, waiting for a target to pass beneath it.
He wondered if it had waited especially for him, if it possessed the intellect to identify his captain’s insignia. Had it not been for its abominable xenos nature, he might have admired its gall. Its ork masters were dead and their plans, quite literally, in ruins. It could have slinked away and perhaps survived; instead, it was taking one final, desperate chance to do harm to its enemies.
The gretchin stabbed at Sicarius’s eyes with a knife.
Having heard it coming, however, he was already in motion. He dropped to his good right knee before it could secure a grip on him. Its blade thrust went awry and the gretchin’s feet shot out from underneath it. It bounced off Sicarius’s left shoulder and he caught it with his right hand. The wiry creature squirmed fiercely in his grip and slashed at his armoured fingers with its blade. He drove its head into the wall of the basilica behind him, dampening its defiance by cracking its skull.
He tossed the gretchin over an ornamental balustrade. It cleared two of the star fort’s outer storeys to end up smeared across the third. Sicarius thanked the Emperor for a fortuitous escape. Small and weak as the creature had been, it might still have blinded him or worse. He could have been the captain who had lost an eye to an imp, an object lesson that no foe should ever be underestimated.
He clambered over the balustrade himself, and lowered himself to the next level and then the next. Beneath him, he saw Death Korpsmen digging through the wreckage to their dead. Did they never rest, he wondered? He thought, at first, that they were trying to extricate their late brothers-in-arms for burial. They seemed more interested, however, in salvaging what they could of their equipment.
Some of his Ultramarines were assisting with that effort, in lieu of further orders, while others had weapons and armour of their own to patch up.
The Indestructible’s western-facing ramparts were lower than they had been, thanks to its new and more pronounced list. It was possible to hop from them to the ground; at least, it was for someone wearing power armour. In the star fort’s shadow, Sicarius saw a Korpsman – or rather, a Korpsman’s peaked cap – that he recognised, and knew that he ought to face its wearer.
Commissar Dast was busy coordinating the recovery effort. Sicarius waited for him to take a breath before he approached him. He congratulated the commissar on his regiment’s loyal service. ‘Had your men not fought so hard and so well, then Khargask would have had more orks to protect his engine room. This war might have ended very differently, and more tragically for all of us.’
That said, he asked how many Krieg men had been lost.
‘Our quartermasters are still counting the bodies,’ said Dast. ‘I expect the final tally to be close to eighteen hundred.’ If he felt any bitterness about that, his tone didn’t betray it. Close to eighteen hundred lives, thought Sicarius. Almost ninety per cent of their original strength. He knew how he would feel were he ever to lose ninety battle-brothers to a single mission.
‘The most remarkable thing is,’ a voice interjected from behind him, ‘that, while we are screening and conditioning and training and implanting new, raw recruits to replace our fallen battle-brothers, the 319th Krieg Siege Regiment will be back up to full strength and fighting for the Emperor in a matter of months.’
The voice belonged to Sergeant Lucien, who had walked up behind Sicarius as he and Dast conversed. ‘Isn’t that right, Commissar Dast?’ Lucien asked pointedly, though he didn’t meet the commissar’s blank-eyed gaze. He had noticed the big mek’s skull attached to Sicarius’s belt and was admiring that instead.
Sicarius detected a brief hesitation before Dast answered. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘The Death Korps of Krieg is, ah, indestructible.’
He turned smartly on his heel and strode away.
‘The Astra Militarum has a medal,’ Lucien told his captain, ‘the Triple Skull. It is awarded to survivors of campaigns where the casualty rate has been extremely high. We ought to recommend the survivors of the Krieg 319th for that honour. Their captain should be awarded the Winged Skull for his inspirational leadership.’
Sicarius nodded, silently.
‘Never did a man of them flinch from his duty,’ Lucien continued. ‘Never did they question what the Emperor would have them do, nor stand back and hope that someone else would offer his life in their stead. I wish you could have seen them as I did, captain, for you would have been as proud of them as I am.’
An approaching scream of engines drew Sicarius’s eyes to the sky.
Ultracius and the others had just emerged from inside the Indestructible, carrying Gallo and Lumic between them. Sicarius hadn’t seen Renius since he had woken. He wasn’t listed among the dead, however. He had likely descended to the star fort’s buried bowels, to sift through the remnants of the Adeptus Mechanicus’s precious engines.
Sicarius set out across the cold, dark plain to meet the first of the arriving Thunderhawk transport ships. There were other battles to be fought, and more glory to be won.
Knight of Talassar - Steve Lyons Page 10