Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah
Page 13
‘Have you never wanted something more? What if you could ascend to the ranks of the tech-priests and travel closer to the Machine-God?’
‘That’s what you don’t understand.’ She touched the cog symbol in her forehead and then ran her fingers along the struts of her exo-skeletal arm. ‘I already travel in the sphere of the Machine-God. They gifted me these as reward for my dedication. You think the Cult Mechanicus despises the flesh, but the biologis teach us that even flesh is a machine, simply forged from different materials. The Machine-God is in our thought processes, not our limbs and organs. You disrespect that when you give me stimms without my consent, without offering supplication to the spirit they have placed within me.’
She stopped, shocked by her own vehemence. Harkas looked at her oddly. He seemed offended at first and then cautious.
‘I did not mean to cast aspersions on your faith, tributai, but to compliment you on your resilience and resourcefulness.’
Ghelsa noted the lack of an actual apology in the explanation and was about to iterate that point when the cough of stub pistols and a shout from Dazi drew their attention back to the atrium.
‘Some help here, strange one,’ Aszad called.
Armoured warriors were descending the steps on the opposite side of the hall, bolts and plasma blasts preceding them like a bow wave, carving apart any skitarii caught in the fusillade. Converging arc-flashes and lasbeams scoured across their armour, but they advanced into the storm heedless of any danger.
The Armageddon fighters and Harkas added their fire to the defence, bullets and arc-flares blazing across the divide. One of the lead giants stopped his advance and turned towards them, bolter raised. Dazi threw herself across Harkas, knocking them both flat, while Aszad dived against the corpse pile.
Ghelsa stood transfixed as bolt rounds exploded across the bodies, detonating viscera into the corridor. A second salvo ripped a fresh swathe through the corpses, shattering dead bone, tearing cold flesh.
Harkas and the two tunnel fighters were pinned down behind a depleting wall of the dead. In a few more seconds the corpses would be ripped apart, denying them the last shreds of cover.
The gleam of a plasma coil drew Ghelsa’s eye to one of the bodies closer to her. There was a plasma caliver in the soldier’s dead grip. The pulse of the energy cell called to her like the insistent blink of a warning indicator. From her position, the Space Marine was just in sight, but the corpse was in full view of the traitor. If she moved she would step directly into the line of fire.
Another staccato of wet explosions and a dismayed shout from Dazi spurred her into action.
She bounded forward, covering the width of the corridor with a single calliper-assisted leap. She stooped and tore the rifle from the skitarii’s grasp and then turned, raising the weapon in one hand. A shrunken, ruddy image of the Space Marine moved back and forth in the sight along its length, appearing and disappearing as her hand wavered.
Still boosted by the vestigial effects of the combat stimm, Ghelsa tracked the course of the next bolt to erupt from the Space Marine’s weapon. It slammed into the wall between her and the others, a midpoint in a continuing burst that was moving towards her.
She pulled the trigger. A fist-sized sphere of blue plasma sped across the atrium and smashed into the traitor’s chest even as the next round left the muzzle of his boltgun. The armoured warrior fell back into the wall, scattering shards of molten plastron, but Ghelsa’s attention was fixed on the spark of bolt propellant as the projectile raced towards her.
It scorched past her face, the spit of propellant burning her eyes, hot air washing over her skin in the heartbeat before it slammed into the wall further down the corridor. A split second later it detonated, spraying shards of plascrete into her arm and leaving an uneven pattern of white dots across her skin. Her ear buzzed painfully, partly muting the ongoing sounds of battle.
Dazi, Aszad and Harkas rose up from their hiding place and dashed towards her. A fresh welter of bolter impacts tore into the archway where they had been, chasing them down the passageway.
The two xenagia tackled her together, driving her away from the line of fire just an instant before the white-hot beam of a lascannon slashed into the corridor. They hit the floor hard, Harkas jumping over the tangle of their limbs to evade the incoming fire.
Rolling over, Ghelsa half jumped and half crawled after the inquisitor, her breath coming in short gasps. Dazi and Aszad caught up with her, hooking their arms under hers to haul her fully to her feet.
Together, the four of them fled for the shelter of a doorway a few metres further down the passage. Ghelsa sank to her knees in the small chamber beyond, her shoulders heaving, her leg bracing scraping the tiled floor. Harkas stopped inside the arched doorway and peered out. He jerked back suddenly and a bolt trail sped past the opening a second later.
Ghelsa followed his gaze as he looked around the chamber. It was a storage space, lined with shelves on which were stacked neat piles of chamfered discs and assorted sealed cardboard boxes. Aszad and Dazi performed their own quick inspection, pulling aside crates to see if there were any vents below the lowest shelf. There was nothing, only solid wall.
‘At least we’re safe in here, even if we can’t go anywhere,’ said Ghelsa, hauling herself to her feet with the help of Harkas’ outstretched arm.
‘If the traitors don’t reach this level of the atrium,’ said Aszad.
‘Or break through at the outer gate and arrive from the same way we came,’ added Dazi.
Without spoken agreement, Harkas and Ghelsa backed away from the door until they reached the wall. The two Armageddon veterans stacked more boxes to create a barricade across the entrance, and then another line of crates further back that they could shelter behind.
‘Don’t worry, help is on its way,’ said Dazi. ‘Our tunnel-kin will find us, or we can wait for the skitarii to secure the area again.’
‘You mentioned something else, other forces being readied,’ said Harkas. ‘How much longer until they arrive?’
‘Not long, I’m sure,’ said Dazi. ‘And then the serious fighting can begin.’
They waited. The sounds of battle waxed and waned along the corridor, sometimes so intense it was hard to imagine anyone from either side might survive, and at times almost falling silent as the combatants simultaneously regrouped. Each resurgence of gunfire was accompanied by indecipherable shouts, the metallic echo of binaric and the distorted amplified war shouts of the traitors. Now and then one of the tunnel rats would identify specific weapons, plucking a particular zip or bang or hiss from the cacophony. Judging by the smiles and little laughs they shared, it seemed to be some kind of game.
Ghelsa had the plasma carbine resting on a crate, aimed directly towards the centre of the door. The others had their weapons couched more comfortably, lacking a lockable exo-skeleton to take the strain of aiming for so long.
‘You would make a very good fighter, you know?’ said Aszad. ‘Not so good for vent-crawling, but very strong, very big.’
‘I don’t think I’m suited to it,’ said Ghelsa, remembering her episode of dizziness. ‘I prefer taking on coolant leaks to enemy fighters.’
Nothing more was said, and Ghelsa’s thoughts began to turn, chasing themselves around her head. Without the distraction of conversation she feared she would screw herself too tightly and lose control again.
‘How long have you been on the Casus Belli?’ she asked, trying to sound calm.
‘Nearly four years, I think,’ said Dazi. ‘We grew up on stories of how our ancestors fought in Hades hive against the orks. When the tech-priests came to Acheron, we fought our way up into the hive city to offer our blades to the Legion in return for their sacrifices for our world. A great day for us that they accepted.’
‘Your Princeps Mannheim, he is a saint on Armageddon, did you know that?’ said Aszad. ‘He has a holy day almost as grand as Yarrick’s.’
‘I did not know that,’ said Ghelsa. Sh
e saw confused inquiry written in Harkas’ face. ‘How can you not have heard of Kurt Mannheim, hero of the Legio Metalica?’
‘The Imperium is vast, and you cannot expect someone to take an interest in every war that has occurred and every hero that has arisen in ten thousand years. I know little of the troubles of Armageddon.’
‘It was during the First War, when Beast Ghazghkul invaded,’ she said.
‘I think you mean the Second Armageddon War,’ he replied.
‘She is right – it was the First War, when the greenskins brought destruction to our world.’
‘Of course,’ Harkas said hurriedly. ‘Yes, it was the First War. There have only been two, yes?’
Ghelsa frowned at his ignorance and shook her head derisively.
‘The traitor, Overlord von Strab, ordered the Titans of the Legion into battle against impossible odds.’ When she said the turncoat governor’s name, Dazi and Aszad made slashing motions across their throats and then spat on the floor, hatred burning in their eyes.
‘His soul burns in the abyss,’ snapped Dazi. ‘Long may he suffer.’
‘Mannheim obeyed though he knew he could not win. Despite the odds, the Legio ended the profanity of many ork war engines in that battle, and even when his noble Warlord Steel Hammer was close to destruction he pressed into the foe and overloaded the reactor to destroy as many greenskins as possible.’
‘Praise Mannheim, his sacrifice endures as we endure,’ intoned Aszad. ‘We can hope that our souls will be elevated to the Emperor upon the fires of battle too.’
‘Why did he obey?’ Harkas asked with a frown.
A flurry of bolter fire that sounded quite close had them all pointing their weapons at the door again. After several seconds the sound relented.
‘Perhaps we should take another look,’ suggested Dazi, looking at her life partner. ‘It would be bad to sit here waiting when we do not have to.’
Aszad vaulted over the crates and then dropped to his belly to slide serpent-like to the doorway. He pulled a thin rectangle of polished metal from the waistband of his trousers and held its end between a slender thumb and forefinger. He eased the mirror into the corridor, angling it for a moment to look towards the atrium.
He rolled sideways and threw himself from the door moments before a bolt impacted on the frame, hurling fragments of plascrete and paint across the retreating duct-runner.
‘Still not good,’ he said, taking position once more.
Though dozens of soldiers gave their lives for the Machine-God, the Space Marines drove them to the lowest two levels. Occasional databursts from the logistari Monderas informed Exasas-tactical that the external threat to the akropoliz had been neutralised and no further enemy were incoming. The forces defending the main gate and upper gun batteries were thus devoid of duty and Exasas-tactical retasked them to the atrium.
Exasas-tactical lacked the ability to predict fully whether such reinforcements would be able to intervene in time. Their imminent arrival might well spur the enemy into a final attack, knowing that they fought on only for death or victory. Alternatively, if they detected fresh forces on their way the Heretic Astartes might well secure their positions and attempt to fight a more protracted engagement.
Neither was a promising prospect, with the Casus Belli actively fighting to breach the citadel. While he cut down the first of the Space Marines to reach the atrium floor with a swipe of a gleaming blade, a flash of strategos-think entered Exasas-tactical’s mind.
The leg bastions were empty.
It was entirely possible that the Heretic Astartes had attacked purely to divert all possible defenders to the akropoliz.
Exasas-tactical had not the ability nor the inclination to investigate this further and filed the idea away into a sub-packet for Exasas-non-tactical to deal with as he saw fit.
The distraction was unfortunate, drawing away Exasas-tactical’s attention for almost a whole second. Too late he detected a trio of Space Marines leaping from the uppermost level, their jump packs flaring as they plunged directly towards the heart of the fighting.
The magos’ thought-imperatives scorched through the minds of his soldiers, directing all excess firepower at the descending giants. Arc rifle fire scoured the divide in a roiling tempest while phosphor rounds cracked white fire across the armoured warriors. One of the Space Marines fell like a comet, crashing into a first-level gallery, the impact slaying half of the skitarii squad deployed at its rail. The other two controlled their descent with more bursts of jump pack glare.
A sudden change in course took one of the Heretic Astartes into the remaining corpuscarii and fulgurites who had gathered around the dominus as a final line of defence. The second landed directly atop Exasas-tactical, the weight of impact slamming the magos to the floor.
Emergency self-preservation routines burst into life, performing a rapid triage of the immediate danger. Exasas-tactical whipped a gleaming combat blade towards the Space Marine atop his shell, catching the chainsword aimed at his phosphor blaster. Serrated mandibles sprang from his carapace and locked around the bolt pistol in the warrior’s other hand, crushing it.
The other Space Marine hacked his way through two fulgurites, his chainsword trailing electricity-laced blood from the wounds. Ducking beneath the staff of another, he hacked the legs off a third and rolled underneath Exasas-tactical.
It was immediately obvious that the magos was being targeted directly, a normative-protocol decapitation attempt. Exasas-tactical resisted the desire to dump-load his cerebral context into the noospheric archive for later restoration. The action itself would likely precipitate his physical demise and the subsequent loss of the atrium. Instead he turned those precious moments of processing into a burst of action.
Taking up a tripedal stance, the magos snapped a bladed foot up under herself, puncturing the back of the Space Marine driving the tip of a chainsword at Exasas-tactical’s armoured underside. At the same time, he detonated the ammunition of his serpenta, sending waves of system static coursing through his hardware. Despite the intense discomfort, this had the desired effect of blasting the other Space Marine from the magos’ back, sending the Heretic Astartes crashing to the floor, molten flesh and armour indiscernible from each other.
With all of his attention fixed upon immediate survival, the magos had no spare output to bolster the defence. A dozen Heretic Astartes had reach the first level, uncaring of the skitarii above them, determined to force their way to the antae of the command module and the gates of the torso decks.
The warrior beneath the magos continued to blast with his bolt pistol, chainsword wedged into a crack of Exasas-tactical’s abdominal armour. With one leg now pinned into the superhuman soldier, the magos lacked any means to attack – if he simply let his weight drop onto the Space Marine it would only drive his body onto the whirring teeth of the chainsword.
A fatality-imminent protocol boiled through his processors and activated the warskin disengagement routine. It was intended as a final attempt at escape but had the effect of dropping Exasas’ inner body directly on top of the Space Marine.
Shocked, just as his attacker likely was, Exasas flailed mechadendrites, interface spikes and grappling appendages at the heretic’s ornate helm. A diamond-tipped interface plug pierced a lens and punched into the eye and brain within. The retort of the Space Marine’s bolt pistol almost overloaded Exasas’ auditory pickups and he felt a very real explosion of pain in his upper torso.
He continued to stab wildly at the heretic’s facial area, scrabbling at the armoured form with a flurry of propulsive limbs.
Sensory input finally registered the Space Marine as deceased a few seconds later, though Exasas remained unsure which actual blow had caused this positive outcome. Further investigation into the immediate situation was curtailed by the flood of strategic data flooding into her through the noosphere.
His consciousness expanding out through the layers of the akropoliz and beyond to the battle that raged ou
tside the Titan, Exasas was swept away as though confronted by the touch of the Omnissiah himself.
The battle-din did not lessen, and in fact increased over the next few minutes. Not only did the noise intensify, it moved closer – even Ghelsa could tell. She swallowed hard and wiped the sweat from her hands on her coveralls. Amid the noise she had become accustomed to was a semi-regular pounding, like heavy footsteps on stone. It grew louder and louder, a continuing crash accompanied by furious gunfire. Beside her Dazi and Aszad shifted nervously, their own unease adding to her discomfort. The two tunnel fighters shared a glance.
The thudding was definitely heading along the passage towards them. Sporadic bursts of light from the atrium cast a broad shadow along the floor, from something far larger than a normal man. Ghelsa’s finger trembled on the trigger and she almost opened fire by mistake.
Teeth gritted, she waited, the footsteps now just outside the door.
Something armoured in white-and-red plate stepped into view. Dazi jabbed out an elbow just before Ghelsa opened fire, knocking off her aim so that the plasma bolt struck the shelves instead of the mechanical beast before them.
In the next moment Ghelsa saw the construct properly. It was certainly bigger even than a Space Marine, its domed head almost touching the high ceiling. The frieze of the corridor was reflected in a mirrored visor-face that turned towards her, independent of any movement from the rounded shoulders that flanked a barrel chest. A flame-throwing weapon pivoted over the shoulder from a spinal mount, the flicker of its ignition spark leaving spots dancing in Ghelsa’s vision. Heavy forearms contained the muzzles and magazines of solid shot weapons where hands should have been. These too lifted towards her as the automaton squared its bulk towards the open doorway.
A kastelan.