Astra Militarum Read online

Helm mounted the steps of the fort’s outer wall. He looked north, in the direction of the Ishawar Mountains. Even if it had been day, the chain wouldn’t have been visible from this distance, but Helm could see more than enough evidence of the unfolding disaster. Before him, at the base of the plateau, the horde had gathered. These were not orks from the Ishawar. They had been gathering for hours. Transports arrived like black hail from the space hulk, dropping down just out of range over the horizon to disgorge their war-fevered cargo. And so a third ork force had entered the war, yet another obeying the will of a single warlord. The unity was terrifying. And here was the irony: the more everything went catastrophically wrong, the more Yarrick was being proven right.

  The perpetual cloud cover raged and flashed, but not all the fury was natural. There was the glow and the rumble of the transports as they cut through the overcast on their final approach. And there were the fires: streaks of flame that flashed above like wounds in the sky. The bombardment had spared the plateau so far, but the lethal rain was falling heavily in the direction of where the Titans fought their ork counterparts. The ground shook faintly from concussions hundreds of kilometres away. The orks sending death from the heavens didn’t care if their kin were vaporised. Nothing mattered but the destruction of the foe.

  Then there were the traces of the other war, the one in the heavens. Sometimes there was no more than the light. Other times, the debris was large enough that it did not burn, but hit the ground with cratering force. Helm could follow this war only through the occasional, fragmented transmission. He hoped some of that wreckage was from ork ships.

  But even as he watched, there in the distance, so far away that it was nothing more than a lonely, broken silhouette, and visible only because it was wreathed in the fire of its death, fell a shape that stabbed at his heart. Shattered though it was, he still recognised the lines of the ship on which he had travelled so long that it was home at least as much as Armageddon itself. No longer. The Firestorm-class frigate Harrower was making planetfall unseen and unmourned by anyone but Helm. It disappeared in the polluted night. The thunderclap of impact was muted, but it had the resonance of a single, massive beat on a funeral drum.

  Helm looked back at the orks below. Hadron Base was built to withstand sieges, but no fortress could do so indefinitely, and there was no reason to make a stand. The commissar had ordered everyone here to depart. If they did not do so soon, they never would, and the defeat on Golgotha would be total.

  With a curse, Helm turned away from the spectacle of loss. As he descended the staircase, he shouldered the mantle of the commander who would oversee one of the most humiliating retreats of the millennium.

  3. Yarrick

  There is something freeing about hopelessness. I knew that we would not live to see the dawn. So did the crew of the Fortress of Arrogance. Suddenly, there was no destination to reach, no goal to slip from our grasp. There was nothing left except the honourable death. As that certainty sank in, I saw smiles on the faces of the tank crew. I believe there was a real lightening of their spirits.

  I have told myself this many times since then. It is important for my own soul that this be true.

  I felt no lighter as I climbed out of the Arrogance’s hatch and took up position in its pulpit. The failure to stop Thraka would mean no peace for me as I fell to the night of the grave. Even so, I had new energy. Something very like exhilaration coursed through my blood. If death was upon me, I was going to meet it with all the fury my faith would grant me, and exult in every ork I killed between now and my last moment.

  ‘Warriors of the Imperium!’ I called. I was speaking over the vox, but as the energy flowed, it seemed to me that my voice itself carried over the battlefield. ‘Tomorrow will be our day of days, for we shall have rejoined the Emperor in glory at the Golden Throne. Tonight is our night of nights, for it is now, in these very moments, that we earn the glory that will carry us to the Throne.’ I paused as ork stubber fire ricocheted off my claw. In response, I stood higher. ‘The greenskins outnumber us. They laugh that we have nowhere to go. They think they are triumphant.’ A large blast to my left: a Leman Russ torn open by multiple rocket blasts. A Hellhound avenged it by incinerating its killers. ‘Show them that they are wrong. Show them that they have nothing to celebrate. Show them that they are trapped on this planet with a foe who will never leave. Teach them what triumph really means! Become the true wrath of Golgotha!’

  I could not hear the response any more than I could truly hear my own shouts. But as I could feel my exhortation in the rasp in my throat, as if it were a primordial beast’s roar, so I could feel the spirit that rose to my call from the Emperor’s legions. Locked in combat, dying and killing, they all heard my words, and they responded. For all that the valley floor was very quickly becoming a savage melee on a monumental scale, with regimental cohesion breaking down in the collision between two vast forces of war, we acted as one, striking with renewed fervour, our hearts filled with something that was at once a song of praise and a howl of undying rage.

  As the Fortress of Arrogance leapt forward, I raised my claw in defiance of the ork machines that bulked in the night ahead. A Stompa and another battle fortress were barrelling forward to meet us. Their guns and ours flashed-burned the dark. At the same moment, there was a jerk as Lanner took the Arrogance through a sudden course correction. The movement was sluggish by any normal standard, but was preternaturally nimble for a Baneblade, and was just enough to spoil the orks’ aim. Their machines turned, far more slowly. Distracted by the inviting target we presented, they ignored the other cannons aimed their way. A unified barrage crippled them.

  I became aware of concerted, organised movement on all sides. With the Arrogance as focus, the regiments were reforming. Our casualties were horrific. The landscape was strewn with the corpses of men and vehicles, but was also alive with an army reforging itself into a mailed fist.

  ‘Commissar!’ a voice called to me.

  I looked down. A Steel Legion trooper was running alongside the Arrogance, so close he was a single wrong step away from being dragged under by the treads. He didn’t care, but not because he had succumbed to despair. There was a spring in his step. ‘Yes, soldier,’ I said.

  ‘It’s Hades Hive again, isn’t it?’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes, I was. The greenskins are in for another surprise, aren’t they? Going to rip Thraka’s head off, commissar?’

  I opened my claw. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll crush it instead.’

  The trooper laughed, saluted, and moved off.

  Doesn’t he realise? I wondered. Of course he does. This was our final assault, and we all knew it. Every man was charging for the salvation of his soul, for the bond of comradeship, and for the glory of the Emperor of Mankind. In the hellish strobes of the stubber, las and cannon fire, the gleaming elegance of Mordian uniforms mixed with the Armageddon trench coats and the industrial-grey Mortisian fatigues. And we were all moving toward the pass.

  We plunged back into the sea of orks. We punched forward, always forward, though there was nowhere to advance except deeper into the enemy’s midst. ‘Stop for nothing,’ I called down to Lanner. In answer, he drove the Baneblade even faster, crushing orks by the score. For a moment, the treads spun in the morass of corpses, and then the Arrogance roared on. I snapped my claw closed, as if tearing out the collective throat of the foe. I sent a mental challenge to Thraka. Here we are, I thought as I cut down greenskins with my bolt pistol and my eye. Do you dare face us? Do you?

  The orks fell back before our fury. But only so far. They bunched up, then gathered courage as something colossal loomed out of the pass. It was a Gargant, fifty metres tall, come from the battles with our Titans.

  Hanussen, who was manning the main gun, realised what its presence implied. ‘What happened to the Legio?’ he voxed.

  ‘That is not our concern, captain,’ I
snapped. ‘Our concern is what happens to that abomination. Destroy it.’

  Hanussen lined the cannon up and fired.

  If the Gargant had not been fresh from another battle, our gesture would have been pointless. But I could see that it had already sustained serious damage. There was smoke pouring out of its neck, and what looked like a fault line running down the length of its frontal armour. Our shell hit at the base of the head. Hanussen must have loaded an armour-piercing round. There was no explosion, and for a moment, it seemed as if we had wasted our blow. The Gargant took one more step, then rocked forward. The head slipped from the shoulders and plummeted to the ground. The giant leaned deeper. Then gravity took over, and the slow bow became a sudden drop. The monster crashed to the ground, crushing hundreds of orks and spreading panic far beyond the immediate reach of its destruction. The superstitious dread spread before the Fortress of Arrogance too. The orks could see who rode the tank that had felled a Gargant with a single shot, and they could believe anything of me.

  My bark of laughter lacerated my throat.

  We surged towards the pass. We punished and slaughtered. The greater the number of orks, the greater the number of kills. The Arrogance shouted its voice of justice, and though a crew of brave and skilled men operated her, the tank felt like an extension of my will, as much a part of my body as the bale eye and power claw. The Arrogance and I were one, the iron spear-tip that was tearing open the belly of the orks.

  ‘Here come more playmates,’ Lanner drawled.

  Emerging from the night ahead was another Stompa with a battle fortress. Was there no end to the orks’ supply of these engines? I pushed the irrelevant question away. We were committed to the pass, so we had to destroy the ork superheavies. That was all.

  ‘Take them!’ I cried. I was speaking to the crew of the Baneblade, but I saw the infantry around us charge the monsters, too. I thought there might even have been some uncertainty in the orks. The psychic oppression that accompanied their presence seemed lesser to me. And why not? We had felled a Gargant with a single shot. We were unstoppable.

  Then something changed. Something else had entered the field. I couldn’t see what it was, but the atmosphere of the struggle gathered a new, crackling charge. The orks hurled themselves back against us. They hit with renewed will, and with something else. The panic had evaporated, replaced with orkish exuberance at its most insane. The monsters were laughing, just as I had been, but with a terrible delight. Their joy in battle and indiscriminate death had returned with a vengeance, and their laughter was undiminished whether they witnessed the bloody end of a human or an ork.

  The Stompa charged. It actually charged. Fire and oily clouds pouring from its smokestacks, it pounded towards the Arrogance. The valley floor shook beneath its monstrous piston feet. It was not a creation that could move fast, nor did it now, but there was a massive build-up of momentum to its advance. ‘Captain,’ I voxed.

  ‘I have it, commissar,’ Hannussen replied. He fired, hitting the Stompa dead centre. But this time, the armour held, and the monster came on. It launched a rocket that struck the front of the Baneblade. Flames washed over the top, and I ducked down beneath the pulpit. Lanner didn’t slow, and the Fortress of Arrogance rushed out of the flames to meet the challenge.

  Another exchange of fire, cannon against cannon this time, and impossible to miss. The armour of the behemoths buckled, but did not give way. And then there was no more time or space. It seemed to me that the totemic face of the Stompa was roaring. I was, my face almost torn wide by the adrenaline-fuelled cry. The giants slammed into each other. The impact should have shattered the world. The Arrogance’s treads rode up the Stompa’s plating. The walker brought its arms in as if to embrace the tank. The chainfist screeched against the left flank. The tip of the blade whirled teeth the size of my hand just over my head. A geyser of sparks streaked the night. On my right, the Stompa’s cannon was aimed point-blank at the join between turret and hull. ‘Burn!’ Hanussen screamed. The cannon boomed. The explosion engulfed the Arrogance and the Stompa’s arm. I was shaken like a pebble in a tin, and lost my grip on the pulpit. I slid down the length of the hull and landed on the ground, an insect to be trampled by the giants.

  I looked up as I staggered to the side. The blast had peeled back the Arrogance’s side armour and shredded the Stompa’s arm. Metal flaps from both war engines were tangled together, and the giants were locked in their dance of death. The Baneblade’s treads were still turning as if it were trying to force the Stompa to the ground, but the walker’s centre of gravity was so low that it couldn’t be toppled. The Arrogance’s turret was askew, the gun pointing to the clouds. The sponson-mounted lascannons and bolters had fallen silent.

  Head ringing, still half-deafened from the report, I yelled Lanner’s name into my vox-bead.

  ‘Commissar,’ his voice came back, hoarse and strained.

  ‘Are all of you still alive?’ I couldn’t see how.

  They weren’t. ‘Just me,’ Lanner croaked. ‘And a shot ready to go in this gun.’

  The demolisher cannon protruded from the front of the hull, and could be fired by the driver. Its muzzle was only a few metres from the Stompa. The shot would be even more insane than the one the orks had taken, and Lanner’s protection had been badly compromised. But I did not tell him to stop. I did not tell him to abandon the tank. I would not deprive him of his honour. And I would not deprive the Imperium of one more victory, however pyrrhic.

  ‘Glory to the Emperor,’ I said.

  ‘Glory to the Emperor,’ he returned, and fired the gun.

  The Stompa’s chainfist broke through to the Arrogance’s munitions at the same moment.

  The shockwave lifted me off my feet and hurled me end over end. I slammed into a wall of oncoming metal. I was boneless, a broken toy. As I slumped, something grabbed the bottom of my coat. I was yanked to the ground, dragged along the stony surface, and finally came to a stop in a painful, half-reclining position. I had been caught by the treads of the battle fortress. If the tank had not stopped, I would have been ground to mulch.

  My vision began to grey, growing black around the edges. I blinked, keeping unconsciousness at bay. I could not move, but I could see. I saw everything. I saw that the Stompa was no more, but the majestic Fortress of Arrogance was mortally injured. It crashed back down and was silent. It was only inert metal, now.

  I saw the end of our war. The soldiers fought heroically, but the end was preordained. The orks simply kept coming until they overwhelmed. Their triumphant energy turned them into an unstoppable wave. Then, finally, I saw what had changed. I saw what had entered the battlefield. It came charging through the swirling melee of combatants, knocking orks aside and splattering humans. The silhouette was so massive that for a hallucinatory moment I thought I was seeing a Dreadnought of the Adeptus Astartes. It wasn’t a Dreadnought, nor was it one of the ridiculous weaponised cans that were the orks’ debased versions of those living martyrs.

  It was too big to be either.

  It was an armoured shape, and it was rampage personified. It tore through the night faster than anything that big should move, leaping from cluster to cluster of struggle, annihilating Guardsmen with a massive stubber in its left hand, crushing them to nothing with an equally colossal power claw on its right. Every movement, every roar was an expression of rage, glee and messianic fervour. A terrible perfection of destruction had come among us.

  Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka was here.

  He was smaller than the Stompas. But his presence was so immense that he appeared to tower over the mountains themselves. I was sick to the soul at the threat he represented to the Imperium and I struggled to tear myself free. I had no leverage. I was bound fast. But I still had one weapon. What I could see, I could target and kill. ‘THRAKA!’ I howled with every ounce of strength I still possessed.

  It should have been a futile gesture.
He shouldn’t have been able to hear me. Not in the cacophony of massacre. But he did. I understand now that destiny decreed that he should know I was there. It seems to me, in my darker moments, that the perfect agony of the galaxy is shaped to no small degree by the crossing of our paths. So he heard, and he came pounding toward me, running faster as he recognised me, his footsteps leaving a trail of small craters behind him. Like me, he only had one natural eye, and my bionic one focused on it. He came up so quickly, I had trouble acquiring the target. I had him as he reached me. I glared at him with the hatred of complete righteousness.

  Before I could fire the laser, his claw swung into my face. The blow was no more than a slap. It was like being struck with a meteor.

  My last sight before oblivion was of that obscene face contorted with delight.

  Chapter Four

  The Well

  1. Rogge

  They didn’t kill him. They took him instead. They dragged him away, along with the other ragged survivors the orks chose to enslave rather than slaughter. He didn’t struggle. There was no point. Quite a few of the captives did. Very few of them were killed. Instead, the orks jabbed them with shock poles and hauled them onward while they were still convulsing. So Rogge did nothing. He walked where he was led. He squeezed into the suffocatingly overcrowded hold of the slave transport. Second by second, step by step, he felt the last dregs of his honour drain away. The pain of his failure was so profound, he didn’t even have the strength to howl.

  When he stumbled out of the transport, into the greater hell of the space hulk, he felt that he had been reduced to a body surrounding a core of nothing. The numbness was a relief.

  It didn’t last.

  2. Yarrick

  I woke to agony and an immediate temptation to despair. I was suspended by chains that hung from a ceiling in darkness above me. They were wrapped around my upper arms, holding them out from my body, crucifying me. The pain, like clusters of daggers stabbing my flanks, shoulders and back, was so savage that at first, I wasn’t aware of how I’d been mutilated. Then, as awareness sharpened, I felt the losses. My bale eye was gone. So was my claw.