[Space Marine Battles 01] - Rynn's World Read online

  On the comm-link, he opened a channel to Forgemaster Adon.

  “Yes, my lord?” rasped the old Techmarine.

  “Drop the shields,” Kantor commanded. “It is time to unleash our fury.”

  “The Sercia, Protheo and Marez batteries are ready, my lord. The Laculum batteries are powering up now.”

  “Problems, Javier?”

  “A momentary glitch, lord. System checks now report optimal status. We have targeting solutions already mapped. Tracking data for the missiles is being uploaded now. The Laculum batteries will be online within three minutes.”

  “As soon as they are ready,” said Kantor, “launch everything we have. I want maximum retaliation on the greenskin fleet. We’ll honour Ranparre, by Terra! What is the risk of large-scale debris impacting post-contact?”

  “Very small, lord. The largest of the ork ships are locked in orbit so they can deploy their landers. Any heavy impact will propel debris outwards, away from the planet. The probability margin of collateral surface destruction is within the lower tenth of a percentile.”

  “Very well,” Kantor replied. “You have my full confidence. Let the enemies of mankind know our wrath.”

  “In Dorn’s name,” grated Adon. The comm-link clicked off.

  Over the command channel, Kantor addressed all his squad and company commanders. “The shields are going down, brothers. They will be coming. Bless your weapons and honour the Chapter with your kills.”

  Another voice, Marqol Tomasi’s, added, “There is only the Emperor.”

  Kantor’s voice joined the others in the traditional response.

  “He is our shield and our protector.”

  Sirens began to wail and red warning lamps spun into life. From the top of a tower sixty metres to Kantor’s right, a great cloud of steam billowed up into the air. A circular hatch in the tower roof, one metre thick and five metres across, hinged open with a hydraulic hiss. All around the fortress-monastery, the same was happening, hatches rising to reveal the blunted noses of surface-to-orbit ballistic missiles, each equipped with the most devastating conventional warheads available.

  The sirens changed pitch now, warning of imminent launch. The Space Marines stopped checking each other’s gear for a moment to turn and watch as the first flames licked up from the top of the tower-silos. The ground began to shudder, and the air filled with a rumble that drowned out all else.

  Snagrod had underestimated the Crimson Fists in coming here. He was about to pay for that mistake.

  The deafening roar of plasma-jet rockets intensified in pitch, and the nose of the missile nearest to Kantor slowly rose into view. Its acceleration seemed painfully slow at first. It wrestled with gravity, fighting to heave its bulk into the air.

  More and more of the missile emerged from the silo, and its speed continued to increase. Gravity was losing. The missile burst clear of the silo, shooting straight up into the sky with a roar like an angry god. Its tail of flame was almost blindingly bright.

  Others followed, streaking upwards on thick columns of fire and smoke.

  Watching them arc towards their distant targets, Pedro Kantor never imagined, not even for an instant, that a terrible hammer was about to fall on everything he held most dear.

  The Night of the Burning Sky had only just begun.

  Savales stopped in the hall just outside the Refectorum and immediately perceived the fear that hung in the air. The smooth stone benches within were crowded with the youngest of the Chosen, many of whom were hunched over, looking up at the vaulted ceiling from beneath rumpled brows. Others had their eyes shut tight. Some hugged themselves or rocked back and forth. The youngest were a mere eight years old, the oldest closer to fourteen. None had experienced anything like this before. Even Savales would have bet against the orks being so brash as to assault an Astartes home world directly.

  The young Chosen had been gathered here to wait out the orbital bombardment, but also to keep them from under the feet of the Astartes and the older serfs, many of whom had duties critical to the defence of the fortress-monastery. A few adults paced between the benches, telling the boys to be strong, that the storm which was shaking the entire mountain would be over soon enough.

  One of the adults, a whip-thin man named Bernis Kalisde, Master of the Refectorum, barked at some of the boys as he passed close to them, causing several to jump and one to cry out in surprise. “You are pathetic!” he told them. “Look at you, cowering like beaten dogs. You belong to the Chapter. In your time here, have you learned nothing from your betters? Fear is useless to you. It holds you back. Let go of it, or it will have to be beaten out of you.”

  Savales watched Kalisde from the shadow of the western entrance. No one had yet noticed his presence. He did not like the man. Kalisde was quick to criticise and loath to hand out praise where it was well deserved, and he had no right to beat anyone who did not serve directly under him. Some of these boys were already marked to study for roles in the Sacratium, Apothecarion and Technicarum once they were old enough. If the Master of the Refectorum lifted a hand to them, he would find himself facing a very harsh penance.

  “Look at me,” Kalisde continued. “Do you see me shaking? Are my eyes wet with tears like yours? No. You are weak, all of you. The bombs do not scare me at all. I’d be laughing at you all if I wasn’t so disgusted.”

  Savales stepped fully into the Refectorum now, walking straight for the centre of the hall. His robes, bearing the personal heraldry of the Chapter Master on the back and breast, marked him out as the supreme authority among the Chosen. No other mortal man had the right to bear that sigil until Savales passed it on. On seeing the Ordinator enter, Kalisde stopped pacing and drew himself up straight. He eyed Savales with grudging respect as he approached.

  “Look here, you boys. Ordinator Savales fears no greenskin bombs, is that not right, Ordinator?”

  “Not so long as I have void shields over my head,” said Savales, stopping a few paces from Kalisde and smiling at the boys who looked up at him from either side. Then he fixed his eyes on the Master of the Refectorum and said, “I will take things from here, Bernis. You and your staff are free to retire for now.”

  Kalisde did not like being told what to do on territory he considered his own, but he knew the power the Ordinator wielded. His jaw worked for a moment while he considered a response, but if he found one, he thought better of voicing it. He gave a curt nod and moved off to an arch in the north wall that would take him back to the kitchens. The other adults followed in silence.

  Savales looked at the boys around him. He couldn’t fault Kalisde for what he had been trying to do, but there were better ways to do it than making scared children feel guilty and miserable.

  “Make room,” he told two on his right. He stepped over their bench and sat down beside them. “Gather close, the rest of you,” he called out. “Make sure you can all hear me.”

  Wordlessly, the young serfs from other tables rose and gathered around, their fellows making room for them so that the benches became closely packed. There was a certain primal comfort in this new proximity. Huddled together like this, the shuddering of the mountain lost a little of its edge.

  “Now,” said Savales, “how many of you understand what is happening outside?”

  None raised a hand. They all knew that the fortress-monastery was under attack by orks, of course, but none had ever seen one. All they knew of the greenskins was the stories the older serfs sometimes told, always third hand, and whatever they could glean from the friezes that decorated many of the Chapter corridors, ancient artwork in which Crimson Fist heroes were depicted slaying thick green figures by the hundreds.

  “You know that the aliens hoped to surprise Master Kantor, yes? They hoped to strike hard at the Chapter’s foundations and gain a quick victory. Well, try to imagine how frustrated the foolish greenskin leader must be feeling right now. He and his troops have spent years preparing, maybe even decades. His armies have crossed great stretches of cold
, dark space, intent on obliterating the single greatest threat to their species in the entire sector. They risked death by the millions, exiting the warp dangerously close to a planet, losing many of their most powerful ships in the process. It’s true. And now, having finally reached their goal, they launch their payloads, only to find their weapons utterly useless. Every last bomb they drop explodes harmlessly on our shields. Afraid? Us? Throne, no! It is fine comedy.”

  He saw a few faces brighten as they listened, but the walls still rumbled. The bombardment seemed endless and it was clear the youngsters needed more from him.

  “When I was your age,” he told them, “I experienced the greatest fear of my life. Do you know what that was?”

  “You saw a xenos,” said a wide-eyed boy of nine from across the table.

  “No,” said Savales, “Not that.”

  “A daemon, then?” said another of about the same age.

  The others hissed at him and made warding signs, and he shrank back from them.

  Savales frowned and shook his head, but he was not angry. “No, not that. And we do not say that word aloud, child. Remember your lessons. Well, it seems none of you will ever guess, so I will tell you. The greatest fear of my life was that my chance to serve the Chapter was lost forever. I was not much older than you are when I discovered I would never be Astartes. I had wanted it so much. I doubted the worth of any other kind of life. I thought my life over. I was sure I would be put to death. But I’ve lived a better life than I ever deserved, and so will each of you. The Chapter needs us, you know, and each of us need the Chapter. Master Kantor knows all your names. He cares for all the Chosen. In fact, he once said to me, ‘Ramir, the Chosen are like this mountain’. ‘How so, my lord?’ I asked him. ‘They are the rock on which the Chapter stands’, he told me. ‘It is by their labours that the battle-brothers are always ready for war. I only wish the rest of the Imperium knew how much of our glory and honour rightly belongs to the ones who serve us’.”

  “He really said that?” asked a boy on Savales’ left.

  “He did,” said Savales. “Throughout your lives, the Chapter will ask much from each of you. Sometimes you will be tired, but you must go on. Sometimes you will feel pain, but you must overcome it. You must give everything you have to your duties. Lord Hellblade is depending on you. The Chapter’s victories are our victories, too. Do not forget it.” He pointed upwards towards the high ceiling and raised his eyes. “When the orks finish dropping their useless bombs, our masters will begin the real fight, and they will finish it, too. You will see. The Crimson Fists cannot be overcome. Even the accursed Scythians failed in the end and fled into the Great Dark to escape the Chapter’s wrath.”

  The air in the Refectorum had brightened noticeably now. Most of the boys had straightened in their seats. Savales saw pride burning in bright eyes. Good, he thought.

  “I hope you all know Gordeau’s Ninth Litany Against Fear.”

  The youngest looked nervous and guilty, but the others nodded.

  “If you don’t know it,” Savales said kindly, “just listen and do your best. You will soon pick it up.”

  So, he led them in the litany, their voices joining to fill the air and challenge the noise of the bombs. They hardly noticed when the bombs stopped falling. A short time later, when death came to take them all, that was how it found them; unafraid, with pride in their hearts.

  Savales need not have worried about the worth of his life. He had lived it with great honour, and it ended in the only place he ever called home.

  The orks came soon after the first of the ship-killers were launched. They came in uncountable numbers, with tanks and bikes and weapons that beggared description, spewing forth from fat transports that braved the fortress-monastery’s mid-and close-range defences to land and disgorge them. They swarmed up the mountainsides, heedless of the fire that spilled out to meet them.

  Alessio Cortez felt no fear. It had been so long, he no longer knew what true fear felt like. When the call went up that orks had been spotted on the slopes, he felt only the familiar, welcome heat of battle-rush. His blood surged through his veins, flooding his muscles with everything they would need for the imminent combat. He felt the cardiovascular drumbeat in his gauntleted fingers where they gripped his trusty boltpistol.

  Now they’ll see, he thought. Now they’ll pay for their arrogance.

  He and his company had been charged with defending the Protheo Bastion from the lower ramparts, and, as the alien horde charged into view, they began pouring fire down onto the snorting, roaring front lines. The orks, usually disinclined towards night attacks, when their poor eyesight was rendered even poorer, carried flaming torches that made them all too easy to target. They had little chance of breaching the western wall. The chasm helped prevent that. But they had brought heavy armour with them, great lumbering artillery pieces with unbelievably wide muzzle, and, if these were brought within range, they would be able to lob their barrel-sized shells over the walls.

  The 4th Company was not about to allow that.

  Bolter-fire sputtered out, splitting apart the night, bright muzzle flares strobing across the walls. Lascannons cracked like lightning, ionising the air, lancing into ugly enemy tanks and cutting them apart as soon as they came into view. Explosions once again rocked the mountainside.

  “For glory brothers!” shouted Cortez as he fired again and again.

  Behind him he heard another voice boom out, “For glory, captain!”

  Cortez glanced round for the briefest instant and saw a white skull. He recognised the voice, one of Tomasi’s Chaplains, Brother Rhava, with two black-robed Sacratium acolytes in tow. Each acolyte silently carried a tray of extra ammunition and charge packs.

  Rhava came forward and joined Cortez at the parapet, raised a glowing plasma pistol, and began firing burst after flesh-searing burst out into the crowded greenskin ranks where they were forced to halt at the chasm’s lip. Many had already plunged over, struck by the fire of the Space Marines, or pushed to their deaths by overeager comrades.

  “How goes the defence, brother-captain?” the Chaplain asked Cortez between rounds.

  Cortez’s clip ran dry. As he slid another from his belt, he answered, “There is little sport in this, holy one. They can’t gain ground here. This assault is mass suicide.”

  “And yet,” said Rhava between his own shots, “sport or not, you seem to be revelling in it.”

  Cortez grinned beneath his helm. “Tell me you find this a chore.”

  “It never is,” said Rhava. Another of his blinding plasma-bolts struck an ork full in the chest. It sank to its knees, its chest little more now than a gaping crater of burned flesh. The ends of ribs poked from the side of the wound like stubby teeth.

  There was a great roaring noise just to the north, and Cortez glanced that way to see another ship-killer emerging from its silo-tower, flames and smoke billowing up around it.

  “I have heard,” said Rhava, also noting the missile’s emergence, “that The Crusader escaped successfully.”

  Cortez’s eyes followed the missile’s burning path. The power of such weapons was astounding. Part of him wished he could fly with it, to see the raw destruction it wreaked on whichever warp-damned enemy ship it struck.

  “Ranparre gave everything to make it so,” he said. “We will turn this around in his honour. Now that we—”

  He never finished that sentence.

  Something was wrong. One of the missiles from the other side of the fortress-monastery had suddenly changed vector.

  No one would ever know what caused that change. Was it a simple malfunction? Sabotage? The will of malicious gods? No answer would ever come forth, but the results would be remembered in the Imperial history books for all time.

  Rhava followed Cortez’s gaze.

  “By Dorn—”

  The missile corkscrewed in the air above the Arx Tyrannus for a brief moment. Time seemed to slow down for Cortez as he watched, helpless to do anyth
ing. Then the missile plunged deep into the mountainside, its powerful thrusters forcing that armour-piercing nose-cone through metre after metre of rock.

  The mountain shook.

  Cortez and Rhava were thrown from their feet. Shouts of alarm replaced the stutter of gunfire on the air.

  When the missile reached a depth of two-hundred metres beneath the rock on which Arx Tyrannus stood, it detonated, igniting the Chapter’s ancient underground munitions stores one after another.

  There was no time to shield oneself, no time to run, nor even to curse.

  White fire engulfed all, and burned to embers the hopes of an entire world.

  TWO

  “These were days so dark they had been rivalled only once in the history of the Chapter, and darker still were yet to come. But darkness is not a thing in and of itself. It has no form, no substance. It is merely the absence of light, and where light enters, darkness always recedes.

  The smallest most ephemeral spark can grow to burn like a mighty sun.

  It requires naught but the right kind of fuel. Snagrod gave us all the fuel we needed!”

  —Brother-Codicier Ruthio Terraro of the Librarius,

  Crimson Fists Chapter, Adeptus Astartes

  ONE

  The Gorrion Wall, New Rynn City

  The concept of patience was as alien to the orks as they themselves were to the race of man. They did not hesitate, did not congregate around fires to hold war councils or to assess the success of their landing. They simply swarmed, and the outer fringes of the planetary capital, those poorest of districts that fell out with the city’s grand defensive walls, were engulfed in fire and raw, rampant destruction.

  Alvez and Grimm had been out on the southwestern ramparts of the Gorrion Wall for hours, overseeing the deployment of Crimson Fist resources to those sections of the city’s outermost defences that were judged to be weakest. The rest of the city’s perimeter, in particular those sections that were expected to hold longest, were assigned to companies of nervous-looking Rynnsguard. Alvez deemed this best for now, though a stout, high-ranking officer called General Saedus Mir protested as vocally as his respect for the Astartes would allow, adamant that his men would prove the equal of any blasted aliens. The first hour of battle, Alvez knew, would separate the real fighters from the cowards. He would pay particular attention to how the Rynnsguard handled their wall sections. Only then would he have an accurate idea of just what General Mir’s forces were capable of.