The five-strong Dark Angels command squad sat in the troop hold of the Thunderhawk studying the fragmented data being relayed by the Sword of Caliban. Selenaz was leading the Imperial fleet in hit-and-run attacks, the strike cruiser’s sensors scanning the surface of Honoria only when it was in range to do so. The hololithic globe projected between them was incomplete but the information it relayed was grave.
‘They’re deploying in their entirety,’ Puriel said matter-of-factly, his words punctuated by the staccato chatter of the flyer’s heavy bolters as they cleared a path through the crowded skies.
‘Selenaz, what’s the situation up there?’ Zadakiel voxed.
For the next few moments, nothing but static fizzed across the Thunderhawk’s vox-caster. ‘We’re running out of targets,’ the shipmaster said eventually, voice laced with interference. ‘We’ve decimated the ork fleet but most craft made it planetside before we got to them.’
Zadakiel was thoughtful. ‘Disengage the Sword of Caliban and run reconnaissance. We need a complete picture of where the greenskins are deploying. They’re spreading out all over the planet but we need to know if they’re concentrating anywhere. Leave the Navy to pick off stragglers and maintain the blockade. If more reinforcements arrive, on no account are they to make it into orbit let alone to the surface.’
‘Affirmative,’ Selenaz said. The vox cut out with a hiss.
‘What’s the word from the outlying gates, Turmiel?’ Ezekiel asked.
The young Codicier was knelt at the end of the troop hold, eyes closed deep in concentration. His armour and robes gained a coat of frost as he reached through the aether to gather information from the scattered brothers of the Fifth Company.
+All reports are the same,+ Turmiel communicated psychically to his superiors. +Ork forces are probing the defences at each gate, but all of them are holding so far. The only exception is the Tamhdu Gate. The defences are being probed in the same manner but the bulk of the ork forces there are holding back.+
‘Where is the Tamhdu Gate?’ Rephial asked, studying the hololith. As the assembled Dark Angels looked on, blank spots on the flickering globe turned red as the Sword of Caliban’s sensors revealed more and more of the ork deployments.
‘There,’ Serpicus said, jabbing a finger towards one spot in particular on the slowly rotating sphere.
The gate, like all others, was denoted on the schematic by a yellow triangle, but the area directly in front of it was a more concentrated shade of red.
‘Does Tamhdu overlook a steppes region?’ Puriel asked from behind his skull mask.
‘Yes. It’s surrounded by plains on three sides. The trenchworks are longer and deeper to compensate, but it could still be vulnerable,’ Serpicus said. As he spoke, the area of red around the gate on the globe grew darker.
‘That’s it. That’s where they’re massing,’ Zadakiel said. The pitch of the engines shifted, the Thunderhawk pilot already adjusting course.
‘Who’s stationed there?’ Ezekiel asked.
+Brother Shadrach of Seventh Squad,+ Turmiel replied.
Ezekiel too reached out through the aether, hastily warning Brother Shadrach of what he was about to do. The Librarian closed his eyes, the temperature around him dropping by double digits.
When he opened them again, he was looking through Shadrach’s eyes. Either side of him, Vostroyan, Mordian and Honorian troops stood at the battlements, guns trained on the sea of green spread out before them. Ezekiel could feel the chill wind blowing against Shadrach’s face, smell the burning in the air from crashed ork roks and flyers, hear the battle-cries of the besieging force. The plasma cannon in Shadrach’s grasp felt strange to Ezekiel, his hands more accustomed to wielding a force sword and bolt pistol, and the Mark V power armour the warrior wore seemed more cumbersome than the Mark VI plate the Librarian had been given after his previous suit had been destroyed on Korsh.
Ezekiel turned Shadrach’s head, making full use of his battle-brother’s enhanced vision to gather as much information as he could: estimated troop numbers, any tanks and artillery pieces deployed alongside them, likely angle of attack. Ezekiel was just about to do a second sweep when something caught his attention on the very limits of Shadrach’s vision.
Originally yellow, the looted Land Raider had been crudely repainted in red, and had new apertures gouged into its hull, through which an assortment of additional weapons protruded. Thick, greasy smoke billowed from the multitude of exhaust ports added to the rear of the vehicle, and other adornments, both practical and inexplicable, broke the once clean, straight lines of the Land Raider’s silhouette. The top hatch was open and the upper torso of an ork – larger than any Ezekiel had seen before – poked through it, a primitive set of magnoculars in its hands, it too surveying the soon-to-be battlefield.
Spotting Shadrach atop the battlements of the gate, the ork stopped scanning from side to side and stared intently at the green-armoured figure, twiddling cogs and dials with fat fingers. The ork passed the magnoculars to a smaller subordinate sat on the Land Raider’s hull, revealing its savage visage. Its lower jaw was made entirely of metal, serrated at the top to form a wicked set of razor-sharp teeth, and its left eye was surrounded by a star of lighter green tissue, lasting reminders of old wounds. Its bald, green scalp was a latticework of scars, many thick from where it had likely survived a blow from some kind of blade or axe, others like pockmarks left from shrapnel or a shotgun blast. Inlaid into the top of its skull was an offset row of long spikes, a Mohawk of metal dulled by dried blood.
It opened its mouth in a smile, revealing yellowed tusks behind the set of metal teeth, and slowly ran its finger across its throat, pointing to Shadrach with its other hand.
Ezekiel had seen enough. He broke the psychic link.
‘It’s there,’ Ezekiel said to his brother Dark Angels stood around him in the Thunderhawk. ‘The ork general is at the Tamhdu Gate.’
The Dark Angels disembarked from the rear ramp of the Thunderhawk and were greeted by an unexpected figure.
‘Arch Magos Diezen,’ Zadakiel said. ‘And it looks like your skitarii have finally decided to reveal themselves.’
In the days since the Dark Angels had arrived on Honoria, they had not seen a single warrior of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they had been able to monitor their movements and picked up the occasional burst of binaric cant across open vox-channels. Twenty of the more-machine-than-man warriors flanked the tech-priest, their robes and armour the same black and purple as Diezen’s robes.
‘The arch magos arrived at the Tamhdu Gate shortly before you did, company master,’ Shadrach said. Diezen himself was seemingly oblivious to the new arrivals, instead fussing and fiddling over Shadrach’s plasma cannon.
‘And why are you here, arch magos?’ Zadakiel asked. The lack of communication and cooperation from the Mechanicus in recent days had taken its toll. Zadakiel’s patience had worn parchment-thin.
‘The greenskins, of course,’ Diezen said, as if it was glaringly obvious. ‘We’re here to fight the greenskins alongside you.’
‘Your timely aid is most appreciated,’ said Zadakiel in a tone that balanced diplomacy with sarcasm. ‘Come, Brother Shadrach. Let us prepare for war.’ Zadakiel nodded respectfully to the tech-priest before leading the Dark Angels from the landing pad. Serpicus went to attend to the Thunderhawk and administer the Rites of Safe Passage before it took off again to ferry more Space Marines to the Tamhdu Gate. He had just daubed the first sigil onto the hull in holy oil when he felt and heard a mechadendrite tapping him on the pauldron. He turned to find a scowling Diezen staring dead into his artificial eyes.
‘Remember, Serpicus,’ Diezen hissed mechanically. ‘The turrets are not to fall into the hands of the orks. You and your brothers are to defend them at all costs. Do I make myself clear?’
Unblinking, Serpicus held the arch magos’ gaze for uncomfortable seconds before turning his attention back to the idling flyer and continuing his ritual. Still glowering, Diezen led his own troops from the landing pad to join their fellow skitarii already positioned around the base of the defence turret.
For a city under siege, the streets of Aurelianum were surprisingly calm.
Its citizens bustled through the streets in an orderly fashion, factorum workers and small children making their way to the bunkers housed within the inner gates just as they had practised countless times during their lifetimes, and like their ancestors had done for millennia.
Between the bursts of fire from the turrets high above him, Ladbon was struck by how quiet it was. Though the residents of the capital spoke to each other as they navigated the wide streets, it was with quiet urgency rather than panic. The entire world had spent ten thousand years preparing for war; now that war was here, the entire population simply took it in their stride.
Moving against the flow of people, Ladbon caught sight of a familiar red uniform and fur hat. As he got nearer he could see that the Vostroyan trooper was directing the Honorians towards the inner sanctum. Moreover, he recognised the trooper as being from his own regiment.
‘Trooper Petrovich,’ Ladbon said as he approached. ‘I’ve been separated from my squad. Do you know where they are?’
Petrovich eyed Ladbon with contempt, unslinging the lasrifle from his back and pointing it at the dishevelled captain. Ladbon realised that he was virtually unrecognisable, his face and moustache caked in filth and ork gore. Bereft of his tunic and greatcoat there was only one way he could confirm his identity to the nervous trooper.
‘Captain Antilov,’ Ladbon said, pointing to his augmetic eye. ‘We were on patrol in the steppes together not three weeks ago.’
Petrovich flashed a set of yellowed teeth from beneath his thick blond moustache and lowered the rifle. ‘What in the name of the Throne happened to you, captain?’ he said, saluting as an afterthought.
‘An ork flyer crashed in the city. The pilot survived, but not for very long.’ Ladbon shivered, suddenly aware of the cold. ‘Do you know where my squad are?’
‘We were all billeted in a hab block in sector nineteen until yesterday. Then new orders came through and the regiment was dispersed around the gates. They could be anywhere by now. Might not even be in the city any more.’
‘Where is sector nineteen?’ Ladbon asked.
‘In that direction,’ Petrovich said, pointing over the heads of the constant stream of Honorians. ‘Follow the signs with this marking on them.’ Petrovich grabbed Ladbon’s hand and drew a symbol in the layer of grime on the back of the captain’s hand.’
‘What is that?’
‘It’s the Honorian numeral for nineteen. The translator taught it to me.’
‘Marita?’ Ladbon said.
‘I think that was her name. Did you know she’s the governor’s daughter?’
‘I do now…’ Ladbon muttered. ‘Was she with my squad when they were billeted in sector nineteen?’
‘I don’t know, captain,’ Petrovich said. ‘Everything has been so confused these past few weeks.’
‘Thank you, trooper,’ Ladbon called over his shoulder, already heading in the direction of sector nineteen.
As Ladbon expected, the hab block was empty when he got there. Telltale signs of its recent occupants were everywhere, but as he went from dorm to dorm he could find no evidence of his squad, nor Marita, having been there.
Thankfully, he found a discarded greatcoat – one of its pockets torn off, which would likely have earned its previous owner a reprimand should he have worn it in battle – and a Vostroyan fur hat, scorched down one side where it had come too close to the business end of a lasrifle.
As he descended the stairs of the hab block and headed back out onto the streets of Aurelianum, flexing his arms and shoulders to stretch the slightly too snug greatcoat, he saw the two words scrawled on the wall beside the doorway. The handwriting was unmistakably Mute’s.
SULARIAN GATE.
A bitter wind howled through the battlements of the Tamhdu Gate bringing with it yet more snow. It settled on the stone walls of the tower and the ceramite plate of the Dark Angels’ power armour, but Ezekiel and his brothers paid it no heed.
Out on the plains, the ork army waited impatiently for the order to attack. As was the greenskins’ wont, sporadic brawls had broken out as the assembled horde worked itself up into a battle frenzy and gunfire rang out over the din of war-cries as overenthusiastic orks discharged their weapons with no care for who or what they shot. Even the constant anti-personnel fire from the Tamhdu Gate’s turret did nothing to dampen their spirits, each shot that obliterated at least a hundred of their number greeted by loud cheers from the xenos throng.
‘What are they waiting for?’ Puriel spat. ‘Their forces have all landed. Delaying only grants us an advantage, a chance to whittle down their numbers.’ Another shot boomed out from the turret, another cheer rose up from the steppes.
‘It is sport to them,’ Rephial said. ‘They revel in battle for battle’s sake. This world, its resources mean nothing to them, likewise its people. Should they be victorious here, the spoils of war will be meaningless, aside from whatever they can loot. For the greenskins, battle is not a means to an end, it is a means without end, without purpose. Even this,’ Rephial gestured, open-palmed to the sea of green before them, ‘is part of it. The show of force, the pre-battle pageantry – it’s like oxygen to them. Without it, the species would just wither and die.’
‘A most intriguing hypothesis, Dark Angel,’ Diezen said, looking up from the skitarii he was tinkering with. ‘We should talk more when all this is over, you and I. I once knew a magos biologis who thought that the eldar reprod–‘
‘Something’s happening,’ Shadrach said. The noise of the horde changed, discordant cries and howls turning into a discordant approximation of singing or chanting.
‘The Land Raider is on the move,’ Ezekiel said. Black wisps of smoke rose into the air on the horizon as the looted vehicle sped towards the beleaguered gate.
‘The what?’ Diezen said, quickly forgetting any offence he had taken at being so rudely interrupted by Shadrach. He looked to where he saw movement on the steppes, artificial eyes irising wide in horror. ‘Blessed Omnissiah, what have they done? What have they done?’ He turned aside and vomited, thick black oil spilling over his dark robes and melting the snow at his feet. When he looked back at the Land Raider, he dry-heaved several times before muttering away to himself in incoherent binary.
‘What does it hope to achieve?’ Puriel said. ‘The trenches are designed to prevent vehicles from…’ The Chaplain went silent, coming to the same realisation as his brothers at the exact same moment.
The Land Raider sped inexorably on, mowing down anything in its path, its tracks crushing all beneath them. When it hit the edge of the trenchworks, it sped onwards, the corpses piled to the top of the gulley walls forming a road beneath it.
‘That’s what they were waiting for,’ Zadakiel said. ‘They needed enough corpses to dam the trenches and we helped them do it! Stop that turret from firing.’
Diezen was still reeling from the sight of the defiled Land Raider, oblivious to all around him.
‘Serpicus,’ Zadakiel said, turning to the Techmarine.
‘Affirmative,’ he replied, already sprinting in the direction of the turret.
Emboldened by their general’s bravado, other ork vehicles began to follow in the Land Raider’s wake. Behind them, tens of thousands of orks began to charge, their tuneless singing growing ever louder.
Gaining speed as it went, the looted Space Marine vehicle headed straight for the base of the weapons tower. When it was little more than half a mile away, the ork general leapt from the top hatch, landing roughly among a pile of dead xenos.
The Land Raider kept on going.
‘Brace!’ Zadakiel yelled.
Down below, reaching speeds far in excess of what it had been designed to achieve, the Land Raider impacted against the base of the gate, detonating violently. Flames spewed high into the air, thick plumes of smoke chasing the fire skywards. Two hundred and fifty feet above, the battlements shook under the force of the blast, dropping some of the ordinary human soldiery to their knees.
The vox erupted with noise as Astra Militarum forces reported in, all confirming that the base of the gate had been breached. Snapping out of his trance-like state, Diezen and the skitarii headed towards the defence turret without a word to the Dark Angels.
As the Space Marines looked on, countless orks flooded towards the breach, some of them ablaze from the Land Raider’s detonation. In the heart of the chaos, surrounded by a bodyguard of thickset greenskins, the ork general threw back its head in raucous laughter, content at the carnage already wrought, giddy at the prospect of slaughter yet to come. It held both hands out in front of it, palms upwards, and gestured goadingly to the Dark Angels.
Here I am. Come and get me.
‘Now is our chance to finish this,’ Puriel said. ‘If we eliminate their general, the orks will resort to infighting and our war is all but won.’
‘This is all part of its plan,’ Rephial said. ‘It intends to do to us what we intend for it. Just as we want to remove the head from the body of the ork army, it knows it has drawn the Dark Angels commanders here and seeks to vanquish us.’
‘You give the xenos too much credit, Apothecary,’ Puriel scoffed. ‘It is merely an ork, and seeks only combat for combat’s sake. You said as much yourself.’
‘The patience it has shown in both amassing its forces for the invasion and preparing for this assault was by design rather than accident,’ said Rephial. ‘I think you are underestimating it, Brother Puriel.’
Zadakiel was pensive. ‘What say you, Brother Ezekiel? Does the warp reveal to us the optimum course of action?’
Ezekiel closed his eyes, inclining his head forwards so that his psychic hood bathed his face in shadow. When he opened them again, he turned to Turmiel. The Lexicanium shook his head.
‘The future is occluded to both Brother Turmiel and ,’ Ezekiel said.
The vox-traffic became ever more frantic, Vostroyan and Mordian voices appealing for reinforcements to counter the ork forces now within the walls.
‘This ends now,’ Zadakiel said defiantly. ‘Ezekiel, get us down there.’