God machines, p.117
God-Machines, page 117
Cursing and snarling, Gorgrok tried to turn. His movements were cumbersome, and sparks showered from seizing joints. Through sheer brute strength, the ork kept moving, but Danial moved with him, lunging around his slower opponent and swinging another blow that crunched through Gorgrok’s generator again. Fuel sprayed, and ignited. Flames leapt up Gorgrok’s back, and the warlord howled in fury.
Driven by pain and ferocity, the ork lunged backwards, catching Danial by surprise. Flames seared the High King’s skin, and Gorgrok’s armoured bulk smashed him from his feet for a second time. Danial gasped in agony, his vision swimming, but he managed to scramble clear before Gorgrok’s huge foot came down to crush him.
A headless militiaman fell across him, and Danial heaved the corpse away with his good arm in time to see Gorgrok break into a staggering charge. The warlord was ablaze, much of his armour inactive, yet still his incredible resilience and battle-lust kept him moving. He drove the immense weight of his armour through belligerence alone, eyes bulging as he swung back a claw to crush Danial like an insect.
‘Burn in the Draconsflame, you xenos filth,’ spat Danial, heaving himself to his feet and lashing out with his blade again. The blow hacked through flesh, bone and cabling. It severed the ork’s right claw at the elbow.
Danial didn’t give his enemy time to react. He hacked at Gorgrok again and again, splitting cables, mangling pistons, setting light to the greenkin’s flesh with the last guttering reserves of his draconblade’s fuel.
Gorgrok was trapped in his own armour, driven mad with frustration and pain, blood pumping from the stump of his right arm even as flames engulfed his body. Danial staggered back as Gorgrok burned, and the ork’s frantic howls filled his heart with the Emperor’s light.
‘See your leader burn, scum!’ he roared. ‘Hear his agony! This is the Emperor’s judgement made manifest!’
Around him, the orks faltered, gawping at the agonising fate of their leader. The warriors of House Draconis capitalised upon their hesitation, hurling themselves into their enemies with the last of their strength. Draconblades hacked through tough flesh and bone. Knives thrust into sunken red eyes.
Danial saw Percivane, bleeding from deep cuts across his breast-plate, decapitate one of the armoured orks and heave its body back over the barricade.
The greenskins gave a rising bellow of rage. As they surged forward, Captain Bannoch stepped to meet them with blade and pistol. He shot down one ork, ran another through, then was plucked off his feet as a third wrapped its piston-driven claw around his head. Bannoch struggled, battering his attacker’s face and shooting it in the chest. Shrugging off his efforts, the ork leered at Bannoch before snapping its claw shut with a horrible crunch.
Danial cried out in anger at the sensless death of the noble captain, and his heart sank. This wasn’t a heroic tale told on a tapestry to young squires. The monsters didn’t stop fighting, didn’t retreat just because you slew their king. They would keep coming until the last warriors of House Draconis were dead. Wearily, he raised his blade and sought for Suset. He could at least die by her side.
The outer wall of the throne room exploded with incredible force. Blazing rubble sailed through the air, crashing down like meteorites amongst the ork horde. Masonry collapsed in an avalanche, crushing them.
For a second time, the greenskins howled and pointed as towering Imperial Knights stormed into the throne room. Rockets and shells blasted them apart. Stubbers and gatling cannons chewed greenskins to bloody mist.
Danial recognised the heraldry of the Knight leading the charge, and felt an incredible surge of fierce delight.
‘Luk!’ he yelled as the last of the orks panicked and scattered at last. ‘Luk, my brother!’ shouted Danial again, hearing the manic edge in his own laughter and not caring. He found the strength to hack down a fleeing ork, then impale another as it tried to barge past him.
Danial saw the strange Knights that followed his friend to battle, and the wave of Taurox armoured transports that roared on their heels. More gunfire tore into the orks as soldiers deployed from the armoured transports and loosed disciplined volleys. Greenskins fell by the second, slaughtered from in front and behind as they tried in vain to fight their way free of the trap.
Danial cut down another ork, vision greying with exhaustion, and suddenly Jennika was there, soldiers flanking her, blade blazing as she slaughtered every alien in reach.
‘Jen,’ he said, relief flowing through him. ‘Jen, you made it! We survived!’
His sister approached and saluted with her blade.
‘Brother,’ she said. ‘It is good to see you.’
‘What is it?’ he asked, reading the grim desperation behind her smile. ‘What else has happened?’
‘We don’t have much time,’ she said. ‘Whatever steeds you have, mobilise them. And gather the Sacristans. If we’re to save our world, Danial, there’s one last battle to be fought.’
CHAPTER 17
High above Adrastapol, guns the size of hab-blocks spat hundred-foot-long shells into the void. Lances sent silent, blinding beams of energy through the darkness to chop apart ork warships, and strew their blazing wreckage across the starfield. Ork gun batteries hammered Imperial void shields. Fighters and bombers hurtled around the larger ships, fighting out their own zero gravity dogfights or engaging in desperate bombing runs through hails of flak.
With its numbers depleted by weeks of planetary drops, defence battery fire and harassing attacks from the Bastion Fleet, the ork armada was a shadow of its former self. Its ships still numbered in the hundreds, but many were damaged or scattered, their crews depleted.
Orbital scans had revealed the desperate fight taking place on the planet below. With only a little browbeating from the irascible Captain Shas, the Bastion Fleet Captains had voted to ignore their standing orders and launch an all-out attack to break the back of the greenskin fleet.
Two hours into the naval action, and the fight was going well. Still, Captain Shas sat in his throne and glowered. On the main holoscreen, a compact fleet of Imperial warships could be seen cutting their way through the scattered ork armada from its opposite flank. Glowing lines on the astrogation monitor indicated they had slipped out from behind the dwarf moon of Triaetos, and were now on a direct heading for Adrastapol’s orbital envelope.
‘Auspex confirms one Oberon-class battleship, two Exorcist-class cruisers and six frigates of various marks,’ said Mister Klem. ‘Heavily modified, all vox encrypted.’
‘They’re still ignoring our hails?’ asked Shas, taking a slug from his hip flask. The metal digits of his augmetic hand tapped out a slow beat on the arm-rest of his throne. The aperture on his bionic eye whined and refocused, a sure sign Shas was tense.
‘Yes, captain,’ said Klem. ‘They appear to be disinterested in an exchange.’
The Unbroken shuddered as her gun decks spoke, hammering an ork ramship to scrap off the port bow.
‘What about the rest of the Bastion Fleet?’ asked the captain. ‘Any of these ujovskae got an opinion worth hearing?’
‘Nothing that wouldn’t provoke further insults from yourself, captain,’ said Klem. ‘They’re not the most experienced captains, and terribly bound by all this chivalric business.’
Shas grunted and scowled.
‘Mister Malsyn,’ voxed the captain. ‘Can you confirm the iconography on those ships?’
‘Yes, captain,’ came Malsyn’s reply. The man glanced up from his distant console, expression worried. ‘No doubt about it. That’s the sigil of the Emperor’s holy Inquisition.’
‘Well,’ said Shas heavily. ‘Throne damn it.’
‘Succinctly put, captain,’ said Mister Klem. ‘What do you wish us to do?’
‘You think those ships just happen to be flying past, Klem?’ asked Shas. ‘Hm? You think they’re winging their way through the ether, they just happen to see all this? Think to themselves, you know what the Emperor wants, is we keep our mission in the other hand while we come help fight the greens?’
‘The probability does appear vanishingly small, captain,’ said Klem.
‘Hah!’ barked Shas. ‘About the same damn odds of you growing a proper Valhallan beard. Not going to happen.’
‘Wouldn’t want to show you up, now would I, captain?’ asked Klem, his noble features unreadable. Shas barked a laugh.
‘What I think, is these koshnova have been waiting here all along,’ said Shas. ‘I don’t know why, don’t want to either. But I don’t think they’re about to lend their aid. If we have to, I think we go and get in their way.’
‘I’m not sure that Commissar Hauptvier would agree with your assessment, captain,’ said Klem quietly.
‘I think you’re not wrong,’ said Shas. ‘And I think chances of cutting our way through all this carnage in time are pretty slim anyway. Especially with only ujovskae Bastion Ships for backup. Never stopped us before though, hey?’
‘No, captain, that’s true,’ said Klem with the ghost of a smile. He tapped the holstered las pistol at his hip gently. ‘I’ll be ready, if you give the word. It is heroic of commissars to face the dangers they do, especially when one considers the accidents that can happen in the white heat of battle.’
‘Good man,’ growled Shas, then raised his voice to a sudden bellow. ‘All right, you bunch of whimpering conscripts on this bridge. You’ve all seen Imperial ships before, why are you staring now? Look fierce! There’s orks to slaughter!’
Still, the captain’s eyes lingered on the trajectory of the menacing Inquisitorial ships, and the chron cycling swiftly down on his displays. They would enter geosynchronous orbit within minutes, and Shas had an inkling suspicion of what might happen then.
Northrise Battery was wreathed in smoke and flame. Pegasson and Draconis aircraft streaked back and forth overhead, dropping bombs and sending streams of gunfire to strafe the orks. Gunfire spat down from the battlements, hammering the shields of the Knights fighting to gain entrance. Greenskin forces swarmed over them, Stompas leading waves of tanks and infantry against the Imperial force.
The Knights of House Pegasson strode in long, swift arcs, torsos twisting and guns hammering as they circled the towering ork Gargant. The machine was ablaze, secondary systems and armoured compartments blown to ruin. Yet its flickering force fields kept springing back to life, and with every cumbersome salvo of return fire it left another steed sprawled as wreckage on the Valatane.
The Knights of House Minotos had succeeded in blasting a breach in the battery’s walls, but with enemies coming from every side they were hard-pressed to capitalise on their achievement.
‘Damnation!’ roared Grandmarshal Kurt. He stepped his steed backwards, barely evading the churning teeth of a Stompa’s chainsword. He clenched his haptic gauntlets, tensed in his throne and swung a return blow. Gustev’s Revenge responded in bellicose style, swinging its Minotane hammer in a meteoric arc. The huge weapon connected with the Stompa’s jaw and tore its head clean off.
Sparks flew and flames leapt as the war effigy tottered backwards, decapitated. Kurt drove Revenge forward, slamming his battered shield into the Stompa’s gut and overbalancing it completely. With a mighty groan the ork war engine tipped backwards and crashed down on its back. Secondary explosions rippled through it, blasting loose hull plates and deforming its mangled hull.
‘Knights, report,’ snapped Kurt as shots splashed from his ion shield. The battle was brutal, and he had a dark sense that they were losing.
‘Sire,’ came Wilhorm’s voice through the vox. ‘We’ve lost another two Knights. They’ve pushed us back on the right, and blocked the breach with more damn Stompas.’
‘Marchioness, what’s your status?’ asked Kurt, switching channels.
‘Stalled,’ came Lauret’s reply, delivered through gritted teeth. ‘This Throne-damned Gargant will not die! Energy readings suggest its primary weapon is almost charged.’
‘You’ve got to destroy it,’ said Kurt. ‘Emperor alone knows what that thing does, but–’
‘I know, Grandmarshal,’ snapped Lauret. ‘I’ve lost six Knights to this abomination already. We’re directing all of our fire into it, but it simply will not stop.’
Kurt checked his strategic overlay, and felt a fresh surge of fury at the sight of yet more greenskin runes spilling around the fortress towards his beleaguered Knights.
‘Where are they all coming from?’ he cursed.
‘Irrelevant,’ said Lauret. ‘We need to do something to turn this battle in our favour or Adrastapol is lost.’
‘Sires Gastaurn, Colchin, Willer, with me,’ said Kurt, mind racing. ‘We’re going to punch through the breach. Everyone else, covering fire, be ready to follow us in the moment the way is open.’
Assent runes flashed back to him. Vox speakers still booming their war arias, the Knights of House Minotos swung into action.
Kurt charged, enemy fire rebounding from shields. Sires Gastaurn, Colchin and Willer, Gallant pilots all, formed lance on him, striding heroically towards the towering Stompas that held the breach.
The lead Stompa fired a spread of huge rockets that streaked down to explode amidst Kurt’s charging force. One warhead hit his steed’s slablike shield and rebounded, Revenge stalking on through the resultant fireball. Another slammed straight into Sire Gastaurn’s steed and blew it apart.
Kurt swore furiously as energy beams stabbed down from the artillery on the walls, converging to saw a leg from under Sire Willer’s Knight.
Gatling rounds and battle cannon shells stitched the Stompas blocking the breach, causing them to shudder with detonations. The ork war engines opened fire again, the sheer volume of fire stealing Kurt’s momentum and forcing his steed to a grinding halt with its shield held before it.
He fired his melta cannons, carving a glowing hole through the chest of the closest Stompa and causing its magazines to detonate. Still the other two war engines kept shooting, and Kurt cried out in dismay as Sire Colchin’s steed suffered a string of hits to its torso that left it a gutted, blazing wreck.
‘My liege, pull back!’ voxed Sire Wilhorm.
Kurt forced his steed forward another pace, and another. Shells hammered his ironclad shield, chewing chunks of metal from its edges. More shots splashed from his ion shield, forming a perpetual blue haze. He growled in frustration as warning runes flashed across his intruments.
‘My liege!’ urged Wilhorm again.
‘Grandmarshal,’ barked Lauret. ‘Curb your wrath. Withdraw, and try another approach.’
Kurt swore vociferously, walking his steed back from the looming Stompas as shots continued to batter his steed.
‘What do you suggest, my lady?’ he asked. ‘Time is running out.’
‘Pull back and help us finish this monster off,’ said Lauret. ‘Perhaps with our forces combined we can–’
Kurt frowned at Lauret’s pause, turning his steed towards the towering Gargant and flashing runic commands to his subordinates.
‘My lady?’ he asked.
‘Look, Grandmarshal,’ said Lauret, and in her voice he heard a note of hope. ‘The Draconspire. The orks are fleeing. And behind them…’
Kurt magnified his vid feeds, and barked a fierce laugh.
‘The High King!’ he said, his voice booming through the vox channel to inspire Knights of Minotos and Pegasson alike. ‘Danial Tan Draconis lives, and he’s riding to our aid. For the sake of our world, we cannot let him down!’
Oath of Flame crossed the Valatane at a loping run, pennants flowing in the wind. Lances of Knights followed in its wake. Draconis steeds, all those that the Sacristans could awaken. The Knights of Houses Pegasson and Minotos. Luk and the Exiles stormed into battle on Danial’s heels, alongside Suset, Markos and Percivane.
Vehicles roared in their wake, the Vesserines’ Tauroxes escorting a wedge of Sacristan Crawlers and the few remaining Draconis tanks and transports, with as many militia as could fit packed into their holds and clinging to their flanks and roofs. Danial knew that Jennika was amongst them, riding with a colonel who served Luk. He had had scant time to grasp the full situation, just a few moments while the medicae pumped him full of painkillers and stimms, and fitted a servo-brace to his shoulder so that he could pilot. But he knew enough.
With every moment, the fight around Northrise Battery grew closer, and looked more desperate. The remaining dregs of the greenskins fled before his force, yet those around the battery still fought furiously.
‘All Knights,’ said Danial over the open channel. ‘Understand that there is no price too high for victory here. By Inquisitor Massata’s reckoning, we may have a matter of minutes to save our world. We must smash the xenos aside, and allow High Sacristan Polluxis and his brothers access to the battery’s vox. Succeed, and we save this world for the Emperor. We earn a chance to win this war. Fail, and we die by fire. But Knights of Adrastapol, we will not fail!’
Vox horns blared and autopennants were raised. Overhead, wings of Adrastapolian aircraft fell into formation, ready to support the attack.
‘Sire,’ voxed Markos. ‘The Gargant. That’s the monster that banished our machine-spirits during the siege.’
‘Energy build up around the war effigy’s primary weapon is prodigious,’ voxed Polluxis. ‘I would posit that its crews are readying to fire another such energy blast. Were they to succeed in this it would reduce our chances of success to virtually nil.’
‘Then it dies first,’ said Danial. ‘All Knights, long guns and missiles to target the Gargant. Assist the Marchioness.’
The charging Knights opened fire. Shells, energy blasts and missiles filled the air, converging upon the ironclad mountain. The war machine’s force fields collapsed one after the other, each one blowing out with a thunderclap of displaced air. A battle’s worth of ordnance struck the Gargant’s head, chest and arms. Explosions flared and wreckage spun away.
