Hellforged, p.14
Hellforged, page 14
The machine’s enormous bulk pushed down one of the gatehouses, and tonnes of rubble were sucked into its maw. The useless matter was siphoned off and spewed from vents along its sides as clouds of choking dust.
Men died in its path. The gate district was barren, the forums strewn with half-dissolved bodies and abandoned barricades. A basilica collapsed, detonated to slow the Undying advance with rubble, but the machine just dragged its bulk right through the ruins.
A few Raevenians, who had been wounded or who had run out of ammunition, had been cut off by the rapid Undying advance, and had not been able to give up their last few moments fighting. The Undying turned and herded them towards the giant machine. Some of them threw themselves on the bayonets on the Undying’s xenos weapons. Others stumbled ahead of them into the machine’s path. They disappeared into the machine’s maw, sucked down into its throat.
They were denied the good deaths suffered by hundreds of other defenders. A death in defence of his home, upon the orders of his queen, was a worthwhile goal for a Raevenian’s life. There were better, of course, but few men would ever have the chance to even witness them. Plenty of soldiers had asked for the honour of manning the front lines. Plenty of them received their wish in the first few minutes of the battle for Astelok, stripped to the bone by lances of green fire, or chewed into pulp by hordes of scarabs.
Some of them did not die. A man dragged himself along the street, his leg a bloody length of sinew and bone. Another held in the wet heaving mass of his chest, gasping for breath and bracing his gun one-handed for a few more shots. Another curled into a ball to keep the scarabs off his face, howling as their mandibles burrowed through his back.
The machine harvested them too, as the Undying threw them into its throat, or it simply rolled over them as they tried to crawl out of its way. More good deaths went begging.
The dust began to fill the city like fog. The Undying marched through it, into valleys of apartment blocks that had previously been crammed with refugees. Raevenian sharpshooters aimed through the windows, and sniper bullets punched through metal skulls. A flying warrior fell, sheared through the spine, its anti-grav unit cutting out, sending it tumbling into the gutter. More flyers fired their cannon up at the buildings, boring through walls and the men sheltering behind them. Warriors sent fire spattering up, not missing a step as they advanced.
One Raevenian sniper shot down a flying machine, plugging it clean through the head. He fell back into shelter, as return fire from the warriors chewed away at the wall below the window he had used as a vantage point. He was a veteran, his aim honed by sniping birds and stags in Raevenia’s forests. The inhuman march of the Undying had not fazed him. He had been raised to kill, and whether it was prize game or alien machines did not make any difference in his mind.
Another soldier ran into the apartment behind him. The place was still scattered with furniture and belongings, the refugees having abandoned anything that could not be carried in a backpack. The soldier was tattered and bloody, wounded by the Undying fire streaking up into the buildings.
‘We’ve got to get out of this building,’ said the veteran. ‘Keep moving. I’ll be right behind you.’
The soldier didn’t reply. He slumped against the doorframe. The veteran ran to support him and took the man’s weight on his shoulder.
‘We’ll get you out,’ he said to the wounded man. ‘You can’t die yet. Queen’s orders, eh?’
The wounded man turned his head to look at the veteran. His face was a ruin of torn skin. His eyes were lit from behind with green fire. His face split open and bloodstained metal leered through it.
The veteran fought to get out of the machine’s grip. Metal claws slid through the dead soldier’s skin.
The veteran’s scream was lost in the roar of the harvester as it ground through the streets below.
From the window of the southern palace, Queen Dyrmida watched another pall of dust billow up above the city. Another building in the north of Astelok had collapsed.
The Undying weren’t just killing her city. They were dismembering it before her eyes.
‘We have to go, your majesty,’ said Lieutenant Kavins beside her. ‘The civilians can’t be held here any longer.’
He was right. The refugees cramming the southern half of Astelok were beginning to panic as the Undying approached. Most of them had never seen the Undying, and had built them up as ghosts or daemons from the underworld, inhuman and unstoppable, who inflicted fates worse than death on their victims. Those who had seen the Undying, in the fall of cities and settlements scattered across Raevenia, had terrors of their own, memories of green fire eyes and skeletal killers that never stopped. Religion came quickly to people watching their world being devoured, and plenty of the refugees whispered that the Undying had been sent by the gods to punish Raevenia for her people’s impiety.
The southern gate was the largest in the city walls, flanked by memorials to the Raevenians that had died to defend Astelok in ages past. People thronged the thoroughfare in front of it, and soldiers on the battlements had their guns trained on the crowds ready to fire if they turned violent.
‘Then we must put trust in our people,’ said Dyrmida. ‘Open the gates. Make sure the troops keep them from stampeding.’
‘Yes, your majesty,’ said Kavins. ‘The transports are waiting for you. We should get you out of the city as soon as possible.’
‘Wait a while,’ said Dyrmida. ‘I will not flee my city ahead of my people.’
Kavins signalled the soldiers holding the gatehouse, from the palace balcony, and the gates began to grind open. The crowd surged forwards, and soldiers held them back, yelling orders at the crowd. Women and children were weeping, screaming, yelling prayers and spreading rumours of the Undying closing in.
These were the people for whom Queen Dyrmida was responsible. It was a great burden to bear. If she failed them here, they would die, all of them.
The first columns of citizens were moved through the gates. Some were old or infirm, and were left behind. Others bulled their way forward and were clubbed with rifle butts to keep them in line.
The sound was terrible: thousands of voices tinged with panic and desperation. It would take almost nothing to send them boiling over: a stray shot, a glimpse of the Undying, even just a wrong word shouted in fear.
It had to be this way, however. An hour before, the chances of the Undying ambushing a convoy of fleeing refugees were too high. Now, it was less, still high, but low enough to give them hope. That hope had been bought with the lives of Raevenians dead and yet to die, and Dyrmida had no choice but to grasp it and let it play out until the end.
‘My people!’ she called from the balcony. ‘We will be delivered! Trust in me and in our soldiers! Believe, and be calm!’
Eyes fell on her. She recognised the fashions of many other cities amongst those of Astelok. Some of them had been enemies of Astelok in times past. Now, there were no cities. There was just Raevenia.
A tremendous roar went up from the north. Dyrmida saw the spires of the Dawning Palace falling, clouds of white marble dust swallowing the pinnacles where Dyrmida had once held court. The Dawning Palace was close to the centre of the city, and it was one of the most powerful symbols of Astelok’s culture, of its past. With the Dawning Palace fallen, the rest of Astelok could not be far behind.
‘Fear not!’ shouted Dyrmida as panic rippled through the crowds. ‘They will not reach us! This I swear!’
Sarpedon saw the first of the towers falling. The palace just ahead was perhaps the grandest in the city, its slender towers of rose-coloured sandstone defining Astelok’s skyline. Now one of those towers collapsed across the road ahead, spilling hundreds of tonnes of rubble into the streets. For a moment, some of the palace’s finery could be glimpsed: torn tapestries, gilded portrait frames, painted wood furniture. They all disappeared in the churning mass of stone.
‘Salk!’ yelled Sarpedon into the vox. ‘Fall back! Fall back!’
‘On it,’ replied Salk briskly. Sarpedon could see Salk’s tactical squad sprinting across the street as the palace behind them collapsed. One tower fell towards them, fracturing as it piled into the street. Hunks of broken stone slammed into the street a few metres behind Salk’s squad, and the Soul Drinkers were swallowed by the tremendous flood of dust erupting from the palace’s torn foundations.
‘Phol,’ voxed Sarpedon. ‘Where is their siege engine?’
‘Still heading right for you,’ replied Phol from the Thunderhawk overhead. ‘I’m losing a visual on it. There’s too much dust.’
‘Soul Drinkers!’ yelled Sarpedon. ‘Guns up!’
A couple of Raevenian soldiers, fleeing the destruction, ran between the wings of the mansion that made up one part of the crossroads. Their shapes became dim, and then disappeared, as the bank of dust rolled over them.
‘Brothers, the siege engine is our target!’ ordered Sarpedon. ‘If we are to hold the Undying in this city, we must strike at the heart of their attack! Let us see how these xenos fight when their enemies do not flee before their war machine!’
‘Nothing like the spirit of improvisation, commander,’ said Captain Luko.
‘Take the enemy’s strength and turn it into their weakness,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘These were the words of Daenyathos.’
The dust rolled over Sarpedon. The crossroads and the war memorial became a pit of shadow. Even to a Space Marine’s enhanced eyes the dust was impenetrable.
‘Commander, I’ve lost you,’ voxed Phol from above.
‘Keep circling,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Keep low. Don’t give them an easy target. They might still be able to see you.’
‘Novitiate!’ said Librarian Tyrendian, who was sheltering in the memorial alongside Squad Luko. ‘To my side. Prepare!’
‘Yes, Librarian,’ replied Scamander. ‘I am ready.’ Scamander’s gauntlets were glowing, ruddy in the murk, and Sarpedon could feel the heat coming off them.
Sarpedon heard the tramp of metal feet on stone. The ground groaned with the weight of the war machine. A few voices yelled out, soldiers trying to locate their comrades or crying in pain.
‘Coming in on your position,’ voxed Salk. ‘Hold fire!’ Squad Salk emerged from the fog and huddled down in front of the memorial.
Sarpedon looked out over the top of the memorial’s wall. He could see a few metres down the street, and then just seething darkness.
Then pinpoints of green fire: Undying warriors, hundreds upon hundreds of them, advancing down the road, between the mansions and across the sculpted gardens.
The war engine bellowed again, throwing out a dark pall of ground-up city that smothered the street in black as if a deeper night was falling. A scream was cut short.
‘Soul Drinkers!’ voxed Sarpedon. ‘We cannot kill all the Undying, but we can hurt them. Our target is the war machine!’
He waited a moment more. He could make out the outlines of the Undying warriors. Their weapons were glowing with pent-up energy as they searched for targets. This window, when the Soul Drinkers could see the Undying but the Undying could not see them, would last only a few moments more.
‘Charge!’ yelled Sarpedon, and vaulted over the memorial wall.
A lightning bolt leapt over his shoulder and blew a warrior apart right in front of Sarpedon. Sarpedon didn’t have to turn to see it had come from the hand of Tyrendian, whose psychic power took a most direct and destructive form. Sarpedon ran into the gap opened up in the Undying ranks, and slammed his axe through the chest of one of them before its electronic brain had reacted.
The Axe of Mercaeno was a force weapon, tuned in to the wielder’s psychic power so that he could focus it into the blade and tear the soul right out of an enemy. The Undying had no souls to destroy, so Sarpedon had to rely on pure strength to drive the axe through them. Fortunately, strength was something he had never lacked.
He struck a skull from its shoulders, and stabbed a leg through the abdomen of another Undying, severing its thick steel spine. Squad Luko and Squad Salk were right behind him, blazing at point-blank range with rapid-firing bolters. Soul Drinkers advanced on either side, and Sarpedon heard the roar of jump pack jets as assault squads leapt over the front lines and into the Undying beyond.
The robotic nature of the Undying was not a strength. It was a weakness. They were tough and fearless, but they had no capacity for imagination. They could not react, except to the commands wired into their machine minds. They had come to this battle ready to fight Raevenians, brave but fallible humans who panicked and ran, who faltered when faced with a wall of metal bodies. They had not been ready for the Space Marines.
Sarpedon was at full tilt, slamming into the warriors and bowling them aside. One of the large floating spiders, the same kind he had dispatched at the white city, loomed through the dust, the lenses studding its head swivelling to focus on him. Blasts of bolter and plasma fire hammered into it from Squad Luko, and Luko himself ran beneath the stricken machine and disembowelled it with a slash of his lightning claws. Sarpedon could see the trails of the jump packs, and hear chainswords against metal as the assault squads went into the fray. There was bolter fire, everywhere, criss-crossing in white trails as they ripped through the pall of dust.
The harvester bellowed. Buildings collapsed in its wake.
‘Forward!’ yelled Sarpedon. ‘Take the war engine! Forward!’
The great dark circle of the maw pushed through the dust. It was bigger than Sarpedon had imagined, too big to fit into the grand street, and it ground its way through the buildings on either side to make passage for itself. It was a monstrous vortex of gnashing metal. It was like the eye of death itself.
‘Get onto the rooftops!’ shouted Sarpedon into the vox. ‘Assault squads, jump! The rest, into the buildings and up!’
Undying warriors were converging in front of the harvester to fend off the attackers. Sarpedon scuttled sideways to reach the front of a law court that took up one side of the street. The building was already shuddering as the harvester chewed through the far end. Squad Luko was already entering it, shooting out windows and kicking in the main doors. Sarpedon jumped onto the wall, finding purchase with his talons and running up the vertical surface. Undying warriors, bent and fast wielding claws, like the machines from the forest palace, were following him up the wall or emerging from the windows. One of them wore the skin of a dead Raevenian, making for a horrible bloody parody of a human form. Sarpedon paused to take aim, and blew one of its legs off with a bolter shot. Bolter fire from inside the building threw another off the wall.
Sarpedon reached the roof. Deep cracks were running across the walls and roof of the law court, and the whole building leaned under the advancing weight of the harvester. The first Soul Drinkers were emerging onto the roof.
Sarpedon could see the main bulk of the harvester now. It was immense, like a gigantic beetle with a carapace of bullet-scarred metal. It was bigger even than an Imperial super-heavy tank. Power glowed green beneath its overlapping armour plates.
Techmarine Lygris was on the roof.
‘Lygris!’ shouted Sarpedon over the din of the collapsing building. ‘I need you inside!’
‘Very well, commander! Open the door!’ replied Lygris.
Sarpedon ran to the edge of the roof and jumped. He landed on the hull of the harvester, just behind the lip of its maw. Lygris followed him. Sarpedon, whose legs and talons held him firm to the hull, held out a hand, and caught Lygris’s wrist to drag him up onto the upper surface, which was almost horizontal. The harvester swayed and juddered beneath them. Members of Squad Luko were making the jump, too, or crouching at the edge of the roof to grab an edge of armour plate and clamber their way up. Sarpedon saw that Soul Drinkers were making it onto the machine from the opposite roofs, too, and more were on the rooftops up ahead waiting for their turn to make the jump.
‘The carapace is too tough,’ said Lygris. ‘Can we get a plasma weapon up here to blast through?’
‘Allow me,’ said Scamander. The Librarian had climbed across from the buildings opposite. Tyrendian was still on the roof behind him, shattering an Undying warrior with a well-aimed lightning bolt. Scamander knelt on the hull and put both his hands on one of the armour plates. His gauntlets glowed, and, as they drew heat from the rest of him, ice crystallised on his backpack and the armour of his legs.
The armour plate glowed as Scamander poured psychic heat into it. The edges and the areas beneath his palms began to run molten. Scamander pulled, and the plate came away, the half-melted metal stretching like sinews. Lygris and Scamander grabbed it, too, and between them they pulled it clear and threw it aside.
The hole Scamander had opened up was big enough for a couple of Soul Drinkers to enter. The cross-section of the hull was riddled with glowing green filaments, humming with the power they channelled around the machine. Sarpedon could see enough room, inside, among the pulsing machinery and power conduits for a Space Marine to move.
Sarpedon led the way in. The Soul Drinkers gathering on the hull followed him, or lined up behind Scamander as he went to work on another armour plate. Many of them covered the machine’s hull, sniping at the Undying trying to clamber up at them, or spearing the many scarabs on its back with combat knives.
Sarpedon wiped away the dust that had caked around his eyes. It was cramped inside the harvester, but he could move if he crouched down on his haunches. He pushed between a pair of humming power conduits and saw the chamber opening up before him.
Hundreds of humans, Raevenians, hung from racks on the walls of the cylindrical hull. Their faces were covered by silver masks, like stylised, expressionless faces. A walkway led between the racks of captives. Undying, bigger than the warriors with reinforced spines to take the weight of their enormous cannon, patrolled the interior to fend off boarders.
