Hellforged, p.24
Hellforged, page 24
Dyrmida ran for the door, the officer close behind her. He slammed the door behind him and hauled its lock shut. The stairwell was white-painted and narrow, made to serve as a maintenance access to the roof of the tower. The door boomed with the stray gunshots hitting it, and Dyrmida heard the men trapped in there screaming.
Kavins had shut them in there to die so that there was more chance of the queen escaping. She knew that she should be ashamed of that fact, but the feeling was drowned out by her heart hammering in her chest.
She ignored the thought and pushed upwards. Gunfire echoed from below, mingling with the sounds of the guns on the walls. She hauled on the wheel lock on the door in front of her, and the door swung open to the roof. It was scattered with antennae and receiver dishes.
The smell of gun-smoke hit her. It was thick in the air, drifting in a pall from the soldiers on the walls. Across the landing pads, she could see her soldiers manning the defences, keeping up a hail of fire against the two columns of Undying approaching from the north and south. The massive black pyramidal vehicles, the monoliths, were drifting towards the main gates, apparently immune to fire, thousands of Undying teeming around them. The Soul Drinkers knelt on the other side of the gate, waiting. Hundreds of soldiers had flocked to hold the walls to the south, and heavy weapons thumped as they sent anti-tank shells and missiles into the Undying advancing through the smouldering remains of the forest’s edge.
Kavins slammed the door shut and readied his gun.
‘Hold here, your majesty,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you off here soon.’
‘Do not risk your life for me, Kavins,’ said Dyrmida. ‘Too many have died that way already.’
‘It will not come to that.’
Kavins pointed as the lifter rose above the edge of the command centre roof. It was a stubby box-like craft with short stabiliser wings, and it rose on a pair of vertical jet engines on a column of rippling hot air. It was a small craft, big enough for perhaps half a dozen passengers. Through the cockpit windshield, Dyrmida could see the pilot, brow furrowed as he held the craft steady.
The rear access ramp of the lander opened, and the craft swivelled to bring the ramp over the roof. Metre by metre, the craft descended, until Kavins was able to run over and grab the lip of the ramp. He held his hand out.
‘Your majesty,’ he said.
Dyrmida put her foot on Kavins’s hand and pushed herself up onto the ramp. Her upper body was on the ramp, and her legs were kicking out over the roof. She pulled herself towards the safety of the crew compartment.
Dyrmida heard gunfire over the roaring engines, and looked back to see Kavins firing at something on the edge of the roof.
It was an Undying, one of the Flayed Ones, still wearing the scraps of skin it had worn as a disguise. Bullets sparked against its skull, and it fell, but more followed it, clambering onto the roof.
Kavins paused for a moment to wave at the pilot, indicating that the lander should take off without him.
‘No!’ shouted Dyrmida. ‘We can save you! Turn back!’
One of the Flayed Ones was scaling an antenna. Dyrmida, still clinging to the ramp, aimed her sidearm at the Flayed One and fired, but the shots snapped wide. She knew what it was going to do, and she couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
The Flayed One leapt from the antenna onto the front of the lander. Dyrmida could just hear, over the roar of the engines, the sound of the lander’s front windshield shattering.
The lander lurched suddenly, almost throwing Dyrmida out. The cockpit door burst open, and the pilot flew back into the crew compartment in two pieces, his body carved apart from one shoulder to the opposite hip. The sundered corpse tumbled past Dyrmida as the lander pitched backwards. The blood-slicked Undying looked at Dyrmida through the open cockpit door, the gore from the pilot’s death running thickly down its grinning skull.
Kavins looked up as the lander’s shadow passed over him. He dived out of the way as its bulk flopped down onto the roof of the command centre. Half the roof collapsed into the control room below. Debris shattered up into one engine, and it exploded in a storm of fire and metal, throwing torn Flayed Ones off the roof. Flame billowed across the roof, and torn fuel lines sprayed through the fire.
Queen Dyrmida didn’t know where she was or what was happening to her. All she knew was that one half of her world was agonisingly hot and the other was not. She rolled away from the flames, too confused and shocked to register the pain from broken bones in her leg.
She was still holding her gun, for her hand had closed around it in a lucky reflex. She wiped her other hand across her face, getting some of the blood out her eyes. Behind her was the wrecked lander, explosions shaking it as fuel cells cooked off inside. The spatters of blood on the lander’s nose were blackening in the heat.
She saw Kavins in front of her. He was lying on his back, and a Flayed One stood over him. It squatted over his chest and punched its blades into his eyes. Kavins spasmed, and then he wasn’t Kavins any more, but just another body laid low by the Undying.
Dyrmida tried to get to her feet, but her leg collapsed under her. The pain threw her into a white place of agony, and she nearly blacked out, forcing herself to stay conscious for a few moments more.
Flayed Ones were clambering over the edge of the roof and walking towards her. There was little hurry in their movements. They didn’t need their speed now.
Their blades were so sharp that their edges glowed orange with the light of the flames, like slivers of fire. Dyrmida imagined them cutting through her, slicing her apart into bloody chunks.
She would not go through that. They would not carve her up while she was alive.
Queen Dyrmida of Astelok, Regent of Raevenia, put the muzzle of her pistol to the underside of her jaw.
The Flayed Ones advanced on her, fixing her with their burning green eyes. Their faces didn’t change from the impassive rictus of metal. Somehow, it would have been better to see their hate.
Blades touched her skin.
Dyrmida pulled the trigger.
‘How many have died? None but the Emperor knows. How many of their stories are remembered? Barely a drop in that ocean. Strive to overcome not only the standards of your heroes, but of everyone who has died forgotten.’
Daenyathos, The Bullet and the Skull
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The blast ripped right through the ruins of the tomb, and sheared through Archmagos Voar’s legs. Voar hit the ground, tech-guards running to his aid. One of them was shredded to atoms by another fat eruption of green fire, but two more grabbed Voar by his shoulders and dragged him clear, spraying las-fire at the necron destroyer that had fired on them.
Voar’s auto-senses rapidly took stock. His legs, simple but sturdy motivator units, had been completely destroyed, one flayed off at the knee, the other fused and useless. They held no vital systems, and he could function at almost full capacity, save for the ability to move under his own power.
‘You,’ he said to the tech-guard kneeling beside him, firing rapid las-fire at the destroyer, ‘Carry me.’
‘Yes, archmagos,’ said one of the tech-guard, and pulled Voar’s arm over his shoulder so he could half-carry, half-drag Voar around.
The vox-net opened up. It was barely possible to make out voices among the distortion. Voar engaged his logic circuits and rearranged the static-filled snippets of sound into recognisable words.
‘This is Sarpedon!’ said the voice over the vox. ‘We’re under attack from some necron machines that can phase in and out. Bullets pass right through the damn things. Advise!’
‘I had anticipated this application of their phasing technology,’ said Voar. He amplified his vox-unit to address the tech-guard around him. ‘Device Epsilon! Now!’
One of the tech-guard ran forwards carrying a second weapon similar to the device Gamma: a metal sphere wrapped in circuitry and wires. This one contained a power source that turned the metal translucent as it pulsed.
‘Crystavayne,’ voxed Voar. ‘I am inconvenienced. Deliver device Epsilon to Commander Sarpedon.’
‘Yes, archmagos.’ Crystavayne ran through the ruined tombs and knelt beside Voar. The inferno pistol that Voar had given him was still in his hand, its muzzle glowing a dull red with the constant fighting.
‘Archmagos, be still. I can fix the–’
‘I am in no danger,’ snapped Voar. ‘The same is not true of Sarpedon. Deliver the device Epsilon. That is an order.’
‘Very well,’ said Crystavayne, taking the weapon from the tech-guard.
‘And be quick,’ said Voar. ‘Ancient they may be, but the patience of the necrons has run out.’
The labyrinth was twisting again, warping space to throw the ghost-like necrons in greater number into the Soul Drinkers’ position.
Sarpedon slammed the Axe of Mercaeno into the chest of one of the machines, and the power field split deep into its torso. The machine shifted out of phase with reality again, turning transparent, and the axe slipped through the apparition harmlessly. One of its limbs solidified, and stabbed a bundle of knives and injectors at Sarpedon. He was a fraction of a second quicker than the machine anticipated, and grabbed the limb with his free hand. He drew back his arm and hurled the necron at the wall, but, just in time, it shifted again and passed right through it.
‘Give me a whole company of Traitor Marines to fight,’ spat Luko, who was fighting back to back with Sarpedon, lightning claws blazing. ‘At least when you hit them they stay hit.’
Soul Drinkers were dying to the necron ghosts. One lay, throat opened up, his helmet wrenched back off his head. Another was dragging himself along, trying to hold in his entrails as they spilled through the triangular hole slashed open in his armour.
One of the ghosts had been destroyed, phasing out a moment too late to avoid the volley of bolter fire that slammed into it. It lay half-shifted, flickering like an image on a faulty pict screen, back blown open and spilling ghostly circuitry across the floor. Another had been skewered through the head by a chainblade, and had fallen like a metal puppet with its strings cut. The others were faster, materialising to strike, and then becoming ghosts again faster than the Soul Drinkers could target them.
They functioned naturally in the abnormal dimensions, too, shifting in and out of folds in space, warping from one place to another. This was their home ground. The Soul Drinkers were the intruders, and the necrons had them trapped in their labyrinth.
One of Voar’s tech-priests stumbled over the threshold into the midst of the Soul Drinkers. He looked mostly human, with only a medicae gauntlet on one hand and cranial interfaces in his scalp to suggest his augmentations. In one hand he held an inferno pistol and in the crook of his other arm was a device like an oversized grenade. Sarpedon remembered him as Magos Crystavayne, one of the officers of Voar’s fleet.
‘Commander!’ shouted Crystavayne.
It was the only word he got out before the necron ghost behind him shimmered into reality and speared him through the back with both sets of blades. Injectors pumped to fill him with acids that would eat him away from the inside, and blades vibrated to slice easily through his bones and organs.
Magos Crystavayne slumped to his knees, still impaled on the ghost’s blades. The ghost shifted back into spectral form, as twin fountains of blood sprayed from the magos’s back.
With his last moment of life, Crystavayne thumbed an activation catch on the device he held. His inferno pistol dropped from his hand, and he slumped down onto his back.
The device split open. A glowing orange-white core was revealed, and it pulsed, flaring up to fill the labyrinth intersection with painful light.
The light died down, Sarpedon’s auto-senses fighting to adjust. A necron above him shuddered as if its image was obscured by static, and suddenly it was real. Its skull split apart as its jaws opened, wrenching a tear across its face like a ragged grin, and it screamed.
‘They’re real!’ yelled Sarpedon. ‘Kill them!’
Most of the Soul Drinkers dropped to one knee and fired, blazing full-auto at the ghosts suddenly locked into their physical forms above them. Sarpedon saw one Wraith materialise halfway through the wall, writhing as its innards fused with the wall, sparks bleeding from its eyes.
Luko killed another, leaping over Sarpedon to grab the necron’s tail of cabling and spine, dragging it down and slamming it into the floor. He leapt on it, and slashed its skull into three slices with a sweep of his claws.
Sarpedon saw something like panic in the movements of the necron ghosts. They were darting around at random, throwing themselves out of the way of angles of fire. It didn’t work. Forced to stay in physical form by the Mechanicus device, they were little more than target practice for the Soul Drinkers.
‘They’re fleeing from us, commander!’ voxed Sergeant Salk, who was kneeling, directing his squad’s fire. One of the necrons clattered to the ground behind him, its head and one limb missing. With its capacity to phase out gone, the wreck stayed there, smouldering.
‘More will follow,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Lygris? Can you lead us on?’
Lygris stumbled up to Sarpedon and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily enough to distort the vox-unit that Pallas had fitted him with.
‘I can,’ he said. ‘It is far through the labyrinth, but I can lead us through… through the broken space. It will not be long before we reach it. It is talking to me.’
‘What does it say?’
‘That we will all die.’
Sarpedon pulled the Axe of Mercaeno from the body of the necron he had killed.
‘For a creature of such intelligence,’ he said, ‘it has little imagination.’
‘Follow me,’ said Lygris.
It was surprisingly quiet by the main gates in the northern walls of the space port where Chaplain Iktinos and his flock waited for the real battle to begin. The gunfire from above was muffled by the walls and the gatehouses, and the Undying made little sound save for the grinding of their feet in the dirt and the occasional falling tree, knocked down by the advancing monoliths.
A few soldiers were running, here and there, to collect ammunition or carry wounded comrades to triage stations. Reserves waited nervously in a maintenance hangar, wishing, at the same time, that the Undying would not breach the walls, and that the aliens would hurry up and force their way in so they could get the fight over and done with.
The command centre was burning. Flame-shadowed smoke billowed from its tower, and the fire was spreading through the building. Communications from the centre had ceased.
A soldier ran from the direction of the reserve. He was wounded, one of his hands half blown off and the stump of his wrist wrapped in a bloodstained bandage. He had evidently been pressed into service as a messenger because he could no longer hold a gun. He was young, his face and short blond hair smeared with gun residue and blood.
‘Chaplain!’ he shouted as he ran. ‘Chaplain! The centre has fallen. Queen Dyrmida is lost.’
Chaplain Iktinos knelt before the gates. The thirty or so Soul Drinkers with him knelt too, their heads bent in contemplation. Iktinos looked around at the messenger’s approach.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘We… we don’t have anyone in command. Her generals are gone too.’
‘That will be all,’ said Iktinos, and turned away again.
The messenger stood for a moment, unsure what to say. Then he backed off, turned, and ran towards where the reserved were stationed, perhaps to see if there was anything else he could do.
‘Soon,’ voxed Iktinos quietly to his flock. ‘Remember, my brothers. It matters not who survives, so long as there is one of us.’
The drone of a monolith’s engines reached Iktinos’s ears. It was on the other side of the gate.
‘Nothing matters,’ continued Iktinos, ‘but the Salvation.’
Enormous energy weapons tore at the gate with a sound like industrial saws grinding through plascrete. The gates shuddered, and cracked lines appeared, describing a massive rectangular shape like another doorway set into the surface of the gates. The ground shook, too, thrumming with the scale of the power being unleashed.
There was panic on the walls. Men were running, some away along the top of the walls, others into the cramped stairways leading down. Some were standing clear of the defences, heedless of the danger, because on Raevenia a good death was as meaningful as a good life, and there were good deaths to be won defying the aliens, even now. Green fire rippled along the walls. Men fell, half their bodies flayed away. Some stood and defied for a few seconds more, yelling their anger and firing their weapons even as their bodies were flayed away into gnawed skeletons.
The cracks in the gate deepened into molten-edged furrows. A huge section of the gates fell inwards, slamming into the ground with a sound that deafened men. The Space Marines’ auto-senses protected them.
The monolith, the size of a building, loomed over them, suspended a metre above the ground on a shimmering field of energy. Two more glided behind it. Undying warriors marched alongside it, hundreds of them in strict formation. Many of them had patches of bright silver where they had been shot down, self-repaired, and rejoined the advance. Closest to the monoliths were the Immortals, the larger warriors with twin-barrelled weapons, their carapaces inscribed with ornate patterns as if to acknowledge the majesty of the monoliths.
‘Charge!’ yelled Iktinos. The Soul Drinkers leapt to their feet and ran forwards, chainblades whirring, bolters stuttering fire into the Undying.
Some of the flock died there, immolated in the green flare that raked through them from the guns mounted at the pinnacle of the monolith, but it did not matter.
