Helsreach (13 page)

I see.

But what I see is a compromise.

‘The only reason the Mechanicus is not committing one of its greatest weapons to the war to save this world is because it remains unblessed?’

‘Yes. The soul of the machine will rebel. If it even awakens, it will be wrathful.’

Within these words, I see the way through our stalemate. If their rites require a blessing that is impossible to give, then we must alter our demands to the most basic, viable needs.

‘I understand, Zarha. Jurisian will not reactivate the Ordinatus Armageddon and bring it to Helsreach,’ I tell her. She watches me closely, her visual receptors clicking and whirring in poor mimicry of human expression.

‘He will not?’

‘No.’ The pause lasts several heartbeats, until I say, ‘We will remove the nova cannon and bring it to Helsreach. It is all we needed, anyway.’

‘You are not permitted to defile
Oberon’s
body. To remove the cannon would be to sever its head or remove its heart.’

‘Consider this, Zarha, for I am finished with standing here and posturing over Mechanicus banalities. The Master of the Forge was trained on Mars, under the guidance of the Machine Cult and in accordance with the most ancient oath between the Astartes and the Mechanicus. He reveres this weapon, and counts his role in its reawakening as the greatest honour of his life.’

‘If he was true to our principles, he would not do this.’

‘And if you were true to the Imperium, you would. Think on that, Zarha. We need this weapon.’

‘The Lord of the Centurio Ordinatus is en route from Terra. If he arrives in time, and if his vessel can break the blockade, then there is a chance Helsreach will see
Oberon
deployed. I can give you no more support than that.’

‘For now, that is all I need.’

I thought that would end it. Not end it
well,
by any means. But end it nevertheless.

Yet as I walk away, she calls me back.

‘Stop for a moment. Answer me this one question: Why are you here, Grimaldus?’

I face her once more, this twisted, ancient creature in her coffin of fluids, watching me with machine-eyes.

‘Clarify the question, Zarha. I do not believe you speak of this moment.’

She smiles.
‘No. I do not. Why are you here, at Helsreach?’

Strange to be asked such a thing, and I see no reason to lie. Not to her.

‘I am here because one who was brother to my dead master has sent me to die on this world. High Marshal Helbrecht demanded that one Templar commander stay to inspire the defence. He chose me.’

‘Why you? Have you not asked yourself that question? Why did he choose you?’

‘I do not know. All I know for certain, princeps, is that I am taking that cannon.’

‘I find it difficult to countenance,’ Artarion said, ‘that your plan actually worked.’ The knights stood together on the wall, watching the enemy. The aliens were massing, forming into clusters and chaotic regiments. It still resembled a swarm of vermin more than anything else, Grimaldus thought, but he could make out distinct clan markings and the unity of tribal groups standing apart from others.

It would be dawn soon. Whether or not that was the signal the xenos were waiting for didn’t matter. The flow of landers had fallen to a trickle, no more than one every hour now. The wastelands were already home to millions of orks. The attack would come today. The overwhelming force they needed to take the city was here.

‘It has not worked yet,’ Grimaldus replied. ‘Ultimately, it comes down to what they will allow. We need their cooperation.’ The Chaplain nodded to the gathering horde. ‘If we do not have Mechanicus aid in reactivating the cannon, these alien dogs will already be gnawing on our bones within a handful of months.’

A cry went up from further down the wall. Few Guardsmen remained posted on the battlements, and those that were served mainly as sentries. Two more of them shouted, and the call was taken up along the entire northern wall. The general vox-channel came alive with eager voices. The city’s siren once more began to wail.

Grimaldus said nothing at first. He watched the horde sweeping closer like a slow tide. What little order had been evident within the enemy’s ranks was broken now, and in the sea of jagged metal and green flesh, scrap-tanks and wreck-Titans powered forward – the former dense with aliens clinging to their sides and howling, the latter shaking the wastelands with their waddling tread.

‘I have heard it said,’ Artarion noted, ‘that the greenskins raise their Titans as idols to their strange, piggish gods.’

Priamus grunted. ‘That would explain why they are so hideous. Look at that one. How can that be a god?’

He had a point. The wreck-Titan was an iron effigy of a corpulent alien, its distended belly used to house the arming chambers for the proliferation of cannons thrusting from its gut.

‘I would laugh,’ Nero said, ‘if there weren’t so many of them. They outnumber Invigilata’s engines at a ratio of six-to-one. ’

‘I see bombers,’ Cador noted, neither interested nor disinterested, merely stating a fact. A wing of ugly aircraft, over forty of them, rose from landing platforms hidden behind the landers of the main force. Grimaldus could hear their engines from here, labouring like a sick elder ascending the stairs.

‘We should abandon the walls, brothers.’ Nero turned to watch the last Guardsmen making their way down the ramps and ladders leading from the battlements. ‘The Titans will be firing soon.’

‘So will theirs,’ Priamus smiled within his helm. ‘And these mighty walls will be reduced to so much powder.’

At that moment, a squadron of fighters soared overheard – the sleek metal hulls of Barasath’s Lightnings turned silver by the reflections of the rising sun.

‘Now that is courage,’ said Cador.

Commander Barasath had argued long and hard for permission to make his first attack run. This was principally because anyone with even a vague grasp of tactics could see full well it would almost definitely be not only his first attack run, but also his last.

Colonel Sarren had been against it. Adjutant Tyro had been against it. Even the Emperor-damned dockmaster had been against it. Barasath was a patient man; he prided himself on tact and the willingness to deliberate being among his chief virtues, but to have to sit there and listen to a
civilian
complaining and questioning his tactical expertise was beyond galling.

‘Won’t we need your planes to protect the tankers still coming from the Valdez platforms?’ the dockmaster, Maghernus, had asked. Barasath gave the man a feigned smile and a nod of acknowledgement.

‘It is unlikely the orks have the presence of mind to seek to cut our supplies of fuel, and even if they have, they would need to take the long route around the city, and risk running out of fuel themselves long before they reached our shipping lanes over the ocean.’

‘It is still not worth the risk,’ Sarren said, shaking his head and seeking to conclude the matter.

‘With all due respect,’ he said, none of his inner turmoil showing through to his demeanour, ‘This attack run offers us too much to merely dismiss out of hand.’

‘The risks are too great,’ Tyro said, and Barasath was fast coming to hate her. A petulant little princess from the Lord General’s staff – she should go back to her clerical duties and leave war to the men and women who were trained to deal with it.

‘War,’ Barasath mastered his temper, ‘is nothing but risk. If I take three-quarters of my squadron, we can destroy the enemy’s first waves of bombers and fighter support. They will never even reach the city.’

‘That is exactly why this is a fool’s errand,’ Tyro argued. She was less skilled at controlling her agitation. ‘The city’s defences will annihilate any aerial attack. We don’t even need to risk a single one of our fighters.’

My fighters,
Barasath said silently.

‘Adjutant, I would ask you to consider the practicalities.’

‘I am,’ she scoffed.

Uppity bitch,
he added to the previous thought.

‘This is a two-bladed attack that I suggest.’ Barasath looked at his fellow commanders gathered here in the briefing room. While the chamber itself was a bustling hive of activity, with staff and servitors manning vox-consoles, scanner decks and tactical displays, the main table that had once seated the entire city’s command section was almost deserted. Almost every regimental leader was with his or her soldiers now, standing ready.

‘I’m listening,’ Colonel Sarren said.

‘If we engage the enemy above the city, a great deal of burning wreckage will fall to the streets and spires below. Add to that the fact we will be under fire from our own defensive guns. Anti-air turrets on spires will be firing up at the sky battle, and have a significant chance of hitting my pilots with their flak-bursts. But if we take the fight to them, their precious junk-fighters will rain down upon their own troops in flames. Once my first wave has pierced their formation, send a second and a third. We can cut overhead to perform strafing runs on their airstrips.’

Silence met this statement. Barasath capitalised on it. ‘Their aerial capabilities will be butchered
in a single hour.
You cannot tell me, colonel, that such a victory isn’t worth the risk. This is how we must strike.’

He could tell the colonel wasn’t convinced. Tempted, yes, but not convinced. Tyro shook her head slightly, half in thought, half already preparing her advised refusal.

‘I have spoken with the Reclusiarch,’ Barasath said suddenly.

‘What?’ from both Sarren and Tyro.

‘This plan. I have discussed it with the Reclusiarch. He commended me on it, and assured me that city command would allow it.’

Of course, Barasath had done no such thing. The last he’d heard of the knight leader was that Grimaldus was evidently involved in some sort of difficult negotiation with the Crone of Invigilata. But it turned Tyro’s head, and that was all he needed. A wedge of doubt. A sliver of her interest.

‘If Grimaldus advises this…’ she said.

‘Grimaldus?’ Sarren arched an eyebrow. His jowly face was caught between amusement and alarm. ‘A trifle familiar of you to use his name like that.’

‘The Reclusiarch,’ she swallowed. ‘If he believes this is a sound plan, perhaps we should take that into consideration.’

Barasath was adept at hiding all emotion, not just the negative ones. He battled down the urge to grin now.

‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘and Adjutant Tyro. I can see why you wish to hold as much of our forces in reserve as is tactically viable. This is a defensive war, and aggressive attacks will play little part in it. But my pilots and I are useless once the walls are breached and the enemy floods the city. Even the hololithic simulations made that clear, did they not?’

Sarren sighed as he linked his fingers over his belly.

‘Do it,’ he’d said. And Barasath had. His squadron was airborne an hour later, tearing over the city streets below before powering low over the wastelands.

In the tight confines of his Lightning’s cockpit, he was more than just comfortable. He was home. Both control sticks in his hands were extensions of his own body. They said infantry felt the same about their rifles, but by the Holy Throne, there was no comparison. A rifle to a Lightning was like a spear to an angel of iron and steel.

The mass of the alien invasion darkened the ground beneath them.

‘Need I remind anyone,’ he said over the squadron’s vox, ‘that bailing out over this mess is extremely ill-advised?’

A volley of ‘No sirs’ was his answer.

‘If you’re hit – and by the Throne, some of us will be – then bring your bird down into one of their fat-arsed god-walkers. Take as many of the bastards with you as you can.’

‘Gargants, sir.’ That was Helika’s voice. ‘The orks call their Titans “gargants”.’

‘Duly noted, Helika. Fifty-Eighty-Twos, on my mark, you will break formation and open fire. The Emperor is with us, boys and girls. And the Templars are watching. Let’s show them how we earned the knights’ crosses painted on our hulls.

‘For Armageddon,’ he narrowed his eyes, breathing in a lungful of the recycled oxygen offered by his facemask, ‘and Helsreach.’

Chapter X

Siege

When the wall is first breached, it dies in an avalanche of pulverised rockcrete.

Dark powdery dust blasts into the air, thicker than smoke and expanding like a stormcloud, blinding in its density.

I watch this from hundreds of metres away, standing with my brothers and the soldiers of the Desert Vultures. At the end of the street, the wall is no more. Our defences are broken, and behind the dust cloud, the breach gapes wide.

The true siege has begun. On every rooftop, in every alley, on every street and from every window – for kilometres around – Imperial guns stand ready, clutched in loyal hands, ready to slay the invaders.

Road by road, home by home. This was always how the Battle of Helsreach would be fought, and it is what every soul in the city stands ready for.

The great figures of the Titans begin to withdraw. Their first duty is done; they stood at the walls and pounded the enemy forces with their immense artillery. Invigilata’s engines fall back now, not in defeat, nor even willingly – but because they must reload for the true battle. The Crone updated the commanders’ shared tactical grid with the locations of the Mechanicus landers within the city limits that serve as Invigilata’s rearming stations. Her Titans trudge back to the closest ones now, their tread shaking the city around them. They are tall enough to darken the rising sun as they pass, even though they walk through distant streets.

Reports filter in from across the vox-network. The wall is falling to pieces, crumbling under the insane firepower of so many tanks and wreck-Titans. Around me, the smell of fear rises from the human soldiers. It is a foul musk; the sourness of breath, the tangy reek of liquid waste, and the rich, stinging scent of cold sweat. This fear-smell emanates from several of them, and while I do not hold them to the standards of Astartes, while I acknowledge the fact the human body will always react in this way even with the bravest of souls inhabiting it, it is still hard to stand in their presence. Their fear disgusts me.

Above the dust cloud, the head and shoulders of a wreck-Titan emerge, its bulbous head of scrap metal shaped into a roaring alien maw. Throne of the Emperor, it would have towered above the wall even if our insignificant barricade was still there. Glass shatters in every window along the street as its slow march brings it closer.

A moment later, the street thunders beneath our feet. Every one of the human soldiers with us falls to the ground, their curses lost amid the noise. I maintain my balance only because of my armour’s joint stabilisers compensating for the tremors. With the brightness of a flaring sun, the wreck-Titan’s head detonates, showering debris into the dust cloud below.

The cheer that rises around me is the loudest sound yet.

‘Engine kill,’
comes Zarha’s voice over the vox, sounding amused despite the interference.
‘You owe me for that, Grimaldus.’

I do not answer. The shot must have been a truly difficult challenge, but I do not care where
Stormherald
is, nor that it is retreating. My focus is here and now. Tension burns through my body like superheated blood. I feel it in my brothers, as well. Twenty of us, our breathing fast, our hands clutching weapons that are ritually chained to our armour. Chainswords complain as they rev, cutting only air. Last-minute oaths are whispered, or sworn to the sky.

Emerging from the dust cloud, snorting their porcine war cries, come the hunched silhouettes of the enemy.

Hundreds of them, flooding into the street.

‘Fire at will!’ calls one of the Steel Legion officers.

‘Hold your fire!’
I scream, my helm’s vocalisers piercing the surrounding noise.

‘They’re in range!’ the officer, Major Oros, yells back.

‘Hold your fire!’

I am already running, sprinting, my armour joints snarling as I leave the humans behind. Proximity runes, my brothers’ life-markers, flicker on my retinal display, but I have no need for them. I know who follows me.

‘Sons of Dorn! Knights of the Emperor! Charge!’

The first of the aliens runs from the dust, its green skin plastered grey from the cloud. It raises a junk weapon in its brutish fists, and dies with my crozius annihilating its malformed face a moment later.

The two battle lines meet with a discordant crunch of weapon against weapon and flesh against armour. The sick, fungal stench of ork blood fills the air. Chainswords chew through xenos flesh. Bolters discharge their lethal loads – the crashing bangs of release followed by the muffled thumps of shells detonating within bodies.

The creatures howl and laugh as they die.

My knights remain silent as they slaughter.

Perception fades, as it always does in war, to flickering images that come moment to moment. Concentration is impossible, anathema to the holy rage that fills my senses. I grip my master’s relic weapon in both hands, and swing at three aliens before me. They are hurled back from the mace’s crackling power field, all three slain by the impact with their chests shattered, each of them tumbling across the road to end in limp, lifeless heaps.

I kill, and kill, and kill. It does not concern me that there is no end to this horde. The enemy fall before us, thrown to the floor by the righteous arcs of sacred weapons, and all that matters is how much blood flows before we are forced to retreat.

Over the vox, I hear Oros and the men cheering. It is an easy sound to ignore.

Artarion suffers more than the rest of us. He sacrifices one hand to hold my banner aloft, his chainblade held in his other. The standard draws the enemy to him.
They want our banner. They always do.
Without even a grunt of effort, he hacks left and right, parries clumsy strikes and lashes back with vicious ripostes.

Priamus saw the danger first. I see one of the aliens behind Artarion fall in two pieces, the young knight’s sword splitting the creature in twain through the torso. He kicks the biological wreckage from his blade and cleaves his way to fight side by side with Artarion.

‘Reclusiarch,’ Nerovar is still with me, tearing his sword free from the belly of a disembowelled greenskin. His boots crush the viscous, stinking ropes of intestine that spill to the road. ‘We are being overwhelmed.’

A spear crashes against my helm, reducing my visor display to static for a moment. I swing back at the creature that hurled it, and my sight flickers back online to see the beast’s skull demolished beneath my crozius. More discoloured blood spatters over my armour in a light rainfall.

Two more orks fall, one to Nero’s chainsword ripping across its throat, the other to my maul, hammered into its chest and sending it flying against the wall of a nearby building. Blood of Dorn, Mordred’s weapon is an incredible gift. It slays with effortless ease.

I can feel its charge and release with each alien that dies. There is a split second before every impact as the energy field around the head pulses in a low growl, conflicted by the closeness of other material, before it unleashes its force in a snapping burst of kinetic power.

The enemy have encircled us, but that is little worry. Fighting our way free will be no effort.

‘Oros,’ I breathe into the vox. ‘We are preparing to fall back to you.’

‘Give me the mark,’ he says. ‘We’re itching for a turn ourselves.’

With the true siege underway, the Imperial forces fell into their prepared defensive strategies.

Every road had a barricade, where Steel Legion soldiers arrayed in ranks would unleash las-fire at the swarming foe. Snipers worked their deadly duties from rooftops. Battle tanks of every pattern and class ground their way down streets, shelling the first waves of enemy infantry pouring into the outlying sectors of the city.

Every road and building had its assigned piece to play in the battle. Every section had its orders to hold and inflict as much punishment upon the advancing foe as possible, before falling back to the next barricade.

Rearmed Titans stood as vigilant sentinels over entire city blocks, their weapons reaping life from the creatures that swarmed around their feet. The enemy gargants were still engaged in pulling down and breaking through the wall. In these first hours, Invigilata was unrivalled in its destruction.

The invaders spilled into Helsreach, and died in their thousands. Every metre they took was bought with foul alien blood.

Colonel Sarren watched the battle unfolding on the hololithic table. Stuttering images relayed the position of Imperial forces at the very edges of the city, inexorably withdrawing from the walls. Larger locator runes showed the position of Invigilata’s engines, or battalions of Steel Legion tanks. He had formulated this endless, relentless fighting withdrawal over the course of the past weeks, and by the Emperor, it was a fine thing to see it in action.

In this first phase, it was imperative that casualties be kept to a minimum. The grind of army against army would come in time. For now, losses must be kept light and the death toll suffered by the enemy must be kept high. Let the invaders claim the outlying city sectors. Let them purchase these abandoned, worthless zones with their lives. It was all part of the plan.

The wave would break soon.

Sarren watched the flickering icons depicting his forces across the immense map. It would come soon, that perfect moment in the shifting winds of battle when the enemy’s first push would falter and slow as the advance elements outpaced their slower support units. The initial hordes of infantry would crash against Steel Legion resistance in the outer city streets that they could never break without support from their tanks and wreck-Titans.

And at that moment, the wave would break like the tide against the shore. With the ferocious momentum of the first attack lost, the defence would begin in earnest.

Counterattacks would be mounted in some streets, especially those close to Invigilata’s engines or Legion armour units. In other zones, the Guard would stand fast, unable to take ground back but entrenched well enough to hold it.

All that mattered was keeping the enemy from reaching Hel’s Highway.

At the last meeting, when the commanders had gathered in their battle armour, Sarren had outlined once more the necessity to holding the highway.

‘It is the key to the siege,’ he’d said. ‘Once they reach Hel’s Highway, the city becomes twice as difficult to defend. They will have access to the entire hive. Think of it as an artery, ladies and gentlemen.
The
artery. Once it is severed, the body will bleed out. Once the enemy takes the highway, the city is lost.’

Grave expressions had answered this statement.

The colonel hunched over the table now, his squinting eyes taking the scene in, road by road, building by building, unit by unit.

He watched the war in silence, waiting for the wave to break.

Barasath had hit the ground hard.

He’d seen Helika fall from the sky – and heard her, too. That’d been difficult to deal with. The night they’d spent together sharing a bunk had been almost three years ago now, when they’d both pretended to be drunker than they were, but Korten had never forgotten it, nor had he wished it to be the only one. Hearing her die had chilled his blood, and he had to fight not to deactivate his vox as she screamed on the way down, her engine trailing fire.

Her Lightning, with its white-painted wings, had ploughed into the chest of an alien god-walker. The Titan had shuddered for a moment, then vented flames and wreckage from its spine as Helika’s bird – now nothing more than spinning debris – burst through its back.

The gargant kept walking as if unharmed, even with a hole blown clear through it.

That had been in the first run. Helika didn’t even get time to fire.

A wicked, weaving scrap of a battle through the alien fighters saw most of them spiralling groundward on dying engines. He’d taken cannon-fire along his hull, but a lucky shot saw him bleeding fuel instead of turned into a fireball in the sky. With the way clear and only a handful of his flyers down, Barasath’s second and third waves were inbound.

That’s when things had gotten really nasty.

The enemy god-walkers weren’t marching idly. Turrets on their shoulders and heads aimed up into the sky spat both laser fire and solid shells at the Imperial fighters. Dodging these alone would have been a chore. Dodging these when they were joined by more ork scrap-flyers and anti-air fire from the tanks below turned the situation into the nightmare that Colonel Sarren had promised.