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  ‘We have a few minutes,’ Kusala told Temur. ‘No more.’

  ‘We are not far, brother-sergeant. Prime them for our greetings.’

  The impacts on the other side became louder. Kusala guessed that grenades were being used. It wouldn’t be long before the orks thought to use the Battlewagons’ cannons. He stood to one side of the entrance, Ariq and Tegusal on the other, bolters ready. ‘The second a hole appears,’ he said, ‘open fire. Discourage their approach.’

  He looked back at the dust cloud. It was growing larger. The khan was near.

  The orks used their big guns sooner than he had thought. The first shot did not destroy the door, but shook it hard. Debris rolled down from the earthen rise in which the door was set. The next shell punched a hole the size of a man. Tegusal tossed a frag through it. The howls that greeted the explosion were gratifying. Then the cannon fired again. It kept firing, puncturing a new hole in the metres-thick metal each time. The door remained intact, and held down by its own weight, longer than Kusala could have hoped.

  The shelling stopped. An engine revved. Something huge rumbled towards the door. The impact smashed the weakened metal apart, and the Battlewagon charged out into the daylight, the battering ram face wide with victory.

  Kusala charged back inside the tunnel, Ariq and Tegusal at his heels. There was no fighting the Battlewagon on foot. If death was inevitable, it would come at a cost to the orks.

  The greenskins were coming up the slope, a mob in fury. Behind them came another tank. It crushed the slower orks under its wheels. As yet it was not firing, though the passengers on its roof were. Bullets careened off the stone on all sides of Kusala. Rounds smacked into his armour. They didn’t slow him down. He roared back at the orks, and so did his Scouts. The three of them made their run at the orks as if there were hundreds of their battle-brothers at their sides.

  Kusala threw his final two frag grenades ahead of him. They were joined a beat later by four more as Ariq and Tegusal followed suit. A minor artillery barrage hit the orks. The tunnel was almost wide enough for two Battlewagons to drive abreast, but it was still a confined space for such a concentrated burst of explosives. A score of orks died immediately. Their bodies were reduced to jagged bone shrapnel, impaling still more. The horde’s advance stumbled as the orks pushing from behind tripped over the bodies of the dead.

  Barely a second behind the blasts, Kusala slammed into the orks. Tulwar in one hand, bolt pistol in the other, he slashed throats and burst skulls. The Scouts followed his model. They showed the orks that speed was not dependent on engines and wheels. Kusala’s tulwar was more a blur than a blade. His prey did not see it until after he had severed their windpipes. When a brute tried to hit him with an axe or machete, the tulwar was already in defensive position, arresting the blow while the pistol came up and delivered a mass-reactive shell to the ork’s snarling visage.

  Kusala killed in spirals. He made it hard for the orks to anticipate his movements. He was never still. As one ork fell, he was already striking the next. The two Scouts showed they had absorbed every lesson of their training. They had nothing like the protection of his power armour. It was even more vital that they move quickly, and they did. Reduced to half strength, outnumbered by orders of magnitude, the squad cut the orks down. The Scouts were scythes from the steppes of Chogoris, reaping a harvest of death.

  The orks were strong. They were not stunned long, and they were not passive before an enemy. If ever there was a species bred for the single purpose of war, Kusala knew, it was the orks. For each one he killed, three more were there, their hunger for battle undiminished. And they were strong. He was able to put them down quickly, but even these, the common infantry of the orks, were more resilient than they should be.

  The Battlewagon continued to move forwards. It would have the Scouts under its wheels in the next few seconds. Behind it was yet another tank.

  Tegusal went down. His legs were chopped from behind by a chainblade. He disappeared beneath the mob of stomping greenskins. The horde pressed tighter yet. Kusala’s blade caught in the ribcage of an ork. He stopped moving for a moment, and he was almost borne to the ground. Whirring blades cut at the ceramite of his armour. He fired his pistol into the ork’s body, knocking it back and freeing his blade. He swung wide, cutting throats and limbs. He was moving again, but he was more constricted.

  The sound from the mouth of the tunnel changed. Kusala heard the first Battlewagon reversing back into the tunnel. There was another engine noise, too, higher-pitched and cleaner.

  Bikes.

  The minghan was here.

  The manoeuvre was madness. The space was too restricted. His speed was too great.

  It was perfect.

  The Battlewagon was in the tunnel entrance. On either side of it, there was enough room for the White Scars bikes and Land Speeders, with no margin for error. Strafing the tank would be like shooting a bullet into the barrel of another gun. Temur didn’t slow. Bolters blazing, shells stripping the surprised orks from the roof of the Battlewagon, he plunged past the vehicle and into the tunnel. The walls echoed and amplified the snarl of the bike’s engine. He heard the rest of the brotherhood following his example, shrieking past the tank to become a wall of speeding death descending on the orks.

  He heard the concussion of the Battlewagon’s cannon. It had fired inside the tunnel. Temur could not look to see the result, but he knew that, in these initial moments of the incursion, there was no way for the orks to miss. He had lost at least one more brother, and perhaps more.

  The destruction he would wreak on the orks became that much more savage.

  From the moment he entered the tunnel, only a handful of seconds separated him from the horde below. He saw Kusala and Ariq struggling in their midst. He saw the other tank closing in. He heard, beyond the curve, the approach of yet another. He processed all of this, and he reacted. This was war in his element: the rush of events too quick for a mortal to process, the need for reaction at the same instant as perception, the exhilaration of murderous velocity.

  A tiny correction to the right brought the bike close to the wall. He could have touched it with his hand. Kusala’s squad was struggling near the centre of the tunnel. Temur aimed his strike along the sides. The twin-linked bolters tore into the orks. A score died without knowing what had happened. Still without slowing, Temur ploughed into the mass of greenskins. He smashed bodies to pulp, ground bones to powder. He rode through the horde, and behind him came his brothers, and now it was the orks who were trapped in the tunnel, because death, sudden and unstoppable, was upon them. There was no space for the orks, and there was no time.

  But there were still tanks.

  Temur flashed past the Battlewagon before its crew could react. He kept going down the tunnel, spotted the next tank, and then another. He kept firing at the vehicles, picking off passengers but doing little other damage. Shells ricocheted off the monstrous forward shields. He had the crews’ attention.

  He whipped down the tunnel until he was sure there were no more tanks. Then he turned and raced back up the slope along the other wall. Now he could see the minghan, the long line of bikes and speeders following in his wake, just as fast, just as deadly. They formed a conveyor belt of death. The assault on the orks was unending.

  But the Battlewagons rolled on. Though they had lost their passengers and some of their crew, their armour was holding up against the bolter fire. And they were firing their cannons. As he shot past the tanks once more, the shells smashed into the walls, missing him by little. The explosions in the tunnel were devastating. Speed was the White Scars one defence. It wasn’t enough. When the shells hit, it was by luck, not by skill, but in this space, with these numbers, the orks in the Battlewagons had the luck they needed.

  The infantry was in tatters now. Kusala and Ariq had jumped onto the nearest tank, and were fighting their way in. Good. The brotherhood wa
s close to causing critical disorder in the ork force. The Battlewagons were moving closer together. Any discipline the greenskins had was tenuous. Temur would see it severed.

  ‘Brother-sergeant,’ he voxed, ‘you know what has to happen.’

  ‘Depend upon it, Temur Khan.’

  Constant fire. He was draining his ammunition stores. He and his brothers were also hitting the orks with a perpetual, disorienting hammering. Even if the shells were still being stopped by the armour, the omnidirectional clamour would have the orks lashing out on instinct. Their accident would come.

  At the upward end of the slope, almost at the exit again, Temur saw the accident happen. It was the Battlewagon under attack by Kusala that made the error; the sergeant had seen to it. It struck the first tank with its cannon fire. Knowing only that they were being hit by a barrage, and now by a vehicle boarded by their enemy, the orks in the uphill Battlewagon responded in kind, turning their full armament on their brothers. The two tanks went to war.

  The Battlewagons rushed together, driven now by the crews’ hunger to tear out each other’s throats. The next tank arrived. Its crew joined the fray, shelling the nearest target. Kusala’s Battlewagon was now in the middle of crossfire. It wouldn’t last long. Its crew fought back, though, and were still fighting when the fourth Battlewagon arrived. It came around the last bend, and the orks aboard showed no hesitation before launching into an attack, training their gun on the third tank.

  Temur saw the masterpiece of confusion take form. ‘Keep them surrounded,’ he ordered. ‘Concentrate fire on the rear armour.’ It was thinner. It would give out.

  The White Scars circled the Battlewagons. They were a noose of speed. The larger predators were locked in combat with one another, and the White Scars would ensure that there were no victors. The bolter shells hit the rear armour. The cannon fire hit the front. First one, then two of the ork crews realised their mistake and tried to disengage, but it was too late.

  The Battlewagons died close together. The explosive immolation of the first wreaked havoc with the others, and still the battles raged. The tunnel became a maelstrom of fire and sound. If not for the White Scars discipline, and their skill in adapting to the lightning changes in the currents of battle, they would have been sucked into the vortex. The explosions reached a climax. For a few moments, the Battlewagons merged into a single being of iron and flame. Then, after being dwarfed by the blasts of fuel tanks and ammunition caches, the guns fell silent. The fires dimmed. What remained in the centre of the tunnel was a twisted mass of blackened metal.

  Temur brought his bike to a halt near the wreckage. The battle had been a costly one. The ruins of seven more bikes and Land Speeders were scattered through the tunnel. There was little left of the warriors who had ridden them.

  He found Kusala and the surviving Scout standing before the iron pyre. He pointed to a deep wound that ran from Ariq’s right temple to the left side of his throat. ‘You have fought hard to earn that scar,’ he said.

  Ariq bowed his head. ‘Only my duty, Temur Khan,’ he answered.

  To Kusala, Temur said, ‘Where do we stand?’

  ‘We have accounted for all the completed heavy armour. There are still some partial ones in what appears to be the primary assembly bay.’ He pointed back down the tunnel.

  ‘Then the momentum is ours,’ said Temur. ‘We will erase what remains of the ork operations here and return to the bastion.’ He grunted. ‘If it is still standing. This war is far from over.’ He paused before asking his next question. He already knew the answer would not please him. ‘And Stormseer Ghazan?’

  ‘He remained with the eldar.’

  ‘The eldar?’ He listened with rising anger while Kusala filled him in. ‘What was the purpose of the imprisoning device?’

  ‘It appeared to power the teleporter. There was something like an explosion when we lost the use of the vox. The nature of the explosion…’ Kusala shook his head, as if still trying to clear it. ‘The explosion was not entirely of the materium.’

  ‘You think the Stormseer destroyed the teleporter?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘No word since?’

  ‘None.’

  Temur cursed. Ghazan’s silence could be chosen, or it could mean he was dead. The implications of the first possibility were, after what Kusala had told him, worse than the second. He did not doubt Ghazan’s loyalty. He did not doubt the reality of the zadyin arga’s visions. What concerned him was Ghazan’s judgement and sanity. ‘This changes nothing. We proceed as I have said.’

  As he marched back to his bike, he called Ghazan on the vox. He had the sensation of sending his demands into a darkness of ruin, a darkness that was not empty.

  Ghazan stood in the centre of the cavern. He was surrounded by the death of machines, the death of bodies, and the death of psychic energy. The emptiness of the space was gigantic. It had been a realm of excess. The life of machines, bodies and warp sorcery in violent collision had created a psychic atmosphere as dense as the core of a gas giant. Its sudden end created a profound tomb.

  The great death of the eldar psykers was the barrier to his pursuit. The loss reverberated, a powerful null with the lingering scars of agony. But destiny did not end in this place. It still waited beyond the tomb. The time of its unfolding was closer than ever. If only he could reach through the grave-void, penetrate this bubble of psychic annihilation.

  He knew that at least part of the barrier was self-created, a wall that had protected him from the deathstorm that the ork witch had unleashed.

  He thought of Chogoris. He grounded himself in the strength of the home world. It shaped its warriors. It moulded them with lightning and wind, with the plains of battle and survival, with the immensity of its sky. It was the scourge of the weak, and the inspiration of the strong. As he felt his ghost walk with the spirits of Chogoris, he opened himself up to the warp.

  He found a thin wound of certainty, a hairline crack in the nothing. He concentrated on it. It changed from crack, to thread, to rope. It wrapped around his consciousness. It pulled. There was a direction out of the dark and into further destruction. He grasped it as it held him. The possible became the inevitable once more.

  He returned to a consciousness of the materium. The pull made him look to his right. He saw the shadow of a cave entrance behind where the control mechanisms had been. That was where the ork witch had gone.

  Ghazan made his way over and entered the tunnel. It was a small one, barely high enough for him to walk without lowering his head. It narrowed at the floor. It felt like a seam in the bedrock. As he followed it, some sections became so constricted he had to pass sideways, the front and back of his armour scraping against the walls. This was not a passageway that would be of any use for construction. It was, he thought, a private route. If the ork psyker had this route for its own use, then either end must be a destination of some importance.

  His vox-bead came to life. The sound of another voice was startling after the silence of the tomb. It was Temur. ‘Stormseer, are you there?’

  Ghazan did not respond at first. He knew how the exchange would unfold. He had nothing concrete to tell the khan about what he was doing. The full truth of his vision was still obscure to him. But he could not ignore Temur. ‘I am here,’ he said at last.

  ‘Where is “here”?’

  ‘Beyond the teleporter. I am in pursuit of the ork witch.’

  ‘You think it still lives?’

  ‘I am sure of it.’

  There was a thoughtful pause. Temur was, at least, thinking about what that meant. Then he said, ‘That greenskin is no longer our concern. We are concluding operations here. The manufactorum is destroyed, but we still have several heavy vehicles and the bulk of the ork infantry attacking the bastion. Our attention must be there.’

  ‘So it would seem. May the winds propel you to the battlefiel
d.’

  ‘We go with you.’

  Ghazan sighed. He began to detach himself from conversation. It was pointless. ‘My purpose here has not yet been fulfilled.’

  ‘You have done extraordinary work. Without your intervention, we would still be searching for this plant, and the orks would still be sending a stream of tanks our way. You have done your duty here. Now it calls you elsewhere.’

  ‘Will you explain my visions to me?’

  ‘Only my orders.’

  ‘I regret, Temur Khan, that fate has decreed a different course for me.’

  ‘Be reasonable! What threat is a single ork?’

  ‘This ork? A considerable one. And we do not know that it is alone.’

  ‘Zadyin arga,’ Temur began again.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Ghazan interrupted. ‘But this struggle is preordained.’ He severed communications. There is no choice.

  The tunnel’s route was jagged. It took Ghazan even further beneath the surface of the moon. Before long, the silence gave way to the sounds of activity. As he drew closer to the source, Ghazan distinguished one ork voice snarling above the others. Commands were being issued. The witch, he guessed. He could also hear the sounds of industry.

  Closer yet, though still in darkness. He felt the level of psychic energy building once more. It had to be more than just the witch’s power. The strength was approaching what he had experienced in the presence of the cages.

  Light appeared, the noise grew, and then the journey ended. Ghazan stopped in the shadows, a few paces back from a ledge a couple of metres above the ground. He looked into the cave before him, and saw just how wrong Temur was. The threat from the manufactorum had not ended.

  Though they had lost the means to produce more tanks, the orks were on the cusp of victory.

  Chapter Eight