The Hunt for Vulkan Read online

  A false hope, it now seemed. An illusion of perfect cruelty. The orks were invincible.

  She looked forwards. Laccolith was somewhere ahead in the dark. It had to be close, but there was no illumination in the city. She would have little notice of its proximity until she crossed the remnants of its wall.

  On all sides, the combined regiments raced through the shattered jungle. The retreat was a flight. The strategy was sound – the only course of action was to reach the urban battlefield ahead of the orks, seize it, and use the terrain to slow the enemy down. But the sense of the tactic did nothing to mitigate the humiliation. All she saw was defeat, the combined forces of the Emperor running for their lives from a triumphant, mocking foe.

  The orks pressed in on either flank. The Imperials were using the cleared swathe of the jungle. The greenskins had to smash their way through the trees and dense vegetation again in an effort to keep up. They were doing well, scorching the earth with flamers, splintering trunks with the siege shields of tanks and trucks. The jungle slowed them just enough. Imren thought the strike force would reach the city in time.

  Our only success will be to run from a fight, she thought.

  Imren’s Chimera had been at the front of the Astra Militarum ranks during the advance. She was towards the rear during the retreat. The greater mass of infantry and vehicles streamed ahead of her. In the distance, she caught glimpses of heavy, reptilian bodies flashing in headlamp beams.

  ‘Nissen,’ she called. ‘What’s happening at the front?’

  After a pause, the driver answered. ‘Saurian attacks, general. Packs of the beasts. They’re hitting the infantry.’

  Caldera was turning on them, Imren thought. It was mocking their defeat.

  Streams from the great river of the ork hordes stabbed into the ranks. The troops fought back, hitting the enemy with all the rage of savaged pride. The night around her was lit by the streaks of las and tracer fire. Three orks ran straight for the left side of the Chimera, grabbing the hull. The turret gone, Imren climbed up onto the rear portion of the roof, which had been spared the impact of the shell. She held on to a spike of twisted metal with her right hand and fired her plasma pistol into the upturned faces of the orks. She returned their snarls with her own, her hate as brutal as their joy. She burned the head off one. As it fell, it knocked one of its fellows off the hull. Both disappeared under the treads.

  The third slashed at Imren with a machete. She reared back, lost her footing and fell. Her pistol clattered into the troop compartment. She kept her grip on the spike. Its jagged edges cut through the leather of her gloves. Her boots struggled to find a hold on the side of the hull.

  The ork jumped on top of the Chimera. It crouched over her, grinning, its foetid breath making her eyes water. It raised the machete over its head.

  Imren pulled on the spike with all her strength. She bent her arm and hauled herself up, grabbed the greenskin’s harness with her left hand, and dropped back. The sudden weight overbalanced the ork and it plunged forwards. The spike rammed through its eye and cracked out the back of its skull.

  Imren climbed up the corpse. She pulled the head off the spike and pushed the body off the Chimera. She stood on the roof, her breath coming in growling heaves and looked out at the jungle, and the cauldron of struggle and flight. She saw the broken towers of Laccolith emerge from the darkness. She filled her lungs with the torrid air, with the fyceline-and-burnt-flesh stench of defeat, with all her despair and rage, and she roared.

  The war answered back.

  There was no line to hold in Laccolith. There was no keeping the orks out, or forcing them back. There was only the hope of bogging them down. To break up the concentration of the horde, and tangle them in the canyons of rockcrete.

  A play for time. Nothing more. It wasn’t good enough. There was no end except a delay of extermination.

  Koorland led the Last Wall down a narrow avenue. They had less than a minute’s lead on the orks. The artillery barrage of the city had already begun. A shell destroyed the upper portion of a hab on the right. The street filled with a cloud of powdered wall.

  Marching beside him, Eternity said, ‘We can ambush them here.’

  ‘We keep moving,’ said Koorland. ‘We wait for word from Hemisphere.’

  The word came when the Last Wall was deep into the dust cloud. And Hemisphere gave Koorland what he needed.

  ‘Chapter Master,’ the pilot voxed, ‘I managed another pass towards the target position. A portion of the ork army is still there.’

  ‘Did you see what they’re fighting?’

  ‘I couldn’t get near. Most of their anti-air is concentrated near that position.’

  They really don’t want us to approach, Koorland thought. He opened a channel to the other commanders. ‘Our original target is still viable. The orks are using their full strength because they are desperate to prevent us from reaching it.’

  ‘They have been successful,’ said Arouar.

  ‘They have also given us the opportunity to turn that success into failure. They are following us into Laccolith.’

  ‘How does that help?’ Imren asked.

  ‘We must hold their army here while a small force makes an aerial insertion up the slope.’

  Thane said, ‘The Thunderhawks will await you at the space port.’

  ‘We’ve defeated these orks before!’ Thane called to his company. ‘We won on Eidolica! Today, a delay is a victory.’

  The Fists Exemplar had taken the main avenue cutting through the centre of Laccolith. It was the fastest route to the space port, and the most inviting path for a large force. The ork super-heavies were most likely to take this route, so the avenue was the one most important to deny to the enemy.

  ‘We don’t know the greenskins have any idea what Koorland is attempting,’ Aquino had said as they set up the ambush.

  ‘We don’t,’ Thane had agreed. ‘Should we underestimate them yet again?’

  Now, Aloysian answered Thane’s shout. ‘Let the delay begin, Chapter Master.’

  The Techmarine had worked fast. Under his supervision, it had taken less than five minutes to plant the demolition charges. The greenskin horde thundered down the avenue, lured by the harassing attacks of the Predators. The Adeptus Astartes tanks backed up, still firing, until they crossed the kill-zone. On either side of the street, the foundations of hab-blocks exploded.

  Already weakened by the initial fighting in Laccolith, the towers collapsed, falling towards each other. They came down on the front ranks of the orks, crushing them beneath thousands of tonnes of rubble, filling the street with an avalanche of rockcrete and dust. The wall of wreckage was a dozen metres high. The assault squad landed on its peak and rained fire on the orks below. The rest of the company attacked from the structures on either side, trapping the greenskins in a lethal dead end. Gunships flew low on the avenue, raking the enemy with cannons and heavy bolters, missiles tearing into the greenskin tanks.

  The orks stopped. The infantry began to pull back.

  ‘Do they think we’re stupid?’ Aquino voxed.

  ‘Keep hitting them,’ said Thane. ‘But keep a distance.’ He would not lead his men into a counter-ambush.

  ‘Only the infantry is pulling back,’ Aloysian said. ‘The heavy guns are moving forwards.’

  At the end of the avenue, a walker and three battle­fortresses advanced. Before the infantry was fully clear, they opened up. The barrage was monstrous. The Fists Exemplar pulled back as the street erupted, explosions hammering the avenue from a point fifty metres forward of the company, all the way to the barrier. Rockets slammed into the facades of the habs, bringing more buildings down. The collapses forced the Fists Exemplar into the open. Taking to the shelter of the craters, they maintained their fire on the enemy, but Thane could no longer see what effect, if any, they were having. He was shooting into explosi
ons.

  ‘Pull back to the other side of the barrier,’ Thane ordered. ‘We’ll welcome them again there. Gunships, covering fire. Break this barrage.’

  Aloysian slid into the same crater as Thane. ‘They’re concentrating their bombardment on the road.’

  ‘It’s working for them. They’re making it hard for us to move. Let them amuse themselves. At least they’re not advancing.’

  ‘If this is victory, it has a displeasing shape.’

  ‘Our victory conditions are the success of the mission.’ The truth of the words made them no less bitter. Aloysian was right. At this moment, the idea of locating the primarch felt abstract. Compounded humiliation was a reality.

  Aloysian’s attention had shifted back to the orks’ tactics. ‘Why the road? The enemy has done nothing without reason.’

  Thane looked behind. His battle-brothers were climbing over the rubble. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Aloysian. ‘If they have a reason, it will do them no good in our absence.’

  He made for the barrier, running through the barrage. On his left, Brasidas took a direct hit. The Space Marine vanished. The mist of his blood splashed against Thane’s helm. The ground shook with impacts. Fissures spread from crater to crater.

  Too late Thane realised what the orks were doing.

  With a massive tremor and a howl of shattering rock, the avenue gave way. It fell into the honeycomb of lava tunnels below. Weakened by the pounding of the bombardment, the tunnels collapsed too. The chain reaction spread. A gorge opened up, running through the centre of Laccolith. It swallowed the barrier. The ground vanished beneath Thane’s feet. The Fists Exemplar plunged into the depths.

  Thane dropped twenty metres. He bounced off jagged ledges and landed on an uneven field of broken stone. The force of his fall punched through rock. He stood, servo-motors in his armour catching and whining. He looked up at the sheer walls surrounding the company. There was no sure route out.

  He heard the bombardment stop. The rumble of engines replaced the roar of guns. The orks were closing in on the trap they had created.

  The company drew together. Thane made for the tanks, but the fall had disabled the heavy armour. The tanks were immobilised. Even if they could manoeuvre, none could be extracted from the gorge except by airlift.

  However, not all of the vehicles had been wholly destroyed in the fall. Some, at least, still had working guns.

  ‘Tactical squads,’ Thane voxed, ‘get to street level. Do what you can. Gunships, concentrate on the super-heavies. Hold them off. Destroy them if possible.’ He turned to his brothers. ‘We can fight or we can climb.’

  ‘Is that a choice?’ Kahagnis asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Unless they climbed, annihilation was inevitable.

  He climbed on top of the nearest functioning turret. It belonged to the Predator Scion of Roma. ‘Let enough of us remain with the tanks to hold the enemy at bay. The rest of you, make for the far wall. Reach the top, then cover our retreat.’

  His brothers rapped their fists against their chest-plates in salute and left. There were five guns that could be used. Venerable Brother Otho stayed as well: the Dreadnought could not climb, so he became the mobile artillery. The Whirlwind Citadel’s End could still move, and Aloysian took its controls with Scuris operating its rocket launcher. The bulk of the company retreated. The rear of the canyon was five hundred metres to the south. The collapse was deep, narrow and less than a kilometre long in total.

  ‘We are in a barrel,’ Aloysian voxed.

  ‘I know it,’ Thane replied.

  The orks moved their super-heavies into position. The walker arrived first. It towered over the lip of the canyon. Its squat, conical shape having none of the majesty of the Titans. It was power embodied in its most brutal, savage form. In the excess of its massive cannon and the clusters of turrets, Thane nonetheless saw a mocking kind of genius. The behemoth was the ork spirit of war: crushing feet, crushing limbs, and crushing weaponry. Thane looked up from the perspective of the Imperium trampled beneath the boots of the greenskins.

  Hatred fuelled his first shot.

  The Predator’s shell exploded against the walker’s armour. The hit would have reduced battlements to powder. A crater smoked in the ork machine’s carapace. The beast’s cannon arm swung downwards as if the blow had meant nothing.

  The gun barrel was as long as a Rhino. The shot was like a meteor impact. The shell struck the ground just ahead of Scion of Roma and the explosion lifted the front of the tank up, flipping the Predator onto its roof. Thane leapt from the turret in mid-arc. He landed and scrambled out of the way of its fall.

  Thunderhawks and Xiphon interceptors strafed the ork machines. Secondary turrets on the walker retaliated, while the primary arms remained pointed down. The massive totemic head, its eyes lit crimson, appeared to gaze into the canyon, unperturbed by the aerial assaults. Imperial autocannon fire took out smaller tanks. The battlefortresses and the walker maintained their positions and the steady bombardment. Dense clusters of anti-aircraft fire reached for the gunships.

  Scuris unleashed the Whirlwind’s battery of rockets, enveloping the head of the walker in flame. Its next shot went wild. As pulverised rock rained down on him, Thane pounded over the floor of the canyon. He jumped on top of Citadel’s End as Aloysian drove forwards. The Techmarine headed for the cliff nearest the orks, below the range of the walker’s cannon.

  Battlefortresses and the smaller battlewagons arrived at the lip of the gorge. Infantry set up mortar positions and a deluge of fire fell upon the Fists Exemplar. The canyon became the boiling crater of a volcano. Identification runes flashed red and then black in Thane’s retinal lenses. More brothers dying. A double explosion to the rear was another tank, blown up by a direct hit from the walker’s huge cannon.

  ‘Brother Aquino, what is your progress?’ Thane voxed.

  At the head of the battle-brothers climbing the south wall, Aquino said, ‘Halfway there, Chapter Master. They haven’t–’

  Thunder and static howl cut him off. Electrical arcs fired across the gorge, stabbing at the vertical face. Thane heard the rumble of further rock falls. Another rune blinked and died.

  Citadel’s End fired again, but this time Aloysian targeted the top of the cliff instead of the ork machines. He created his own avalanche. The walker rocked forwards as the ground fell away, but its operators moved one of its huge legs in a great dragging step backwards and it staggered away from the edge. One of the battlefortresses wasn’t fast enough. It pitched down, engine screaming, treads spinning uselessly as it fell. It turned on its side, then into a ponderous roll, hauled by its own tremendous mass. It fired again in mid-flight. The shell hit the cliff wall just above Citadel’s End. Aloysian reversed, jouncing the Whirlwind off boulders and a cloud of dust billowed over the tank.

  Thane left the roof. He ran through the dust to the darker mass of the battlefortress. It had landed upright. The treads were destroyed and its wheels threw up sparks as they tried to find traction on rubble, but its three layered turrets rotated southwards. They roared. Thane stared straight ahead. He refused to acknowledge further losses. He would not permit them.

  Behind him, Citadel’s End fired again, eating at the ground of the ork positions, forcing them back. An energy gun exploded, filling the night with an emerald glare.

  Thane pulled a melta bomb from his belt and ducked beneath the lowest cannon, scrambled over the spiked cylinder the fortress used as a siege shield, and climbed its hull. Firing his bolt pistol through a viewing slit, he was rewarded with a whining snarl of pain. He slapped the melta bomb to the top cannon, the largest, where the barrel met the turret. Then he jumped to the ground in front of the tank, daring the greenskins to take their anger out on a single enemy.

  They took the bait.

  The melta bomb flared then ate through the turret and barrel. The gun fired, and the battlef
ortress self-immolated. Molten heat reached for Thane. Burning chunks of hull spun past him.

  This was a much better shape of victory.

  He turned back towards Citadel’s End. Even as he did, the orks settled into new positions and hit the canyon with another massive salvo.

  ‘Aquino!’ he shouted.

  No answer.

  He called again. Aquino answered, his voice tight with suppressed pain. ‘They’re blasting the cliff away from us, Chapter Master. Progress is slow. We are taking losses.’

  ‘I have faith in you, brother.’

  But he didn’t in the situation. The orks were bringing forwards even more mortars, even more large guns. The foot soldiers lined the circumference of the gorge, shouting with laughter. Thane only saw them in glimpses between the eruptions and the flames. They were celebrants exulting over the pyre of their foe.

  Thane would fight. Aloysian would fight. Aquino and the others would fight.

  And they would die.

  The vox scratched for his attention – a transmission on the wider command network. He caught up to the Whirlwind once more and opened the channel.

  ‘Tynora 7-Galliax,’ a mechanical voice said. ‘We are approaching your position, Chapter Master Thane.’

  ‘Your news is welcome, princeps.’

  ‘Our manoeuvre is thanks to yours, Chapter Master. The principal strength of the Veridi giganticus was drawn to you. The pressure on us was relieved. We come to return the favour.’

  She spoke, and then new light tore the night. Blinding phosphor blasts illuminated the ork positions and burned the infantry. The perfect razor yellow of eradicator beams cut in from east and west, burning through the flanks of the enemy armour. Two battlewagons disintegrated. Their blasts took out the energy cannons nearby. The destruction spread.

  ‘All guns target the cliff top,’ Thane ordered.

  Citadel’s End, Brother Otho and the immobilised Predators fired within seconds of each other. Concussive hammer blows tore a huge chunk of the ground away. The new avalanche stole the road surface from beneath the orks. The battlefortresses ceased fire as they reversed course, backing over the retreating infantry.