The Hunt for Vulkan Read online

  Vulkan nodded. ‘I would have known, otherwise. They must have used more troops here than in the invasion itself.’

  ‘Did they know you were here?’

  The idea the orks knew more about the location of the primarch than did the Adeptus Astartes was appalling. He forced himself to ask it. He must not consider anything beyond the reach of this enemy.

  ‘Not before they arrived, I think. I was aware of something happening in this region first. Then the attack on Laccolith began.’

  ‘The invasion was a distraction?’

  ‘An effort to keep me from here, at the least. A successful one until now.’

  Koorland felt the scale of the conflict and the tactics on Caldera sink in further. Millions of orks deployed to counter a single warrior. And the orks had known to do this.

  ‘Still lower,’ he voxed Preco. ‘Get their attention.’

  The ork facility occupied the full width of the rift. It ran for dozens of kilometres north and south. Conduits, each ten metres thick, plunged into the bedrock and ran into power junctions the size of manufactoria. Chimneys rose half the height of the canyon. They spewed smoke and ash. Their mouths glowed red. Koorland stared. He pointed. ‘Are those chimneys doing what I think they are?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vulkan replied. ‘They are dagger wounds in the flesh of Caldera.’ His anger smouldered like the magmatic light from the chimneys. ‘The orks have pierced the crust. They are using the energy of this world to power its own destruction.’

  Even more immense conduits ran from the junctions towards a towering central point in the distance. The grand nexus was twice again as big as the other structures. To Koorland’s eyes, it was simultaneously manufactorium and a single machine. Its conical form suggested the ork versions of the Titans, but many orders of magnitude larger. It had extrusions resembling arms, but instead of cannons, the articulations released energy one moment, and in the next fed the searing light back inside its metal walls.

  Pulsing arteries of incandescent blue and green and white ran from the nexus and up the rift walls. Koorland followed them with his eyes. Lining the top of the canyon, at the end of each line of power, were flaring, arcing points. After some flashes, he could just make out the shapes of huge energy coils.

  Everywhere he looked, he saw the generation and deployment of inconceivable force. The engineering violated any principles he knew, yet it worked.

  ‘What is this?’ he finally asked.

  ‘The means of murder,’ Vulkan said. ‘Power is created and controlled here. It flows north.’

  Koorland understood. ‘This is part of their gravity weapon.’

  It was how the orks were taking Caldera apart and sending its pieces up to become part of the attack moon. The technology required a planetside base as well as the device used on the orbital base. The orks were not simply lashing the planet with their gravitic whips. They were controlling the ascent of the masses.

  ‘You will doubtless see more evidence of the crime further to the north,’ said Vulkan.

  The passage of the two Thunderhawks was rapid, and it took several seconds for the orks to react. Turrets sprang to life across the installation. Vehicles and troops mobilised in the spaces between structures and conduits. Preco dared the fire and took the Honour’s Spear even lower, flying between chimneys. The anti-air fire was cautious by ork standards. They were taking care not to destroy their great machine.

  It was moments later, with the nexus looming closer, that Koorland learned just how fast the orks were reacting to the incursion. Thane contacted him on the command network. ‘The orks are pulling out of Laccolith,’ he said. ‘They’re heading back north at full speed.’

  ‘Good,’ said Koorland. ‘They’re afraid of what we’ll do.’ The huge moves of the game were occurring once more. An entire army mobilising to deal with two aircraft. At last, the Imperium had the initiative in the war, forcing the orks into a reactive mode.

  ‘We are in pursuit,’ said Thane.

  ‘Good.’ Koorland relayed the news to Vulkan, then contacted Arouar. He described the installation.

  ‘Impressive,’ the tech-priest dominus said. ‘The possibilities it offers are considerable.’

  ‘Not for data collection,’ said Koorland. ‘The only focus here is the pursuit of victory. I hope there is no chance for misunderstanding.’

  There was a slight pause. Then Arouar said, ‘None.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Any contribution the Mechanicus can make would be welcome.’

  There was no pause this time. Koorland thought Arouar was speaking more quickly, the pace of his inflectionless words increasing with excitement. ‘We are a long way from having mastered the gravitic technology of the Veridi giganticus. Nonetheless, we know enough for me to hypothesise an intervention. It is the primarch’s purpose to break the Veridi control over the weapon?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then I urge you, Lord Commander, not to destroy the installation itself. We will attempt a field experiment.’

  ‘Thank you, dominus. I know you will reward our trust.’

  ‘We will, Lord Commander.’

  The nexus loomed closer, a hulk of dark metal, furnace blasts of flame, and explosive energy. The Thunderhawks came in even lower, below the range of movement of many of the turrets. They angled away from the front of the nexus, heading for the eastern edge of the installation, then turned north again just before the cliffs.

  Vulkan looked at Koorland. ‘Fight well, son of Dorn,’ he said. ‘Your actions honour his name, and I will tell him so.’ He stepped out of the door before Koorland could ask him what he meant.

  The primarch dropped into the night, a dark meteor of noble wrath.

  Vulkan hit the earth fifty metres from the nearest conduit. He was in the darkness outside the installation, and the searchlights were all trained on the departing gunships. The rumble of industry and the bedrock groans it elicited from Caldera had covered the sound of his impact. He crouched in the small crater of his landing, motionless as a boulder, and waited. The conduits rose from the rock for twenty metres, then ran straight into the nexus. Its near wall was half a kilometre away. He caught glimpses of the ork forces mobilising for its defence as they passed underneath the conduits. Their numbers were difficult to gauge from his position, but he knew they would be high, and the physical defences of the nexus would be considerable. The orks had devastated a continent to keep him from the rift. The most sensitive point in the canyon would be protected like nothing else in the system except the attack moon itself.

  The Thunderhawks passed from his sight. The wait stretched. Vulkan was patient. He could wait centuries for the fated moment of action. On this night, though, he felt the impatience of anger. The moment of Caldera’s salvation approached, but still the planet bled, still the monstrous act of engineering continued.

  But it ends tonight. Let that suffice for now. And it did. He must wait for the necessary turn of the war, and so he would. He found his way back to calm through his anger. He had much practice in this. Necessary calm was forged and tempered as surely as any weapon, and hardened into cold, unbreakable steel.

  Over the centuries, Vulkan had not been unaware of the currents at work in the Imperium. The divisions, the corruption, the Emperor’s dream turning black with ash. Vulkan’s disgust vied for pre-eminence with his grief. When Terra called for help, it was hard for him to hear his Father’s voice. He heard the cries of politicians, of petty connivers and their toxic power games.

  Father, don’t you see what is happening? Why do you do nothing?

  But the orks had returned to Ullanor. That was grave beyond the comprehension of any Terran mortal.

  Then there was Koorland. In his voice, Vulkan heard something better than the squalling of the High Lords. He did hear the echo of his Father, in Koorland’s absolute allegiance to preserving the work of the E
mperor. The last Imperial Fist had come to Caldera at the head of a force that united Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, the Mechanicus and the Imperial Guard. There was unity of purpose, and commitment to that purpose. And Koorland was capable of seeing that this purpose extended beyond immediate, rigidly defined goals. Vulkan declared that Caldera must be saved, and Koorland agreed. He agreed because he understood why this was necessary. Vulkan saw something precious in the new Chapter Master. Emerging from destruction, he had forged something strong. Koorland embodied a form of hope.

  So Vulkan waited, and he prepared for the final battle for Caldera, and the greater war that waited beyond.

  The Thunderhawks dropped the squads of the Last Wall at the northern end of the installation, flew on, then turned back to provide air support, joined by Hemisphere in the Deathblow. Koorland began the assault on the installation’s defences.

  The wall was high and many metres thick. It was a patchwork of iron, plates and girders slapped together with speed and so much excess that the barrier would have stopped almost any artillery barrage. The Ascia Rift narrowed again here, and the ground rose steeply, choking off the canyon for several kilometres before opening up again. A large force would be caught in a bottleneck, movements hampered, working against itself.

  Against the squads of the Adeptus Astartes, the wall was worse than meaningless. It was a liability. They punched their way through its base with melta charges. The Thunderhawks and the Storm Eagle hammered its ramparts with assault cannons, tearing apart the first of the ork defenders. The gunships strafed the wall repeatedly, holding the greenskins’ attention and preventing them from dealing with the threat below. In less than a minute, the Space Marines were inside the wall, out of reach of the enemy. The cannon fusillades continued, drawing the horde to that point, to the visible threat, away from the control nexus.

  ‘Minimise the damage to the wall,’ Koorland ordered the gunship pilots. ‘We want to keep it intact.’ It had been built to keep attackers outside the facility. Now it would keep the orks inside.

  Two more melta bombs, and the tunnel was complete. Its sides glowed, still half-molten, as the squads reached the downslope exit they had created. Before them, the orks were already massed in the thousands. The canyon was wider on this side of the wall, though still narrow enough to reduce the orks’ advantage of numbers. The horde was deep and furious, a river of brute energy flowing between the towering conduits and sparking generators. The orks met the Last Wall with a hail of shells and fire.

  Koorland and the front row crouched to give their brothers behind a clear field of fire. His squad sent focused streams of bolter fire into the foe. At the same time, Aloysian used his plasma cutter servo-arm to begin a second tunnel that began at right angles to the first, then turned south again to create a second exit. Both squads hit the orks, turning foot soldiers to bloody pulp as fast as they ran up. The orks had small targets. The Space Marines had a tide of xenos flesh before them. Every shot hit.

  ‘No heavy vehicles,’ Eternity grunted. He exchanged magazines so smoothly there was no interruption to the rhythm of his fire.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Koorland. ‘Hard to bring them forwards on this slope. They’ll be waiting for us further down.’

  ‘And for once they’ll be trying to move around structures they don’t want to damage.’

  ‘Exactly. Let them wait, or come to us.’

  The orks closed in on the wall. The mass of infantry reached its base. The Space Marines pulled back a few steps inside the tunnels. The orks had no line of fire without exposing themselves. They took the risk. The greenskins charged the breaches again and again, dying every time. The war became a portrait of grinding immobility. Blood flowed over the rocky ground, and bodies burned. Deeper into the facility, engines roared with frustration. Guns beyond Koorland’s sight launched shells to no effect. They could not come close enough for targets, and the orks still believed they must preserve their wall.

  Keep believing that, Koorland thought. Until we’re ready to destroy you with truth.

  Vulkan waited. He was an unmoving shadow in the night, a stone among many. He read the flow of the green tide. He heard combat break out to the north. The howls of the orks moved further and further in that direction.

  Vulkan waited. He was part of the landscape. There was no threat to the orks here. They had no reason to linger. The danger came from Koorland. The greenskins must protect their great machine from the enemy knocking on the wall.

  Vulkan waited. Minutes passed. They turned into an hour. Combat raged, and he took no part, the better to prepare a terrible blow.

  Vulkan waited. He thought about the main force of orks in Laccolith. He visualised the brutalised landscape between the city and the Ascia Rift. He pictured the news of the attack on the installation reaching the army. The response. The desperate drive back. He calculated the time of arrival. He listened to Koorland’s updates on the battle. Eventually, the orks would decide to bring down their wall. He found the balance between the charge coming from the south and the siege in the north. He located the fulcrum of the war. The point upon which a hammer would shatter a blade with a single blow.

  Vulkan struck.

  Nine

  Caldera – The Ascia Rift

  Vulkan rushed the gate of the command nexus. He held the great hammer Doomtremor high over his head. Alarms whooped with savage, rusted voices as he approached. The immense cone shimmered, its shape flickering and distorting as its protective force field pulsed and surged. Within the field, before the gate, a line of orks in heavy armour raised chainaxes. They braced for combat, but their jaws were open in mocking laughter. They did not expect a lone human to pass through the field.

  Vulkan hit the invisible barrier with all his velocity, all his mass, and all the strength of his hammer. The orks learned that energy itself could scream. The force field flashed white. The shriek of a hundred tortured generators pierced the air. Vulkan raised Doomtremor with both hands then brought it down again before the glare had faded. The shield howled red, then violet. The orks at the gate covered their eyes, dazzled by the brutality of light.

  Vulkan was relentless. With each blow of the hammer, the earth shook. Thunder cracked reality into hard, broken edges. The shockwave radiated across the installation. Conduits crumpled at its passage. They burst, spewing geysers of fire.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. The beat of judgement, of the end of feral empires. Vulkan swung, channelling all his fury. He swung, and he was the anger of Caldera. His cloak billowed in the hurricane of his creation. He swung, and half a kilo­metre away, the tremors unleashed by his wrath felled a chimney. The tower swayed. At its base, stone crumbled and iron snapped. The chimney came down, dropping vertically and then forward, crushing generators below it. The night exploded with unleashed, coruscating energy. Lava flowed from the shattered base, spreading across the canyon floor. A dull orange-red glow lit the sides of surrounding structures.

  The damage spread, but the nexus resisted. The power in the installation did not falter. Vulkan had not expected it would. Ork construction piled excess upon redundancy. It would take an even greater cataclysm than this to destroy the great machine. Control was what he would wrest from the hands of the orks.

  Strike. Strike. Strike. A terrible accumulation, the rhythm unbreakable as the laws of the universe. At the edge of his vision, Vulkan saw orks rushing at him. The greater part of the defenders were at the wall, dealing with Koorland’s incursion. Perhaps now they had realised they had been diverted. Perhaps they would turn from that battle and head back towards the centre of the complex. They would be too late to disrupt his attack. Those who remained were too few to make a difference. They were not even a distraction. The shockwaves knocked them back. The tremors hurled them to the ground.

  Doomtremor flashed, its rage the extension of Vulkan’s soul, and it shattered the force field. A prismatic explosion surrounded the nex
us. The gigantic arms jerked, their energy arcs rising to the clouds in their agony. A cluster of explosions opened a rent along the top third of the cone. The night became a howling strobe of light and dark. The installation roared. An invader had breached its defences. A great danger had come.

  Vulkan had come.

  He strode forward. Each step was grounded. He felt the heart of Caldera reach up through his feet, through his body. The world embraced its avenger.

  The orks charged. They were as tall as Vulkan and even more massive in their armour.

  ‘This world is under my protection,’ he snarled. ‘Trouble it no more.’

  He swung the hammer sideways. One blow was enough. Armour shattered like eggshells. Bodies burst and burned.

  Behind him, howls of distress and anger from more defenders, too few and too late. The chorus of alarm engulfed the complex. It was the fanfare of xenos defeat.

  The primarch stood before the gate. He slammed the hammer against its centre. The iron slab, ten metres high, flew apart.

  Vulkan entered the nexus. It was composed of a single vast space, a cathedral of riotous technology. Banks of coils the size of plasma drives rose toward the inner peak. Energy arced between them, creating a crackling web intense enough to fry half a continent. Huge cables from the exterior fuelled the banks with still more energy, while conduits fed the heat of Caldera’s mantle to the machine. At the centre of the cone was a pillar half the height of the structure, and fifty metres wide. It supported the control mechanisms. Scores of orks moved back and forth between monumental levers and dials. A huge greenskin engineer stood above them all on a dais, surrounded by a tangle of sparking machinery. There, Vulkan thought, was the heart of Caldera’s martyrdom. That was what he had come to destroy.

  He took in the disposition of the nexus and his target in a fraction of a second. The ork engineer evaluated him in the same moment. Vulkan took a step forward, and the inner defences activated.