The Hunt for Vulkan Page 16

  Desperation is weakness.

  Strike it.

  Not the clapper of a bell, then. He was the hammer against the anvil. His core turned molten. The calm of the mountain became the anger of the volcano.

  Erupt.

  His consciousness exploded back into the full awareness of his body, and then transcended it. He observed his arc against the wall, and saw not the wound inflicted but the action he must take. And when the engineer hurled him to the floor again, he moved. He did not struggle against gravity. He acted in concert with it. He turned it into his own weapon. He punched forward with his left hand, hitting the floor, and drove his arm deep into the stone. He took root. He held Caldera. It held him back.

  When gravity reversed, he remained in place.

  The agony was a revelation. Forces sought to rip his body apart. He defied them. The ork had ceased to laugh, and now it froze. It stared at him, hands hovering uncertainly over its controls.

  Tempered by the pain, guided by magmatic anger, Vulkan raised Doomtremor. The hammer’s wrath lit up the interior of the nexus with the blaze of a sun. Thunderhead, Dawnbringer, weapons long lost, were present to his spirit in that which he now held aloft. Their terrible strength demanded Vulkan rise. And with the reversed gravity, but against its current, he threw the hammer.

  Its flight was true. A comet roared across the space between Vulkan and the pillar. It struck the platform, the impact released the energy of the throw, of the hammer, and of gravity itself. The explosion swallowed the top half of the pillar. The gravitic fist released him. He stood, and marched through a vortex of howling, chaotic lightning to retrieve Doomtremor.

  The pillar ended in a jagged stump. The control mechanism was gone, vaporised along with its master. Around Vulkan, surviving orks ran in panic as their great mechanism lost all direction. The ground heaved and cracked.

  Vulkan moved through a gathering storm. He picked up his hammer, braced his stance, and waited, fighting the instinct to destroy the abomination around him. If it did not find a new master within the next few moments, the storm would rip the planet open.

  The shaking built.

  Cracks became chasms.

  The world groaned.

  In the centre of the rift, the energy discharges were maddened. Arouar’s throne vibrated, presaging worse tremors to come.

  ‘Proceed,’ the dominus commanded.

  The connections were made.

  He screamed. His larynx was no longer capable of such a sound. His vocalisations had long been purged of any trace of emotion. Yet he screamed, emitting a wailing stream of binaric. His senses lit up with electric fire.

  He became a god maddened by the pain of his own power.

  Duty to the Omnissiah was his lodestone. His one focus was the coordinates of the ork attack moon.

  In an act of prayer, he flexed his power.

  And he lifted a mountain.

  ‘Admiral.’

  The voice was distant. Rodolph could barely hear it. His body was growing cold and numb. He was dying along with his ship. He had to keep his attention on the oculus, on the sight of the moon. If his mind drifted, if his will failed, all would be lost.

  ‘Admiral.’

  The voice was insistent. Then a hand shook his shoulder. The movement shot pain through his abdomen. He winced and looked away from the oculus.

  Groth was beside him. The bridge was filled with smoke, but his crew was still on station. The Finality was still fighting. It was still approaching the moon.

  ‘What is it, captain?’ he managed.

  ‘Look, sir.’ She pointed to the auspex screen on his right.

  Rodolph looked. The sensor array had picked up another mass rising from the planet towards the moon. Rodolph blinked. The mass was coming far too fast.

  He grinned.

  The mass became visible through the oculus a few moments later. It had risen with such velocity it was heated to red by its passage through the atmosphere. It spun end-over-end, thousands of metres long, trillions of tonnes of rock, a missile hurled at the exposed heart of the ork base. Rodolph watched it disappear into the uncompleted face of the assault moon.

  It was small by comparison to the target, but so was a bullet fired into the body of a man. In the next instant, a fireball bloomed from the interior of the moon. It expanded far beyond the crescent edge, spreading until it was almost as wide as the moon. It was a sudden tumour, its uncontrollable growth killing the host. Fissures appeared across the partial globe. Fire leaked out of them. The moon was in agony.

  ‘Finish it,’ Rodolph said. ‘In the Emperor’s name, finish it.’

  Much of the ork fleet had broken away from the Finality and formed a blockade around the open face. It was vaporised in the explosion. The path was clear for the battleship to complete its run and launch its full armament into the glowing interior.

  Rodolph’s head cleared still further. He felt strength return to his body with the flush of victory.

  But not all the orks had left. Those who remained kept on the attack. When the torpedoes slammed into the stern, Rodolph knew the worst before Groth told him. He felt the blow like a knife between the ribs.

  ‘The warp drive,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Groth answered. ‘Breached.’

  ‘How long?’

  She spoke into the ship’s vox. Rodolph was surprised there were any survivors left in the enginarium to answer her.

  Groth looked at the oculus, then back at Rodolph. ‘Not long,’ she said. ‘But long enough.’

  Rodolph nodded. They understood each other. ‘Better than any ordnance,’ he said.

  ‘A definitive blow. A fine victory, admiral. Well fought.’

  ‘And you, captain. And you.’

  ‘Signal the Mechanicus vessels,’ Groth called. ‘They should rejoin the Alcazar Remembered. Helmsman,’ Groth called. ‘Take us in. For the Emperor!’

  The crew echoed her. ‘For the Emperor!’

  All batteries firing their last, marking the void with the purging light of the Imperial Navy’s power, the Finality plunged through the remaining ork vessels, completing its run, fulfilling its destiny. Rodolph watched the open face of the moon reveal itself. He saw a honeycomb of madness, construction on a gargantuan scale burning, shattered, pulsing with mortal fire. The Finality entered the maw of the wounded giant, warp reactors about to go critical. It travelled through an immensity of caves natural and artificial, of hangar bays for entire armadas, bearing with it a sun about to be born.

  Rodolph gazed at what was about to be destroyed. The price he had paid for this vision seemed very little.

  When the end came, in furious light, he was ecstatic.

  He had taken one action. He had struck one blow. The power was building, raging, a beast about to slip its tether. Arouar’s grip on his omnipotence slipped. One more move, and then he must disengage. One more move, the one to bring an end to the power. The one Koorland had ordered him to make regardless of the situation in the canyon.

  Arouar had no knowledge of the war below now. He had no knowledge of anything except the blinding absolute. So he took the action.

  The Machine is all. Death to the blasphemy of the xenos machine.

  Vulkan felt the change in the tremors. He felt how deep they went. He knew what was coming.

  No more waiting, then. Culmination was at hand.

  Koorland ducked beneath the ork dreadnought’s swing. The thing’s forearm was as long as he was tall, and it ended in a vice of revving killsaws. Another arm came in lower on the same side. Koorland stepped in closer, avoiding the saws but not the blow itself. It knocked him to the right, into the grasp of the two right arms. The claws seized him. The saws dug into his armour. He maglocked his bolter and with his free hand took a krak grenade from his belt, throwing it at the dreadnought’s viewing slit. The expl
osive attached itself to the metal and went off, damaging the ork’s shell.

  It did not eat all the way through the armour, but the flash of its detonation stunned the greenskin wired into the mechanism. It flinched, and so did its mechanical limbs. Their grip loosened. Koorland pulled himself free. The gouges in his left flank went through his armour, all the way down to the bone.

  He jumped forward before the dreadnought could react, grabbing the top of the huge head, then hauled himself up, and plunged his chainsword through the viewing slit. The blade vibrated as it cut through the body inside. Animal screams of pain turned into gurgles. Blood sprayed out of the slit, drenching Koorland’s chestplate. The war machine’s arms dropped. It stumbled forward, then stopped, inert.

  Koorland dropped to the ground, grabbed his bolter and sprayed shells in a long burst, felling the greenskins that closed with him. To his right, another ork dreadnought had pinned Eternity to the ground. Its shoulder-mounted guns pummelled the veteran. The killsaws dug into him. Daylight was fighting to reach him, but the third dreadnought launched two rockets at him. The blasts took out the orks surrounding him and sent him flying. Absolution led three other battle-brothers against the dreadnought. Their relentless bolter fire and washes of flamer held it at bay.

  But Eternity was dying.

  Koorland ran, chainsword forward, bolt-shells scything his path toward Eternity. As he did, the earth tremors become violent. He managed to keep his feet, but many of the orks were knocked down as the ground bucked, an animal convulsing in pain. Koorland moved in awkward leaps, trusting the air instead of the surface, landing with hard stamps to keep his balance, putting more faith in luck than in the earth to be where he expected.

  He closed with the dreadnought. Its mass was so great, its centre of gravity so low, that it was remaining stable through the tremors. It held Eternity fast with two of its arms and was cutting deep with the other two. Eternity’s rune was flickering between amber and red in Koorland’s retinal lens. ‘Brother!’ Koorland called to him.

  ‘Finish it fast!’ Eternity shouted, his voice tight with struggle and agony.

  A crevasse burst open to Koorland’s left. The earth rose and fell in waves. Echoes of Ardamantua pursued him. The land in chaotic movement, the enemy overwhelming, the death of brothers looming.

  But this was not Ardamantua. This was Caldera. And the orks were roaring in dismay as the planet turned against them. The quakes were not a mystery and the prologue to defeat by a power beyond his ability to grasp. The tremors were the work of the Imperium. They were the sign of victory.

  And Koorland flew over the land, propelled by the furious energy of vengeance.

  His shells struck the armour of the dreadnought. Not hard enough to punch through, but hard enough to draw the pilot’s attention. It held Eternity with its left limbs and turned to meet Koorland’s charge, guns blazing. Koorland ran into the fire. He exchanged his chainsword for a melta bomb, and ran through the snarling embrace of the arms, colliding with the dreadnought. It was like running into a tank, though his mass and momentum were enough to rock the monster back a step. He slapped the melta bomb against the dreadnought’s flank, then he threw himself back and over Eternity’s prone figure, shielding him.

  The shaped charge ate through the ork monster. It melted iron and conduits and the flesh inside. At this proximity, the heat flash seared off the top layers of Koorland’s armour. His power pack fought to compensate, read-outs redlining in his lenses. The temperature inside his armour was enough to roast flesh. The dreadnought’s ammunition cooked off, and the war beast blew apart. Shrapnel embedded itself in Koorland’s back and arms. He rose, servo-motors catching and whining. His armour was heavy and sluggish. He fought to keep moving.

  The tremors were still growing in intensity. There was not much time.

  Eternity had lost his left leg below the knee. Koorland helped him stand. The wounded Space Marine took his chainaxe from his back and used the shaft as a cane, while Koorland held his shoulder. The dreadnought’s explosion had cleared some space for them.

  ‘Time to go, I think,’ Eternity rasped.

  ‘Yes.’ Across the command network, Koorland sent the order. ‘To all Imperial forces, the enemy’s defeat is at hand. Withdraw from the rift. But keep the orks contained.’ Switching to the squad channels, he said, ‘To the tunnels, brothers. To the tunnels.’

  The brothers of the Last Wall fought their way back through the cauldron of orks, staggering up the slope. The land was a sea in storm. Chunks of the cliffs were falling onto the battlefield.

  Koorland found he had to put his faith in the orks. He had to hope they had built their wall strong enough to withstand the storm.

  ‘Take the ground from under them!’ Thane ordered.

  The armour of the ork walkers had withstood the fire of the Predators and the missiles of the gunships. The huge skirts of the behemoths were smoking and cratered, but so dense they still had not collapsed to expose the interior. The orks had destroyed two of the Fists Exemplar tanks. The Imperial armour was faster and more manoeuvrable than the greenskin machines, and they stayed close to the enemy, forcing the orks to risk their own destruction in the firing of the huge guns. But when the orks moved back, all it took was a single step, a lucky swing of the arm, and the tanks were exposed.

  The earthquakes had begun. They were building. Remaining upright was difficult. Thane would make it even more so for the walkers.

  Most of the greenskin infantry was held further into the valley, in the battle with Imren’s regiments. The Fists Exemplar destroyed the foot soldiers who had made it this far. Thane sent half the company downslope to hold back the rest. But the walkers were the problem. They needed to be stopped.

  And as the tremors presaged great events to come, a barrier was needed.

  The tanks lowered their guns. They blasted the land at the walkers’ feet. The shells dug deep depressions in the already wounded land. New fissures opened, joined, and spread in webs.

  The ground heaved. The ground plunged.

  And Koorland’s order came.

  ‘Acknowledged,’ Thane said.

  He waited to hear the same from Imren. There was only silence from the general.

  The walkers’ steps slowed, then stopped. They stood their ground, immensity holding them in place, while their gigantic arm turrets moved with jerking urgency, their shots coming faster but more erratic.

  ‘Chapter Master,’ Aloysian called on the feed. He and the rest of Thane’s squad were between the two walkers. The Techmarine pointed to the western monster. A third of the way up the hull, a shell impact had destroyed a gun emplacement and peeled back the piston-raised shutters that protected it.

  ‘I see it.’ The actual opening was small, the angle unpromising, but it was an opportunity. He eyed the overlapping shields. Their edges would serve. ‘With me, Brother Aloysian.’

  They climbed. The rest of the squad provided covering fire as the other shutters opened and the orks rained shots down on the intruders.

  Aloysian took the lead, climbing faster with his servo-arms. He and Thane took shots, but there was no evasion to take. It was all Thane could do to hold on to the ledges as the iron wall he climbed rocked and swayed, the operators of the walker struggling to compensate for the upheavals of the tremors.

  Higher. Gravity and violent motion tried to throw them to the ground. Slugs slammed into their armour, striking at their gauntlets. Higher. The shattered gun came with reach. Smoke poured from the rent.

  With less than two metres to go, a pair of orks appeared in the gap. They turned their shotguns on Thane and Aloysian. The Techmarine responded with his plasma cutter, firing the jet into the brutish faces, burning them off their skulls. The greenskins fell back, and Aloysian climbed in after them. Thane followed.

  There was no time for strategy. Koorland’s warning was almost a minute in the
past. Thane charged through the narrow passageway leading from the wrecked gun. It led to a network of catwalks and compartments surrounding a shaft where immense pistons and gears formed the mobile skeleton of the walker’s leg. While Aloysian cut cables and breached conduits, Thane hurled krak grenades into the shaft above and below their position. He exhausted his supply and sprayed bursts of shells in all directions. Smaller greenskins panicked. Larger ones died trying to attack. Mass-reactive shells blew apart the supports on the catwalks and they fell into the shaft, tangling gears.

  The grenades went off. The damage spread. The machine shook within and without.

  The floor tilted.

  ‘Out,’ said Thane.

  The raid had taken thirty seconds.

  They ran back to the gun emplacement. They climbed out of the gap, the slope of the walker’s skirt now near vertical. The walker was listing, one leg paralysed, its motion becoming erratic. The behemoth was unstable, and it was still firing. Thane and Aloysian dropped down its side, slowing their fall with quick grabs at ledges for as long as they could, then leaping the last several metres.

  They landed on ground whose movement was as violent as the walker’s.

  ‘Pull back,’ Thane ordered. ‘Out of the rift. Suppressive fire on any enemy who follow.’ He tried to raise Imren, and this time she answered. ‘General,’ he said. ‘There is no more time.’

  ‘I agree, Chapter Master.’ She sounded injured. ‘There is no time. We will hold the enemy. Preserve our memory on Terra.’

  Thane grimaced at the scale of the sacrifice. ‘It will be celebrated,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She signed off.

  The Predators had ceased firing. They had shattered the land, and the walkers could not move forward without stepping into depressions that would overbalance them. The tanks now moved upslope. The pass between the volcanoes seemed desperately narrow from Thane’s position. The peaks thundered, and the clouds around them turned crimson. The eruptions had begun.

  The Fists Exemplar charged between the walkers. The ork machines fired their cannons, and fired again, but the tremors were too powerful. The shells went wild, striking cliffs and mountainsides. The western walker lurched. Internal blasts beat against its interior. Thane and Aloysian stood between the two beasts until the rest of the company had passed through, then they followed. The wounded walker tried to walk. The tremors, broken land and the damage made the error a fatal one.