Vulkan Lord of Drakes Page 5

  Xerexenia’s prediction was accurate. The southern chain unleashed its rage first, even as the tank formations rumbled into the plain. Greenskins fell, crushed beneath the treads, while squads of infantry marched beside the vehicles, creating an impassable wall that exterminated the orks in a swath that widened out from the base of the cone. While the Whirlwinds took up the rear, their clusters of missiles unleashing chains of explosions in the ork ranks in the middle distance, Vaughn had the battle tanks concentrate their fire on the nearer range. The concentrated fire was devastating. The XVIII advanced slowly, methodically, and it was a march of annihilation.

  When the eruptions began, it was as if Antaeum was responding to Vaughn’s commands and the planet had chosen to ally itself with the Legion against the greenskin plague. The earth shook, hurling smaller orks off their feet, as ash clouds blotted out the horizon. The sky-shattering booms rolled over the lava plain, bursting eardrums and staggering infantry. The Legion’s volcano exploded with renewed violence minutes later, flows of molten rock and mud running down its sides and into the plain, but the built-up ridge on the southern end of the crater still held.

  Vaughn rode in the turret of Ethnarch’s Doom, scything down the greenskins with its pintle-mounted twin-linked combi-bolter. The sponson lascannons blasted through the xenos flesh ahead of the tank, while the accelerator cannon punished the orks with a holo­caust of high explosives. Visibility was poor, and what Vaughn could see was the madness of war and volcanic mayhem so utter, coherence was lost.

  An image flashed through his mind. In the early stages of the Great Crusade, at a gathering of the commanding officers of the Legions, Vaughn had been received by the Emperor’s Children aboard the Pride of the Emperor. The flagship was home to a tremendous number of remembrancers, and as Fulgrim, primarch of the Emperor’s Children, guided him through one of the ship’s great galleries of art, Vaughn had been struck by the power of one painting in particular. The canvas was massive, easily six metres high and twice as wide. It was a swirl of movement, dusky colours in collision with one another, streaked with ragged glimpses of bright red and orange. That painting was non-representational, and it conveyed an overwhelming sense of upheaval.

  ‘Compelling, isn’t it?’ Fulgrim had said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It is war. It is, in my estimation, one of the most perceptive depictions of war I have ever seen. When I look at this, I see the inevitable chaos our Crusade courts in every conflict, and a warning about the maelstrom unfettered war can become. When I look at this painting, I am reminded again of why I insist upon perfection in every aspect of my Legion’s conduct in battle. Without discipline, this is what awaits us.’

  Vaughn saw the painting again now. He saw it in his mind’s eye, and he saw it before him in a reality thrown into monstrous vortex. He felt as if the world no longer had form. He was surrounded by the annihilation of greenskin flesh by fire and shell, and buffeted by explosions. There was no true sense of distance now, only more of the violent grey, the sear of lightning and flares of colour that dimmed and smeared into the grey as soon as they appeared. Vaughn was fighting his way through the infinite sea of the painting. This was the war rendered abstract. It seemed as though everything would be dissolved into the embodiment of conflict. Part of him felt this would not be a terrible thing.

  But the rest of Vaughn was still lord commander of the XVIII Legion. What was happening was his will, his strategy, his turning of the world against the orks. And now, to his left and to his right, came the terrible heat of the lava flows, a short distance beyond the flanks of the Legion’s formations. A slow wave of lava three metres high swallowed the orks. The greenskins’ screams as they died were faint beneath the overwhelming roar of the shelling and the eruptions, but it was the sound that Vaughn most wanted to hear.

  He voxed Xerexenia at the Cauldron. ‘What are you seeing?’ The long-range auspex array might still be able to give a sense of the broader battlefield.

  ‘It is as you predicted, lord commander. The reinforcements to the south have been cut off. The army on the plain has already been significantly degraded. The ork landing appears to be compromised. The number of crashes has increased with the eruptions. We…’ She paused. There was a squeal of recalculating binaric. ‘Lord commander, one of their ships is making for the plain.’

  ‘Are they attempting a landing here?’ If the orks succeeded, they would destroy the opportunity to contain the xenos the eruptions had given the XVIII.

  ‘Success is impossible. The attempt is not improbable.’

  Vaughn glanced up. He could not see the sky. There would be no way of anticipating where the ship would hit before it was too late. He sent out the warning all the same. He wondered if the orks were seeking the same kind of destructive sacrifice they had done on Corcyra.

  Xerexenia contacted him again. ‘Lord commander, the course of the ship will not take it to the plain. The flight path is towards the peak of the central volcano.’

  Was that chance or strategy? Vaughn wondered. Did the pilots of that ship even know what they were doing? The answer hardly mattered. There never seemed to be true thought behind ork behaviour, but the brutality of the greenskins, again and again and again, was favoured by bafflingly unlikely chance, as if their savagery itself were enough to bend the laws of physics and probability.

  ‘Impact in five seconds,’ Xerexenia warned.

  Vaughn saw a streak pass by overhead, a glow of fire or of engines. There was the shrieking, rattling roar of primitive technology. Then the unmistakeable crash of ship against rock. There came a flare high in the north, a new anger in the sky and the rumble of rockslides, growing louder and louder. Then a glow, a red glow.

  Lava flow. The warning spread over the vox, but there was little action to take. Xerexenia’s sensors had confirmed the strength of the ridge. The direction of the eruption’s blast had been known. The contingency of a ship this large hitting at just this spot had been close to unimaginable.

  It was also the one event for which there was no contingency. There was no high ground to seek, no shelter to take. There was only fate to curse. The crash had destroyed the protective ridge of the crater. The doom Vaughn had brought to the orks now came for them all.

  Vaughn kept fighting and moving forwards. Reports and commands on the vox chronicled the coming disaster.

  ‘We’re cut off on the east flank. Can we shift the columns west?’

  ‘Negative. It’s a sea on this side.’

  ‘Lava hitting the Cauldron.’

  ‘This is rooftop artillery. We can maintain fire for now. Be strong, brothers.’

  There was no recourse except to get as far ahead as possible of the new stream of lava. It might extinguish itself, lose its greater force before it reached the Legion.

  The vox squealed as contact with the Cauldron cut off.

  ‘If we die, they die with us!’ Vaughn called to all who could still hear. ‘This is our retaliation! This is their immolation!’

  The glow grew brighter. The heat rose. The guns pounded, and the orks died. Vaughn was truly in the reality of the painting. That remembrancer had known the deep truth of war in a way that no one, Vaughn thought, not even Fulgrim, could have suspected.

  And now the lava was here, and suddenly there was no land. There was only the ocean of fire, and Ethnarch’s Doom was rising end over end.

  Everything dropped into a monstrous forge.

  On the Klostzatz, klaxons sounded as tacticarium screens updated to show new, threatening enemy vectors. ‘Greenskin vessels are changing their orientation,’ the auspex officer, Denhorn, reported. ‘They’re leaving orbit.’

  ‘All ships,’ Resalt said. ‘Prepare to engage the main force of the enemy. They’re heading for us.’

  ‘You are not surprised,’ said Valtine, the shipmaster of the frigate Flame of the Caucasus.

  �
�The eruptions are preventing the greenskins from landing. They need to turn their attentions elsewhere.’

  ‘What are your orders?’

  ‘What they always have been. There is no retreat, shipmaster. Antaeum is where we stop them. There is nowhere to go.’

  ‘The attack moon is leaving orbit too,’ said the auspex officer.

  ‘Fleet, form up,’ said Resalt. ‘Close the gaps between our ships, concentrate fire ahead.’ She looked at the tacticarium screens and saw the scale of the swarm heading for the Klostzatz. The situation was the same as it had been over Corcyra. There was nothing to do but go forwards now. ‘To all commanders, we will be a spear tip. Our target is the attack moon. In the name of the Emperor, we will exact a heavy cost.’

  Two kinds of war closed with one another. The differences between them were so great that Resalt thought them obscene. It offended her that there should be a battle at all with these creatures, that a single ship of hers should be damaged by them. That orks should exist at all was an outrage. The Emperor taught humanity what the galaxy could and must be. Greenskins were everything it should not be. There was no thought in them, no civilisation. There was only the rampaging exultation of violence. If there were true justice in the universe, they would fall back before the glory of the Imperium and be shamed into extinction.

  Resalt knew what was coming. She had fought so long for the XVIII Legion, and had been through so many desperate struggles, that she had a taste for the last stand too. She had no regrets. She felt herself beginning to smile as she thought about how she would end as many orks as she could. She would find glory today. More importantly, she would find meaning.

  The last of the XVIII’s fleet came together as the swarm approached. Torpedoes and cannon shells and lances cut the void, incinerating mockeries that dared to take the shape of vessels. The orks fired back. Some of their ships exploded as they attempted to engage, dying without being struck by a single Imperial shell. But there were always more. The swarm grew thicker. Ork ships collided with each other in their eagerness to take on the enemy.

  But there were always more.

  And the attack moon loomed in the centre of the ork fleet, the greatest monster.

  The Imperial spear cut into the swarm, and the ork swarm embraced the spear. The Klostzatz’s fire destroyed any vessel that dared to approach head-on. The fleet cut down scores of flanking vessels, but always, always, there were more. Some of the enemy got through. Some of their shots got through.

  Enough got through.

  The escort Barbican died. The frigate Might of Honour died. The spear tip became ragged.

  Resalt grasped the pulpit as ram ships collided with the hull, and primitive ork shells battered the void shields. The defences of the Klostzatz were weakened. The void shields went down more easily, and the hull was breached in a dozen places.

  ‘Fire control minimal,’ announced the flat voice of a servitor linked to the ship’s weapon systems.

  In the oculus, Resalt saw the distant blooms of cannon and ­torpedo impacts on the surface of the attack moon. ‘Are we damaging it?’ she asked Denhorn.

  ‘It is hard to get any kind of coherent reading. We must be, but nothing deep, as far as the auspex can tell. The density of its construction is too great.’

  Brute force, Resalt thought. Its brutishness is going to defeat us.

  ‘Port cannons down,’ said the servitor.

  ‘Redirect what we can,’ Resalt ordered. ‘Target the ork staging ground on Antaeum.’ The battleship was too far from the planet for a true orbital bombardment, but any damage to the enemy force on the ground would mean something. The Klostzatz’s fate was sealed, and there was only one last thing it might do against the ork base.

  ‘We keep going,’ Resalt said. ‘No retreat.’

  A few seconds later, the last of its bombardment torpedoes blasted out of its flanks, making for Antaeum.

  Valtine said, ‘We’ve lost steering. They’ve opened up a breach along half our length. We’re losing atmosphere fast. Farewell. Our course runs true. We will kill them as we die.’

  ‘So will we, shipmaster. So will we.’

  The attack moon loomed. Another ram ship came up beneath the Klostzatz. The impact sent a mortal shudder through the ship. Power stuttered. Pict screens blacked out across the bridge.

  ‘Engine breach,’ droned the damage control servitor. ‘Plasma leaking.’

  ‘Will they go critical?’ Resalt asked.

  ‘That is certain.’

  ‘Good. We shall go for the attack moon now.’

  A solemn silence fell on the bridge. The crew faced the inevitable, collectively willing the battleship forwards to the ork base.

  ‘We have one more torpedo,’ Resalt announced. ‘It is our greatest. We will be the death blow.’ She wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe this end would have meaning. The Klostzatz was twenty-four kilometres long. With its engines breached, the ship would crack the attack moon open like an egg. Its explosion would scour the interior, and its force would break the monster apart.

  Surely, this is what would happen. Surely, destiny would permit no other ending.

  ‘Get me the lord commander,’ Resalt said.

  ‘We have lost contact with the Cauldron,’ Denhorn said.

  ‘Very well. Record vox transmission.’ Resalt hoped Vaughn would hear her in the end. ‘We will ram the attack moon. We will destroy the heart of the enemy’s fleet. My only regret, lord commander, is that I will not live to see what we achieve.’

  Now the ork base filled the entire oculus. Resalt could no longer see the contours of the mass. She realised that the Klostzatz was striking at the orks much as the orks had struck the Legion on Corcyra. Her chest clenched. There were no longer two kinds of war here. There was only one. The fleet was dead. It was simply moving forwards, becoming merely brutish. The orks were forcing the XVIII to fight as they did. Resalt wanted to cry out in soul-deep pain.

  But she held her silence. Resalt stood to attention with her crew as the great ship plunged towards the surface of the attack moon.

  Let this have meaning, she thought. Let this have meaning.

  But in the final seconds before impact, she knew their deaths would not.

  There was darkness. Darkness and black pain. Then darkness gave way to the red, to heat and agony. The heat was agony. The warning runes were shutting down in Vaughn’s auto-senses. His body was slipping towards a sus-an membrane coma. He was being crushed. Everything was heat, nothing could vent, but he was conscious.

  Vaughn punched at the weight. He punched with all the fury of approaching death, and he felt the weight shift. He punched again and again, and then he could move. Determination blunted the blade of the red pain, and the weight gave way before him. Then he was lifting it, and then he threw it away.

  Now he could see. He pulled himself out of the wreckage of the Fellblade. The lava had pushed the Legion’s heavy armour together in a great hill of ruined metal. Congealing rock still glowed a sullen red between the masses of the tanks. Some had exploded, others were crushed, but most of them had been resilient enough to keep their crews alive. The vehicles were dead, but the legionaries lived on, and they crawled from burst hatches and torn hulls. Beneath the hill of tanks, Vaughn saw motionless limbs protruding from the lava flow. He did not want to think how many of the legionaries marching with the tanks had perished, but more had survived than he could have hoped. They too were climbing the hill.

  The ash fall was still intense, and Vaughn could not see clearly for more than a hundred metres in any direction. But that was an improvement. The dying glow of the lava gave him a hint of where the battle stood. In the midst of the destruction of the molten rock, there was a moment of calm. Some of the lava was still glowing in the near distance. Thousands of orks had been engulfed. Half-buried, burned, bestial faces were scattered acros
s the battlefield. The landscape was a slowly shifting cemetery and crematorium. The ash fell, choking and smothering, grey descending upon smouldering orange and black.

  Through the drifting smoke came a new chorus of savage cries.

  ‘Lord commander,’ said Numeon. He had already made it to the top of the wreckage. He reached down and pulled Vaughn up beside him. He looked out towards the shouts. ‘They have not had enough yet,’ he said.

  ‘They will only have had enough when there are none left,’ said Vaughn.

  He stood up, making himself visible to the surviving legion­aries. He could see a little further from this position. There were others who had lived through the flood. They were making their way from ruined tanks, across the thickening crust. ‘To me!’ Vaughn shouted. He looked back towards the volcano. He could not see the Cauldron. He did not know if there was anything to go back to, but they would have to try. ‘To me!’ he called again. ‘Form up! We have not yet finished the greenskins’ punishment!’

  The orks came into sight, scrambling over the congealing lava. Some broke through the crust and died, but the surface was already strong enough to support the weight of most of the brutes.

  ‘Take them down,’ Vaughn ordered. The heat inside his armour had diminished, and he could think more clearly. He focused on the task of killing. ‘Give our returning brothers cover. Flamers at the base, bolters on high. Let no greenskin approach!’

  The hill of wreckage erupted with fire.

  No squad had been left intact by the lava flood, but the rump of the XVIII Legion gathered on the hill fought with precision and discipline. The barrage was continuous, brothers redirecting their aim to take down enemies approaching legionaries who were reloading or racing to the mound. The destroyed tanks became a new fortress. The orks closed in relentlessly, but the legionaries held them back, and the heaps of greenskin corpses grew. More surviving warriors fought their way through the orks and added their strength to the hill.