Vulkan Lord of Drakes Page 7

  ‘How many will we need?’ Sho’mar asked.

  ‘Seven of the ones we have on this ship will suffice.’

  The seismic charges on the Flamewrought were also one of Vulkan’s modifications of design. They were several times larger than the standard battlefield seismic charge. It took two legionaries to carry each bomb, and the explosives were an order of magnitude more powerful than their smaller kin.

  ‘They must detonate simultaneously and not from a single point.’ Vulkan held up a fist. ‘Once we reach our target depth, one company will remain with me, and we will fight to keep the greenskins’ focus on us. The rest of the strike force will radiate out from that position and place the charges at a distance.’ He opened his fingers wide. ‘That will ensure the extent and pressure of interior rupturing required to shatter the greenskin base to dust.’

  ‘How far will we travel from your centre?’ said Kal’ma.

  ‘That we cannot know until we discover the composition and density of the attack moon.’

  The two Praetors nodded.

  ‘These hulks,’ Vulkan went on, ‘will be the targets for the boarding assaults by the rest of you.’ He tapped the controls of the tacticarium table, lighting up conglomerations of wrecks that were smaller than the base, but still huge troop carriers.

  ‘So ordered,’ the Praetors said in unison, committing themselves to the war that would hammer the untempered blade of the Legion into its most perfect self.

  On Vaughn’s instructions, the command module of the Cauldron had been made his permanent residence. He was anchored to a mobile medicae slab, tangles of tubes and mechadendrites feeding stimms and fluids into him. Nothing seemed to be able to counteract the pain. Through determination alone, Vaughn made himself think coherently. Nothing mattered except his duty to his brothers. And now he had to consider the new reality of another fleet in the system. He wanted to believe it represented aid for the XVIII, but his Legion had been left to fight on its own for so long, he could not assume the best. The ships might be hostile. He would see the truth of this event, and he would see the battle to its end. His end had not come on the hill of tanks. He had a last chance to preserve his honour, and he accepted the agony as the price of terminal redemption.

  ‘Keep me awake,’ he ordered Fimbrus.

  ‘I can keep you awake,’ the Apothecary said. ‘I don’t know how long I can keep you alive.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I can keep any of us alive,’ Vaughn answered.

  Numeon entered the chamber. ‘The orks are massing again,’ he said.

  Vaughn’s lips pulled back in frustration. Every instinct pushed him to rise from the medicae bed and don his armour. He managed to raise his head, but his arms and legs remained motionless.

  ‘Lord commander?’ said Numeon, waiting respectfully for orders.

  Relinquishing control of the field was agony. It was not the wounded pride of command that he felt. It was the sense that he was no longer fighting alongside his brothers. But he had turned the battlefield over to Numeon, and that decision was the right one. He had full confidence in Numeon. He could release his grip on consciousness and let himself try to heal. Except he could not. He would not surrender to oblivion while the war yet raged. ‘What are your plans?’ he asked.

  ‘We still have enough tank and infantry companies for a targeted sortie. We will use the Cauldron as bait and assault the ork flanks as they lay siege to our gates. We have found routes down the slopes to the east and west. The lava flow has changed the landscape enough to offer that possibility at least.’

  Vaughn nodded, picturing the strategy, approving. He would have done the same. ‘That will slow them,’ he said.

  ‘Will the tactic slow them enough, do you think?’ Numeon glanced at the screen that showed the estimated positions of the approaching fleet.

  ‘Enough for what?’ Vaughn asked. ‘To meet our reinforcements or our new enemies?’

  ‘Either,’ said Numeon.

  ‘Make sure it does,’ Vaughn said. ‘I will know the truth, first captain. If I have to tear ork throats out with my teeth, I will know the truth.’

  With T’kell at his side, Vulkan walked down the hall towards the starboard launch bay of the Flamewrought. He had sought out the Forgemaster in his quarters, where T’kell had been preparing for embarkation, and told him that he would be the pilot of the great engine. Now they were making their way to where the machine waited.

  ‘Thank you, lord primarch, for this honour,’ said the Forgemaster.

  ‘You have earned it. You know the vehicle better than anyone else in the Legion.’

  ‘Not anyone, lord primarch.’

  ‘I meant exactly what I said. It would be tactically wrong for me to assign anyone else as pilot. Nor do I wish to.’

  T’kell bowed his head. ‘Then, with thanks, I will pilot this piece of the Eighteenth Legion’s history.’

  Vulkan placed a hand on T’kell’s shoulder. ‘You will pilot it into our Legion’s future.’

  The launch bay of the Flamewrought had been modified to accommodate the huge vehicle. One of the bulkheads had been opened up so the machine’s great length could fit into a single, gargantuan chamber. Vulkan stood on a dais beside the open hatch in the forward section of the weapon and addressed the serried ranks of legionaries. His voice needed no amplification, and it boomed against the distant walls of the bay.

  ‘My sons,’ he said, ‘when I had this machine brought from Mars to Nocturne, I told you of the modifications we needed, of the improvements that were to be made. Your labours have made me proud. Though the function of the machine needs no explanation, I did not tell you then of its provenance or of its history. I will tell you now, because it is important to mark that we begin a new chapter in the Legion’s history but not a new book. There is continuity from the past to the future of the Eighteenth, and we find that continuity in this great engine, for this is the Termite Spear of Fire.

  ‘You are aware, I know, of the Terran Eighteenth’s reputation. How its legionaries appear to seek out the most desperate of battles. Perhaps they do. And perhaps that is as things should be. Are we not made to withstand that which no others could? We are the ones who, when all else have fallen, will stand and declare, This far, no further. Not one more step.

  ‘So it was when the Eighteenth fought by the side of the Emperor on Terra, using this machine and others of its kind. With the Termites, they stormed the underground Tempest Galleries of the Ethnarchy of the Caucasus Wastes. They broke through what had seemed impenetrable, and when, on the surface, all but the Emperor had deemed the Eighteenth lost, its warriors returned in triumph, bursting through a volcano near the city of Klostzatz.

  ‘The battleship that proudly bore the name of that city, the name that represented this victory, died attempting to ­shatter another impenetrable barrier. Now we will complete that task. The Termite will grind through the defences of a foe once more. But now, with your work and the actions of our forges on Nocturne, this ship will do so much more. The technology of Terra is united to the craftwork of Nocturne, and look at this wonder, my sons! There is no fortress that can stand before this, not on any world. Think of the cataclysmic might we have created, now that the Termite can also travel through the void. Think what it means that before us is a boarding torpedo that can carry a thousand warriors.

  ‘Think what we will do to the enemy.

  ‘Do you hear me, my sons?’

  ‘We hear you, lord primarch!’

  ‘Then let us go. Let me hear in your march the beat of the great hammer of the Eighteenth Legion. Let me hear the sounds of its forge.’

  As the chosen thousand boarded the Spear of Fire, Vulkan’s ships closed with the ork swarm. The fleet was no larger than the one the XVIII had brought to defend the Taras Division more than a year ago, but these ships were newly launched from the yards of Mars and they to
o had been reworked by the Forgemasters of Nocturne. They were fresh to battle, and they came upon a surprised enemy. Following Vulkan’s plan, the fleet came at the orks not as a spear to drive into the heart of the enemy, but as an oblique hammer blow. The greenskin ships reacted as the first torpedoes fell upon them, peeling away from Antaeum to attack the new threat. And so the first stage of Vulkan’s strategy began to bear fruit, as the landings on Antaeum diminished.

  The fleet drew nearer the swarm and the angle of its approach became even more pronounced, and now the ships had their flanks to the greenskins. A wide barrage struck the orks. The near orbit of the planet burst with explosions, and scores of ships were destroyed. The ork swarm broke away from the world like a cloud of furious wasps and gave chase as the XVIII’s ships appeared to overshoot Antaeum, then begin to turn away.

  The Legion’s fleet accelerated, putting distance between it and the orks, getting the space it needed to turn around and attack again.

  At the moment of the Flamewrought’s closest approach to Antaeum, just before it began its turn, the Termite dropped from its hull and sped towards the attack moon. Its cylindrical hull was eight hundred metres long. In appearance, it was forged from wrought iron that was black as coal, the engravings on its surface limned with bronze and gold. Its walls were metres thick, composite plates of adamantium and ceramite. The engines for void navigation that had been added on Nocturne formed a ring around its aft section, surrounding the primary ground-propulsion system. Shielded sensors ran the length of the windowless hull, feeding knowledge of the Termite’s surroundings to the pilot’s compartment, which was just aft of the drill head. The chromed adamantium cone was immense, larger at its base than a Stormbird and twice as long.

  At the same time that the Spear of Fire left its berth, so did a stream of boarding torpedoes, making for their own targets.

  Vulkan stood in the chamber behind Forgemaster T’kell’s pilot’s throne aboard the Spear of Fire. He hunched forwards to keep his head below the curved roof. From this position, he could see all the pict screens at a glance. They were arranged in a horseshoe formation around the throne, though T’kell’s focus was on the large screen before him, which displayed the view ahead of the Termite.

  Vulkan tracked the movements of the fleets. The barrage was having the desired effect. The orks in their anger were abandoning the attack moon. The only threat they saw was the fleet. Vulkan had calculated the Spear of Fire’s path carefully. It ran parallel to the bombardment. He was counting on the orks dismissing the Termite as yet another projectile. They showed little interest in trying to intercept torpedoes and cannon shells. Defence seemed to be an unknown concept to the greenskins. All they knew was to attack, and so their ships went after the sources of the projectiles, rather than the projectiles themselves.

  The Spear of Fire flew through the cloud of ork vessels.

  ‘Those are not ships,’ T’kell muttered. ‘They are detritus.’ He spoke with the anger of the offended craftsman.

  Vulkan did not blame him. Every ship that appeared on the pict screens defied any concept of void-worthiness. Their shapes turned the hololithic diagrams into scrawls. Some of the ships had once been human, while others included portions of ­recognisable craft.

  ‘I cannot even call them diseased,’ said T’kell.

  ‘No,’ Vulkan agreed. ‘That would imply they were once whole.’

  The ships were wreckage that flew, components hurled together with no thought, no logic. There was no uniformity to any of them.

  ‘They are a perversion of craft,’ T’kell said.

  ‘They are the products of brute chance. These are merely the ones that function. Who knows how many thousands never left the ground.’

  T’kell feathered the controls, using the engines only when he absolutely had to, preserving the illusion of an outsized ­torpedo. Then the Spear of Fire came through the swarm, and the way was clear to the attack moon.

  The two fleets came within range of each other, and Vulkan watched as the screens coldly relayed the impact of large-scale void war.

  The leading edge of the ork horde came apart, ships disappearing into fireballs, exploding into storms of shrapnel. The orks flew so close together that the death of a single vessel led to chain reactions. Vulkan’s fleet came at the orks and curved again, broadsiding the enemy, then turning away.

  The Flamewrought and its escorts began the manoeuvre long before the orks came anywhere close to their positions. The battle­ship was so massive, its momentum so great, that its turning circle was tens of thousands of kilometres wide. The change in direction had to begin before it was needed. This was why Vulkan had rehearsed the strategies of the battle in detail with Och’hi. He had seen the unhappy look on the shipmaster’s face as Vulkan unfolded the pattern to him in the primarch’s quarters.

  ‘You are displeased,’ Vulkan had said.

  ‘The extraction strategy is daring, lord primarch, and we will do you proud. But with respect, the tactics until then feel like a series of retreats.’

  ‘It is quite the opposite. Antaeum is the ground we seek to hold.’

  ‘But we are not yet on it,’ said Och’hi.

  ‘We are,’ Vulkan had told him. ‘The Eighteenth is on Antaeum, fighting desperately, and this world is the line that protects the rest of the Taras System. You will draw the orks away from Antaeum. This will relieve your brothers on the ground and clear the path for us. This is not a retreat. It is an advance. The orks will be losing ground when they pursue. They will not know it, but it is they who will be relinquishing territory.’

  Now, on the Termite, the pict screen readouts could not convey the majesty of the Flamewrought, but Vulkan could picture it in his mind’s eye. He hoped Och’hi could see what he was forging. This tactic was no blunt blade of war. It was finely crafted. It was worthy of pride.

  The Imperial ships turned slowly, but their engines were far more powerful than the orks’, and as they accelerated once more, they put distance again between themselves and the enemy. Then they turned to port, delivering another broadside, and then they were face-on.

  The orks were firing constantly, turning the void white with the intensity of their weapons. On the pict screens, the war frozen into still images as the data updated, Vulkan saw the flare of void shields. Runes changed second by second, breaking the battle down to vectors and damage estimates.

  ‘We are holding, lord primarch,’ Och’hi voxed. ‘We will keep them here.’

  ‘And we will stab at their heart,’ said Vulkan.

  The attack moon drew closer. The target site was the impact of the Klostzatz. Though the battleship had failed, the shell of the ork base would still be weakened where the vessel had hit, and to break open the crust at that site would pay tribute to the loss and the bravery of the Klostzatz’s final sacrifice.

  Not all the ork ships had left to pursue the XVIII’s fleet. Small transports were continuing to land xenos troops on Antaeum. As the larger ships were emptied of their complement of infantry, they left orbit to join in the void war.

  ‘No landings from the attack moon,’ Vulkan commented.

  ‘Is that suggestive?’ T’kell asked.

  ‘Unless its forces are already on the planet, then the full strength is still in the greenskin base, and there is a much greater invasion to come.’

  ‘There will be plenty to welcome us, then,’ said T’kell.

  ‘Indeed,’ Vulkan said. ‘And that many more to be destroyed.’

  An ork ship that had finished unloading now whipped around the attack moon on its way towards the fleets. Its trajectory brought it in line with the Termite. Vulkan eyed its path carefully, and when the ork vessel changed its route slightly, he said, ‘They have seen us.’

  The ork ship was coming directly at the machine.

  The Termite was armed, but its lascannons and twin-linked heavy bolters
, which would be devastating against infantry and armour on the ground, were futile against a void ship.

  ‘I can try to evade,’ said T’kell.

  ‘No. Take us through that ship.’

  The Forgemaster grinned. ‘With pleasure, lord primarch.’

  T’kell engaged the Termite’s drill head. A rapid vibration ran through the bulkheads and the deck. It set Vulkan’s teeth on edge, but it was also a satisfying sound. It was powerful. It drew from the entire strength and length and mass of the Termite. It was not just the spin of the drill head that would strike the enemy. It was all the momentum of the Termite, its monstrous totality – just as it was not the hammer itself that would crush an enemy, but the force of the blow.

  The ork ship neared, its cannons firing madly. Shells smacked against the hull of the Termite, shaking it violently.

  ‘These glancing blows will mar our fine artwork,’ said T’kell. ‘They insult us.’

  ‘Then return the insult in full,’ Vulkan said.

  The Spear of Fire ploughed into the bow of the enemy ship. The pict screens struggled to keep up with the flood of updates from the sensors. A juddering series of still images showed Vulkan the death of the ork vessel. They were static-riven yet vivid impressions of rent metal and explosions. The vibrations of the hull grew more violent as it passed through the ship, tearing it open as a hunter’s blade guts the belly of a leo’nid. The vessel peeled back until its ragged halves fell away, bleeding bodies and gases into the frozen void.

  The Termite came out the other end, the ork ship slowly disintegrating in its wake.

  ‘We have called attention to ourselves,’ said T’kell.

  There were other ships coming for them now.

  On the central pict screen above the pilot’s controls, the target area of the attack moon became more and more defined. The ork ships came from both sides of the huge base, firing continuously. There was no point in disguise now, and T’kell used the engines to move the Termite back and forth. The aim of the greenskins was so rushed, so wild, that his efforts were enough to weave the ship through the web of shells, and the ork vessels began to destroy each other with their own crossfire.