The Hunt for Vulkan Page 9

  ‘By being true to his myth,’ Koorland muttered.

  ‘I missed that, Chapter Master.’

  ‘Nothing, brother. I wish I knew too. But I think we know where we’re heading now.’

  ‘We do.’

  The Deathblow flew north-east.

  Ahead, the jungle thinned as the land rose. The land, fertilised by frequent falls of volcanic ash, gave way to the barrenness of hardened lava flows. Further north, Koorland saw two massive cones with smoke pouring from their peaks, lit by lightning and the angry red of molten rock. The next force of orks were between the gunship’s position and the two volcanoes, still in the jungle and striking directly towards the peaks. This was the largest horde so far. More warbands were arriving at the rear, perhaps groups that had broken off early from the other mobs. The movement here was assured and violent. Koorland saw a bright flash towards the head of the advance.

  ‘Brother Hemisphere,’ he said.

  ‘I saw it, Chapter Master. They’re fighting something.’

  Hemisphere turned the Storm Eagle towards the north.

  And flew straight into a massive anti-aircraft barrage.

  The orks had been waiting for them. Charging forwards to attack their unseen target, racing ahead with the single-minded ferocity and speed of their race, they had still prepared for the Deathblow’s appearance.

  Hemisphere threw the gunship into evasive turns and rolls. Koorland raked the ground below with the turret’s heavy bolters, and energy bolts lashed the grey late afternoon. A lightning storm reached up from the ground to surround the Storm Eagle. The orks had assembled a battery of energy cannons, and they had waited until Hemisphere had flown within the ring of cannons before opening fire.

  Hemisphere vectored the thrusters downwards. The engines shrieked with strain as the gunship shot up and banked south. A crackling beam punched a hole through the centre of the port wing and the engine stuttered. Speed bled away and the gunship dropped. Hemisphere released the wing-mounted stormstrike missiles before the ork fire could blow them up.

  The gunship spiralled downwards. Koorland saw the ragged jungle canopy rush towards them, spitting ordnance. His bolter fire felt like nothing more than symbolic defiance.

  Hemisphere regained control of the Deathblow. The gunship levelled off and skimmed just above the trees, brushing them. A gale of leaves and broken branches surrounded it. The orks lowered their fire, but the ship had dropped faster than they could adjust their aim. Hemisphere stayed low, strafing the ground ahead with the twin-linked assault cannon. Koorland turned his guns the same way. They unleashed an annihilating barrage ahead of them. At this speed, at this proximity, the land and the ork army were a blur. There was no chance to aim. Koorland had a brief glimpse of artillery guns ahead, and then they blew up. The Deathblow streaked into a wall of burning plasma.

  Then they were through the anti-aircraft ring. Hemisphere angled the ship up again, putting distance between it and the orks. Energy beams arced after them. A rocket screamed by the turret canopy and exploded just off the port wing. The blast wave buffeted the Storm Eagle. The engine stalled again, but Hemisphere kept control of the flight. He dipped the nose, sacrificing altitude for speed, then angled hard to port, and the ork fire went off to the side.

  ‘I’m satisfied we’ve found our target,’ Hemisphere said.

  ‘So am I.’ These orks were not marching or searching. They were at war. They had an enemy. Koorland opened a vox-channel to Thane. ‘We have our target. I’m sending you the coordinates. Begin the mobilisation now.’

  The Imperial advance was rapid. The orks had paved the way, destroying the jungle as they advanced, flattening all obstacles. Adeptus Astartes, Astra Militarum and Mechanicus contingents moved north on the trail the enemy had left. In less than two hours, the smoke of their vehicles was in sight. Even so, Koorland wished for more speed. He had no proof Vulkan was battling the front lines of the greenskin column. And if the primarch was there, how long could the struggle continue?

  He forced the questions aside, placing them with his doubts. There was a clear path of action open to him, so he took it. Since the disaster of Ardamantua, he had been faced with one hard decision after another. Each time, the choice had been clear. Each time, the outcome uncertain.

  They all still were.

  But now there was the immediacy of the mission, and the fury of an assault. And for the first time since Ardamantua, he had the prospect of seeing the orks bleed.

  Koorland rode with a squad of the Last Wall in one of the Rhinos the Fists Exemplar had turned over for the comp­any’s use. The transport was in the front line of the advance. He sat in the top hatch, watching the jungle ahead, tracking the progress of the combined effort of the Adeptus Astartes, the Astra Militarum and the Mechanicus. He was closing on the orks with the power to topple worlds.

  He kept the assault force in a tight fist. He assumed the orks knew the attack was coming, so planned to render their information useless with a massive, overwhelming blow. The army advanced at the speed of its infantry. Gunships flew overwatch. Tanks held their fire until the last minute. Hemisphere took the Deathblow up again, maintaining a cautious distance until Koorland ordered the attack.

  ‘What can you see?’ Koorland asked him.

  ‘The rearguard is still moving forwards. The horde’s direction is unchanged from earlier.’

  ‘They aren’t turning to fight us?’

  ‘It seems not. Either they aren’t aware of our approach or they don’t care.’

  ‘Then it’s time they did.’

  Still he waited, until he caught his first sight of the rearmost orks. He could not hear their snarls over the clanking roar of the Imperial transports and tanks, but he saw the ferocity in their movements. They were rushing to fight an enemy thousands of metres ahead of them, ignoring the one approaching from behind.

  Koorland switched to the combat network. ‘Now!’ he said.

  A new volcano erupted in the Calderan jungle. Its eruption was focused. Its devastation was controlled. It was a thing of metal and ceramite, of promethium and particle beams. It was flesh and machine. It was the fury of the Imperium come to punish the xenos.

  The artillery barrage reached ahead of the rearguard. Predators, Whirlwinds, Dunecrawlers, Basilisks and Wyverns fired at once. Beams, mortars, rockets and shells struck the targeted region, and a second Imperial volcano erupted in answer to the first. The middle distance turned into a firestorm that rose to the clouds. Silhouetted fragments of ork bodies and vehicles tumbled through the flames. The thunder of the salvo was like the planet itself cracking in two.

  As the tanks and artillery vehicles continued the bombardment, the infantry charged the rear of the ork column. Fists Exemplar and the Last Wall poured out of Rhinos and Land Raiders. Behind them came the skitarii and the Guard. Assault squads rode jump packs ahead of the main charge and came down in the midst of orks, between the walking barrage and the battering ram of the infantry.

  I am Slaughter, Koorland thought. His wall-name had been stolen from him by that terrible voice over Ardamantua. Now he reclaimed it. He struck the orks with a wall of battle-brothers and a hurricane wind of mass-reactive shells. He had brought annihilation to the enemy. He had brought vengeance. ‘I am Slaughter!’ he shouted, his bolter on full burst, and he saw a measure of justice for his murdered brothers in the butchery he unleashed.

  The Imperial advance was fast, but measured, disciplined. Las, shells, electrical arcs and plasma bolts hit the orks in an unbroken wave. The assault squads spread ripples of ruin and confusion. Hundreds of metres of the enemy column collapsed into anarchy. Wherever the orks turned, they were cut down. They fought back, but there was no coherence to their response. There was order only in the manner of their deaths. The infantry charged in conflicting directions. Trucks and warbikes were caught in the crush, unable to manoeuvre, their wheels spi
nning over the bodies of the fallen until rockets and grenades turned them into flaming coffins.

  Further on, the massive shapes of two vast walkers bulked against the sky, higher than the flames. Gunships attacked them in squadrons. Flying through the anti-aircraft fire, the Imperial flights strafed the walkers with lascannons and heavy bolters. The walkers lumbered to retaliate. They brought their heavy weapons to bear on departing aircraft only to be hit from another flank by the next squadron. As the gunships passed the walkers, they looped back to launch missiles at the ork tanks.

  Koorland felt the momentum of the campaign. It was a beast upon the land, tearing into its prey. It was also a mechanism of violence, crushing the enemy with implacable precision. Three branches of the Imperium’s might fought as one, their collective forming the sinews of the beast, the gears of the machine. This was the unity so absent in the Great Chamber. The competing agendas that had led to the madness on Mars were gone. The corrupt self-interest of the High Lords and the divisions they fostered threatened the Imperium as much as the orks. But here, now, the servants of the Emperor did their duty. In this moment, the fall of the greenskins seemed inevitable, no matter how far they evolved or how advanced their technology.

  The stench of the war reached Koorland through his helmet grille, the humid mix of rotting vegetation, burnt fyceline and spilled blood. In the distance, barely audible over the clamour of the battle, the saurian carnivores of Caldera snarled their fury. They were displaced. Predators far worse than they were at war.

  A battlewagon reared over the bodies of infantry. Smashing the living and the dead beneath its wheels and treads, it thundered towards the front line of the Last Wall. Koorland and Daylight ran at it, splitting left and right. Its gunner swung the cannon after Koorland. The shell exploded behind him, and then he was too close. Orks leaned out of hatches, hammering his armour with shots. He turned towards the vehicle’s front at the last second, leaping up to grab the top of its siege shield. He clung with one hand and threw a frag grenade through the driver’s slit in the armour. On the right, Daylight slapped a krak to the side.

  The slit spat flame and the battlewagon veered wildly. Koorland jumped away from the shield as the krak grenade went off, melting through the rear treads and the hull. The vehicle’s fuel ignited and the blossom of fire lifted the back of the wagon as it slewed. It rolled, crushing the orks in its turrets. It became a tumbling mass of shredding metal and flame, killing the orks still in its path. The Last Wall parted to let it pass.

  On the flanks, the Sydonian Dragoons moved up, racing forwards on their Ironstriders. The legs of their bipedal steeds were long enough that they could have stepped effortlessly over the heads of the enemy. Instead, they smashed greenskins down with each stride. The dragoons held their taser lances pointed low. With the Ironstriders moving at full gallop, the lances stitched lines of chained incinerations.

  And the rifle fire was unstinting. There was no standing against the Imperial storm. The counter-charges were brief and shattered before they could begin. There was only one direction the orks could go. They took it.

  They fled.

  ‘The enemy is in retreat,’ Koorland shouted. ‘Drive it into the ground!’

  The Imperial machine pursued. The speed of the orks surprised Koorland. Even allowing for the gap in their ranks created by the artillery, they had seemed too densely packed.

  ‘Hemisphere,’ he voxed, ‘tell me what you see.’

  It took a moment for the pilot to answer. Koorland heard him grunt and a background burst of energy. Further ahead, the orks were still lashing at the aircraft. ‘There’s a gap between the bulk of the horde and the struggle involving the front lines. I couldn’t see it before. I think they only slowed down when we began the assault. But they’re catching up quickly now.’

  Unease gnawed at the edge of triumph. But the odd greenskin strategy changed nothing. Koorland led the pursuit without pause, chewing up the rear ranks of the enemy, the cannons pounding the centre of the horde.

  The jungle thinned, then ended. The ground became rockier. The terrain sloped upwards, turning into craggy foothills in advance of the two volcanoes. The horde retreated even faster. The mounted mass abandoned the slower infantry. The orks fought to climb aboard the trucks and the tops of battlewagons. Bikes and overloaded vehicles roared up the slope. The gap between the two armies widened.

  Unease became alarm.

  ‘Stop their flight!’ Koorland ordered. ‘Land Speeders to the fore. Dominus Arouar, we need your fastest troops!’

  And Hemisphere was shouting in his ear. ‘They’re not retreating! They have camouflaged positions. They–’

  A new thunder of cannons drowned Hemisphere out. The orks’ heavy tanks burst from their concealment. The walkers, damaged but still fighting, turned away from the harassing aircraft and aimed their massive guns downhill. From the heights, they dropped the sky down on the Imperial forces. Koorland heard the shriek of high-explosive shells, and then he was in the air, lifted off his feet as the ground hurtled skywards. His battle-brothers and the rest of the strike force vanished in the flare of crimson and coruscating green.

  He landed on his back, cracking stone. He rolled and surged to his feet.

  ‘Force them back!’ he voxed. ‘Artillery, take out the tanks! Our cannons outnumber theirs.’

  Through the smoke and blasts, he saw the Last Wall and the Fists Exemplar climbing with him. The formation was ragged, but the fire still constant.

  And the ork infantry had stopped retreating. It was digging in, returning the Imperial salvoes with a vengeance.

  ‘Keep advancing,’ he heard Thane order the Fists Exemplar. ‘Keep the initiative.’

  Wreckage everywhere: Ironstriders twisted and smoking, mortals turned into meat, their uniforms so burned and soaked in blood there was no identifying their regiment. Through the dead and through the meteor storm of the ork barrage, the Imperial forces advanced.

  Keep the initiative.

  We never had it, Koorland thought.

  The shadow of Ardamantua fell on him. Though he marched up the slope, though he weathered the shots scoring and pitting his armour, though he led an attack that was still disciplined, still coherent, still powerful, he felt the sickening knowledge of imminent disaster.

  It was Hemisphere who first saw what was coming. It was his voice that became the messenger of doom.

  ‘Chapter Master! Major ork forces closing from the east and west!’

  Uphill, the ork cannons paused for a moment. Wind cleared the smoke, and Koorland could see the scale of the counter-attack.

  No, not a counter-attack. A trap.

  To the left and to the right, armies fully as large as the one to the north closed in.

  An ocean of savagery came to drown the Imperial machine.

  Six

  Caldera – Laccolith

  Smoke. Fire. Volcanic rock turned into a shrapnel whirlwind. Crashing waves of xenos muscle, blades and rifle fire. The slope caught in a hurricane of war. Directions becoming meaningless. The world disintegrating, reduced to the clamour of violent death. The vox a torrent from all the elements of the strike force.

  ‘Heavy weapons hitting us from the west…’

  ‘… the east, the east, the east…’

  ‘… suppressive fire on those tanks…’

  ‘… pushing us back…’

  ‘… maintain formation or I’ll shoot you myself…’

  ‘… consolidate Dunecrawler line…’

  ‘… lost…’

  ‘… close that gap, by the Throne, close–’

  The screams of dying mortals. Chattering binharic dissolving into feedback whines. The grim calm of battle-brothers falling into sudden silence.

  The choir of disaster.

  The Last Wall closed ranks. The company became a ceramite barrier. Bolter shells and
streams of flaming promethium slammed against the orks, exploding and incinerating flesh. At the northernmost tip of the Imperial advance, Koorland’s veterans held the ork infantry at bay.

  ‘They will not pass, Chapter Master,’ Eternity promised.

  ‘It is we who must pass,’ Koorland said. ‘Artillery,’ he voxed, ‘sustained fire to the north. All other forces, protect the artillery. We must advance!’ Their goal was almost in sight, beyond a few more ridges.

  But the upper slope was hidden by ceaseless explosions. The fury of the Imperial guns thinned the ork infantry. The small-arms fire coming from the heights diminished. But the salvoes of the ork cannons were unceasing. Greenskin heavy support from the east and west now bombarded the slopes.

  On the Imperial flanks, the ork infantry crashed against the Imperial forces. They broke the charge of the dragoons. Lumbering monsters in thick plate armour hurled their bulk against the legs of the Ironstriders. They toppled the steeds, then fell on the riders with power claws and killsaws, crushing metal, tearing flesh.

  Skitarii could still bleed.

  ‘Gunships,’ Koorland called, ‘we need those artillery placements taken out.’

  ‘We are attacking,’ Hemisphere replied. ‘Their anti-aircraft fire is much stronger than we supposed. Two Xiphon interceptors and a Thunderhawk already lost.’

  Koorland cursed. He marched forwards into the roiling flames. Overhead, eradicator beams lanced at the enemy as the Dunecrawlers manoeuvred through the Astra Militarum and skitarii infantry. The energy vanished into the maelstrom before him.

  The Last Wall’s line advanced. The battle-brothers on the flanks held back the rampage of the ork infantry. Faster than they died, the greenskins kept coming, wave after wave. They ran over their dead and stormed through the explosions. In the brute savagery of the charge, Koorland saw a dual threat. Beyond the sheer power of the massed attack, it was also the reason humanity underestimated the greenskins again and again. This way of war was barely beyond the animal. It was what he would have expected of a pack of saurians. There was no way these savages could be capable of complex strategy.