He knocks one Word Bearer down, throwing him over the racing speeder. Then he hits another and catches him on the speeder’s plated fender, upper body spread across the nose, legs caught under the machine. A huge wake of sparks kicks out from the underside of the speeder as it carries the road kill along, abrading the heels and calves of the pinned Word Bearer’s heavy Mark III battle plate. There is a terrible noise of squealing and scraping. Ventanus can’t dislodge the man.
A wall collapses into the freight lane ahead of them, and a crimson Land Raider lumbers into the open, its hull tipping up and over the rubble of the demolished structure. It swings around, weapon mounts lining up.
Ventanus peels left. There’s no other practical. He rams the sheet metal wall of a warehouse unit and blows clean through it to escape the Land Raider’s hail of fire. The Word Bearer pinned to their front end takes the force of the impact. If he wasn’t dead already, he is now.
But so is the speeder. The impact has killed the drive reactor. It starts coughing and rasping, leaking smoke from its vents. The speeder coasts to a halt in the darkness of the warehouse.
Ventanus and Selaton dismount. Selaton has the autocannon and the last of the ammo hoppers. Ventanus gets the standard, and then pauses and goes back to prise the boltgun out of the dead grip of the Word Bearer now all but fused into the mangled nose. There’s very little of him intact from the waist down. There’s a smell of superheated metal, of friction, of cooked bone marrow.
The first of the Word Bearers force their way in through the gap the speeder created. Selaton rakes them, cutting two down and sewing more holes in the wall for the light to shine in.
His hopper is spent. He ditches the cannon and pulls his boltgun.
They start retreating across the jumbled floor space of the warehouse, trading shots with the Word Bearers who are breaching their way in through the gap. Bolter shells spit to and fro. Ventanus scores a hit, but he can’t be sure if it’s a clean kill. Sheer weight of numbers is stacked against them.
He keeps expecting a wall to cave in and the Land Raider to storm the barn, hunting for them. He can hear it outside, rumbling and revving.
Suddenly, there’s a staggering explosion outside. A brilliant light-flash pushes into the warehouse for a second, through every slit and bullet hole and window. The buildings shake, and whizzing pieces of superhot machine parts and plating debris punch through the wallskin.
Ventanus and Selaton pick themselves up. The Word Bearers who have forced entry after them are getting up too. They attempt to re-lock target finders on the fleeing Ultramarines, but they are bewildered. What was the blast? Did something just kill the Land Raider?
Searing plasma beams chop the gloom and slice them apart as they turn. The beams – scintillating green – fuse through and through blast holes in their armour and pop their helmets like balloons.
Ventanus and Selaton back into cover, weapons ready.
Lugging their powerful, close-quarter plasma blasters, skitarii of the Mechanicum flood into the building. Without compromise, they finish off any of the Word Bearers not cleanly killed.
There are dozens of the fearsome Mechanicum fighters.
‘Warriors of the XIII,’ one of them broadcasts in loudhailer mode. ‘Make yourself known to us. Hurry, time is against us.’
Ventanus gets up, raising the battered standard.
‘Remus Ventanus, 4th Company,’ he announces.
The skitarii commander comes to face him. He’s a big veteran, scarred and ugly, gaudy in his aposematistic wargear. One of the red eyeslits in his copper visor is flickering.
‘Arook Serotid, Skitarii Kalkas Cohort,’ he replies. His voice is slightly halting, as if he is not practised at talking. ‘We realised from the Word Bearers activity there had to be XIII strengths in the vicinity. Just the two of you?’
‘Yes. We thank you for your intervention.’
‘It will count as nothing if we remain here much longer, captain,’ replies Arook. ‘We have the firepower to assault a small squad, a vehicle or two. But power reserves are limited, and we cannot take on the mass of the enemy forces.’
‘Can you get us out of here?’ asks Ventanus.
‘We can get you to our senior magos,’ says Arook. ‘It is hoped we can begin to coordinate our resistance.’
Ventanus nods. The skitarii lead the way to the closest exit point.
Arook notes the standard that Ventanus is carrying.
‘That is bulky,’ he says. ‘There is no need to bring it.’
‘There really is,’ says Selaton.
She uses her fleshvoice.
‘I am Meer Edv Tawren,’ she says. ‘I hold the rank of magos. I am the acting Server of Instrumentation for Calth/Numinus.’
‘There doesn’t appear to be much left to instrument,’ says Ventanus.
‘True enough,’ replies Tawren. ‘This is a hateful day. Both of our institutions have lost grievously–’
‘The Imperium has lost grievously,’ says Ventanus. ‘Indeed, something more awful than that has occurred. For reasons I cannot even make a theoretical about, the Word Bearers have turned on us. They have unleashed open war on Calth, on the XIII, on the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, and on the Imperium of Mankind.’
She nods. She is tall and solemn. Her ceremonial robes of office are dirty and torn, and they are stiff with bloodstains. In the last few hours, someone has died while being cradled in her arms.
They are standing in a sub-ground cistern several hundred metres north of the main Numinus arterial. It is a dank cavern, a storm drain for the river system. Arook has suggested that the density of rockcrete above their heads can deter the detection systems the Word Bearers are using.
‘My direct superior is dead,’ says Tawren. ‘We escaped from the Watchtower at the time of the ship impact, but it was too late for him. Responsibility for command and coordination falls to me.’
‘What resources do you have?’ asks Ventanus.
‘I have a force of about three hundred skitarii, with portable weapons and some light support,’ she replies, ‘and that number is growing as we contact other survivor groups. We have no manifold capacity, no noosphere, and absolutely no operational control of the data-engines or the Veridian system weapons grid.’
‘None at all?’
She shakes her head.
‘This is due to scrapcode infection that immediately preceded the start of hostilities. We believe that the XVII Legion deliberately introduced a scrapcode plague into the Calth noospherics prior to attack in order to destabilise then cripple the Mechanicum’s capability.’
‘Since when does a Legion technologically outflank the Mechanicum, magos?’ Ventanus asks.
‘Since today, captain.’
‘So… this scrapcode, it was new to you?’
‘It was like nothing we had ever encountered before. Not just the coding language. The very basis of it. We are still not entirely sure what it is or how it operates.’
‘Further evidence that this was planned and orchestrated well in advance,’ says Selaton.
No one speaks. For a moment, the only sound is dirty water plinking down from the overflow chutes.
‘What is your intention at this point?’ Ventanus asks.
Tawren looks at him.
‘I will use every means at my disposal to regain control of the data-engines. To oust the enemy from our systems and retake the noosphere.’
‘The weapons grid would certainly be a considerable asset,’ says Ventanus. ‘Not to say a crucial one. I fear the XIII has been worse than decimated. I fear for the fleet too.’
‘We have very little in terms of accurate projections,’ says Arook, ‘but at least fifty per cent of the fleet assembly and the ground forces appear to be lost.’