‘They are vulnerable,’ said Valtar Skyclaw. The Space Wolf Rune Priest looked up at the horn. ‘The unclean energies here are on the cusp of overwhelming their material constraints. We will destroy this gate forever.’
‘Not until we claim its power source,’ Gadreel said.
‘Aye,’ Skyclaw admitted.
‘Where is Gladius?’ the Dark Angel Vehuel asked.
‘Nearly in position,’ Iairos said. Until the power was shut off temporarily, they could not attempt to splice into the main cable and link it to Gadreel’s teleport homer.
‘How long will it take to cut into that?’ asked Eligos, the second Blood Angel.
‘Not long,’ said Gadreel.
‘Attacking control centre,’ Thane called over the vox. ‘Stand by. Stand by.’
Time accelerated and slowed at once. With Thane’s call, the mission entered the narrow window of success. The timing of the actions required from all three squads came down to a matter of seconds. Sword and Crozius could not take their targets until the power flow was under the control of Gladius. Thane’s squad would not be able to hold their position if Crozius did not stop the reinforcements from arriving. Crozius could not risk destroying the gate without also destroying its teleport homer.
The allotment of seconds crawled as Iairos took in the variables of the battlefield. He saw the vectors of action and their possible consequences. He waited, forced to guess at the moment and duration of Thane’s success.
So many unknowns.
Theoreticaclass="underline" action must be predicated on the known skill of allies.
Practicaclass="underline" attack at the opportune moment based on the presumption of skill.
He gave Thane a few more precious seconds.
Then he leapt from the tunnel, leading Squad Crozius towards the main cable’s junction.
The moon’s power plant was the size of a city. The cavern was so huge that Koorland could not make out the far walls. Haas brought Sword to an entrance on the floor of the cave. Her sense of how the shafts worked had been accurate, and the squad had moved quickly. They had encountered a few groups, quickly despatched, of the dwarfish greenskins.
Now the Deathwatch was surrounded by generators larger than hab-blocks. They were hulking machines, squat despite their height. It was impossible to see more than a few hundred metres in any direction. The generators sat at all angles on the cavern floor. The paths running between them were wide, but never straight for more than a few dozen metres.
A tangled forest of cables ran between the generators. They trembled and convulsed with surges. Sparks flew from flawed junctions and haloes of lightning crackled down their lengths. The din was immense, a deep, continuous tremor that vibrated deep in Koorland’s chest. The sound was so thick, it tried to stop his hearing. The sharp snap of energy cut through the tremor with a searing arrhythmia. The cavern rumbled and shrieked with the roars of beasts and the hiss of serpents. It rang with the endless, grating choir of xenos industry.
‘There is the power of a small sun here,’ Simmias said as they paused at the entrance. ‘We cannot cut in blindly.’
‘And we come to steal this energy, not to destroy it,’ said Koorland.
In the flashing gloom, orks clambered up and down the generators. The energy production was so violent, every few moments Koorland saw an electrocuted greenskin tumble from the heights of the machines.
‘There are so many generators,’ Vepar said. ‘How can we let Gladius know which node to shut down for us?’
‘We take the nearest,’ Simmias said. ‘Damage it, but do not destroy it.’
Vepar turned to the Ultramarine. ‘That smacks of messy improvisation.’
‘There is no perfection in this situation,’ Simmias told him. ‘The practical is constructed from the necessary.’
‘Improvisation, in other words,’ Vepar said. Koorland thought there was a glint of amusement in his tone.
Thane’s declaration of war came through the vox. ‘We go now!’ Koorland shouted.
Squad Sword raced towards the nearest generator. The labouring orks saw the Space Marines and Haas and roared in surprise and rage. From the ground and from the scaffolding of the generators, they opened fire. The rain of bullets was disorganised. The aim was wild.
Hakon Icegrip took the lead of the charge, ripping through orks with frost blade and bolt pistol. He howled as he ran, the fury of his voice a terrifying, distorted rasp from his vox-casters, a monstrous cry at once animal and machine. The squealing orklings fled before him. Icegrip gave their masters no time to respond. He ploughed through an explosion of blood and flesh.
Haas was not far behind him. She sprinted from enemy to enemy, her shock maul at full power, its blows immobilising and burning the orks before she finished them with autopistol rounds to their skulls. She was shouting, but Koorland could make out no words. Her cries were a pure expression of vengeance and rage. She had returned to the moon to avenge a defeat, and to purge her nightmares of the billions dead.
Vepar moved in tandem with Koorland. The Blood Angel used his bolter, cutting down orks that tried to close in on the flanks of Icegrip and Haas. Vepar fired in precise short bursts. Every pull of the trigger counted. Where he looked, greenskin heads burst apart. There was a careful art to his kills, a restrained wrath channelled into a perfection of aim, as if something worse were held in check by the force of discipline. Hanniel and Simmias followed at a more measured pace. They were no less destructive, their bolter fire systematic.
The run from the tunnel to the generator covered hundreds of metres in a single, relentless burst of speed. As the squad approached the huge device, Simmias’ fire turned from the orks to the generator. He shot at the junction points on the near facade, blowing away cables. They fell, lashing back and forth. Hanniel reached out for the orks on the scaffolding. An eldritch storm bellowed over the generator, wher two lightnings entwined and fought, the warp against the materium. Orks screamed, incinerated by the warring forces, their corpses dropping, falling to ash before they reached the ground. The generator was enveloped in coruscating power.
The kill-team reached the base of the generator, tore through its defenders, then rounded a corner. Ahead was a cable twice Koorland’s height.
‘There,’ said Simmias. ‘That one.’
‘Thane,’ Koorland voxed. ‘We have our target. Do you see it? Shut it down!’
The ork engineers were ready for Gladius. Thane and Warfist burst across the threshold first. Three engineers faced them. They were large beasts, made even larger by the harnesses they wore. Power coils and portable generators rose from the greenskins’ shoulders and backs like the arcing spines of saurians. The air around them shimmered. Static broke out across Thane’s auto-senses as they reacted to an overload of energy. He had trouble focusing on the targets. Their image juddered, a cracking mosaic, and his lenses fought to stabilise. He paused and fired. His shells exploded on contact with the orks’ force fields.
Warfist snarled with frustration and rage. He hurled himself at the nearest engineer and the force field flared from the impact of the lightning claws, then collapsed with a deafening concussion. Warfist grappled with the ork. It struck him with a heavy tool that resembled a fusion of a shock maul and a plasma cutter. Electricity and flame washed over the Space Wolf’s armour.
The other two orks came at Thane with similar weapons. He maglocked his boltgun and raised his chainsword, throwing himself at the closest ork, using his mass and velocity against the barrier of the shield. He felt the resistance as an invisible force that pushed against him and stabbed through his armour and his body with powerful jolts. A vibrating numbness suffused his limbs. He pushed on, the chainsword sparking and shrieking. There was a blast, and his blade moved quickly again. He brought it down on the ork’s skull and cut it in half before it could hit him with its weapon.