‘He is yours, Iron Father.’ Kjarvik turned into the sporadic fire still raining down from above. ‘Phareous, remain with the Sisters and cover us.’
‘As ordered.’
Kjarvik took position over the downed ork psyker. Despite its injuries it was very definitely conscious, but too occupied smashing its own forehead into the puddled flooring to notice him. Loose rounds from above spanked off his plate, but the fire was aimless and half-hearted.
Bohr lowered himself with a hydraulic wheeze and examined the raging maleficar’s armoured frame. The ork’s head was bigger than the Iron Father’s torso. Its leather strapping could have encased him and Kjarvik both and left room to move. He rammed a piston-enhanced fist into the side of the ork’s head for good measure, then began spooling a length of heavy-duty chain from a hopper clamped to his hip. He bent to the task. A slug hit off a flicking mechadendrite and blew out an articulation segment. ‘We need to move it now or it will drown.’
Kjarvik stood up and growled into his gorget vox. ‘Now.’
From the crowded levels above there came the squeal of metal being torn, a reverberating clang as of a square of bulkhead that had been ripped out of a wall crashing onto a companionway. The torrential whine of an assault cannon carved through the orks on the left-hand walkways like a cutting beam. From the right, a wave of fiery promethium hurled a pair of incinerated greenskins through the handrail, back from the huge, flame-lit bulk of a Dreadnought in Dark Angels green. It stamped through a ventilation grate and shredded an ork in its power fist.
The Dreadnoughts Maloch and Azazael had been inserted into the hive by drop pod once the orks’ attentions — including that of the witch — had been focused on Umbra. The Vlka Fenryka were savage when savagery was demanded, but nothing pleased them like the chance to secure a victory through cleverness.
Kjarvik looked left to where Azazael tore through the remaining orks, too hemmed in to escape. There would be no reasoning with the ancient one now. Not until every greenskin in reach was jelly under his feet. He turned to Maloch. ‘Get down here and lift. Azazael will clear our path to Penitent Wrath.’
‘You are a sly wolf, I will not deny,’ Phareous laughed.
‘We have won nothing yet,’ said Bohr. His augmetised voice was the material doppelganger to the Sister’s null-psychic chill. ‘Let us move. And pray that our brothers do as well.’
Valhalla — Kalinin, north
Check 3, 01:19:45
+++CHECK+++
+++VERIFIED+++
+++ TRANSLATIONAL DISCREPANCY CONFIRMED+++
+++18:59:02+++
Tulwei’s attack bike sped over over the pot-holed terrain. Combatants flashed through the snow and disappeared. Vehicle wrecks lay skewed on the ice, Chimera and Leman Russ hulks belching smoke. Valhallans in ice-world camouflage streamed in the opposite direction. Amplified, inhuman bellows set the snowfall to trembling. Tulwei gunned the accelerator and pulled ahead.
The approach to Kalinin had been contested for almost a year and the deep holes of Demolisher and Earthshaker shells were themselves riddled with mass-reactive craters and stubber casings. The vivid red bodywork of pursuing ork vehicles swept in and out of view. Buggies bounced over the devasted tundra, breaking, swerving, screeching through channels between the larger craters. Kill-Team Tigrus’ durable suspension and shock-responsive tyres tackled the terrain better than the orks’ overpowered machines ever could.
‘How could they have predicted our approach?’ yelled Sentar, pivoting the sidecar’s heavy bolter to maul an ork bike as though it were a ration can attacked with a fork.
‘I do not know.’ And then, voxed on the squad channel, ‘Keep to the coordinates that the general fed back.’
‘Where is the general?’
‘I lost his signal in the retreat. Keep to target,’ said Tulwei.
Vehuel’s gunner pivoted his heavy bolter until it was as close to directly backward as it could turn, and fired. A stream of accelerated rounds puffed up the ice and ripped through a mob of manoeuvring bikers. Snowmelt and bits of engine housing rattled down over the surrounding craters, not nearly enough to fill them. A truck packed with bawling ork warriors ploughed into the hole and flipped over. More vehicles veered around the obstacle and gunned the throttle. Scores of bikes, half a dozen troop trucks and half-tracks were just behind. The orks bellowed, mad with speed, firing wild with sidearms and mounted weaponry, pennons flapping madly from whipping flagpoles.
For all the machines’ technical failings, their raw acceleration was incredible.
‘Where is the psyker?’ Tulwei shouted, and swung a left between two particularly deep, thermically glassed impact craters. Grigorus zipped after him, then the Sisters of Silence in their sleek-bodied vehicles, and finally Abathar and Vehuel on bikes at the rear.
A dark smudge appeared under the snow ahead. It was at the point where the two craters were at their closest, practically touching, barely metres apart. It grew out of the ice as he raced towards it: a battlewagon, parked side-on to Tulwei’s approach and effectively blockading the pass. The orks piled into the back hooted and shot into the air as Tulwei yelled a curse and swerved.
His bike skidded on the ice. White snow, black truck, round and round. As he wrestled with his steering bars, he saw an armour-fronted ork gun ’copter rise up over the lip of one of the craters like the breaching topfin of a shark. Its gun mounts blazed. Shells chomped through the ice towards the snarled-up bike squadron, loud, slow, as though its underslung machine cannons were driven by a hand-crank that spat out rounds. The stream of fire carved through Grigorus and Abathar and slugged the ice on the other side before either of them had a chance to reverse. The lead Sister slammed into Grigorus’ back and died in a cartwheel of black and gold. The second had time to swerve, and sped away from the pile-up, bouncing and skidding as she brought her bike under control.
Tulwei turned into the spin and screeched out of it, gunning for the hovering ’copter just as a krak missile corkscrewed from a shoulder launcher carried by one of the orks in the battlewagon and disintegrated Vehuel’s machine. The Dark Angel tumbled into the ice.
Of the Sister of Silence there was no sign but a brake mark at the lip of the crater.
Firing up at the ork ’copter with his bolt pistol as it veered and began to climb away, he slowly reduced speed. He stopped, surveying the wreckage, aware of the ork fighters storming over the ice from their battlewagon. Ork bikes rumbled in from the other side in low gear.
A trap. They had known he was coming.
Without a word between them, Sentar opened fire on the bikes. Tulwei loosed rounds into the charging infantry.
Kalinin was going to fall. The Imperium could follow.
He could only hope that someone had succeeded where he had failed.
Six
Koorland’s armour was polished, perfect, garlanded with every honour and citation ever worn by a Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, so high a yellow that it sparkled under the wall-bracketed lumen bulbs like gold. If his predecessor, Cassus Mirhen, had ever encased himself in such ostentation then Koorland would have thought him ridiculous. No one laughed now. He was just himself beginning to realise that perhaps they were right not to. It had been Ullanor that had changed him, standing in Vulkan’s presence, hearing his words. The primarch had taught him the power of symbols.
Ironic, if that were not too light a word, that the Imperium’s darkest day since Isstvan should be the day on which Koorland, last of the Imperial Fists, finally understood his role.