He suspected that the ork was less interested in him than the trio of gold-armoured women beside him.
Urquidex was accustomed to the company of emotionless beings, but something about the warrior women chilled him. It was deeper even than the unease he felt in the presence of a mind-wiped servitor. It was visceral, basic; an aversion to something alien that was recognised directly by the soul rather than filtered by imperfect organic senses.
‘Can you tranquillise it again?’ said Rothi.
Urquidex nodded.
‘Remain harnessed, magos,’ said Tyris.
‘Crossing thermosphere,’ said Gadreel, the Techmarine’s voice coming through the internal vox.
‘Armour up,’ said Rothi. ‘Helms on. And check seals. It’s a cold world down there.’
Incus Maximal — orbital
Check 5, 2017:55:31
‘All drop-ships away, all gunships landed and redeploying to engage targets. Lord Issachar signals limited resistance thus far.’
Shipmaster Weylon Kale walked the gangway from strategium to command throne under the choral backing of cherubiam serfs of the Fists Exemplar Librarius. Koorland grunted acknowledgement. The tac-screens and data-displays showed the same information.
‘Ork vessels?’
‘Engaged or destroyed, lord.’
‘No sign of anything breaking away?’
‘Navy and Basilikon Astra have the Mandeville point under blockade.’
Koorland reformatted the data-display at his armrest to call up a bi-dimensional gridchart of the planet’s orbital band. Thirty to forty green icons represented ork ships. They were construction vessels and bulk haulers rather than true warships, though all were armed to some capacity and making a fight of it. At slightly under a quarter of the numbers, Space Marine and Inquisition ships were represented in Chapter colours and black respectively. They were true warships, and green icons disappeared fast.
Also in green, but larger, were the planet’s orbital facilities. The handful of weapons platforms that had been in orbit no longer had the power output or the mass to return an auspex signal. The installations currently showing up on Alcazar Remembered’s screens were dry docks, assembly yards and fuel depots, low-priority targets that the flotilla had ignored while green icons still crowded the board.
At Koorland’s swiped command, the image on the main oculus altered to one from a starboard viewer. It showed a tangle of aerials and macro-turrets, blanched with void frost, and, through it, one of the orbital shipyards. It was crescent-shaped, one face tidally locked to the planet and the other bristling with empty slipways. The ‘skull’ section of an Opus Machina had been crudely redone in green. Bulky weapon retrofits spewed macro-ordnance. The fire appeared to be manually targeted, much of it sprayed hopefully into space. Impacts flared violet and indigo from the forward shields of the Blood Angels cruiser that manoeuvred alongside. A full broadside from the Space Marine vessel blasted several hundred metres from the shipyard’s void-facing side and sent explosions rocking through the rest. The cruiser fired reverse thrusters, gunners reloading for a second volley. A much-reduced volume of fire blistered her shields.
‘Launch a shuttle with a message for the Sanguine to break off her attack.’ The blanket denial broadcast that all fleet elements were transmitting made direct ship-to-ship or ship-to-ground communication impossible. ‘Remind all captains and shipmasters, static facilities are to be disabled only. Dispatch Terminator squads to take recordings, but their orders are not to engage.’
‘And how do you propose they do that?’ said Thane.
The Chapter Master was lit up by the pale glow of the command deck’s vox-turret. He had no specific purpose here. Kale controlled the ship, Issachar the fleet and ground forces, Koorland himself had strategic command. For want of anything better to do, Thane monitored the hardline comm-booths for updates from their planetside forces, and coordinated with the shipmasters of Bulwark and Faceless Warrior.
Koorland put his brother’s uncharacteristic attitude down to frustration, and perhaps a little wounded Chapter honour. Most of the Fists Exemplar First Company and all of their Tactical Dreadnought suits had been lost with Dantalion. Out of respect for his and his Chapter’s losses, Koorland chose to let it lie.
‘Have Asger mobilise the necessary squads. And remind him that he is not to deploy in person.’ The reminder was necessary. Koorland knew where he would rather be had his position not prohibited it. ‘I want him monitoring the feeds from those facilities.’
‘I will remind him, lord.’
Koorland thought he detected some satisfaction in his brother’s voice. Nothing ameliorated a sense of frustration like spreading it around. Teleportation signals lit up the tactical displays, energy usage spiking on several Inquisitorial ships. He tapped impatiently at the snowy data-display.
‘And have one of our low-flying craft relay a message to Issachar. Tell him the weapon is inbound. He needs to draw the orks into the target area and quickly if we are to have a worthwhile test.’
Incus Maximal — Hyboriax Cryoforge
Check 5, 2018:09:01
Issachar could not see the orks yet. The landing zone was surrounded by bronzed manufactorum walls and by the ice-capped pylons through which ran a sky-blackening net of power lines. Cog Mechanicus icons re-cut with tusks, box chins, glowering eyes, and beret-style caps glared down from towering basilicae. A ranting xenos voice blasted out from augmitters set up amongst the buildings. The roadway hissed under an acid snow that tumbled through mechanised guttering, spraying out of corroded effluent pipes in kilometre-high glitterfalls that disappeared through successively narrower-spectrum rainbows to the unseen sump-layer below.
The local topography was of immense containers that had been broken open and scattered, ordnance potholes from the initial invasion that the orks had not bothered to fill. Yawing cranes swung in the jetwash of overflying gunships. The headlamps of three-score rumbling vehicles lit the ground in harsh white streaks, the periodic wash of electricity through the lines temporarily inverting light and shade.
Issachar could not see the orks. Not yet. But he could hear them.
Gunfire rattled far away. The crump of rockets. Bikes and buggies growled through the surrounding districts. He could even hear the orks themselves, and not the cracked voice being pumped through the augmitters. The forward squads were already engaged, just on the far side of those manufactorum walls.
‘Orders from Alcazar Remembered, brother-captain.’
Brother Orgos of the First approached over the debris-strewn roadway. His armour was rad-pitted. The vox-antennae of his high-powered pack array twanged with countervailing winds, the occasional snap of voltage leaping towards the overhead cables. ‘Koorland demands we engage with all haste.’
Issachar laughed. ‘Tell him that it would be my pleasure.’
Armoured fist squadrons of the Astra Militarum, the merged veterans of the Ullanor invasion, and Inquisitorial storm troopers shivered in column to the front, tracks and armour frosted with a yellow-brown ice of sulphates, fluorates and hydrochlorates. Demolisher siege tanks and Hellhounds grumbled at the head of each column. Fully-enclosed Sentinels with armoured canopies strode the flanks, overwatch provided by heavy weapon teams ensconced behind shockboard barricades set up on top of the crumpled superheavy crates. With a sequential whoosh of castellan guided missiles, Whirlwinds loosed. The missiles twirled and parted and spun together, the incendiary barrage crumbling an effluviam stack several kilometres due north.