Concentrated fire drove Thane back into cover. They were not aiming at him, of course. He was one Space Marine sheltering behind a wreck, and a Fist Exemplar, indistinguishable in undecorated ceramite from any battle-brother under his command.
Sparks rattled across the glacis plate of the drab grey Predator tank that rolled over the tangled rubble at walking speed, keeping step with the combat squad of Fists Exemplar advancing under the cover of its guns. A blast of its twin-linked lascannons slagged a high-sided armoured truck. Return fire cost it its left sponson and a turret antennae cluster. It growled to a stop, the Space Marines taking up positions around its bulk and laying down fire. Thane recognised Kahagnis, Abbas, Agrippus and his autocannon, Thamarius and Xeres. Brother-Apothecary Antonius of the Excoriators knelt by the Predator’s ruined gun, narthecium buried in the neck of fallen Sardonis, a plasma burn where an arm and a large part of a chest should have been.
Thane pulled himself in behind the body of the Knight, taking advantage of the cover to pull his mistreated bolter to his chest, eject the sickle magazine and slam in a fresh one with a red strip along the base to indicate that it contained armour-piercing vengeance rounds. He could feel the ding of bullets striking the far side of his cover. He could hear the rumble of engines, getting louder.
He stepped out of cover, side-on, bolter swinging upwards in one smooth motion in time with the flashed appearance of that overloaded half-track. He prepared to fire, but before he could rake the speeding vehicle’s flank with bolts he felt a hot downwash of air, like a fiery hand pressing down from above, and the half-track drove into a wall of heavy weapons fire. Quad-linked heavy bolters tracked back and forth, shredding the vehicle like paper. Thane dropped to one knee and turned his head away as a quartet of hellstrike missiles dropped from the black-painted Thunderhawk’s underwing hardpoints, flared, and then whistled through the vehicle formation, sending metal plates and smouldering remains billowing skyward.
Ground dust blew out from the lowering Thunderhawk in ripples, tied to the cycling of its engine fans. It hovered above the height of its landing struts and dropped its doors, squads of Inquisitorial storm troopers in glossy black carapace and visors tramping down the assault ramp and into a covering posture around the gunship. Thane saw another blunt wedge of black armour thunder overhead, strafing the ground with heavy bolters and turbolasers, with flak from wall-mounted air defences lighting up its aerofoil.
His vox-bead gave a long, power-boosted whine and the orkish voices receded. ‘Lord Thane,’ said a female voice. ‘This is Wienand. Are you hearing me now?’
‘I hear you!’ Thane ducked back into cover as a third gunship powered in low, spraying dust and gravel. He did not ask what the inquisitor was doing here when she had been directly instructed to remain behind the lines. She had followed her own counsel as any Fist Exemplar would have. ‘I did not realise we had any kill-teams still airborne.’
‘We have some remarkable pilots.’
‘The Beast is near, inquisitor. He is directing the defences himself, probably on short-range comms. Do you think your pilots are good enough to get us over the walls?’
The line went quiet a moment, presumably while the inquisitor conferred with her squad. It crackled back to full, static force.
‘Lord Atherias tells me that he’s excited to try.’
Sixteen
The cartolith still floated on Koorland’s helm display. The icon representing his present coordinates was a heartbleed of gold, nine-tenths of the way down a zig-zagging stair that had multiplied the descent by a factor of twenty or more. Ork design. Two hours and they were still to breach the throne room. But they were close. A doubled stream of mass-reactive shells burned from his storm bolter, ripped open the drab blue and black chest-plate of an ork twice his weight in muscle, and strobed monstrous horned shadows along the walls. Dark gore splattered Koorland’s lenses. In tri-d, it was as though the palace schematic ran with blood.
‘One more turn and we are there,’ he called out to the kill-team and the others, his breathing remaining slow and deep even after two hours of intense hand-to-hand combat.
Blocks of screed and infographics reporting on his armour’s combat systems made fluid passes across his faceplate, kept in constant motion by the targeting reticules that pushed them aside to keep his vision uncluttered.
Battery reserves low. Ammunition nearly depleted. Armour compromised. No matter.
They were almost there.
Bohemond was already at the turn of the stair, surrounded by hulking orks that hacked at him with chainaxes and powered maces: fend, fend, strike, and push forward, nigh-invincibility allied to earth-shattering moments of power, the timeless fighting style of the Cataphractii.
Tyris was just behind, firing muffled rounds of stalker-variant ammunition into the densely packed mob. Gadreel and Icegrip fought hand-to-hand, servo-arm and frost blade, smiting and hacking. The Ultramarines Simmias and Straton, replacements for Numines and Vega, fallen on Incus Maximal, were a step behind, firing from the chest.
Brokk had an ork by the throat, ten centimetres off the ground and turning blue. His bicep was a swollen mass of veins and anger, faced creased by gun shadow, caught in a rictus of hatred for the alien. Olug’s ripper gun brought thunder into the confined space, spraying out bullets until the robust weapon clicked empty. The maddened ogryn took the gun two-handed and clubbed the closest ork to the ground with it. In his fury, Koorland saw the common thread that ran through every member of his squad: man, woman, abhuman, Space Marine.
One Emperor. One Imperium. One mankind.
‘Could you please avoid killing so many,’ said Laurentis, modulating his voice to a whining pitch that ogryns and bolter fire could not reach. ‘The weapon requires live Veridi to serve as detonators.’
Krule rolled his eyes, artfully massaging the selector of a palm-sized executor pistoclass="underline" bolt-rounds shattered the weak joints between armour plates, needle killshots punctured dense green hide.
‘There are plenty more, magos,’ said Koorland.
Asger’s panting chuckle returned through the shared feed, along with the crack of lightning.
‘Take the stairs!’ Koorland bellowed, punching his sword’s blued edge through an ork’s chest-plate and forcing another step towards Bohemond and the others before more orks stepped up to stop him. He snarled.
Spotting the shift in his tactical display, Koorland glanced left as Kavalanera broke from the rest of her sisters. The women fought in uncanny unison to defend the bound ork psyker. The servitors dragging it along between them were mammoth but ill-suited to combat, though more than a few stray shots bound for the ork psyker smacked into vat-grown, plasteel-reinforced flesh. Drevina and the other Sisters adapted their blade routines to Kavalanera’s absence smoothly. The knight abyssal veered towards the handrail on the left-hand side of the stair and vaulted over it.
Koorland saw the parchment strips affixed to her armour flutter up as she dropped onto the orks charging up the stairs. Her power blade lashed out in perfect figures of eight, hacking orks limb from limb as they ran at her or past. Every part of her body moved with the minimum of effort and the maximum of effect: grace, poise, a ballet of slaughter performed in absolute quiet but for the howls of dismembered orks. Unnerved by their own brutish sense of the pariah in their midst, the orks began to waver.