Engines of War (3 page)

Arkelius had no idea what his gunner was talking about. He had been tuning out his crewmates’ voices, lost in his own thoughts.

Corbin filled him in, ‘Orath. It’s an agri planet, a breadbasket world, with no real strategic value. We wondered what the Death Guard could possibly want with it.’

Arkelius’s only answer was a noncommittal grunt.

‘We also wondered,’ said Iunus, ‘since the crops down there and the farmers too are dead anyway, and contaminated–’

‘–then why send us in at all?’ Corbin concluded. ‘What does the Imperium have to gain from a ground assault at this point? Why not just fire off a salvo of rockets from orbit, or blast the whole world to ashes? Stop the rot from spreading further?’

‘Unless,’ said Iunus, ‘perhaps there’s something about Orath, about this “breadbasket world”, that we don’t know?’

‘The captain doesn’t have to explain his decisions to you,’ Arkelius growled.

‘No, sergeant,’ agreed Corbin. ‘Of course he doesn’t.’

He fell silent then – Iunus too – and Arkelius was left to his own thoughts again.

The fact was that he couldn’t have told them anything if he had wanted to. He had put the same questions to Galenus himself earlier – and received the same curt answer. Whatever Orath’s secret was – because Arkelius, like Corbin and Iunus, was certain it must have one – it was considered too sensitive for his ears.

A new voice crackled over the
Scourge
’s frequency: their Thunderhawk pilot. He advised the Hunter’s tank commander and crew that – at last – he was putting them down. Arkelius acknowledged him gratefully, and told Corbin to restart the engine. For the second time, he realised that his driver had pre-empted his order.

Runes blazed into life on the control banks around Arkelius, bathing him in a muted glow. He held onto his seat as the Thunderhawk decelerated sharply. A moment later, the
Scourge of the Skies
’s chassis let out a groan of relief as the clamping arms released it.

It fell the last few metres to Orath’s surface, and landed with a violent jolt.

Raising his head, Arkelius peered through one of the vision slits above him. He saw more Thunderhawks, swooping down around his tank like giant metal birds. They laid their equally giant metal eggs, then shot away into the overcast sky.

He couldn’t see much else, so he turned to his tactical displays for information. They had put down in a field, thirty kilometres to the north-west of their objective: Fort Kerberos, one of Orath’s former listening posts, now the Death Guard’s base of operations.

Arkelius instructed Corbin to release the brakes and step on the accelerator pedal. The Hunter’s tracks spun for almost a second before finding traction in the ashy ground.

Then, the
Scourge of the Skies
surged forwards. It smashed its way through blackened, wilting sorghum sheaves that grew almost as high as Arkelius’s main vision slit and crushed them into pulp beneath its armoured-metal weight.

A new voice came over the vox-net: Captain Numitor of the Eighth Reserve Company. He instructed the Ultramarines artillery to form up into an arc, with their most powerful units – like the Hunters, the
Scourge
and the Stalkers – towards the rear.

Eyes on his displays, Arkelius voxed directions to Corbin. The driver brought the
Scourge
around and manoeuvred it into position, on the right-hand flank of the most impressive array of artillery that Arkelius had ever seen: at least twenty tanks, by his count. They were flanked by a Predator Destructor ahead of them and a Stalker behind.

In the field in front of the tanks, two hundred Space Marines were forming up too. They were loading up their bolters, performing litanies of accuracy and hatred over each shell. Arkelius felt a fleeting pang of jealousy, wishing he was out there with them.

Behind him, Iunus was preparing the
Scourge
’s weaponry.

The next voice they heard was Galenus’s, voxing from the orbiting
Quintillus
. He reminded his brothers of their mission: to retake the captured fort, despite the fact that – according to the battle-barge’s scans – the Death Guard had reduced it to a ruin. Arkelius could guess what his two crewmates would make of that.

The captain then gave way to the company Chaplain, who bestowed the blessings of the Emperor upon the assembled force. Then, at last, Captain Numitor gave the order that Arkelius had been waiting for, and which he immediately relayed to his eager driver.

‘Artillery – advance!’

Galenus strode brusquely into the
Quintillus
’s strategium.

His senior staff were waiting for him around its U-shaped table, as was Captain Mikael Fabian of the Third Company, flanked by his own entourage. Numitor of the Eighth was already down on Orath, of course, but he too was represented by several aides.

Terserus stood quietly in one corner, but dominated the room all the same. Galenus liked to have him present at these meetings – after all, he was the Fifth Company’s most venerable and experienced member. He valued his wisdom.

Terserus had led Galenus’s first squad as a fully-fledged battle-brother. Galenus had often said that everything he knew, Sergeant Terserus had taught him. Three-quarters of a century ago, he had tried to overrun an enemy tank. In the process, he had been struck point-blank in the chest by its autocannon and blasted to shreds.

He had refused to die – he had always been stubborn, even by Space Marine standards – though his body had been beyond saving. His remains – some would say his very soul – had been interred in Dreadnought armour, so that he could continue to serve.

Galenus took his place at the top of the table – at the apex of the U’s curve – but didn’t sit down. He rested his fists on the table instead.

He studied the hovering tactical hololith that almost filled the space between the table’s arms. It showed him nothing that he hadn’t already known. His army had set down to the north-west of Fort Kerberos and begun their march towards it.

‘This is what we know,’ said Galenus. ‘Two ancient eldar artefacts were found beneath the surface of Orath. We call them – Librarian Appius Vabion called them – the Great Seals. He believed that the Seals secure a warp rift of unknown magnitude. Their purpose is to hold that rift at bay. What we don’t know…’

He straightened up and pursed his thin lips. ‘What we don’t know, frankly, could fill tomes. Even Vabion, who devoted his life to the study of the Great Seals – even he confessed to me, in his final report before he died, that he had hardly begun to unpick their secrets.

‘What we can deduce is that the Great Seals were fashioned for a purpose. What we suspect – what we fear – is that the Orath rift… It could be big. A second Eye of Terror, perhaps.’

Several human aides shuddered at the very sound of those words, and traced the sign of the Imperial aquila across their chests.

‘We suspect that, were the Great Seals to be destroyed…’

‘But hasn’t one of them been destroyed already?’ Captain Fabian spoke up.

‘Another thing we don’t know,’ Galenus conceded. ‘Two listening posts were constructed on this world, two centuries ago. Fort Kerberos. Fort Garm. Their purpose – their primary purpose – was to justify the presence of an Imperial garrison on Orath. The men stationed there were never told what they were really guarding. For two hundred years, the Great Seals remained hidden underneath those forts – until now. Now, clearly, the secret is out.

‘Two days ago, a Death Guard army attacked Fort Kerberos.

‘They reached the Great Seal underneath it and attempted to destroy it. However, according to the latest information we have, they were unsuccessful. A shard of the Great Seal remained intact. The current Orath garrison – two Doom Eagles squads – were all but wiped out. But the enemy paid dearly for their victory.

‘Their leader, their Plague Champion, was slain and Fort Kerberos collapsed. The Great Seal – what remains of it, if anything at all remains – was buried.’

‘But the rift–’ protested Fabian.

Galenus nodded. ‘The warp rift, as doubtless you have seen, has already opened. Or perhaps it has only just begun to open. Again, we don’t know. We do know – from our orbital scans – that the Death Guard are busy excavating the Fort Kerberos site.’

‘What about Fort Garm?’ asked Fabian.

A tall, armoured figure stood in the shadows behind him. He stepped forward now and requested permission to speak, which Galenus granted. The figure wore the horned-skull symbol of the Librarium on his right shoulder and the rank insignia of an epistolary was stitched into his blue and yellow robe.

‘Librarian Vabion believed,’ he said quietly, ‘that the Great Seals worked in concert. It could be that, with either one of them destroyed, the other would simply break too. The full force of the rift would be unleashed.’

‘Or it could be, Emperor willing,’ Galenus added, ‘that the Death Guard don’t know about the Fort Garm Seal – in which case, it would be folly for us to draw their attention to it. For the present, we can only assume the worst.

‘We must assume that the Kerberos Seal remains partially intact, and that, to some extent at least, it still holds the rift in check. That the Death Guard intend to destroy it and have the means, and that the results of their so doing would be…’

He paused to suck in air between his teeth before he uttered the word, ‘Apocalyptic’.

Another voice spoke, then: a rumbling, augmented voice, a little slurred but ringing with confidence and authority. ‘Our enemies want whatever lies beneath Fort Kerberos,’ said Terserus. ‘Our sacred duty is to keep it from them.’

Nobody argued with him. The Dreadnought armour that Terserus wore – that he had earned – commanded the utmost respect and even reverence of all those present.

‘An atomic strike was considered and ruled out,’ Galenus explained. ‘We can’t take the risk of further damaging either of the Seals. That has left us with only one option. As Brother Terserus says, we have to hit the Death Guard hard and hit them fast. We have to rout them and ensure they don’t return – else, God-Emperor knows exactly what they might unleash.’

The captain’s steel-grey eyes had been darting between the various members of his audience and the tactical hololith between them. As new information had come in from his pilots in the field, the display had been remotely updated.

‘And with that, gentlemen,’ he announced, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders, ‘you know exactly as much as I do. Any questions?’

If there were, Galenus didn’t wait to hear them. He was already halfway to the door and nodded to Terserus, who followed him. His lurching footsteps shook the metal deck plates, and a couple of aides were forced to sidle out of his path.

‘Captain Fabian,’ Galenus rapped over his shoulder. ‘I want you to remain aboard the
Quintillus
and coordinate our efforts from here. I want to know if anything comes out of that warp rift – or of any indication that it may be increasing in size.’

Fabian pushed himself to his feet. ‘You’re going down to the planet?’

‘Hit them fast,’ Galenus reminded him, pausing in the doorway. ‘So far, our tactics are working. The bulk of the enemy forces have been drawn out from the fort site to meet our army, but not all of them. I kept two squads in reserve – one of them my own – and a Thunderhawk, for precisely this purpose.

‘I – we – will put down as far behind enemy lines as we can. We may be outnumbered, but our aim is simply to keep the Death Guard busy, too busy to dig for the Great Seal – until our battle-brothers can break through their defences and stop them permanently.’

Chelaki felt sick. He told himself that the mere sight of the rancid followers of Nurgle had soured his stomach, but he knew that wasn’t the truth.

He had reached the small rise beyond the field in which he had crash-landed. He lay flat on its leeward slope and peered cautiously over its crest.

He saw huge metal machines picking through the wreckage of Fort Kerberos. He recognised some of them as agricultural vehicles, once used by Orath’s farmers. He saw a couple of old Imperial Rhinos too. They had been defaced by blasphemous symbols and had dozer-blades fitted to their front ends.

In between the machines, he saw hunched, shambling figures, wielding shovels and pickaxes. Filthy, ragged clothing hung from their bodies; diseased skin was peeling from their bones. Their eyes, their expressions, were vacant; they tackled their labours lethargically, like failing automata, only going through the motions.

He realised what the shambling creatures were: the former farmers of Orath, along with their wives and children. Their bodies and minds had been ravaged by disease. They looked as if they should be dead, and perhaps they were.

Was this the fate that awaited him too, he wondered?

The creatures – the zombies – worked under the direction of a force of Death Guard. Plague Marines. Their armoured suits were neglected, rusted to the point where it seemed impossible that they could still function, although they did. Their original colours were long lost in a murky morass of greens and browns.

One of their number seemed to stand above the others. His armour had a greater number of adornments – presumably, his sick idea of battle honours – including a belt of human skulls slung low about his hips. His head was uncovered and looked hardly more healthy than the dead, rotting skulls did. He was missing an eye and a nose; fat, wriggling maggots had infested the empty sockets. Occasionally, a maggot would pop out of its crowded nest, bounce off its host’s chestplate and burst as it hit the ground.

Chelaki trained his auto-senses on the ghoulish figure. According to his range finder, he was half a kilometre away. Too far for a kill shot to that tempting bare head, even if he had a working bolter with him. And, with the zombies and the Plague Marines in between them, he knew he would never reach him.

He could still see dark, flying shapes through the ever-present haze, further from him now than they had been before. He glimpsed a pair of shapes larger than the others with jagged, razor-edged wings, leaving smoke trails, and he remembered the machine-creature – the fire-belching daemon engine – that had wrenched him out of the sky.