Tomb World, page 23
Sinos has hardened herself to these decisions. Though, in truth, Sinos has had a lifetime of facing such choices. She is a marshal of the Lex Imperialis. Sacrifice in the name of order is her creed.
It has been through that creed that she has found her role and purpose. With Imperial morale growing threadbare, every commissar left on Orymous is deployed to the front line, leaving a void among the war’s command echelon.
Sinos stalks the bastion, a black-clad figure of menace to those around her. No quavering voice or trembling hand escapes her notice. She is the steel in their spines, and the blade in their backs should their resolve begin to fail.
They hate her for it. In the past five weeks there have been three attempts on her life. Two were plots to ambush her on the route between her quarters and the strategium, both foiled by her arbitrators. The other was a vox-operator driven beyond her endurance. She lunged at Sinos as she passed behind her, stylus gripped like a dagger. It broke against the breastplate of her armour. Sinos felt the woman’s sobs like the wound she had hoped to cause. The only mercy Sinos could offer was the blast of her bolt pistol, to spare her the indignity of a firing squad.
But she can endure this. Let them fear and hate her, if their fear and hate drive them to do their duty beyond what they might think possible.
Fear is all that the commanders of the Gerhemenst Bastion have left. For those who serve at the operational centre of the war, hope would have been a foolish indulgence. Battle lines are breaking as soon as they are formed. Civilians flee with nowhere to run. The twin horrors of hunger and the xenos’ utter relentlessness stalk the world, eroding all they touch.
Of the two, hunger is the more insidious. The troopers know their enemy now, and are no longer shocked by a skeletal form marching through a volley of las that would put down an ogryn. But they cannot outfight hunger, cannot conjure fresh las packs and battle-cannon shells through courage alone.
The Munitorum’s legion of adepts and drivers and loaders work without pause, emptying store after store of ration blocks, ammunition, spare parts of every description. Convoys of cargo-8 transports brave the long roads south to the regiments, always watching the skies for the crescent-shaped killers that every Imperial driver has learnt to fear. Fewer than half get through; the roads are littered with food and medicaments and all the materiel of war, along with the burnt carcasses of transport trucks.
Tales of extremis from the besieged cities have begun to reach the bastion, but Sinos has swiftly ensured that they go no further than the strategium. Her war, the war for morale, is no less fierce and desperate than those of clashing armies.
The projections are clear. Even if the strategic picture remains the same, if the battle lines remain static, the defending armies will be rendered combat-ineffective by lack of supply within two months.
Their only chance of survival is for resupply from off-world. But the void is lost. There are at least eighty transport ships and monitor ships that escaped the murder that rose from the ocean, but they hide at the edge of the system, fearful of the slender killer that hangs imperiously in orbit. It plays no active role in the ground war, though all assume that it is the seat of the xenos commander.
Sinos stands through the rest of General Ingvalen’s briefing, fighting the exhaustion that presses down upon her. She has taken to serving through the night, finding that the twilight hours are the greatest burden to the strategium’s operators.
Colonel Ylda waits for Ingvalen to finish, then places a hand on the briefing table. ‘General, may I once again offer–’
‘No, you may not.’
‘Sir–’
‘We have been over this, colonel. I am in accordance with the Mechanicus, and you will not change my mind. That is all, gentlemen.’ Ingvalen sweeps his papers from the table and leaves, followed more wearily by the rest of the war council.
‘Very well, sir,’ says Ylda, to himself.
In the first days of the war a faction of the Logis Strategos – led by Ylda – had argued for the deployment of the planet’s Deathstrike arsenal against the xenos craft. Ensconced within the depths of the Lysern Plateau, each missile is capable of touching any part of Orymous, and anywhere above it. The desire for wrath in the face of such overwhelming slaughter was paramount in those first days, and the xenos’ command craft was the obvious target for a revenge strike.
The deciding voice in the debate came from the Adeptus Mechanicus, who showed a surprising degree of defeatism when they stated that they were uncertain whether the missiles, among the gravest weapons the Imperium commands, would penetrate the arcane defences of the unnamed ship.
Instead they have been hoarded, a weapon of last resort held for a day that Sinos fears is approaching. In order to save Orymous, they may have to lay waste to it.
Sinos walks out of the briefing room, waiting for Arbitrator Murillen to come and relieve her. She stands at the room’s edge, fighting the urge to lean against the brass railing. The heat rising from each brass and chrome mechanism is fierce, adding to the soporific effect of a night spent watching for cowardice. Each operator and their machine is sunk below the level of the deck, permitting a forest of wires and cables to run beneath the gantries on which Sinos and the other officers walk.
She looks up at the wall-chronos, and feels the slight tremble as her attention wanders across their faces. She snaps back to her centre, and is about to walk when the operator directly beneath her leaps from his seat.
‘Major Gorka, we are receiving a vox-transmission from off-world!’
All heads turn towards him, his excitable cry carrying clearly across the chamber. Sinos’ hand drops to the grip of her pistol, wary as ever for the first signs of hysteria.
‘Origin?’ asks Gorka, officer of the watch this morning. He seems as calm as ever, but summons a runner with the flick of a hand. ‘Send for General Ingvalen.’
‘It identifies itself as the Blessed Vengeance. Lord, it claims to be a vessel of the Adeptus Astartes!’
Hope, the most treacherous of feelings, all but knocks the breath from Sinos’ chest.
She is closer than Gorka. Sinos drops into the pit and snatches the vox-horn from the operator’s hands. ‘This is Marshal Solome Sinos of the Adeptus Arbites. Identify yourself, in the Emperor’s name.’
There is a second’s delay as her message is hurled into space. The reply, when it comes, lands like a bolt of lightning.
‘This is Commander Trantor of the Deathwatch. Well met, marshal. We come to answer your call.’
CHAPTER 5
At their heart, all battles are the same. They are violence harnessed. The elementary hatred at the centre of all things directed and unleashed. Whether with spear and rock or particle cannon and gauss flayer, battle is the struggle for existence made manifest.
Thus, Khemet emerges from the portal of a monolith fully prepared for the sensory assault that greets her.
She strides from the portal’s light and into the maelstrom. Laser light strobes from the city’s walls, a thousand pinpricks each second. Gauss flayers reply, cratering stone and flensing flesh. Doomsday Arks race through the air, chased by the humans’ remaining aerial defences. Monoliths hurl lightning and thunder, reducing the cannons atop the curtain wall one by one.
The siege lines encircle the city, tens of thousands of warriors and Immortals trading fire with the defenders. There can be only one end to such an encounter, and Khemet is content to let it play out. She has not come for the humans.
Khemet sees her. She is impossible to miss.
Ahnuret is the centre of a vortex of destruction. She has placed herself on the wall, cutting a trail through its defenders. The horror of enmitic weapons leaves a welter of gore that paints the rampart with each shot.
Khemet kicks her anti-gravity pack into life, rising like an arrow from a bow. A half-hearted fusillade of las fire follows her, but Khemet ignores it, her living metal entirely proof against their paltry weapons.
She drops from the sky, staff drawn and held ready.
In the last moment, Ahnuret glances up. Her enmitic pistols vanish, and a wickedly curved sickle blade appears in her hand instead.
Khemet shatters the rockcrete with her landing and throws herself at the deathmark. The staff carves air as Ahnuret backs away.
‘I have come to end this.’
‘As you did before?’ Ahnuret swings, aiming for her hand, but Khemet lets it drop and the blade sails over her wrist.
‘Not again. I will not let you steal this from me. The Destroyer is the truth. To deny it is to deny our purpose in this galaxy.’
‘Our purpose is to rule, not eradicate.’
‘An absurd distinction.’
Khemet presses her attack, knowing that to give Ahnuret even a second’s respite will see her depart into her oubliette.
‘Are you truly so weak that you will give in to madness?’ Khemet attempts a different angle, but the deathmark throws the accusation back at her.
‘It is you who are weak, praetorian. Weak and fearful. You call me mad? You are flawed, a shadow of yourself. You have lost so much. Left behind in the Traveller’s prison, or else hidden beneath your pathetic insecurities.’
She lowers her weapon to deliver the gravest cut.
‘Would the Silent King even know you as you are now?’
Khemet punches the deathmark.
There is no elegance to it, no motion of ancient martial craft learnt in ages past. Khemet simply balls her metal fist and hammers it into Ahnuret’s skull, every fragment of her strength leaning into the strike.
Ahnuret topples, her senses fuzzed for a crucial moment. There is a dent in the necrodermis of her faceplate and Khemet pursues it, ferocious desire burning from her core to break that dent open. Khemet hammers the deathmark, her rod of covenant abandoned. Blow after blow rains down. The metal of Ahnuret’s skull deforms, cracks, breaks away.
Khemet stops, a fist raised, as she sees the inner workings of the deathmark’s skull.
She can destroy Ahnuret. Khemet has come close, though she will mend, as all necrons do. Khemet can destroy her, but that is not what she came here to do. She came here to save her, to help her vanquish the demon that plagues her.
Khemet clamps both hands to the sides of Ahnuret’s head, and with a surge of power casts the deathmark into oblivion.
While they fought, the battle has evolved around them. The humans are running. A gaping void has been torn in the curtain wall, and cohorts of Immortals are escorting monoliths into the city.
One more marker on the path to victory.
Khemet summons a Ghost Ark to bear Ahnuret away. She will recover, but in the confines of a stasis crypt until Khemet – not Kamoteph – judges she is ready for release.
She considers the rampart and its dead. For all that she judged Ahnuret, there are many Unclean left to defeat, and the catharsis of bloodshed is tempting. For once, Khemet yields to that temptation.
She is about to light her anti-gravity pack when Kamoteph’s unwelcome touch enters her mind.
‘If you are quite finished brawling like a common thug, a new factor has entered our war.’
CHAPTER 6
Coming aboard the Blessed Vengeance is a major military operation in its own right. No fewer than four decoy flights are launched, though there can be no disguising the intended destination of any of them. The Adeptus Astartes vessel has slid into orbit on the far side of Orymous from the xenos ship, though based on auspex logs of its first appearance it could round the planet in a matter of minutes.
In the event, the xenos have made no attempt to prevent the Imperial delegation from uniting with their saviours. Sinos has tried to consider what that means, but there is simply too much they do not know about their enemy to intuit anything of worth.
The lighter slowly drifts inside the open mouth of the strike cruiser and settles onto a designated square of the flight deck. It is evident which patch of metal is intended for them as it is surrounded by weaponry. A platoon of armsmen is waiting for them, along with a pair of Tarantula sentry guns, whose twinned heavy bolters track the lighter’s progress from the moment it passes through the atmospheric barrier.
Seven figures in the massive battle plate of the Adeptus Astartes form the most arresting element of their welcoming party.
‘They are suspicious of us,’ observes Hikaru.
‘They are right to be. We come from a tainted world.’ She has not forgotten the look in Verispexor Pyrch’s eyes as he lunged for her, or the tide of metal insects that he sent forth.
Sinos was given a seat aboard the lighter thanks to her initial contact with the Deathwatch. The rest are occupied by Dorienn Hikaru, the chief secretary to the new lord-militant of Orymous, and a limited retinue of robed strategos. Hikaru is sweating profusely. This is, as he has said six times since entering the lighter, his first encounter with the Emperor’s Angels.
‘Be clear, be direct.’ Sinos offers some final words of advice. ‘Accept that you will never shed your fear of them, and know that you will do your duty regardless.’
Hikaru gives her a worried nod in reply.
‘Do not exit your craft until ordered.’
The order comes from beyond the lighter’s hull, loud enough to be heard over the cycling engines.
They are not kept waiting long. ‘Permission is given to come aboard. Exit your craft slowly, and in the light of the Emperor of Mankind.’
A frigid blast of air rushes in as the hatch opens. Sinos is at the rear of the hold, and waits her turn with ill patience. It has been twenty years since she was last in the presence of a Space Marine, and it is an experience unlike any other. Once felt, the mixture of awe and, yes, stomach-curdling fear is not forgotten.
She finally steps out onto the flight deck, whose roof is at least a hundred yards above her. It is a cavernous space, occupying the majority of the forward quarter of the ship, or so she reckons from a brief glance as they approached.
The armsmen are professional, and clearly one word away from killing them all. Their hellguns are held low, but ready to rise in an instant. They are also entirely eclipsed by the warriors who stand between them.
Seven warriors. Seven warlords of the God-Emperor. Each one towers over Sinos, each a sculpted ideal of humanity’s form, perfected for war. Their armour is the black of the void, of absolute darkness, save for a single arm and hulking pauldron which is burnished silver and mounted with a complex death’s head icon.
Their other pauldrons each show a mixture of Adeptus Astartes heraldry, some of which she recognises from the childhood tales on which all Imperial children are raised, and others from her time in service to the Emperor’s Adeptus Arbites. Three wear a clenched red fist, including their leader, who stands ahead of his peers. Sinos knows the rampant beast of the Howling Griffons, worn by two others, and she would never mistake the Space Wolves’ snarling iconography.
The last wears a leering silver death mask, and chills Sinos to the bone. What little she can see of his face is heavily tattooed with black whorls, but a thick and complex hood rises from the collar of his armour and casts his face in shadow. A chain of human and alien skulls hangs from his waist, and more are attached to a metal staff as tall as the warrior himself.
Hikaru, like the rest of the delegation, has frozen in the sight of their saviours, none of whom wear their helmets, displaying faces that are scarred, brutal facsimiles of the human form. But he finds his voice, and steps forwards. ‘Watch Commander Trantor. Thank you for–’
‘Captain,’ the leading warrior interrupts him. ‘I command the Orthanik station, but my rank is watch captain.’
Hikaru mops his brow. ‘Watch captain, of course. I am Dorienn Hikaru. On behalf of Lord-Militant Locum Hemryn, I gratefully welcome you to Orymous. Thank you for allowing us aboard. We are all willing to consent to whatever tests you require in order to confirm we are free of xenos corruption.’
He says all this in a rush, fearing exactly what means the Adeptus Astartes would use to verify his claim. The insidious nature of the xenos threat had been explained over the vox prior to their launch.
‘If you were tainted, you would not have left your craft.’ Trantor does not expand on that, but the warrior with the skull-topped staff mysteriously inclines his head towards Hikaru.
‘Good, then.’ Hikaru forges on. ‘You come in the hour of our direst need. We humbly–’
‘Time is short. Let us speak of your need.’ Trantor’s voice is a deep bass rumble, rising out of a chest that is almost broader than Sinos’ arm span. ‘What is the disposition of the enemy?’
Hikaru holds out a dataslate. ‘This is a complete exload of our tactical situation, and our wider logistical position.’
Trantor takes the tablet, but does not look at its contents. ‘How would you describe the status of your world?’
Hikaru finally loses his nerve. At the last, he is unable to give voice to the state of his home.
‘Nearing collapse,’ says Sinos. ‘The sabotage of the planet’s food supply has crippled combat efficiency. The Imperial Guard fight like heroes, but there is only so far mortal strength can be tested.’
Trantor looks at her for the first time. ‘Thank you, marshal.’
‘The enemy are highly resilient,’ says Hikaru, again finding his voice. ‘We have compiled all we have observed of them and their tactics. We have had no communication with them, and attempts at capture and interrogation have proven… unsuccessful. In truth, we do not even know what to name them.’
