Empire of Lies, page 30
But they would learn it this day.
Sha’vastos strode from the mouth of a side alley choked with ork corpses, his own flamer adding to the intensity. Bravestorm grabbed a charging ork war leader with his onager gauntlet, twisting hard at the waist to fling it into the second storey of a ruin some fifteen metres to the south. Brightsword swept his fusion blasters sidelong, the twin beams scything around at neck and groin height in a wide circle that stopped short of Bravestorm by only a finger’s length. Seven orks fell dead, bisected into cauterised lumps of flesh.
Then, all of a sudden, there were no more greenskins within the perimeter.
‘Keep fire intensity on the dais,’ said Farsight from his vantage point some fifty metres above the zone. The disc-portal called to him, demanding his attention. He felt his head throb, threatening to split.
••• RISK OF CARDIAC FAILURE CRITICAL ••• read the medsuite. ••• DISENGAGE AND SEEK EARTH CASTE SUPPORT IMMEDIATELY •••
He pushed the pain to one side. ‘Coldstar, trim all hex images to ensure the portal is not shown, retain maximum information otherwise.’
‘Affirmative.’
Without the unnatural light of the portal to distract him, Farsight found some of his old focus returning. His tactic was beginning to work. The influx of the crimson Molochites, bolstered by a near-constant flow of reinforcements from the Great Star Dais, was thinning.
‘Intensify scouring,’ he said, relishing the words.
His Crisis teams had moved into their optimal places now, their fire warrior comrades keeping the lesser Molochites from interrupting their purges. The disc shimmered bright as flames leaped to meet it, but no more of the Molochites were appearing, and more died with every microdec. Where the bladesmen came forward in their rushing, screaming attacks, the Crisis suits bounded out of harm’s way, their burst cannons taking the creatures’ legs as soon as they left the perimeter that Farsight had outlined on their own command suites. A great howl of frustration and rage went up from the crimson aliens – denied the blood they craved, they were robbed of sustenance and reinforcement in one fell swoop.
A hex flashed on Farsight’s command suite; La’rua Qutan had recovered a hexagram amulet, and the team was sending it towards him. Their gun drone skimmed into view at speed, the medallion double-looped over its jutting pulse rifles.
‘Unorthodox method,’ he said.
‘Nothing about this engagement is orthodox,’ replied Shas’ui Qutan, sending the sign of the Opportune Strike.
‘True enough,’ he said. ‘Coldstar, release my sword.’
‘Done,’ said Coldstar, the magnetic field dispersing. Farsight took the relic blade’s hilt as it dropped and used its tip to untangle the third amulet from the drone’s rifle barrels. Despite the sword being weighted strangely, such a feat of dexterity came easily to him. It felt as if he had used the weapon for many kai’rotaa already..
‘Do you intend to use these antithetical symbols to drive back the Molochite attack?’ asked Coldstar.
‘No. I intend to halt it altogether.’
One of the massive, feathered creatures that Farsight took to be a Molochite commander gave a piercing cry, half a madman’s scream, half an eagle’s hunting call. As one, the blade-winged rays that swooped above the battle changed course, making for Farsight and the Crisis suits around the portal that still shone bright in the midpoint of the city. The monstrosities converged upon their position, casting great sheets of blue flame from their staves and forcing back the breacher teams that were holding off their foot-soldiers in tight, overlapping firing lines. Through the fires the pink-skinned Molochites danced, cartwheeling and leaping across fallen masonry, slowed not at all by the flames of Bravestorm, Brightsword and their fellow Crisis suits.
United in a single assault, the Molochites had numbers enough to swamp their position twice over. Fire-teams sent missiles and plasma bolts into the horde, blasting great craters in their advance, but there was no breaking them.
‘Concentrate fire on the bladesmen and the cavalry,’ said Farsight. ‘If fire cannot harm them, they will swiftly encircle us.’
Brightsword’s crossed blades appeared as a minor command hex, flipping to reveal his youthful features. ‘A warning, armless one,’ he said, sliding an informational across the cadrenet. ‘Enemy war leaders on vertical attack vector.’
‘Corroborated,’ said Coldstar, her tone urgent. Farsight punched up a red-bordered hex to see three of the muscular red giants he had fought before, one missing a hand and with gore still spurting from its stump. They were diving vertically from the clouds, axes raised and wings furled as they hurtled towards him. Three sets of red eyes, and glinting in them all was the desire to see him brutally slain.
‘– – YOU WILL SUFFER FOR ETERNITY – –’ spooled the autotrans. ‘– – BATHE IN YOUR BLOOD – – TAKE YOUR SOUL – –’
Farsight cut the XV8’s thrust and dropped to the flagstones fast. Arthas Moloch’s bruised sky was blotted out entirely by the bat-winged monstrosities.
His doom had come for him.
He spun in a low pirouette and flicked his sword hard to the right.
The three medallions that had been looped around the weapon slid from his blade to shoot towards the portal. They ignited as they sailed away from him, each a little comet of white fire.
A cacophony of daemonic screams rang out. Killing axes ripped the air.
Then, as the medallions passed burning into the portal, the entire dais exploded with cataclysmic force.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE EXECUTIONER
THE NAMELESS CITY
ARTHAS MOLOCH
‘High commander?’
Farsight blinked away unconsciousness, disengaging his remote haptics on instinct and rubbing his eyes to restore some kind of focus. His head was splitting, his heart lurching, but the XV8 was upright, and still operative.
‘High commander,’ said Coldstar, ‘the Molochites and their portal are gone. But this is still an active warzone.’
‘They are gone?’ Farsight fought through the mental haze on muscle memory, re-engaging with his control suite and calling up as wide a variety of hex viewpoints as possible. Sure enough, there was not a sign of pink, blue or crimson flesh amidst the utter ruin that had once been the Great Star Dais.
‘They teleported away from the battle the moment your medallions hit the portal,’ said Coldstar. ‘“A leap of intuition precedes a great victory.”’
‘And the ethereals?’
‘They were confirmed dead before the explosion, high commander.’
It felt as if a Fio’taun grave shroud settled upon him, then, smothering the fire inside.
His reverie was broken as a fusillade of bullets punched into his XV8, knocking it off balance. He spun, his temper flaring hot at those who had the temerity to disturb his grief. Orks, a small group of them, sheltering in the remains of a broken-down vehicle and opening fire with its point-defence guns from the other side of the plaza. More solid shot pounded into his XV8, sending brief flickers of red across the holo-doppel.
A snarl escaped his throat, growing to a cry of wordless anger. His heartbeat was thundering, now, and skipping irregularly. He leant hard, the thrust-vector suite turning the battlesuit on its axis as he leant into a swooping dive. The orks did not scatter, but gave voice to their own war cry, a bellow of animalistic rage. Their fire focused, punching in so hard he could feel each impact, but he did not turn aside.
‘Critical damage levels approaching,’ said Coldstar. ‘Please avoid unnecessary engagements.’
Farsight answered only by swiping his blade in a low arc that cut straight through one of the orks and the gun-chassis that encased him. An arc of blood jetted out, glittering silvery-red in the twilight. The bifurcated ork corpse pinwheeled away along with the mangled remains of the gunnery position, leather seat and all.
A thrill coursed through Farsight, something akin to the righteous joy of a hunter’s kill well made, but even more potent. It did not pass, but lingered in his muscles, empowering him.
He slashed the blade right as one of the creatures broke its fist on his shoulder armour with an ill-advised punch. He cut it diagonally in two from the hip to the collarbone, the blow almost contemptuous in its swiftness. Too easy, in fact, for he had compensated by leaning left as he made the strike, only to find no resistance. He turned hard, regaining his balance with a foot planted on the wagon’s rear sponson turret, and took the Stance of Seven Deadly Cuts.
There had been barely a whisper of effort at the passing of the relic sword. Farsight had originally put it down to the thing’s sheer size and heft, but he knew enough about material science and the tolerances of a battlesuit’s strength to know it was not that simple. There was some property to this artefact that made it exceptional, deadlier than anything the earth caste had yet devised. He could feel it as a weight in his mind as well as in the haptic relay of his gauntlets.
••• CARDIAC FUNCTION REGULATING ••• read the med-suite.
Another ork came in, this time wielding an axe made of two badly constructed circular saws. It was larger than the rest, and it pushed the axe down as a lever, the twin saws grinding into the hypermetal alloy of the suit. He heard the thing’s guttural laughter, hateful and crude.
‘Please address this most recent assailant,’ said Coldstar, the holo-doppel flashing brighter than usual as if to make a point.
Farsight shucked a shoulder and the battlesuit shrugged with him, catching the axe and ripping it from the beast’s hands. He elbowed the thing away with his good arm, and then – even as it fell from the side of the vehicle – slashed the relic sword out to catch it in the neck. The ork’s head flew away as if it had been clipped off by a perfect executioner’s strike. Farsight felt another surge of energy thrill through him, liquid vitality rippling through his bones and invigorating his tired muscles.
••• CARDIAC FUNCTION NORMAL ••• read the med-suite.
Farsight barely spared it a glance. He was already on to the next ork, kicking it hard in the chest to break it free from the gun harness that it was desperately trying to bring to bear upon him. He flipped the sword around, rolling it over the back of his hand, and drove it point first into the base of its neck to impale the beast through its entire torso. He felt the terrific pulse of gratification once more as he yanked his blade free, sending the ruined corpse flailing into the dirt.
••• ALL BIOSTATIC LEVELS ELEVATED ••• EXCEEDING ESTABLISHED PARAMETERS •••
‘Commander,’ said Coldstar. ‘Are you feeling at battle readiness?’
‘More than readiness,’ said Farsight. ‘I feel invigorated. Unstoppable.’
Another slash of the blade. Another dead ork. Another pulse of energy.
‘Your health levels are anomalous. They are exceeding that of Commander Bravestorm under the most potent of hyper-stimm injections.’
‘Then let my blood sing,’ said Farsight. ‘Too long I have denied it.’
A threat designator blipped, insistent and annoying. He silenced it with a glance. His disposition hexes showed two orks flanking him, one climbing atop a mangled turret brandishing a giant wrench, the other aiming a multi-barrelled gun at the side of his head.
He slashed right, taking the arms and gun from the ork to his side. Turning in a full circle, he put the giant blade through the other ork’s chest, twisting it through ninety degrees to mangle the beast’s torso completely before withdrawing it. Alien blood mingled with motor oil on the flatbed of the ork vehicle, drizzling from the sides of the wreck onto the dry white dust below.
‘Proximal threats neutralised,’ said Coldstar. ‘Recommend immediate withdrawal to strategic-level engagement only.’
Farsight panned the XV8’s mangled head around as best he could, raising and lowering its sensor aerial. The suit’s holo-doppel was flaring red in a dozen places; it was missing an arm, its shield generator had been reduced to a battered disc of metal, and its plasma rifle was buckled into a twisted cylinder.
He had never felt more lethal.
‘Recommendation denied,’ he said.
A series of thin screeches came from a nearby building. He saw flashes of green, and turned his observation hex to heat sensor. Diminutive greenskin life forms scurried in the rubble, turning some manner of junkyard artillery piece around to face him.
He leaned hard and blasted his jets to shoot over towards the ruin. His heart was thumping hard in his chest, but now there was not so much as a flicker of pain.
‘Coldstar,’ he said. ‘Patch into the VX1-0 dronenet, and cross-reference with air caste data. I want to know how many greenskins there are left on the planet.’
‘Pending,’ said Coldstar. A numeral flicked up on the top left of his command-and-control suite, ticking upwards rapidly.
It stopped at twenty-four.
‘T’au’va’s grace,’ said Farsight. ‘So nearly there.’
‘High commander,’ said Coldstar. ‘Are there not strategic concerns that would be–’
‘Just locate the orks, please.’
A crackling bolt of intense green energy shot past him, missing him by several metres. He snarled in contempt, jumped, and smashed feet first through the ruined wall of the greenskin artillerists’ temple building, just where the XV8’s structural analyser had told him the ancient brickwork was weakest. The force of the impact sent rubble slewing down onto the scrap-metal gun that had discharged the energy shot. Greenskin slave-creatures screeched, waving their arms and scrabbling for their pistols. The full-grown ork that accompanied them bawled its orders to fight, laying about itself with a stout lash of knotted leather.
Down came the relic blade. The ork was the first to die, its head and one of its shoulders sliced clean through so the upper quarter of its body tumbled away from the rest. The frisson of energy blossomed within Farsight once more, something like the joy of submerging fully into hot water mixed with the kick of a potent liquor.
He stamped down on one of the runt-creatures, breaking its spine and ribs with a satisfying crunch. Another died on the tip of his blade, lanced through and then flicked away. This time the hunter’s thrill was barely noticeable. Farsight put it down to the fact the creature was far from worthy prey. Nonetheless, the numeral in the top left of his command-and-control suite ticked down.
Twenty-one.
‘Threat detected, left quadrant,’ said Coldstar.
Farsight glanced at the leftmost hex, raising his battered shield as one of the lesser creatures took a potshot. It ricocheted away from the broad disc. As the greenskin turned to run, he brought the edge of the mangled shield down, flattening the creature against the jagged white rocks of the tumbled wall.
Another idiot beast dead, another green stain on the galaxy eradicated.
The three remaining runts were scattering in all directions. He cut one in two with the blade, stamped on another as it tripped over the corpse of its broken comrade, and leapt over the head of the third as it fled in panic. He landed right in front of it, turning at the waist with his sword outstretched to cut the hated thing in half.
A guilty thrill ran through him. He had duty elsewhere, but he was so close, now, to completing the work of decades. The Molochites, having seemed so important only a few decs ago, had dwindled to little more than background texture in his mind.
The numeral in the top left had dropped sharply; clearly his warriors were still engaging, and doing some of the work for him. He fought back an unseemly pang of anger. This war was his. He was the one that should close it down.
He blinked in surprise at the strange surge of thought – what did it matter who killed them, so long as they were killed? He put the question aside, turned back to the flickering light of the dais in the centre of the city, and bounded back into the fray.
Fifteen, now.
‘Locate the largest greenskin target,’ he said.
‘Due east, one hundred metres,’ said Coldstar. ‘A war leader, by his mass.’
‘Plot the swiftest route we can afford without burning out the last of our power. I shall plan the attack.’
A hex flicked up on the command suite. The beast was an obese brute with a distended belly covered in tattoos. It was almost as tall as the Crisis suit it was busy bludgeoning into scrap metal with a massive spiked mace.
A flicker of recognition became a dread certainty as Farsight zoomed in on the creature. On the beast’s gut, stick-figure orks fought hulking beasts with massive tusks; he had seen those exact pictograms – this exact ork warlord, in fact, he was sure of it – on the red sands of Arkunasha. Given the randomness of ork interstellar flight, the chances of the same beast being here, on a backwater world in a completely different star system, were astronomically small. He knew enough of the Kauyon metastrategy to know the ork was likely bait, being used by a third party, and he the mark. But who had laid the trap, and to what end?
As Farsight watched, the ork caught the suit by the neck, roared with effort as it raised the XV8 high, and then slammed it back down so hard the entire battlesuit bent in the middle at an awkward angle. There was a thin whine of servomotors as the Crisis suit struggled to rise, then fell back.
Farsight ran forward as fast as he could. He burst through the other side of the ruined temple and sprinted through an archway to cross a nave lit by the disc-portal beyond. Dancing shadows writhed and flickered around him, seeming to beckon him into the darkness. He ignored them, his vision set on one thing and one thing alone.
The numeral updated as his cadre closed the net. Eleven greenskins left on Arthas Moloch. That meant eleven left in the entire system, if the air caste’s analysis was correct. The imminence of his victory over the greenskins gave Farsight a fierce energy.
