Throneworld Page 9

  ‘You are surprised?’ said Bohemond, when he caught Koorland examining the xenos devices. ‘These are my trophies, many taken from worthy opponents, unclean though they were… But there would be no honour in employing the weapons of the alien against the alien. What I have for you is of far nobler origin.’ He pointed to an alcove where waited a large object covered with a white silk shroud, black Templar crosses repeated hundreds of times over it in an interlocking pattern. Bohemond nodded at one of his arming bondsmen. The man came forward and tugged the shroud free.

  Underneath was a suit of Terminator armour, painted in the bold yellow of the Imperial Fists.

  ‘This suit is one of the very first of the Indomitus armours manufactured,’ said Bohemond, indicating the familiar planed helm and heavy-gauge chest plating. ‘Its name is Fidus Bellator, and it was fashioned in the closing years of the great Heresy war.’ He looked at Koorland. ‘I doubted you, Koorland. I cannot deny it. I have yet to be convinced you are suitable to lead the assembled might of the Last Wall. Yet you have proved yourself in other ways. You are confident, sure of purpose, tactically astute. You are worthy of the rank of Chapter Master, and so I may yet change my mind. In recognition, and in friendship, I give this to you.’

  ‘I do not know what to say, High Marshal,’ said Koorland wonderingly. Much of his Chapter’s supplies and materiel had been destroyed around Ardamantua, though there would of course be armour and weapons still aboard their great star fortress of the Phalanx and in their barracks on Terra. But were there any Terminator suits left? He doubted it. They were all lost, along with the First Company.

  ‘Then say nothing,’ said Bohemond. ‘The armour is not dishonoured, for Fidus Bellator has borne these colours before. Once it resided in the armouriums of the Phalanx. If it makes it easier to accept, let us agree that I do nothing more than return it home.’

  ‘You do me a great honour. I cannot repay you.’

  ‘I do,’ agreed Bohemond. ‘And you can repay me. Repay me with glory, Chapter Master. Avenge your brothers.’

  Ten

  The gate

  An electric buzzing supplanted Koorland’s senses as his substance was projected through the warp. His body diffused, becoming a tingling sensation and little else. Thought fled as his consciousness momentarily disconnected from reality, but it did not cease – rather his sense of self became something else, a raw awareness without thought, a thing of feeling. Rationality was inconceivable. Time was irrelevant. There was only being, nothing else.

  A wall of pain interrupted his contemplations. His body passed out of the warp, his wargear and flesh rearranging themselves into solid forms. A blaze of light and rush of vapour, and he was striding forward, gun raised, into a roughly hewn chamber cluttered with ramshackle machinery and orks. A subsidiary power nexus for the surface energy weapons, its destruction would knock out several dozen energy cannons, or so their Adeptus Mechanicus allies had informed them.

  The xenos recovered quickly from their surprise at Koorland appearing in their midst, abandoning the tasks they were about at the machines, and launched themselves at the Space Marine with a ferocious roaring. Their weapons rebounded from his Terminator armour without effect. Koorland gunned them down with his storm bolter, blasting them into bouncing pieces. Ork slave creatures squealed and ran from him. Rushing air behind him signalled other successful teleports. The sensorium of his borrowed suit pinged into life, triangulating his location, linking up with the auspex suites of his ad hoc squad.

  ‘Teleport successful. Target achieved. Strike Team Slaughter, respond,’ he voxed. He could not turn easily in the massive armoured suit, not without presenting his back to the doorway.

  ‘Moscht here,’ spoke a voice into his helm. The Space Marines sounded off, their squad icons and vital signs flicking into life upon Koorland’s helm display.

  ‘Ulferic here.’

  ‘Donafen here.’

  ‘Arbalt here.’

  ‘Holde here.’

  Two Black Templars, a brother of the Fists Exemplar, an Excoriator, and an Iron Knight made up his small command.

  ‘Zero casualties,’ said Koorland.

  ‘Praise be,’ said Ulferic and Arbalt.

  Koorland ignored their odd expression of piety. ‘Thus far, our Adeptus Mechanicus allies have been proven correct. According to their information, the primary target is this way – power generators for the ork gravity weapons. Let us ensure they never fire again. Move out and engage.’

  Koorland went first, the others close behind. The combat chatter of other Terminator squads crackled in his ears. Three hundred Terminators worked their way through the tunnels. The moon shook with impacts from the surface, shortly joined by the detonation of demolition charges nearer to hand. Data-screed and vox-reports kept Koorland abreast of the battle, so much information it took the superior mind of a Space Marine to comprehend.

  ‘Target Gamma destroyed.’

  ‘Report heavy fire, sector nineteen forty-three.’

  ‘Target Zeta damaged and on fire. Proceeding to secondary objectives.’

  Koorland’s squad stamped through corridors carved from grey stone, primitive deck plating buckling under the weight of their armour. Squads of orks burst from doorways, weapons blazing. Their large-calibre bullets ricocheted from the thick plates of the Terminator suits in showers of hot sparks. Return fire cut them down. As they passed each rathole and stinking entrance, Holde of the Iron Knights poked the nozzle of his heavy flamer down it and sent a jet of shrieking promethium inside. Burning ork slave creatures ran out, screaming. Soon the twisting corridors were choked with smoke, and the Space Marines switched to artificially enhanced views of their environs.

  They approached their target. The corridor widened into a cavern, floored erratically with platforms of poorly cut metal. Rough doors as numerous as maggot holes in a corpse riddled the chamber sides. A four-storey-tall machine buzzed and crackled in the middle of the cavern, topped by a rotating arrangement of three glass balls as big as light tanks whose innards writhed with peculiar energies.

  ‘Our primary target is ahead of us,’ voxed Koorland. ‘Destroy it.’

  ‘First, a little bladeplay,’ said Arbalt, pointing across the uneven cavern floor.

  From an entrance on the far side, hundreds of orks pelted into the room, howling guttural xenos war cries, each one desperate to be the first to kill. Gunfire hammered down at the Space Marines from the tiered galleries ranged up the walls.

  Koorland raised his gun and his power sword in salute. ‘For the Emperor,’ he said.

  The Terminators opened fire.

  In her dreams, Haas laboured. An eternity had passed since her arrival, and whether it was days or aeons long, she could not tell. There was no marker to judge by, no day-night cycle. It was never dark and it was never truly light. Food and water came rarely and erratically. The orks were capricious in everything, sticking to no schedule or plan. They let the prisoners sleep at random times for periods that could have been minutes or hours. Without a chronopiece, there was no way of knowing.

  During their ‘day’, she and the longshanks were shackled together and marched a short distance from their cell to the lift platforms leading to the giant hollow in the heart of the moon. There they were whipped and beaten and forced to move supplies under conditions of erratic gravity. They worked in the shadow of the orks’ crackling gate, a spasming vortex of green fire whose flarings spat out raw materials, goods, food and always more and more orks. The noise from it was terrifying, a constant thunder that boomed deafeningly loud with every fresh transit.

  It was there that Haas was dragged to work, and there she returned during her brief nightmares.

  The ork gate shimmered over her head, bathing the sandy floor of the transit cave in painful light. An ork was coming, the one they called One Tooth, for the single ivory fang jutting over his lip. She ke
pt her head down, not wanting to be noticed. But One Tooth was coming for her, growing to incredible dream-size.

  ‘Too little, too runty,’ it said. Tiny slave things scuttled around its feet, repeating its words mockingly. ‘Far too weak! To the meat room, take it to the meat room!’

  A huge hand, horny with callouses lined with old blood, reached down for her.

  She came awake screaming when it touched her.

  ‘Shhh!’ said Marast, touching his lips with a single long finger. ‘Quiet! Something’s happening.’

  All around the dim cell the longshanks were stirring, unfolding spindly limbs from their uncomfortable sleeping positions and looking towards the door.

  ‘What?’ said Haas. Gunfire and shouting came from outside, down on the prison cavern floor.

  An explosion rocked the room, followed by a storm of gunfire.

  ‘What’s going on?’ shouted Marast. The other slaves screamed at the noise.

  ‘The orks!’ said Haas. ‘They’re being attacked!’ She was up on her feet, adrenaline keeping her exhaustion at bay. She crept towards the door. The light of weapons discharge strobed through the viewing slit. She stood on tiptoes to look through.

  ‘Get her away from there!’ hissed Huringer.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Marast.

  ‘Can’t see. Wait…’ Haas shrieked and threw herself backwards as a pair of glaring red eyes appeared at the slit.

  The ork rumbled aggressively in its alien tongue. Keys jangled, and it flung the door open.

  The ork swaggered in, kicking the longshanks aside with bone-crushing force. Battle noise flooded the room. The ork slaver ignored it, his head swinging back and forward, nose snuffling. Haas scrambled back, until her back was against the wall by the door. The ork caught sight of her and pointed, gabbling in its uncouth language. A blind, stupid hatred of such intensity shone in its eyes that Haas was pinned by its gaze, unable to move.

  It said something and smiled evilly. As it had in her dream, it reached massive hands out for her.

  A series of bangs resounded round the room. The ork’s chest blew out messily, showering Haas with viscera. She covered her face instinctively. A final shot rang out, bursting its head, and its huge corpse toppled towards her. Haas scrambled aside to see a giant warrior in black-and-white armour shove itself into the cell, bringing part of the doorway down. It was some kind of Space Marine, garbed in armour Haas had never seen: tall, high-backed, the helmet roughly square and formed of brutal angular plates, arms protected by massive shoulder guards. A second stood in the door, watching his comrade’s back.

  ‘Thank the Emperor! We are saved, saved!’ shouted Marast. He flung his lanky body at the feet of the Space Marine, clutching gratefully at the feet of their saviours. The longshanks wept, disbelieving of their salvation.

  The Space Marine nudged Marast away with its enormous boot.

  ‘Non-standard human phenotype identified. Loathe the mutant. Terminate.’

  Haas curled up and clapped her hands over her ears as the Space Marines opened fire with their terrible weapons. The longshanks did not even have time to express their surprise before their fragile bodies were pulped by mass-reactive shells. The gunfire went on forever, the individual reports merging into one rolling booming. When it stopped, Haas was amazed to find she still lived. Her hands shook as she took them from her ears. The longshanks had been obliterated, reduced to a gory slick that dripped from the walls.

  Her ears hurt agonisingly and she cried out. The Space Marine swung its blocky helmet in her direction, pointing its bolter at her. She screamed again, and the Space Marine moved his bolter away from her. When he spoke to her it was muffled, as if her ears were stuffed with fabric.

  ‘Human survivor located. You, come with us.’ The warrior pointed a massive articulated finger at her, the segments sparking with a power field. ‘The Emperor protects.’

  Hundreds of dead orks lay in piles around the cave, by the burning machine, on the floor, on the walkways, in cell doors. A handful more of the Space Marines in the massive armour stood at the far end, weapons smoking. Their liveries were all different. Haas only recognised the bright yellow of an Imperial Fist. From the rear of the cavern Space Marines in more familiar armour were flooding in, dozens of them, drawn from the same Chapters as those in the oversized wargear.

  One of her rescuers walked away on another errand, the high, hunched back of his armour swaying, the walkway rocking dangerously under his weight. The other shepherded her down rickety stairs to the cavern floor, bringing her together with a few bewildered humans like herself. They were guided to where the Imperial Fist stood, directing the incoming warriors into defensive positions.

  ‘Chapter Master Koorland, human survivors,’ said her rescuer. The chamber shook with a titanic impact somewhere high above. Grit pattered down from the roof.

  The Imperial Fist, Koorland, finished giving his orders to warriors in bare metal armour discoloured by heat, and others in battered gear annotated with careful script.

  ‘State your names,’ said Koorland to the survivors. ‘Be quick. If you have anything worthwhile to tell us of the ork moon, reveal it now. We cannot tarry.’

  Haas began to speak. A tracked ammunition train came clanking into the chamber, drowning out her voice. The larger warriors stumped over to it, moving slowly but with purpose. Servitors opened hoppers in the train’s sides and began rearming weapons, while others with specialised tools for limbs ran diagnostic checks on the Space Marines’ armour and effected minor repairs. Others in the giant battle­suits were arriving from elsewhere, and these were also attended to. The noise in the chamber was deafening, warriors shouting, heavy footsteps booming off uneven deck plating. The other rescued men and women said nothing, other than babbling thanks and praise. The Imperial Fist turned from them, as if he had never expected to receive anything of use from them.

  Haas tried again.

  ‘Your men! They killed the longshanks,’ she shouted.

  The Chapter Master turned back.

  ‘What?’ His voice was hard and inhuman from his vox-grille, the bright yellow helm unreadable. Haas was terrified, but her instinct for justice was strong.

  ‘Others. I was imprisoned with them. They helped keep me safe, and your men killed them.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Arbitrator Galatea Haas, Imperial Palace 149th Administrative District, General Oversight Division. I survived the Proletarian Crusade.’

  ‘Is this true, Arbalt?’ Koorland asked of Haas’ rescuer.

  ‘The female was domiciled with a number of aberrants,’ said Arbalt, his contempt plainly audible through the distortions of his vox-grille. ‘Non-standard humanoid phenotype. They did not deserve clemency.’

  ‘They told me that they were permitted abhumans. Longshanks,’ said Haas.

  ‘Longshanks? That kind are not mutants,’ said Koorland. ‘Arbalt, Ulferic. No human is to be harmed, no matter their type, not before you report to me.’

  ‘As you wish, Chapter Master,’ said Arbalt emotionlessly.

  ‘Convey this information to all your fellows,’ he said angrily. ‘While you are under my command I will not countenance the needless slaying of innocents.’

  Arbalt gave an awkward bow, his movements restricted by his suit. ‘My lord Chapter Master.’

  ‘You may go,’ said Koorland to the humans.

  ‘There is more,’ said Haas. ‘The orks. They have a… a device, not far from here. A gate.’

  Koorland looked down at her. His helmet’s muzzle and odd faceted panels made him look like an animal made of metal. ‘A gate?’

  ‘Some kind of teleportation device,’ said Haas. ‘Troops and weapons come through it all the time.’

  Koorland motioned for a Space Marine wearing rust-red armour, a bulky servo-arm folded on top of his pack. ‘Send word to t
he Adeptus Mechanicus. We have intelligence of interest.’

  ‘Immediately, Chapter Master Koorland.’ The Space Marine hurried away.

  Koorland called another to him. ‘Fetch this woman food and water. Now.’ Only then did he give his full attention to Haas. He tilted forward a little and projected a rough holo­lith from a device integrated into his suit.

  ‘This is a three-dimensional representation of the immediate surroundings,’ he said. ‘Show me where this “gate” is…’

  Eleven

  Servant of the Beast

  The moon ceased shuddering. The fleet’s efforts to strip the weaponry from the surface were concluded, but throughout the interior Space Marines fought desperate close battles against hordes of green monsters, protecting Adeptus Mechanicus salvage teams and xenologists while they stripped whole caverns of machinery. The orks, though contained, did not diminish in number.

  The woman Haas had been correct. Through a grainy pict image relayed from the eyes of a servo-skull probe to a portable augur station, Koorland, Bohemond and Thane saw the orkish gate in operation. The skull looked down from a ledge high overhead. The angle was odd, the picture a striated, brown monochrome, but the poor quality of the image could not disguise the scale of what they witnessed. The orks had carved a chamber four kilometres across to house it. Bizarre machines crowded the walls, crackling with potent energies. Within the circle of the machines, piles of crates, scrap, lesser machines and weapons occupied the flat, gravelly floor. Fat cables snaked away through the materiel crowding the chamber, plugging the gate into the machines.