Apocalypse - Josh Reynolds Read online

  Eamon spoke up for the first time. ‘Collapsing the western causeways will all but seal off the lower sections of the city. Millions will be trapped, even with the evacuation efforts that are already underway.’ The cardinal-governor sounded tired. Calder looked at him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are we to abandon them?’ From Eamon’s tone, Calder suspected that he already knew the answer. The question was for the benefit of his subordinates, then. Calder felt a brief flicker of annoyance – there were currents here that he could but dimly perceive, and he disliked being used in such a way. Nevertheless, he answered.

  ‘Some must be sacrificed to maintain the whole.’

  The words hung in the air for a moment. Then, one of the Ministorum priests spoke up. ‘A pretty enough death sentence,’ he said. He was a small man, built heavy, and dressed in plain robes. Shaggy, greying hair merged with a tangled beard to create a grizzled lion’s mane, but the eyes within it were a vibrant green. Calder knew his face from reports – Tabrain Hast. He was responsible for the shrines in Low Town, and oversaw a contingent of nearly a hundred subordinate priests. Thanks to them, a number of civil disturbances had been headed off before they could erupt into violence.

  ‘How many of our flock must die to preserve the rest?’ Tabrain turned to Eamon. ‘Such arithmetic is beyond me, brother.’

  ‘Cardinal-governor, Tabrain,’ Tyre said, with a touch of warning. ‘Not brother. Not here. Best you remember that.’

  ‘I remember enough, Domenico,’ Tabrain growled. He turned his glare on the other man. ‘I remember Eamon’s promises of rescue – of salvation. Instead, we are to let our chapels burn, and the faithful with them. And for what?’ He looked around, and Calder saw a few others nod, as if in agreement.

  ‘The promise of victory,’ Calder said. They turned to look at him. Most looked hurriedly away, save for Tyre and Tabrain. The heavyset priest frowned.

  ‘A pyrrhic victory,’ he said.

  Eamon spoke up. ‘But a victory. Else what was it all for?’ He moved among his subordinates, meeting the eyes of each. ‘We did not ask for this burden, but it has fallen upon us. The God-Emperor, in his eternal wisdom, has set us to bar the way of hell. We will bleed for it. We may perish.’ He made a fist. ‘But we will do this thing. That is our purpose. We are His voice made flesh, and it is for us to carry out His will. We can do no less.’

  ‘And what about the rest of us?’ Another priest spoke up. Calder glanced at him. Dipesh Klein, the lord deacon of Feingard’s Landing – one of the smaller agri-cities on the southern coast. ‘You’ve sent a handful of Space Marines to each city to prepare defences. But that’s nowhere near enough to protect us.’

  ‘In all previous contacts, the enemy focused on the planetary nerve centre. Other cities and urban hab-sprawls came under attack only in the latter stages of the siege. So long as Almacia stands, they will not come for you in force.’

  ‘Can you promise that?’ the noblewoman – Artesia – asked.

  Calder paused, weighing his answer. ‘No. I can promise nothing save that we will do as we must to defend this world.’

  Before another uproar could begin, Eamon clapped his hands for silence. ‘I propose that we bring this council session to a halt. Those of you who wish to return to your dioceses should do so now. The rest of you may stay here, if you wish. I will, of course, extend the cathedral-palace’s hospitality to any who wish it.’

  As the meeting broke up, Eamon joined Calder, Tyre trailing in his wake. ‘Tyre tells me Lieutenant Karros and a contingent of Raven Guard set off for the asteroid mining facilities this morning. I trust he understands the value of those facilities, both to Almace and this system?’

  ‘He does,’ Calder said. Karros had assured him that he would bring the mines under control swiftly. How he intended to do that, exactly, Calder wasn’t sure. But he trusted Karros to find the most efficient path forward.

  ‘And what about the system defence fleet – is there any way they can reach us, before the enemy?’

  ‘Unlikely. I left the decision to Suboden Khan.’

  ‘Was that wise?’

  ‘He’s more experienced in void warfare than I am, and he better understands the capabilities and value of his ships.’ He decided not to mention that Suboden’s last message had been a garbled mess. The astropathic choirs were suffering as much from the presence of the Archenemy as the more mundane communication systems. Perhaps more.

  As far as his calculations went, the Silent Horseman no longer figured in them. If Suboden still lived, then Calder had no doubt that the khan would do what he could to reach Almace. If he did not, doubtless he had died bravely.

  Eamon frowned. ‘Answer me truthfully – how much time?’

  ‘A few days at most. The fleet bought us more time than I expected, but it won’t be enough. Work will continue until the last moment, but this city is suboptimal, in terms of defensive strategies. There is not much we can do.’ Calder looked down at Eamon. ‘I have formulated a dozen theories as to the purpose behind this attack. None of them are satisfactory.’

  Eamon stiffened, and then turned away. Hands behind his back, he started towards the windows that overlooked the city. ‘Does it matter?’ Eamon asked, as Calder fell into step beside him.

  ‘Without knowing why I cannot know if the defensive preparations are adequate.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve done the best you can…’

  Calder looked at him. Eamon flinched back. Calder heard the scrape of steel, and knew that Tyre had his hand on his sword. He ignored the swordmaster and focused on Eamon. ‘You are hiding something. We both know this. There is a sixty per cent chance that this obfuscation directly relates to the current situation.’ He shook his head. ‘I told you that the time was coming when I would not take no for an answer.’

  Eamon stopped. Calder could read the nervousness in his body language. He noted the way Tyre set himself, just out of the corner of his eye. The swordmaster’s hand had dropped to the hilt of his blade. Calder was unarmed, but he calculated eight ways of disarming Tyre without killing him. He hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

  ‘Is that time now?’ Eamon asked, softly.

  Calder gazed out the window, for a moment. ‘You have thirty-six standard hours to decide your next course of action.’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned towards the doors, brushing past Tyre as he did so.

  ‘I suggest you pray on it.’

  Almace, Primus asteroid facilities

  A dozen black-armoured forms trudged across the surface of the asteroid. Karros had point, as was his privilege as commander. Above him, the stars spun, cold and wild and heedless. The asteroid was pitted with lightless chasms and marked by mountains of silicate. It was one of a dozen larger bodies, comprising part of the inner region of the belt that girdled Almace. A planetoid in all but name.

  A web of man-made structures stretched across the inner belt, connected by leagues of shunt-tubes and orbital causeways. The mining facilities had grown, stretching from one asteroid to the next with every passing century. Now, the Primus facility was a city in and of itself. Smaller outposts dotted the belt, reachable only by jump-craft or ore-hauler.

  Karros’ battleplate scanned his surroundings, noting the high level of iron-nickel and other valuable elements. Even after all this time, there were deposits yet unplumbed. There were only a few asteroids of similar composition in the belt. Most of the rest were carbonaceous, or silicate-rich. All showed signs of mining.

  Around the Raven Guard were signs of industry – ore-scrapers rose like iron ziggurats over great holes gouged in the surface of the asteroid, and pipelines meant to carry fuel stretched between far-flung outposts. Unmanned docking platforms towered over everything, and a canopy of gantries and cabling stretched between them.

  A shadow passed over the Raven Guard. A servitor-controlled ore-hauler drifted
far overhead, thrusters aiming towards the nearest docking station. Karros watched it for a moment, noting the thick hull, built to withstand celestial debris, and the scooped, ram shape of its prow, the better to push past chunks of rock and ice. As if reading his mind, one of his warriors, Deron, murmured, ‘Strap a few guns to it and it’d make an acceptable assault boat.’ He spoke across an encrypted vox-channel. No sense in alerting anyone of their arrival before they absolutely had to.

  ‘I was thinking explosives,’ Karros said. ‘Like the fireships of ancient Ilium.’ Past the ore-hauler, and above, he could see a column of refugee ships navigating the asteroid belt. Their immense shadows darkened the asteroid’s expanse, like the sudden fall of night. There weren’t many of them, and most of them were small – private yachts and the like. They’d fled across a system, only to find themselves in the eye of the storm once more.

  ‘Speaking of ships, why are we walking?’ another warrior asked. This one was called Spiros. ‘Why not simply take the gunship in?’ The Thunderhawk that had brought them to the asteroid was concealed some distance away, awaiting Karros’ orders.

  ‘I didn’t want to risk getting knocked out of the void by a mining laser or a debris-battery.’ Karros glanced back. ‘That would be quite humiliating, don’t you agree?’

  Spiros grunted.

  ‘No sensors, this way. No alarms,’ Deron said.

  Karros smiled. ‘A gunship would have been picked up on short-range augurs, even with the sensor baffles. Their system is built to detect minute debris particles – a speck of rock the size of your thumb can punch a hole in something vital out here. They’d have spotted us, even if they weren’t sure what we were.’ He looked around. ‘But this way, they won’t see us coming.’

  ‘Unless they look out a porthole,’ Spiros said. ‘Or there are scanners we didn’t detect. Or they noticed the gunship when it landed.’

  ‘Yes, if any or all of those things happen, they’ll be waiting for us,’ Karros said, with a slight sigh. ‘Do you have a point, Spiros, or are you just being your usual optimistic self?’

  ‘Merely contributing to the overall strategic picture, brother.’

  ‘And I thank you for that. But in the future, consider saving those contributions until I ask for them.’ Karros looked back at the other Raven Guard. ‘Are we clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ Spiros said. He sounded suitably chastened, and Deron and the others chuckled throatily. Karros allowed himself a smile. A certain structured informality was often of benefit, but only off the battlefield.

  ‘Good.’ Karros turned back and paused. ‘Down.’ As one, the Raven Guard sank down, crouching so that the camo-cloaks they wore covered them completely. A moment later, a maintenance scow trundled close by, overhead. Augurs set into its hull scanned the nearby machinery, looking for damage or flaws.

  ‘The enginseers are still working,’ Deron murmured. The vox-link crackled slightly with background interference.

  Spiros laughed. ‘Even revolutionaries aren’t foolish enough to interfere with the servants of the Machine-God going about their duties.’

  Karros waited until the scow was out of augur range, and rose to his feet. ‘Come. The enforcers will be arriving soon. We need to be there to meet them.’

  ‘We don’t need them,’ Spiros said. The others murmured agreement. None of them had been particularly impressed by Regulator Galba and his enforcers. They were a sloppy lot, and brutal. Unsurprising considering the nature of the posting – this was a punishment detail, in practice if not in name. Karros had scanned Galba’s file on the journey. It was littered with infractions, mostly violent. He had a reputation for brutality. It was no wonder Tyre had assumed that Galba would simply execute the miners.

  ‘No. But they need us. That is why we are here. To keep the situation from complicating matters any further.’ Beneath his feet, the rocky surface of the asteroid gave way to ferrocrete and rusty metal. Up-close, this part of the facility resembled a factory, save for the atmospheric shielding that obscured large sections. Shunt-tubes and enclosed walkways extended from it in all directions, connecting to various towers and pods. Hundreds of heavy solar generators were visible, clustered like barnacles at the base of the main structure, their receptor-cells angled to catch the light of the sun.

  His helmet’s auto-senses clicked and hummed, bringing the exterior of the main facility into sharp focus. His tactical helm display selected possible entry points. He gestured. ‘Spiros, Chayn, left, with me. Deron, you and the others, make your way to the right – get the airlocks open on the tertiary gantries and hold them until the enforcers arrive.’

  ‘Lethal force?’ Deron rumbled.

  Karros paused. ‘Non-lethal, if possible. We don’t want to kill them. Not yet.’

  ‘They’re insurrectionists,’ Chayn said. It was not a protest, or an accusation. Merely a statement. Karros glanced at him.

  ‘Yes, and potentially useful ones. Non-lethal.’

  Clicks of acknowledgement sounded on the vox. There would be no more talking from here on out. Not until the mission was complete.

  They moved quickly after that. While they had maintained a controlled pace in their approach, this was discarded now in favour of speed. Servos hummed as motive fibre bundles bunched and twisted, lending extra speed to an already powerful stride. Concealed air-jets helped them maintain a solid footing as they bounded towards the main facility.

  Karros conducted a localised frequency scan as he moved. He could hear the miners talking to one another. Their attentions were firmly fixed on the enforcers who were attempting to breach the facility. The rebels had welded most of the access hatches and rigged the rest with mining explosives. By the time he’d swung himself up onto an entrance gantry, he’d identified which was which, and headed for the closest of the booby-trapped hatches. He motioned for Spiros and Chayn to spread out on the gantry. As Karros advanced down the walkway, the other two covered him.

  The access hatch was a solid piece, with a simple pressurised release mechanism. He ran a hand along the frame, letting the tactile sensors in his gauntlet build him an image of what awaited on the other side. A crude explosive, meant for opening up new holes in the rock. It was wired to the release mechanism.

  Karros waved the others back and retrieved a melta charge from his combat rig. The thermal putty would burn, even in a vacuum. He moulded it around the release mechanism and activated the timer before backing away quickly.

  The explosion was silent. A flare of brilliant white and then a sudden rush as air escaped from the entry chamber. Karros tore what was left of the door from its hinges and cast it aside. Then he was through. He raised his boltgun and fired at the release mechanism for the inner bulkhead. A solid kick and he was into the facility proper.

  The entry chamber was a wide, high stretch of featureless walls, cut by a web of interconnected gantries and observation platforms. Thousands of pipes ran beneath the gantries, forming an almost solid floor of rounded metal.

  Klaxons were sounding, their shrill cries echoing eerily through the expanse of gantries and observation platforms, illuminated by a few flickering lumens. The pull of depressurisation abated as Chayn and Spiros followed him, their bulk all but sealing the apertures. Karros gestured to the inner bulkhead, and Spiros wedged it shut. Chayn raised his boltgun and fired, silencing the nearest klaxon. More sounded, in the depths.

  Karros motioned for them to spread out as he checked the auspex built into his vambrace. There were no guards, but he hadn’t expected any – not immediately. They would be relying on the booby-traps as early warning systems. The auspex pinged. They were coming. His auto-senses detected the low hum of an approaching grav-shunt. The boxy tram-like vehicles ran along rails built into the sides of the gantries. Chayn and Spiros took up positions to either side of him as the lights of the shunt washed over them.

  As the shunt slowed, Karros raised his
bolter and fired a precise burst, shattering the lumens overhead. As darkness fell, the Raven Guard scattered. He heard shouts from the shunt and someone activated a secondary light on top of the vehicle. The new light spun wildly and he avoided it easily. Chayn and Spiros did so as well.

  Through his picter-unit, he watched them converge on the shunt, as he did the same. There was no need to worry about them calling for reinforcements. Short-range frequency emitters built into their battleplate would jam the vehicle’s vox-equipment as well as any handheld communication devices the passengers carried.

  The shunt began to reverse, back along the line, as he drew close. Karros leapt from the gantry and crashed down onto the roof. He slung his boltgun and punched a fist through the top as autogun fire perforated it, drawing sparks from his armour. With deliberate slowness, he began to peel the metal back like foil. The shunt shuddered as Chayn and Spiros joined him. Shouts of panic rose from the passengers. There were fifteen of them, all smelling of sweat and fear. They fired wildly. They’d expected enforcers and got something much worse. When he judged the hole large enough, he dropped through it.

  His weight caused the shunt to sway wildly as he rose to a stoop. He knew that from their viewpoint, he filled the vehicle. ‘Lay down your arms and you will not be harmed. There will not be a second warning.’ Chayn and Spiros peered in through the openings on either side, their boltguns aimed at the passengers.

  Weapons clattered to the deck. Karros nodded. ‘Good. Now. Take us to your leader.’

  Almace, Primaris-grade cardinal world

  Eamon opened his eyes as the transit platform shuddered to a stop. One of his bodyguards opened the cage and stepped out into the corridor. The Crusader paused, one hand on his sheathed blade. Several heartbeats passed as the bodyguard studied the corridor ahead. ‘Clear,’ he murmured. His voice was scrambled by the vox-distorters built into his featureless mask. Eamon didn’t know why. A tradition of their house, he suspected.