Apex Predator - Gavin G Smith Read online

  ‘Heartsbane was named for the stone hearts taken from the golems,’ Sethana explained, ‘the same stone hearts that were used to construct Golem’s Keep back home.’

  Harvan and Dugness had joined her in the shadow of their Knights, as had Malachi, answering her vox summons.

  ‘The golems were huge, easily the size of a Knight, often stronger and very hard to kill. They would work together, as well.’

  ‘So?’ Dugness asked.

  Sethana forced down her irritation.

  ‘So, when you hunted golems you were not the apex predators,’ Malachi suggested.

  ‘You mean to change tactics?’ Harvan asked.

  ‘We didn’t have tactics before,’ Sethana said, ‘we offered martyrdom.’

  ‘And now?’ Malachi asked.

  Lady Isabella had taught her that Ivandar was proud, easily offended, easy to anger. Lady Maria had taught her the simplest plan was the best, and that the mere sight of Heartsbane could bait him.

  ‘We need to offload the explosives, and we need a snare,’ she said, looking up.

  Heartsbane, Oakspear and The Huntsman were positioned in front of the hab tower that had been their ad hoc sanctum. They were looking down a long, ruined boulevard bordered by the remains of various industrial complexes so badly damaged that it was impossible to guess what their function had once been. The hab tower was at the south end of the boulevard. Before the remnants of the Home Guard and Morassian forces had pulled out, they had used the earth-moving blades attached to the Leman Russ tanks to pile the rubble as high as they could on either side of the road. The hastily assembled rampart wouldn’t stop a determined Knight, but it did make the boulevard the path of least resistance.

  They waited and they waited.

  The auspex picked them up first, faint movement out amongst the ruins, the dead city interfering with their instruments. Then Sethana saw movement. It looked almost furtive. Less like armoured war machines and more like a pack of scavenging wild dogs, slowly surrounding their weakened prey.

  ‘Ivandar of the disgraced House of Lucaris, you are a fool, a coward and a weakling, always bested by my ancestors no matter how much advantage you had!’ Sethana broadcast from her vox-horn, her voice echoing through the ghost of the city. It was a gamble. It relied on Ivandar actually being the pilot of the Death of Hope.

  Auspex traces and peripheral movement were the only answer to her call.

  ‘They’re checking the area,’ Harvan said, ‘looking for other ways in.’

  Looking for the trap, Sethana thought, willing Ivandar to take the bait. Hoping that his hatred of Heartsbane, his superiority in numbers and his arrogance would be enough.

  It was. They saw the movement over the top of the skeletal remains of the buildings. Two Knights, their heads like the helmets of some ancient warriors, their forms a twisted mockery of a Knight Warden, came from the east. They had been designated Despoilers. With them was a toothed-maw Knight known as a Rampager. From the west came two more Knights with elongated skull heads: Desecrators. And finally the super-heavy Knight Tyrant they called the Death of Hope, but which had once been called Reign of Iron.

  Well, iron rusts, it is weak, Sethana told herself, not quite believing it.

  ‘How many millennia have you been trying to kill me?’ Sethana asked over the vox-horn. She felt a thrill of anticipation run through the Throne Mechanicum. It was as though she could see the actual ghosts of all her ancestors standing beside her.

  ‘You think too well of yourself! You are nothing!’ the Death of Hope answered over his own vox-horn. That was when Sethana knew for sure. She could hear his anger. The petty vengeance of a petty man.

  ‘Tell me, slave, how do your masters feel about your constant failure?’ The ghosts of Lady Maria and Lady Isabella joined in her question. The answering roar from the Death of Hope’s vox-horn was nothing more than incoherent rage.

  The six Heretic Knights charged.

  ‘Now,’ Sethana said over the vox.

  The Basilisk artillery pieces started firing from their heavily camouflaged positions two miles out in the ruined city. The Bombard mortars started to do the same from equally well-camouflaged but closer positions. The Imperial soldiers and the Home Guard troops were exhausted, their morale was poor, but somehow they managed to do their job delivering a close artillery strike, even allowing for the speed of the charging Heretic Knights. High-explosive and concussion shells battered the heretic lance, buckling armour plate, sending them staggering. Even Heartsbane, Oakspear and The Huntsman felt the waves of force from explosive overpressure.

  Then the Leman Russ tanks started firing from their camouflaged defilades out amongst the ruins, far behind the enemy lance. Except the remaining five tanks were concentrating their fire on just one of the Heretic Knights. They fired round after armour-piercing high-explosive round into one of the Desecrators. The tanks poured on fire with their secondary weapons as well. The Desecrator was wreathed in explosions as the Heretic Knights all but disappeared into the cloud of grit and flying rubble thrown up by the artillery bombardment. Sethana saw the targeted Desecrator stumble and go down.

  ‘Concentrated fire!’ Sethana cried. Her Avenger gatling cannon opened fire with a savage tearing noise. The Huntsman fired his thermal cannon, turning the barely visible Despoiler’s adamantium armour to so much slag for Heartsbane’s cannon rounds to splash through. It was Oakspear’s Questoris and rapid-fire battle cannons, however, that did the most damage. They had gambled that the tank attack would force the Heretic Knights to angle their ion shields behind them. It had paid off. Sethana watched as the Despoiler was blown apart, Oakspear’s explosive cannon rounds detonating inside of it.

  ‘Pull back!’ Sethana shouted over the vox. It was an order for both the tank squadron and the artillery batteries. They had done their bit.

  The House Cadmus lance angled their ion shields to the back of their Knights, as one by one they turned and moved rapidly towards the hab tower. The Huntsman, then Heartsbane, and finally Oakspear. Sethana felt hit after hit ricochet off her shield. The amount of incoming fire from the surviving Heretic Knights as they emerged from the cloud of powdered rockcrete was such that some of the shots were making it past the narrow fields of their shields. She cried out in pain as Heartsbane took a cannon round in the back, and stumbled. The Knight Warden almost fell but Sethana managed to keep moving into the shadow of the cored hab tower.

  Oakspear was not quite so lucky. As he reached the crack in the hab tower’s external rockcrete wall his ion shield failed. The sheer volume of incoming fire, now all concentrated on him as the last viable target, took him down. The Knight Crusader’s noble head was melted as las-fire cut him open and explosive shells tore apart his metal innards. Sethana knew she should be appalled, devastated by the death of her oldest comrade. Instead her exhaustion was replaced by a cold, calculating anger. She would gladly give her own life to see Ivandar dead.

  She felt a ripple of excitement through the ghosts in her throne.

  Heartsbane was moving as fast as her servos could carry her. Chasing The Huntsman. Making their way round the first level of the vast tower, which had been some kind of loading deck. They were both making for a ramp that led to the next level.

  As the Heretic Knights appeared below them Heartsbane let rip with the Avenger. She fired one of her Stormspear rockets from the pod on the top of her Warden’s armoured carapace as well. The Huntsman drew a line of haze from his thermal cannon to the Death of Hope and added an Ironstorm missile for good measure. Sethana watched the missiles and the cannon fire ricochet off the ion shield, and the heat from the thermal cannon washing across it. The Death of Hope responded with its Siegebreaker cannons, threatening to destroy the already unstable rockcrete floor under the two House Cadmus Knights.

  Take the bait! Sethana willed the Tyrant. If it didn’t then all was for nought. Her hear
t surged with savage joy as the Death of Hope and the Rampager gave chase. The other two surviving Heretic Knights remained on the ground level, firing their weapons at Heartsbane and The Huntsman. Rubble was falling from the upper levels, the larger pieces crashing through the floors below them, threatening to crush them.

  The two House Cadmus Knights reached the cargo ramp and headed up onto the second level, into a storage area. Sethana was concentrating her Avenger cannon fire on the Despoiler below, aiming for its thermal cannon, trying to force the pilot to position its ion shield in the way of their own weapon system. It was a difficult shot on the run, but the sheer volume of fire that the Avenger could put out helped. At the same time she was firing her rockets intermittently at the Death of Hope as it chased her.

  The Huntsman was doing similar with the Desecrator, targeting it with its thermal cannon, trying to lessen the incoming fire that threatened to destroy the damaged rockcrete floor, and firing Ironstorm missiles at the pursuing Rampager.

  The Despoiler’s laser lanced through the rockcrete as cannon shells exploded in the air all around them, buffeting them with waves of concussive force, loosening more rubble from above. Ahead of her Sethana could make out the Knight-sized hole in the wall, presumably damage from the same orbital strike that had cored the tower early in the conflict. Today they would use it to their advantage.

  Ahead of her The Huntsman had almost reached the hole.

  Heartsbane took another step and her foot went through the rockcrete, which had been turned to near-liquid by thermal cannon fire. Her heart lurched, and Sethana cried out as her Warden went down but didn’t fall through the floor.

  She was aware of the Tyrant closing in behind her. She could hear the buzz of its twin Reapers. She fought down panic as she tried to free herself, to climb out of the hole, all too aware of just how vulnerable, how exposed she was.

  Rocket contrails shot over Heartsbane, and she heard and felt explosions behind her as The Huntsman launched the rest of his Ironstorm missiles.

  Then The Huntsman was there, by Heartsbane’s side. Pouring fire from his thermal lance down on the Despoiler. Reaching down with his Thunderstrike Gauntlet to help her out of the hole.

  ‘Go!’ Sethana cried as soon as she was back on her feet, staggering forward as her ion shield tried to absorb the cannon rounds from the Death of Hope’s twin cannons. Heartsbane and The Huntsman made it to the hole in the wall and the Knight Errant jumped.

  ‘Now, Malach–’

  Sethana’s vox-message was cut off as the Shieldbreaker missile skipped through the warp, bypassed her ion shield, and caught Heartsbane in the back. The explosion blew the Knight Warden out of the hab tower.

  Everything seemed to slow down, and Sethana caught a glimpse of The Huntsman sliding down the bulldozed slope ahead of her. Then the pile of rubble rushed up to meet Heartsbane. Everything went dark.

  Sethana awoke in a sea of red warning hologlyphs. Heartsbane was badly damaged, but alive. The feeling of relief and, for the first time in a long time, hope flooded through her. The Knight Warden was lying at the base of the pile of rubble. Everything was grey outside, and the atmosphere was thick with powdered rockcrete from the hab tower they had dropped on the Heretic Knights. Under Malachi’s supervision, the Morassian sappers had set the demolition explosives to act as cutting charges against the hab tower’s supports. Staggering the explosions from south to north, they had tried to ensure that the remnants of the huge building had collapsed along the boulevard, away from the House Cadmus Knights’ escape route. Though, as Malachi had pointed out, it was far from an exact science.

  Through her barely functioning auspex, Sethana was aware of The Huntsman standing over her. Despite his morale, despite his nerves seemingly being shot, Sir Dugness had done his duty every step of the way. Even coming back for her. To her mind, his ability to function despite his mental state was a true mark of courage, a true mark of strength.

  Sethana tried to move Heartsbane, and every single part of her hurt. She felt like crying with relief, however, when the Knight Warden, despite all the damage it had taken, responded.

  The running lights of the Warden and the Knight Errant cut through the murk of the powdered rockcrete dust. Where the hab tower had stood was now a vast pile of rubble that would have to stand as Sir Harvan’s and Oakspear’s grave, for the time being at least. Heartsbane had to be careful where she put her foot as her auspex functionality was intermittent at best, and Sethana knew the Morassian sappers and forward observers were combing the rubble pile, as was Malachi.

  ‘Lady Sethana,’ Malachi said over the vox, his voice almost swamped by static. ‘We have detected movement under the rubble in the southernmost section, close to where you egressed the building.’

  That made sense, as the Tyrant and the Rampager hadn’t been that far behind them. The Huntsman and Heartsbane, the latter with a pronounced limp, made their way to Malachi’s position.

  The Rampager emerged first. It was on its back, using its Reaper and Thunderstrike Gauntlet to dig and claw its way through the rubble. The Huntsman used one huge armoured foot to halt the Heretic Knight’s movement. He levelled the thermal cannon at the Heretic Knight and fired, again and again, until he had made a hole of slagged metal through the centre of the Rampager. The Huntsman may as well have been despatching a rabid dog.

  Sethana was ready when the top of the badly damaged Tyrant appeared. She was not feeling as merciful as Sir Dugness. Instead she used her Reaper to cut into the Death of Hope. It was not an execution. It was surgery. In a fountain of sparks she cut down, through, and carefully into the cockpit. Then she dismounted.

  It was only as she climbed down from Heartsbane, with more than a little difficulty, that she realised how badly hurt she was. She struggled to breathe, she was drooling blood down her chin, and her entire body felt like a bruise. She made it down and hobbled across the rubble, her suit protecting her from the dust cloud.

  Malachi was waiting for her, a shadow in the murk. She was aware of the Morassian sappers around her, lasrifles at the ready, providing security. They, like Malachi, were all wearing filter masks. Sethana held out a hand and Malachi passed her his combat shotgun. She brought it to her shoulder, using the flashlight mounted on the weapon to cut through the murk as she approached the rent in the inert Tyrant.

  Sethana assumed she was hallucinating, either from the head wound or sheer exhaustion, because she could see figures, all of them dressed like her, standing around the wreckage of the Death of Hope.

  Sethana felt disgust as she saw the pulsating fusion of armour and skin that somehow formed the carapace of the fallen Chaos war machine. Her disgust intensified as she shone the flashlight into the rent she had made in the Tyrant.

  Whatever Ivandar had once been, he was now a mutated mess of flesh and machine, well and truly fused with his corrupted Throne Mechanicum. The creature that was Ivandar was obviously badly wounded and in no little pain. It stared at her with undiluted hatred, spitting black ichor up onto its own face. Its malice-filled eyes remained the most human thing about it.

  ‘Remember that you were not worthy of death in combat,’ she told it.

  It looked as though it was trying to speak.

  Sethana raised the shotgun again and put it out of its misery.

  She knew that the war was far from over, as she limped back towards Heartsbane, but at least they were the apex predators once more.

  About the Author

  Gavin G Smith is the Dundee-born author of, amongst others, the science fiction novels Veteran and War in Heaven, the survival horror novel Special Purposes: First Strike, the fantasy novella Chivalry and the short story collection Crysis Escalation. 'Apex Predator' is his first story for Black Library.

  An extract from Kingsblade.

  Danial Tan Draconis, kingsward of House Draconis and heir to the throne of Adrastapol, willed himself not to th
row up. He was strapped firmly into his throne mechanicum at the heart of his Knight Errant, Oath of Flame. His throne’s neural jacks were plugged into his cranial augmetics and its armaplas webbing cradled his body tight. The Knight itself – a forty-foot-tall, roughly humanoid war machine – was mag-locked within its armature, one of a dozen looming metal giants dominating the debarkation deck of the drop keep. Still, Danial was shaken like a ragdoll. The turbulence of the combat drop was savage, the pressure of gravity scarcely less so. And then there was the disorienting sensation of the ghosts within his throne. It was a little like standing alone with his back to a curtain, knowing that just beyond it crowded dozens of whispering strangers who might at any moment reach through to grab his shoulder. There again, it was like staring into a mirror and feeling his reflection looking back through his own eyes. Then it felt like embracing myriad thoughts and dreams, only to endure the jarring dislocation of realising that not one of those mental fragments was his. It was like all those things, but not them. Every effort he made to rationalise the sensation only added to his nausea. Danial battled the sickness with the grim desperation of a drowning man clinging to his last spar of driftwood. If he couldn’t even win the fight with his own biological failings, or master his throne before his first true engagement, how was he to win a real battle on the glorious field of war? Besides, he wasn’t about to give Markos the satisfaction of seeing him fail.

  ‘A bracing plunge, isn’t it, Da?’ Luk’s voice crackled over the vox-net. Exhilarated. Of course he was. Nothing fazed Luk Tan Chimaeros. At least nothing Danial had seen yet.

  ‘It is,’ he managed, biting out the words.

  ‘Hah! That a little drop sickness I hear in your voice, Da?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Danial replied, before pressing one gloved fist to his lips in desperation. His Knight’s machine-spirit responded with a sympathetic churning of internal gears, a slight shudder running through its hull-plates.