Forge Master - David Annandale Read online

  The Verdict gained, but slowly. The speeds of the two ships were almost identical. Urgency and rage granted the strike cruiser just enough of an edge to close with its prey. Every moment saw the ork monster drive deeper into the system, and the window for the mission close a little bit more.

  Then Mulcebar saw an adjustment in the kroozer’s course. It was beginning a starboard turn. ‘Got your attention at last,’ he muttered. The enemy ship was coming around to meet them with its heaviest guns and strongest shields. ‘Helmsmaster,’ he said aloud, ‘let us give the greenskins what they are clearly wanting. Set course to meet their turn.’ He opened a channel to the torpedo deck. ‘Boarding party, prepare for launch.’

  The Verdict began a starboard correction as well, moving on a diagonal to its original heading. The lumbering kroozer finished its turn. A hook-jawed leviathan, it surged forwards to meet its rival. The two predators closed with each other, one eager to devour, the other intent on purging its opponent from within. When the kroozer’s guns began their bombardment, Mulcebar stifled the impulse to respond in kind. ‘Evasive manoeuvres,’ he ordered. ‘Get us within range, helmsmaster. Batteries open fire. Target only the enemy’s turrets.’

  Phanes took the Verdict to port and down. Against an attack ship, the move would have been pointless. Against the beast that was the kroozer, the Verdict’s agility was blinding. Some of the ork shots hit, but most went wild. The void shields held. The kroozer’s turrets spun, fighting to reacquire their target. The Verdict’s batteries blazed at the kroozer. The show of firepower was spectacular, but barely more dangerous than a fireworks display as the Verdict’s targeting concentrated on turrets and the thickest shielding. A few of the ork guns were silenced. There were plenty more, and as the vessels drew nearer to one another, it became impossible for the orks to miss. The barrage pressed the Verdict’s shields hard. ‘Torpedo decks,’ Mulcebar voxed. ‘Status.’

  ‘Ready for launch,’ Ba’birin’s voice came back.

  The ships were upon each other. ‘Do it now,’ Mulcebar told Phanes.

  The helmsmaster straightened the Verdict’s course. The two behemoths slid by each other, unleashing hellish broadsides. The Verdict took strong hits on the port side. Most of the ork shells struck the damaged area, but Ha’garen had quarantined it so completely from the rest of the ship that a few more gaping rents in the hull were beneath notice. The Verdict’s own guns still fired to spectacular effect, causing only minor damage but blinding the enemy’s eyes with constant las and plasma flashes. The blaze of ordnance was cover. In the midst of the exchange of fire, while the ships passed the length of each other like ancient, three-masted privateers, the boarding torpedoes launched.

  Mulcebar watched them go as Phanes shot the Verdict of the Anvil out of the kroozer’s range. The kroozer tried to turn around, but by the time it did, the Salamanders would be well under way. There was no catching up possible.

  The torpedoes had almost reached their target when a servitor announced, ‘Contact.’

  Mulcebar looked at his own screens. He saw no other ships in the vicinity. ‘Is there any confirmation?’ he called out.

  An officer had run to the servitor’s augury station. She looked at the screen, then back up at Mulcebar. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Perhaps an anomaly caused by the damage.’

  Mulcebar frowned, dissatisfied. ‘Keep watch,’ he ordered. ‘Inform the boarding party.’

  Minor explosions erupted in the kroozer’s flank. They were close together, a concentrated burst of two pinpricks. They were the sparks of Vulkan’s hammer striking the anvil, bringing the war to the orks.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The boarding torpedo was a blunt instrument whose uses were as varied as they were sophisticated. Though it was crewed and had enough fuel and engine power for limited manoeuvres over short distances, its action was still one of the most basic of warfare. It was a projectile. It was an object launched to hit other objects as hard as possible. Its uniqueness among other projectiles, its sophistication, came in the fact that it caused most damage after its initial impact as the living weapons it carried stormed the passageways of its target. From that uniqueness sprang its versatility. Should the strikes concentrate on a single entry point or be spread out, engaging the enemy on multiple fronts? Hit from one side for a spear-point thrust, or from both flanks, trapping the foe in a ceramite fist? The answer depended on the ship and the objective. Was the vessel a known quantity whose layout could be factored into planning? Was the objective one of total annihilation or more surgical?

  This ship was unknown. It was the creation of a species whose approaches to technology were in equal measures crude and enthusiastic.

  And the mission was grotesque.

  But there was a mission, and so there was a strategy. The mission was search and rescue through hostile, alien territory. The strategy was the use of a concentrated, mobile force. And so the boarding torpedoes drove into the centre of the kroozer’s port flank.

  For Ha’garen, the line between machine and flesh was blurry at best. There were times when he saw no distinction at all. Was there an essential difference between his mechanistic implants and prostheses, and the organs that had transformed him into a Space Marine? He didn’t think so. The hands of the Mechanicus hovered over both. Neither was natural. What, beyond the medium of construction, distinguished his eyes that saw radiation above and below the wavelengths of visible light from the neuroglottis that broke taste and smell down into component, identifiable parts? Nothing. Flesh and metal, bone and ceramite, the physical was the physical. The body was the body.

  So when the vulcan-drills of the boarding torpedoes parted metal, they were parting flesh. The torpedoes were blades sinking into the body of a living enemy, and then sealing the entry wound. There was nothing of mercy in the healing; it merely permitted the deeper, more lethal wounds that would be inflicted subsequently by the transported Salamanders. There was an aesthetic to this form of attack, a perfect fusion of the organic and inorganic in form and function that he found pleasing. The very act of waging war in this fashion was a tribute to the Omnissiah. The focus of the hammer blow was an obeisance to Vulkan. And the war itself was a sacrament to the Emperor. There was a trinity of worship simply in the manner in which the squads had arrived on the ork ship. This simple truth was so clear, it was a wonder it was not visible to all. But he did not need to see Ba’birin’s face beneath his helmet to know that the lesson was lost on him. Ha’garen could read distrust in the microscopic changes in the other Space Marine’s posture whenever Ha’garen was in his field of view.

  There was more than distrust. There was anger, running deep. Ba’birin still did not see the necessity of what Ha’garen had done on the Verdict of the Anvil. He saw Ha’garen disregarding any consideration of the flesh in his effort to save the machine. He was wrong. Ha’garen’s judgement was sound.

  Are you sure? What are you?

  The Salamanders disembarked in a large cargo bay. The ceiling was high, like those of the Verdict, but there was none of the Imperial ship’s majesty here. The walls did not rise to ribbed vaults that lifted the eyes in awe. Instead, there was an irregularity to the space that offended the Techmarine. There was a morality for the constructed, and there was none in evidence here. The walls were of different heights, varying by as much as a metre even on a single side of the room. The ceiling dipped and sagged overhead like an iron tarpaulin. Worst of all, Ha’garen couldn’t shake the sense of grotesque improvisation. The space’s function was the result of chance and opportunism. It was not big because it was a cargo bay. It happened to be big, and so it was a cargo bay.

  He was disgusted, in the sense that every bit of technical data streaming to his consciousness revealed their surroundings as corrupted. Not by Chaos, but by incompetence. He was not surprised. This first glimpse of the interior of the ship matched what he had seen of the exterior during the torpedo’s appro
ach. Though the kroozer had an impressive, bestial solidity to it, there was little overall planning to its design. Its shape, not unlike an elongated ork’s skull, was not produced by careful design. It was the inevitably ramshackle work of many hands guided by single-minded aggression. The greenskins could not help but produce a machinic embodiment of themselves: brutish, stupid, ferociously dangerous and hard to kill. There was no system, no logic to the construction. There was only instinct.

  The Salamanders were surrounded by vehicles in various states of construction, disassembly and experimentation. Some looked intact, awaiting the signal to deploy. Others had been dissected, seemingly by a drunk and blind butcher. Engines had been removed and scavenged with no thought as to how they might be replaced. Wheels, tracks, chassis, weapon mounts and unidentifiable scrap littered the floor, some in mounds that rose higher than the intact vehicles. The scene was an engineering disgrace. But for all the heaped junk and parts, for all the haphazard placement of the transports, bikes and tanks, there was also menacing force. The ork way of war was sloppy, and at first glance seemed alien to any recognisable concept of strategy. But it was devastatingly effective. For every vehicle in pieces, there was one ready for battle, and another being rebuilt into something even more deadly. And there were numbers. In this single cargo bay, stacked and parked any which way, there was enough transport and heavy support to annihilate an entire company of Imperial Guard.

  The space was lit by guttering glow-globes. Light a shade of filth and rust slicked the room, glinting dully off metal. The vehicles and scrap piles cast jagged shadows. Some of the shadows moved.

  Orks had been at work when the torpedoes burst through the hull. Several had been pulverised by the vulcan-drills. The others had regrouped at the far end of the bay and were charging forwards, roaring with anger that intruders had invaded their territory, and with delight that an unexpected scrap was at hand. They came in a straight line, a wave of snarling barbarism, leaping over obstacles that might have served as cover in their eagerness to reach the Space Marines and start the killing.

  The Salamanders obliged. They didn’t seek cover any more than did the orks. ‘Brothers!’ Ba’birin called out. ‘Purge the savage greenskins from the sight of the Emperor! Let them feel the fire of Vulkan’s judgement!’

  ‘Into the fires of battle!’ Neleus cried.

  ‘Unto the Anvil of War!’ the squads chorused. Ha’garen unleashed the battle cry with as much force as any, his vocal cords grating from the unusual strain. He rarely raised his voice above a monotone now, relying almost exclusively on his helm vox-caster to deliver the volume he needed, whether in discussion with his battle-brothers or reciting liturgical verse over a damaged machine. But in this moment, in this surging birth of battle, he was a Space Marine above all else, and the passion he felt for war surprised him in its fire.

  The fight had been too long in coming. Anticipated while the other Chapters carried out their missions, held off again while the void-ships engaged in their lethal dance, its glory tainted by the nature of the mission, the struggle was nothing as simple as a military tactic. It was a need, a reaffirmation of nobility and purpose.

  And a battering ram of vengeance.

  The Salamanders marched into battle. They were a steady, measured, implacable advance. They were a fist of ceramite, flame and bolter-fire. Neleus and Ba’birin led the two squads as a single whole, twenty Salamanders moving forwards like an adamantine piston. Both sergeants carried combi-flamers. They formed the blunt end of a terrible spear, and fanned a spread of burning promethium before them. Fuel drums and pools of spilled chemicals ignited with the ferocious whoosh of a sudden gale. The orks poured into the fire. The front ranks were consumed. The mob coming up from behind pushed over the bodies and broke over the rock of the Fifth Company. The Salamanders continued their advance, hammering the orks. They husbanded their ammunition. They knew they would be needing it the further into the ship they drove, wading into a sea of orks. They used the initial blast of bolter-fire to complement the wash of flame. A horizontal, explosive hail turned the greenskin charge into a storm of rancid meat. Through the storm came still more orks, laughing at the spectacle of their fellows’ deaths even as they hurled guttural curses at the Space Marines. The momentum of their rush, though, was lost. They couldn’t simply bound over vehicles. They had to avoid flaming slicks and red-burning wrecks. They had to fight past their twitching, near-dead comrades and tangling stumbles of the barely-more alive. The single-minded tenacity of the orks kept them coming when a lesser foe would have been exterminated, but even a slight bleed-off of speed and energy was enough for the Salamanders to exploit.

  Mag-locking projectile weapons to their thighs, they moved into close combat with chainsword, gladius and fist. Ha’garen brought up the rear. His servo-arms smashed flanking greenskins to the ground with metronomic rhythm while he gutted enemies to the front. His burst of excitement had faded, giving way once again to an intense, cold-blooded focus. At the speed of instinct, but with the precision of meticulous calculation, he evaluated each second for maximum damage to the enemy. He slew the orks with a methodical brutality that would have made even his cautious, pre-Mars self chafe with boredom. His new incarnation was not bored. He experienced no tedium. Instead, he was engaged in the deliberate crafting of the perfect ork kill. It was, in its way, a form of art, the only kind that he could still recognise.

  The Salamanders battered their way to the entrance of the cargo bay. They reached the raised gate and began to run out of orks. They turned around and mopped up. The remaining monsters did not give up. They fought as hard, and with as little fear, as they had at the beginning of the struggle. But then they were dead, and for a few moments there was silence. Or as close to it as could be experienced on an ork ship. There was no true silence in such a place. The throb of the engines made the filth-encrusted iron walls vibrate as if from the grunts of a giant beast. Snaking, creaking pipes and conduits carried the echoes of snarls, blows and screams. Some of the screams could have been the squeals of poorly slaughtered animals. Others surely were the agonised howls of breaking slaves. Still more might have been either.

  The squads moved into the wide corridor outside the cargo bay. It stretched a good distance fore and aft before dropping into gloom. It was wide enough for four Space Marines to march abreast, and Ha’garen pictured it feeding vast numbers of orks to the various flank bays, whose openings were so many gaping maws along the passageway’s length. Narrower corridors, tributaries to a major river, ran off the main hallway. From what little Ha’garen could see, they twisted, angled and crossed each other in a hopelessly tangled metal labyrinth. They made a mockery of the logical, strategic function of the principle artery.

  The Salamanders formed a defensive semi-circle, covering all approaches. Ba’birin and Neleus turned to Ha’garen. ‘Any ideas?’ Neleus asked.

  ‘We can hardly go exploring,’ Ba’birin said. His tone was cold, accusatory, as if Ha’garen had suggested just such a lunatic plan of action. Ba’birin was right, though. Slightly longer and broader than the Verdict of the Anvil, the kroozer was the size of a small city, one whose entire population of tens of thousands would have no other thought than to wipe out the Salamanders once their presence became widely known. It was no heresy or failure of will to acknowledge that they could not take on the entire ork crew. It was madness to believe otherwise.

  Past Imperial encounters with ork ships was of little help. Greenskin vessels of a given class resembled each other sufficiently in their broad lines to be recognisable as being part of that class, but in the specifics, each was its own unique monster, shaped by the whim of its commander and the demented experimentation of his mekboyz. Relying on previously experienced layouts was just as likely to lead to dead ends and disaster as one’s objective. Ha’garen might have been willing to make some educated guesses based on existing data if the Salamanders’ target had been the bridge or the e
ngine room. But they were here to find a single prisoner.

  Ha’garen stepped back into the cargo bay. In the wall to the left of the gate was a large metal box. Its location was promising. So was the sound of sparks and angry hornets coming from inside. Ha’garen opened the panel. If an Imperial engineer had produced such a collection of wires, circuits and outlets, he would have been shot, had he avoided electrocution long enough to reach the firing squad. It looked like a death trap, and not a power source for the orks working on the vehicles in the bay. Sparks jumped from wires that had little or no insulation. Through his helmet’s rebreather, Ha’garen picked up a powerful smell of ozone. He accepted all of this as normal. He had long ago learned to accept that ork technology worked in defiance of common sense. His mechadendrites moved towards the electrical snake pit but he hesitated before making contact, forging a mental shield from his prayers to the Omnissiah. Though he spoke the words aloud, the principle force of the ritual was internal, a ceremony between his flesh and machine, mind and spirit, a communion in that sacred place where the self was still evolving out of the fusion between Salamander and machine.

  The link he was about to attempt was dangerous. He was aware of no precedent for it, nor did he even know if it was religiously sound. He had been thinking about the act and its possible consequences since Mulcebar had first assigned him to this boarding mission, and had tried to think of an alternative means of acquiring the necessary information. There was none. He thought back to the briefing, to the look Mulcebar had given him as he had saluted, arms crossed to slap chestplate, before leaving the strategium. The captain did not have an expressive face, and his look of stoic pragmatism did not change then. But Ha’garen had thought at the time, and was convinced now, that there had been a glimmer in his eye, a hint of repressed regret. He had known. He had known the step Ha’garen would have to take, but he could not let an impulse of sympathy compromise the mission, just as he had to swallow the revulsion that came with ordering the rescue of an eldar.