Forge Master - David Annandale Page 6

  The second, and truly it was a full second, passed. The orks on the upper levels turned to welcome the Salamanders with open arms and hacking blades. Ba’birin said, ‘Slay the greenskins. Do not fire on the eldar.’

  The decision was a sound one, in keeping with the objectives of the mission. And like the mission itself, it rankled. There was too much history, and it was too dark, for things to be otherwise. But the Salamanders accepted the test, and vented their wrath on the orks.

  Numerous as the brutes were, there was room to fight in the arena. Room to shoot, and room to swing a weapon properly. Ba’birin and Neleus struck first, once more leading by burning the plan of attack into the flesh of the enemy. They opened with a flamer blast, their promethium jets bathing the closest ranks of orks. The brutes turned into wailing, stumbling torches. They fell back against their kin, spreading the pain like a burning ripple over a pond of green scum. Straight ahead, a path through scorched bodies opened up. The Salamanders stormed into the breach. Ha’garen built on the opening move. He advanced, between the two sergeants. His servo-arms swung forwards, then out, crushing ribcages and smashing spines. His shoulder-mounted flamer fired, incinerating the orks that were trying to charge up the gap. More bodies, more collateral burns. But still more greenskins were rushing forwards over their flaming dead. Ha’garen didn’t think there was any other race, barring the tyranids, who were so completely unafraid of death. The orks’ fears were far more irrational, and would take much more than the wholesale slaughter of their own to invoke.

  He would show them how wrong they were not to fear the Salamanders.

  He took another two steps forwards, brandishing his chainaxe. He had the high ground. He dropped down the next tier of benches and swung his weapon in a wide, horizontal stroke. It roared as if hungry. Its teeth fed on flesh, muscle and bone. It sliced deep into the chest of the leading ork as it tried to climb the riser. The top half of the beast toppled backwards while the bottom stood upright for a second after death. Ha’garen’s swing side-swiped two other orks on either side of the leader, the impact sending them stumbling back. Then Ba’birin and Neleus were at Ha’garen’s flanks, striking with their own chainswords. Behind them came supporting fire, bolter shells blasting greenskins to pulp.

  The Salamanders descended the tiers of the arena like a lava flow from Mount Deathfire. They were flame and rock, scorching the enemy and grinding him into the filth of his own decking. They conserved ammunition by limiting themselves to sharp bursts of flamer and bolter that were just enough to make the orks reel, and then followed up with close-quarters hacking. There was no pause in their killing march, no stopping their momentum.

  The orks weren’t limiting themselves to blades now, but their gunfire was a weak threat. It was wild and undisciplined, and much of it wound up cutting down their own troops as they tried to close with the Space Marines. Stray rounds struck Ha’garen’s armour. He ignored them.

  The Salamanders advanced. They punched through the orks, and the eldar responded to the shift in the battlefield. The Fire Dragons changed their focus. No longer struggling to reach the pit, they began to make their way back up the slope of the arena. They were going to link up with the Salamanders, trapping a riot of orks between the two disciplined forces. And with that, the Salamanders were working in concert with the eldar.

  Ha’garen glanced at Ba’birin. The gesture was unthought, automatic, the product of decades of habit suddenly resurfacing, a vestigial reflex that no longer meant shared battlefield cynicism. And yet... The portion of his consciousness that, since Mars, had become a process of perpetual analysis noted the reaction and tagged it for later examination. It noted, too, that Ba’birin had made the same gesture. Preliminary analysis: old alliances strengthened/restored in face of extraordinary new circumstances.

  Interesting, but hardly relevant. Very relevant was the most effective way of disposing of the orks before him. His flamer blast joined that of the two sergeants. Orks fell. The Salamanders were over halfway to the pit. They were closing on the eldar position.

  The rockets hit the riser between the Space Marines and the eldar. The orks took the direct hit. Benches and decking blew into shrapnel. Metal torn into jagged blades whipped into the squads, along with chunks and limbs of orks. Four explosions, disorienting with skull-ringing surprise. The force of the blast staggered Ha’garen.

  Momentum faltered.

  Through the smoke, Ha’garen saw the eldar reeling too. He looked up. Massive, armoured orks stood at the top of the arena, spread out along its periphery. They were discarding what looked like large sticks that were smoking at one end. They were very basic, single-use rocket launchers. So simple, Ha’garen thought. Their effectiveness was insulting. He didn’t know if the bombardment had missed its intended targets or not, but its impact shifted the strategic balance. Both parties of invaders were stunned. The orks outside the radius of the explosions were unfazed and charging.

  Small, snivelling greenskins were handing new rocket sticks to their masters.

  A plasma cutter was mounted on the left shoulder of Ha’garen’s servo-harness. He fired it now, shearing off the arm of one of the giants. It howled in annoyance, then stared down at the ground with an expression of stupid surprise before its weapon exploded, smearing the ork and its retinue across the scorched walls. The Fire Dragons recovered at the same time and drew their fusion guns. Melta beams of an intensity that Ha’garen envied struck the other rocket-wielding orks. They vanished in a flash of heat that seemed frozen in its purity. Flamer and bolter-fire from the Salamanders drove the orks back again, but only just. Another rocket assault would have been lethal. The Space Marines and eldar were in the open. Their armour did not make them invincible.

  The attack had been good tactics. The ork resistance was becoming organised. Orders were being given, orders with some thought to strategy, however crude.

  Through the arena entrances came more orks, all of them brandishing heavy weapons. Too many to take down at this distance. Ha’garen saw annihilation loom ahead. Annihilation even had a shape. A gigantic silhouette appeared behind the troops, towering over all the other orks. It seemed too huge to pass through the doorway, but on it came, a striding mountain of darkness and brawn. The allotted span for all life in the arena was measured in seconds.

  The Salamanders used those seconds. So did the eldar. Flamers and fusion guns on full, ammo conservation be damned. The two forces turned as one and blasted exterminating fire down the bowl of the arena. They ran into the wake of their blasts, scorching armour. There was no pause in the wave of flame. Fuel canisters depleted as a swath of orks five metres wide vanished, replaced by charcoal and burning logs of bone. Eldar and Space Marines punched through the last of the orks like a spear-tipped battering ram. A fusion beam melted the gate. The eldar, furthest down the rise, were first into the mouth of the tunnel. The Salamanders were at their heels. Ha’garen splashed through the pit, the traces of a thousand miserable deaths crunching and splitting beneath his boots. He sensed the space above him hold its breath as something monstrous roared a command.

  He plunged into the dubious shelter of the tunnel.

  The very air of the arena exploded.

  The rocket bombardment was an embodiment of will and totality. It was madness to use ordnance of such size, and in such quantity, inside a ship. For a moment, the sun rose behind Ba’birin. The blast wave slammed air into the tunnel like a giant fist, flattening every soul to the ground. As he fell, Ba’birin saw a Fire Dragon hurled against the wall where the tunnel bent. The eldar crumpled to the ground, a shattered doll with too many joints. Flame followed with a hollow, booming roar. Even through the protection of his helmet’s rebreather, Ba’birin felt the air inside his lungs turn scorching dry. He held his breath, waiting for the worst of the fire to pass. As the oxygen in the tunnel was consumed, the fire abated. In its place came choking smoke, roiling with toxic particulates
and organic ash. The world’s-end thunder of the explosions faded. The aftermath was a chorus of crackling flame and groaning metal.

  ‘Give me the count!’ Neleus shouted. The Salamanders called out their names.

  Brother Ko’bin did not.

  Ba’birin followed Neleus back to the mouth of the tunnel. Ko’bin had been caught by the blast. He was tangled in the rubble at the entrance. His armour had been reduced to slag, less by the heat than by the direct force of the explosions themselves. His body had been pierced by an assemblage of metal. Perhaps it had once been decking. Perhaps part of a wall, or some seating. Perhaps all three. It had become a missile. Now it was a sculpture, a writhing, tortured abstraction of agony.

  Neleus spoke softly. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look at what he did.’

  Ba’birin was confused at first. Then the meaning of Ko’bin’s crucified corpse became clear. His outstretched arms and legs were not an accident of death. Ko’bin had done what he could to block the tunnel mouth with his body, absorbing fire and forming a new barrier by becoming one with debris. He had sacrificed himself to save his brothers from the worst of the explosions.

  ‘Thank you, brother,’ Ba’birin murmured. The loss was even greater than that of a single warrior. Ko’bin’s progenoid glands were beyond salvaging. His genetic code was lost to the Salamanders forever. The Circle of Fire, the process of rebirth as asserted by the Promethean Creed, was broken.

  They rejoined Ha’garen at the head of the formation. The Techmarine stood motionless except for the plasma cutter on his servo-harness. It traced a gentle arc back and forth as if scanning the xenos before it. The eldar had recovered. Salamanders and Fire Dragons eyed each other warily. Weapons were at ready, but not trained on targets. There was enough consciousness of shared circumstances to hold off conflict for the moment.

  ‘Now what?’ Neleus asked.

  ‘Insight would be welcome,’ Ba’birin answered.

  From the destroyed arena came the first sounds of orks clambering down to investigate the results of their handiwork. The huge voice was bellowing orders again. The greenskins would be here before long.

  The robed eldar stepped forwards. He glanced first at the flamer-wielding commander, and received a nod. His blade was unsheathed, but he was not brandishing it. It seemed, rather, as if the sword were as much a limb as his arms, and moved as part of the eldar’s expression of self. He reeked of witch. When he spoke, his Gothic was accented but arrogantly precise, as if he were instructing the Salamanders in the use of their own language. ‘Warriors of the human Emperor, greetings. I am, by name, Kaderial, and by deduction certain that we are on this ship with the same purpose.’

  ‘And your conclusion?’ Ba’birin asked.

  ‘The urgent need for an alliance, and the need, as urgent again, to avoid conflict.’ He sheathed his sword. The sudden economy of the gesture made it seem as if even keeping things simple were a luxury and an art.

  The noises of the ork approach were drawing closer.

  ‘Agreed,’ Ba’birin said.

  Kaderial nodded. ‘I am, by joy, surprised.’

  The hyperbole grated, but Ba’birin let it pass. ‘We should go,’ he said.

  ‘Agreed, in turn. Shall we lead?’ Without waiting for an answer, the eldar moved off with his troops.

  Ba’birin gestured for the Salamanders to follow, and he marched after the eldar.

  ‘Brother-sergeant,’ N’krumor voxed over the company channel. ‘Are we really?’

  ‘We are,’ Ba’birin told the Apothecary. ‘Or would you rather not keep a close eye on an enemy force whose target is the same as yours?’

  ‘A sound strategy,’ Ha’garen offered.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ba’birin said, and realised that his distrust of Ha’garen had tempered. He did not understand his brother’s altered way of thinking, and worried that his judgement was suspect at best. But Ha’garen was, at least, starting from a human standpoint, however far he had travelled from it. The conversation with the eldar warlock had been disconcerting. One did not talk with orks. They barely seemed to talk with each other. The only possible interaction with that race was a clash of arms. There was a comfortable simplicity, then, to their alien qualities. Orks also had but one mode of existence: attack. They were predictable. But the eldar were a hated mystery. The fact that one could communicate with some of them only compounded their disgusting otherness. This contingent was particularly off-putting. Their predilection for flame and their drake-like iconography gave them a touch of the familiar that only made them even more alien. Ha’garen strode forwards, his servo-harness turning him into a multi-limbed creature of metal. The eldar moved with grace, and their armour had a flexibility that made it seem mere raiment than protection. They were entirely of the organic realm. Ha’garen was far down the path to the inorganic. He was disappearing, it seemed to Ba’birin, into the realm of the machine. He marched with clockwork precision, servo-arms flexing and grasping, shoulder mounts swivelling from target to target even as his chainaxe was angled diplomatically down. There was no trace of the flesh in his heavy, perfectly measured tread. Yet in this moment, in the presence of true xenos, he was completely human.

  Eldar and Salamanders moved down the tunnel. It ran straight for a few hundred metres. There were no branches. The metalwork was so rough, it was as if the passage were a cave mined out of a mountain of iron. It was wide enough for the Space Marines to walk two abreast. Ba’birin suspected beasts sometimes chased the slaves out into the pit. There were plenty of rotting bits of bodies. People had lost limbs in this tunnel. There were claw gouges here and there in the walls.

  Neleus voxed for his ears only. ‘They have their backs to us. How are they watching us?’

  ‘You assume that they are.’

  ‘They have to be.’

  Ba’birin nodded. ‘The one who spoke to us is a witch of some sort.’

  ‘Sending one to find one. Sensible.’

  ‘Any suggestions for what we do once we reach the prisoner?’

  ‘Other than kill them before they kill us?’ Neleus’s grin was almost visible through his helmet.

  ‘Then we agree that that should be our plan.’

  ‘There can be no other.’ Neleus sounded much less jocular.

  ‘Brother-sergeants,’ a voice interrupted. It was Berengus. He had the long-range vox equipment. ‘I have received an urgent message from Captain Mulcebar.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s good news,’ Neleus said.

  ‘The Raven Guard’s mission planetside has been successful,’ Berengus began.

  ‘I congratulate my brothers,’ Ba’birin interrupted, ‘but we already knew that, and the tactical relevance of this information–’

  ‘Culminating in the annihilation of eldar ground forces,’ Berengus finished.

  ‘Thank you, brother,’ Ba’birin said. ‘Please alert the others.’ He tightened his grip on his flamer, lifting the muzzle just a little bit higher, ready to stream death at a moment’s notice.

  ‘Do you think they know?’ Neleus wondered.

  ‘They must.’

  ‘There has been no detectable broadcast since the beginning of this encounter,’ Ha’garen put in as the information reached him.

  ‘That means nothing,’ Ba’birin said. ‘The eldar are masters of sorcerous communication.’

  ‘Then why aren’t they attacking?’ Neleus demanded.

  ‘For the same reason we aren’t.’

  ‘The mission is paramount,’ Ha’garen said, completing the thought.

  The tunnel ended in a long chamber filled floor to ceiling with cages. They were rough cubes, about a metre and a half on each side. There were no platforms or walkways reaching to the upper prisons, just a tangle of rope ladders. Some of the cages were empty. Most were not. Inside the tiny boxes were the arena participants. Ba’birin saw humans, eldar, k
root and more. There were even a few orks. This was a menagerie in which the differences between species had been all but erased. The prisoners were all feral, ravening rage and gibbering fear. He didn’t hear a single intelligible word, only the whining pleas and growling threats of beasts. There was nothing to salvage here. A conflagration would be nothing less than euthanasia.

  ‘Is our target here?’ he asked Ha’garen, eyeing the advance of the eldar carefully.

  The Techmarine shook his head. ‘Nearby, but not part of this collection. These are not slaves. Not any longer.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  A moment passed, a tick during which Ba’birin sensed Ha’garen’s consciousness vanishing into mechanistic meditation, as if he were a walking cogitator. Then he was back. ‘Down another level,’ he said. ‘Then we look.’

  Ahead, the eldar had stopped. They had spread out in a rough circle, and appeared to be focused on a section of decking. Kaderial gestured Ba’birin forwards. ‘I am, by circumstance, delighted,’ he said. ‘Farseer Elisath, reaching the end of his misfortune, lies almost directly below.’

  Ba’birin glanced back and forth between the deck and the eldar. ‘You are suggesting cutting through.’

  ‘Motivated by strategy, I am.’

  Neleus said, ‘You don’t appear to be equipped for this sort of work.’

  The same thought had occurred to Ba’birin as he ran his eyes over the eldar arsenal. He didn’t know what they had concealed on their persons, but they weren’t holding anything other than their primary weapons. The fusion guns would punch through the deck easily enough, but they would also vaporise anything beneath. The prisoner would not survive such a rescue.

  Kaderial spread his hands. ‘We are, by the fates, embarrassed.’ His ornate, conical helmet turned Ha’garen’s way. ‘While you, by the same, are prepared.’