Stormseer - David Annandale Read online

  If he took the brotherhood at desperate speed to the manufactorum, they would be leaving the Iron Guard to a fate that was anything but uncertain. The mortals had courage, tenacity and skill. None of that mattered in the long run against the ork machines. By the time the White Scars returned, the bastion could well be a smoking ruin.

  And if he stayed? By Kusala’s own estimation, the Scouts were not strong enough to cripple the ork facility. There would be delay, and there would be losses, but more ork tanks would arrive, and the end would be even more certain.

  Closer to the tanks now. He made rapid corrections left and right. Ork bullets screamed overhead. A few struck the front armour of his bike. He kept to the course.

  There was no real choice. To stay would result in the further consolidation of ork strength. The White Scars had come to find the manufactorum, destroy it, and from that blow, destroy the orks on this moon. The bastion was here for that purpose too. So it would have to play its role.

  He wondered what the difference was between his forced hand and Ghazan’s sense of fate.

  Temur and his brothers shot past the left flank of the Battlewagon, strafing it with shells. They killed the side gunners and a handful of orks clinging to the roof of the tank. But the vehicles had arrived with the greenskins covering them like ticks, and the gunners were replaced in an instant.

  Temur contacted Meixner. ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘the successful prosecution of this war will require sacrifice.’

  ‘Ours?’

  ‘Yes. The heart of the greenskins’ operation here is about to be exposed to us. The Khajog’s Stand and the assault squad will remain to assist.’

  ‘You did warn me of this eventuality.’ There was no bitterness, no irony in Meixner’s voice. He understood. ‘We will hold the orks here,’ he said. ‘We will keep their forces divided for as long as we can.’

  ‘That will be sufficient. You have my word.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Then the disciplined formality of Meixner’s tone slipped for a moment. ‘If I might request a favour?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Hurry back.’ The irony came through now. It was as clear as the exhaustion.

  When the demolition charges went off and the power plant collapsed on itself, the energy levels fluctuated wildly around the cages on the grid. One of the machines burst into flame. But the grid did not shut down. A minute part of Ghazan’s consciousness wondered about this. Perhaps the hellish construction stored reserve power in batteries. Perhaps it was the imprisoned eldar witches themselves who were the source of the power, and the cables were bringing their energies to the plant in the next cavern rather than the other way around.

  It didn’t matter. The only thing that did was to tackle his future head-on, and the future was standing there, a thing of inhuman worship and feral magic.

  Ghazan ran forwards. He sent another electrical blast ahead of him. It caught the oncoming orks and the flash turned three of them to ash. Two others were rooted to the floor as the lightning devastated their nervous systems. But one of them, with smoke rising from its eyes, managed to keep running towards Ghazan, taking half a dozen more steps before it died.

  So strong, he thought. Why are they so strong?

  The witch was back on its feet. It opened its maw so wide that its head rocked back. It roared with an ecstasy of rage. The other orks were frenzied by the shout, and fed their heightened fury back to the witch. The ork madness was an almost physical wave. It knocked Ghazan back a step.

  He fired his bolt pistol as he steadied himself. The orks seemed stronger yet, but their skulls still flew apart when struck by mass-reactive shells. A howling monster hurtled into him. He blocked the swing of the ork’s chainaxe with his staff and shot the greenskin through the throat.

  His outrage had its own power, and he moved forwards again. Staff upheld, he roared back at the orks, hurling the shout of ancestral cavalry charges. The shout became wind, and it flattened the greenskins, clearing his path to the witch.

  Four of the eldar were climbing the grid, firing down from the cages at the orks. The others were engaging in melee combat with the greenskins, slicing at them with twin blades, forcing them back from the machines. Tellathia moved through the battle with a mix of stillness and uncanny speed. She carried no weapon except her staff. Her right hand moved as if she were conjuring music only she could hear. Wherever she pointed, there went shuriken fire or sword blow. Orks tried to kill her, but the attacks of her squad always hit the greenskins just as they were getting her in their sights or closing within striking distance. She kept the eldar ahead of the orks. Whatever attack the greenskins tried, the eldar countered even as it began. She seemed to know what the orks were going to do before they did themselves.

  A few times, when her brethren were pressed hard, an ork slipped through the cordon of pre-emptive kills that surrounded her. The opportunity did the beast no good. Tellathia snapped into motion, rounding on her foe with serpent speed. Energy coursing the length of her staff, she pointed. She didn’t touch the ork, but it collapsed, screaming, clutching its head. It stayed down, gibbering, and was trampled to death by others of its kind as they tried to grapple with this being who seemed to exist a few seconds ahead of everything else in the cavern.

  The ork engineer was in between Ghazan and the witch. It regarded him with malevolent curiosity. Ghazan’s bolter shells exploded against the force field. Ghazan refused to believe that the tech was intentionally providing cover for the witch; but it had done so, buying seconds during which the wind-stunned greenskins made it to their feet again. The ork witch spread its arms wide. Coruscating energy flowed from its claws. The streams split into dozens of arcs that landed on the greenskins on both sides of Ghazan.

  The brutes seemed to grow before his eyes. He dismissed the sight as an illusion. But the orks were bursting with renewed power. They came at him as an explosion of violence. He saw residual energy crackle on the ends of their tusks. They were maddened with rage, ecstatic with it. He was surrounded by a wall of green muscle.

  It closed in. A few orks, in the lunacy of their rage, fired their guns, shooting through their own ranks. Shotguns blew open chests and severed arms. The wounded kept fighting. A brute that should have been dead paid no attention to the hole in its torso, and swung a huge cleaver at Ghazan. The blow was strong enough to shatter the blade as it bit into the ceramite of his power armour.

  There was a sound like stuttering thunder. It came from a portable stubber. Sparks and smoke billowed from the barrel as it spat a stream of bullets. The weapon was a monster of noise and recoil. It had no accuracy. It didn’t need any. The volley cut through ork flesh and pounded Ghazan. His armour protected him, but he sensed damage occurring. His movements became heavier as servo-motors lost power.

  Something huge hit him from behind. He stumbled forwards a step, turned his momentum into a pivot and faced his attacker. The ork was a head taller than the others. It wielded a grotesque double-bladed chain-cleaver. The weapon was ridiculous in its overwrought expression of bloodthirst, but it was wielded by a being that was equal to its violence. More blows rained on Ghazan from all sides as the big ork swung the roaring blades at his face.

  If the strike went true, it would cut his head in half.

  He had all the time he needed to see the danger, to understand it, and to parse his reaction. As he had entered the pivot, he had reacted on instinct. He tapped into a power as elemental to the collective psyche of the White Scars as lightning and wind were to the identity of Chogoris.

  He summoned speed. It had been the defining feature of the White Scars way of war for all the millennia of the Chapter’s existence. It had been the way of the steppes long before the arrival of Jaghatai Khan. War was speed, and he became its incarnation.

  The ork’s swing appeared to slow, as if it were happening in deep water. The fists and blades around Ghazan became l
ethargic. He ducked beneath the chainblades and moved to the side of the ork. Beneath the greenskin’s heavy brow, its stupid eyes began to widen in surprise. Ghazan brought his bolter up to the brute’s temple. He pulled the trigger. The normal pace of time resumed as the ork’s head exploded.

  No more orks came from the entrance behind Ghazan. Ariq’s sabotage had been effective. The great flood of the green horde had been slowed, but it had not been stopped. The enemy continued to arrive from smaller passages, mostly on the north side of the cave. More and more orks directed their fire at the eldar in the elevated positions, the greenskins showing no concern about preserving the lives of their prisoners.

  The four warriors were forced to send their shuriken into the flesh of more and more targets. Even with Tellathia’s direction, they could not hold them all at bay. The orks shut down the options of destiny through sheer numbers. There was no future where tragedy did not occur. First one, then a second of the warriors fell, sublime armour shattered by simple but overwhelming brutality.

  There was art in war. To be Adeptus Astartes was to know this and to practise it. Ghazan recognised the alien brilliance in the eldar art. The orks had no art as he understood it. They were nothing but raw war. Their undisciplined, exuberant force smashed the art and trampled its remains.

  The eldar on the ground tried to counter the new force. They unleashed their pulverising screams. The orks staggered, giving the last two eldar on the grid the chance to kill a few more. It wasn’t enough. Tellathia’s gestures grew more urgent. The eldar took down the orks faster, despite their own losses. But the tide was turning, and it was rising.

  Wind, Ghazan thought. Wind, his spirit became. He reached deep into his soul, into the heart of Chogoris, and into the warp. He risked much, as the eternal claws of the immaterium reached into his self. He gained much, as the winds came, greater than before. They surrounded him, a cyclone spiralling out from this centre. The rage took the cavern. The orks lost their aim. The smaller ones fell. The eldar, warned by Tellathia of the coming of the gale, rode it out and slaughtered the enemy.

  He’d won them all breathing space. Not much. A few seconds, perhaps.

  Freed, for the moment, of the mob, Ghazan moved forwards again. Unmoved by the gale, as firmly grounded as a pillar, the ork tech hadn’t moved. It was still blocking his path to the witch. It was still grinning. It was not attacking, but it had the look of feral joy of a greenskin in full combat.

  Behind it, the witch was bent over. It clutched its staff with both hands, trembling with the tension of effort. It was surrounded by a narrow, intense aurora. Power was barely contained by the ork’s body, and was still building.

  Ghazan realised that he’d been half right. The tech was not protecting the witch. But it was cooperating. The look on its face spoke the truth: it was attacking. The two were launching a coordinated strike, with the engineer giving the psyker the opportunity to prepare its great blow. Ghazan charged, still firing his bolter in the faint hope that he might overwhelm the tech’s force field in time. He was drained from calling the great winds, but he began to open his mind to the warp yet again.

  Stop, he thought. Stop, stop, stop. He’d been too slow. The orks had bought their own breathing space. They had delayed Ghazan just long enough.

  Just a few metres away now. The tech’s force field wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t let it. He would smash the ork aside with his own momentum. Let him only have the time to take those last steps.

  The tech jumped out of his way. It crouched low, racing to Ghazan’s left for the nearest side exit.

  The witch was standing straight.

  The blow came.

  There was no way into the cavern except through the main entrance. Yet there was still the chance to approach without being detected. The lumen orbs that the orks were using were harsh, bright, and threw stark shadows across the floor. The tanks were well-lit. Beyond them, the lower reaches of the cavern were a confusion of darkness and pulsing glare from giant welding torches. The noise of the construction was deafening. Kusala would have had to resort to hand signals just to make himself understood.

  The Scouts moved in, flowing from shadow to shadow, wraiths in armour. The orks were consumed by the riot of industry. On all sides, Kusala saw the dark side of creation. The orks built with glee and wild passion. Everything they brought into being was grotesque. They gave form to excess, and the excess was brute violence. There was nothing sensible or practical about the designs of the Battlewagons. There was too much armament, too much shielding, too much metal piled on top of metal. And yet the vehicles were every bit as dangerous as the orks believed they were. Somehow, their form made them into the monsters they were meant to be.

  Seeing them closer, outside the frenzy of vehicular combat, Kusala was struck by their size. They were larger than the typical ork Battlewagon. Everything about these orks was exaggerated, as if some malign spirit were inspiring them to greater heights of destruction, war, and riot.

  Kusala scanned for opportunities as they headed deeper into the cavern. He would have to choose the target well. There would be a single opportunity. If the damage was severe, with accompanying chaos, the Scouts might live long enough to do more. If it were minor, they would be useless martyrs.

  Ariq signalled for his attention. He pointed. Two vehicles over, partially obscured by the intervening scaffolding, a completed Battlewagon was being fuelled. It was close to the centre of the cavern. Beside it was a reservoir twice the size of the tanks. Kusala nodded. He followed a path that took them under the scaffolding, shifting back and forth between patches of darkness, approaching the clear space.

  Closer up, Kusala could see the spills of the orks’ promethium. There were pools of it over much of the cavern floor in this area. More was streaming down the side of the Battlewagon, leaking from the hose, and dripping from the bottom of the reservoir. Ariq’s eagerness was bordering on delight. No wonder. The orks might as well have issued him a written invitation to do his worst.

  Kusala looked back the way they had come. The quickest retreat would take the Scouts past two more Battlewagons. As single-minded as the orks were about their tasks, they weren’t so blind that they wouldn’t notice a human coming right up to the vehicles. But given a much greater distraction…

  Kusala began to share Ariq’s eagerness. It was time to unleash what he and his Scouts did best. In this cavern, they would complete the mission that Temur Khan had given them. He could not deny the importance of what following the zadyin arga had revealed. But he could not shake the idea that, if they had not encountered the eldar, Ghazan would have insisted they continue down the path of his visions. They would likely never have found this assembly bay.

  Kusala had a full measure of respect for Ghazan’s prowess. He did not doubt the importance of the Stormseer’s visions. He did not doubt their reality. What he doubted was Ghazan’s insistence that what he had seen superseded everything else about the mission. There would be a reckoning with the khan later. Kusala had no interest in being caught in the middle of that crossfire. He was a warrior of the White Scars, and he asked no more than to do his duty to the minghan and Chapter, primarch and Emperor.

  Now, though, Ghazan had removed himself from Kusala’s concern. Now, there was only the purity of the mission. The purity of destroying the foe.

  One of the lessons that Kusala taught the Scouts was the many shades of speed. On foot or on Land Speeder, the spirit of the White Scars way of war was the same. Stealth was speed. The attack came without warning. The enemy did not see the blow coming. The effect was the same: lightning from a clear sky.

  Kusala sent Ariq to prepare the lightning over the reservoir. He led the others back so that they might turn the first thunderclap into a great storm. At the first Battlewagon, he stopped. Yekejin and Bokegan continued to the last vehicle before the entrance. They moved well. Within very few paces, Kusala could barely see
them, even knowing where to look.

  An act of great speed was closing in on the orks.

  He maglocked his bolter. He took out a krak grenade for each hand. He eyed the tank’s wheels and its roof, covered in labouring orks.

  Two orks began shouting at each other. They stood on the top of the Battlewagon, behind one of the viciously angled crenellations. Each wanted the same tool. It looked like a combination wrench and welder, as long as Kusala’s arm. After a brief tug of war, one ork snatched it from the other’s grasp. The second greenskin grabbed its brother by the throat and smashed its head against the point of the crenellation.

  The iron punched through the ork’s skull and launched its left eye in an impressive arc. The rest of the orks hooted. The corpse’s grip relaxed. The tool fell, clattering and bouncing through the scaffolding. It landed in front of Kusala. He was close enough to pick it up.

  He mentally framed a string of curses. They were his most imaginative in at least twenty years.

  He glanced left. Still no Ariq. Looked up. The ork was clambering down the scaffolding.

  Left. Was that a shadow moving? It was.

  The ork was on the ground. It reached for the tool.

  Ariq was seconds away.

  The ork grasped the tool. It saw Kusala. Its jaw hung open in stupid surprise.

  Still holding the grenades, Kusala slammed his gauntleted fist against the bridge of the ork’s nose. He caved in the greenskin’s face. The brute still roared before it had the good grace to die.

  ‘Now!’ Kusala shouted. He threw his grenades, one at the roof, one at the wheels.

  Ariq triggered the charge.

  The speed of war struck the orks.

  The first blast of Ariq’s explosives was dwarfed by the conflagration of the promethium. The fireball filled the centre of the chamber. It swallowed the Battlewagon. It turned orks and scaffolding into flying, burning debris. Then the tank exploded. Its wreckage was of larger mass. It flew lower, hit the ground rolling, smashing down more construction works.