Trial by Blood Page 4

  ‘A Titan?’ Seth’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  ‘Yes, an Imperator-class to be exact, and it does not belong to the forges of Mars.’

  ‘The Archenemy has not set foot upon this planet in such force for thousands of years. Not since before Armageddon was resettled,’ said Seth.

  ‘That is true.’ Nerissa nodded. ‘But the terraforming process is not without flaw. Occasionally, elements are missed, the past buried beneath the new. It seems that when Armageddon was remade, we left something behind of the old.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘No, I am not,’ said Nerissa. ‘But it is rare that I have the luxury of certainty. If there is even the slightest chance that the Titan is buried there, we must move to destroy it before the orks find it. We have no idea what malicious sentience lies dormant within the Titan’s machine core. We cannot allow the orks to awaken it, or worse, move it to another world. Such a grave threat to the Imperium cannot be allowed to slip through our grasp.’

  ‘I will not abandon Hive Volcanus on a whim. When the hive is secure and the orks have been driven back I will reconsider your request.’

  ‘You misunderstand me. This is not a request.’

  ‘And you misunderstand our relationship. I am not beholden to you, inquisitor.’

  +It saddens me, Chapter Master, that you would condemn your Chapter to extermination over something as trivial as a few million lives.+ Nerissa pushed her words into Seth’s mind.

  ‘Speak plainly, witch.’ Unlike Nerissa, Seth was no psyker, but the anger boiling through him cut her mind like a dagger.

  ‘If you refuse me… If you will not do your duty, then I shall ensure my colleagues in the ordos perform theirs.’ Nerissa’s eyes narrowed. ‘When was the last time you submitted a batch of gene-seed for testing, Flesh Tearer?’

  ‘You dare threaten me?’

  ‘I am an agent of the Throne! There is nothing I dare not, or cannot, do in my duty to the Emperor.’

  ‘Enough, both of you. Seth, Dante believes Nerissa to be correct. He would have you do this. I will redeploy Third Company to bolster Volcanus’s defences.’

  Nerissa grinned.

  ‘Do not mistake me for an ally, inquisitor,’ Tycho growled. ‘If you threaten a descendant of Sanguinius again, I will smash your bones and cast you into the deepest pit of Baal.’

  ‘Very well, but only my honour guard and me. The rest of my warriors will remain in place until Tycho’s Blood Angels are in position,’ said Seth.

  ‘No…’

  ‘It is not up for discussion!’ Seth turned his back on Nerissa, his eyes lingering on the image of the Titan as it rotated on the hololith. ‘We will be more than enough.’

  ‘This is madness. We’ll never reach the mine in one piece,’ Harahel growled as the Vengeance shook under another burst of anti-air fire. The single red luminator mounted on the ceiling strobed in warning as shrapnel and las-blasts pawed at the gunship’s flanks, assailing her like a terrible storm.

  ‘Brother Harahel is right.’ Metatron tapped the Stormraven’s hull in an effort to appease the craft’s machine-spirit. ‘The fighting only intensifies as we head north. We cannot continue in the air.’

  ‘Fortunately, Flesh Tearer, that is not our intention,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘Then perhaps, inquisitor, you will dispense with this facade and enlighten us.’ Seth spoke slowly, struggling to stay calm.

  Clad in sapphire battleplate, the inquisitor was a striking figure, far more imposing than the loose-robed woman Seth had met in the command centre. ‘Secrets are the armour of my order, Chapter Master. You will forgive me for not throwing off their protection until necessary.’

  ‘If Chaplain Appollus were here, he’d remind her that only death brings forgiveness,’ Harahel’s voice crackled over the private squad channel. Like the rest of the Flesh Tearers, the Company Champion’s face was hidden behind his helm.

  ‘We are only travelling as far as the defence line at Sreya Ridge, where we will rendezvous with the 11th Armoured and travel the rest of the way on the ground.’ Nerissa tapped a dial on her gauntlet and a hololith sprang from it to fill the space in the centre of the gunship’s hold.

  Metatron sat forward, studying the hololith as a series of icons and vector-tags detailed their route from the ridge to the ore mine. ‘The orks have crippled the infrastructure. There is no bridge, inquisitor. We cannot reach the mine overland…’ Metatron paused as details of the Imperial forces stationed at Sreya scrolled over the image. ‘The Validus…?’

  ‘You are astute, for a soldier,’ Nerissa grinned. ‘The Validus is void-shielded and stands taller than the deepest recorded furrow of the Boiling Sea. It will carry us to the mine.’

  ‘What of the 11th? The Validus cannot carry them all,’ asked Metatron.

  ‘She does not mean to take them with us,’ said Seth.

  ‘The 11th will cover our advance and buy us enough time to complete our mission,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘And what of them then? The plains north of Sreya are overrun by heavy ork war-engines, and more than a battalion of their towering idols. The 11th will perish without the Validus’s support.’

  ‘It seems you have answered your own question, Chapter Master.’

  ‘Pilot, turn us around.’ Seth got to his feet and turned towards the cockpit.

  ‘No! Stay on course. This is my mission, my command.’ Nerissa stood, barring Seth’s way.

  Seth growled. It took every ounce of his restraint not to rip the inquisitor’s head from her shoulders. Around them, Nerissa’s retinue tensed in apprehension, their hands edging towards weapons. The two females, bound in tight leathers, wielded slender power swords, their faces hidden behind masks of skin. The larger of the males was covered in crude tattoos and the litany of penance had been burned into the flesh of his left arm. The fourth was more machine than man, the lower part of his face and most of his torso replaced with augmetics.

  Nerissa had come ready for war, but if she thought that even warriors as dangerous as these would buy her a single second against his wrath, she was gravely mistaken.

  ‘Arrogance has made you foolish. The ridge is under heavy assault. The entire region is embroiled in a full-scale engagement. We’ll be blown from the air before we get within a kilometre of the Validus.’

  ‘I have diverted a squadron of Vendettas and a wing of Thunderbolts to cover our approach. The orks will have more than enough to worry about.’

  ‘And who were they supposed to be covering? Who else have you left to die?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘The lives of the Emperor’s servants are not yours to waste.’

  ‘They are! That is what it means to be of the ordos. I would sacrifice every man, woman and child in this sector to do the Emperor’s work. It is a shame you do not share the same clarity of purpose, Flesh Tearer.’

  ‘Know this, inquisitor.’ Seth’s voice dripped with menace. ‘It is only my oath to Dante that keeps me from ripping your heart out.’

  ‘You–’ Nerissa began, trailing off as the gunship shuddered violently and a slew of weapon impacts rang out against its hull.

  ‘Lord, the fighting is even heavier than anticipated. We cannot slow down enough to land. We’ll be too easy a target for the ork guns,’ the pilot’s voice crackled over the comm.

  ‘So much for the air cover.’ Seth turned his back on Nerissa, moving to the rear of the hold and slamming his fist into the assault ramp’s release catch. ‘Equip jump packs. We’ll drop the rest of the way.’

  ‘What about them?’ Nisroc gestured to the inquisitor and her retinue.

  ‘You needn’t worry about me, Flesh Tearer,’ said Nerissa. ‘My gifts will see my team and I safely to the Validus.’

  ‘I’d sooner place my life in a servitor’s hands than trust to such gifts,’ Metatron muttered over the private squad channel as he hefted a jump pack onto his back.

  ‘Given the choice,
brother, I’d rather we walked.’ Harahel double-checked the mag-clamp on his own jump pack, and moved to the ramp.

  Below the gunship, the Sreya plains were a mosaic of fire and steel. The battle tanks of the 11th Armoured were spread out in a thin defensive line in a bold attempt to hold an area they did not have the resources to contest. An innumerable horde of ork vehicles swarmed towards them, tearing across the desert in a chaotic mass of gunfire and exhaust fumes.

  Ahead of the Imperial line, the Validus strode forward, a mountain of metal and plasteel bent on the orks’ destruction. An Imperator-class Battle Titan, the Validus was a monument to the achievement and arrogance of man. As much city as war machine, it was capable of housing entire platoons in its armoured legs and torso. Its top deck spread out like a mammoth landing pad, as though it carried a slab of the world on its shoulders. Crenellated buttresses and armoured spires grew up from the platform. Studded with battle cannons, las-batteries and missile silos, they housed more firepower than a small army. Yet they were little more than defensive trinkets when compared to the Titan’s primary weapons. When the Validus attacked, it did so with purpose.

  The colossal weapons mounted under the Validus’s shoulders blazed like miniature suns as they fired, annihilating entire columns of ork vehicles and burning great furrows in the earth.

  ‘It is glorious, is it not, brother?’ Metatron stood on the ramp, transfixed by the might of the Validus.

  ‘I’m just glad we are not here to kill it,’ said Harahel.

  ‘Yes, thank the Blood for small mercies.’ Nisroc was not joking. Outside the gunship, carnage reigned.

  Ork anti-air batteries spewed a constant stream of rounds skywards. Ork and Imperial fighters dogged each other, stitching the clouds with tracer fire. Clusters of aerial mines detonated in a wash of flame. The air between the Flesh Tearers and the Validus was a morass of shrapnel, las-fire and explosions. Jumping was madness.

  ‘The Blood protects.’ Harahel touched his blade to his helmet and locked it to his armour.

  The gunship bucked hard, threatening to toss the Flesh Tearers into a free fall. Dark smoke rolled over its surface, its engines ignited by a rocket strike.

  ‘Go. Now.’ At Seth’s command, the Flesh Tearers leapt from the gunship. Nerissa followed them. Wrapped in a sphere of flickering energy, the inquisitor and her warriors fell through the clouds like leaves trapped in a plasma bomb. Seth jumped last.

  An instant later, the Vengeance exploded.

  ‘By the Blood,’ Seth snarled as the blast wave punched him into a sharp dive. Burning shrapnel pelted his armour like iron hail. Flame washed over him, scouring away the litany parchments that adorned his pauldrons.

  Warning icons filled Seth’s display, his altimeter spinning down towards zero as the Validus’s deck sped up to meet him. Seth watched it near, unwilling to slow his descent until the last possible moment.

  He activated his jump pack, gritting his teeth against the force as the booster roared into life and arrested his fall. Seth slammed into the Titan’s weapon platform, flexing his knees to absorb the impact. The servos in his leg armour whined in protest, sparking as a fracture spread up his left greave.

  ‘Report,’ Seth commanded over the squad channel.

  ‘On board.’ Harahel was the first to respond.

  ‘On deck,’ said Metatron.

  ‘I live,’ said Nisroc.

  ‘I am to your south, lord,’ said Nathaniel.

  Seth listened to the chorus of vox acknowledgments as he called up his squad’s ident-icons and locations. There was one missing. ‘Brother Shemal?’

  The vox-link hissed with silence.

  ‘He is lost to us,’ said Metatron.

  ‘Sanguinius keep him,’ said Nisroc.

  ‘Sanguinius rip the heart from every one of these accursed greenskins,’ Harahel snarled.

  Seth bunched a fist in rage, and opened a comm-channel to Nerissa. ‘This had better be worth it, inquisitor.’

  Nerissa ignored the Chapter Master and addressed the Titan’s pilot. ‘Princeps Augustus, new orders.’

  The Validus stepped into the ocean. The Boiling Sea had not been named in irony. More chemical mess than body of water, it was fed a constant stream of corrosives and pollutants by the waste pipes servicing Armageddon’s hives and manufactoria. Super-heated by the toxic mix, the sea never cooled. The Validus remained unbowed as the sea did its best to beat back the intruder, weathering the barrage of rolling waves that broke against its torso.

  ‘Enginseer Luag, status.’ The calm note of Princeps Augustus’s voice was in stark contrast to the violent waters enveloping his Titan.

  ‘Integrity is holding, princeps. Ablative plating will dissolve in less than two days, Terran standard. The hull and superstructure are under no immediate threat.’

  ‘Very good. Alert me if the situation changes.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Luag.

  ‘Advancing, tactical stride.’

  The Validus pushed on, lurching unevenly as it struggled for footing on the undulating sea bed. The water displaced by the Titan’s monolithic bulk surged up around it, rising into a simmering wall before crashing down over the Fire Wastes.

  Seth listened in silence as the Validus’s sensoria fed the death-screams of the 11th Armoured to his helm. The lucky ones died quickly, swept into the sea, dissolved before they could scream. The others, the unfortunate, were soaked by the corrosive liquid. Cast across the plain, they were left to die an agonising death as their skin bubbled from their bones.

  ‘Such a waste,’ Nathaniel snarled, unconcerned with who heard him.

  Seth turned his gaze to Nerissa. Her face was impassive, as steely cold as her actions. ‘You would use the tools of the xenos to do the Emperor’s work?’ He gestured to the pendant hanging around the inquisitor’s neck. It was a single oval gem, the colour of darkness and blood. He had seen its like before, affixed to the breastplates of the accursed eldar.

  Nerissa glanced down at the gem. ‘A weapon is a weapon, is it not? It is the wielder that is important.’

  ‘Perhaps. But the worth of a warrior can be judged by the weapons they use to make war.’

  +So what then is your worth, Chapter Master? What will history remember of a warrior who deploys black-armoured beasts to fight his battles?+

  Seth grimaced, suppressing a growl as Nerissa forced her words into his mind. +Be careful to what you turn your thoughts, inquisitor. You of all people should know that a mind that wanders in dark places is soon lost.+

  A thunderous tremor ran up the Validus’s spine, shaking the deck as the Titan reached the ocean floor and stopped.

  ‘We’ve reached bottom.’ The princeps’s status report drew Seth’s attention, breaking the baleful silence between him and Nerissa. ‘The terrain evens out from here. Proceeding at one-half striding speed. Estimated arrival in twenty-three point eight five minutes.’ The Validus’s commander’s tone was flat. To him, war was a perfunctory task. He acted devoid of emotional intent.

  Seth’s thoughts turned to his Flesh Tearers, to the rage that flowed through their veins. It was the Chapter’s secret. A truth each of them was charged with concealing, yet its touch made them more honest in deed than any of their allies. Unlike the princeps, their actions were all emotive. Unlike the inquisitor, they did not pretend to be anything but monsters.

  ‘Contacts,’ the Validus’s tactical officer announced as the shrill chime of warning sigils rang out from his console.

  ‘Number and direction?’ asked the princeps.

  ‘Fourteen, fast moving, from the north-west.’ He paused. ‘Correction. Eighteen, and there are a dozen more coming from below.’

  ‘Below?’ asked Seth.

  ‘The orks have been using submersibles to cut off our supply routes over the sea,’ said the princeps. ‘It does not seem to trouble them that their craft eventually corrode in the water.’

  ‘Harahel, Nisroc, stand ready,’ Seth voxed the Flesh Tearers stationed i
n the vaulted bastions that were the Validus’s legs. ‘You have incoming.’

  A shower of glowing metal spat and flickered in the gloom, sparking to the floor as the orks cut their way into the Validus.

  ‘Men of the Emperor, prepare yourselves!’ Harahel shouted the command, bolstering the spirits of the thirty or so Steel Legion troopers who stood with him and Metatron in the vaulted hold-space of the Validus’s right leg. Locking his helm in place, Harahel watched as the Guardsmen checked the charge of their lasguns and fixed blades to the ends of their barrels.

  ‘Their time would be better spent readying their souls,’ Metatron said over the comm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know as well as I do, brother, that they are as good as dead. It will only be by the grace of Sanguinius that any of them survive the next ten minutes.’

  Harahel cast his gaze over the Guardsmen. Metatron was right. Clad in cumbersome enviro-suits, their movements were slow. It was a cruel irony that the equipment designed to keep them alive if the chamber flooded would likely speed them to their deaths. At best they would provide a distraction, something to keep the orks from swarming the Flesh Tearers. He turned to face the Techmarine. ‘It is unlike you to be so tenebrous, brother.’

  ‘Forgive me. I am… distracted. This Titan…’ Metatron gestured around and above them. ‘The Validus is unlike any machine I have encountered. Its spirit is unknown to me. It speaks only to the princeps, and he is as fallible as all men. I do not enjoy trusting to his intentions.’

  ‘Then it is a good job you were blessed with the strength to kill those who would abuse such trust.’

  Metatron gave a grunt of amusement.

  ‘Here they come.’ Harahel motioned to the increasing flow of water.

  Rivets spat and popped as they shot from their housing, ripping through the bodies of the closest Guardsmen.

  Harahel moved his head, narrowly avoiding one of the heavy bolts. ‘Stand firm. No one flees. Kill until killed.’ He thumbed the activation stud on his eviscerator.

  The Guardsmen lent their voices to the weapon’s roar, hurling battle cries and oaths of vengeance.

  Boiling seawater burst into the chamber, pushing through the fissure made by the ork cutters and tearing a wide rent in the adamantium bulwark. The Guardsmen screamed as the water swept them back and away from the centre of the room, slamming them into the walls. Undisciplined volleys of las-fire struck the walls as the troopers panic-fired.