Thousands. There were thousands of them.
They were too far away to identify with any confidence, but Daylight had enough of a grasp of comparative scale to know that some of them were smaller atmospheric aircraft, and some were vast void-capable warships.
They were seeing an attack formation, a multi-strand attack designed to hit surface and nearspace targets simultaneously.
A rapid-deployment raid of huge magnitude.
An attack on a planetary level.
An invasion force.
Daylight heard the whistle of high-altitude munitions auguring in. The first blasts ripped through the hills above the stockade, turning them into steam and light. Monumental cannons, vast missile arrays and planet-slicing beam weapons were being fired at the surface from the invading moon and the fleets of attack ships it was disgorging.
Bombs rained down, chewing their way across the valley in mushrooms of smoke, or hurling water from the lake in towering columns. Stabbing beams of light raked in from high above, vaporising ground targets and scoring deep canyons of blackened, fused glass in the rock.
‘Rally! Rally!’ Daylight yelled. He couldn’t see First Captain Algerin anywhere, but what little force the Imperial Fists had left needed to be focused and directed.
Projectiles smashed into the countryside around them like meteors. They fell like giant bombs, but they didn’t detonate on impact. Thunderclap concussions blasted out from each strike.
‘Landers! Troop landers!’ Slaughter cried.
Daylight didn’t argue. The enemy, this brand new enemy, was deploying in unimaginable strength. Daylight saw the first of them appear, flooding from the impact crater of one of their lander projectiles.
Smoke washed the air, but he could see their ground forces distinctly. He could see what kind of creatures they were. The face of the enemy, revealed at last.
It either made no sense, or it made the worst sense of all. Daylight knew this enemy. Every brother of the shield-corps knew this enemy. Warriors of the Adeptus Astartes might almost regard such a foe contemptuously due to over-familiarity.
Except this particular foe never operated in this particular manner. It simply didn’t. It couldn’t.
There was no more time for questions. The roaring enemy was upon them, and all that remained was war.
Daylight drew his sword.
‘Daylight Wall stands forever,’ he voxed. ‘No wall stands against it. Bring them down.’
Twenty-Nine
Terra – The Imperial Palace
An individual was more vulnerable when he or she was alone. That was basic.
The Officio taught its agents and operatives to watch the behaviour patterns of a target patiently and methodically, learn their routines, and then carry out the play when the individual was most vulnerable.
Alone. In a bath, perhaps, or a bedchamber. On a retreat to a country property, or in transit in a small craft. When at his ease or relaxing, his guard down. Eating, that was a good moment.
Approaching a target when he or she was accompanied by other people made things much more difficult. The play might be compromised. A definitive killing action might not be possible. The individual might be surrounded by bodyguards, retainers or a security retinue. Whoever they turned out to be, and whatever their level of expertise, vigilance and reaction, they were witnesses. The presence of others increased the agent’s vulnerability. It reduced the chances of success, or anonymity. It reduced the chances of finishing the play and withdrawing alive.
There were eighty-four thousand, two hundred and forty-seven people with Lord High Admiral Lansung when Vangorich approached him. Vangorich knew the figure precisely because he had swept the immense domed chamber with a miniature sensor drone.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
Lansung, dressed in the gold and scarlet robes of the Winter Harvest Battlefleet, had just finished delivering the commencement speech at the Imperial College of Fleet Strategy, and the vast audience of immaculate cadets and staffers was still applauding. Golden cherub servitors flew overhead among the banners and streamers, clashing cymbals and playing fanfares on long silver trumpets. Lansung was coming off-stage with his armsmen around him: twelve bodyguards from the Navy’s Royal Barque division. The Royal Barque was the name of a mythical, or rather conceptual, ship of the fleet. It was not an actual, physical vessel, though it had a serial code, a keel number and a registration mark, as well as its own sombre ensign design. When a man was selected to join the crew of the Royal Barque, he was being recruited into the Navy’s elite protection squad. Such individuals were all highly trained and experienced killers, who were then further trained and honed, and appointed as bodyguards to the high-ranking admirals and fleet officers.
They were all tall, stone-faced men in black uniforms with red piping and frogging. Each carried a sheathed cutlass and wore a pair of red dress gloves. One of them, the chief protection officer, carried the admiral’s fur shako.
The armsmen tensed slightly when they noticed Vangorich approaching through the crowd of cheering cadets, and the beaming tutors and executives hurrying to congratulate the admiral on his perceptive and inspiring remarks.
‘Step back,’ one of them snarled quietly, hoping to avoid a scene. Lansung was busy shaking hands with the Head of the Bombard School. Vangorich simply smiled at the armsman.
Lansung, alert as ever, saw Vangorich, and saw he was being challenged. He expertly detached himself from the Head of the Bombard School and swept in.
‘Really, Romano,’ he said to his armsman, ‘you must learn not to obstruct a member of the Imperial Senatorum.’
‘My apologies, lord,’ the bodyguard said to Vangorich. He clearly didn’t mean it. He had not recognised the modest and unostentatious man in black when he had approached, and he did not know him any better now.
‘Do you often come to hear me talk, Drakan?’ Lansung asked.
‘Almost never, my lord,’ said Vangorich. ‘But I must do so more often.’
They started to walk together through the huge chamber into the mobbing crowd, followed by the men from the Royal Barque detachment. Trumpeting cherubs and psyber-eagles flocked after them through the air. Lansung smiled and nodded to those he passed, shaking hands with some. He barely looked at Vangorich as they continued their conversation. Vangorich, for his part, paid more attention to the finely painted ceiling fresco visible through the flags and banners high above, great images of battlefleet ships at full motive, gunports open, crushing enemies.
‘Why have you come, Drakan?’ asked Lansung. ‘Surely not to kill me, or you’d have chosen a less public moment.’
‘Oh, you don’t realise how good I am at my work, my lord,’ Vangorich replied.
Lansung shot him a look. He’d made his comment in jest. There hadn’t been a sanctioned Senatorum assassination in a very long time.
‘My lord, I’m joking,’ said Vangorich. ‘Rest assured. Indeed, I chose this moment precisely because it was public. I’d have hated you to get the wrong idea if I’d shown up suddenly, unannounced, in a more private place. Things can get so complicated. Messy. I don’t know what it is. People just get jumpy around me. Must be my face.’
‘I’m busy, Drakan,’ said Lansung, energetically shaking hands with Lord Voros of Deneb.
‘Then I’ll cut right to it, my lord,’ said Vangorich. ‘We need to become allies.’
‘What?’
‘Political allies, my lord.’
‘Why?’
Vangorich smiled.
‘I know. It sounds insane. We’ve never been allies before, and I absolutely know why. I’m not important enough to cultivate. And you, my dear lord, you are about as important as it gets.’
‘Where is this going, Drakan, my good friend?’ asked Lansung, trying to glad-hand others.
‘Now there’s an encouraging
phrase,’ said Vangorich. ‘Indeed. “My good friend.” I know you don’t mean it in any literal way, but it shows me you’re willing to make a decent show of civility, and put a good face on a public encounter. That does encourage me. So, let me press this. We need to become allies.’
‘Explain to me why before I lose patience,’ Lansung said, smiling a fake smile at two august fleet commanders.
‘You are a very important man, my lord,’ Vangorich said. ‘One day, perhaps one day soon, you may be the most important man of all. The balance of power you hold in the High Twelve is very solid. You, Lord Guilliman, his excellency the Ecclesiarch. You draw the others around you. None can stand against you.’
Vangorich wasn’t blind to the fact that he was standing in the middle of a vivid demonstration of Lansung’s personal power and influence, the cult of his personality. The Imperial College of Fleet Strategy, the Navy’s most elite academy, was on its way to becoming Lansung’s private youth movement. Lansung had been a graduate, and he favoured it unstintingly. All the best fleet promotions went to graduates from the College. In return, the cadets showed the Lord High Admiral a form of blind support that bordered on adoration. Many proudly referred to themselves as ‘Lansungites’, and modelled their tactical theories after Lansung’s career actions.
‘The trouble is,’ said Vangorich, ‘though none can stand against you, some might try.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It would be foolish. Divisive. But there are some parties, my lord, who might try to oppose you even if it was futile. And that could harm the Imperium at this time.’
Lansung looked at Vangorich directly for the first time, and held his gaze for a moment.
‘Who are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘It would be inappropriate to betray a confidence, sir,’ Vangorich replied, still smiling. ‘The point, sir, the real point, is Ardamantua.’
‘Ardamantua? Drakan, that’s an entirely military issue. Why is a political outsider like you even slightly interested in–’
‘We should all be interested in it, sir. All of us. Ardamantua is turning into a debacle. An extraordinary military calamity actually, and we don’t yet know what the consequences will be. But let’s imagine for a moment that they are the worst possible consequences.’
Lansung murmured an agreement, turning to shake more hands and mouth more small talk. He was still listening.
‘If Ardamantua turns into a disaster, sir, as you may suspect it might, it may well have long term effects on the security of the Terran Core.’
‘We can deal with anything–’
‘Sir, the problem as I perceive it… and, of course, I am only a mere political outsider… but the problem as I see it is a disagreement about how we deal with it. Certain… parties, certain quarters… they see things in different ways. When push comes to shove, they may well disagree with your proposals as to how to handle the matter. They may wish to employ alternative policies. They would fight you over the correct way to deal with Ardamantua and its fallout.’
Vangorich leaned closer so he could whisper, while Lansung shook hands.
‘That might be fatal. Your power bloc in the Twelve is unassailable, but others might be so desperate they would fight it anyway. Then what? Stagnation. Impasse. Brutal, political, internecine war amongst the High Lords. Paralysis. An inability for the Senatorum to act, to make policy of any sort… just when the Imperium is under threat? In short, my dear lord, my dear friend, the fact is if Ardamantua develops into the threat that it really could be, then it is not the right time for the High Lords of Terra to become locked in a pointless, hopeless battle with themselves, with each other. The Imperium must not be left so vulnerable, nor can such a vulnerability even be risked.’
Lansung looked at Vangorich again.
‘I may be a political outsider, my lord,’ said Vangorich, ‘and my seat and Officio may carry very little weight compared to the influence they used to bear. But I will not stand by and see the Imperium under such jeopardy of political paralysis. After all, if my Officio ever had any purpose, it is as the final safeguard against precisely that danger. And that, sir, is one of the two important reasons you need me as an ally.’
The audience around them was clapping more enthusiastically again. Lansung raised his hand to acknowledge them. His armsmen steered him towards the stage steps.
‘Oh, they love you,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’m not surprised. They’re stamping and shouting. They want you back on the podium for an encore.’
Lansung turned at the foot of the steps and looked back at Vangorich, who had stopped walking with him.
‘We’ll talk again, at your convenience,’ said Vangorich. ‘Soon. Now, go! Go on! Shoo! They want you up there!’
‘What is the second reason?’ asked Lansung.
‘My lord?’
‘You said there were two important reasons why I needed you as an ally,’ Lansung called out over the rising roar of the crowd. ‘What is the second reason?’
‘Very simple, my lord,’ said Vangorich. ‘You may not much want me as an ally. But you definitely do not want me as an enemy.’
Thirty
Ardamantua
Laurentis regained consciousness. He knew at once he was pitifully injured. His neck, throat and chin were wet with the torrents of blood that were leaking from his ears and nose. There was pain in his joints and organs that he was sure would be crippling him into immobility if his nerves weren’t so dulled.
He hauled himself to his feet. The tech-adept was dead, and most of Laurentis’ apparatus flickered empty with equivalent lifelessness. Major Nyman lay sprawled on the chamber floor nearby, twitching and moaning.
A terrible noise rumbled from above ground. The whole structure shook from repeated detonations and impacts. Laurentis had lived through fearful events in the previous six weeks, and that had included the most appalling climatic upheavals and gravitation storms.
They had been nothing compared to this tumult.
Leaning on the oozing wall of the blisternest tunnel for support, he dragged his way towards the surface to see for himself what new ordeal had been visited upon them. Noise bursts continued to reverberate though the ruined nest. He could hear what seemed like gargantuan warhorns too, warhorns sounding out long, braying, raucous, apocalyptic notes.
The end of the world. The end of this world. It was about time. They had suffered enough.
Laurentis came out onto the surface, into the dank twilight and the rain, and cowered in the mouth of the tunnel. He gazed in wonder at the stockade and the world beyond. The moon filled the sky. The stockade was on fire and overrun. Around him, in the smoke and lashing rain, he could see figures in yellow, Imperial Fists, locked in furious battle, grossly outnumbered.
The place was swarming with orks.
Laurentis had never seen a living one close up. He had only examined preserved specimens brought back from the frontier. He didn’t really understand what he was looking at. Where had the orks come from? What part did they play in the disaster overwhelming Ardamantua? Were they another by-product threat that had spilled onto the planet because of the subspace realm, like the Chromes?
Laurentis struggled. He knew he was hurt, and that his mind wasn’t clear enough for reasoned consideration. The noises hurt so much. He wished he could make sense of it. Orks? Orks?
Slowly but surely, terror began to permeate his numbed body. The intellectual issues ebbed away. For the first time since he had faced down the Chrome warrior-form in the tunnel, he felt true mortal jeopardy.
In life, in the stinking flesh, the orks were colossal. Every single one of them was as big as a Space Marine. They simply radiated weight and power, from the huge knotted masses of their shoulders to their treelike forearms and wrecking-ball fists. Laurentis had never seen creatures express such manifest strength and density by simply existing.
They were muscle and power, they were fury and rage, they were raw noise and brute strength. They were truly monsters.
They were armoured in metals and hides, but the armour was nothing like as crude as he had imagined it would be. Hauberks and shoulder guards were expertly woven from steel wire and reinforced animal skin or synthetic fibre fabrics. Seams were precise. The level of ornamentation was marvellous. Shields were studded and curved for impact resilience, and some of them smoked with heat and ozone, revealing they were self-powered with built-in kinetic fields. The weapons, clamped in prodigious fists, were the immense, burnished cleavers and swords of frost giants, not the crude blades of ogres. The huge-calibre firearms were of eccentric design yet superb craftsmanship.
The orks had dyed and painted their green flesh with powders and inks, making intricate tribal designs and motifs. Laurentis wished he could understand what each of the marks and stripes and hand-prints signified. There was something primevally shocking about an ork head dusted in white or pale blue powder, its eyes glistening, its mouth splitting open to expose splintered yellow tusks and rotting molars, its maw shocking pink and covered in spittle. It was an atavistic thing. The ork was the primordial predator that man had fled from when he had lived in caves. It was the beast, the uber-myth behind all other monsters. It was the murderous face of man’s oldest, purest terror.
The monsters barked, roared and bellowed as they attacked, their tusked, open jaws as massive as those of grox. They hacked and slammed their blades into the warriors of the shield-corps, ripping Adeptus Astartes ceramite plate asunder. Every blow resounded like a thunderclap, like a slap to the face. The rain sprayed off everything, bouncing off armour, helms and blades, mixing with blood, flooding the ground, splashing underfoot.
Dazed, Laurentis stepped backwards. He trembled. He knew there had been long ages in Imperial history when the greenskin tribes had posed the greatest of all threats to the security, the continued existence, of the Imperium of Mankind. He’d always presumed this was simply a result of their sheer numbers, their ubiquity. He’d never considered the orks to have any potency as a species. They were little more than animals, mindless and unskilled, mobbing in the fringes of the stars, an endless supply of cannon-fodder for Imperial guns in the frontier wars. They were not a genuine threat, not like the malevolent forces of the Archenemy, or the threat of heretical civil war, or even the genius machinations of the eldar. Those were dangers to be taken seriously. The orks were a joke, an annoyance, a bothersome chore. They were an infestation that had to be managed, cut back, and kept down. They were not a critical hazard. They were not… They were not…