Warhammer - Ultramarines 02 - Warriors Of Ultramar (McNeill, Graham)

  The Truda could not have struck the refinery in a worse place: designed to capture the hot gasses from the planet below, the intake tower sucked a huge breath of the tug's explosion, carrying the burning plasma of its engines to the very heart of the refinery's combustion chambers, where it ignited an uncontrolled chain reaction.

  Emergency procedures initiated, but blast doors not shut since the refinery's construction thousands of years ago jammed and shutdown measures failed as ancient circuits failed to close, their wiring long having since degraded to the point of uselessness.

  Within minutes of the crash, the internal chambers of the refinery began exploding sequentially, with each blast blowing apart more storage chambers and multiplying the force of the blast exponentially.

  From high orbit, it appeared as though the giant refinery was convulsing and before any warning could be given to the ships still clustered nearby, it exploded in a flaring corona that eclipsed the brightness of the system's star.

  Everything within a thousand kilometres of the blast was instantly vaporised and the Shockwave ruptured the surface of the planet below, sending plumes of fiery gasses into space.

  The blast wave faded, leaving nothing of the refinery or the hundreds of men that made up the Adeptus Mechanicus detachment tasked with its retrieval, save an expanding cloud of burning plasma gas.

  Oblivious to the disaster in their wake, the flotilla of tugs continued onwards to Chordelis with the two surviving refineries lifted from geo-stationary orbit around Yulan in tow.

  Why the Ultramarines' admiral had tasked them with this dangerous duty, they did not know, but theirs was not to question, simply to obey.

  The six trucks sat silently in the dimly lit vehicle hangar, moonlight streaming in through the high windows providing the only illumination. A dozen soldiers granted as they loaded crates onto the back of the trucks, overseen by a supply sergeant of the Erebus Commissariat, who, despite the fact that the temperature was below zero, sweated teneath the fur-lined hood of his winter coat.

  He smoked a limp bac-stick and stamped his feet to ward off the cold as the last crate was loaded onto the truck, each one marked with a scorched burn where a Departmento Munitorum shipping number and regimental crest had been stamped. The tailgates of each track were slammed shut and secured with chained locking-pins and as his soldiers filed passed him, he pressed a wad of promissory notes into each one's hand.

  'Don't do anything dumb with this.' he warned.

  As the last of the soldiers left the garage, he stubbed out his bac-stick and circled the tracks, checking that all the tailgates were secured. As he rattled the last one, a group of figures emerged from the shadows at the far end of the garage.

  'You all done?' asked the figure at the front.

  The supply sergeant jumped, his hand reaching for the pistol below his coat.

  'I wouldn't do that if I was you.' growled a hulking figure behind the first and the sergeant raised his hands.

  'Snowdog.' he breathed in relief, lowering his hands as the group came into the light. He flipped another bac-stick into his mouth.

  'You expecting someone else, Tudeca?' asked Snowdog, his shotgun resting on his shoulder. The leader of the Night-crawlers wore a thick woollen coat to ward off the winter's chill and his bleached hair shone as silver as that of the girl beside him. Behind Snowdog stood the psychotic thug he called Jonny Stomp and a trio of painfully thin youths decorated with colourful, if badly drawn, tattoos across their faces. At a gesture from Snowdog, they jogged towards the cabs of three of the tracks, a redheaded girl in a tight catsuit climbing into the nearest one.

  'No.' said Sergeant Tudeca. 'It's just you startled me. I wasn't expecting you so soon.'

  'What can I say: I like to surprise people.' said Snowdog, nodding to Jonny Stomp. The brutish giant climbed onto the

  back of each of the trucks in turn, counting the number of crates in the back of each one. Sergeant Tudeca stepped nervously from foot to foot, surprised Jonny Stomp could count past his fingers, as Snowdog and Silver watched him carefully.

  'It's all there?' asked Snowdog.

  'Yeah, it's all there. Medical supplies and ration packs, just like you wanted. Didn't I tell you I could get them for you?'

  'Yeah, you really came through for us.' agreed Snowdog, putting an arm around Tudeca's shoulders and lifting the pack of bac-sticks from his breast pocket.

  Snowdog waited for a second, raising an eyebrow until Tudeca took the hint and lit the bac-stick for him, the flame wavering in his shaking hands. Snowdog reached up to steady the sergeant's hand.

  'You okay, Tudeca?' said Snowdog with false concern. 'You look all jittery, man. Something on your mind?'

  'It's going to cost more.' blurted Tudeca. 'I had to give my lads twice what they normally get for this. The commissariat provosts are coming down hard on anyone they catch stealing, and if they arrest me, it's a bullet in the head for sure.'

  'Tudeca, Tudeca.' soothed Snowdog. 'Don't look at this as stealing: look at it as redistributing it to the people who really need it. Look, all this stuff was going to the medicae buildings for the regiments from off world. I'll make sure it gets to the people of Erebus... at a nominal charge.'

  Tudeca laughed, a hoarse bray, and said, 'Nominal charge! You'll be selling this for four times its worth.'

  'Hey man, it's a seller's market out there. If I can make a little money out of this war, then who's to say that's a bad thing?'

  'Don't forget, you're hip-deep in this too.' pointed out Silver, her long hair glittering in the moonlight.

  'Yeah, I know.' said Tudeca sourly, as Jonny Stomp dropped from the back of the last track.

  'It's all there, near as I can tell.' he said.

  'Well, what the hell does that mean?' said Snowdog. 'It either is or it isn't.'

  'I mean it looks right to me.' growled Jonny.

  'Good enough, I guess.' said Snowdog with a shrug as Silver and Jonny Stomp each got behind the wheel of a track. He vaulted into the cab of the truck next to him and slammed the door behind him. He rolled down the side window and leaned out, looking over his shoulder at Sergeant Tudeca as the engines of tracks roared into life. He pulled out a wad of bills, a chunk of the score from the Flesh Bar - minus what he'd paid for a stolen shipment of guns from another crooked supply sergeant the night before - and flicked it through the air towards Tudeca.

  The sergeant caught the money with a lopsided grin of avarice.

  'I can get more of this stuff in a little while.' he shouted, his greed overcoming his natural cowardice. 'I just got to wait until the heat dies down a little.'

  Headlights speared from their mountings and the first truck moved off into the night.

  'Sounds good to me.' said Snowdog as he gunned the engine of his track.

  'After all.' said Tudeca. 'Business is business.'

  'Yeah.' agreed Snowdog. 'Business as usual.'

  SEVEN

  The orbital docks of Chordelis were a scene of controlled anarchy, as every technician, shipwright and able-bodied man available was pressed into service repairing the terrible damage done by the tyranids to the vessels of the Imperial Navy following the Battle of Barbaras. A perimeter of local gunboats formed a picket line around the naval vessels, isolating them from the swarm of ships that rose from the surface of Chordelis in an uncontrolled tide.

  Under the supervision of the Mortifactors' Techmarines, thick sheets of steel were welded onto the damaged sections of the Mortis Probati and fresh shells loaded into her magazines. The crews of the Heroic Endeavour and the sole surviving vessel of Hydra squadron swarmed around their hulls, jury-rigging repairs that would allow them to go into battle once more. No one was under any illusions that these repairs were anything more than temporary - each ship would need many months in dock to return to full service.

  The Vae Victus had escaped comparatively unscathed. Her hull had been breached in four places, but none of the tyranid boarding organisms had penetrated further t
han the outer decks and repairs would be a relatively simple matter. Not that this was any consolation to Admiral Tiberius, who had vowed that he would not forget the insult done to his ship by the Mortifactors' impetuosity. The bulk of the work on her hull had already been completed and beyond the picket line of gunboats, Arx Praetora squadron and the Dauntless cruisers Yermetov and Luxor awaited to escort her on another mission.

  Since the warning of the tyranids' impending arrival had reached Chordelis, the planet had been steadily emptying and hundreds of vessels clogged the shipping lanes around the world. Wealthy citizens with their own vessels were the first to depart, closely followed by those able to book passage off-world. Those with enough money fled deeper into the galactic core while those unable to finance such a journey travelled on commercial ships crammed with refugees that shuttled back and forth between Chordelis and Tarsis Ultra. Greedy captains, scenting opportunity for profit, raised their prices accordingly until even the wealthy fled as paupers.

  But though millions escaped, millions more remained. Panicked crowds flocked to every major spaceport, trying to get to safety. Desperate to escape, men offered eternal service and women offered themselves. Some were successful, more were not, and fear spread like an epidemic through the people of Chordelis.

  At Berliaas , desperate crowds demonstrated outside the governor's palace, demanding action be taken to evacuate the populace. Tempers flared and thousands of angry citizens stormed the palace only to find the planetary governor had already fled Chordelis and that his missives for calm had been broadcast from off-world.

  In Dremander, the crew of a rogue trader's vessel opened fire on people trying to commandeer their vessel, killing more than seventy before being overrun and torn to pieces by the angry mob.

  Two days after this incident, more than eleven thousand people died at Jaretaq, the planet's largest port, as terrified crowds broke through the lines of Arbites guarding the entrance and demanded passage on the fleet of departing vessels thronging her landing platforms. As the luxury vessel Cherrona lifted from the planet's surface, angry crowds prevented the ground crews from releasing her mooring cables. Her starboard engine was torn free of its mountings as her captain brought her about for departure. The engine dropped and blew apart like a bomb among the milling crowds and the ponderous vessel began sliding back towards the ground, the attraction of gravity too much for its remaining engine to fight. Fully laden with refugees and thousands of tonnes of fuel, the Cherrona swayed drunkenly in the air, striking the nearby control tower before slamming into the landing platforms of the spaceport.

  The Cherrona exploded with the power of an orbital bombardment, hurling blazing sheets of fire and lethal fragments in all directions, scything through thousands of people and touching off scores of secondary explosions. The devastation ripped through the spaceport until almost nothing was left standing. The blazing pyres of this terrible disaster could be seen as far away as the planetary capital of Kaimes.

  All across Chordelis, the same scenes played out as its terrified population fought to escape their doomed world.

  The command bridge of the Vae Victus was tense and subdued as Admiral Tiberius kept his ship a respectable distance from the mighty structure that slid through space before them and filled the viewing bay. They had all heard of the disaster at Yulan and the loss of the third refinery, and Tiberius was determined that nothing similar would happen to this one.

  'How close are we, Philotas?' whispered Tiberius, as though the volume of his voice would alert the tyranids to their presence, though the aliens must surely be aware of them by now. Garbled reports from Arx Praetora squadron and the Dauntless cruisers, some thirty thousand kilometres ahead of them, had spoken of the alien fleet moving in a solid mass of creatures, several hive ships scattered throughout the swarm. They were probably too far apart to catch more than one or two, but even one was a victory.

  'Hard to say, admiral.' replied Philotas. 'Surveyor returns are being scattered by the refinery vessel, but I'd say no more than fifty thousand kilometres.'

  'We're cutting this very close.' observed Uriel, staring at the plotting table. 'The first engagements at Barbaras were not much closer than this.'

  'I know, Uriel, I know. But we only have one chance at this. Chordelis is depending on us. We cannot fail.'

  Uriel nodded, determined that Chordelis would not suffer the horrible fate of Barbarus Prime. By now there was nothing left of that world but a dead hunk of rock, its people, wildlife and very ecosystem devoured by these monstrous aliens. Chordelis also faced obliteration, but in this case the threat did not come from the aliens, but from the very people supposed to be defending it.

  The thought of Kryptman's cold, steel logic sent a shiver down Uriel's spine and he was reminded of the last time he had defied the will of an inquisitor. On this very ship, Inquisitor Ario Barzano had proposed the destruction of Pavonis to prevent a madman from obtaining a weapon capable of unmaking the stars themselves. Uriel had managed to persuade Barzano to give them one last chance to act and, by the grace of the Emperor, they had been successful, and Pavonis had been spared the horror of the ultimate sanction of viral bombing.

  Once again he had been forced to stand against those he would have counted as his allies in defence of the ordinary men and women of the Imperium. It astounded him that Kryptman could be so unfeeling with the lives of millions of people, consigning an entire planet to death simply to prevent the enemy from taking it.

  Only two days ago in the captain's chambers on the command deck of the Argus, Kryptman had told them of his decision to let Chordelis die.

  'We have no choice.' the inquisitor had said. 'Fighters from the Kharloss Vincennes have harried the vanguard of the alien fleet from Barbarus, past Parosa and Yulan. 'The tyranids will be here within three or four days at the latest. There is simply no more time to get anyone else off Chordelis. If we stay any longer we will doom what little assets we have, and for what? We could fight, and we would gain perhaps a day's respite for the defenders on Tarsis Ultra. And once we are defeated, the tyranids will devour Chordelis as they did Barbarus Prime, swelling their numbers with an entire planet's biosphere.'

  Kryptman shook his head. 'No, far better Chordelis dies by our own hand than that of the Great Devourer. Believe me, Exterminatus is a better, quicker death than the tyranids will offer.'

  A stunned silence had greeted Kryptman's pronouncement. Admiral Bregant de Corte blanched and took a sip of amasec before taking a deep breath and casting his flinty gaze around the table. His assembled captains looked shocked, but took their lead from the admiral and said nothing. Captain Gaiseric and Astador nodded slowly.

  Admiral Tiberius cleared his throat and leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the smooth table and steepling his fingers before him.

  'There must be another way.' he said slowly, and Uriel was struck by yet another sense of deja vu, remembering when Inquisitor Barzano had come to a similar decision.

  'Admiral Tiberius is correct.' he said. 'What is the point of us being summoned to this system to defend it when our first reaction to these aliens' advance is to destroy everything in their path? You would have us stand victorious over a dead system.'

  'You do not see the larger picture, Captain Ventris.' said Kryptman, emphasising the insignificance of his rank next to his own. 'We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend, and one must sometimes sacrifice the smaller battles to be victorious in the larger war.'

  'Listen to yourself.' snapped Uriel. 'You talk of sacrificing smaller battles. Do you not realise that you are talking about one of the Emperor's worlds, still populated by millions of His subjects, His soldiers? I think that it is you who forgets the "larger war".'

  'No, Captain Ventris.' said Kryptman with finality. 'I do not.'

  Uriel stood and slammed his fist on the table, splintering the wood. 'Every time these aliens invade the Emperor's realm we fall back. People like you claim we cannot fight them and we hear this so oft
en we start to believe it. Well that stops now. I say we draw a line here and talk no more. This time, I say we stand and fight.'

  'Captain Ventris, you forget your place.' said Chaplain Astador. 'We are here to fight the tyranids and if the learned inquisitor believes that this is the best course, who are you to question him?'

  'I am a loyal servant of the Emperor and proud son of Roboute Guilliman. As I once thought you to be, and the fact that you even ask me that question shows me how wrong I was.'

  Astador's face filled with thunder and the muscles along his jaw bunched in rage at Uriel's insult.

  'While we are united in a common cause, I shall call you brother, but when this foe is defeated, there will be a reckoning between us.' promised Astador.

  'I welcome it.' said Uriel, returning to his seat. 'You disgust me.'

  'Gentlemen.' said Admiral de Corte. 'This is hardly the time for such discussions. The fate of an Imperial world lies before us and it ill becomes us to fight among ourselves like orks.'

  'Thank you, Admiral de Corte.' said Kryptman. 'We waste valuable time in these discussions. The decision has already been made.'

  'Lord inquisitor.' said Tiberius. 'I may have an alternative solution that you might consider. As we passed the orbital refineries of Yulan, I recalled my Ravensburg.'

  Kryptman's eyes narrowed, his interest piqued by Tiberius's reference to the saviour of the Gothic sector, Lord Admiral Cornelius Ravensburg,

  'Go on...'

  And Tiberius went on to tell the story of the destruction of the Unforgivable and the actions of Commodore Kurtz during the defence of Delos IV. A buzz of excitement filled the room as Tiberius explained the actions he had set in motion upon passing Yulan and the potential it had.

  Even now, days later, Uriel could not believe the ease with which Kryptman had decided the fate of millions. To the inquisitor these were just numbers, but to Uriel they were living, breathing people - subjects of the God-Emperor and deserving of protection. He shook himself from his reverie, focussing on the present as the sacristy bell began ringing and Tiberius descended from his command pulpit to stand beside the plotting table.