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  Figures scattered about the shadowy interior, firing lasguns and laspistols at Nemiel. One bolt struck his right thigh, while two more punched into his chest. Amber warning telltales flashed on his armour readout, but the suit’s integrity was still well within accepted parameters. He charged towards the pod, his powerful legs driving him relentlessly over the shifting piles of rabble. His bolt pistol barked again and again; each shot struck home, killing a rebel soldier as he rose from cover or tried to switch positions to outflank him.

  He had just crested the tallest debris pile, only ten short metres from the drop pod, when he saw the flicker of an energy field low and to his left. Without thinking he dodged to the right and brought his crozius down to block the blow, and just barely managed to keep his leg from being cut off at the knee. As it was, the rebel lieutenant’s power sword sliced deeply through his left calf and caused him to stumble. The pain was so intense it took his breath away. Even with the autohypnotic rotes at his command, the wound very nearly sent him into shock. His armour sensed the damage and immediately compensated, stiffening the pseudo-musculature of his left calf and immobilising it, like a ceramite splint. The sudden change in mobility pitched Nemiel forward, sending him sliding face-first down the debris pile into the midst of the platoon’s small command squad.

  The rebels closed in on Nemiel from all sides, firing their laspistols as they came. He was hit in the head, shoulders and chest; the armour stopped the blasts, but the integrity sensors began to shade from amber to red. He heard the distinctive crackle of the rebel lieutenant’s power sword as the man chased down the slope after him.

  Nemiel crashed to a stop against a tangle of steel supports at the base of the pile and twisted onto his side just as the enemy officer reached him. The power sword swept down at his chest, and he just managed to twist far enough to parry it with his crozius. Snarling, the lieutenant drew back his blade for a quick thrust, but Nemiel brought around his bolt pistol and shot the man through the heart.

  Another rebel soldier rushed past the lieutenant’s falling body and tried to drive a bayonet into Nemiel’s throat. The Redemptor contemptuously blocked the thrust with his crozius and killed the soldier with a backhanded blow to his head. The remaining soldiers scattered as Brother-Sergeant Kohl reached the crest of the debris pile and opened fire with his bolt pistol. The survivors retreated from sight around another mound of fallen permacrete.

  Kohl sheathed his power weapon and dashed nimbly down the slope. ‘Are you all right, brother?’ he called, extending his hand.

  Nemiel waved the offer of assistance away. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, climbing quickly to his feet. He was about to ask for Brother Askelon when the Techmarine appeared at the top of the pile and quickly moved to join them. Instead of inquiring about Nemiel, however, his eyes were for the drop pod alone.

  Askelon indicated an open crate a few metres away. Four disc-shaped melta charges had been carefully unpacked and sat in a neat row on a small slab of flakboard. ‘I’d say we were just in time,’ he noted, giving Kohl a meaningful look.

  ‘Well, you know what I say, Askelon?’ Kohl shot back. But the rest of his retort was swallowed in a thunderous explosion as the tank outside fired its battle cannon into the derelict building. The blast pulverised a ten-metre-wide section of the building’s front entrance, showering the Astartes in a hail of jagged stone and metal. When the cloud of dust and smoke cleared, Nemiel could look through the hole the cannon had made and see the enemy tank, still sitting where Marthes had hit it. The melta blast had knocked out the vehicle’s engine, but the crew was still very much alive.

  ‘Marthes!’ Nemiel called out over the vox.

  ‘I know, brother, I know!’ Marthes called back. ‘I’m at the southern end of the building with half the squad. Just give me a minute to get into position.’

  ‘We may not have another minute!’ Nemiel shot back. But it wasn’t himself or his squadmates he was worried about – the downed drop pod made for a much more enticing target. ‘Askelon, we’ve got to get that pod open!’ he shouted.

  The Techmarine nodded his helmeted head. ‘We need to get it level fast, so the ramps can deploy!’ he said. His gaze fell to the melta charges. ‘Help me with these!’ he said, and bent to grab two of the discs.

  Nemiel and Kohl each grabbed one of the charges and followed Askelon around to the far side of the pod. The Techmarine surveyed the debris pile, then activated his servo arm and began to dig deep gouges into the rubble at specific points below the canted end of the pod. ‘You’re not going to be able to dig this pile out fast enough!’ Kohl barked.

  ‘I’m not planning to, brother,’ Askelon said. He took one of the melta charges, set its timer, and shoved it into one of the gouges, then quickly placed the second one.

  Nemiel heard the whine of servos as the tank’s turret rotated to bear on its new target. Then came a shriek of superheated air, and a melta blast struck the tank from its right. The detonation reverberated down the street, but when the smoke cleared, Nemiel saw that Marthes had shot from too far away, and the melta blast hadn’t fully penetrated the tank’s armour. The crew inside had likely been stunned by the hit, but that wouldn’t last for more than a few seconds.

  Askelon grabbed the charge from Nemiel’s fingers. ‘I’d find some cover, if I were you,’ he said, setting its timer and placing it in the pile. The three Astartes hurried away from the pod and crouched at the base of the debris pile. No sooner had they settled onto one knee than the four charges detonated in carefully-orchestrated succession.

  The blasts went off so close together that the sound merged into a single, thunderous explosion. Molten stone and vaporised earth sheeted out from the pile, channelled away from the pod by the precise placement of the charges. In one stroke, Askelon removed ten cubic metres of rubble from beneath one end of the drop pod. Slowly, then with gathering speed, the elevated end of the pod began to settle, until it landed upright with a hollow metal clang. The flank of the pod slammed into the corner of the building, sending an alarming series of cracks forking across the damaged walls.

  Immediately, Nemiel heard the metal thud of harness releases popping then the buzzing whine of servos as the pod’s four large ramps finally deployed, revealing Echo Four’s lone passenger.

  The huge figure in the centre of the pod was approximately humanoid in shape, with two stubby, powerful legs and a pair of mighty weapon arms attached to a giant, barrel-like torso. A sensor turret, shaped similarly to a helmet-clad head, swivelled left and right from an armoured collar set a little above the torso’s middle. The overall effect was of a hulking, hunchbacked giant, with a matte black ceramite hide. Both shoulders bore the winged sword emblem of the First Legion, and a score of noble battle honours fluttered from the Dreadnought’s frontal plates. A Mechanicum artisan had applied gilt scrollwork to the glacis, just beneath the Dreadnought’s notional head, which bore the name Titus.

  Gears and servo-motors whirring, Brother Titus strode from his drop pod just as the tank fired its cannon once more. The shell flew into the pod where Titus had been standing a moment before and blew it apart.

  Red-hot shrapnel pinged like raindrops off Brother Titus’s shoulders. The Dreadnought cleared the ramp in three long steps and kicked its way through the debris piles towards the rebel tank. Its turret slewed to the right, desperately tracking the oncoming war machine while the crew struggled to load another round into the cannon’s breech.

  Brother Titus was armed with a standard Dreadnought weapons configuration. His right arm terminated in a large, multi-barrel assault cannon, capable of firing streams of high-velocity shells that were lethal to troops and light vehicles, but far less likely to penetrate the thick armour of a battle tank. Titus’s left arm, however, ended in a powerful, four-fingered hand that crackled with pent-up energies like an Astartes power fist. Nemiel and his brothers watched Titus charge through the ragged gap blown in the front of the building and bring that tremendous fist down on the top of the
tank’s square turret. Armour plates crumpled like tin; there was a bright, violet spark and a tremendous concussion as the turret split apart beneath the blow. Flames leapt from the ruptured seams.

  Nemiel shook his head in awe at the Dreadnought’s power. ‘Brother-Sergeant Kohl, re-form the squad,’ he said, and began limping quickly from the building. The pain in his leg had subsided to a dull ache, thanks to injections from his suit’s array of pain blockers and his own enhanced healing abilities. He switched to the company command net. ‘Force Commander Lamnos, this is Alpha Six,’ he said. ‘We’ve reached Echo Four and freed Brother Titus. No enemy forces in our immediate area. What are your orders?’

  ‘Good work Alpha Six,’ Lamnos responded. ‘Titus was the only one still unaccounted for. The rest of the landing force has engaged rebel units along the tramway, and we’ve received word that forward elements of the Tanagran Dragoons are working south to link up with us.’ There was a short pause while Lamnos consulted with his other squad leaders. ‘There are still enemy units present around the entrance to the forge complex, approximately one kilometre to your southeast. Take Titus and engage the rebels.’

  ‘Affirmative,’ Nemiel replied. ‘Alpha Six, out.’ The Redemptor limped over to Kohl and Askelon, who were standing in the shadow of Brother Titus. Askelon was clearly in awe of the mighty Dreadnought; Kohl was looking up at Titus’s sensor turret, his head cocked as though in conversation. They were probably speaking on a private channel, he realised. Dreadnoughts were an uncommon sight in the Legions; since they required a human mind to operate, only severely-injured Astartes were offered the opportunity to continue serving the Emperor by having themselves installed into one of the war machines. Those offered the task were typically warriors who had demonstrated great heroism in battle and were mentally strong enough to endure their entombment in a Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. As a result, they were accorded tremendous respect by their brethren.

  Titus’s head swivelled slightly at Nemiel’s approach. ‘My thanks to you and your squad, Brother-Redemptor,’ he said over the squad channel. Titus’s voice was deep and powerful, and entirely synthetic, devoid of human inflection. ‘Force Commander Lamnos has directed me to accompany your squad for the time being. What is our objective?’

  ‘The rebels have taken the southern entrance to the forge complex,’ Nemiel said, turning and heading off to the southeast. ‘We’re going to take it back.’

  EIGHT

  DARK DESIGNS

  Caliban

  In the 200th year of the Emperor’s Great Crusade

  A ROILING, GREY overcast hung over the towers of Sigma Five-One-Seven, swallowing the rays of the setting sun and plunging much of the processing plant into shadow as Zahariel and his warriors reached the outskirts of the site.

  They made their approach straight down the plant’s primary access road with a clatter of steel treads and a billowing wake of oily black smoke from the Land Raider’s massive petrochem engine. Sitting in the assault tank’s troop compartment, Zahariel adjusted the settings of the tactical display on the bulkhead next to his station and switched from light-enhancement to thermal view. Instantly the blocky outlines of the plant’s main buildings and its sifting towers were painted in stark silhouettes against a vivid green background, their flanks studded by bright spots of white that marked the locations of hot chem-lights. Peering carefully at the display, he could make out a faint, white nimbus colouring the air at the centre of the plant; from what he knew of the site’s layout, he suspected that was likely the heat rising from the power plants of the relief force’s ten Condor transports. According to the blueprints, the site had a large, central landing zone for offloading heavy-lift cargo haulers. The reinforcements could touch down there and unload under cover without worrying about fire from rebel forces around the site perimeter.

  Except that there weren’t any rebel troops, as near as Zahariel could reckon. The dark foothills, scoured down to bare rock by Imperial crawlers, were silent and still. Stranger still was the lack of any obvious signs of attack: there were no gaps in the plant’s tall perimeter fence, nor thermal scars on the buildings from small arms or light artillery fire. More and more, he was coming to believe that the threat to the plant had been internal rather than external. He’d accessed the site’s status reports and work logs on the short flight from Aldurukh and discovered that the engineering team working on Sigma Five-One-Seven’s thermal plant consisted of twenty-five Terran engineering specialists and a hundred Calibanite labourers. Could the labour pool have been infiltrated by insurgents? Zahariel thought it entirely possible. From there, it would have been easy to smuggle weapons onto the site and hide them in the plant’s sub-levels until the time was right. Using the advantage of surprise, such a force could then easily overcome the rest of the engineers and the unsuspecting garrison, and then set an effective ambush for Imperial relief forces.

  Zahariel could understand how such a thing could be done. He just couldn’t figure out why. An attack of this kind didn’t match the insurgents’ tactics to date, and it seemed like a disproportionate investment of time and manpower on a target that was far from any of the planet’s major population centres. So far, the rebels were doing a very effective job of crippling the planet’s industrial base by fomenting riots in the arcologies and staging hit-and-run raids with small, well-armed guerrilla forces. And this particular plant was sitting idle anyway; Zahariel could think of a dozen targets offhand that would have made better candidates for a takeover. There was a great deal about the situation that didn’t add up, and he wasn’t heading back to Aldurukh until he had some answers in hand.

  The voice of the Land Raider’s driver crackled over Zahariel’s vox-bead. ‘Coming up on the site’s main gate now,’ he said. ‘Orders?’ ‘Increase speed,’ Zahariel replied. ‘Advance up the main road towards the central landing zone.’

  The assault tank’s engine roared in reply, and the Astartes in the troop compartment swayed in their seats as the Land Raider surged forward. The vehicle struck the plant’s heavy main gate and crumpled it contemptuously. Zahariel heard the faint clang of the impact and the screech of metal as the broken gate was ground beneath the heavy tank’s treads, but the barrier scarcely slowed the Land Raider down. As the tank roared along the main road, he switched to the Legion command frequency and reported in to Aldurukh. ‘Seraphim, this is Angelus Six,’ he called. ‘We have reached Objective Alpha and are proceeding to secure the area.’

  The reply came back at once. Zahariel was surprised to hear Luther’s voice over the vox instead of the strategium’s duty officer. ‘We read you, Angelus Six. Any sign of the garrison or the relief force?’

  ‘Negative,’ Zahariel replied. ‘No obvious signs of combat, either. I expect I’ll learn more once I reach the central landing zone.’ ‘Understood,’ Luther said. ‘Broadsword Flight is on station and standing by if you require support, Angelus Six. Remain in contact at all times.’

  The Librarian twisted a dial on the tactical display and brought up a regional map of the Northwilds sector. A green diamond, representing the transport craft that had delivered the Land Raider from Aldurukh was shown exiting the area to the south. There was also a small, red chevron blinking above the mountains northwest of the site, flying in a circular holding pattern between Sigma Five-One-Seven and the recently established Northwilds arcology. The alphanumeric code beneath the chevron told him that Broadsword Flight consisted of three Stormbirds, each loaded with a full suite of air-to-ground ordnance. Luther had put enough firepower at his disposal to destroy an entire armoured regiment. Zahariel was more grateful for the obvious sign of Luther’s support than the Stormbirds themselves. ‘Understood, Seraphim,’ he answered. ‘We will keep you advised.’

  Zahariel switched the tactical display back to the tank’s forward auspex array, then turned away from the screen and bent in his seat to pick his helmet off the Land Raider’s deck. ‘We’re coming up on the edge of the objective area,’ he said, pitchin
g his voice to carry over the tank’s roaring engine. ‘Prepare to deploy. Brother Attias, take the pintle mount.’

  Silent and purposeful, the veteran squad fitted on their helmets and checked their weapon loads. Across from Zahariel, Chapter Master Astelan readied his bolt pistol and power sword. When the order had come down to assemble a combat patrol to investigate the site,

  Astelan had been among the first to volunteer. After nearly a half-century in garrison, every member of Luther’s training cadre was eager for action, and Zahariel was glad to have a warrior of Astelan’s ability as part of the squad.

  At the far end of the troop compartment, Brother Attias rose to his feet and worked his way down the narrow aisle between his squadmates. Attias had been an aspirant of the Order at the same time as Zahariel and Nemiel, and as a youth he’d earned no small amount of grief thanks to his nervous and overly-studious nature. That had changed on Sarosh, when an alien monster had melted his helmet with a torrent of caustic slime. Attias had been lucky to survive, but the Legion Apothecaries had been powerless to heal the damage wrought by the monster’s acid. In the end, they had been forced to strip away most of the flesh and muscle and graft polished steel plates directly to Attias’s skull, transforming his face into a gleaming death mask. After more than a year recovering from his wounds, he had joined Astelan’s training cadre, where he was roundly feared by the chapter’s novices. Zahariel had barely spoken to him in the years since returning to Caliban. Outside of training, Attias rarely spoke to anyone at all.

  Zahariel watched as Attias stepped past him and took up the remote controls for the Land Raider’s pintle-mounted storm bolter. Servomotors whined on the tank’s roof as the weapon elevated and began to cover the rooftops of the plant’s outer buildings as they made their way deeper into the site. The heavily-armoured Land Raider was impervious to all but the most powerful anti-tank weapons, but in the confines of the industrial plant a rebel team with melta bombs – or worse, a meltagun – could be a serious threat.