I've started redrafting this story in an effort to tidy up the less fluffy elements of the first version. I'm aiming to achieve a greater adhesion to the canon of WH40K where I found that in some areas the first draft was lacking. Note that the story will remain, in essence the same, but I may chop and change some of the less plausible stuff. I'll also be tying all three parts (to date) into the same story to form a more cohesive plotline. These changes have been made both for my own reasons and on the advice of others. I hope you enjoy this version as much as I am enjoying writing it.
Thanks,
Matt
I
The Imperial city of Gieddi clings to the cliffs of the Karvalo Atoll like a gargantuan limpet of metal and stone. Ancient and decrepit, she spreads her flanks across the lofty delta and sinks her roots deep into the volcanic stone. Her skyline is dominated by the Triumphal Spire, the Great Crusade's monument to victory all of ten thousands years before. Where the Spire competes with the mountain itself, the lesser edifices clustered below can only compete with each other, straining to scratch an azure sky like a chirurgeon's needle.
Beneath her ancient skyline the river Gieddi splits into five distinct tributaries, each flowing into antediluvuan watercourses that wash clean the holy city's underbelly, flooding her ancient sewers and making her lower recesses damp and forbidding until they reach the cliffs. Here they surge out into a thousand metre freefall to crash and churn in the salt seas below.
The seaward face of the cliffs forms a vast, vertical seaport. Gargantuan derricks reach down to form cradles around the merchant ships that ply these waters, lifting them into recesses carved out of the black stone where they can be unloaded and repaired. A place of pilgrimage and a centre of trade, Gieddi of the Five Rivers is accounted the capital of Fered Roathi.
The only approach to the holy city was from the sea. The Imperial Guard's liberation army had taken to ships back at Varnistae, boarding vast and ancient warships for transportation to the atoll. Three weeks of lumbering progress had brought them within sight of their goal.
To the two men standing at the starboard rail, Five Rivers was like nothing they'd seen before. Escabar Corgan, Necromundan by nurture, was used to being surrounded by the vast and decrepit artifice of man. He imagined that Hive Primus, his home for twenty years and more, would dwarf even the Triumphal Spire. But he had only ever seen in from within. There was no frame of reference to draw a comparison. Alfonso Shopal, olive skinned and terminally cheerful, hailed from the Urbane Prefabulae of Sarassa, where the cities were little more than sprawling connurbations, lacking even the baroque architecture that was so prevalent on other Imperial worlds.
They looked on in silent awe as the city passed slowly by on the horizon. The sun was dipping towards the eastern horizon, sinking behind the atoll and the city, run through by the needle-construct of the Spire.
As the dark came down the deck-lights picked out and yellowed the planes of their rugged features. They turned to share a speculatory glance.
It wouldn't be long now!
II
Sirens wailed.
Hundreds of men were milling around on the foredeck, enjoying the dusklight as they shared smokes and other pale comforts. When the alarm went up they started shouting and shoving, suddenly reluctant to be above decks. The dissonant, high pitched squeal of jet-engines folded neatly into the belly-growl of the ship's massive boilers. The shouting died away as jaundiced eyes turned to the skies in fearful expentancy.
The next thing any of them knew, high-calibre rounds were stitching across the deck, exploding bodies and hurling people into the air. The spice of burnt off fyceline mingled with the tang of blood and the earthy scents of open bowels. The shouting returned, edged by the screams of the wounded and the dying. Fear was transmuted to panic.
Shopal was caught against the rail, pressed from behind by men so desperate to escape the carnage they would rather submit to the embrace of the sea. Corgan had managed to slip away but turned back at Shopal's cry for help.
Corgan dived back into the fray, cudgelling one man out of his way with a smart blow to the temple. Another man shoved past him, making for the rail. Corgan kicked out, tripping the man so that he slid head first into the rail and lodged there, screaming. Corgan stepped over him and reached out to grab Shopal's hand, popping him out of the press. The pressure gave out like a bottle unstoppered, bodies spilled out into the watery abyss.
'Stick close!' Corgan grunted, turning and making for the nearest blockhouse, lashing out with eager fists at anyone that got in his way.
'They're coming round for another pass!' someone cried, his voice trailing off as the first detonations of the strafing run drowned him out. The deck had taken on a nightmare ambience, the light of the flames reflected in runnels of blood and illuminating heaps of mutilated bodies. Flailing silhouettes arced through the air as fresh explosions tore into the deck. The metalwork ruptured and twisted with a harsh, tortured screaming that hurt the ears.
Finally the ship's anti-aircraft guns opened up from the higher tiers of the ship's superstructure, stitching the skies with bright white tracer rounds that groped blindly for the Enemy aeronaughts. It was a futile effort. The flyers were running dark, only visible as the barest hint of darker shadow against a black sky. Searchlights sent up bright spears of light, but they were too slow and bulky to track the circling fighter bombers.
It was not long before the Enemy's efforts were rewarded. The deep-throated roar of an explosion ripped all other sounds from their night, the fickle light of the deck fires was drowned in the bright corona that consumed one of the other capital ships. A critical hit had overloaded the boiler room reactors, igniting the super-heated plasma and releasing catastrophic elemental energies that spread oil and shrapnel over a three mile radius.
Suddenly the urge to get below-decks seemed childish and just as futile as staying out in the open. Besides this, the blockhouse door was wedged with bodies. Corgan cast about for alternatives, spotting a stair to a higher gantry further down the flank of the ship.
'Come on!' he led the way, making for the stairway at a dead run. He took the iron steps two and three at a time. The walkways above were virtually clear, only a few Roathan mariners were in evidence, scuttling to their alloted battle stations, wide-eyed with fear, running on adrenaline.
The pair headed aft, moving into the ship's midriff where the bulk of the AA weapons were mounted. The gantry was ruptured and twisted in places, the handrails hot to the touch or shorn off completely by incoming fire. Bodies lay strewn about, torn apart or missing limbs. The air was thick with smoke.
They found a gun that was unmanned. The base tilted at a strange angle where one of the gantry support struts had been smashed awaypart and the walkway groaned ominously as they stepped onto. It wobbled, but held.
'Man the spotlight!' Corgan shouted, indicating the massive lamp mounted on a mechanical frame. A simple set of levers and wheels allowed it to traverse quickly in well-oiled grooves. It was undamaged and Shopal was able to activate it and send a spear of white light up into the inky sky.
Corgan dropped gingerly into the gunner's seat, quickly running his hands over the controls to make sure it could still traverse cleanly. He cast his eyes to the sky, following the beam of Shopal's light, his fingers itching on the paddles.
A black shape flitted through the beam, tantalising but too quick for the burst of fire that spat from Corgan's quads and set the gantry to wobbling in protest. Shopal tried to track it but its vector carried it over the ship and out of their fire arc. He quickly recovered, swinging the beam out over the sea.
By now their ears were attumed to the raucous sounds of the raid, sensitive to the high-pitched droning of the Enemy jets. They picked up another, incoming on their position, perhaps seeking to snuff out the light of Shopal's lamp. Corgan opened up by instinct a second before the light picked out the hook-nosed flyer. His stream of fire passed over the bird, arcing out into the sky beyond. He compensated, his cradle gyrating wildly to a new position as he worked his feet on the attitude controls. This time his angle of deflection was better, the bird flew directly into the white-hot stream and faltered, breaking off its attack run.
Before he could track it to finish the job the construct around him vibrated to the tune of incoming fire. Shopal ducked reflexively, spitting a stream of colourful curses as explosive munitions barely missed him and his equipment. Corgan quickly swung his weapon around but the flyer roared overhead before he'd even drawn a bead. The gantry swung, threatening to pop loose of the superstructure and dump them in the sea. Corgan gritted his teeth and tracked for new targets, determined to make his mark on the battle.
Shopal reached out seeking fresh prey. The attack seemed to have slackened off somewhat, although the skies were still full of the bright traceries of anti-aircraft fire. A blossom of fire erupted off to the west, the tell-tale signs of a plane dying under heavy fire from one of the rearmost haulers.
Then the speakers rigged to the superstructure whined into life as a member of the bridge crew issued a general hail.
'Check your fire! Friendly aircraft inbound! I repeat! Check your fire!'
The mosquito whine of the Enemy aircraft was shot through by the throatier roar of powerful powerful ramjets. The interceptors fired their burners, leaving bright trails of residual burnoff in their wake as they streaked into the battle like fiery comets. Corgan sat back and watched in awe as the combined searchlights of the fleet illuminated the aerial combat. The slender fighters of the enemy viffed and jinked, playing out on stilted vectors as they pushed their machines to the limits of their tolerances. The Imperial fighters were more direct and more brutal, slicing the night open with the weapons arrayed under their snub noses, picking the Enemy fighters out of the sky and themselves enduring terrible injuries.
He watched as three Enemy fighters flocked around a single Imperial bulldog, pulling from the skies with the weight of fire. The rest of the night-black squadron darted clear, leaving their wounded to be picked off as they retreated.
Corgan fell a cold dread settle in the pit of his belly as he saw one such wounded bird circle around towards them, going into and spinning dive as he trailed fire behind him. The Thunderbolts pursuing it lanced out with their autocannons in an attempt to bring it down short, but the Enemy pilot was skilled and determined in his desperation. Corgan leapt out of the cradle and ran, dragging Shopal out of his own seat and leading the way aft at breakneck speed.
The whining increased in pitch and volume until it drowned out all other sounds, wiped clean all other thoughts but that of self-preservation. Primal instincts drove them to get as far as they could from the mid-sections of the ship as the barbed aircraft struck home and exploded.
The ship lurched, listing heavily under the impact. A boiling tower of flame gushed from amidships, cooking the life out of the crew on three of the upper decks. Anti-air-craft munitions cooked off, a staccato ripple of lethal, unchecked shrapnel exploding in all directions. One of the large-bore cannons ensconced at the heart of the ship was shorn completely away, threatening to expose the magazine on the lower decks. How the fire never reached it no one would ever know. If it had the whole ship would have been consigned to the depths in several pieces.
In the panic that followed passengers and crew alike were pressed into fire-fighting teams. The first fighting action of the Orrax Fifth Penal Legion was not a direct assault against the bulwarks of the enemy, but a desperate combat with the flames that threatened to end them all even before a land battle could take place.
Corgan lost track of Shopal in the hours that followed, swept up as he was from the wreckage, only to be pressed into a deck gang to operate one of the many hoses brought out to fight the raging flames. In the early hours of the morning he collapsed in a ragged heap against a bulkhead, his every sense numbed to insensitivity by the sheer intensity of the battle. Exhaustion tugged at him and even the adrenaline roar became a sweet lullaby that dragged him down into unconsciousness.
III
The crippled warship was secured with massive chains to the flanks of the Hyperios, a truly gargantuan carrier ship with a broad flat deck and conning tower shielding the close-packed superstructure underneath. Behind her another two ships were secured, dragged along in the wake of the unstoppable carrier.
The Imperial flottilla had suffered the complete loss of two capital ships. Rescue operations had been made through the night. Hundreds of hypothermic survivors were picked out of the sea. By the time the blue-white sun had started to rise in the west, they were pulling only corspes from the tumbling waters. The high commanders decreed that it was time to move on. The driving off of the Enemy planes was an opportunity they had to make good on if they were to make landfall unmolested.
The fleet moved in towards the towering black cliffs. The passengers aboard the crippled ships were transferred en masse to the Hyperios, crossing via rickety boarding ramps. The embarkation deck directly beneath the runway superstructure was packed tight with grimy, sweaty, salt-rimed bodies.
Corgan could barely breath. It was difficult to keep track of Shopal in the press. He'd found him this morning as he was ejected from one of the temporary infirmaries. Both of them were carrying scores of small superficial wounds. Neither of them denied how fortunate they were to be alive.
Together they were herded onto one of the massive gorgon assault transports, fifty men to a machine. Here they were afforded a fraction more personal space, even though it was still cramped in the open topped track bed.
'Wish I knew what was going on,' Shopal remarked. He was drawn and pale even under his ruddy skin tones. His usual irrepressible humour had been dampened by the events of the previous night. Neither of them had caught any sleep and the strain of the journey was starting to tell on the younger man.
'Pull yourself together,' said Corgan. 'You look ill.'
'Aren't you even a little curious?'
'What's to know?' he shrugged. 'We fight. Today, maybe tomorrow, parhaps a week from now. We fight and either we die or we go to fight again until we do. There's nothing you or anyone else who gives a sht can do about it.'
'I'm scared, man!'
Corgan grabbed him by the front of his jacket, drawing him nose to nose.
'Every man feels afraid! What you don't do is admit to it, y'hear? You and I both know what happens when a man shows weakness. Didn't you learn anything on Orrax?'
Shopal shivered once before shaking himself free and visibly shaping up.
'We're Penal Troopers,' Corgan asserted. 'Hardened by trial and travail on the bergs of Orrax. We know of no hardship that can level us. Death himself walks at our left shoulder.'
Shopal smiled, finally giving vent to the clown inside him.
'Corgs you sound like one of the black-tops!'
'Well, those boys may be worth a sht after all. At least they talk a good fight, eh?'
The sound of machinery drowned them out as a massive derrick assemply moved into position over the gorgon. Huge iron clamps closed around it, slotting into grooves in the sides of the carrier and secured with massive chains by a gang of deck servitors. The gorgon lurched underfoot as the lifting arm started to retract. The metal body of the tank screamed as its stress tolerances were put to the test. Up it went, soaring over rank upon rank of other military vehicles to be deposited on the lift platform.
As soon as the derrick had been uncoupled and had moved away, the platform began to rise on massive, hissing pistons. A crack of natural light speared down as the deck above them opened to the azure sky. With a reverberation that rattle their bones the platform slotted firmly into place.
The driver in his cab threw the ignition switch and gunned the engines, setting a vibration in the bones of his passengers. The mechanical beast lumbered forward, taking up a position at the centre of four massive yellow chevrons even as the lift platform receded back down to embarkation deck. More deck crew hurried out to surround the gorgon, taking up positions as a truly massive airlifter moved into position overhead.
The lifter's metre-thick cables were secured in place and the gorgan lurched again. The creak and squeal that told of massive forces at work sent shivers of pure terror down the spines of those huddled in the belly of the transport. Some of the men were shaken from their feet as the carrier lifted the gorgon and took a lurching side-slip, the strong offshore winds catching the gorgon in its fingers. Corgan barely kept his feet and was almost dragged down as Shopal grabbed out at him.
Their flight from ship to shore was terrifying but brief. With a crash the idling gorgon made landfall and lurched into forward motion. The passengers huddled within, blind to their destination and ignorant of their purpose. Only the sky bore witness to their fearful existence, and the grim, silent crewmen of the growling beast that held them in its iron belly. The vehicle clanked and rattled over uneven terrain, the tracks raising a dissonant, high-pitched song, haunting like wind-chimes in a dark, deserted forest.
Before long the beast slowed and finally ground to a halt. The front ramp dropped, bouncing once before settling in a cloud of dust. The passengers waited in silence, their eyes trying in vain to penetrate the grey cloud. A vague shadow loomed suddenly into view, bellowing and wielding a shock maul.
'Off, you dogs! Disembark and foorm orderly ranks! MOVE!'
The praefect lashed out, blasting the closest man from his feet with a barb of snapping energy that made his short hair bristle and his skin smoke. It was enough of an example to get the other forty nine passengers bustling for the exit ramp.
Corgan passed through the cloud and onto the broad, rugged plateau beyond, getting his first landward view of the island. The atoll gave way to a broad, rugged plateau on its souther side. The plateau was divided into segments by the burrowing roots of the mountain, forming high black ridges with deep green valleys between.
They'd been driven deep into the inland regions, several miles from the coastal cliffs. Here the ground was firm and the terrain rugged. Volcanic stone jutted from the hardy grasses and shrubs, black with crystalline veins running through it. Further in the ridges gave way to the lower foothills of the mountain, richly carpeted with evergreen forests that clung to the soil-sparse slopes.
The gorgon had drawn up on a low ridge. Directly ahead of them the valley plunged and rose again towards a lofty ridge of black stone. It was perhaps a ten mile walk, but not as the bird flies. The rippling effect of the terrain made the black bastions on the opposite ridge loom high even at this distance. All along that ridge, ranged from the foothills to the shoreline, were the bulwarks of a mighty curtain wall. Cyclopean in scale and built out of the black stone of the island, it wasn't difficult to predict the course of their advance.
'They expect us to take that?' Shopal gasped. Corgan didn't reply, simply shaking his head in fatalistic unbelief..
The unit began to line up in ragged block, murmuring and griping amongst themselves. All along their ridge the other gorgons had lined up, forming a wall of indomitable steel with their frail cargo ranked up en masse before it. More were pulling into line to their right as the super-heavies arrived from the coast. Behind them came companies of smaller chimera troop transports, accompanied by the swarthy tanks of the Roathan PDF's armoured divisions.
Commissars and Praefectorum toughs moved along the lines of infantry, bellowing at the penal troopers to form neat rows, beating those that were too slow or reluctant into submission. The bark of bolter fire rippled sporadically up and down the valley. The commissars were liberal in their remit to execute those found wanting. Likewise, the praefects were wanton in the use of their shock-mauls. One of the bully-boys went too far and provoked a full-scale brawl, bringing other praefects wading in to deal out further punishment. Several of them were carted off, their fates decided with the battle still ten miles distant.
Corgan found himself numbed by the scale of the endeavour. The close confines of Necromunda had done nothing to prepare him for this and neither had his six years on Orrax, where relief from the biting cold was a man's only motivation. The gorgons were true behemoths, dwarfing the Leman Russ battle tanks that rolled in to fill the gaps between them. Corgan could count eighty-six super-heavies from his vantage point and he was sure there were more lining up down in the valley out of sight. Behind them, filling the terrain to saturation, the squat grey forms of chimeras, pulling into blocks behind the assault vehicles. The artillery came last, row upon row of self-propelled basilisks with their earthshaker cannons forming a forest of steel on the row of hills behind them.
Corgan estimated the total number of vehicles that he could see to be somewhere around the three thousand mark. Rumour amongst the convicts held that the penal world had surrendered as many as forty-thousand colonists to form the four legions founded there. Even if the entire Fourth Legion had been lost en route (and that was only hearsay), that would put their own numbers around thirty-thousand.
Corgan suddenly felt very small. He wondered who their Enemy could be to warrant such a gathering of manpower.
IV
A full half of the infantry were kept at battle-ready stations while the artillery moved to higher positions to the north. Corgan envied the infantry companies that got assigned to the cushy duty of protecting them. Meanwhile, the rest were pressed into the hard labour of digging in along the back of the ridge. Munitorum lifters flew in with prefabricated buildings that the troopers were put to assembling. Others were assigned the dubious honour of digging the vast latrines. The better part were put to work shifted tonnes of earth to form defensible trench-lines.
Sometime after midday the artillery made a start to the battle. From his position, the ripple of fire above and the resulting detonations along the ridge ahead of him were something of an anti-climax. After all the noise and bustle of the Imperial deployment it was a disappointing display. The black ramparts weathered the constant hail of bombardment, barely even taking notice of the fiery blossoms that impacted along the fortified lines.
The duty praefects had relaxed their watchful policing, turning to watch the fireworks, allowing the ranks of penal troopers to break ranks and rest after a fashion. Most of them sat down where they were, others moved inside the gorgons to spark up smuggled lho sticks where they couldn't be seen. Corgan leaned back againt the track assembly of his transport and watched the bombardment with a critical eye. Shopal dropped to the ground close by, despair plain in his bearing once more.
'It's like throwing spitwads at one of these things,' he remarked, indicated the massive brute of iron and steel behind them.
'Not making much of an impression is it?' Corgan replied, bleakly.
They looked on with a growing despair, enjoying the temperate morning as best they could. The atmospherics on Fered Roathi were far warmer and more hospitable than the icy winds of Orrax. Likewise, it was far less physically taxing to sit and watch the display than if they'd behind to work the bergs. The dark cloud of imminent death still loomed, but in those moments at least it could be set aside.
'Wanna smoke?' asked a wiry man with hollow eyes and deeply lined cheeks. He held out a packet of greased paper, revealing a cluster of black cigarillos.
'I've got nothing to trade,' Corgan replied, to which the other man just smiled.
'Does it matter? Sooner or later we're heading over there. If we survive you can owe me...'
Corgan took four.
'One for now,' he said, gripping it between his teeth. He tossed two to Shopal and held the last one up between finger and thumb. 'This is our victory dance,' he said, tucking it into his breast pocket. 'We smoke these when the aquila flies over that ridge and not before.' He sparked up in plain view, careless of what the praefects did. After a moment's relish he truend to Shopal and smiled. 'I might be convinced to make an exception in the event of mortal injury…'
Shopal grinned, regaining some of his sense of humour. The kid had been getting so fixated on the impending battle that he was losing perspective. He needed to retain his cynical humour or he'd end up getting himself capped by the black-tops. Corgan's strong silent method hadn't been going anywhere, but the suggestion that they might get through this coupled with his bravado managed to touch something in the younger man and stoke the flames of his personality back to life.
Before long he was back in full flow, recounting the tales of his family's colourful history to a gaggle of sceptical troopers with nothing better to do. He'd landed himself on Orrax through the shady underworld connections he'd fallen into back in the Urbane Prefabulae, but his family had a long and illustrious history of involvement in the criminal fraternities that virtually ruled the vast cityscapes of Sarassa. Corgan had heard them all before but he found a strange comfort in letting them wash over him as he savoured the pungent cigarillo.
Just across the bowl of the valley, the black fortress waited. Battered and bruised, but still a formidable barrier protecting the city.
V
By nightfall the Imperial headquarters were all but established. The duty troopers were allowed to sleep in rotating three hour shifts while those that had helped with the construction were given the whole night. They were heavily dosed with muscle-relaxants and sedatives to stop them cramping up and make sure they rested. The long warp transit had put them out of shape and this sudden stint of hard labour was bound to make more than a few of them ache for weeks. It wouldn't do to have their fighting potential curbed. The Praefectorum discipline squads patrolled the camps studiously, incarcerating many that were found breaking their curfew.
Corgan grabbed what sleep he could, haunted by dreams of impossible mechanical monstrosities, rimed with frost and so huge that they stretched beyond his comprehension. The cold of Orrax had worked into his bones and ice was a strong recurring theme in his nightmares. It was not a restful sleep and he was almost glad to be called back on duty when his stint was up.
He loked around, cataloguing the now familiar faces of his compatriots. He'd come to know a few of them through the course of the day. Jarny and Tolpo, the brothers, diminutive and shifty, pale-skinned and with straw coloured hair. They shared a thick accent that Corgan couldn't place and a surly attitude for anyone that wasn't blood.
Erriks was a quiet, bearded man with a barrel chest and powerful limbs. His physical size and the scars of his hands and arms indicated that he had worked with heavy machinery, probably all his life. The man was quiet and retiring, he said nothing to elaborate on his history. He was teamed up with an older man, wiry and scared, perhaps forty years old. They had the kind of partnership common to penal colonists on Orrax. It had paid to have someone watching your back on the ice-moon.
The man with the trade goods was Pars. He's made free with various commodities carried about his person before disappearing. He was back now, rolled up in his bedroll and snoring loudly. He was your typical fence, shifty and street wise, always on the lookout for where the action was. Throne only knew why he'd come back. Perhaps it was for the protection of the cosmetic friendship he'd fostered.
What did it matter, though. Like the man said… tomorrow, maybe the day after, they'd hit the ridge and all bets would be off.
Morning bled a cold, bluish light across the ridges. The bombardment had kept up throughout the night, blending into the ambient sounds until it was a familiar, comforting rhythm. As the sun came up he could see that at last the line of fortifications was looking a little frayed around the edges. That at least was encouraging, but the bulwarks of the Enemy were still formidable.
Two hours after sun-up the praefects started bullying the men back into lines, rousting them out of bedrolls and kicking any too slow to respond. The blankets went back into bulky packs that were heaped alongside the troop carrier to be carted off by tracked servitor units of the Munitorum. The penal troopers were left with just the clothes on their backs.
Before long Munitorum trucks drove along the lines and they were issued with their equipment. Four las-mags each went into the slots on their webbing. A rudimentary field-kit containing bandages, sterile coagulant spray and two shots of morphia went into a pouch-roll at the small of their backs. A torch that could be attached at the front.
No weapons yet.
The praefects did a quick check to make sure their flak jackets were fastened up and secure, their webbing tightened over it. They were ordered to buckle up their bowl helmets under the chin.
To each gorgon assault carrier five praefects were assigned, outnumbered ten to one by their charges. Corgan recognised the most senior of their guardians as Decurion Torvik, renowned as a true-blooded bully-boy. Stories had been passed around about his brutality. He'd made the trip from Orrax extremely unpleasant for a lot of people. The other four assigned to his unit were boot-licking cronies of Torvik's, cut from the same boot-leather.
'Just our bloody luck,' he muttered.
The commissars were driven along the lines in armoured cars that stopped at every tenth gorgon. Each time they skidded to a halt another black-top would dismount, secure his peaked cap, and march stiff-leggedly to his assigned transport.. These were even more heavily outnumbered by the penitents. One for every ten gorgon transports meant they were responsible for upwards of five hundred souls. Each of them would be backed up by a team of dedicated praefects to carry his will to the companies under him.
The man in charge of Corgan's division hoisted himself to stand upon one of the central machines, some way further up the slope. He lifted a vox horn to his mouth. It was patched into the loud-hailers on each of his machines and his words carried to them all, even as the commissars of the other divisions spoke to their own men. The valley resounded with echoes.
'Men of the Fifth,' he intoned, his voice carrying self assuredly through the hailer system, powerful enough to raise the hairs on the back of Corgan's neck. 'Today you will fight for your salvation.'
A roar went up. This was what they had come for, the chance to be absolved of their sins in the crucible of war. The commissar continued as the cheer died away.
'The shrines of Fered Roathi have been despoiled. The Emperor weeps upon the Golden Throne for the atrocities perpetrated here by our Great Enemy, the Eternal Scourge of Mankind. The Emperor demands bloody retribution!'
A second roar rose up, louder than the first and beautifully timed. The valley rang with the cheers of thirty thousand voices and men punched the air in aggressive jubilation, working themselves into a frenzy born out of their frustrations of the last few months. Cooped up in cramped conditions aboard the ships of the Imperial Navy and carted from world to world like so much cattle. Bullied and humiliated by the Praefectorum bravos and then attacked at sea by the foe that had made it necessary for them to be brought here in the first place.
'Today,' the commissar raged on, 'we bring justice to the unjust, purification to the unclean and vengeance to the aggressor! To arms!' he bellowed, evincing another great roar. 'To arms, my brothers! To arms! Let us rain death upon the foe!'
Now Corgan realised why they had not yet handed out weapons. If he'd had a gun in his hands he might have followed the crowd on foot towards the ridge, crying in bloody abandon as he vented his own ire. The fact that they were unarmed was the only thing that stopped them from charging recklessly out, despite the ten-miles of rugged countryside that separated them from the Enemy.
The praefects burst into action as the commissar clambered down from his perch, herding the frothing legionaries into their transports so that the ramp could be raised back into position.
'Weapons will be issued at the three minute marker!' Torvik bellowed from his vantage point high in the crew compartment at the rear of the vehicle. 'From this moment on all praefects have been granted actio ab mortalis. Show dissent, cowardice or any other insubordination and you will be executed.'
The gorgon growled into motion, tilting as it moved out onto the downward slope and headed into the valley. Corgan's truncated view was of a pristine sky, cloudless and pure. Once again his world was reduced to one of noise and heat and fear.
The men around him were pale as death, resembling nothing more than ghosts in their dusty grey fatigues. They reacted to their confinement in different way, some with brash bravado, others with stunned silence. Many of them wore their features set in masks of aggression while others could not conceal the horror of their circumstances. The fervent reaction to the commissar's speech was diminished as a blanket of fear settled over them. The cloud of imminent death loomed large on an unseen horizon.
The gorgon shook violently, tilting to the side as dirt and grit showered over the transport compartment. The roar of an explosion drowned out the transport's engine growl even as it over-revved. They were thrown from their feet as the gorgon's slammed back down to earth, the tracks ripping into the rocky ground and causing the transport to slip and twist in its forward motion.
More explosions followed. Hot shrapnel arced into the crew section, telling them of Imperial vehicles suffering at the hands of an Enemy counter-bombardment that was capable of smashing even the super-heavy gorgons to so much scrap metal.
Many of the men in Corgan's unit only got up as far as their knees, praying frantically for deliverance. Corgan turned around and started making his way back towards the crew compartment, determined to be the first to be issued with a weapon. He was in a prime position to bear witness to the explosion that ripped the driver's cab to metallic ribbons.
The men at the back of the vehicle took the brunt of the blast, limbs and gore showering those that were sheltered by their compatriots. The sound burst eardrums and the blast wave threw down anyone still standing. Burning oil sent tendrils of flame, coating those nearest the blast and spreading as they flailed wildly.
The gorgon was dead and the artillery had them zeroed. Those that had survived so far were trapped in their metal coffin.