The Siege of Castellax Read online

  A second ork fighter came screaming down from the sky, stitching the surface of the firebreak with high-impact rounds. Flecks of ferrocrete exploded from the wall. The effect upon the men caught in the path of the automatic fire was more dramatic. Soldiers jerked and writhed like puppets, flailing obscenely before sprawling across the ground like heaps of bloodied rags.

  Bullets smacked at his very heels as Taofang rushed to the pit. Without bothering to even look at what he was doing, he threw himself down into the hole, somehow twisting around in his descent so that he found himself staring upwards when the xenos plane went sailing above the mouth of the pit.

  ‘If I knew you were going to kick me in the eye, I would have let the orks shoot you,’ Mingzhou complained. ‘And if you want to keep that hand, then you’d better move it.’

  Experiencing a pang of guilt, which he recognised as absurd given the situation, Taofang pulled away from the sniper, extracting himself from where he had become tangled in her tunic. The motion brought a gasp of pain from him, a stabbing sensation racing down his arm. It seemed he hadn’t cleared the lip of the pit as smoothly as he had thought.

  Reeling back, Taofang felt the cold wall of the firing pit press against him. Through the ferrocrete he could feel the vibrations of a renewed ork barrage, the most vicious to yet assail Vorago. Each tremor sent a fresh twinge of agony rushing down his arm.

  Mingzhou was beside him almost at once, her face pinched with concern. She did the incredible, setting down her lasrifle so she could inspect his arm. It was the first time he’d ever seen her out of contact with the weapon. ‘I thought you slept with that thing,’ he joked, but the effort brought his teeth snapping together against a fresh surge of misery.

  The sniper scowled at him. ‘Exactly how much do you want this to hurt?’ Her hands closed about his arm, one behind and one above his elbow. An icy chill of anticipation crawled through Taofang’s flesh.

  ‘Is there a painless option?’ he asked, the last word barely leaving his lips before a blast of excruciation thundered through him. His eyes snapped shut, his mouth clamped tight, biting his tongue. His arm felt like it had been set on fire and then smashed under the treads of a tank.

  ‘It’s broken,’ Mingzhou announced, her voice a grim whisper. ‘We might be able to fool Nehring, if we’re careful.’

  ‘Why...’ Taofang shuddered as he opened his eyes, a wave of nausea almost overwhelming him. He closed his eyes and started over. ‘Why fool anybody? I can go to the aid section’

  ‘Broken bones aren’t tended at the aid section,’ Mingzhou said, dread creeping into her voice. ‘Serious injuries are taken care of at Processing Omega.’

  Taofang started to shrug, then thought better of it. ‘So I go to Processing–’

  The sniper pressed her hand against his lips, smothering the rest of his words. Her eyes were like chips of steel as she locked him in an intense gaze. ‘Have you ever heard of anyone coming back from Processing?’ she demanded.

  Smiling, Taofang pulled Mingzhou’s hand away. ‘Of course they come back. Probably reassigned to whatever units…’

  His gaze strayed from the sniper to the other occupants of the firing pit. He suddenly felt cold all over, staring down at the two dead men, factory slaves who had been chained to the walls of the pit. He only had a good view of one of them, a big black hole burned through his forehead. It was more than he wanted to see. He lifted his gaze back to Mingzhou.

  No, Taofang decided, he wasn’t going to ask her how these men died. Knowing wouldn’t do anybody any good.

  Castellax bled compassion from men. It was a weakness that could kill quicker than an ash-storm. Survival was the only thing a man had to cling to, survival at any cost. Whatever didn’t help him survive, it was something he had to teach himself to ignore. What good to wonder if someone he didn’t know had been murdered? This was a planet of murder; hundreds died each day just to placate the whims of the Iron Warriors. Who would care about two nameless slaves in a firing pit?

  Taofang knew the answer to that question even as he asked it. The Iron Warriors were vicious, brutal monsters who thought nothing of slaughtering their own slaves, but they had very different standards for the human cattle who served them. If one slave killed another, then that was a crime against the property of their masters.

  ‘Mingzhou,’ Taofang gestured at the dead slaves. ‘We have to get rid of them. Make it look like the orks got them.’ He pushed himself away from the wall. Drawing his knife, he began to attack the chain binding the closest slave to the wall. In his mind, he kept seeing Colonel Nehring and his shock troops appearing and dragging Mingzhou away.

  He couldn’t let that happen. Ignoring the pain from his arm, Taofang tried to pry the links apart, to free the corpse from its fastening.

  Almost gently, Mingzhou pressed her hands against his chest and pushed him back. ‘They won’t know,’ she assured him. His panic had touched her more profoundly than any words could have. On Castellax, where life was cheap, the rarest thing of all was to fear for any life that wasn’t your own. ‘We’ll be gone before the disposers show up.’

  A feeling of intense relief gripped Taofang as he bowed to the woman’s logic. The disposal teams weren’t the sort to brave ork guns. They’d wait until the worst of the barrage was over before sallying from the tunnels to gather the dead. By then, as Mingzhou said, they would be safely away, neither Nehring nor his monstrous masters any the wiser.

  ‘Post one-thirty-five,’ a nasal voice cried out from above, its words almost drowned out by the roar of artillery and the scream of ork planes. ‘Anyone alive down there?’

  Taofang retrieved his lasgun from where he had dropped it, frantically swinging the weapon towards the mouth of the pit. His moment of relief tasted bitter now. Against all precedent, the disposers were ranging along the firebreak in the midst of the barrage. A fine time for the corpse-collectors to grow a spine!

  The weight of the lasgun was too much for Taofang to manage with one arm. Unwisely he set the muzzle against his broken arm. Instantly a surge of pain swept through him, the weapon slipping from fingers shocked into helplessness. Mingzhou tried to squirm past him to reach her lasrifle, but between the janissary and the dead slaves, the space was too tight.

  A muffled gasp drifted down from the mouth of the pit. A masked face quickly withdrew, darting away before Taofang could try to recover his lasgun. The faintest suggestion of a hurried exchange filtered down into the pit, then another masked figure stared down at them from above, a long hook clenched in his gloved fists.

  ‘Janissaries,’ the man said, making the word sound like a curse. Before the crippled Taofang could move, the disposer lashed out with the hook, swatting his hand and knocking the lasgun from his fingers. Mingzhou lunged for the hook, but with a twisting motion, the disposer pulled it free from her grip.

  ‘Did you kill them?’ the disposer demanded, gesturing at the dead slaves.

  Taofang glared up at the masked man. ‘Does it matter? You’ll tell Nehring we did and earn yourself a reward. Maybe an extra ration of protein-paste.’

  The disposer flinched as Taofang said the last words, lurching back almost as though he had been struck. The eyes behind the lenses of his mask narrowed. ‘What would you do if I didn’t turn you in? Would you go back to your regiment, or would you try to escape?’

  Mingzhou sneered up at the disposer. ‘There is no escape.’

  The masked man nodded his head. ‘Maybe not, but at least there is a chance to fight back. To die like men, not dogs.’

  A cynical laugh hissed through Taofang’s teeth. ‘No revolt succeeds. I’ve put down enough of them to know that.’

  ‘Success or failure,’ the disposer said. ‘They don’t matter. All that matters is fighting against… them.’

  Taofang turned his head, staring into Mingzhou’s eyes. He could read the same thought in her mind. The man wasn’t just a rebel, he was mad. Fighting the Iron Warriors was suicide. No mere mortal could hop
e to oppose the Space Marines.

  ‘I can get you away from here,’ the disposer was saying. ‘Load you onto the tractor as though you were dead, take you away into the tunnels.’

  Mingzhou nodded slowly, still staring at Taofang. ‘It is better than being turned over to Nehring,’ she said. ‘And we can sneak away as soon as we reach the tunnels,’ she added in a whisper. The suggestion pleased Taofang. He wanted no part in this madman’s impossible crusade and was grateful that Mingzhou shared his sentiment.

  ‘All right,’ Taofang called up to the disposer. ‘Get us off the firebreak.’

  The masked man nodded, lowering the hook back down into the pit. ‘Loop the straps of your weapons over the point. Get the one from the dead men too.’

  Taofang laughed at the order. ‘You ask us to trust you, disposer. You ask us to believe in your fight.’ His fingers wrapped about the muzzle of his lasgun as he lifted it from the floor. ‘That is asking a lot. So I think we’ll be keeping our weapons.’

  The disposer shrugged. ‘You’ll have to hide them,’ he said. ‘An armed corpse might attract attention.’ He dropped flat as a shell burst somewhere overhead, the firebreak trembling with the impact. ‘No more discussion,’ he snarled. ‘Are you coming or not?’

  Taofang hefted his lasgun, shaking it at the masked man. ‘We’re coming,’ he said. He hesitated, wondering if it was wise to continue. The rebel had obviously expected to find only slaves in the pit. Taofang didn’t want him getting any crazy ideas now that he had two armed janissaries under his wing. ‘But we make no promises about fighting the Iron Warriors, disposer.’

  ‘Yuxiang,’ the masked man introduced himself. ‘And I won’t ask you to fight the Iron Warriors.’ He paused, his body shuddering beneath the slimy sheen of his plastic duster. ‘I won’t need to after you have seen Processing Omega for yourself.

  ‘After you have been there, you will know the kind of monsters they are. You will know that they must be destroyed.’

  The hulking ork chief thumped its chest with the armoured backs of its power claws. The immense masses of cable and steel were surgically attached to the alien’s body at the shoulder, replacing its natural arms entirely. Painted in a bloody shade broken up by rings of black and white checks, the brutal weapons presented a garish contrast to the tattered leather cloak and leggings the beast wore. A bowl-like helmet fitted with massive black horns was crushed down around the brute’s scalp, casting its pushed-in face into shadow.

  Rhodaan pressed the activation stud on his chain-sword and favoured the ork with a grandiose flourish of his blade. His plasma pistol was dangerously close to overheating after fending off incessant waves of orks for the past two hours. It was becoming dangerously unpredictable. Gazing at the ork chief, he didn’t think he’d trust anything less than a full charge to burn through the brute’s thick skull. Less than that would probably just piss it off.

  Killing the warlord hadn’t done much to throw the xenos into confusion. The monsters had been fully capable of mounting another assault against Vorago even as the Raptors were extracting themselves from the battle-

  fortress. Ork artillery thundered through the sky, ork planes ruled the air, ork warriors rampaged across the desert and assailed the perimeter walls. Alien mobs patrolled the wastes, hunting for the enemies who had penetrated into their headquarters.

  How many had Rhodaan killed since Vallax and the others had withdrawn into the pipe? The tabulation icon in his helmet registered two hundred and forty-seven confirmations and another twenty-three probables. To the Iron Warrior, the numbers were unimpressive, mere drops in the bucket. There were millions of orks infesting Castellax, the deaths of a few hundred were nothing. There were only sixty-four Iron Warriors on the entire planet – their deaths had to be sold at only the highest price. Killing the warlord would have had consequence. Dying here, in a scrap yard of scavenged junk, would account for nothing. It would be shameful, a disgrace.

  Rhodaan would not die in disgrace. When his spirit was cast into the warp, he would stare at the Great Powers and spit at them. They would know he had died as an Iron Warrior, not Flesh grovelling on its knees in the dirt.

  The ork chief clambered down from its perch atop the smashed chassis of a tank, barking its savage laughter as it answered Rhodaan’s challenge. Weedy little gretchin attendants scurried out from hiding to assist the ork as it advanced, activating a crazed array of drives and gears fitted to the shell of its claws. Streamers of golden lightning crackled around the brute’s steel paws, dripping from each chequered talon in rivulets of molten fire.

  The Space Marine took one step, then his body jerked back as a high-calibre round smashed into his cuirass. Rhodaan pitched, almost falling, but his psycho-conditioned reflexes turned his sprawl into a roll, throwing him behind cover. A barrage of enthusiastic but erratic fire pelted the ground around him.

  Raucous bellows roared from the ork chief’s fanged maw. On the scrap-heaps around it, a pack of grimy aliens bedecked in blue paint and wearing human skulls as trophies maintained a steady rate of fire against Rhodaan’s refuge. The Space Marine chided himself for underestimating the ork chief. The brainless brutes were so often unable to resist the promise of a fight that it was easy to forget that sometimes the monsters could display a crude intelligence.

  Rhodaan thumbed a grenade from his belt. Three more and then he would be empty. The Iron Warrior nodded grimly. He would just have to make each one count. Reaching out, he wrenched a piece of pipe from the broken railcar he was using for cover. With deliberate precision, he threw the piece of debris into the darkest path of shadow he could find.

  Ork eyesight was notoriously poor and the aliens reacted on instinct rather than strategy. The sound of the pipe clattering across the shadowy ground brought a withering fire chopping down at it, every xenos gun shifting to annihilate the unexpected sound.

  It was a momentary distraction, but a moment was all Rhodaan needed. Darting from around the opposite side of the railcar, he braved the fire of the few orks who still had the presence of mind not to forget their original enemy. The thin grenade sailed from the Space Marine’s hand, flying not towards the ork warriors atop the scrap-heaps, but at the base of the junk pile itself.

  Rhodaan dove back behind cover, crouching low against the railcar as the grenade detonated. The deafening shriek of tons of metal sliding and scraping together scratched across the scrap yard. There was a dull rumble, the panicked barks of orks, then the upset scrap-heaps came smashing down in a rattling avalanche of rusted metal and shredded steel.

  The rolling junk heap smashed against Rhodaan’s shelter, pushing it back a dozen metres, threatening to upset it and smash him into paste beneath the mass of the railcar. Bits and oddments went sailing over the top of the vehicle, crashing to the ground in a clamour of dislodged wreckage. Rhodaan held fast to the side of his refuge, braving the cataclysm he had set into motion.

  When the clamour fell still, the Raptor lunged to the top of the railcar, using his demi-organic wings to aid his leap. He scowled down at the sprawling mess of twisted metal, the torn bodies of orks strewn about the jumble. A few of the aliens moved feebly, trying to drag their mangled remains free. Rhodaan clenched his fist tighter about his chainsword and drove down upon the torn survivors.

  As he hacked the head from one ork and kicked in the face of another, Rhodaan was suddenly bowled over by a tremendous impact. Thrown across the scrap yard, he landed in an agonised heap, only his superhuman constitution and the amazing durability of his power armour protecting him from immediate death. The object that had smashed into him rolled away, the burned-out hulk of a warbike.

  Monstrous, familiar laughter roared at him from across the debris-field. The ork chief wrenched its leg free from a tangle of wires and pipe, glaring at the Space Marine with its beady eyes. Its face was a mash of torn flesh and shrapnel, one power claw sparking and hanging obscenely from its torn shoulder. The ork reached out with its good claw, scooping the drive-shaf
t of a truck from the ground and hurling it like a javelin at the prostrate Rhodaan.

  The Iron Warrior had underestimated this brute, but it had done the same in turn. The ork hadn’t reckoned upon the agility and speed of a legionary. Rhodaan threw himself flat as the drive-shaft went sailing over his head. As soon as it was past, he sprang into a vicious charge, rushing at the hulking alien beast. He could see the savage anticipation in the ork’s eyes, the excitement as it clenched and unclenched its power claw.

  At the last instant, before he closed with the ork, Rhodaan activated his jump pack, launching himself over the alien’s head. ‘You had your chance,’ he hissed at the brute. ‘Now you can burn.’

  As though understanding Rhodaan’s words, the ork chief didn’t turn to see where the Space Marine was going, but instead stared at the little discs the Raptor had dropped on the ground at its feet. A heartbeat later the incendiary grenades detonated, engulfing the ork in flame.

  Screaming, its flesh cooking beneath its skin, the ork chief stubbornly clung to life, staggering blindly around the wreckage in a futile attempt to close upon its killer. The living torch raged and bellowed for more than a minute before a sharp whine whistled across the scrap yard and smacked into the ork’s burning body. Rhodaan was forced to shield his eyes as a brilliant explosion consumed the ork.

  Spinning around, clutching the doubtful plasma pistol in his fist, Rhodaan tried to find the location of the shooter who had finished the ork. It was a simple task, the shooter made no effort to hide himself. Lumbering across the scrap yard, the missile launcher gradually flowing back into the substance of his arm, Brother Merihem smiled his steel smile at Rhodaan.

  ‘A magnificent battle,’ the Obliterator congratulated. ‘A good display of tactics against a more numerical foe and with woefully limited resources.’