Hammer and Bolter: Issue Twenty-Six Read online

  KOVOS FALLS

  Mark Latham

  ‘There are countless thousands of regiments of the Imperial Guard. There are untold millions of Imperial Guardsmen, all of whom provide grist for the mill in the eternal war for mankind’s deliverance. Yet there is but one regiment of storm troopers, who stand head and shoulders above the common soldier. Would that the schola progenium could provide more of them.’

  – Commissar Dmitri Antonov addressing the McIntyre Assembly, 977.M41

  The wind whipped furiously across the cavernous mouth of Hangar 11, its howl drowning out the screech of las-fire. Three men fell to the first salvo, as the storm troopers swooped into the vast opening on glowing grav-chutes.

  The hive scum scrambled in disarray, trying in vain to mount an effective counter-assault, but managing only to make a din as they fired high-calibre stub guns in blind panic. All fifteen of the foe lay dead or dying before the final trooper made planetfall, and the Hell’s Rejects unhitched their grav-chutes and took up defensive positions.

  ‘Valdimar, Kraster – take point,’ hissed Sergeant Godric. The two storm troopers darted to cover, hellguns readied against any further threats.

  Trooper Sorokin kicked at one of the fresh corpses on the hangar deck. ‘Renegades,’ he spat. Turning the body over, the dead man’s bared chest revealed a pattern of scars, carved into his torso in a series of blasphemous sigils. ‘Heretics! This gets better and better.’

  ‘All who turn from the Emperor’s light are heretics, Sorokin. How far they have fallen matters not to us.’ Godric was taciturn as always, and Sorokin only nodded in response.

  ‘The only things I hate more than greenskins is heretics,’ muttered Trooper Kraster, who had seen more than his fair share of fighting against both.

  The orbital drop had been treacherous. The storm was fierce, and the only safe landing point on the principal hive was three miles up. It was a testament to the storm troopers’ skill that they had found their landing site, avoiding the auto-defence weapons in the process. This was Kovos Rising, a black, cyclopean spear thrusting from the surface of the world amidst a cluster of smaller hives. With the hangar secured, the storm troopers quickly took stock of their equipment and muttered thanks to the Emperor for a safe drop, before heading across the landing bay. Godric led the way, his bionic eye cutting through the darkness. When they reached the far side of the hangar, Godric led his squad through obfuscating shadows until they reached a large bulkhead set in a plasteel wall some fifteen metres high. The coast seemingly clear, the troopers flicked their visors up and stood easy.

  Godric looked at his men. ‘We’re close to the spire, but we have to expect stiff resistance from hostiles. We’ll have to do this the hard way.’

  ‘What’s new, sergeant?’ grinned Valdimar. He was a giant of a man, who looked as though he could wrestle a Catachan devil into submission.

  ‘Remember your objectives, and take no unnecessary risks,’ Godric said, sternly.

  ‘Yes sir!’ The response came as one from the assembled troopers.

  ‘Okay, McLeod, get this door open. We’re going in – and remember, all of you; the scum behind these doors have turned from the Emperor’s light. If they get in our way, show no mercy.’

  ‘Mercy is weakness!’ came the refrain, accompanied a moment later by the grinding of hydraulics as the heavy bulkhead swung open, revealing a narrow corridor ahead. The passage was bathed in blood-red light; the only sound the steady whirring of filtration pumps and the clunking of vast, antiquated steam pipes.

  ‘Two-by-two formation,’ said Godric. ‘Sorokin, you’re with me. Tarek, Joachim, take the rear. Let’s go.’

  The route to the Wall had been perilous, but not as dangerous as Godric had feared. Using access tunnels from the manufactorum, the storm troopers had managed to locate the most isolated group of sentries, and Kraster and Sorokin had made short work of them before beckoning the others down onto the main gantry. Now the Wall was before them – plasteel panels, coated in ceramite, standing sixty metres high and at least six metres thick, with a perimeter stretching for miles around. Bulkheads permeated its exterior at regular intervals, each crowned by auto-defence units. The Wall was a physical barrier between the noble dwellings of the upper spire and the squalid manufactora, celerions and hab-blocks of the rest of the hive, and now it stood between the Hell’s Rejects and their mission.

  With barely a word, the Hell’s Rejects took up defensive postures around one of the bulkheads, claiming cover where they could. The wind whipped up around them, billowing from the vast void between the outer railings and an unfathomable drop beyond. McLeod took up a position next to the control panel of the bulkhead, nervously operating the controls under the watchful eye of the sentry gun. He thrice intoned a blessing to the Omnissiah, before patching his Imperial identi-chit into the dormant servo-skull behind the panel. A red eye blinked into life.

  ‘Imperial Guard Storm Trooper Squad Identified. Authorisation?’

  Godric stepped forward, and spoke to the servo-skull as loudly and clearly as he dared given the hostile environs.

  ‘Squad Godric. sixty-sixth storm trooper company. Imperial Override Alpha 11759.’

  The inner workings of the grim automaton whirred and clicked.

  ‘Welcome to Kovos Spire.’

  The door swung open with a loud clunk. Even before the first storm trooper had stepped beyond the threshold, footsteps and shouts could be heard close by as gangers were alerted by the noise. The most treasured prize of all for these heretics lay within the spire, and they would stop at nothing to gain access. Godric ushered the last man through the door, and only just had time to see it closed as the first rounds ricocheted off the armoured bulkhead.

  Before long, the storm troopers were stepping into what seemed like another world. Despite the hardships and unrest beyond the Wall, in the spire those noble lords and ladies who had not managed to flee the hive still existed within airy halls, with as much food, drink and finery as they could desire. Well-dressed administrators and lordlings stepped aside for the storm troopers, looks of distaste upon their faces at the appearance of the Hell’s Rejects. Godric was saluted by a captain of the Kovosian household guard, a man who looked a little past his peak.

  ‘Captain Tarvin, sir, at your service,’ he said. ‘I am to escort you to Governor Marchinus.’

  Tarvin led the way through the brightly-lit halls, past domiciles, offices and rec-rooms, and up several flowing staircases.

  ‘How many men do you have, Tarvin?’ asked Godric.

  ‘A few days ago I had a hundred, sir. Now I have twenty-two.’

  Godric nodded grimly. The fighting across the planet had been fierce and retribution swift, as hive after hive had fallen to open rebellion.

  ‘You know why we are here?’ Godric’s question was a leading one – this was not a mercy mission, and he would brook no requests for rescue.

  ‘We picked up the same signal, sir. Adeptus Mechanicus emergency protocols. We couldn’t decipher it, but we know where it came from.’

  ‘Good. And the governor? He’ll cooperate in the fulfilment of our mission?’

  Tarvin checked himself before replying. ‘Governor Marchinus is… He will do his duty, sir.’

  Through twisting corridors they strode, before reaching the command centre of the spire. Tarvin announced the Hell’s Rejects as ‘Storm Trooper Squad Godric,’ and took his position by the door.

  Before Godric’s men was a well-equipped control room, with a massive viewport on one side looking out over the other hives, and the turmoil of a world at war. The governor stood with his back to them, gazing upon his shattered domain.

  ‘
I have spent a lifetime building this world, as did my father and grandfather before me,’ said the governor. His high-pitched voice was quavering. ‘And now look at it… all in ruin. Irrecoverable, they say… such a pity.’ He turned to face Godric. The man was broken. His brow was heavily lined, and his eyes were wild, darting about like Torvelid swamptoads in their holes. ‘You’ve come to save me from my own world? A world that has turned on me like a wayward son?’

  ‘We have come to find the source of the Adeptus Mechanicus emergency transmission, located somewhere in Kovos Rising,’ replied Godric in a measured tone.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ said the governor, evidently misunderstanding or wilfully ignoring Godric. ‘But you must realise there is still much to do before I can leave. Why don’t you go and make sure the hangar is secure, and I shall prepare my people.’

  Godric chanced an impatient look over his shoulder at Tarvin, who returned his gaze, shaking his head.

  ‘You do that, Lord Marchinus,’ said Godric, stepping back towards the door. ‘Do I have your permission to employ your household guard in the operation?’

  Marchinus was already beckoning in half a dozen attendants and bureaucrats, each more exotically attired than the last, and all wearing quite vacant expressions.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, yes. Go and talk to Tarquin. Or was it Tarvin? Go, go – and report to me the moment my shuttle is ready. You will be rewarded for this, Godwyn, mark my words. I have friends on Terra, you know.’

  Godric left hastily, and pulled Tarvin to one side as soon as the door was closed.

  ‘The governor is mad, Tarvin. You should have told me.’

  Tarvin shrugged. ‘It is not my place to judge my Lord Governor. Protocol demands that you seek an audience. Duty demands that I protect him to the end.’

  ‘Let him pomp and preen with his courtiers. Marchinus is no longer in control. I will allow him to die on his own world, in the service of the Emperor – others would not be so merciful. Your duty now lies in serving me; the Emperor’s will is more important than all of the inhabitants of this spire, understood?’

  Tarvin could only nod sullenly. ‘I will do my duty, sir.’

  ‘As do we all, for only in death does duty end. Now, show me where this transmission came from.’

  Tarvin and four hand-picked men accompanied the storm trooper squad. Any more and their numbers would be impossible to conceal, even in the labyrinthine passageways of the hive. Their mission would lead them to the underhive, a perilous journey into the bowels of Kovos Rising; outside the spire’s artificial environment of tranquillity and high culture was a vast city ravaged by corruption, suffering and violence. Tarvin had revealed that a delegation from Mars had been labouring over excavations at the hive’s foundations since before the rebellion, and had lost contact with the spire shortly after the fighting had begun.

  The household soldiers guided the squad through endless corridors, machine shops, storied warehouses and boiling-hot forges. Through almost every bulkhead and in every other corridor, pockets of resistance were met with extreme prejudice. Hive gangers and once-loyal soldiers hunkered behind shabby barricades, launching furious assaults upon the Hell’s Rejects whenever they were encountered. The storm troopers went about their business with grim efficiency, taking down a heretic with every shot from their supercharged lasguns, and standing unflinching as stubber fire rattled against their carapace armour.

  The deeper they delved, the bolder the hive scum seemed to grow, and the more outlandish their appearance. Tattoos and scarification seemed to be commonplace, confirming that Kovos Rising had indeed succumbed to heresy. They shouted curses against the immortal Emperor, which served only to make Sergeant Godric deliver his wrath with greater alacrity. After the first few encounters, Trooper Siegfried advanced to the head of the squad, his flamer laying waste to dozens of renegades in the tight confines of the hive’s corridors. Siegfried had always favoured the flamer as a weapon, and was marked by his permanently blackened face and armour – scorch-marks that he insisted could not be washed off ‘for luck’.

  The Hell’s Rejects advanced in this way for what seemed like an eternity. When they reached Manufactorum Sixty, in a district Tarvin told them was called Forge Landing, Godric gave the order to halt.

  ‘If we carry on this path it’ll take us an hour or more to fight through more of these corridors. We’ve been lucky so far, but we need to reach the underhive soon or our time – not to mention our luck – might just run out. Captain Tarvin says we can cut through this factory and continue through one of the old extraction tunnels. If we meet resistance, it’s las-fire only – this manufactorum houses fuel tanks, and if they ignite they could blow us to the Emperor’s mercy and back.’

  Trooper ‘Lucky’ Ishmael looked sullen at this instruction and slung his plasma gun over his shoulder forlornly, as though parting with his first-born child. Siegfried was similarly sullen as he unloaded the promethium canisters from his flamer, just in case..

  The doors to the manufactorum were large enough to drive a Shadowsword through, and the storm troopers parted them but a fraction. Beyond lay a dark, cavernous workshop. Conveyor belts and pulleys reached up high into the gloom. Emergency lumen flickered and showers of sparks from broken machinery flashed intermittently. Stairs and walkways encircled the factory, spiralling around the vast tanks of volatile fuel. With the factory workers dead or rioting, and so many of the containment systems down, the silos represented a serious threat to the stability of the hive’s upper levels. Trooper Thyrus whistled in awe, and Godric silenced him with a glower from his good eye..

  Soundlessly, the squad skirted the vast chamber towards the steel-shod stairway.

  ‘Tarek, scout ahead and report back if there’s trouble. Everyone else, proceed with caution,’ said Godric.

  Tarek scurried down the stairs, silent as a cat. He was an expert tracker and stealthy scout, and he took no more than a dozen steps before he had melded into the shadows and disappeared from view.

  Progress was arduous. The stairs were littered with detritus and corpses, and many steps were missing, damaged, or slick with blood, making the footing treacherous. On the seventeenth level they were forced to duck beneath suspended bodies of factory workers, hanging from long chains. On the sixteenth they had to deploy rappel lines to cross a missing section of steel walkway. When they arrived at level fifteen, they were met at the top of the stairway by Tarek.

  ‘Guard station, directly below,’ Tarek said, his voice hushed. ‘Five men, all armed. There’s only one way in.’

  ‘Must’ve been the old foreman’s post,’ said Godric. ‘We do this quick and quiet – hand-to-hand. Tarek, you lead, I’ll follow. Valdimar, Sorokin and Joachim, you know what to do. The rest of you, pistols ready. Tarvin, same goes for your men. If we fail, then our only hope of keeping this quiet is light arms fire. Understand?’

  The Hell’s Rejects muttered obeisance, and Godric drew his power sword.

  ‘The Emperor protects.’

  The five chosen men crouched on the threshold of the guard station. A double door, one side hanging off its hinges, stood between them and their quarry. Shrieking voices could be heard from within – gangers who had given themselves over to some kind of dark cult, and were now debauched and high on stimms. Tarek held up a hand to ready the advance party, waiting for an opening. When it came, he jerked his hand forwards and, as one, the five Hell’s Rejects dashed into the guardroom.

  Tarek, the smallest and nimblest of the group, made it all the way to the comms panel before the drunken gangers knew what was happening. A tall, scarred ganger with outrageous spiked hair idled by an intercom. Tarek slit his throat and shut down the comm-unit before his target even knew he was there. Two more moved towards him clumsily, while the other two scrambled for their stubbers.

  Between the gangers and their weapons stood Valdimar and Joachim ‘the Fist’. Valdimar fended off the clumsy knife slashes of the nearest assailant, reached down with his massive hands,
and lifted the ganger from the ground by his head, breaking his neck with one violent wrench before tossing him aside like a broken doll. Joachim needed no assistance either – the plasteel knuckle-studs on his gauntlets glinted in the flickering torchlight as he delivered a rough death to the cultist before him. Joachim had earned his nickname at the Jones Crispin insurrection, where he had held off a crowd of rebels bare-fisted until reinforcements arrived. He needed little encouragement to use his talents.

  The two that had turned on Tarek had barely registered the deaths of their compatriots. One of them was gnashing his teeth and slashing at the Tallarn-born trooper with a crude pick. The other was fumbling at his holster for a pistol. Tarek backed away, drawing them on – too late, the gangers realised why Tarek did not attack them himself. A tempered blade was thrust through the neck of the first ganger, whilst the second’s hand was removed by another blade before his holster was unfastened. Sorokin stood between them, and spun around with the grace of a consummate duellist to decapitate both foes. Sorokin was Godric’s right-hand man and the most flamboyant member of the squad. His father had been a colonel of the Vostroyan Firstborn and Sorokin carried a pair of adamantine blades in honour of the progenitor he never knew.

  Godric strode towards the comms panel, scanning the room with his bionic eye for any signs of enemy surveillance or traps. Satisfied, he sheathed his unused sword and beckoned the rest of the squad into the guard station. Kraster stayed crouched by the door, keeping watch on the gantry.

  ‘Good work,’ said Godric. ‘Now secure the room. Tarek, see if there’s anything worth scavenging from these scum. McLeod – take a look at that comms unit. If you can patch in and take out the enemy relays for a while, it might buy us some more time.’

  ‘Sir, if I may?’ It was Tarvin, stepping over the body of a dead ganger, and taking pains to avoid the pool of blood that crawled slowly across the floor. ‘If I have my bearings right, we’re near to a derelict sector, sealed long ago. I don’t think anyone even knows it exists any more. If I can find the old panoptical station and access the maintenance shafts, we can clear at least three or four levels without enemy contact.’