Engines of War (13 page)
Authors: Steve Lyons
The order had barely left his mouth when the
Scourge of the Skies
shuddered – but, by the grace of the God-Emperor, didn’t actually explode – and discharged its deadly payload.
Iunus was already frantically reloading. In the meantime, the Daemon Prince had hauled its bloated carcass into the air. A lone Imperial Stormtalon had been circling and waiting for a clear shot at it, which finally it had. It swooped to engage the monster. On the ground, the pair of Predator Destructors that had advanced ahead of the
Scourge
had been waiting for their shots too, and they took them.
The Daemon Prince flinched – it actually flinched – as it was battered by cannon fire from above and below; the worst, the very worst, was yet to hit it.
The Skyspear missile was flying dead on course. Arkelius watched, with a prayer on his lips, as it streaked towards its target, but the prayer turned into a dismayed groan as, at the last possible instant, the Daemon Prince saw its nemesis coming and twisted out of the way.
It had been so close – the monster must have felt the fierce heat of the Skyspear’s backwash on its face – but, of course, close wasn’t good enough.
Arkelius yelled to Iunus to fire again, along the same trajectory. The second missile missed its target too, and by a wider margin than the first one had. The Daemon Prince belched at the buzzing Stormtalon, engulfing it in another feculent cloud. The gunship spun out of its pilot’s control and smacked into a nearby hillside like a flaming comet.
‘Sergeant,’ said Iunus, ‘if these readings are correct–’
Arkelius knew what he was about to say. He had been keeping a rough count of the
Scourge
’s ammunition in his head. He had known this news was coming, although he had prayed it wouldn’t come just yet. ‘How many?’ he asked, tersely.
‘One, sergeant. We have one missile left. It’s in the tube now.’
He nodded grimly. He scowled as he fixed the hovering Daemon Prince in his helmet’s sights again. It had shifted somewhat to the left and climbed a little. He relayed the figures to his gunner in an unemotional tone. ‘…and fire at will!’
Iunus fired.
A third, a final missile, went blasting away from the
Scourge
. This time, it seemed that luck – and the will of the Emperor – was finally with it. The Daemon Prince had been staggered by an autocannon punch to the stomach – surely it couldn’t recover from such a blow and get out of the Skyspear’s way before it hit?
Arkelius could hear movement in the tank commander’s compartment to his left. With no missiles left, Iunus must have scrambled forwards to see what was happening outside. Arkelius heard his voice, ‘Sergeant, look! Look over the daemon’s shoulder!’
He pressed his eyes to his vision slit and saw it too. A second missile – one of the two that had missed its target, it had to be – had turned around and was swooping in for another attempt. Arkelius had been right: even without the benefit of a target lock, it knew its enemy.
‘God-Emperor be praised!’ he whispered.
The Daemon Prince was effectively flanked. Perhaps it could have evaded a single Skyspear missile, but it had no hope of dodging both, and at least one of them would only have stayed on its tail if it had. It looked as if the monster was finished.
Then there was a sudden purple flash of warp energy, bright enough – even at this range – to leave Arkelius dazzled. When his eyes had cleared, the Daemon Prince had vanished. Just like that, it was gone without a trace. He couldn’t quite process what he was seeing.
The Skyspear missiles passed each other, flying through the space that their target had just vacated, while Arkelius was left staring in numb disbelief. It was over.
‘What happened?’ Iunus sounded dismayed too. ‘Where did it go?’
It took Arkelius a moment to come up with an answer for him. ‘We fought our way past the Death Guard army,’ he said at length. ‘We sent their Daemon Prince fleeing back to the unholy realm it came from, with its tail between its legs. We recaptured Fort Kerberos – what remains of it. We accomplished everything we were tasked to do. That means we won.’
It didn’t feel like a victory, though.
Arkelius clambered awkwardly out of the
Scourge of the Skies
and jumped down from its roof. When no one was looking, he patted it affectionately on the prow.
The Hunter had given its all – as much as any Space Marine could have given – in the Emperor’s service. After a refit, he knew it would serve again. When it did, he intended to be sitting in the tank commander’s seat.
He hoped that Corbin and Iunus would be seated beside him. The first ships had arrived to collect the wounded, and casualty lists were being collated. He hadn’t heard Corbin’s name yet, which meant he was probably a survivor. The same was true of Terserus, whose fate was in the Techmarines hands. The news on Galenus, however, was less promising.
When last seen, the captain had been in a healing coma, but his body had been lost in the rubble when the Daemon Prince had emerged. The warp storm over the ruined fort was still blowing, now purple in colour once more. Arkelius went to join the search for his captain, praying that he might still be saved.
He was contacted on a private vox-channel by Captain Numitor. Arkelius’s actions, he insisted, had won the battle and had earned him an honour badge. He accepted the compliment, but he wished he could have done more. He wished he could have made certain that the Daemon Prince wouldn’t return.
Arkelius didn’t understand everything that had happened here today. He knew, however, that a world – a once-fertile, populated world – had been lain waste by disease, and that an ancient, terrible power had been unleashed and was still on the loose.
He knew one more thing, in his hearts: the war on Orath was far from over.
Steve Lyons
’s work for Black Library includes the Space Marines audio drama
The Madness Within
, alongside the Imperial Guard novels
Ice World
and
Dead Men Walking
– now collected in the omnibus
Honour Imperialis
– and the audio drama
Waiting Death
. He has written numerous short stories and is currently working on more tales from the grim darkness of the far future.
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Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
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