Helsreach (20 page)

‘Hnk. Agh. Ss.’ He fought for breath that wouldn’t come as he stared into the silver replica of the God-Emperor’s death mask. Grimaldus leaned closer, his skulled face leering, blocking out all other sight.

‘Where would you run, coward?
Where would you hide that the Emperor would not see your shame and spit on your soul when your worthless life is finally at an end?
’

‘Pl– Please.’

‘Do not shame yourself further by begging for a life you do not deserve.’ Grimaldus tensed his hand, his fingers snapping closed with wet snaps. In his grip, the lieutenant went into spasms, then thumped to the floor as the knight released his grip. The Reclusiarch strode back to the table, ignoring the fallen body.

It took several seconds for conversation to resume. When it did, Falkov saluted the Reclusiarch. Grimaldus ignored it.

Maghernus tried to make sense of the lines being drawn across the map showing troop disposition, but it might as well have been in another language to him. He cleared his throat and said, above the din, ‘Colonel.’

‘Dockmaster.’

‘What does this mean? In the simplest terms, please. All of these lines and numbers mean nothing to me.’

It was Grimaldus who answered. The knight spoke low, staring down at the map with his helm’s unblinking scarlet eyes.

‘Today is the thirty-sixth day of the siege,’ the Templar said, ‘and unless we defend the docks against the tens of thousands of enemy that will arrive in under two hours, we will lose the city by nightfall.’

Cyria Tyro nodded as she stared at the map. ‘We need to evacuate the dockworkers in the most efficient manner possible, allowing for the arrival of troops.’

‘No,’ Maghernus said, though no one was listening.

‘These avenues,’ Colonel Sarren pointed out, ‘are already clogged by inbound/outbound supply traffic. We will struggle to get all of the dock menials – no offence, Dockmaster – out in time. Let alone get troops in.’

‘No,’ Maghernus said again, louder this time. Still, no one paid him any attention.

One of the Steel Legion majors present, a storm-trooper set apart by his dark uniform and shoulder insignia, traced a finger along a central spine road leading from Hel’s Highway.’

‘Evacuate the drones down the other paths and leave the highway route clear. That’ll be enough to fill the central docks with trained bodies.’

‘That still leaves almost two-thirds of the dock districts,’ Sarren frowned, ‘with no defence except the garrisoned militia. And the militia will suffer from the fleeing dock menials being in their way.’

‘Hello?’ said Maghernus.

‘We can reroute the traffic through to these secondary veins,’ Tyro pointed out.

‘Troops would trickle in,’ Sarren nodded. ‘That might not be enough, but it may be the best we can ask for in the situation.’

A sound emerged, machine-like and harsh, like the engine of a Chimera troop transport choking on the wrong fuel. One by one, heads turned to Grimaldus. The sound was emitted from his helm’s vocalisers. He was chuckling.

‘I believe,’ said the knight, ‘the dockmaster has something to say.’

All heads turned to Maghernus.

‘Arm us,’ he said.

Colonel Sarren closed his eyes. The others watched the dockmaster, unsure if they had heard correctly. Maghernus continued, as the silence spread out, ‘There are over thirty-nine thousand of us on those docks – and that’s just the workers, not including the militia. If you need time, arm us. We’ll give you the time.’

The storm-trooper major snorted. ‘You’ll be dead in an hour. All of you.’

‘Maybe,’ said Maghernus. ‘But we were never going to win this war, were we?’

The major wasn’t done, and his voice had less of a sneer now. ‘Brave, but insane. If we allow the enemy to butcher the dockworker forces, the city won’t be able to function for decades after this war. We’re fighting to preserve our way of life, not just survive.’

‘Let us focus,’ Sarren opened his eyes, ‘on surviving first. The fact remains that the majority of the Steel Legion cannot be moved. They are holding the city, and pulling them back from their positions will see the city fall as surely as if we leave the docks undefended. Invigilata and the militia can’t hold everything.’

‘There’s little choice,’ said Tyro. ‘The dockworkers will die unsupported.’

‘Arm them first,’ Grimaldus said, his vox-voice heavy with finality. ‘Then argue how long they have left to live.’

‘Very well. Our course is clear.’ Colonel Sarren cleared his throat. ‘Dockmaster. I thank you.’

‘We’ll fight like… like… We’ll fight damn hard, colonel. Just don’t take too long getting the troops to back us up.’

‘We have immense stockpiles of materiel in the dock districts.’ The colonel nodded to Cyria Tyro. ‘You heard the Reclusiarch. Arm them.’

She saluted with a grim smile, and left the table.

‘We can hold,’ Sarren told everyone that remained. ‘After all we have done, I refuse to believe this will be the treacherous blow that breaks our back. We can hold. Major Krivus, the movement of storm-trooper squads to the docks is already under way, but I need you to take personal command of that process immediately. Grav-chute them in if you have to. Drop them from the Valkyries that remain. Every rifle counts.’

The major saluted, and moved out of the office with all the grace and speed his bulky carapace armour allowed.

‘The civilians,’ Tyro murmured, staring at the hololithic. Almost all of the city’s reinforced shelters were situated – and sealed – within and beneath the docks district. Sixty per cent of the hive’s population, crowded in civilian shelter bunkers, now no longer away from the front lines. ‘We can’t have that many people left in the direct line of fire.’

‘No? We can’t release them onto the streets.’ Sarren shook his head. ‘There is nowhere for them to run, and the panic would choke the byways, preventing the Steel Legion ever reaching the docks. They are as safe as they can be in their shelters.’

‘The beasts will tear down those shelters,’ Tyro argued.

‘Yes, they will. Nothing can be done now.’ Sarren would not be deterred. ‘There will be no evacuation. We can’t arm them in time, and we can’t protect them if they leave the shelters. They will do nothing but die in the streets and clog the veins of reinforcements.’

Tyro didn’t raise another objection. She knew he was right.

Sarren continued, ‘I need insurgency walkers and light armour battalions riding in from the tertiary arterial roads here, here, here and here. Sentinels, my friends. Hellhounds and Sentinels. Everything we can muster.’ More officers left the table.

‘Reclusiarch.’

‘Colonel.’

‘You know what I am going to ask of you. There is only one way we will survive this assault long enough to flood the docks with tried and tested troops. I cannot order you, but I would ask it nevertheless.’

‘There is no need to ask. My knights will deploy from our remaining gunships. We will stand with the civilians. We will hold the docks.’

‘My thanks, Reclusiarch. Now, we are as ready as it is possible to be, given the nature of this unwelcome surprise. We are, however, placing a great deal of pressure on Invigilata and the bulk of the Imperial Guard. The city will bleed while we divert our elite infantry to the docks, and this fight… it’ll take days. At best.’

‘Let Invigilata hold the city,’ Grimaldus said, gesturing to the map with a black gauntlet. ‘Let the Steel Legion stand with them. Focus on what matters in the here and now.’

‘No grand speech? I’m almost disappointed.’

‘No speech.’ The Templar was already stalking from the room. ‘Not for you. You won’t be dying this day. I save my words for those who will.’

Chapter XIV

The Docks

They came as the sun began its downward arc in the sky.

The Helsreach docks took up almost a third of the hive’s perimeter. Thousands of uninspiring warehouses and harbour office towers stood watch over an expansive bay which featured an endless number of quays and piers that stabbed out into the sloshing, filthy greyish water.

The air across the entire world might have always reeked of something faintly sulphuric, but here – at the heart of Helsreach’s industry – the reek bordered on petrochemically unhealthy. It only took an hour for a person’s clothes and hair to become saturated with the greasy, heavy stink of spilled oil and ammoniac seawater. Lifers, the dockworkers who spent their entire careers here, hacked up a fair share of blackness when they hawked and spat. Respiratory tumours were the second-largest cause of death among the populace, only behind industrial accidents by a small margin.

The chaos of the docks was a natural deterrent to the enemy assault, but not a true defence. The first sign of the enemy came as crews leaped from their vessels, risking a kilometre-long swim through pollution-foul waters to reach the docks. On dry land, the defenders of Helsreach watched as the hundreds of undocked tankers, lurking offshore with their volatile manifests, began to explode.

The men and women of Helsreach stood together on cargo crates, on the paved groundways, on steel piers, all eyes turned to the seas and the fleet of enemy vessels breaching the surface of the water, powering closer to the city. A horde of humanity, looking out to sea.

Maghernus was close to the front of one crowd, leading his worker gang in their filthy overalls, clutching a newly-forged lasgun to his chest. They were being handed out by Guard officers from weapon crates stored in warehouses across the dock districts. Every dock gang was treated to a short, simple talk on how a lasrifle was loaded, unloaded, set to safety and fired after aiming. Maghernus had felt his palms sweating as he collected the rifle and extra power cells, which now sat in a small sack hanging from the side of his belt. The hurried Guard sergeant had shouted his way through a quick demonstration, and now here Maghernus was, gun in hand, dry-mouthed.

‘Follow your assigned leaders,’ the sergeant had yelled above the noise of so many men and women gathered in one place. ‘Every dock gang, and every group of fifty people, will have a storm-trooper with them. Follow that storm-trooper the way you’d follow the Emperor Himself if He descended from the sky and told you what to do with your sorry arses. He will tell you when to fight, when to run, when to hide and when to move. If you do what this trooper tells you to do, you’ve got a much greater chance of getting through this in one piece, and not messing up another unit’s movements. If you don’t listen, there’s a greater chance you’ll be fouling it up for everyone else, and getting your friends killed. Understood?’

General assent answered this.

‘For the next few days, you’re in the Imperial Guard. First rule of the Guard: Go forward. If you get lost,
you go
forward.
You lose your way?
You go forward
. You fall away from your group?
You go towards the enemy
. That’s where you’ll do the most good, and that’s where you’ll find your friends. Understood?’

General assent answered this, too. It came with a little more reluctance.

‘Right. Next groups!’

With that, Maghernus’s gang and several others filed from the warehouse, making room for others to get exactly the same lecture.

Outside, dozens of Steel Legion storm-troopers in their ochre jackets and heavy, thrumming power generator backpacks were directing the flow of human traffic. Maghernus led his gang to one that waved him over. The man was slender, unshaven, scratching his forehead under the domed helmet he wore. His goggles were raised up, fastened around the helmet, and his rebreather mask was hanging slack around his neck. He had the look of someone who, if not lost, was at least not entirely sure where he was.

‘Hello,’ Maghernus swallowed. ‘We need an assigned soldier.’

‘Ah, I know this already. That is me. I am Andrej.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The storm-trooper laughed, slapping the dockmaster on the shoulder. ‘That is funny. “Sir”. I may keep you after the war is done, to make me feel good, eh? I am not Sir. I am Andrej. Perhaps I will be Sir after I make sure none of you are dead. I would like that. It would be nice.’

‘I…’

‘Yes, it is a big pressure. I understand this. I would like a promotion, so you must all stay alive. We play for big stakes now, no? I thank you for this idea you have given me. You have made the day more fun.’

‘I…’

‘Come, come. No time for making friends now. We will talk much soon. Hey! All of you dock-working people, come with me, yes?’

Without waiting for an answer, Andrej began to walk through the crowds, followed by Maghernus’s gang. The storm-trooper would occasionally wave at other soldiers, most of whom offered silent nods or gruff greetings. One of them, a pale beauty with black hair so thick and rich it had no business being leashed in a plain ponytail, smiled and waved back.

‘Throne, who was that?’ Maghernus asked as he trailed just behind Andrej. ‘Your wife?’

‘Ha! I wish. That is Domoska. We are squadmates. She is nice to look at, no?’

She was. Maghernus watched her leading another group through the masses. As Domoska was lost in the teeming crowds, his gaze fell on the men she was leading. Maghernus prayed he didn’t look as nervous as they all did.

‘It is very funny, I think. Her brother is the ugliest man I have ever seen, yet the sister is touched by fortune with great beauty. He must be very bitter, no?’

Maghernus just nodded.

‘Come, come. Time is running away from us.’

That had been an hour ago. Now, they stood with Andrej, unfamiliar weapons held to their chests, pressed against quickened heartbeats. Andrej was occupying himself by picking his nose. This was something he struggled to do in gloves of thick, brown leather, but he went about the task with a curiously stately tenacity.

‘Sir,’ Maghernus started.

‘A moment, please. Victory is almost mine.’ Andrej flicked something grotesque from his fingertip. ‘I can breathe again. Emperor be praised.’

‘Sir, shouldn’t you say something to us?’ He lowered his voice, stepping closer. ‘Something to inspire the men?’

Andrej frowned, absently biting his cut lip as he looked around at the other groups spread down the dock lines. ‘I do not think so. No other Legionnaire is talking. I was going to wait for the Reclusiarch’s speech, you know? Would you prefer me to speak now?’

‘The Reclusiarch will speak?’

‘Oh, yes. He is good at this. You will like it. It will happen soon, I am thinking.’

A blast of screeching feedback slashed through the air as across the docks – kilometre upon kilometre of them – every vox-tower came alive in a distorted whine.

‘See?’ Andrej grinned. ‘I am always right. It is what I do best.’

For several seconds, the people of Helsreach heard nothing but breathing – low, heavy, threatening – over the vox-speakers.

‘Sons and daughters of Hive Helsreach,’
the voice boomed across the shore districts, too low and resonant to be human, flavoured by the slight crackle of vox-corruption.
‘Look to the water. The water from which you draw the wealth of your city. The water that now promises nothing but death.

‘For thirty-six days, the people of your world, the people of your own city, have been selling their lives to defend you. For thirty-six nights, your own mothers and fathers, your own brothers and sisters, your own sons and daughters have been fighting the enemy to ensure that half of the hive remains in human hands. They have battled, road by road, sweating and fighting and dying so you can enjoy a handful of days of freedom.

‘You owe them. You owe them for the sacrifices they have made so far. You owe them for the sacrifices they will make in the days and nights yet to come.

‘Here and now, you will have the chance you deserve, the chance to repay them all. More than that, you will have the chance to punish the enemy for daring to lay siege to your city, for breaking your families apart and destroying your homes.

‘Watch the tides. See the scrap fleet that sails into your port, bearing a horde of howling beasts. When the sun sets at the end of this week, every single invader in those surfacing ships will no longer draw breath from the sacred air of this world. They will fall because of you. You are going to save this city.

‘Fear is natural. It is human. Feel no shame for a heart that beats too fast in this moment, or fingers that tremble as you hold a weapon you have never wielded before. The only shame is in cowardice – in running and leaving others to die when everything comes down to your actions.

‘You are led by Guard veterans – the best of your Steel Legions – Imperial storm-troopers. But they are not alone. The forces of Helsreach are coming. Stand and defy the enemy for long enough, and you will soon see thousands of tanks constructed in this very city grinding the invaders into dust. Help. Is. Coming. Until then, stand proud. Stand resolute.

‘Remember these words, brothers and sisters. “When death comes, the good we have done will mean nothing. We are judged in life for the evil we destroy”.

‘That time of judgement is upon you. I know every man and women here feels it in their blood, in their bones.

‘I am Grimaldus of the Black Templars, and this is my vow to you all. While one of us stands, these docks will never fall. If I have to kill a thousand of the enemy myself, the sun will rise once more over an unconquered city.

‘Look for the black knights among you. We will be where the fighting is fiercest, at the heart of the storm.

‘Stand with us, and we will be your salvation.’

Silence descended once more.

Maghernus sighed, tension ebbing from him as his breath misted in the cool air. Andrej was adjusting the slide rack settings on his modified lasrifle. The weapon emitted a pulsing, charged hum that set the dockmaster’s teeth on edge.

‘That was a stern talking-to, no? Not many will run now, I am thinking.’

Maghernus nodded. It took him several moments to speak. ‘What’s that rifle?’

‘This?’ Andrej finished his ministrations, gesturing to the thick power cables feeding from the rifle’s bulky stock to the humming metal power pack he wore between his shoulders. ‘We call them hellguns. Like yours, only brighter and louder and hotter and meaner. And no, you cannot have one. This is mine. They are rare, and only given to people who are right all the time.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘This is a det-pack.’ He tapped the hand-sized detonator disc hanging from his belt. ‘Used for sticking to tanks and making them explode into many pretty pieces. I once had many, now I have only one. When I use it, I will have none, and that will be a sad day.’

Maghernus wanted to ask if Andrej was really a storm-trooper. He settled for saying ‘You are not exactly what I expected.’

‘Life,’ the soldier said, looking off to the side in what appeared to be distracted consideration, ‘is a series of very wonderful surprises, until a final bad one.’ Turning to the entire group, Andrej buckled his helmet’s chin strap with a grin.

‘My handsome new friends, it is soon to be time for war. So, my beautiful ladies and fine gentlemen, if you want to remain beautiful and fine, keep your heads down and your rifles up. Always aim from the cheek, with your eyes down the barrel. Do not be firing from the hip – that is the best way to feel excellent about yourself and yet hit nothing. Oh, and it will be loud and scary, no? Much panic, I think. Always wait one second before pulling your trigger, to make sure you are aiming at something you should be aiming at. Otherwise you may be shooting other people, and that is bad news for you, and worse news for them.’

The gangs of workers began to disperse across the docks, taking up positions in alleys between warehouses, behind crate stacks, around the edges of buildings and on the various floors of multi-storey hangars and work blocks facing the sea.

‘Come, come.’ Andrej led his group into the shadows of a loader crane, ordering them to spread out and take cover around the huge metal strut columns and cargo containers close by.