Helsreach (9 page)

‘Brothers and sisters… A legion of beggars and alien dregs wheezes its way across the plains. Forgive me when the moment comes that they whine and weep against our walls. Forgive me that I must order you to waste ammunition upon their worthless bodies.’

Grimaldus paused, lowering his weapon at last, turning his back on the invaders as if bored by their very existence. His entire attention was focussed upon the soldiers below him.

‘I have heard many souls speak my name in whispers since I came to Helsreach. I ask you now: Do you know me?’

‘Yes,’ several voices replied, several among the hundreds.

‘Do you know me?’
he bellowed at them over the firing of the wall-guns.

‘Yes!’
a chorus answered now.

‘I am Grimaldus of the Black Templars! A brother to the Steel Legions of this defiant world!’

A muted cheer greeted his words. It wasn’t enough, not even close.

‘Never again in life will your actions carry such consequence. Never again will you serve as you serve now. No duty will matter as much, and no glory will taste as true. We are the defenders of Helsreach. On this day, we carve our legend in the flesh of every alien we slay. Will you stand with me?’

Now the cheers came in truth. They thundered in the air around him.

‘Will you stand with me?’

Again, a roar.

‘Sons and daughters of the Imperium! Our blood is the blood of heroes and martyrs! The xenos dare defile our city? They dare tread the sacred soil of our world? We will throw their bodies from these walls when the final day dawns!’

A wave of noise crashed against his armour as they cheered. Grimaldus raised his war maul, aiming it to the embattled heavens.

‘This is
our
city! This is
our
world! Say it!
Say it! Cry it out so the bastards in orbit will hear our fury! Our city! Our world!
’

‘OUR CITY! OUR WORLD!’

Laughing again, Grimaldus turned to face the oncoming horde.
‘Run, alien dogs! Come to me! Come to us all! Come and die in blood and fire!’

‘BLOOD AND FIRE!’

The Reclusiarch cut the air with his crozius, as if ordering his men forward.
‘For the Templars! For the Steel Legion! For Helsreach!’

‘FOR HELSREACH!’

‘Louder!’

‘FOR HELSREACH!’

‘They cannot hear you, brothers!’

‘FOR HELSREACH!’

‘Hurl yourselves at these walls, inhuman filth! Die on our blades! I am Grimaldus of the Black Templars, and I will cast your carcasses from these holy walls!’

‘GRIMALDUS! GRIMALDUS! GRIMALDUS!’

Grimaldus nodded, still staring out over the wastelands, letting the cheering chant mix with the howling wind, knowing it would carry to the advancing enemy.

A vox-voice pulled him from his reverie. ‘That is the first time since we landed,’ said Artarion, ‘that you have sounded like yourself.’

‘We have a war to fight,’ the Chaplain replied. ‘The past is done with. Nero, how long?’

The Apothecary tilted his head, watching the horde for several moments.

‘Six minutes until they are within range of the wall-guns.’

Grimaldus stepped down from the edge of the wall, standing among the Guard. They backed away from him, even as they all still cheered his name.

‘Vultures!’ he called, ‘I must speak with Colonel Nathett, and Majors Oros and Johan. Where are your officers?’

A great deal can happen in six minutes, especially when one has the resources of a fortress-city to call upon.

Dozens of fighters in the gunmetal grey of the 5082
nd
Naval Skyborne streaked over the advancing horde, punishing them from above with strafing runs. Autocannons chattered, spitting into the tide of enemy flesh. Lascannons beamed with eye-aching brilliance, destroying dozens of the few heavy tanks present in this initial ork host.

Grimaldus stood upon the battlements, weapons in hands, watching Commander Barasath’s Lightnings and Thunderbolts unleashing devastation from the sky. He was a veteran of two hundred years. He knew, with cold clarity, when something was wasted effort.

Every death counts,
he thought, seeking to force himself to believe it as the immense sea of foes came crashing closer.

Priamus was similarly unmoved. ‘Barasath’s best attempt is no more than spitting into a tidal wave.’

‘Every death counts,’ Grimaldus growled. ‘Every life lost out there is one less enemy assailing our walls.’

A great beast, some kind of stomping mammoth covered in scales, cried out as it went down, lanced through its legs and belly by a volley of lascannon fire. The orks fell from the howdah on its back, vanishing into the swarm of warriors. Grimaldus prayed they were crushed underfoot by their allies.

On his retinal display, a runic countdown began to flicker red.

He raised his crozius.

Along the north wall, hundreds of multi-barrelled turrets begin their realignment. On grinding joints, they cycled down to aim at the wastelands, leaving the city vulnerable from above.

Around each turret, a cluster of soldiers stood ready – loaders, sighters, vox-officers, adjutants, all ready for the order.

‘Wall-guns,’ Nero voxed to Grimaldus. ‘Wall-guns, now.’

Grimaldus sliced the air with his blazing maul, screaming a single word.

‘Fire!’

Craters appeared in the enemy horde. Huge explosions of dirt, scrap metal, bodies and gore erupted from the army. With the numbers facing them, the gunners on Helsreach’s walls couldn’t miss.

Thousands died in the first barrage. Thousands more came on.

‘Reload!’
a lone figure, armoured in black, shouted into the vox.

The walls themselves shook again, tremors pulsing through the rockcrete as the second volley fired. And the third. And the fourth. In a sane army, the annihilation inflicted upon them would be catastrophic. Entire legions would be breaking and running in fear.

The aliens, blood-maddened and howling their throaty war cries, didn’t even slow down. They ignored their dead, trampled their wounded, and crashed against the towering walls like a peal of thunder.

With nothing capable of breaching the metres-thick sealed gates in the northern wall, the berserk aliens began to climb.

I have always believed there is something beautiful in the very first moments of a battle. Here are the moments of highest emotion; the fear of mortal men, the frustrated bloodlust and screaming overconfidence of mankind’s enemies. In the moments when a battle is joined, the purity of the human species is first revealed to the foe.

In organised union, the hundreds of Steel Legion soldiers step forward. They move like different limbs of the same being. Like a reflection stretching into infinity, every man and woman down the line aims their lasguns over the wall, down at the greenskins howling and clambering. The aliens drag themselves up by their own claws; they climb on ladders and poles; they boost up on the whining thrusters of jump-packs.

And all of it so delightfully futile.

The
crack!
of thousands of lasguns discharging in a chorus is a strangely evocative song. It sings of discipline, defiance, strength and courage. More than that, it’s a furious response – the first time the defenders can vent their rage at the invaders. Every soldier in the line squeezes their triggers, letting their lasrifles shout for them, spitting death down at the foe. Las-bolts tear into green flesh, ripping orks open, throwing them to the ground far below to be pulped under the boots of their kin.

Barasath’s fighters streak overhead, their weapons still stuttering into the massed horde. Their targets have changed – more often than not, they rain their viciousness upon the artillery tanks that were unloaded last from the landers, and are only now catching up to the back to the besieging army.

I watch as the first of our fighters is brought down. Anti-air fire rattles up from a junked Hydra, its two remaining turrets tracking a group of Lightnings. The explosion is almost ignorable – a crumpled pop of fuel tanks detonating, and the protests of engines as the fighter spirals down.

It impacts in a burning wreck, wings shorn off, spinning and crashing through the ranks of the enemy. Some might consider it tragic that the pilot likely killed more of the enemy with his death than he did in life. I care only that more of the invaders are dead.

The first of the enemy to gain the ramparts does so alone. A hundred metres and more down the wall, a lone ork crashes down with his back-mounted propulsion pack streaming smoky fire. The others that were with him are either dead or dying, falling from their ascent as their bodies and thruster fuel tanks are riddled with las-fire. The one alien that touches down on the wall lasts less than a heartbeat. The creature is bayoneted in the throat, the eye, the chest and both legs by half a dozen soldiers, and their rifles blast the beast back over the edge.

First blood to Helsreach.

The minutes became hours.

The orks hurled themselves against the walls, still lacking any ability to secure a hold there, clambering up the hulls of wrecked tanks, mounds of their own dead, and ladders of twisted metal in a vain effort to reach the battlements.

Word was filtering through the wall commanders now; the east and west walls were enduring similar sieges. In the wasteland around the city, more landers were making planetfall, unloading fresh warriors and legions of tanks. While plenty of these new forces committed themselves immediately to the first attack already in progress, many more remained far from the city, making camps, clearing more landing zones and organising for a far more coordinated assault in the future.

The hive’s defenders could make out individual banners among the ork swarm – clans and tribes united under the Great Enemy – many of which were now holding back rather than hurl themselves into this first, doomed attack.

Grimaldus remained with the Steel Legion troops on the northern wall, his knights spread out among the Guard’s ranks, the Astartes’ own squad unity suspended. Occasionally, greenskins would manage to reach the battlements rather than being slaughtered as they climbed. In those rare moments, Templar chainblades would shear through stinking alien flesh, before Guard-issue lasrifles would finish the job with precision beams of laser light.

At some point during the endless firing downward, Major Oros had voxed Grimaldus in bemusement.

‘They’re just lining up to die,’ he’d laughed.

‘These are the most foolish, and the least in control of themselves. They hunger to fight, no matter the odds or the war being waged. Look out onto the plains, major. Witness the gathering of our real enemies.’

‘Understood, Reclusiarch.’

Grimaldus heard the Legion officers shouting to their men then, ordering another change of rank. The soldiers at the battlements fell back to reload, to clean their weapons and cool down overheating power-packs. The next line advanced to take their comrades’ vacated positions, stepping up to the ramparts and immediately opening fire on the climbing orks.

The smell of the siege was drifting into the city now. Mountains of alien dead lay at the foot of the walls, their bodies ruptured and their tainted fluids leaking into the ashy soil. While the Templars and the Legionnaires were spared the worst of the stench by their helms and rebreathers, within the city itself, the civilians and militia forces were getting their first, foul taste of war against the ork-breed xenos. It was an unpleasant revelation.

Night was threatening to fall before the aliens finally fled.

Whether the mountain of their own dead had turned their fury to futility, or whether some cognition finally dawned over them all that the true battles were yet to come, the green tide retreated en masse. Horns sounded across the wasteland, hundreds of them, signalling a retreat that otherwise lacked even a hint of cohesion. Las-bolts flashed down from the walls as the Legion kept up a savage rate of fire, punishing the orks for their cowardice now just as they had punished them for their eager madness before. Hundreds more of the xenos collapsed to the ground, slain by the day’s last, bitterest volley.

Soon, even the stragglers were out of range, limping their way behind the horde back to their landing sites.

Ork ships covered the wasteland now from horizon to horizon. The largest ships, almost as tall as hive spires themselves, were opening to release colossal, stomping scrap-Titans. Like hunched, fat-bellied aliens in shape, the junk-giants crashed across the plains, their pounding tread raising dust clouds in their wake.

These were the weapons that would bring the wall down. These were the foes that Invigilata had to destroy.

‘That,’ Artarion nodded at the sight as the knights remained on the wall, ‘is a bleak picture.’

‘The real battle begins tomorrow,’ Cador grunted. ‘At least we will not be bored.’

‘I believe they will wait.’ It was Grimaldus who spoke, his voice less bitter now the war cries and speeches were over. ‘They will wait until they have overwhelming force with which to crush us, and they will strike like a hammer.’

The Chaplain paused, leaning on the battlements and staring at the army as sunset claimed the surrounded city.