Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [124]
‘Secondary impact from the turbolaser batteries… Cog’s teeth, we struck the G-71 orbital landing platform. My princeps, I implore you to use caution…’
Engine kill. She licked her cold, wrinkled lips. Engine kill.
‘Engine kill.’
Half a kilometre behind the dead enemy walker – its foundation struts destroyed by the laser salvo from Stormherald’s hellstorm cannon – a sizeable landing platform crashed down to the ground, sliding on fouled gantries to smash through the roof of a burning tank manufactorum. An avalanche of rockcrete, broken iron and steel was all that remained of both installations, at the heart of a cloud of grey-black smoke and rock dust.
The ironyard had played host to the pitched battle between Titans and infantry for several days. Little was left, yet neither side was giving ground.
‘My princeps…’
No more lectures. I do not care.
‘No more lectures. I do not care.’
‘My princeps,’ Valian repeated, ‘new contact. Behind us.’
She spun in the fluid, fish-like and alert. Stormherald followed with ponderous slowness, its fortress-legs thudding down onto the ground. The cityscape view through the Titan’s eyes panned, showing nothing but devastation.
‘The scanner blur is either several walkers together, or a single engine of our size.’
The adept hunched by the auspex console turned to regard the pilot crew with three bionic eyes, each with a lens of dark green glass. A blurt of machine-code disagreed with Lonn’s appraisal.
[]Negative. Thermal signature registers distinct single pulse.[]
One enemy engine.
That isn’t possible, she thought, but never let it reach her vocalisers. An uneasy tremor was running through the Titan’s bones, and she felt it as keenly as she’d once felt the wind on her skin in another lifetime.
‘My princeps, we must disengage,’ Lonn said, staring out into the burning ironyard. ‘We need to rearm and cool the plasma core in standard sustained venting procedure.’
I know that better than you, Lonn.
‘I know that better than you, Lonn.’
But I am not abandoning a district I have spent four nights fighting to hold.
‘But I am not abandoning a district I have spent four nights fighting to hold.’
‘My princeps, there’s precious little left standing to defend,’ Lonn pressed. ‘I repeat my recommendation to withdraw and rearm.’
No. I am sending Regal and Ivory Fang north to hunt the inbound enemy engine and confirm with visual scanning.
‘No. I am sending Regal and Ivory Fang north to hunt the inbound enemy engine and confirm with visual scanning.’
Lonn and Carsomir shared a glance from across the command deck. Both men were restrained in their control thrones, and both men wore the same expression of frustrated doubt.
‘My princeps,’ Carsomir tried, but he was cut off.
‘See? They move.’ On the hololithic display screen, the runes denoting the scout Titans Regal and Ivory Fang broke away from their perimeter-stalking patrol to the west, and strode northward in search of the incoming thermal pulse.
‘My princeps, we do not have the ammunition reserves required to inflict destruction-level damage on an enemy engine of comparable size to us.’
‘I am venting the heart-core’s excess fusion matter and flushing the heat exchangers.’ Even as she vocalised the orders, she was sending empathic pulses through her links to make it so.
‘My princeps, that is not enough.’
‘He is right, my princeps,’ Carsomir had turned in his throne, and was looking back at her fluid tank now. ‘You are too close to Stormherald’s wrath. Return to us and focus.’
‘We are defended by three Reavers and our own scout screen. Be silent.’
‘Two Reavers, my princeps.’
Yes. Two. She pulled back from the immersion of rage. Yes… two. Bound in Blood was silent and dead, its power core cooling and its princeps voiceless. In her confused thinking, she did not mean to vocalise her next words.
‘We have lost seven engines in one week of battle.’
‘Yes, my princeps. Prudence would serve us best now. If the