Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [125]
She floated in her coffin, hearing the curious humanity in their voices. Such emotion. Such curious intensity, affecting their speech tones. She recognised it as fear, without truly recalling what the sensation felt like.
‘We have killed almost twenty of the foe’s engines… but I concede. Sound the withdrawal as soon as the Warhounds have confirmation.’
The first Imperial engine to bear witness to the Godbreaker was Ivory Fang. It stalked fast and low on its backwards-jointed legs, the side-to-side pitch of its stomping gait adding a feral, if mechanical, grace to its dawn hunt.
Warhound-class. And it suited the name, lone wolfing its way through the wrecked industrial sector, striding around the shells of tanks destroyed in the week-long struggle for the Rostorik Ironyard. Sometimes, its hooved feet would crunch down on the soft meat of burned bodies and render them into pulped smears along the ground. Dead skitarii, Guardsmen, factorum workers and greenskins littered the district.
Ivory Fang was commanded most ably by a princeps by name of Haven Havelock. Princeps Havelock dreamed, as did most of his ilk, of one day mastering a great battle-Titan, and perhaps even one of Invigilata’s precious few Imperators. His fellow princeps – equals and superiors alike – spoke well of him, and he knew his place in the Legio as a solid, reliable scout-Titan commander was assured, valued, and deserved.
Patience was foremost among his virtues – patience and cunning. That reasoned, meticulous hunting instinct bled through the mind-bond into Ivory Fang. Twinned, man and machine were past masters at the kind of deep-urban stalks where Warhound Titans most excelled.
The rough link between Titan commanders maintained throughout the city had suffered just as Imperial vox had suffered, but Havelock was reassured by the fragments of meaning that pulsed through the chaos. If there truly was an enemy scrap-Titan out there, it was nothing the battle group could not deal with. Stormherald was no more than two kilometres to the south, and with it were Danol’s Retribution and The Ghoul, both Reavers with victory banners descending from their armour plating that would put mid-range Titan princeps from any other Legio to shame.
Nothing the beasts could hurl at them would break such a formation. Even the largest gargant would fall to Stormherald.
I see nothing, came the aggravated spurt of machine code from his fellow princeps, Feerna of Regal.
Havelock spent a quarter of a second consulting his internal tracking runes. The link to his Titan’s auspex sensors formed a rough, instinctive knowledge of his kin’s locations in his mind.
Regal was a half-kilometre to the north-east, moving at speed through a small cluster of iron smelteries. It would have been in visual range, had the space between the two Titans not been obstructed by ruined manufactories.
I see nothing, either.
It’s the heat, she complained. Hunting for thermal signatures in this inferno is like seeking black in the night sky. My auspex readers show nothing but thermal disruption. Horus himself could be hiding in here, and I would not kn–
Feerna? Feerna?
‘Registering energy discharge of significant size to the north-east,’ Havelock’s moderati called out.
‘Confirmed,’ murmured the tech-adept that hunched in a station behind the princeps throne.
Feerna? Havelock tried once more. ‘Bring us about and move north-east at aggressive intent speed. Everyone be ready.’ He twitched in his restraint throne as the Titan obeyed his pilot’s urgings. The connection feeds were alive with subtle static, itching at his nerves. Ivory Fang was keen. It had sensed something.
And then it hit Havelock, too.
‘Hnnngh,’ he drooled through clenched teeth, shuddering against the leather bindings that restrained him in place. ‘Hnn… Hvv…’
The pain of Regal’s mortis-cry faded, and Havelock breathed again. Feerna was gone, as was her Titan. She’d been a Warhound, and her link to the others was tenuous and weak in comparison to the strength of a bond to the greater god-machines.