Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [7]
Yet at Hades Hive, the storms were especially fierce. Hundreds of troop carriers, their paint already melted to reveal bare, dull metal in places, endured the rainfall as they rested on the landing fields. Some were disgorging columns of men into the hastily-erected campsites that were spreading across the wastelands between the hives, while others sat in silence, awaiting clearance to return to orbit.
Hades itself was little more than industrial scar tissue blighting Armageddon’s face. Despite efforts to repair the city after the last war over half a century before, it still bore a ragged share of memories. Toppled spires, broken domes, shattered cathedrals – this was the skyline after the death of a hive.
A squadron of Thunderhawk gunships pierced the caul of cloud cover. To those manning the battlements of Hades, they were a flock of crows winging down from the darkening sky.
Mordechai Ryken scanned the gunships through his magnoculars. After several seconds of zoom-blur, green reticules locked onto the streaking avian hulls and transcribed an analysis in dim white text alongside the image.
Ryken lowered the viewfinder scope. It hung on a leather cord around his neck, resting on the ochre jacket he wore as part of his uniform. His breath was hot on his face, recycled and filtered through the cheap rebreather mask he wore over his mouth and nose.
The air still tasted like a latrine, though. And it didn’t exactly smell any better. The joys of high sulphur content in the atmosphere. Ryken was still waiting for the day he would be used to it, and he’d been stuck on this rock so far for every day of his thirty-seven years of life.
A way down the battlements, working on getting an anti-air turret operational, a team of his men clustered with a robed tech-priest. The multi-barrelled monstrosity dwarfed the half a dozen soldiers standing in its shadow.
‘Sir?’ one of them voxed. Ryken knew who it was despite the shapeless overcoats they all wore. Only one of them was female.
‘What is it, Vantine?’
‘Those are Astartes gunships, aren’t they?’
‘Good eyes.’ And they were, at that. Vantine would’ve made sniper a long time ago if she could aim worth a damn. Alas, there was more to sniping than just seeing.
‘Which ones?’ she pressed.
‘Does it matter? Astartes are Astartes. Reinforcements are reinforcements.’
‘Yes, but which ones?’
‘Black Templars.’ Ryken took a breath, tonguing a sore cut on his lip as he watched the fleet of Thunderhawks touching down in the distance. ‘Hundreds of them.’
An Imperial Guard column rolled out from Hades to meet the newest arrivals. A command Chimera, flying no shortage of impressive flags, led six Leman Russ battle tanks, their collective passage chewing into the newly laid rockcrete.
Bulky troop landers were still setting down elsewhere on the landing field, the wash from their engines blasting wind and gritty dust in all directions, but General Kurov of the Armageddon Steel Legion did not make personal appearances to greet just anyone.
Despite his advancing age, Kurov cut a straight-backed figure in his grimy uniform of ochre fatigues and black webbing, with flak padding on the torso. No sign of his many medals, not a hint of gold, silver, ribbon, or the other trappings of pomp. Here was the man that had led the Council of Armageddon for decades, and earned the respect of his people by wading knee-deep in the sulphur marshes and bracken forests after the last war, hunting xenos survivors in the infamous Ork Hunter platoons.
He stomped down the ramp, setting his cap to guard his eyes against the heatless, yet annoyingly bright, afternoon sunlight. A team of Guardsmen, each as raggedly attired as their commanding officer, clanged down the ramp after the general. As they moved, misshapen skulls clacked and rattled together from where they hung on belts and bandoliers. Across