Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [74]
The sharp crack! of the reductor doing its work splits the silence. First once, then again. The meaty, wet sound of flesh being pulled open follows.
Nero lifts his arm, the surgical gauntlet’s armour-piercing flesh drills buzzing, spraying dark, rich Astartes blood against his armour. In his hand, with great care, he holds the glistening purplish organs that had rested within Cador’s chest and throat. They drip and quiver, as if still trying to feed their host with strength. Nero slides them into a cylinder of preserving fluids, which is in turn retracted into his gauntlet’s protective housing.
I have seen him perform this ritual too many times in the past month.
‘It is done,’ he says, dead-voiced, rising to his feet.
He ignores me as I approach the corpse, occupying himself with entering information on his narthecium’s screen.
CADOR.
The 36th day. Ambush along enemy-controlled portions of Hel’s Highway.
Gene-seed: Recovered.
The thirty-sixth day.
Thirty-six days of gruelling siege. Thirty-six days of retreat, of falling back, of holding positions for as long as we are able until inevitably overwhelmed by the insane, impossible numbers arrayed against us.
The entire city smells of blood. The coppery, stinging scent of human life, and the sickening fungal reek of the foulness purged from orkish veins. Beneath the blood-scent is the stench of burning wood, melted metal, and blasted stone – a city’s death in smells. At the last gathering of commanders in the shadow of Colonel Sarren’s Baneblade, the Grey Warrior, it was estimated that the foe controlled forty-six per cent of the city. That was four nights ago.
Almost half of Helsreach, gone. Lost to smoke and flame in bitter, galling defeat.
I am told we lack the force to take anything back. Reinforcements are not coming from the other hives, and the majority of the Guard and militia that still fight are exhausted remnants of the regiments, forever falling back, time and again, road by road. Hold a junction for a few nights, then withdraw to the next position when it finally falls.
Truly, we are fated to die in the most uninspired crusade ever to blight the name of the Black Templars.
‘Reclusiarch,’ the vox calls me.
‘Not now.’ I kneel by Cador’s defiled body, seeing the holes in his armour and flesh – some from alien gunfire, two from the ritual surgery of Nerovar’s flesh-boring tools.
‘Reclusiarch,’ the voice comes again. The rune blinking at the edge of my retinal display signifies it as from the Grey Warrior. I suspect I am to be begged, again, to fall back to Imperial lines and help in the defence of some meaningless roadway junction.
‘I am administering the rites of the fallen to a slain knight. Now is not the time, colonel.’
At first, the colonel had replied to such words with the worthless, polite insistence that he was sorry for my loss. Sarren no longer says such things. The tens of thousands of lives lost in the last four weeks have utterly numbed him to such personal sentiment. That, too, is almost admirable. I see the strength in the way he has changed.
‘Reclusiarch,’ Sarren’s voice betrays how ruined by exhaustion he is. Were I in the room with him, I know I would feel the weariness in his bones like an aura around where he stands. ‘When you return from your scouting run, your presence is required in the Forthright Five district.’
Forthright sector. The southernmost docks.
‘Why?’
‘We are receiving anomalous reports from the Valdez Oil Platforms. The coastal auspex readers are suffering from offshore storms, but there are no storms off the coast. We suspect something is happening at sea.’
‘We will be there in an hour,’ I tell him. ‘What anomalies are we speaking of?’
‘If I could give you specifics, Reclusiarch, I would. The auspex readers look to be suffering some kind of directed interference. We believe they’re being jammed.’
‘One hour, colonel.’ Then, ‘mount up,’ I say to my brothers. It is not a short ride down the Hel’s Highway, especially when it crawls with the enemy. Scouting teams