breath, coughing as the dusty air caught in the back of his throat, and took stock of his situation.
Stranded on the mountains with nothing but a portable vox, a rifle with six clips and a combat knife to his name.
Enemies of the Emperor beware, he thought grimly, and began to climb.
THREE
FORRIX WATCHED AS yet another column of flatbed trucks carrying sallow-faced troopers roared across the runway towards the
gateway in the outer wall of the spaceport. All manner of conveyances rumbled in an endless line from the vast bellies of scores of
transports as they touched down and disgorged convoy after convoy of tanks, trucks, supply wagons, armoured carriers and
mobile artillery pieces. Thousands of vehicles passed him, directed at each stage of their journey by an Iron Warrior from Forrix's
grand company. Nothing was left to chance: every aspect of this logistical nightmare had been foreseen by Forrix and planned for.
Each craft descended in a precise pattern, landing in blinding clouds of ash and retros, disgorging their cargoes before lifting off in
a carefully ordered sequence. Forrix knew exactly which ship captains were cautious and which were reckless in their approaches,
how long each would take to land and how efficient each one's ground crew were. The noise was deafening and most of the
humans landing on this planet today would never hear again.
To the uninformed observer's eye, the spaceport was a heaving mass of bodies and machinery, but had that observer looked closer,
they would have seen an underlying structure to the movements. No random Brownian motion this, but a carefully orchestrated
manoeuvre whose complex patterns could only be perceived by those with centuries of experience in moving such gargantuan
volumes of men and machines.
The sheer scale of the operation and the speed with which it was being undertaken would have amazed Imperial logis-ticians.
Were it not for the Iron Warriors' damnable purpose, those same logisticians would have willingly prostrated themselves before
Forrix and begged him to teach them his skills.
As well as overseeing operations from within the spaceport, Forrix had his warriors directing operations from without. The pitiful
excuse for defence that had been broken open during the initial attack was even now being repaired and lines of contravallation
were being erected to defend the spaceport from any external threat. Not that Forrix particularly expected any, but it was
procedure and thus was done. If history and his long years of war had taught him anything, it was that the minute you thought
yourself safe from attack was when you were at your most vulnerable.
With a speed that would have put the finest Imperial engineers to shame, a nightmarish assembly of trench lines, razor wire fields
and armoured pillboxes were being constructed in defensive formations around the spaceport's perimeter. By nightfall, Forrix
expected the lines of contravallation to be complete and Jericho Falls to be as secure as it had ever been in its long existence.
The spaceport was his responsibility and he would not allow it to remain unprotected, no matter how much the Warsmith had
assured them that there was no way the Imperial forces could summon aid, that their psychic link to the rest of the galaxy had
been terminated.
Forrix was not so sure. Jharek Kelmaur, the Warsmith's cabal sorcerer, had looked uneasy as the Warsmith glibly dismissed the
Imperial telepaths and Forrix wondered what guilty secret the sorcerer might be keeping. Had the Imperial forces been able to
make some communication with the outside world that the sorcerer's machinations had been unable to prevent? It was an
interesting notion and Forrix would store that nugget away lest it prove a valuable bargaining tool at some later date. The passion
for intrigue had long since left Forrix, but he was astute enough to realise that knowledge was power, and it never hurt to have
some potential advantage over your rivals. For now he would assume that there was at least the remote possibility of the citadel
being relieved and he would plan his defences accordingly.
A rune flashed on his data-slate and Forrix put aside the paranoid intrigues that were the meat and gravy of the Iron Warriors and
watched as the main runway was smoothly cleared of soldiers and vehicles as yet another vast ship hauled its bulk through the
deep amber sky in shrieking clouds of engine fire. No sooner had the vessel cleared the outer markers of the landing field than a
ponderous shadow slipped slowly across the spaceport, its inky blackness spreading across the entire facility like an obscene oil
slick.
Forrix knew without looking which craft had entered the approach pattern, and while more easily impressed heads craned skyward
to gawp at the leviathan descending towards Jericho Falls, he was merely irritated that it was almost thirty-six seconds behind his
schedule. A groaning like the sound of the world cracking open split the air, the grinding screech of massive organic pistons and
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
gears overcoming the bass thrumming of the mechanisms that kept the bloated craft aloft. These ancient and arcane devices, a
hideous mix of what had once been organic components and ancient technology, had been created specifically for this craft and
there was nothing in the galaxy like it. Their construction owed as much to the power of hyper-evolution and sorcery as
engineering, and the physics of their operation should have been impossible. Forrix knew for a fact that their manufacture had
only been possible within the Eye of Terror, that region of space where the warp spewed into real space and all laws of reality
ceased to have meaning. That region of space called home by the Legions of Chaos.
As the ominous shadow stopped moving and the deafening grinding noise continued, Forrix glanced up to check that the ship was
maintaining the correct altitude.
The cargo now being delivered here was vital to the success of the campaign.
The massive vessel resembled a vast spire of rock pitched on its side and left to lie for millennia at the bottom of some depthless
ocean. Its ancient surface was a loathsome, glossy black, like the carapace of some vile insect, pitted and encrusted with lesions
and fluid-leaking orifices. Its underside was studded with sphincter-like caverns that shimmered in a monstrous heat haze.
Once, long ago, this vessel had plied the icy depths of space in the unutterable vastness between galaxies, home and locus to
billions of creatures linked together in a gestalt consciousness, enslaved to the imperative to consume biological matter and
reproduce. It had drifted from world to world, stripping each bare of life, each creature within its shared mind acting in perfect
concert with the vast over-mind. That had come to an end when the Warsmith had caused its neural pathways to become infected
with the same techno-virus that infested the insane Obliterators, severing the vital link between the massive parent vessel and its
offspring, stripping away the smothering blanket of belonging from the swarm.
No one knew how long the leviathan had fought the infection before the Warsmith's sorcerers had defeated its defences and
dragged the barely sentient carcass to the Eye of Terror. Perhaps the creature-ship had thought it was to be granted succour, but in
that regard it was to be sorely mistaken.
Defiled and perverted to serve instead of rule, it had been enslaved to the Warsmith's desires and became yet another cog in his
grand design.
Like some bloated sea monster from legend, the gargantuan vessel's vast belly hung open, geysers of putrescent gases venting
from its interior. Over two thousand metres in length, it hovered impossibly above Jericho Falls.
From the sweating darkness of its ribbed interior, two shapes slowly descended from the vessel, cries of terror and welcome rising
in equal measure as the human soldiers pressed into the service of the Iron Warriors screamed a welcome to their gods of war.
Their upper reaches swathed in metres-thick cable-like tentacles, two vast Battle Titans of the Legio Mortis descended to Hydra
Cordatus. First came their massive legs, each like the tower of a castle, their surfaces studded with gun ports and scarred by
millennia of war, followed by wide torsos and armoured chests.
Shaped in the image of Man, their resemblance to their creators ended there. Powerful arms, bearing guns larger than buildings,
hung inert from wide, turret-like shoulders. Then came the heads, and Forrix, for all his weariness of battle, could not help but be
struck by the terrible power inherent in these glorious creations. Whether they had been carved, moulded or shaped by the will of
the dark gods themselves none could say, but their daemonic visages shone with the very power of Chaos, as though a fragment of
that raw energy might be contained within their hellish features.
The ground shook with thunderous vibration as the feet of these glorious machines slammed down like the tread of an angry god.
The glistening cable-tentacles, slipped free of their charges, coiled back into the belly of their host and vanished from sight as the
next two Battle Titans were readied for landing.
Forrix watched as the two Titans stood motionless on the landing field, their power and majesty palpable even in their stillness. A
sinuous tail, bearing a spiked wrecking ball larger than the greatest super heavy tank, twitched at the back of the largest Titan and
a massive cheer burst from the assembled warriors.
A powerful whine burst suddenly from the Titans as the mighty weapon-arms began to move, a fierce and monstrous anime
enlivening each of the war machines with vigour. The first war machine, once an Emperor-class Titan in the service of the corpsegod,
now known and feared as the Dies Irae, took a ponderous step forward, its mighty foot crashing down on the ground with
teeth-loosening force, its daemonic princeps eager to plunge into battle lest his monstrous war machine turn its fury upon its allies.
Its companion in death, the Pater Mortis, raised its guns to the heavens, as though saluting the gods for delivering it to war once
more and roared its battle lust across the world. Smaller than the Dies Irae, it followed its massive sibling like a devoted acolyte.
Forrix allowed himself a tight smile as he watched the two mighty engines of destruction stride from the spaceport towards the
mountains. Tanks and infantry swarmed around their legs. Those who had fought alongside these lethal machines before kept a
sensible distance from them while those unused to seeing the power of their masters so physically manifested clustered around to
pay homage. Many of their foolish human soldiers paid the price for their unwise devotion, as whole swathes of men were crashed
underfoot with each step of the gigantic machines.
Two more Titans were even now descending to the planet's surface and there would be many more before this day's operation was
complete. Forrix had much yet to do, but was content that everything was proceeding on schedule.
Within another two hours there would be an army of conquest ready to take this world apart in a storm of iron.
FOUR
LARANA UTORIAN FOUGHT to keep the pain of her ruined arm at bay just a little longer. Even if she lived through this nightmare,
which she acknowledged was unlikely, she knew she would lose it. The giant who had brought them here had seen to that,
crashing every bone and ripping every tendon in her arm. Each step sent bolts of pain shooting through her and it took a supreme
effort of will not to drop to her knees and just give up.
She had seen what happened to those who had done that, and had no wish to end her days as a screaming, eyeless wreck, nailed to
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the chassis of a traitor's tank. She would face death on her feet like a true soldier of the Emperor.
Painfully, she shuffled uphill, keeping her eyes focussed on the neck of the man in front, concentrating on putting one foot before
the other. She glanced up as he suddenly stopped and felt a hot, roiling sensation of fear work its way through her gut as she saw
the formidable, rocky slopes of Tor Christo before her. The grey bastions on the rocks above were over a kilometre away, but
Utorian fancied she could make out the faces of the gunners and soldiers on the firing steps. What must they be thinking, she
wondered? Were they afraid, or were they full of bravado, confident that nothing could breach their high walls? Larana hoped
they were afraid.
Their column began moving forwards as smoke-belching trucks roared alongside them. The tracks skidded to a halt at the head of
the columns and sudden hope flared in Larana's heart as she saw men in crimson overalls with crude eight-pointed stars stitched
over their left breast on the back of the tracks handing battered, but serviceable looking rifles to the startled prisoners. If these
traitorous curs thought that the men and women of the Jouran Dragoons would fight for them, then they were even more deluded
than she had thought. As soon as she was given a weapon, she would turn it on their captors and damn the consequences.
But any hope of a swift death in a glorious last stand were dashed as Larana took hold of one of the rifles and discovered it was
nothing more than a hollow framework, the internal workings missing. She felt tears of frustration well up inside, but suppressed
them viciously. Hands pulled at her, dragging her and the others forward and lifting them onto the backs of the trucks. Too numb
to resist, she allowed herself to be packed into the vehicle, biting her lip to avoid screaming as more and more prisoners were
pressed inside the truck. The stench of fear was overpowering. Soldiers vomited and soiled themselves in terror as their reserves
of courage finally reached their limit.
Larana, pressed at the side of the truck, caught only glimpses of what was happening outside. The revving of engines built to a
deafening crescendo and she could see hundreds of trucks, all as crammed as this one, lined at the edge of the plateau.
Interspersed between the trucks, Larana could see boxy, armoured personnel carriers, similar to the ones she had seen Space
Marines using. She knew they were called Rhinos, but these bore little resemblance to the noble vehicles she had seen members of
the Adeptus Astartes employ. Their armoured sides had a disgusting, oily texture, as though somehow alive, their every surface
