Leontus: Lord Solar, page 10
‘There’s nothing for them here, as far as they know. It’s difficult to access, remote, and devoid of anything to fight,’ the Lord Solar said, cutting their discussion short. ‘I appreciate your efforts, Sergeant Raust. Do what you can to increase rations whilst keeping us concealed.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Sergeant Arnetz, do you have anything to add?’
Arnetz pushed off the wall and saluted the Lord Solar, her new rank still strange to hear spoken aloud. ‘Nothing yet on the private matter we discussed. Our scouts on the plateau reported that the abandoned Deathskulls prison camp had been occupied by a small warband last night, but they’d gone by this morning. Scavengers, most likely.’
Andersson raised a questioning eyebrow at the mention of a private matter, but she ignored him.
‘Very good, thank you, sergeant,’ the Lord Solar said. ‘If there’s nothing else, I suggest–’
‘I have a matter that I believe we should discuss, my lord,’ Belgutei said.
Andersson and Arnetz shared a quick glance, but Raust’s response was unreadable beneath his respirator mask. Even after days in his company, she still found the one-armed Krieg sergeant disconcerting – his stoicism made him almost statuesque, and with his face covered, he was a hard man to read. The others she understood, but Raust remained a mystery.
‘Perhaps we should speak privately?’
‘It’s relevant to everyone here, my lord.’
‘Then please continue,’ the Lord Solar said, and gestured for Belgutei to speak.
‘I must ask if we are any closer to attacking the space port? With each ambush we are diminished and the takings are… small, to say the least,’ Belgutei said.
‘Each cannon we destroy is another weapon denied to the enemy. That is progress in itself.’ There was a note of warning in the Lord Solar’s tone. ‘I assure you, I have not lost sight of the end goal. I will tell you when the time is right, but for now, I must ask you all to hold your nerve for a little longer.’ He looked at each of them in turn, his jaw set as he sought to reassure them.
‘In that case, my lord, I must again request that my men and I be allowed to play a more active role.’
‘You are performing the role I need you to perform,’ the Lord Solar said, and Arnetz silently begged Belgutei to hear the finality in his tone. The Attilan was stubborn, but he didn’t seem to understand that he was testing the limits of the Lord Solar’s patience.
‘With respect, my lord, I disagree. We could be doing more, if not in your ambushes then to scout the camps we spotted to the west and north-west. If you would but allow us to–’
‘Enough,’ the Lord Solar barked, and Belgutei fell silent. ‘This isn’t up for discussion – you and your riders are where I need you.’
Belgutei’s head dropped beneath the full weight of the Lord Solar’s attention, his jaw working as he bit down on his response. She felt for him in that moment, understanding his desire for he and his men to be more than glorified bodyguards and messengers for the Lord Solar, but restricted to that limited role as others fought, scouted, or in Raust’s case, hunted for food.
‘I am sorry, my lord.’ Belgutei said eventually, but he did not raise his head.
‘You are dismissed, all of you,’ the Lord Solar said with a wave of his hand, turning away from his sergeants both new and experienced. They each offered an aquila salute, Raust’s one hand placed over his heart, then departed for the lower level of the cave. Arnetz looked back to see the Lord Solar removing the Radiant Helm, his once close-cropped dark hair glinting with new silver growth around his temples. It was sometimes hard to remember that he was over a century old, kept strong by a regime of rejuvenat treatments and subtle augmetics, but she was starting to see the old veteran behind the meticulously crafted facade that was the Lord Solar.
‘You’re following your orders, Belgutei,’ Andersson said. ‘No one thinks less of you or your men for that.’
‘I do,’ Belgutei retorted, and strode away to where Nomak tended the horses near the mouth of the cave. The other Attilan met him expectantly, his expression darkening as Belgutei shook his head and began talking in low tones that didn’t carry over the sound of the river.
Arnetz and Andersson shared a look.
‘He’s in a difficult position,’ Andersson said quietly.
‘We all are,’ Arnetz replied, glancing at Raust. The Krieg man didn’t offer an opinion but made for a corner of the cavern where his command, the other wounded soldiers who weren’t able to fight, sorted through their various stores.
‘I don’t think our quartermaster approves of Belgutei’s questions,’ Andersson said.
‘I don’t think he approves of any questions, least of all when they’re directed at the Lord Solar,’ Arnetz replied, smiling. She liked the old Cadian; his humour was dark and dry, which made him far less gloomy than the Cadians she’d served with before and a much better conversationalist than Belgutei or Raust.
‘He’s holding them back for a reason,’ Andersson said as Belgutei and Nomak made for the cavern’s mouth, still deep in conversation. ‘Though in fairness, I don’t know what I’d do in his position either.’
‘You’d follow orders, just like I would,’ Arnetz sighed.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s not just Belgutei who’s in a difficult position.’ Arnetz nodded to the upper level of the cavern, where the Lord Solar stood alone. ‘He had legions of Titans, Knight households, and a thousand regiments of the Astra Militarum, not to mention the Collegiate Astrolex and his private army of logisticians, data-scryers, savants and tacticians. Now all he has is us, and we’re not exactly a substitute for any of it.’
Andersson considered her words for a few moments, watching as the Lord Solar turned and disappeared in the shadows towards the rear of the cavern.
‘You know, I used to know an officer in the Vostroyan Firstborn. Went by the name of Yonas Sabavich Kuriaki Aleksandrov.’
Arnetz laughed. ‘That’s a mouthful.’
‘You’re not wrong. He was a strange man, with some really odd ideas, but I remember he once said that the Lord Solar is unlucky to live in the time of the primarch’s return, forced to build his legend in the shadow of the Lord Regent’s crusade.’
‘That’s straying very close to heresy.’
‘I’d say it’s on the borderline, but he wasn’t wrong. Lord Solar Leontus has come the closest to matching the achievements of Saint Macharius of any Lord Solar since,’ Andersson said. He gave Arnetz a reassuring bump on the shoulder. ‘We’re in safe hands.’
As Arnetz left the cavern a few minutes later, Andersson’s words buzzed around her mind like a fly in a field tent. She believed in the Lord Solar’s tactical knowledge and his skills; after all, every ambush he had devised had been an unmitigated success, denying weapons to the enemy with minimal losses to his own forces. But…
But.
The kernel of doubt still niggled at the back of her mind like a scrap of stringy meat stuck between two teeth, seemingly as impossible to remove as it was to ignore. He was still a man, a human who was as fallible as anyone else – the massacre on the landing fields was testament to that fact, and she seemed to be the only one who noticed the intense pressure wearing down the Lord Solar with each daily report.
Then there was Belgutei. She understood Belgutei’s frustrations, just as she understood the Lord Solar’s caution, but the Attilan was pushing in the wrong direction. He didn’t worship the Lord Solar in the same unquestioning way that Raust did, nor did he have Andersson’s active belief that they were fighting for the greatest living commander of the Astra Militarum. He didn’t even have her quiet trust that the Lord Solar was their best chance for survival, if not victory, on Fortuna Minor.
The Attilan was a problem that she did not have the answer to.
‘Sarge,’ a short Catachan said with a nod of his head as she passed. She had been so consumed by her thoughts that she’d walked almost to the end of the slot canyon, and came to a halt overlooking the plateau and the glistening surface of the lake.
‘Barratt,’ she said with a nod of her own. ‘Anything to report?’
‘Nah, just that I am tired and hungry,’ Barratt said with a white-toothed grin. ‘Those Attilan lads tore out pretty fast, though. I feel bad for whatever gets in their way.’
‘So do I.’
‘I saw what one of those melta lances did to a Leman Russ once. Bloody big bang it was, I said to–’
‘Barratt!’ Arnetz hissed to quiet him and dropped to one knee, pointing out across to the east of the lake where two figures had appeared by the waterline. ‘Magnoculars.’
Barratt slid the lanyard from around his thick neck and passed her his battered magnoculars; one of the lenses was shattered, but the machine spirit still responded with a little coaxing. She raised them to her eyes and zoomed in on the figures – too broad to be Cadian or Attilan, but too far away to be sure if they were Catachan or ork.
She recognised their faces immediately as those of her scouts, both returning unhurt. A deeply held tension was released, and she let out a long, slow breath.
‘Barratt, go and tell the Lord Solar that I need to speak to him about our private matter.’
‘What did you find?’
‘It’s a downed voidship all right, a few miles to the east of the plateau. Much too large to be a lander, though with the state it’s in I couldn’t say whether it was one of ours or theirs, my lord.’
Leera and Mattis both stood to stiff attention before the Lord Solar as they explained their findings, hidden away in the very back of the cavern. They had knelt like subjects before their king at first, but Arnetz had long since learned that the Lord Solar had little patience for courtly etiquette. At least, not the rough version that the Catachans were capable of.
‘If you had to guess?’ he pressed.
‘I’d say that it was an ork kroozer,’ Leera said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘If it was an Imperial vessel then it’s been messed up pretty badly.’
‘Enemy disposition?’ Arnetz asked.
‘There was quite a bit of activity, but it’s well over a hundred from what we could see from the outside. They’ve already stripped most of the guts out,’ Mattis said.
‘And the approach? Is there a way to get close?’
‘Open ground for the most part, no cover to speak of. We’d be spotted before we got within a mile of the walls,’ Leera said. ‘It’s a few miles clear of the plateau, so we might make it there and back in a night if we were on foot.’
The Lord Solar nodded, running his tongue over his teeth as he considered the scouts’ report. Arnetz watched him as his mind worked over the problem, his eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly as he came to a decision.
‘I need you to go back,’ he said at last. ‘Get as close as you can and scout the perimeter after nightfall – around the entire downed ship if you can. I need an idea of enemy numbers and descriptions of any distinctive xenos that you see. Is that understood?’
Arnetz’s stomach clenched. To stray too close to the ork lines was incredibly dangerous, even for experienced scout and ambush troops like Catachans.
‘Yes, my lord,’ the scouts said in unison.
‘My lord, I request permission to go along with troopers Leera and Mattis,’ Arnetz said before she could stop herself.
‘Granted,’ the Lord Solar replied without hesitation, which took her by surprise. ‘Take someone else along too. Two teams of two should cut down the time you need.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Go prepare,’ Arnetz said. ‘We travel light. Dismissed.’
Leera and Mattis both made the sign of the aquila and handed over their magnoculars before departing, clearly exhilarated to have been in the Lord Solar’s confidence.
‘It looks like your suspicions were correct – the weapons are coming from the downed ship, my lord,’ Arnetz said as the troopers disappeared down the slope onto the main cavern floor. The Lord Solar had asked her to send out two scouts after the ambush that morning, but not before she had sworn not to tell anyone else about where they were going.
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. It’s not useful information unless we can find a weakness that we can exploit,’ he said.
She had the distinct impression that the Lord Solar was juggling a number of competing thoughts, and none of them brought him any solace.
‘Make sure that you return, sergeant, even if you are the only one that does. We need our medicae as much as we need this information.’
Leera was right. Whatever the downed ship had been before it crashed on Fortuna Minor, it was unrecognisable now.
It had ploughed into the ground at such speed that the impact crater was several miles wide, though the winds that howled across the open plains had worn down the crater’s lip to a low incline since its landing. Its prow was buried deep into the earth, a full half of the ship left protruding like a splinter from the planet’s skin. The leviathan’s back had been broken upon impact, folding the spine of the vessel upon itself like an inverted ‘V’. Its ancient bones had shattered, leaving a blackened forest of rusting metal spars that jutted towards the sky, each hundreds of feet long.
Arnetz lay flat on her belly on the sun-bleached grass, her skin streaked with a crude camo-paint substitute made from charcoal dust and a quantity of engine grease she had pilfered from the victims of the first ambush. It still had a slight smell of burned wood and sharp chems, but not enough that she could afford to go without it even at night. She watched as sparks danced across the ship’s outer hull, rappelling orks shouting to each other in their crude tongue as they cut usable chunks from the armour and loosened sections of plating. Tons of alloy and plasteel dropped hundreds of feet to slam into the earth with force enough that Arnetz felt the ground tremble from the crater’s edge. Spot-lumens bathed the craft’s exposed innards where the orks had gouged deep into its structure, revealing yet more xenos working within.
‘Yeah, this is the fragging place,’ Arnetz muttered to Barratt, and pointed down to the well-lit camp that had been erected around the ship’s base. A crane was straining to lift a cannon onto a trailer attached to an ork trukk, the massive barrel swinging haphazardly as the xenos shouted apparently contradictory orders to the operator.
‘We could’ve done with a little more cloud cover if we’re getting this close,’ Barratt whispered, the whites of his eyes the only visible part of him beneath his own layers of charcoal and grease. Fortuna Minor’s twin moons were both shining brightly amongst the stars, which had made their infiltration far more difficult than it might have been.
‘Can’t make it too easy, can we,’ she said with a confidence she didn’t quite feel. ‘Come on, we need to scout the rear.’
She led Barratt down into the crater in a crouch, the pair keeping low as they ran across the heat-scarred dirt in an oblique line and staying clear of the globe of light hanging around the ork camp. Her eyes were on the camp’s high walls and the shadow of the ship as they moved, waiting for the moment a savage throat would scream an alarm and they would be caught.
It was exhilarating.
They saw fewer and fewer signs of organised xenos activity the further around the perimeter they scouted, but flickers of movement in the deepest shadows around the ship’s base told her that they weren’t the only things creeping around in the dark.
‘Movement – down!’ she hissed as a shape loomed to their left, followed by light footsteps crunching across scorched dirt. She lowered herself smoothly to the ground, sliding her knife from its sheath as she readied herself.
A high, thin voice called out into the darkness, putting Arnetz in mind of a child seeking reassurance.
Arnetz barely breathed, but her heart hammered with sudden adrenaline. It was beating so hard that she was sure the creature must be able to feel it through the ground, but it just called out again into the dark, then once more, the sense of threat now somewhat undermined by the fearful wobble that coloured its garbled syllables. It was moving away from the ship to their left, and Arnetz caught its silhouette against the distant light of the camp. It was a grot – a two-foot-tall creature with large, pointed ears and a long, hooked nose. Her Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer said they were an ork subspecies, but the larger brutes seemed to have cast this runt out into the night.
Yet again, the grot called out, a note of warning clear in its voice.
Even if it didn’t have a weapon, its voice was going to attract attention before long, and Arnetz couldn’t allow that. She rose from the ground and crept towards the diminutive creature.
She was close enough to hear it draw in a breath in preparation for another shout when she struck.
Arnetz clamped her hand over the grot’s mouth, feeling no lips, only twin rows of dagger-sharp teeth that instantly gnashed at her silencing grip. Her other hand brought the serrated edge of her knife to the creature’s throat, and with one swift slice its body went limp. She dropped the severed head next to the body and sheathed her blade before moving off again to the east with Barratt following in her wake.
They circled around to the rear of the downed ship, where another structure perched, a dangling limb still connected to the front half by sinews of twisted gantries and scraps of hull plating.
‘That looks promising,’ Barratt breathed, moving in close to point at three globes of true darkness, flattened circles that seemed to swallow the dim light cast by the twin moons above.
‘The engines,’ Arnetz said with a nod. There was no sign of the orks working on the fallen tail of the ship, despite the easier pickings and powerful resources it must have offered.
‘Why aren’t they cannibalising it?’
‘Because there aren’t any weapons on the back of this ship,’ Arnetz said, as realisation struck. ‘Come on, we need to find Leera and Mattis. We’ve found our way in.’
