Mike Lee: Fallen Angels

Askelon nodded. 'And these vehicles were built with supplementary crew stations - but Archoi's tech-adepts took out all the controls and welded the hatches shut!' The Techmarine shook his head. 'It doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine what Horus thought he could use to operate these machines - the systems aren't quite as complex as a Titan, but they're close.' He spread his arms and gave a frustrated sigh. 'So here we are with the firepower of an army in our hands, and no way to use it.'

The Redemptor scowled down at the open cockpit. A thought niggled at him. 'Is there any way to rig a basic set of controls to the machine - even just to operate one of its void shields?'

Askelon shook his head. 'Actually, operating the void shield is one of the most complex operations to manage - just ask any Titan moderati. Rigging an effective set of controls would take hours, possibly days.' He shook his head. 'Unless you have a spare MIU sitting around, there's nothing we can do.'

Nemiel glanced up at the Techmarine, his eyes widening. Askelon frowned. 'What's the matter?' he asked.

'We do have an MIU,' Nemiel said. 'It's been right under our noses all along.'

The enemy launched their eighth and final attack an hour and a half later.

Lion El'Jonson listened to the approaching sound of engines and readied his sword. 'Here they come,' he said to Nemiel. Around them, the surviving Astartes checked their weapons. At the Redemptor's urging, they had extended the perimeter of the inner line outwards another two hundred and fifty metres, stretching their coverage almost to the breaking point.

'Askelon is working as quickly as he can, my lord,' he said to the primarch. 'We have to buy as much time for him as we can.'

'This is a terrible risk we're taking,' Jonson replied. Amid the mounting tension, the primarch managed a faint smile. 'If we fail to hold them back and somehow we aren't both shot to pieces in the process, I'm going to hold you personally responsible for this.'

Nemiel nodded. 'Duly noted, my lord,' he said in a deadpan voice that would have made Brother-Sergeant Kohl proud.

The enemy vehicles advanced from three sides, nosing their way through the maze of close-set buildings and closing in on the assembly building. By careful planning or sheer, diabolical luck, most of the enemy vehicles emerged from cover at the same time. Nemiel counted ten Rhino APCs and, directly ahead, a patched-up battle tank. A square metal plate had been bolted over the crater blasted in its glacis by a lascannon bolt, and the rebels' technicians had jury-rigged enough of its wrecked controls to get it back into action. The tank shuddered to a halt as the rest of the APCs surged forward. Its turret tracked fractionally to the left and the battle cannon fired.

The heavy shell howled through the air towards the Dark Angels and struck Brother Titus's armoured torso. The Dreadnought vanished in a thunderous blast, hurling bits of its arms and chest high into the air. Shrapnel rained down on the defenders, the metal fragments pinging off their armour.

Jonson straightened in the wake of the blast, his expression tense. Twenty metres away, the Rhinos came to an abrupt halt. Assault ramps dropped to the ground as ten squads of pale-armoured Astartes disembarked and took shelter behind the cover of their vehicles. Farther back, the tank traversed its turret to the left, taking aim on a Dark Angels squad.

'This won't work,' the primarch snarled. 'That tank will sit back there and shoot us to pieces, and then the Sons of Horus will sweep in and mop up the survivors.' He drew the Lion Sword and held it aloft. Sunlight shone on its razor edge. 'Forward, brothers!' he cried. 'For honour and glory! For Terra! For the Emperor! Forward!'

All sixty Dark Angels rose to their feet in a single, fluid motion and advanced towards the Sons of Horus, a thin line of black against a waiting phalanx of white. The battle cannon boomed again, but the gunner failed to adjust for the sudden enemy advance, and the shell blasted a gout of dirt and permacrete into the air behind the Astartes. The rebel warriors rose from cover and opened fire as well. Plasma bolts and shells stabbed out at the advancing Imperials, and the Dark Angels returned fire. The two formations drew inexorably together. Nemiel clutched his crozius tightly and prepared for one final battle.

A tremor rippled through the ground beneath their feet - very faint at first, but growing in strength with each passing moment. Nemiel felt it through the soles of his boots and turned to Jonson, who had felt it, too. A throaty roar filled the air behind them, swelling outwards in a solid wall of sound as one of Horus's mighty siege machines rumbled slowly onto the battlefield.

The war machine rose like a plasteel and ceramite mountain over the Astartes, its Hydra flak batteries and mega-bolter turrets along its flanks traversing to bear on the enemy ranks. The multi-barrelled laser batteries opened fire, unleashing a torrent of bolts at the stationary battle tank. The tank all but vanished in the glare of hundreds of detonations as the laser bolts pounded the armoured hull. Individually, each shot lacked the power to penetrate the mighty tank's reinforced ceramite plates, but one among the hundreds of impacts landed a direct hit on the plate steel bolted hastily over its former wound and burned straight through. Smoke billowed from the tank's open ports as the thermal effects of the bolt incinerated the crew in a split second.

A pair of mega-bolters roared to life next, sending a stream of heavy calibre shells over the heads of the Dark Angels and into the enemy's ranks. Rhinos shuddered beneath dozens of hits and were torn apart in seconds; the Astartes standing alongside them fared little better. The Sons of Horus recoiled under the storm of shells; dozens of the warriors fell, their armour riddled with holes. The rest wavered for a moment more and then broke, retreating swiftly back into cover among the surrounding buildings. Mega-bolter shells pursued them the entire way, slaying a dozen more before the rest could escape.

The Dark Angels stood in the shadow of the immense war machine, wreathed by wisps of fyceline propellant from the barrels of the mega-bolters and numbed by the awesome roar of the guns. Alone among them, Lion El'Jonson turned to the enormous engine and raised his sword in salute.

'Well done, Brother Titus!' he called over the vox. 'You could not have arrived at a more opportune time.'

'Techmarine Askelon deserves your accolades, my lord, not I,' replied Titus's synthetic voice. 'It was no small feat merging my MIU with the war engine's interface without access to the original STC blueprints; only the specialised tools and equipment in the assembly building allowed him to modify the vehicle's interface with my neural connectors. I regret that I am still unable to access the vehicle's shield array, and my locomotion is still very slow and clumsy, but all weapons systems are fully functional.'

Jonson stared up at the mountain of metal. 'Brother Titus, can your surveyors detect the star port to the south?'

'The unit is in need of calibration, but yes, I am registering it on my array,' Titus replied. 'I am detecting twelve heavy transports and numerous small vehicles.'

The primarch nodded. 'Load a shell into your siege gun and destroy the site.'

Titus hesitated for only an instant. 'At once, my lord,' he replied. With a ponderous moan of heavy-duty motors, the giant cannon barrel began to elevate. 'Loading will complete in five seconds,' Titus said. 'I advise that you take cover behind me. I cannot adequately gauge the effect the gun's concussion will have when it is fired.'

As primarch and war machine spoke, Nemiel cast his gaze upon the devastation that Titus had wrought. Scores of Astartes lay dead, surrounding misshapen metal hulks that were functioning APCs just a few minutes before. Behind him, heavy plasteel machinery rattled and groaned as the siege gun's auto-loading mechanism fed a magma shell into the cannon's breech. Recalling what such shells had done to the forge, he felt a deep sense of dread. What horrors could a warlord wreak with such weapons at his command?