Chapter 14

  The forge was a tomb of cold iron and echoing silence.

  But outside, the world was burning.

  Captain Fabian stood on the central command platform, looking down as his battle-brothers turned the dead factory into Fortress-Garrison Scourgefall. Barricades of fused machinery blocked corridors. Firing lanes were carved through monolithic pistons. The few remaining Tarantula Sentry Guns were placed in kill-zones, their machine-spirits murmuring hungrily.

  A constant, greasy haze seeped through every vent and broken window, carrying the stink of burning promethium, fungus, and scrap. A dull, orange glow was the only light, casting long, dancing shadows that played tricks on the eyes. The siege had begun not with a charge, but with a maddening, relentless campaign of attrition.

  The roar of engines was a constant plague, rising and falling as Speed Freeks made their endless, harassing passes. They never came close enough for a proper engagement, but their bullets would ricochet through the forge’s outer shell, and their snipers, hidden in the burning gloom, had already claimed three sentries.

  Magos Thrax approached Fabian, his metal feet ringing on the deck. “Captain, the situation has… devolved. As I predicted.”

  “Report, Magos,” Fabian said, his eyes not leaving the tactical display that showed their tiny island of blue icons swimming in an ocean of red.

  “The primary water conduits have been destroyed. Pulped, to be clear. The main power relays are also severed. We are operating on emergency power cells, but our water recyclers are failing. We have four days of potable water. Perhaps five, if the non-Astartes personnel are placed on severe rationing.”

  Four days. A slow, ignominious death by thirst.

  “Furthermore,” Thrax continued, a mechanicus drone hovering over his shoulder and projecting a flashing image of a buckled gate, “the xenos are targeting our structural integrity. Not with explosives, but with crude battering rams mounted on their vehicles. The attacks are random, pointless, but they force us to expend ammunition to drive them off. They are testing us. Bleeding us of our resources, bolt by bolt.”

  Fabian’s jaw was a line of granite. The Warboss wasn't just laying siege; he was playing with them. He was dismantling their ability to survive, piece by piece, from the outside in.

  As if on cue, a fresh chorus of roaring engines and whooping war cries echoed from the west wall. A Devastator squad answered with the deep thud of heavy bolter fire. A brilliant explosion lit the orange gloom for a moment—a lucky hit on a Warbuggy. A cheer went up from a group of Navy armsmen huddled near the barricade, but Fabian felt nothing. They had just traded a priceless heavy bolter shell for a vehicle the Orks could likely replace in an hour.

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  Later, Fabian stood on the forge’s highest spire, the heat from the burning plains washing over his armour. He could see them now, countless greenskins spread out in the firelight, a besieging army of monstrous scale. This was their world. He and his men were the invaders, trapped in a cage while the zookeeper decided how best to kill them. The cold rage from the day before had settled deep in his bones, a frozen core of hatred for the beast that had done this to them. To Cassian. To his company.

  He had to think beyond the Codex. The book had no chapter for a situation this hopeless. He had to think like the Ork. What was crude? What was direct? What was the last thing a calculating commander would expect?

  Miles away, on a high ridge overlooking the burning spectacle, Grubbly the Terrible was having a wonderful time. He took a long slurp of fungus beer and spat a mouthful onto a cowering Grot.

  “Look at dat, Dull,” he said, pointing at the besieged forge with a half-gnawed squig leg. “Proper pretty, ain’t it? Like a campfire. With more screamin’.”

  Dull, who was nervously polishing the Warboss’s iron boot, nodded frantically. Zolk lay beside the scrap-throne, his massive head resting on his claws, his single eye glowing like a hot coal as he watched the distant fortress. A low growl rumbled in his chest. He was bored. He wanted to be fighting.

  “Patience, my lad,” Grubbly chuckled, tossing the Squigosaur the rest of the squig leg. Zolk snapped it out of the air. “We gotta let ‘em cook first. Let ‘em get proper thirsty and scared. Makes ‘em taste better when we finally go in for the krumpin’.”

  His plan was working perfectly. Fuminus was having the time of his life, Nob Murg had reported smashing lots of shiny pipes, and Rukkit was driving the blue boys mad. It was all going just right.

  The final straw came when Lord-Navigator Valerius and two of his officers approached Fabian, their faces pale with terror and streaked with soot.

  “This is madness, Captain!” Valerius burst out, his voice thin and reedy. “We cannot stay here to be roasted alive! You must order a breakout! We can try to reach the polar regions, find shelter!”

  “A breakout into what, Lord-Navigator?” Fabian’s voice was dangerously quiet. “An army of a million Orks and an ocean of fire? You would die within the hour.”

  “It is better than this slow death!” one of the officers shrieked.

  Sergeant Chronus stepped forward, his presence alone enough to silence the man. But Fabian held up a hand. He understood their fear. It was logical. And logic, he was beginning to realize, was a liability in a war against Orks.

  “There will be no breakout,” Fabian stated, his voice ringing with absolute authority. He turned to face his Sergeant. “Chronus, assemble Tactical Squad Ventris. We are going on the offensive.”

  Chronus’s eyebrow arched, a minuscule expression of surprise. “Captain?”

  “The Orks expect us to cower behind these walls. To die of thirst,” Fabian declared, his eyes blazing with a new, terrifying light. “We will not. The primary aqueduct pumping station is two kilometers south-east of our position. We are going to take it back.”

  “It will be heavily guarded,” Chronus said, his tone flat. “A direct assault would be suicide.”

  “It would be,” Fabian agreed, a grim smile touching his lips for the first time in days. “That is why it will not be a direct assault. It will be an Orky assault. Loud, bloody, and pointless.” He looked towards the slab-sided form of the company’s last remaining Land Raider Redeemer. “And I require a very large, very loud, and very fiery distraction.”