Angel of Fire

The blood-red sun sprang over the horizon. The heat of the day was rising, causing the air over the ash deserts to shimmer. Engines throbbed all around us. Macharius emerged into the daylight to the cheers of assembled soldiers. He raised his hands in a gesture of triumph and strode towards the waiting Baneblade. It has been decorated in his own personal colours, with the Lion seal of his family on it. There was a name too inscribed in flowing Gothic script, The Lion of Macharius.

I thought that showed considerable faith in his luck. If anyone knew what to look for, it would make the great tank a target. Or maybe not. Maybe anyone looking at it would suspect a trick. Or maybe I am just too devious for my own good.

Macharius looked at us and gestured for us to come with him, so we did. I did not know what to expect but I followed him up the drop-down ladder and into the interior of the Baneblade. It had been modified more than a little. There was a mass of additional command systems and holo-maps inside the enhanced driver’s chamber. It looked like the tech-priests had been very busy in this vehicle. Drake was there and a bunch of people I did not know and whose purpose I could not guess.

Macharius put on a headset trimmed with the oak-leaf clusters of a High Commander. He occupied a throne behind where the commander’s normal seat would be. He gestured for the Understudy to take command of the tank, and for me to drive. Anton and Ivan had been assigned to guns. We might have been his lucky talismans but we were going to have to perform our normal duties under his eyes.

Sliding into the driver’s chair was like coming home. I ran my hands over the control altars reassured by the familiar position of everything. Some things felt different. This vehicle would have a different spirit from the old Indomitable. I knew I was going to take some time to get used to the Lion’s quirks. I hoped there would be enough before we hit the lava moat around the city. I also wondered what had happened to the previous crew. Perhaps this was his reward to us. He had accelerated the process of having us re-assigned to a new Baneblade.

I listened to Macharius respond to the incoming reports from his commanders. I waited for the instruction to fire up the drive cores. It was not long in coming. The New Boy took up position beside me and waited like an apprentice. This machine was definitely different from the Indomitable. It felt more alert, keener, more proud. It was not so tired. I sensed all of that as it stirred from its slumber. It did not know me but it accepted me as it had accepted a procession of new drivers throughout the long centuries of its life.

Looking out through the view-scopes I could see thousands of armoured vehicles come to life. Enormous columns began to move out in response to central command’s orders. Huge plumes of dust danced skywards. We rumbled forwards towards the fires on the horizon. I felt as if we were driving to the end of the world.

If Macharius felt the same, he gave no sign. His voice was calm. His commands were clear. I paid more attention in the first few minutes to the Understudy as he rasped out his orders quietly.

It felt strange to be listening to him and not the lieutenant. It felt doubly strange to be in this cabin and in the presence of Macharius. But it felt nowhere near as strange as the idea of what we were racing towards under the desert sky of Karsk.

Drake said, ‘Incoming signal from Fleet Orbital, sealed channel, highest priority, encrypted.’

‘Take it,’ Macharius said.

The inside of the Baneblade seemed suddenly quiet. There was something in his voice that made everybody listen. The features of an admiral appeared in the command globe, relayed down from his flagship somewhere in orbit.

‘Lord High Commander,’ the admiral said. ‘I have read your encrypted instructions and I seek clarification. We are to begin bombardment of Hive Irongrad at eighteen hundred Imperial Standard Time if we do not receive a direct instruction from you countermanding.’

‘Admiral Jensen. Those are my orders. I believe they are perfectly clear.’

‘But, Lord High Commander, your force may still be engaged within the city. And the pyrite refineries. We came here for those.’

‘New priorities have arisen, admiral. I have given you your orders. See that you obey them!’

‘But–’

‘Obey them, admiral. The security of the Imperium may depend on it. I have no time to explain further.’

The admiral nodded. He did not look happy but he looked like he would do as he was told. Macharius cut the communication channel. I shuddered when I realised what Macharius had done. If we failed to stop the ritual, the whole city would be obliterated. He had given orders that would most likely result in all our deaths, then even more chillingly I realised that if those orders were carried out we would probably already be dead.

‘It still might not be enough to stop the ritual,’ Drake said.

‘We have done what we could,’ Macharius said and returned to speaking into the comm-net as if nothing more need be said.

We swept forwards and I could see the lava flows clearly. Jets of liquid stone spurted upwards, incandescent and ruby red. The earth was cracking. Occasionally, the Baneblade shifted oddly in response to the moving ground. It felt like it might spin out of control if I was not careful. I watched all of the volt gauges and meters carefully. I kept my hands ready on the controls. I did not want to be taken off-guard by anything. We followed the paths predetermined by Macharius’s discovery. It reminded me of our first approach to Irongrad. It was just as tricky and we did not have time to take things slowly and carefully.

The formation rolled on, feeling its way forwards through the shifting terrain where the sign of the daemon-god was being written on the living flesh of the world. It was slow progress and it became all the slower when the heretics realised what was happening. Not all of them were wrapped up in their ritual summoning. The great batteries on the armoured skin of the city opened fire. Swarms of flyers engaged our air-cover in battle. Within the city itself I had no doubt troops were being marshalled.

As we got closer to the city, following the channels of the infernal symbol surrounding the hive, the earth tremors became more intense and the air seemed to shimmer and pulse. Whirlpools of multi-coloured light swirled in the air. At first I thought it was some sort of heat haze. Rocks split and tanks were swallowed like men going down in jungle quicksand. That was not the worst of it.

Out of those swirling whirlpools creatures were starting to emerge. They were roughly humanoid in shape, but their outlines seemed to shimmer and shift as much as the whirlpools that spawned them. They were an odd shade of pink and they belched flame from numerous orifices that seemed to appear in their skin, like blowholes bubbling out of a mudpool. There was something awful just in their very appearance. At times they seemed as if they were not quite solid, not quite there, as insubstantial as a heat-haze or a fever dream. At other times they looked somehow more solid than a tank. They shimmered and were gone only to reappear a few strides away from where they had been. They opened mouths as wide as their entire bodies, revealing fangs the size of bayonets and roared challenges as they threw themselves at our fighting vehicles.

On hearing the panicked cries, Drake strode over to where the New Boy sat and glared through his scope. I was close enough to hear him mutter, ‘The Horrors of which the codexes speak. The Architect of Fate is surely behind all this.’

I did not know then what he meant but it did not sound good.

He turned to look at Macharius. ‘It is worse than I feared. Lesser portals are already starting to open. This is blowback from the ritual. It will get far, far worse unless we stop it. This confirms all suspicions – the cult of the Angel of Fire is indeed a front for Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways.’

He sounded shaken. Macharius remained calm. ‘The Emperor’s enemies must be opposed,’ was all he said.

Even their mighty fists could not do much beating against armoured hulls, but they distracted panicked drivers who swerved into the lava streams. Sometimes they clambered atop stalled vehicles and ripped off hatches, then they could reach inside and pull out terrified men, biting them in two with those enormous fanged mouths that seemed to be centred right on their stomachs. Sometimes I thought I heard them screaming, ‘All is fire, all is flux, all is change.’

It was not so much their power that frightened but the sorcery they represented and I thought that if more of the creatures were waiting in the city, our infantry was going to have a tough time of it when they poured out onto the streets.

Macharius gave the command to open fire with our lighter weapons. The shimmering figures burst asunder, sometimes splitting into smaller figures, very similar but coloured an obscene shade of blue. I half-feared that they would flow back together and reform but they did not, at least not the ones I saw. Of course, such a strategy was not without its perils. Sometimes crews would open up with their heavier guns. That destroyed the daemons all right but it often would take out our own vehicles along with them. Macharius snapped out clear, concise commands to stop doing it. He insisted we use only the light guns and he was obeyed.

Other creatures began to manifest. They looked something like upturned mushrooms, ambulatory and oddly humanoid; from their limbs and maws they spewed iridescent flame. They too shimmered and sometimes seemed to wink in and out of existence as though products of some wicked fever dream. They exploded when hit though and killed what they could and I was left in no doubt as to their reality.

We rolled on towards Irongrad. Armies of shimmering, daemonic entities waited for us. We surged forwards to engage and as we did, the guns on the walls opened up on us, and Vultures swooped down to attack.

Against ordinary infantry, the daemons would have been a threat but on the open plain we simply destroyed them. I wondered what the sorcerers within the city hoped to achieve and the answer came back to me: nothing. They did not need to achieve anything. They were slowing us down, making us waste ammunition, causing a few casualties, and overrunning a few vehicles. The sheer mass of them created confusion in our ranks and the cost to the heretics was nil. The daemons were simply by-products of the ritual being enacted. They demonstrated to the people of Irongrad, and to us, the power of the Angel of Fire. They hindered us when every moment might be precious.

We made for the gates of the city, crushing our inhuman opponents beneath our treads. Occasionally the Baneblade rocked as one of the massive wall-guns came close to scoring a direct hit. Our own weapons pounded away at the fortifications now. One by one, a few of the guns were silenced. Many of our own Leman Russ had been destroyed and the fiery daemons hunted their crews. I cursed but there was nothing else I could do. Macharius kept up a steady calm stream of orders, talking into the comm-net, responding to new developments, holding the whole vast scheme of the battle in his mind as a chess-player can hold the positions of play on a board.

Somewhere in the distance our own Basilisks had opened fire, aiming at positions marked on maps or called in by field commanders. Great mushrooms of smoke and fire blossomed on the walls of Irongrad. We bounced through a crater filled with pink-skinned daemons, turning them to smoking sludge beneath our treads, bursting them like balloons filled with ectoplasmic pus. Some of our troops had already reached the main gates. Siege engineers deployed their demolition charges and lock overrides. Our tanks kept firing. Vultures strafed the walls while Valkyries deployed storm troopers to take critical positions then soared away, sending their twin-tailed shadows racing over the ground below. For once, things went with precision. I attribute it to the close presence of Macharius. In minutes we were within the walls of the city, driving down the core roads, heading for the cathedral. It was there the resistance really began.

The heretics had barricaded the streets. In places they had left lines of industrial haulers and shattered vehicles. Our heavy tanks pressed on, smashing through the wrecks and overrunning the infantry crouched behind them, reducing them to bloody smears on the plascrete paving. Our anti-personnel weapons strafed them. They stood their ground and died. I offered up a prayer to the Emperor and the tutelary spirit of the Baneblade in which we rode, and kept my eyes on the highway we broke beneath the treads of our vehicle.

In a monstrous armoured column we rode down the streets into the centre of the hive. As we progressed the feeling of imminence, of something dreadful being about to happen, became more intense. The nearer hab-blocks had an abandoned look, as if those who had dwelled within had fled, taking what they could carry with them. Here and there, the great trash-piles seemed to be spontaneously combusting. Sprinkler systems in the ceiling sent great storms of water raining down but it did not seem to help, only turned to mist. Some of the hab-blocks blazed. It was as if the whole hive were starting to catch fire.

There were more heretics but it seemed as if they were falling back before us, torn between a desire to slow our advance and to be close to the place where their unholy god was going to manifest. Perhaps the deluded fools believed the Angel of Fire would save them, that somehow, when the Angel of Fire manifested itself they were all going to be transformed in its supernatural light. Hell, maybe they would be, what did I know?

I heard Drake grunt behind me. I avoided turning to look at him, but I could not ignore his muttering voice. ‘The power is spiking. What new horror is this?’

Looking out through the drive periscope I saw at once what he meant. The statues were coming to life. It sounds absurd when I say it now, but that is exactly what was happening. All of those fire-winged metal angels were starting to stretch and flex, like men waking from long sleep. I knew then that something truly unnatural was really happening in Irongrad. When statues come to life, stretch out clawed fingers and take to the air on wings of plasma fire, you know that natural law has been suspended. They soared above the burning buildings and seemed to draw strength from the blaze.

Judging from the screams echoing through the streets around me, I was not alone in my realisation. It looked like the citizens of Irongrad were starting to wake up to the truth of what the materialisation of their deity might bring. It was a miracle of sorts but it was a dark and unholy one. Statues should not come to life. They should remain decently posed and immobile. They should not twist and gesture. Most of all they should not sing. From all of the angels came a full-throated hymn of triumph, at once joyous and evil, strangely thrilling and terribly ominous. The sound did not seem loud within the hull of the Baneblade but the fact that it could be heard at all was troubling. We were supposed to be warded from the siren song of Chaos.

The living statues swooped over us, stretching out their hands and sending bolts of flame arcing down. They splattered off the side of the Baneblade. A strange aroma of brimstone and something else, not unpleasant but haunting and odd was detectable even within the tank. I assumed this must be an actual smell, working through the filters, not something supernatural.

‘We must hurry,’ said Drake. ‘The daemon-god is almost through. Its power is starting to manifest and reality is starting to warp under the force of its power.’

‘How long?’ Macharius asked.

‘Less than an hour.’

Macharius kept speaking into the comm-net, giving calm, clipped, clear instructions. Barrages of fire hit the daemonic angels, bursting them asunder, revealing the terrible spirits of the warp that had animated them. These looked even less human than the Horrors we had seen outside, more like those vast flatfish that swim in the seas of Jurasik, although these did not swim but fly. As they were revealed, hideous screeching screams mingled with the singing of that evil choir.

We kept moving towards the cathedral, knowing that something dreadful was waiting for us.

Ahead of us, I got a clear view of the street. A huge force of Imperial troops was engaged with a horde of the heretics. Tanks crushed groundcars beneath their treads as they advanced. Heavy bolter fire shredded hastily thrown-together barricades. Lascannon chopped through formations of defenders. Buildings burned, metal angels filled the sky. Ray-like screamers dived on our troops, seized them in their maws and lifted them skywards to drop them on the ground hundreds of metres below.

Macharius ordered me to the left and directed more troops into the fray with a series of swift commands.

We drove on through the city, crushing the resistance we found. It should have made me more confident but it did not. The fighting raged through the streets. Macharius commanded it all, ordering flanking actions through side streets, sending troops via overpass and viaduct to attack the enemy from the rear. Somehow he kept the whole vast picture of the battle in his head. He had no difficulty visualising the three-dimensional topography of a hive and using it to his advantage. He dispatched reinforcements where they were needed, directed feints and strikes at enemy positions, and kept the whole Imperial Army moving towards its goal in the centre of the city. All the while the clock ticked down. If he felt any pressure knowing of impending doom, no sign showed on his face or in his voice.

A gigantic explosion erupted off to our right. It was potent enough to make the Baneblade shiver and the mighty structures of the hab-blocks rock. I heard Macharius say something about a gas-refinery going up. He sounded confident. I had no idea whether this was part of his plan, something he had expected, something that he could use or whether he was merely living out the maxim that command must always seem calm and in charge. If that was the case, I have to say that no man ever did it better than he.

The streets blurred by. Explosions wracked the city. Buildings blazed, and the streets were filled with smoke and screaming people. In some places hab-towers had collapsed, partially blocking the road. In other places where there had been hab-blocks, there were merely blackened ruins. I guided the Baneblade around the rubble, kept us moving in the direction of the cathedral. All around was war and fire. It felt like the end of the world.

Massive pipes were evident everywhere. I remembered our escape from the cathedral and knew we were getting close. I could have told that from the increase in resistance. There were more heretics and more vehicles. A cohort of hastily repainted Leman Russ blocked our way. I just kept moving towards them. Our guns blazed, reducing them to so much slag, and the Baneblade pushed through the wreckage like a mastodon pushing through a herd of antelope.

We entered the great cleared area around the cathedral. The mighty structure towered over us, rising into a polluted sky kilometres above. I felt certain that somewhere up there, high atop the unholy site, that gigantic starscraper-sized statue was slowly coming to life, stretching its limbs like a giant waking from sleep, and surveying the entire world with burning, hungry eyes.

The whole vast space was filled with heretics. They lurked behind hastily improvised fortifications, blasting away at us with their weapons. Our formation deployed around us, forming up and advancing, a monstrous armoured column that could not be resisted by any human force. Overhead fire-winged metal angels swooped and dived, sending bolts of magical fire down upon us. Fire from our tanks scythed through them and split their metal bodies and revealed the screaming daemons within. Among the heretics more of those pink-fleshed horrors shimmered and bellowed. Oddly fungal flamers hopped over the battlefield, spraying our forces with daemonic fire. Through every entrance into the great open space which surrounded the cathedral, Imperial armour poured. It was astonishingly well-coordinated. Battle tanks crushed anything made of flesh that got in their way. Great lascannon beams scythed across the plaza. Tens of thousands of infantrymen began to disembark from Chimeras. The combat became close and deadly. Banners of a dozen regiments fluttered proudly above the fray. The grey tower on a white background showed the Legions of Asterion were there along with the Red Sword of the Ninth Traskian Hussars.

We moved forwards, grinding resistance beneath our tracks, surging up the enormous marble stairs of the cathedral until we confronted the cyclopean brass doors.

Pulping flesh as we went, we stormed closer. A concentrated barrage of fire buckled the doors, our Baneblade smashed through them like a battering ram and we were within, moving through the enormous vestibule, confronting heretics and steel angels. We drove onwards crushing the resistance until we had gone as far as we could go. Our tanks could move no further; not even a Baneblade could smash the enormous stone and ceramite walls and columns.

Macharius barked another order. A blaze of anti-personnel fire cleared the area around us. We were surrounded by broken bodies and ruined, religious finery. Smouldering banners covered the walls. The temple drapes provided shrouds for corpses.

‘Everybody out,’ Macharius ordered. ‘We go on foot from here.’

It sounded insane but we had no other choice. If we were going to confront the evil at the heart of this we were going to have to do it on foot.