V2 Chapter 7: Shebol Red Hand
At the summit spire of Formal Prime's main hive, in what had once been the seat of the planetary governor's council, the Gothic hall that had been known for its luxury furnishings, Terran silk carpets, and the great oil portraits of successive governors was now a defiled abattoir.
The paintings and carved reliefs had been drenched in blood, thick and dark under the dim lighting. The decorations that had once proclaimed Imperial authority and status had been thrown into corners and replaced by ugly flooring stitched together from skins of uncertain origin. The original throne of governance had long since been removed. In the centre of the council hall, a throne of accumulated bones now stood, skulls packed into its base in a grinning mass.
Shebol Red Hand sat on it.
His hands, covered in dark red that was not paint, drummed rhythmically against the Formal Prime governor's skull.
The hall's pervasive smell of blood and rot, which had once pleased him, was failing to quiet the irritation in his mind.
He turned his eyes, shot through with red and carrying a quality of unrestrained fury, onto the aide kneeling and shaking before him.
"You are saying." His voice was quiet in the way that something is quiet immediately before it detonates. "The false Emperor's servants broke through our entire outer wall defence in less than one standard Terran day."
"Yes...yes, my lord...their armoured formations...and those Titans...the firepower exceeded everything we had anticipated, the outer positions were—"
"Useless filth."
The roar came from somewhere deeper than a human voice.
Shebol came off the bone throne in a single movement, those crimson hands closing around the aide's throat before the man had processed what was happening. The sound that followed was not one a person makes. It was the sound of a body being reduced to its components by something that was not using tools. The aide did not produce a scream. The pieces hit the bone throne and the blood that ran over the stacked skulls made them look worse than before.
"Next." Shebol shook the remains from one hand.
A second aide came forward from the shadows, knees striking the blood-soaked floor, head down.
"You. Pass the order to all garrison forces: hold those bastards in the lower hive. Every last one of them. They bleed to nothing in the sub-levels." He moved across the hall with the restless, grinding energy of something that finds standing still physically difficult. "And send Threskh out with the war engines. I want those Titans reduced to scrap."
"Understood, my lord. At once."
Shebol watched the aide crawl out of the hall and turned to the window.
The upper hive and the spire had their own independent void generators. He was not concerned about the Imperial Titans bringing the spire down directly. And any Imperial airborne units attempting to bypass the lower hive and assault the upper levels directly would be shredded by the anti-aircraft coverage.
In Shebol's assessment, there was exactly one route by which Imperial forces could take this hive's upper levels: through the hub access passages in the lower hive that connected the various floors to the levels above.
Those passages were currently filled with his Penitents. An army without pain, without retreat, without any consideration beyond killing. The Imperial soldiers would learn what a real meatgrinder was.
"You wretched vermin." He put his eyes on the distant breach in the wall and let the words out through his teeth. "I will show you what blood tastes like when you drown in it."
****
As the auramite gate and the surrounding wall section were reduced to cooling iron by the Warlord's Volcano Cannons, the Imperial armoured vanguard was already roaring through the breach.
What greeted them was not the labyrinthine factory blocks or industrial districts they had expected.
Behind the breach was an open semicircular metal space that stretched for a considerable and immediately discouraging distance.
This area had originally served as the lower hive's primary distribution hub. Every structure that had stood here had been demolished on Shebol's order. What remained were the structural support pillars, each one tens of metres in diameter, the mass required to hold up the hive's upper levels, and empty floor between them.
It was a killing ground, purpose-built.
The inner wall surrounding the open space was dense with reinforced alloy bunkers. Elevated metal walkways crisscrossed several hundred metres overhead, converted into temporary firing positions. Anti-tank obstacles had been distributed across the entire floor to deny any vehicle the option of crossing at speed.
The instant the first Leman Russ track hit the plaza, the entire space came alive.
Thousands of heavy bolt-guns, auto-servo cannon emplacements, and anti-tank laser arrays opened simultaneously. Dense interlocking fire wove a net across the entire open area; tracer rounds filled the dim space with continuous streaks of light.
In the first few minutes, the Imperial vehicles that had led the entry became burning wreckage.
"Knock out those obstacles ahead! Two o'clock, elevated walkway, heavy laser battery! Five o'clock, anti-tank position behind the structural pillar!"
Duvette sat in his command vehicle. The System's strategic display was refreshing enemy markers at its maximum rate. Under the Eye of Judgement, every fire point concealed in shadow or behind firing slits became readable, and he seized the vox and passed the target coordinates continuously to the full regiment.
The two Warhound-class Titans came through the breach after the armour, growling forward into the plaza, their hydraulic leg assemblies making a sharp scraping sound against the metal floor with each step.
Then the two larger Reavers crossed the molten threshold as well. Their presence immediately shifted the balance. The Titans' void shields held against the dense fire net and opened a corridor of survivable space for the armoured units behind.
"112th, don't stop. Use the Titan cover. Nominated targets, clear those bunkers."
The 112th's tank crews showed professional competence that the situation fully required. Under Duvette's direction, the Leman Russ main guns stopped area suppression and became precision instruments.
A single armour-piercing round entered a bunker through its firing slit. The internal detonation turned the structure to rubble.
Major Kleist directed the armoured group, working through the plaza's heavy fire positions one by one in coordination with the Titan fire support, stripping the killing ground's defences in systematic layers.
As the last large auto-servo cannon battery dissolved in the Reavers' plasma fire, the fire net finally showed its first gaps.
"Move! Dismount! Everyone out now!"
Duvette pushed the command vehicle's hatch and went through it into the acrid smoke of the battlefield. He waved one arm and shouted into the channel: "Infantry, establish the defensive line! Move faster if you don't want to die here!"
The 112th's soldiers came out of the Chimeras in a wave. Scattered fire was still coming in from above, but with the Iron Crusade running, not one soldier flinched. They moved into the ruins and craters, used the hulks of vehicles still burning for cover, and drove toward the heavy industrial sector's entrance.
In the middle of directing the regiment's reformation, Duvette caught a familiar detail among the figures moving in the chaos.
An 8th Hyrkan Regiment squad, moving with a tactical precision that earned itself a second look even in that noise and fire. At the front of them, a somewhat young officer with eyes that communicated no doubts at all was driving forward with a chainsword, shouting, leading his soldiers directly into the 112th's advance.
Ibram Gaunt. Still a cadet commissar.
Something registered Duvette's attention on him. Gaunt turned mid-movement and looked back.
For one moment, the man who would one day be a legend of the Sabbat Sector found himself looking directly at the man who was already one.
Duvette watched the younger man, and the corner of his mouth moved upward in something that was not exactly relaxed but functioned as a nod of recognition. He gave a slight inclination of his head.
Gaunt went still for exactly one second. It had not occurred to him that in the middle of this particular piece of hell, the commissar of the legendary 112th would acknowledge him.
That single second of shock, and then he reset entirely. He returned the nod with a composed and formal gravity, turned immediately, and drove his squad deeper into the industrial maze.
Duvette looked away, exhaled once, and closed his hand on the power sword's hilt.
Ahead of him: the sub-hive. Deep, dark, vast, and without boundaries that any map could usefully represent.
No lights in there. Only the density of red markers in the shadows waiting for them. The Penitents filling the passages ahead were more concentrated than anything he had seen on Macragge, and they had no plans to stop.
He drew the power sword and took the plasma pistol in his right hand. The power sword's hum was quiet under the noise of the battlefield, but it was there.
No hesitation. He walked directly into the last burst of fire coming from the passage ahead and drove into the steel hell beyond.