Read Online Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - Free Book Online Page B

Black Templars. You have been bold enough to come here, and honour me with your face. I am no fool. I know how rare it is for a Chaplain to reveal his human features to one not of his brotherhood. Ask what you came to ask, and I will answer.’
    I step closer and press my palm against the casket’s surface. The vibration is twinned with that of my armour. I can feel the eyes of the Mechanicus minions upon me, upon my dark ceramite, their reverent gazes showing their longing to touch the perfection of the machinesmith’s craft represented by Astartes war plate.
    And I look into the mechanical eyes of the princeps as she floats in the milky waters.
    ‘Princeps Zarha. Helsreach calls for you. Will you walk?’
    She smiles again, a blind grandmother with rotten teeth, as she presses her own palm against mine. Only the reinforced glass separates us.
    ‘Invigilata will walk.’
    Seven hours later, the people of the city heard a distant mechanical howl from the wastelands, eclipsing the cries of the lesser Titans. It echoed through the streets and around the spiretops, chilling the blood of every soul in the hive. Street dogs barked in response, as if sensing a larger predator nearby.
    Colonel Sarren shivered, though he smiled at the others in his command meeting. Through bloodshot eyes, heavy with sleeplessness, he regarded them all.
    ‘ Stormherald has awoken,’ he said.
    Three days, just as promised, and the city shook with the tread of the god-machines.
    Invigilata’s engines walked, and the great gates in the northern wall rumbled open to welcome them. Grimaldus and the hive’s command staff watched from atop the viewing platform. The knight blink-clicked a rune on his retinal display, accessing a coded channel.
    ‘Good morning, princeps,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome to Helsreach.’
    In the distance, a walking cathedral-fortress pounded its slow, stately way through the first city blocks.
    ‘Hail, Chaplain.’ The crone’s voice was laden with barely-contained energy. ‘I was born in a hive like this, you know.’
    ‘It is fitting then, that you’ll be dying here, Zarha.’
    ‘Do you say so, sir knight? Have you seen me today?’
    Grimaldus watched the distant form of Stormherald, as tall as the towers surrounding it.
    ‘It is impossible not to see you, princeps.’
    ‘It’s impossible to kill me, as well. Remember that, Grimaldus.’
    No human had ever dared use his name so informally before. The knight smiled for the first time in days.
    The city was finally sealed. Helsreach was ready.
    And as night fell, the sky caught fire.

Chapter V
    Fire in the Sky
    Its name had been, in nobler years, The Purest Intent.
    A strike cruiser, constructed on the minor forge world Shevilar and granted to the Shadow Wolves Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. It had been lost with all hands, captured by xenos raiders, thirty-two years before the Third War for Armageddon.
    When a huge and shapeless amalgamation of scrap and flame came burning through the cloud cover above the fortified city, warning sirens sounded once more across the hive. The squadron of fighters in the air – commanded by Korten Barasath – voxed their inability to engage. The hulk was burning up already, and far out of their capability to damage with their Lightnings’ lascannons and long-barrelled autocannons.
    The wing of fighters broke away as the hulk burned through the sky.
    Thousands of soldiers manning the immense walls watched as the wreckage blazed its way overhead. The air itself shook with its passage, a palpable tremor from the thrum of overworked, dying engines.
    Exactly eighteen seconds after it cleared the city walls, The Purest Intent ended its spaceborne life as it ploughed a new scar into Armageddon’s war-torn face. All of Helsreach shook to its foundations as the massive cruiser hammered into the ground and carved a blackened canyon in its wake.
    It took a further two minutes for the crippling damage inflicted by the impact to kill the