“See what the orbitals tell us! Months of silence from Zoica, signs of them preparing for war! Rumours, hearsay—why weren’t we told the truth? Why does this spring down on us so late in the day? Didn’t you know? You, all-seeing, all-knowing High One? Or did you just decide not to tell us?”
The puppets began to thrash and jiggle, knocking into Gnide. He pushed them off.
“I have been in constant dialogue with my counterpart in Ferrozoica Hive Manufactory. We have come to enjoy the link, the companionship. His Highness Clatch of House Clatch is a dear friend. He would not deceive me. The musterings along the Ferrozoica ramparts were made because of the crusade. Warmaster Slaydo leads his legions into our spatial territories; the foul enemy is resisting. It is a precaution.”
“Slaydo is dead, High One. Five years cold on Balhaut. Macaroth is the leader of the crusade now. The beloved Guard legions are sweeping the Sabbat Worlds clean of Chaos scum. We rejoice daily that our world, beloved Verghast, was not touched.”
“Slaydo is dead?” the three voices asked as one.
“Yes, High One. Now, with respect, I ask that we may test- start the Shield. If Zoica is massing to conquer us, we must be ready.”
“No! You undermine me! The Shield cannot be raised without my permission! Zoica does not threaten! Clatch is our friend! Slaydo is not dead!”
The three voices rose in a shrill chorus, the meat puppets quivering with unknowable rage.
“You would not have treated Heironymo with such disrespect!”
“Your brother, great one as he was, did not hide in an Awareness Tank and talk through dead servitors… High One.”
“I forbid it!”
Gnide pulled a glittering ducal seal from his coat. “The Legislature expected this. I am empowered by the houses of Vervunhive, in expediency, to revoke your powers as per the Act of Entitlement, 45jk. The Legislature commends your leadership, but humbly entreats you that it is now taking executive action.” Gnide pushed the puppets aside and crossed to a brass console in the far wall. He pressed the centre of the seal and data-limbs extended like callipers from the rosette with a machined click. Gnide set it in the lock and turned it.
The console flashed into life, chattering runes and sigils scrolling down the glass plate.
“No!” screeched the three voices. “This is insubordination! I am Vervunhive! I am Vervunhive!”
“You are dethroned for the good of the city,” Gnide snapped. He pressed the switches in series, activating the power generators deep beneath the hive. He entered the sequences that would engage the main transmission pylon and bring the Shield online.
The cherub flew at him. He batted it away and it upturned, tangling in its cords. Gnide punched in the last sequence and reached for the activation lever.
He gasped and fell back, reaching behind him. The girl puppet jerked away, a long blade wedged in her dead hands. The blade was dark with blood.
Gnide tried to close the gouting wound in his lower back. His knees gave and he fell. The girl swung in again and stuck the blade through his throat.
He fell, face down, soaking the carpet with his pumping blood.
“I am Vervunhive,” the girl said. The cherub and youth repeated it, dull and toneless.
Inside the iron tank, bathed in warm ichor and floating free, every organ and vessel connected by tubes to the life-bank, Salvador Sondar, High Master of Vervunhive… dreamed.
The salt grasses were ablaze. All along the scarp rise, Vervun Primary tanks were buckled and broken amid the rippling, grey grass, fire spilling out of them. The air was toxic with smoke.
Commissar Kowle dropped clear of the command tank as flames within consumed the shrieking Vegolain and his crew. Kowle’s coat was on fire. He shed it.
Enemy fire pummelled down out of the smoke-black air. A Vervun tank a hundred metres away exploded and sent Shockwaves of whickering shrapnel in all directions.
One shard grazed Kowle’s temple and dropped him.
He got up again. Crews were bailing from burning tanks, some on fire, some trying to help their blazing fellows. Others ran.
Kowle walked back through the line of decimated hive armour, smelling the salt grass as it burned, thick and rancid in his nose.
He pulled out his pistol.
“Where is your courage?” he asked a tank gunner as he put a round through his head.
“Where is your strength?” he inquired of two loaders fleeing up the slope, as he shot them both.
He put his muzzle to the head of a screaming, half-burned tank captain and blew out his brains. “Where is your conviction?” Kowle asked.
He swung round and pointed his pistol at a group of tank crewmen who were stumbling up the grassy rise towards him from their exploded tank.
“Well?” he asked. “What are you doing? This is war. Do you run from it?”
They hesitated. Kowle shot one through the head to show he meant business.
“Turn! Face the foe!”
The remaining crewmen turned and fled towards the enemy positions. A tank round took them all apart a second later.
Missiles strafed in from the low, cloudlike meteorites and sundered twenty more tanks along the Vervun formation. The explosions were impossibly loud. Kowle was thrown flat in the grass.
He heard the clanking as he rolled over. On the far rise, battletanks and gun platforms painted in the ochre livery of Zoica rolled down towards him.
A thousand or more.
Out of nowhere, just before nightfall, about a half-hour after the klaxons had stopped yelping, the first shells fell, unexpected, hurled by long-range guns beyond the horizon.
Two fell short on the southern outer habs, kicking up plumes of wreckage from the worker homes.
Another six dented the Curtain Wall.
At Hass West, Daur yelled to his men and cranked the guns around.
Dug-in Zoica armour and artillery, hidden out in the burning grasslands, found their range. Shells began to drop into the hive itself.
A gigantic salvo hit the railhead at Veyveyr Gate and set it
