The Iron Kingdom (Dawn of Fire: Warhammer 40,000 Book 5) by Nick Kyme

Author:Nick Kyme [Kyme, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2023-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

AN OLD SHIP

A MOST VIOLENT CARGO

DIRE MEASURES

It had not always been called Vortun’s Ire. In the earliest days of its creation in the shipyards of Jupiter, its name had been Invincible Wrath. A bellicose name for a bellicose ship that matched its captains aptly. No man or woman who became master of the Wrath was anything but a warmonger and a belligerent commander. The ship, it was said, would tolerate no other. Most notorious on its honour roll was Katphur Vortun, a bloodthirsty and entirely unreasonable man who never spared an enemy, never gave any quarter and, most crucially, never retreated from a fight. As such, his war record was exemplary, the Wrath’s list of confirmed kills both impressive and daunting. So successful was Vortun that both of his ship’s appellations appeared entirely appropriate for the man.

Until the Rift.

Everything changed when Cadia fell and the galaxy tore open. Where some shipmasters who were caught in the tides of hell unleashed by the Cicatrix Maledictum turned engines in reverse as they sought to survive calamity, Vortun embraced it. He spat at the denizens of hell, standing braced upon his ship’s bridge like a sea captain of old might grip the wheel as he faced down a storm. For this was a storm, the greatest and most terrible in the Imperium’s history, and Vortun would not blanch from it.

The Wrath added seven traitor vessels to its tally in the days following the appearance of the Rift. All capital ships, all scalps that would have made any captain’s career.

In the end Vortun did not die from a lance salvo or a hostile boarding force. No, as he was spewing his fury and hatred at the enemies of the Imperium, avowing their painful deaths at his hand, his heart gave out and he died in that moment, upon the deck. A man with water for blood was second-in-command, and he pulled the Wrath from what the accounts would say was certain destruction. Nonetheless, he was stripped of his captaincy and forgotten by history. To honour the fallen shipmaster, the Wrath was rechristened Vortun’s Ire.

All of this Renyard knew, for he was, if nothing else, a student of history. Just as the Marines Malevolent also knew that Vortun had raged at the original design of the ship and had seen to the stripping out of what he called ‘redundant sections’, repurposing them as war decks. Here then was where Renyard and his warriors had waited whilst the rest of the reclamation forces deployed for the ground. This part of the ship was registered on no schematics and known to only a handful of officers in the Praxis battle group. Fewer still knew of its contents. Only one, in fact: Lord Ardemus, the groupmaster himself. Renyard’s orders had come from the admiral direct with vermilion-level encryption. Such was their level of sophistication they could bypass any jamming system.

The orders were simple enough, a single word, the true meaning of which would condemn an entire world.

Engage.

As the code-key inputted into Renyard’s vambrace unlocked the cipher, he activated his armour.

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