Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon by David Annandale

Author:David Annandale [Annandale, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Military, Warhammer 40k, Imperial Guard, Orks (Fictional Alien Race)
ISBN: 9781849709118
Google: y-8drgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1849709580
Publisher: BLACK LIBRARY
Published: 2015-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

3. Yarrick

The stompa’s cannon took out the front half of the manufactorum. Facade and walls and floors disintegrated. I had a wall behind me when the orks fired. That was as far as I had run in the few seconds granted to me. That was as much as I accomplished in the aid of my survival. The rest was in the hands of the Emperor.

The Emperor protects.

Force and stone hurled me forwards. Something splashed against my back. Beneath my feet, the floor dropped away. I moved forwards and down, a leaf of flesh in the grip of wind and gravity. Sound and flame filled my senses. I put my arms over my face and held my head. I did not fight my trajectory. My body went loose and took the blows, but my will was iron.

Do not die. Not now. Not here. Your work is not yet done.

My thoughts were not so coherent. They were a wordless roar of refusal. But it had meaning.

I flew and I fell through heat and dust and battering stone. I tumbled and bounced, dropping with the collapse of the manufactorum. Time shattered into nonsense. I fell for an eternity and for mere seconds. Then there was a blow that felt like a power fist to my spine, and I was still.

Several seconds of sheet lightning agony passed before I could draw a breath. I coughed. I spat out dirt-clogged phlegm. The air was thick with dust, but enough weak daylight reached me that I could see where I was. I had landed on a large, canted slab of rockcrete. Below me was a jumble of rubble sloping towards the street. Beneath it, hundreds of thousands of citizens had been crushed to nothing. I looked up and saw jagged floors and twisted rebar. The lower half of the Kasadya complex, reaching far into its heart, had undergone a total collapse. The upper tower still stood for now, but I could see it sway.

I sat up. I left a bloody smear on the slab. The blood was not mine. Somner, I realised. He had been a few steps behind me and been disintegrated by the blast. Of the tech-priest there was no sign.

The stompa took a step backwards. Then another. It was going to fire again and finish the job.

I stood and made my way down the rubble. I moved with speed that would have been reckless if hesitation hadn’t been even more lethal. I leapt from slab to slab. I angled my way towards the feet of the stompa. I was placing my faith in the orks’ skill. I was trusting them not to bring the tower down on their heads. It was a weak form of trust. It was the only move open to me.

The rubble shook with the tread of the stompa. The curtain of dust turned the stompa into a mountainous silhouette. I reached the ground. I became aware of other shapes in the dust running in every direction. ‘With me!’ I shouted.

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