Engines of War Read Online Free PDF Page B

freak – or an ork – with the stink of its blood in his nostrils and throat and no time to think, his only options to fight and kill or to die?
    ‘We can toast your marksmanship skills later,’ Arkelius grumbled.
    ‘Yes, sergeant,’ agreed Iunus. ‘Reloading the Skyspear now, sergeant.’
    ‘Corbin, how are those diagnostics coming?’ asked Arkelius.
    ‘We had a little overheating in the engine,’ his driver answered him, ‘but I’ve pumped some coolant down there and it seems fine. We’ve lost external temperature sensors. Oh, and there’s a crack in my vision slit. The Scourge has coped with worse, a lot worse.’
    ‘Got another target lock, sergeant,’ Iunus boasted.
    ‘You know what to do, brother,’ Arkelius told him.
    Iunus fired, and, once again, the Hunter shuddered as it spat out its deadly payload. The target this time – another daemon rider – was alert enough to see its reckoning coming. It spurred its mount into a neck-breaking dive, and the missile almost grazed the insect’s tattered wings but missed them by a hair. It soared away into the clouds and was lost.
    ‘Bad luck,’ Arkelius commiserated. ‘Still, two clean kills out of two shots is–’
    ‘The final count isn’t in yet, sergeant,’ said Iunus. ‘Ten o’clock, high, look!’
    It took Arkelius a moment – but then he saw it. The Scourge ’s missile had turned itself around in midair. It was coming at the insect and its daemon rider again. At least, Arkelius assumed it was the same insect, the same rider – and the very same missile.
    He had been familiarised, of course – via hypno-conditioning – with the Skyspear’s unique properties. To see those properties in action, however, was something else.
    This time, the daemon didn’t get a chance to dodge. Thinking itself safe, it had taken on a Stormtalon in single combat and swiped at the Imperial ship’s engine pod with a double-bladed sword. It barrel-rolled out of the way as the Stormtalon’s guns responded – and straight into the teeth of the missile that it hadn’t seen coming up behind it.
    Arkelius was tempted to let out an exclamation himself.
    By now, Orath’s sky was a writhing mass of wings and bodies, both organic and mechanical in nature. They were spinning, twisting, wheeling around each other in a dizzying dance; one in which the slightest misstep could result in a sudden, explosive death for the dancer.
    A sustained barrage of gunfire from the ground only added to the lethal confusion.
    The Ultramarines had two Hunter tanks and two Stalkers, each of the latter sporting an Icarus stormcannon array: two triple-barrelled cannons. They were peppering the flies and their riders with solid rounds whenever they saw an opening. They were forced to hold back a little, however, lest they strike an ally.
    The Hunters’ gunners, with their unerring guided missiles, had no such problem. ‘Another target lock, sergeant,’ Iunus reported.
    Behind his helmet, Arkelius smiled to himself as he gave the order: ‘Fire!’
    A wave of nausea took Chelaki by surprise.
    It swept over him, blurring his vision and robbing him of his sense of balance.
    His occulobe – the implant at the base of his brain that blessed him with superhuman eyesight – tried to compensate, but only worsened matters. Before he knew it, he had sunk to one knee, one hand on the ground. He cursed himself under his breath for his weakness.
    He felt his secondary heart kicking in, pumping frantically to compensate for his primary heart’s weakness.
    He had given the ruins of Fort Kerberos a fairly wide berth. If only he had had more explosives about him, he thought, or a working gun, if he could have seen a way to get up close to the enemy commander. He had concluded, however, that he could best serve by joining the newly arrived Ultramarines on the battlefield, who were just a few more kilometres to the north , close enough that he was able to tune in to their vox-chatter.
    Chelaki pushed