by Dan Abnett
The door gunners opened the ramp again and started to wave at them. The machine’s crew had clearly not been able to stomach the idea of leaving Theda empty when lives were wasting.
Darrow and Scalter ran Eads bodily towards the ramp, in under the tail booms and into the embrace of the gunners.
“Get in! Inside! Find a space and a handhold!”
The compartment was dark, a hot metal box. As they got Eads into a scissor-seat, the door crew brought aboard several more stragglers. A buzzer sounded. The ramp began to retract again, and the engine noise rose to a scream.
With a lurch, they left the ground, nose down, and began to accelerate and climb.
Theda MAB South, 07.02
Before the trucks had even come to a halt, the last three pilots of Umbra Flight had jumped clear and started to run towards their hardstand shelters. The fitters followed them.
“I need just five of you!” Racklae bellowed above the raging bombardment. “The rest… get going. Evac transport over there!”
Racklae turned and kept running with the five men who’d volunteered. The others started sprinting towards the last two Oneros that were loading near the main drome hangar.
The truck drivers ran with them.
The whole airfield seemed to be on fire. There were bodies and shell-holes everywhere, overturned vehicles, buckled munitions carts. Some handstands were ablaze, and in some burned the wrecks of planes that had never made it up. Two Lightnings launched, and swept away north. Marquall fully expected to find Double Eagle in pieces.
But it was intact, and so was Blansher’s bird. Del Ruth’s, however, had been caught by strafing fire. The engines and cockpit were just mangled ribbons of metal.
All the other Umbra machines were gone. Cordiale, Ranfre, Zemmic and Van Tull must have made it out. Into the air, at least.
Three Razors went over, low, drives shrieking. In the western sector of the airfield, Tormentors were drizzling submunitions on the machine shops.
Racklae sent two of his men to ready Marquall’s plane, and two to do the same for Blansher’s. “Basic checks, clear them off, and then head for the transports!” he emphasised.
With Del Ruth and the remaining fitter, Racklae ran across to the adjacent row of hardstand shelters. The Thunderbolt wing that had occupied this area, the 76th Firedrakes, had already quit, but they’d left two of their mustard-yellow Bolts behind. Bodies on the ground nearby left little doubt that both pilots had been thrown down, along with members of the ground crew, on the way to their machines.
One of the abandoned Bolts had tail and elevator damage, but the other seemed okay. Racklae started work getting Del Ruth airborne.
Marquall dropped into his own cockpit, and switched primary systems on with one hand as he wrestled to strap up his harness. One of the fitters rolled the primer cart close for connection as the other disengaged the fuel and data-feed lines, and then jumped up on the wing plates to pass Marquall his helmet.
The primer fired and surged, and after a second, Nine-Nine’s mighty turbofans began to turn. Marquall leaned out.
“Unhook the primer and get out of here!” he yelled at the fitters over the rising whine. “Just go!”
They ducked out of view under the cowling. Marquall closed and locked his own lid, fastened his mask, and then did a last preflight overview of vitals. Pressure, coolant, fuel, electronics, air-mix, ammunition. Green all around.
The fitters reappeared, and waved him double thumbs. He signalled back okay, and the two men turned and began to run.
The last Marquall saw of them, they were crossing the asphalt apron towards the heavy lifters.
Ducts angled to vertical, Marquall eased open the throttle and brought Double Eagle up and away from the ground.
“Two, this is Eight. I’m going clear.”
“Copy that, Eight. Just get out of here.”
In the present circumstances, no pilot needed to be dawdling about on lift. Still low, he swung the nose, and lit the burners as he wound the ducts round to level.
Marquall’s Thunderbolt crossed the blazing airfield at rooftop height, power building. He glimpsed bats crossing behind him, but he ignored them. No tone warnings.
He turned into a wide climb north, and in thirty seconds was crossing the coastal ramparts and the long white seam of the shoreline strand. Sea was under him now.
“Two? This is Eight. Are you clear?”
“Confirm that, Eight. Coming up at your five. Don’t wait for me. Turn and punch it.”
A thousand metres below, Blansher watched Marquall’s Bolt blasting eastwards. He waited, then banked firmly, turning back towards the field he had only just left.
“Four? Where are you? Aggie, are you launching?”
From his high vantage point, the true extent of the destruction was finally clear. Blansher could only half-see the ruined airfield through the blanket of black smoke and the sudden blooms of white and yellow flame. Beyond it, Theda City was encased in a vast nimbus of smoke. The air to the south was crawling with formations of enemy planes, dots that caught the sunlight and twinkled against the dark clouds.
“Aggie? Where are you?”
He made another pass over the MAB. Below, Blansher saw two fat Oneros plough up out of the boiling vapour and thunder away in a tight track eastwards. Then a smaller transport plane came up, but it seemed to be in trouble. His blood chilled as he saw a pair of Locusts streak over it diagonally and turn it into a fireball.
“Two? Two, are you receiving? This is Four.”
“Go ahead, I hear you.”
“Coming up now.”
Blansher banked again and saw the tiny, cruciform shape of Del Ruth’s yellow Thunderbolt as it emerged from the smoke line. It was rising cleanly. Instinctively, Blansher turned his rudder and rolled down so that he was coming in behind her as she climbed.
A Hell Talon, having just emptied its payload onto the field’s main drome, swept out of the smoke and saw the flare of her burners. Opportunistic, it lined up immediately, using its pull-out momentum to propel it into a rear attack.
It was five hundred metres lower than Blansher, and about the same distance ahead. Blansher hit the throttle, punched back into his seat, and dropped low, flicking on his targeters and activating his gunsight. He selected quad. He didn’t want to risk hitting Del Ruth with lasfire if he missed.
All Thunderbolts had their own feel, their own temperament. Del Ruth was still getting used to the individual character of her new machine, and as a result was flying slightly erratically.
It saved her life.
The Talon’s first bursts, which looked like the sparks of a striking tinderbox from Blansher’s position, went wide.
Blansher tore down, levelled out, viffed slightly to adjust, and got the tone ping he’d been praying for.
His thumb pressed hard.
A cone of smoke gouted out around the nose of his bird as the quads chattered.
A sudden, savage spray of fragments burst out of the Hell Talon. Blansher kept firing, smacking his shots into its midsection. Fire guttered out, then the enemy machine split into two large sections, almost divided along its centreline. The shorn segments fluttered away below him.
“You’re clear, Four. Get moving,” he voxed.
“You shouldn’t have come back for me, Mil,” her reply crackled. “You should already be gone.”
Not true, he thought. Not true at all. As acting flight commander, it was his duty to make sure all his pilots got clear, even if it meant his own life.
And the real tragedy was Umbra Flight had left one pilot behind, and there was now nothing any of them could do about it.
Western District Theda, 07.26
Jagdea struggled along the transitway between hab stacks, yelling at every vehicle that rumbled by. Nothing stopped. There were people in the streets, and a penetrating, sickly air of distress, something which the word “panic” no longer did justice to. Every few seconds there was a flash or a rumble from th
e east, and the ground shook several times. One particularly large detonation away to the south was followed by a failure in power supply betrayed only by the sudden cessation of the raid sirens. After that, in the strange quiet, there was just the distant booming, the whistle and crump of munitions, the drone of aviation engines. Once or twice, Jagdea thought she heard distant gunfire, small-arms. She put that down to her imagination.
Her wound throbbed. She’d brought no meds with her, and she had managed to knock her sling half a dozen times during dashes for cover when bombers came over.
Fatigue overcame her, quite suddenly. Fatigue, and a sense of hopelessness. She sat down on a kerb and felt tears running down her cheeks. How weak was that? How bloody weak was that?
A truck went past. She didn’t even look up. She heard a screech of brakes.
Jagdea lifted her head. A Munitorum transporter, laden with packing cartons, had pulled to a halt twenty metres away, and the driver was dismounting.
Jagdea rose to her feet. It was the driver, the man with the burn-scarred face. What was his name? She couldn’t remember. She wondered if he’d told her. She wondered if she’d ever bothered to ask.
“Commander Jagdea? Is that you?”
She nodded. He hurried over to her. “I saw the jacket. Recognised an aviator’s uniform. God-Emperor, are you all right?”
“No,” she said.
“You need a lift?”
“Of course I bloody do.”
He helped her over to the cab and supported her as she climbed up. Then he ran around to the driver’s side and got in.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he threw the truck into forward gear.
“I was in a hab clinic. Wounded on a sortie. I heard the raid begin and… I started to walk.”
“What? To MAB South?”
She wiped her face. “I’m not sure I know where I was going. Just… trying to rejoin my unit.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t want another FTR,” he said.
She hesitated. “I never did thank you for your help that night.”
“What help? I was out of line, talking to the boy like that. You had every reason to be angry at me. Apart from that, what did I do? A bit of driving for you. That’s all I’m good for these days. The Munitorum gives me instructions, and I do some driving for them.”
“Even now? In the middle of this?”
“Even now. I am a servant of the Throne, commander. I do as I’m bid. My senior sent me to Kozkoh Administorum, with orders to collect a bunch of Munitorum record files that someone somewhere didn’t want falling into enemy hands.”
Jagdea shook her head. “Record files? Not people? You could be carrying a couple of dozen human lives to safety in this truck.”
“That had occurred to me, commander. The Munitorum has curious priorities, especially at times like this.”
She looked round at him. He was concentrating on the road ahead. She realised for the first time that he had probably been a good looking man before half his face had been melted.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“Kaminsky,” he replied. “August Kaminsky. Munitorum Transit Division, vehicle 167.”
“You were aircrew before that.”
“Combat pilot, Commonwealth Airforce. Wolfcubs and the like. Sixteen years. But that’s ancient history.”
“Look, Kaminsky,” she began. “Can you get me to the field? I know you have orders, but I really need to rejoin my command.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. From here, it would be a long slog, especially given the circumstances.”
“Then I need to evac at least. Anywhere closer?”
“Well, I’ve been told to report to an extraction centre at Mandora Point on the north shore. That’s where these damn record files are supposed to be delivered. There should be mass-barges there, maybe even lifters. Good enough?”
“Okay, that’ll do. I just need to get out. Get out and clear and then back in the game.” He smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking that for months,” he said.
They rode on for fifteen minutes without talking. Kaminsky drove hard, almost recklessly, through the shattered streets. Several times, Jagdea winced as he ran them into walls of smoke that washed across the roadway, without knowing what might be concealed by them. Twice, Kaminsky had to brake hard to avoid debris and slopes of rubble.
“Theda’s done for,” he said at last.
“Yes. I’m afraid it might be.”
“I guess these are the end times.”
“There’s still a chance,” she said.
Swinging the wheel, he laughed at her. “I don’t think so. Not now.”
“If a member of my flight spoke like that, I’d have them up on charges. There’s always a chance. While we still breathe, by the grace of the Emperor, there’s still a chance.”
“Then I count myself fortunate that I’m not a member of your flight, mamzel. Enothis is my homeworld, and I gave everything I had to protect it. There comes a time when a person has to be pragmatic.”
“I fought for my homeworld too. Now I’m here fighting for yours. Don’t talk to me about effort. Don’t talk to me about contribution. And as for being pragmatic, that’s sometimes just another word for defeatist.”
“Well, screw you too, mamzel—”
“Kaminsky! Look out!”
They’d just come through another drift of smoke. In the suddenly-revealed road ahead, a group of figures, dressed in dark red uniforms, turned to face them.
Jagdea saw leering iron masks, bowl helmets, lasrifles.
“Blood Pact!” she blurted out.
“Turn round! Turn us around!”
Kaminsky was already hauling on the wheel. He swore loudly, fighting to avoid a full skid. The truck slewed around madly, stripping tread from its fat tyres. It came side-on to the Archenemy troopers.
And stalled.
“Kaminsky! Kaminsky!” Jagdea yelled.
“Stop shouting at me!” he yelled, gunning the starter. The Blood Part drop-troops began to fire at them, running forward. Las-rounds smacked into the mack’s side and one crazed the door window.
“Kaminsky! For Throne’s sake!”
“Will you shut up, woman?” A las-round went clean through the cab in front of their faces, shattering Kaminsky’s side pane.
The truck’s engines burst back into life.
Jagdea was thrown back against the seat by the violent restart. Her left arm cracked against the door jamb and she howled in pain.
Kaminsky swung them round to the left, standing on the accelerator. The big truck side-swiped the burned-out shell of a car, and slammed it out of the way. Then the Blood Pact squad was behind them and they were barrelling away down a side street at nearly sixty.
“Are you hit?” he said.
“No.”
“You cried out.”
“I’m not hit.”
“I’m sorry I shouted at you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Looks like we’re not going that way,” Kaminsky said.
Theda Old Town, 07.43
All along the canal side, recent bombing had felled the ancient buildings and tenements, even the old Kazergat Bridge. But the templum was miraculously unscathed. Coughing in the smoke and brick dust, Viltry hurried along the canal’s bank and went down to the church door.
He paused there, and glanced up at the effigy of the God-Emperor. “Remember me?” he asked. Viltry opened the door.
It was almost disturbingly calm inside. The air was clear, though he could still smell the stink of smoke from the firebombing. The templum was empty. The rows of pews, the alabaster columns, the faint residue of camphor and incense.
He walked down the aisle, his boots dipping on the mosaic flooring. Saints and daemons passed under his heels. The Ministorum priests had long since fled.
He came to a halt in front of the votary shrine.
“God-Emperor…” he sighed.
“Oskar?”
Oskar Viltry turned slowly.
She had been sitting at the end of a pew row, hidden behind a column. He hadn’t seen her. She was shivering in her thin coat.
He took a step towards her, almost laughing out in strange delight.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“Where else could I go?” Beqa Mayer said. “How else would you know where to find me?”
Northern Theda, 08.12
They tore out of the dying city and onto a coastal highland where the habs became infrequent and scattered. Jagdea glimpsed the sea beyond the headland.
“Kaminsky? Where are we going?” she asked.
“Not the field, that’s for sure. Or the extraction either. The bastards have the whole place locked down. I’m running on a hunch.”
“What sort of hunch?”
“The sort of hunch that will disappoint you if it doesn’t work.”
“Kaminsky?”
“I think there comes a point,” said Kaminsky, “where the act of being pragmatic and the notion there’s always still a chance become the same thing.”
They went under a road-bridge and then down a steep hill between rows of fish processing plants. Kaminsky suddenly turned right, and drove the truck down an access way into a yard behind the manufactories.
Ahead of them stood a line of flakboard sheds facing the edge of the sea cliff. The sheds were painted green. The nearest had a large, shuttered door in the side of it. It was barred and locked.
“Get out, commander,” he said.
She looked at him.
“I mean it. Get out.”
Jagdea climbed down from the cab and slammed the door.
Kaminsky reversed and then drove the truck at the shutter. Jagdea winced at the impact. Trailing a fender, the truck reversed and drove in again.
“Throne’s sake, Kaminsky!” Jagdea cried out.
A third battering run, and the shutter tore away at the sills, partially crunched out of its flakboard frame. Kaminsky got down out of his mashed truck.
“Come on,” he said.
Jagdea hurried over to him, and they bent in low to pass under the crumpled metal sheets of the door shutter.