by Gav Thorpe
She had live-fired her lasgun during their scarce training drills, but this was of a totally different magnitude of destruction. Added to that was the knowledge that she would likely be firing in genuine combat. The thought made her legs tremble and her head spin. It was not the idea of her death that set her nerves quivering but the knowledge that others were relying on her to protect them. If she failed, if she messed up in some way, it wouldn’t just be her that died but Menber, Seleen.
Even Kettai…
Like a battle tank emerging pristine from the end of the line, Zenobi’s experiences all came together in that heartbeat to bring another realisation. Everything the integrity officers said about vigilance was just as true and important as her stint as gunner. A single slip could bring calamity. If one enemy spy or sympathiser was allowed to infiltrate the Addaba Free Corps they could ruin the entire cause.
Her legs had stopped shaking. The speaker set into the bulkhead just above her head had quietly hissed into life. She could hear someone moving about in the command chamber set into the heart of the gunnery car; the squeak of a chair, the thud of something being dropped on the floor. A few breaths wheezed mechanically across the internal vox-link.
‘This is Lieutenant Okoye, fourth gunnery car command officer.’ Feedback whined. There was a pause punctuated by a few beeps and a hiss of static, which then faded, leaving the connection clear but for an occasional crackle. ‘There are aircraft inbound to our position from orbit. It could be an overflight, they could be heading somewhere else, but we have to assume the worst. All weapons are now live. Anti-aircraft explosive rounds have been loaded.’
There was another pause and a sound that Zenobi didn’t identify immediately but realised after a few seconds was the crinkling of plas-transparencies.
‘The crew gunners have been spread across the train to provide experienced, accurate fire. Remember what they taught you earlier. Follow the line of your tracer rounds and lead your targets. Between the time something appears on your targeting imager and the time you open fire, a fast-moving craft will have covered a hundred metres and more. Weight of fire will keep them off us, do not conserve ammunition unnecessarily.’
Lion’s Gate space port, mesophex exterior, one day since assault
Seventy kilometres above the ground assault, where the atmosphere became space, scores of drop-ship and attack craft squadrons descended towards the Starspear. They had been travelling for the better part of twenty hours, drifting tens of thousands of kilometres from ships beyond the range of the greatest defence lasers.
As they closed to near orbit, one by one their engines lit, a firmament of plasma jets springing into life against the blackness. Like shooting stars they fell, hundreds of craft each intent upon a different target, angling towards one of the Starspear’s more than three hundred docking spars, platforms and quays.
Six strike cruisers powered through the void, dashing into the surveyor-wake created by the massed gunship assault. Drop cascades opened, disgorging payloads of assault pods, ejected from their bays by rocket boosters in the absence of sufficient gravity. As the laser beams of defence cannons speared out, the emptied starships broke away. The last was not quick enough, its void shields lit by the impact of a volatile blast. Like a pack of hounds the other defence positions converged their fire on the struggling vessel, swiftly overloading its remaining shields. One final slash of red energy tore through its engines, plasma detonations spilling like blue fire along its length.
Aboard one of the larger pods lit by the brief flash of azure was Berossus, once favoured of the Trident, fallen into disrepute after near-death at the hand of his primarch. The systems of his artificial body flashed with sensor data, highlighting the outcrop of ferrocrete to which he fell, as well as a spike of radiation from the detonating vessel above – the ship he had been aboard only minutes earlier. He cared nothing for the loss of the ship, and was long past any fleeting thoughts of mortality its destruction might have engendered, his thoughts wholly concerned with his immediate future.
It was quite rare for an objective to conveniently have three hundred square kilometres of dockspace for gunships and drop pods to land on. It was not a fact that amused Berossus as the metal capsule depositing him towards the Fourth Eastward quay-spur slammed through the thin atmosphere above the space port. It should have been his assault to lead, a glorious campaign for one of the IV Legion’s most lauded warsmiths.
Instead he was encased in an artificial frame, scorned by the primarch and almost forgotten by his battle-brothers. The body of a demigod with the authority of an infant.
Retro-jets fired, slowing the pod’s descent almost as harshly as an impact, but cocooned in the sarcophagus of his Dreadnought armour Berossus felt nothing. He was only dimly aware of pneumatically powered legs, his arms replaced with heavy weapons. Not for him the familiar pre-battle rush of hormones, a stacked atomic fuel cell for a heart. Crude kinaesthetic feedback gave him a rudimentary awareness of self, but to all purposes he was a mind trapped in a prison of ceramite, titanium and plasteel.
It was easy to regard his salvation as a punishment instead. Those that had kept him alive, had wired the broken remnants of his body into this machine, had thought they were preserving his legacy. All they had done was extend the life he would live knowing the shame of Perturabo’s censure. More than the physical agony, the imagined pain of ghost limbs, the mental torment of that failure vexed Berossus. He had been ascending towards his prime as commander, a long service in the Trident assured.
And all because he had the misfortune to bear bad news.
The drop pod slammed into the ferrocrete apron amid a blast of jets and the scattered shrapnel of frag launchers – not that there was a living soul on the platform to oppose the landing. The access ramp whined down and explosive bolts detonated to release the crash-clamps that held his armoured form in place. Taking a heavy step, the thud of his footfall lost in the thin air, Berossus advanced onto the metaphorical ground of Terra.
With ocular contacts and inhuman sensors he observed his surroundings. Seven hundred Iron Warriors formed the landing force tasked with securing the uppermost ten kilometres of the space port. There was barely anything alive, the airless upper levels now a haunt only of those with power armour or vac suits. Pieces of debris from the destroyed starship fell around the Starspear. This far up they had little momentum, thousand-tonne chunks of metal and plascrete that drifted through the midnight blue as serene as snowflakes.
Berossus barely spared the descending meteors a thought. Even this mission was punishment, assigned a guard dog’s role rather than spearheading the assault.
Not this time. He was a warsmith in his soul even if he was stripped of the prestige.
‘My warriors, hearken to me!’ His bellow leapt across the vox-links to his battle-brothers. ‘Are we to stand upon this barren apron while lesser warriors steal our glory? Those with souls forged in battle do not stand sentry, they seek out the enemy and destroy them!’
Not caring whether any followed him or not, Berossus turned his massive frame towards the closest rampway leading into the body of the space port. He would reclaim his status as warsmith or be destroyed in the attempt.
Aerial attack
Khârn’s gambit
On the trail of the faithful
Nagapor Territories, fifty-nine days before assault
Zenobi felt the vibration of the turret behind her moving. Looking up through the armourglass dome she saw the tips of twin lascannon barrels swing overhead towards the front of the train.
She depressed the left-hand pedal and swung in the same direction, attuning herself to the speed of the rotation. It seemed painfully slow and there was a second’s delay between her foot pushing at the metal and the motors activating. The stick controller was more responsive, angling the guns towards the sky, but their range was limited to about ten degrees to either side of th
e centreline of the turret.
The voxmitter crackled into life.
‘We have a confirmed contact. Aircraft descending from orbit to the north-east.’
‘Which way is that?’ Zenobi then remembered she needed to push the transmit stud in the control panel in front of her. Her left hand found the switch. ‘Which way is north-east?’
‘Check your bearing sphere,’ came an unfamiliar voice. The accent was from a more southern Afrik hive, perhaps the Cape City. After a moment she remembered it was DeVault, the gunner that had run them through the brief training earlier that day. ‘It’s up and to the right of the transmit switch, like a floating ball behind a plex-glass disc.’
Zenobi scanned the cluster of controls, trying to recall the hasty tutorial from DeVault. She found the bearing dial, a grubby white sphere marked with compass points and an elevation level, which showed where the turret was pointing and at what angle to the train. She saw that she was aiming almost due north and used the right pedal to swing back east a few degrees.
‘Thank you,’ she said, remembering to activate the transmit.
She peered through the scratched dome, trying to find something against the blue of the sky. There were occasional flashes that might have been the sun reflected off incoming aircraft, or equally might have been the flashes of the last orbital defence stations being destroyed, or perhaps anti-surface fire from one of the ships in the void.
‘Aircraft heading our way, confirmed three larger bomber-class signals. No escort detected.’
‘You okay up there?’ Menber’s voice was distorted by the metal tube that linked the main gangway with the turret.
‘Don’t distract me,’ Zenobi snapped back. ‘Just make sure you’re ready to change feed lines when the ammo runs out.’
‘Don’t worry, cousin. We’re all here on the line with you.’
She flexed her fingers on the control stick, her knuckles pale from the intensity of her grip. Her other hand fidgeted with the seam that ran down the left thigh of her coveralls, picking at a loose grey thread.
There was no chronometer within the turret. It might have been two minutes or ten since she had first climbed in, she wasn’t sure. Panning the gun down, she used the imager to look back along the long line of carriages. Fumes from the engines obscured the already murky view, but she could see there was a slight curve to the train, the track bending them left, towards the north. Circling around, she looked ahead again. The mountains were larger than when she had seen them from the roof, the skies above them a constant strobe of emerald light and darkness on the crude screen.
The siren blare from the main compartment caused her to jerk against the belt over her lap. Her head banged against the plain metal seat back, bringing her focus sharply back inside the turret.
‘Targets detected at thirty kilometres.’ Lieutenant Okoye spoke quickly, the first time she had heard him sound anything but controlled and calm.
It was easy to forget that despite being officers, those that commanded the platoon and company were as inexperienced with actual war as the troopers they led. Authority on the line was very different to the prospect of combat. They had been assigned their roles underneath the general staff of the 64th Defence Corps, but that entire officer cadre had been left behind or wiped out.
It was inevitable really, she decided. At some point the appointed hierarchy was going to have given way to the reality of war. In some ways it was better that it had already happened, rather than later when they were embroiled in battle.
‘Still on an intercept approach. Targets will be in range in four minutes.’
Zenobi started to hum one of the work songs to keep her mind settled. She trained the gun imager back towards the north-east, panning left and right a few degrees in the hope that she would see something against the artificial storm that boiled above the distant mountains. Clouds scudded across the view, further obscuring the sky.
She thought she saw a brighter flash but it might have been from the ongoing bombardment of the Imperial Palace beyond the horizon. A second later warning horns blared again, ringing through the metal bulkhead and up through the accessway.
The spark became a distinct flare, racing towards the train from beyond the clouds.
‘Brace for–’
Okoye’s warning was cut off as a thunderous detonation rocked the train. The scream of tortured metal and ripple of noise from carriage to carriage swept around Zenobi. Engine protests snarled below, wheels screeching along the rails.
‘Missile hit, missile hit!’ Okoye was breathless on the vox, voice loud in her ear, cutting through the after-noise of the explosion. ‘More incoming!’
A faster, higher-pitched rattle replaced the noise of struggling motors. Two pounding heartbeats passed before Zenobi recognised it as the gatling turrets firing at the incoming missiles. Small streaks blurred across the gun imager view, lit by the brighter spark of tracer rounds every few seconds.
Something larger sped past the jade circle of her world, a split second before another blast rocked the train. Perhaps it was only a glancing hit, or perhaps she had become accustomed to the violence of the first detonation. Whichever it was, the second impact seemed less traumatic.
‘Zenobi! Open fire!’
Okoye’s yell across the voxmitter dragged her back to the view on the gun imager. To the top right of the screen three birdlike shapes blurred against the clouds. She nudged the control stick towards them, pressing the firing stud as she did so.
The thunder of the quad cannons smashed into her like physical blows, her head crashing against the chair back again as she flinched from their fury. On the imager screen streaks of darkness whirred uselessly into the sky below the murky dots of her targets.
Two flashes, almost simultaneous, announced the firing of more missiles. It took barely three heart-wrenching seconds before they hit. As before, they struck somewhere towards the rear of the train, the dual detonations briefly eclipsing the cacophony of guns that raged around Zenobi.
She felt the entire train lurching, the drawn-out shriek of wheels far longer than before, accompanied by a hideous metallic scraping.
Zenobi gritted her teeth, ears ringing, and fired again, using a combination of control column and pedal to guide her long fusillade towards the larger blots on the viewing scope. Other streaks of shells converged from further down the train, along with airburst blossoms from the dedicated flak guns mounted on the locomotive cars.
The enemy craft parted, becoming three distinct shapes now. One seemed to come right towards Zenobi. Two others headed away to her right. She tried her best to track the strike craft coming in her direction, aiming low in the hope that the diving craft would descend into her line of fire.
She could see the distinct silhouette as it dropped below the cloud line, stark against the mountain peaks. Broad, flat-tipped wings carried a fuselage that bulged with gun positions. Bright red bursts stabbed from the battery, scoring hits somewhere just behind Zenobi’s position.
Perhaps they hit the carriage of Epsilon Company.
Her mouth went dry and her gut curdled at the thought. She slammed her foot onto the right-hand pedal, turning the turret hard as the attack craft banked away, coming alongside with its flank guns roaring shells back at the transport train.
She thought her next burst hit but couldn’t be sure. Glitters of shrapnel and torn metal fluttered away from the vortices cut by its wings and she heard a defiant shout from one of the other gun positions.
‘Reloading!’ came the cry from below. She realised she had been holding down the trigger stud for several seconds, ripping through the last of the ammunition feed.
She took her thumb away so that she wouldn’t jam the mechanism the moment the new belts were fed into the loader. Her ears were accustomed to the din of the guns and through their roar she heard the howl of plasma engines
. The attacking aeroplane banked away, twin plumes of blue pushing it upwards again as it sought altitude, the ire of the train’s guns following it back into the cloud.
‘Reloaded!’ Menber’s shout came a heartbeat after the loud crunch of the loader being rammed back into position.
Her target was gone, either circling for another attack run or heading back to orbit. Zenobi breathed a sigh and lifted a shaking hand from the control stick.
Her relief lasted a few seconds, only until the growl and thunder of the other guns reminded her that there were two other aircraft in the attack. At the same moment she came to this recollection, the gunnery car bucked like a snapping cable. Flame washed over the top of the armourglass dome, carrying with it spinning pieces of jagged metal.
The boom of the impact consumed her as the car tipped, hurling her against the strap of the chair. She threw up her hands, but not quickly enough to stop her face smashing into the control console.
The world listed crazily and she tasted blood. The screech of twisting metal, screams of her companions and flicker of flames faded, replaced with the blackness and silence of unconsciousness.
Upper mesosphere, one day since assault
Boarding torpedoes had never been used outside of a void assault and Khârn was starting to understand why. Even in the thin air of the upper atmosphere, friction was starting to overheat the nose cone. His vision was filled with amber displays from the network-linked system of the torpedo. A slight warping caused the whole forty-metre-long missile to shudder erratically, while heat crept deeper and deeper into the circuitry within the nose.
It could set off the impact detonators, tearing away the nose cone and ejecting an intense melta-blast designed to cut through the metres-thick hulls of starships, thirty kilometres above sea level.
The alternative was perhaps even less enticing – the circuits would overload, turning off all the impact systems so the torpedo would hit the side of the Lion’s Gate space port at four hundred kilometres an hour with no retro-thrust or breaching detonation…