by Dan Abnett
In some fields, they sighted rows of fresh graves.
The road approached the river, following its course. More ruined farms stood along its banks, homesteads and land-parcel stations, then a whole village, empty and gutted.
At noon, they came up on a line of burned-out, exploded vehicle wrecks, jumbled along kilometres of road that had been badly holed and cratered. The action was at least three days old. Tanks with dozer blades, and the few remaining Atlas tractors, had to clear some of the wrecks aside to permit progress. It had been an air-strike; Viltry could see all the signs.
After that damage became more commonplace. The remains of other convoy elements littered further shot-up sections of highway. Unburied, blackened corpses lay in the roadside ditches. More bodies, swollen, floated face-down in the pools of a ruined roadside hydroponics system. All of the next three townships had been bombed to extinction by heavy raids rather than just looted and forsaken.
This was now an eerie, miserable landscape to drive through. Thousands of hectares of field-systems had been burned black by uncontrolled firebomb damage. Farms, villages, entire townships had been levelled. There were stretches of forest where nothing remained but blast-splintered trunks protruding from cindered earth. Craters, many filled with rainwater, punctured the landscape for kilometres. Smashed hydroponic systems leaked rivers of algae-rich soup down across the roadway from ruptured dykes. The column moved on, hissing water up into the air.
It was no longer mist that stained the sky, it was smoke residue from the days of raiding and firedust kicked up by their wheels and tracks. Down the wide, wounded valley, their scopes identified other communities shelled to death, wreathed with the grey vapour of firestorms that had blazed, unchecked, for days.
At 13.33, an alert was given. Ten kilometres north, bright flashes underlit the clouds, and they heard the crump of munitions. A few minutes later, a formation of enemy warplanes was sighted heading south at medium altitude. The machines, their payloads already dropped, ignored the straggling column, but there was no doubt they had been sighted. The contact would be called in.
The Imperial column had begun crossing a miraculously unscathed bridge over a Lidan tributary, just after 14.00, when a second alert came through.
It had started to rain, and the auspex refused to give a clean track. An air of confusion and panic rose in the convoy around them. LeGuin cleared his weapon batteries, and then got on the vox.
“Say again. Track reading. Confirm track reading for hostiles.”
Just frantic chatter.
“Come on!” LeGuin snarled into the vox. “This is Line of Death! Give me a track reading! Get it together!”
Viltry opened the top hatch and craned up at the overcast sky, smelling the cold, wet air, listening. The sound of agitated voices came from all around, throbbing engines, the noise of turret motors as weapons traversed, the timpani of rain pattering off the armour.
And there, concealed behind it all, the warble of vector-thrust engines. Viltry glanced anxiously down at LeGuin.
“What?” LeGuin asked, standing up.
“Hear it?”
“Where? Wait… yes. It’s ahead of us.”
“No,” said Viltry. “That’s an acoustic bounce off the valley. It’s behind us.”
LeGuin instantly began spinning the Executioner’s turret to face rear.
“Get us off the bridge!” he yelled at Emdeen.
“Get moving!” Viltry shouted from the hatch to the trucks all around. “Come on! Clear the way! Get these vehicles rolling!”
Over two-thirds of the column had still to cross the bridge’s ancient pilings.
Viltry heard a change in the vector note.
“Here they come!” he yelled.
Someone back down the convoy had at last got a decent track too. From the end of the long line of vehicles forward, weapon mounts began to fire at the sky. Pintle-weapons, elevated cannons, the few Hydra platforms still carrying munitions. Small-arms opened up as well, men standing up in the back of trucks to unload las-rifles into the sky. Hundreds of other Guardsmen, unarmed or too scared to make such a bold defiance, scrambled out of their transports and ran for cover in the trees and amongst the reed beds of the tributary.
The firing was intense. The convoy’s elevated shooting filled the rainy sky with a blizzard of white hot or illuminated rounds. There was still no sign of the hostiles.
“They’re wasting most of it…” Viltry said, noticing that LeGuin at least had not started firing.
LeGuin was about to speak.
Something went over, northwards, low and very fast. The jet wash shook them and their ears popped. A brief hint of something mauve or dark red.
Less than a second later, there was a dull, hollow thump. Rippling around itself, a large ball of flame boiled up into the sky on a neck of smoke and sparks some three hundred metres behind them.
Viltry saw the second bat, a Hell Talon. It had just sat its bomb load on the very tail end of the column, and had clearly hit something significant… a tank, an ammo-carrier, maybe. A curtain of bright, almost neon-white flame rushed into the air way behind them. Small black specks, which Viltry realised were very probably large pieces of detonating vehicle, flew sideways out of the flash-wake.
The Talon kept low, switching to cannon to rake the convoy. The noise of its jets was terrifying. Crouched in what seemed like a very fragile drum of metal, Viltry experienced the psychological impact of an air attack for the first time. He virtually froze, his body refusing to respond. His teeth chattered.
No, his teeth were chattering because LeGuin had opened fire with the main weapons, the twin-linked autocannons, adding his force to the AA storm. The whole turret shook, and started to turn as it tracked. Gripping the edges of the hatch, Viltry stared at the incoming Talon. A stream of green tracer-shot from a Hydra nearly struck it. It banked slightly, almost daintily, refusing to be deterred from its long, hammering run.
Its cannons were firing. Fast blinks of light-flash flickered around the recessed weapon mounts. Whipping, concussive impacts stripped up the line of the road. A cargo-8 shuddered violently, as if men with rock-drills were working in its flatbed. Its canvas cargo hood shredded, its windows blew out and its tyres burst. Bodywork seams split and exhaled dust and smoke. A second cargo-8, just ahead of it, lurched and immediately caught fire. Viltry saw men burning like brush torches staggering out of the cab. Still running, the truck left the road, bounced down the embankment, and rolled on its side in the reed beds, hissing up a thick cloud of steam as river water hit fire.
The Talon rushed overhead. Viltry flinched as one of its shells glanced off the Line’s fore-armour. LeGuin’s shots streamed after it, but missed.
“Not enough deflection!” Viltry shouted.
“What?”
“Deflection! You’re not anticipating him right!”
“Can you do better?” LeGuin asked.
“I can try,” Viltry replied.
LeGuin ordered Mattedes down into the lower compartment to free an autoloader that was sticking. He himself switched seats to the commander’s position and allowed Viltry to drop into the gunner’s seat.
“Bear in mind this isn’t a dedicated AA vehicle,” LeGuin cautioned.
“I know,” said Viltry.
“I mean, we don’t have a Hydra’s elevation, or targeters. I’m just trying to throw up some fire.”
“I know,” Viltry repeated. He was looking around the turret fixtures, familiarising himself with them. “Traverse?”
“There,” said LeGuin, pointing to a two-way clutch lever. “You know what you’re doing?”
“Well, there are some differences, but it’s not that different from a Marauder turret.” Viltry sat back, getting used to the prismatic sight, and test-swung the turret about. “You were doing pretty well, by the way,” Viltry said. “But it’s a predictive thing. You’re not used to airborne targets. You’re thinking they’re going to move like an arrow or a dart, but
vector-thrust don’t do that. They’ll come up or to the side in a weird way.”
Emdeen had them off the bridge now. Parts of the rearward column was burning fiercely.
“More coming,” LeGuin called, one hand up to his earphones. The Hydra batteries on the road started up again. Viltry strained to see out of the limited scope.
“They’re coming for the bridge. They want this column stopped right here.”
Viltry started the turret turning, and then began firing. God-Emperor, it was slow and lumbering, and almost like firing blind. The Talon went over, unharmed. Viltry began to realise why LeGuin had been struggling. The Line of Death had been built for savage anti-personnel action, not air cover.
He swung the turret back fast, immediately picking up a second Talon on its inward path. Viltry used the smoke plumes from burning wrecks along the road as a scale, then began firing again at the air above the bridge, the point at which he was sure the hostile would start to lift out.
Elevated as high as they would go, the Line of Death’s twin cannons punched heavy fire at the clouds, and that stream began to swish in a horse-tail as Viltry dragged the turret around, aiming not for the Talon, but for where the Talon would be when the rounds had covered the distance. Nearly, nearly…
The Hell Talon, blue striped with bone-white, tried to viff hard at the last second, but its forward rate was too high for any kind of instant adjustment. It flew right through the Line’s fusillade. Riddled, the airframe tore open, fragments flying off. The tank rocked as it went over. The Talon sliced across the main river on one wing-tip, then pancaked and hit the far shore. A throaty explosion followed.
Matredes, Emdeen and the other crewmen started whooping and cheering. LeGuin punched Viltry on the shoulder.
“That was mainly luck,” said Viltry.
“Another one!” the loader shouted, looking at an auspex repeater.
Viltry swung around again. It was coming in much lower. He wasn’t going to get anything like as good a lead on this shot. He fired anyway, washing the turret back and forth to extend the cone, an old tail-gunner’s trick.
All of it missed, but the raking fire restricted the Talon’s line of attack, and it flew straight into sustained fire from a Hydra. The moment the four long-barrelled autocannons of the Hydra found the enemy machine, the targeter system took over and held the guns right on it. On powered traverse, the Hydra managed to maintain heavy hits for over one hundred and five degrees of turn. The Talon began to climb and then blew up in a ragged yellow flash, raining debris down over the river and road.
After that, no more raiders came down the valley for a while. LeGuin shook Viltry by the hand.
Viltry was breathing hard, pulse racing. For the first time since G for Greta had been brought down, he felt as if he had a purpose. A worth. He’d helped keep the bridge clear.
The feeling tasted a little like the confidence he’d been slowly winning back on Enothis. The reassurance of a point to life that Beqa Mayer’s company had begun to coax back into him.
The crash had torn that confidence away, of course. But now he felt oddly centred. War claimed men. They died. Machines crashed. Leaders, like Viltry, felt guilt and remorse. It would ever be the way, for in the galaxy of man, there is only war.
For one tiny but valuable moment, sitting there in the Executioner’s turret, surrounded by the cheering and bellowing of men he hardly knew, Viltry realised that guilt and remorse would truly be his to bear if he didn’t make the effort to live. To live, to fight the foes of man, and to make his way back to find the woman who had shown kindness to a stranger.
The column began to move again. The rain grew heavier, and they pulled the hatches shut. The valley ahead was an ashen, dispirited place, and there was a great distance to go before they reached the cities, far away, where the skies were already banded with black fire-smoke.
Lake Gocel FSB, 19.12
In the space of about thirty hours, their alarm bracelets had fired eighteen times. With jarring regularity, they were stirred from exercise, prep, sleep, meals and standby in order to rush to the shelters as enemy formations passed through their airspace. Each period of waiting in the gloom of the dug-outs did nothing to soothe already stretched nerves. There was a fight between two Navy fitters and some PDF troopers, and a face-to-face row between Ranfre and one of the Raptor pilots, which was only defused by the calm intervention of Milan Blansher.
The worst argument occurred between Jagdea and Blaguer. The FSB had lofted only three snap calls in the period, and for the rest of the time it had hidden under its camo at the first sign of an alert.
“What possible good are we doing?” she was heard shouting.
Blaguer’s argument, supported by Marcinon and the leader of the Lightning wing, was that Gocel FSB was under-strength as an intercept force and should therefore pick its targets. Seven of the alerts had been triggered by mass-raid formations of bombers, three or four hundred machines strong, passing north towards the coast. Gocel’s three wings would barely make a dent in such formidable numbers, and launches would betray the base’s carefully concealed location. There was no doubt that a mass-raid force would spare a bomber pack to annihilate the source of the ambushers if it was discovered.
“Better to stay low, observe concealment discipline, and only respond to targets we can deal with safely,” Blaguer told her.
“But in another day or two, there’ll be so many bats up there we won’t be flying at all. We’re supposed to be intercept, so let’s damn well intercept something.”
“You’re talking about a wilful and suicidal approach to the prosecution of this conflict.”
“I’m talking,” growled Jagdea, “about fighting this war instead of sitting it out.”
Late in the afternoon, the fourth sortie of the day was permitted. Coastal Operations had requested urgent data-gathering from its FSBs along the Saroja. There was a pressing need to assess the disposition of inbound retreat elements so the Munitorum could more effectively accomplish the mass land evacuation, an operation already beginning at Ezraville and Theda. Operations also hoped to locate one or more of the enemy land carriers. Given the terrible strength of the raids now being suffered, it was presumed that several mass carriers were currently established in the Northern Desert, and Operations clearly longed to be able to steer in Marauder strikes to ease the ferocity of the bombing campaign.
Word was that not a single town or city along the Littoral and the Peninsula remained untouched. Quite apart from the huge armour and troop evacuation taking place on the seacoast, a vast civilian exodus had also begun. Deprived for the most part of sea transit or Munitorum aid, the citizens of the Littoral were fleeing west towards Ingeburg and the Northern Affiliation in vast, haphazard caravans. Reports of the public panic and mayhem were filtering through. Several civilian convoys had been hit. The losses were so distressing, Jagdea couldn’t bring herself to repeat what she’d read to the pilots and crews of Umbra.
Three recon Lightnings were to go up on a wide track, with a trio of Thunderbolts riding shotgun. According to dispersal rotation, this escort was due to be provided by the Raptors. Blaguer himself was slated to fly, but he clearly felt uneasy about what Jagdea might try to pull if he was absent from the FSB. Blaguer suggested that, if she was so keen to get airborne, the Phantine might take the job.
Jagdea saw through his ploy, and knew Umbra would be better served if she stayed. She declined, citing the damage her Thunderbolt had sustained on the last sortie. In truth, it had already been fully repaired by her devoted techs, but they knew what to tell Blaguer if he asked, and deliberately removed serial Zero-Two’s cowling to act out a pantomime of repair work. Jagdea sent Asche in her place, with Waldon and Zemmic.
Marquall could barely hide his disappointment. With Nine-Nine fixed and cleared for flight, he was overdue a run, and should have been chosen over either Zemmic or Waldon.
After the six machines had launched, and the shimmer nets wound back into pla
ce, Jagdea went to find him. Marquall was in his habitent, playing regicide with Van Tull.
“Got a moment?” she asked.
“I’ve got things to do, ma’am,” Van Tull said, and made himself scarce.
“Get your flight suit on,” she said to Marquall. “I’m moving you up to snap call standby.”
Marquall nodded, but his expression was glum. “I should have gone on the last run. You know that.”
“Depends what you mean by ‘should’, Vander,” she said. “You and Larice aren’t the best of friends right now. Keeping you out of each other’s way is probably a good idea.”
Marquall blushed, but it was largely anger. “She—” he began. “I don’t know what I’ve done.”
“You haven’t known Larice long, Vander. Not like me. I know what she’s like. One of the best pilots it’s been my honour to fly with. But also… headstrong, proud. Full of ambition, and a compulsion to prove herself all the time. It’s her temperament. To fly the best, get the best score… and be seen associating with the hottest of her male comrades. You had something there that she liked the look of. A reputation in the making. But then, that mis-launch.”
“I was a laughing stock.”
“For about ten minutes. I haven’t heard it mentioned since. But Larice… Well, that was a blow to her pride. She’d made a show of picking you as the Next Big Thing, and there you were suddenly, the subject of scorn. Now you might wince and shrug it off, but Lance’s pride gets in the way. She felt some of that laughter was at her expense, and maybe it was.”
“So she just cuts me? Freezes me out? Drops me as fast as she latched onto me?”
“I’m afraid that’s her way,” Jagdea said.
“Great,” Marquall said.
“Larice is strong… as a pilot. As a person, she’s unusually fragile. I know it’s easy to say, Vander, but just move on. There’s a war to wage. Another sortie or two, I’m certain you’ll soon be getting back in your stride, building on the promise you’ve shown. It wouldn’t surprise me if she became interested in you all over again.”