CHAPTER EIGHT
“Any idea at all what this might be about?” Kasteen asked, more by reflex than because she expected an answer.
I shook my head. “He wasn’t very specific,” I replied, cursing the wind that was sweeping across the starport from the lip of the plateau, barely a kilometre away from where we were standing. We’d had a number of similar exchanges over the last few hours, none of them going anywhere, and had run out of increasingly wild speculation some time back. That was probably just as well, we were only making ourselves feel worse. Although it must be said that neither of us had managed to get anywhere close to just how bad the news we were going to hear as soon as we made it to the capital would turn out to be. I huddled a little deeper into my greatcoat, and tried not to shiver too visibly.
We were standing at the edge of a pad in the middle of the aerodrome, the engine of the Chimera that had conveyed us there rumbling quietly in the background, tainting the air with the scent of burned promethium, while a chill wind threw flurries of grubby snow in my face whichever way I turned to avoid it. None of the Valhallans with us seemed at all inconvenienced by the freezing temperature, of course, which was still positively balmy by their standards. Most of the squad accompanying us, which I’d thought to be a reasonable precaution after my last visit to Principia Mons, were wearing the greatcoats and fur hats most often associated with regiments from their homeworld, but all of them had left the heavy garments unfastened, revealing the standard issue flak vests beneath. (Apart from Kasteen, come to think of it, who had donned a dress uniform for the occasion, and didn’t want it getting soggy before meeting the arbitrator.)
“Any sign of the shuttle?” I asked Jurgen, and he shook his head mournfully, already anticipating the discomfort of being airborne again.
“I’ll chase them up, commissar,” he promised dutifully, and began talking with his usual blend of calm reasonableness and unshakable tenacity to someone on his comm-bead.
“Thank you.” I glanced at my chronograph. “I wouldn’t want to keep the arbitrator and the lord general waiting.” Of course technically I could keep both of them hanging about indefinitely, my position alone ensuring that, never mind my fraudulent reputation, but I was reluctant to do so. For one thing I wanted to hear whatever bad news Keesh had for us as quickly as possible, so I could start worrying about something real instead of all the horrible possibilities my imagination kept presenting me with, and for another I seemed to have made a reasonably positive impression on the lord general when we’d met back on Gravalax, and I was keen to reinforce it. In my experience it never hurt to be well in with the people in charge, especially when their decisions could materially affect my chances of getting through the next twenty-four hours with my body still in possession of most of its component parts. Mostly, though, I just wanted to get aboard the shuttle, which was ten minutes overdue already, and out of that pox-rotted wind.
“There seems to be a bit of a problem in traffic control,” Jurgen reported after a moment. “They’ve got everything in a holding pattern while they try to sort it out.”
“What sort of a problem?” I asked, cutting into the right frequency to hear for myself, my sense of trepidation immediately reinforced by the unmistakable flat tones of suppressed panic in the traffic controller’s voice.
“HL 687, respond. This is Darien Down,[1] calling HL 687. You are continuing to deviate from your assigned trajectory. Correct course and respond immediately.”
“They’ve lost track of one of the heavy lift dirigibles,” Jurgen explained helpfully. “It was delivering a cargo of promethium to the storage tanks on the edge of the plateau, but its mooring lines broke, and it’s drifting across the field towards the city.” [1. As opposed to Darien High, the orbital part of the starport facilities.]
“Drifting my arse,” Kasteen said, shading her eyes and looking upwards. A vast shadow blotted out the opalescent haze forcing its way through the snow clouds, plunging us into a partial eclipse. “That thing’s moving under power.”
“You’re right,” I said, the shiver of apprehension rippling though me at the realisation even more acute than the effects of the wind. A low drone of engines reverberated from the snow-dusted rockrete around us. I glanced at the idling Chimera. “Lustig, can we bring it down with the heavy bolters?”
“We can give it a try,” the veteran sergeant in charge of the squad assented, running for the vehicle. “Jinxie, with me.”
“Sarge.” Trooper Penlan, whose nickname I have to admit wasn’t entirely unmerited, doubled in her squad leader’s wake, the flash burn scar on her cheek flushing with the sudden exertion. Despite her reputation for being somewhat accident-prone, I felt Lustig had made the right choice. She was a solid and competent trooper, unlikely to lose her head, and we were going to need a steady hand on the heavy weapons if we were going to bring the gas-filled behemoth down without touching off its volatile cargo. That reminded me…
“This is Commissar Cain,” I broadcast, cutting in on the traffic control frequency with my commissarial override code. “In view of the clear and present danger to the civilian population, I’m bringing this matter under military jurisdiction at once.” In actual fact I couldn’t give a flying frak about the civilian population, of course, but it sounded good, and if I was any judge the aerodrome staff would be only too eager to pass the problem on to anyone else daft enough to put their hand up, which of course they were. “How much promethium is that thing carrying?”
“Three kilotonnes,” the controller told me, making my blood run even colder than it had seemed to on Simia Orichalcae. “If it detonates…” His voice trailed away, and I could hardly blame him; an explosion that size would level most of the city, taking the star-port and our garrison along with it. With a vertiginous lurch of horrified understanding I realised at last why Amberley and Keesh hadn’t been able to uncover any ’stealer cult activity in Darien. The damned hybrids had fled the place in preparation for this atrocity, which would surely spark panic and rioting all over the globe if it succeeded. More to the point, though, I’d be barbequed along with the rest of the city. Whatever it took, the dirigible had to be stopped.
“Aim for the gas cells,”[1] I voxed Lustig and Penlan, noticing with a surge of relief that the envelope containing them extended some distance beyond the cluster of fuel tanks slung beneath the taut fabric, each one of which was large enough to have parked a whole company’s Chimeras in with room to spare. The hail of heavy explosive ordnance should rip the relatively fragile material apart with ease, releasing the gas, and robbing the airship of lift. I turned to the other troopers. “Target the engines.” They were a little more solid, it was true, but unarmoured all the same, and the lasbolts from our small arms ought to do a reasonable amount of damage. [1. The gas bag keeping the dirigible aloft would have been subdivided into several compartments, so that it would remain in the air in the unlikely event of one or more being accidentally torn.]
“Sounds good to me,” Kasteen agreed, drawing her sidearm, and placing a couple of shots squarely into the front starboard engine, which began to leak fluid and a trickle of smoke. Only then did I remember she habitually carried a bolt pistol, but she didn’t seem to have blown us up yet, so I left her to it and headed back towards the Chimera, Jurgen trotting at my heels as always. I’d be able to supervise things a lot more effectively without the wind throwing snow in my face every few seconds, possibly distracting me at a crucial moment, and if things did go horribly wrong I stood a slightly better chance of escaping the worst effects of the fireball behind a nice thick slab of armour plate. (Not an appreciably greater one, it’s true, but give me the choice between virtually certain death and its absolute guarantee and I’ll take the forlorn hope every time.) I half expected Kasteen to follow, but she seemed to be having too much fun playing pop the balloon with the troopers, who had all opened up with their lasguns, knocking holes through the labouring engines with every sign of enjoyment.
I dive
d inside the sturdy little vehicle just as Penlan opened up with the bolter in the turret, Lustig joining in a moment later with the forward mounted one, although he couldn’t have got much elevation on it. Not that it mattered, I suppose, the target was certainly big enough. Even though it was practically on top of us by now, I could still see Lustig ripping a line of holes along its trailing edge as I stuck my head out of the top hatch to see what was going on. (A little foolhardy, perhaps, but I could always duck back inside if things looked like getting uncomfortably warm, and if I was going to preserve my unmerited reputation for leading from the front I’d need to be visible.)
“Frak,” Lustig said, the rear of the dirigible finally passing the point where he could bring our secondary armament to bear. Penlan was having no such difficulty, her eyes glued to the targeting auspex, swinging the turret around beneath me to cleave a long, jagged tear along one flank of the wallowing behemoth.
“Jurgen,” I called. “Get this thing turned around!”
“Right you are, sir,” my aide agreed, and a moment later our idling engine roared fully into life, the Chimera’s tracks flinging up a spray of freezing slush as it slewed on the spot, bringing our forward-mounted weapon to bear again. “How’s that?”
“Good enough,” Lustig said, confirming the fact a moment later by chewing another hole through the gasbag.
“It’s working!” Kasteen reported, her voice echoing tensely in my comm-bead, and glancing up at the perforated dirigible I was forced to agree. It was definitely losing lift, the fabric loose and flapping in several places where once it had been taut with the pressure of the gas within, not quite crippled, but undeniably wounded. Two of its engines were trailing smoke, but none of them had cut out yet, the fans canted downwards to provide as much extra lift as possible while maintaining its inexorable progress towards the unsuspecting city. “Keep firing!” Possibly the most unnecessary order she’d ever given, but everyone complied with undiminished enthusiasm nevertheless, Penlan whipping the turret around to tear another handful of gas cells open so fast I almost lost my balance.
It was at that point I became aware of another danger, which had escaped me in the more immediate prospect of immolation. As the slowly descending leviathan lost ever more altitude, the mooring lines dangling beneath it were beginning to scrape along the ground like the tendrils of a vast jellyfish, raising small blizzards of ice and snow as they came. Mindful of the fact that anyone becoming entangled in one would be ripped apart, and therefore in no position to go on ensuring my safety, I issued a general warning over the vox.
“Mind out for the mooring lines,” I broadcast, with another glance upwards as I did so. That last burst of bolter shells seemed to have done the trick, anyway, the dirigible was definitely losing height and manoeuvrability, wallowing this way and that as it descended.
“Very good, sir,” Jurgen responded, taking my words as literally as he always did, and slammed the Chimera into reverse.
“Frak!” Taken unawares by the sudden jerk, Penlan’s hand tightened on the traverser, swinging the turret wildly with a whine of abused servos. The hail of bolter shells veered off target, impacting somewhere in the tangle of metalwork shrouding the ominous bulk of the tanker module, bloated with its volatile cargo. She snatched her finger away from the trigger as though it had suddenly become white hot, and stared up at me, her startled eyes wide beneath her enveloping hat. “Sony sir, that took me a bit by surprise.”
“Me too,” I admitted, forcing a carefree smile past the rictus of terror that seemed determined to plaster itself across my face. “No harm done…”
“I can see flames,” Kasteen reported, her voice tenser than ever. A chill hand seemed to clamp itself around my heart, squeezing as it did so, and I forced myself to look upwards. It was true, a vivid orange bloom had appeared on the starboard tank, and, merciful Emperor, it was spreading even as I watched. Any moment now the whole cluster would blow, taking the entire starport to perdition, and us along with it. Even if we could somehow get aboard the thing and overcome the hybrids manning the flight deck we’d crippled it so badly that we’d never be able to fly it to somewhere it could detonate harmlessly, let alone manage to escape in one piece if we made the attempt.
It was at that moment inspiration struck. Glancing around desperately for some way of saving our necks, or mine at any rate, I saw one of the mooring lines scoring its way across the landing pad in front of us, a little cloud of snow, steam, and pulverised rockrete rising around it like a miniaturised foretaste of the apocalypse to come.
“Jurgen!” I shouted. “Ram the mooring line!”
I’ve no doubt that most men in his position would have at least hesitated, probably wondering if I’d lost my wits, but not least among my aide’s well-hidden virtues was a dogged deference to authority, and he responded without question or a moment’s pause. The Chimera rocked on its suspension as he slammed it back into a forward gear so high no other driver would even have considered attempting it, gunned the engine to a high-pitched scream that would have set the teeth of an eldar banshee on edge, and let in the clutch. Despite the abuse it had suffered the Chimera leapt forward like a hound off the leash, throwing me back against the lip of the hatch so hard I felt a bruising impact even through the thickness of my greatcoat, and found myself wishing briefly that I’d thought to don my own body armour beneath it, before all my attention became caught up in the urgent necessity of regaining my balance and hanging on. My companions at least were in seats, which protected them from the worst of the buffeting, but I didn’t dare leave the vantage point of the cupola. We’d have only one chance at this, and a slender one at that. Timing was going to be absolutely crucial.
“Penlan,” I said, hoping to the Golden Throne that her wits hadn’t been too addled by Jurgen’s typically robust driving, “get ready to rotate the turret on my mark. As fast as you can, and don’t stop whatever happens. OK?”
“Right sir.” She nodded, her face grim, too seasoned a campaigner to ask any questions at so critical a juncture.
“Brace for impact!” Lustig called from his station next to the driver’s seat, and forewarned I did so, just as Jurgen ploughed us into the dangling hawser, thicker than my forearm, which was still gouging a shallow channel across the solid rockrete of the landing pad. The whole vehicle shook with the violence of the collision. From my vantage point in the top hatch I could see the thick frontal armour buckling, and for a panic-stricken moment I thought it would kill the engine or turn us over, but Jurgen fought for control and our tracks bit into the solid surface beneath the thin coating of slush. Then the writhing cable was falling across us, threatening to take my head off as it lashed about, anchored for a fleeting moment by the weight of our treads.
“Now!” I howled, dropping through the hatch for my very life, and Penlan began to swing the turret, rotating it faster than the enginseers who maintained our vehicle pool would either have believed possible or approved of. For a moment I thought my desperate gamble had failed, as it completed two full turns, then with a sound of rending metal it came to a sudden halt, filling the passenger compartment with the smell of burning insulation.
“Sorry sir,” Penlan said, looking at me dolefully. “It’s stuck.”
“Good.” I poked my head up again, just to make sure, and my heart leapt. The dangling cable had fouled the turret, just as I’d hoped it would, wrapping itself around it and all but tearing off the bolter, which now dangled uselessly from what remained of its mounting. “Jurgen, drop the ramp!”
“Very good, sir.” My aide complied, his voice as unconcerned as though the order was nothing more unusual than a request for more tanna, and the boarding ramp clanged down behind us, scraping against the surface of the pad as the dangling hawser jerked us around like a fish on a hook.
“Lustig, Penlan, out!” I bawled, wishing I could follow them, but that wasn’t going to be possible just yet, and the two troopers obeyed at once, discipline and their unaccountable conf
idence in me combining to get them moving even faster than I’d expected. As they baled out past me I drew my chainsword, and began hacking at the heavy hinges supporting the thick slab of metal. “Jurgen, go! Head straight for the edge!”
“Ciaphas?” Kasteen’s voice sounded a little strange for some reason, less crisp and incisive than usual. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I admitted, as my screaming blade began to cut through the hinges in a shower of sparks almost as spectacular as the one being left in our wake by the dragging ramp. With our engine howling in protest we began to move, painfully slowly at first, our hull booming as though from a series of heavy weapon strikes as the abused metal took the strain of the tangled cable and the immense inertia of the slowly falling dirigible. Abruptly the boarding ramp fell free, and we lurched forwards, picking up speed. “But it’s all I can think of.”
“Emperor be with you,” Kasteen said, and fighting down the suspicion that it could very well be the other way round in a few more minutes if my luck didn’t hold, I waved at her as insouciantly as I could and hurried back to the seat so recently vacated by Lustig.
“Which way, Sir?” Jurgen asked, his vision slit all but obscured by the dangling cable and the spider web of cracks radiating across the armourcrys. Truth to tell, the gunner’s station wasn’t much better, but I could see enough through the sights of the bolter to guide us, and to my immense relief the weapon still appeared to be functional. That would make things a little easier, at least.
“A bit more to the left,” I said, catching sight of one of the vivid orange reflectors marking the boundary of the landing field, and taking us as far away from the promethium dock as I could. There was no point in making things even worse than they already were, if that was possible. The battered APC responded to his nudge on the controls with what sounded like a groan of resignation.
[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Page 8