Let The Galaxy Burn

by Marc

  ‘Arrow, Storm! Strafe enemy positions on the canyon walls!’ Jaeger’s voice was clipped, harsh, as he focused his mind on what to do next. ‘Raptor squadron continue with bombing runs. Devil Squadron use missiles and lascannons to provide covering fire.’

  A series of affirmatives sounded in the flight commander’s ear. Jaeger levelled out the Marauder’s course to prepare for the bombing run. He couldn’t afford to evade the incoming fire, it would make aiming almost impossible for Berhandt. A splintering crack appeared in the canopy between him and the bombardier as a las-bolt ricocheted off. Jaeger heard other impacts rattling along the length of the fuselage as green flashes of laser energy and yellow tracers converged on him, the lead plane.

  He knew Ferix was now working at full stretch, monitoring any malfunctions, coaxing Raptor One’s own systems into repairing themselves, welding, cutting and binding where that wasn’t possible. He could hear the tech-adept chanting liturgies of maintenance and repair behind him. A red warning light flashed on the panel to Jaeger’s right – one of the engines was leaking plasma. Without thought, the flight commander shut down power to the damaged jet and boosted up the others, stabilising the Marauder’s flight path with small movements on the control stick.

  ++Raptor Four is down, Raptor Three is down++ reported Phrao heavily. ++Storm and Arrow have broken off, they’re out of fuel.++

  ‘Emperor damn it all to hell!’ snarled Jaeger, looking back and up over his shoulder for a sign that any enemy fighters had survived the air duel. A sudden blood-curdling shriek over the inter-squadron frequency deafened him, forcing Jaeger to shut down the comm and switch off the pitiful cry. He adjusted one of the secondary view screens on his panel to display the rear camera shot. Another Marauder was tumbling ground-wards, wreathed in smoke and flames, its wings spinning away on separate trajectories, trailing burning fuel. His chest tight with apprehension, he opened up the comm-link again.

  ‘Who was that?’ he demanded.

  ‘Bombs away!’ Berhandt called out, sitting up from where he’d been crouched over the bombsight. Jaeger’s head whirled as so many things clamoured for his attention.

  ++It was Devil One, sir++ came Phrao’s delayed reply.

  Jaeger closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, steadying himself. Opening them again, he looked at the rear view to see massive red flames bursting over the dark shapes of the enemy attack column. The fireballs continued to expand, the special incendiaries igniting the air itself with their heat, filling the canyon from wall to wall with crackling, hungry flame.

  Another massive detonation followed, and then another as the other Marauders dropped their devastating payloads. Jaeger saw secondary explosions along the ground as fuel tanks expanded and burst and ammunition was set on fire. Another blossom of brighter fire, in the air this time, showed where a tailing noctal fighter had flown straight into the inferno as it had attempted to close from below.

  Berhandt was firing off the remaining missiles, as were the other Marauders. In front and behind, the canyon was a blaze of destruction. Burning wrecks littered the valley floor, while the firebomb damage continued to creep along the walls and into the air, slowing now, billowing black smoke now rising thousands of metres into the clouds.

  ‘That should give the ships in orbit something to aim at, if nothing else.’ Berhandt commented gruffly, switching his attention to the lascannon controls.

  Jaeger spied a group of vehicles along the east wall and banked the Marauder smoothly towards them. More ground fire sprung up to meet them, sporadic at first but building in intensity until once more Raptor One was banging and clattering with impacts, and the air became iridescent with multiple las-blasts impacting into her thick armour.

  ‘Just another couple of seconds.’ Berhandt told him, and Jaeger could hear the grind and whirr of motors as the multi-barrelled anti-tank gun swivelled in its nose mount. A movement to Jaeger’s right attracted the flight commander’s attention and he look across, flicking his gaze between this distraction and the approaching canyon wall. It was a bright spark of blue, growing bigger very quickly. With a start, Jaeger realised it was an incoming missile.

  ‘Oh s—’ Jaeger’s curse was cut off by an explosion just to his right and behind him. He heard Marte bellow in pain and Raptor One dipped suddenly to starboard, smashing Berhandt’s head against his sighting array.

  ‘We’ve lost the whole wing!’ screamed one of his crew, the panicked wail making their voice unrecognisable.

  ‘Into the saviour pod!’ shouted Jaeger, punching free of his harness, and releasing the dazed Berhandt as the Marauder’s erratic lurch tumbled him across the bombardier’s chair. He could feel Raptor One plummeting down nose first and had to almost crawl his way up the fuselage. Ferix was there, ushering the others into the armoured compartment, and he saw Marte being bundled in by Arick, the old veteran’s flight suit ripped to shreds, blood pumping from half a dozen shrapnel wounds in his chest.

  Pushing Ferix and Berhandt in first, Jaeger grabbed the door. As he swung it shut he saw the ground screaming up towards him through the canopy. A las-bolt shattered the front screen and the wind howled in, almost wrenching the door from his grasp.

  With a wordless, bestial snarl he grasped the handle with both hands and slammed it shut.

  ‘Strap in, sir!’ Arick pointed towards the empty seat.

  ‘No time.’ Jaeger replied, punching his fist into the release button. Explosive bolts ignited around the base of the pod, hurling it outwards from the doomed wreck of Raptor One. As it tumbled in flight, Jaeger was thrown onto the wall then the ceiling, before the pod steadied on its retro jets and he fell to the floor, dazed, his leg twisted, sending flares of pain up his spine.

  ‘Are you—’ Arick began to ask, but red filled Jaeger’s vision and he heard rather than felt his head thump against the floor. The sound of his blood rushing through his ears filled his mind before unconsciousness swept through him.

  JAEGER OPENED HIS eyes and winced as sunlight blinded him. He was sitting with his back to the saviour pod, out in the Mearopyis desert somewhere. Ferix was changing the bandages wrapped around Marte’s chest, while Jaeger’s own numb right leg was splinted, so he guessed it was broken. Arick noticed he was awake, and the young man crouched down in front of him, face solemn.

  ‘Raptor One, there’s nothing left of her.’ The youthful gunner was almost in tears.

  Jaeger gulped and gathered his thoughts. He pushed himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his leg, and looked around. Just on the horizon was a massive plume of dust.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s the Guard advancing on the capital,’ Arick reassured him.

  ‘Other… other losses?’ Jaeger asked quietly, keeping his eyes on Arick’s.

  ‘Two thirds of the Marauders are destroyed,’ Arick’s reply was hoarse, and this time there really was a glint of moisture in his eyes. ‘Half the Thunderbolts. Seven pilots dead. Losark won’t be getting any more kills, I’m afraid. Thirty-three other crew members dead. Fourteen wounded, including Marte who has shrapnel lodged in his spine, and you.’

  ‘So, almost the entirety of the Divine Justice’s flight complement destroyed.’ sighed Jaeger bitterly. ‘Was it worth it, Arick?’

  ‘I think so, sir. You saved thousands of lives, by my reckoning.’ Arick replied with a fleeting grin.

  ‘I doubt the Imperial Navy will see it that way.’ Jaeger answered with a heavy heart, already picturing his court martial. He sat down again and rested his chin against his chest for a moment, eyes closed against the harsh light. With another sigh he looked up at Arick, into his fresh, grey eyes. ‘They’ll hang me for this disaster.’

  He gazed out at the distant army, rumbling towards the enemy capital, intent on recapturing this world. Was it worth it, Jaeger asked himself? He honestly didn’t know.

  FOR THE EMPEROR!

  DEFIXIO

  Ben Counter

  ‘ORKS !’ SCREAMED SOMEONE over the radio, and the
concussions of the first crude shells rang through the ground into the reeking, cramped interior of the Defixio. Samiel shouldered the massive weight of the sponson’s heavy bolter and squinted through the vision slit. He could see nofhing of the ambush, just wisps of smoke drifting in from the front of the convoy, but he could already hear the confusion of noise building up – broken voices over the comms, dull thuds from up ahead, and the Exterminator crew around him getting to battle posts.

  He was bad luck, they said. Samiel was beginning to think they were right.

  ‘Crew, load up!’ came Commander Karra-Vrass’s voice over the rumble of the tracks and the ringing of explosions. Samiel glanced round to see Graek heaving the autocannon rounds into their chambers, gang tattoos rippling across his back. Above him, the skinny form of Damrid crammed itself into the turret gunner’s chair.

  ‘Defixio requesting target locations,’ barked Karra-Vrass into the comms, but all he got was static shot through with screams. He turned back and shouted over the noise of the Defixio’s engines. ‘Crew, I want targets, now! Light armour and infantry priority!’

  There was a vast, terrible, crunching explosion and Samiel’s vision was filled wifh an orange-white sheet of flame billowing towards him.

  He darted back from the sponson as a tongue of fire licked through the vision slit, his gas mask’s intake suddenly choked wifh smoke and fumes. There was a hideous wrenching sound as Dniep gunned the engine and the Defixio ploughed through the wreckage of the shattered tank ahead of fhem.

  ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ bawled Karra-Vrass.

  ‘Hellhound!’ shouted back Samiel. ‘They got Lucullo’s Hellhound!’

  Burning bodies tumbled across the dark earth outside, and Samiel was thankful he couldn’t hear them scream.

  ‘Targets!’ The voice was Damrid’s, up in the turret, bringing the Defixio’s autocannons to bear.

  Kallin, on the opposite sponson, opened up and suddenly the Defixio’s interior was full of the staccato battering of the heavy bolter’s reports, hot shell casings everywhere. ‘Come get some, ya groxlickin’ sons a’ bitches!’

  Karra-Vrass swung open the front hatch and put his head out to see what was happening.

  When he came back down the side of his face was dark with soot. ‘Get the halftrack!’

  Samiel didn’t hear over the din, but he knew that Damrid would be muttering a word to the Emperor, like he always did, just before the twin thunderclap of the autocannon blanked out the world for a split second.

  All of Defixio’s firepower was brought to bear on the orks apart from Samiel’s sponson. He couldn’t see the orks, and now thick smoke was sweeping across the valley from what must be half the convoy burning up ahead. It was choking the interior, too, but the crew barely noticed. Every breath a Chem-Dog took was drawn through a respirator or jerry-built gasmask, and most of them were used to breathing stuff that would kill most people.

  Graek yanked the glowing-hot shells out of the breech and slammed another two home, and Kallin continued to fill the air with bursts of heavy bolter fire.

  ‘Samiel, get me targets!’ shouted Karra-Vrass. Unlike the rest of the crew his voice was unimpaired by ugly implants or a gas mask – Savlar aristos didn’t have such things because back home they breathed clean, imported air.

  ‘Nothing, sir!’ replied Samiel, and even as he said it a monstrously crude jet intake sucked the smoke away and he was looking at the underside of the ugliest, squattest aircraft he had ever seen. It flew so low it must have clipped the vox aerial, sounding like a nuclear wind and followed by a score of rickety buggies, half-tracks and bikes crewed by insane greenskins, teeth bared and guns roaring. They barrelled down the side of the valley at astonishing speed and one of them slammed into the Defixio’s side, so the tank slewed wildly and Samiel was thrown onto his back. Gunfire rattled along the Defixio’s armour and Damrid swung the turret towards the horde.

  Then, the roar of the dog-nosed fighter again as it spiralled down for another pass. This time cannon shells lanced down from above, ripped chunks out of the ground, and burst through Samiel’s side of the Defixio like a hammer through glass. Samiel heard no noise, because the din had built up into a wall of white noise that filled his ears. Through the yawning hole in the tank’s side he saw a swarming mass of greenskin maniacs sweeping down into the valley.

  Samiel realised he had been blown clear across the tank’s interior, and that Kallin’s gun was still firing wildly even as the wall of white noise toppled over and everything went blank.

  WHEN HE WOKE, all he saw was the grim grey sky of Jaegersweld. There was only one planet Samiel had seen uglier than this one, and that was Savlar itself. The Guard was supposed to be a way of getting off Savlar and the Dead Moons, with their chem-pits and convict-cities. All the Guard had done for him was drag him from planet to misbegotten planet, kill his friends, make him a jinx. Because he had been a sole survivor, he had used up more than his fair share of luck already and whoever had to serve with him next would have that little bit less luck to go round. Sole survivors were as unlucky as it got.

  Still, he wasn’t dead yet.

  He sat up and felt the ache running down his limbs, and the sharp shots of pain where his skin had been hit by shrapnel. He took a breath of Jaegersweld’s damp, unhealthy air, and heard the metallic sigh as it was forced through the implants inside his ribcage. Samiel’s implants were more sophisticated than most, because those willing and able to work as administrators were worth keeping alive for longer than the average Chem-Dog. But the Guardsmen of the Savlar regiment, of course, had little respect for such skills.

  They were towards the top of the valley slope. The Defixio stood nearby. The profile of the Exterminator-class battle tank was broken by all manner of salvaged and stolen bits Dniep had bolted on – armour plates, trophies, stowage. Kallin had tied a string of ork hands around his sponson mount, the freshest still glinting with moistness, the oldest shrivelled and rotted. The Savlar regimental markings were stencilled onto one side of the turret – on the other, splattered on in Dniep’s loose hand, were the bold white letters that read DEFIXIO.

  The tank had been sprayed in the drab brown-grey camouflage scheme common to everything on Jaegersweld, but the various shades of the bits and pieces bolted and tied on made it something very different from what must have rolled out of the factory on some far-flung forge world. Samiel was coming to realise that it was their tank now, their home and their protection as well as the weapon they were ordered to use. And because it was theirs, the crew made sure that in the process of repairing and maintaining it, they left it looking like it had been through its fair share of battles and firefights – they said almost everything had been replaced on the hulking vehicle, until it was almost entirely composed of what they had installed or repaired. The tank belonged to the crew far more than it belonged to the Imperial Guard, and that was just how the crew wanted it. Dniep himself was kneeling at the Defixio’s other side and welding a huge sheet of salvaged metal over the hole in the side armour, which would become one more battle wound carried proudly like a badge of honour.

  ‘Looks like all yer luck’s used up after all.’ Samiel looked up to see Kallin standing over him. Kallin was a big guy, tall and broad-shouldered, with skin so appallingly pitted and eroded by the constant rain of chemicals he had lived through that Samiel had seen healthier-looking corpses. The unsophisticated respirator implants under his jaw confirmed he had grown up in the chem-mines of the Dead Moons, which was a feat in itself. ‘Miracle we made it this far, with a jinx.’

  ‘Save it for the greenskins, Kallin.’

  Kallin stooped down and pushed his ravaged face close. The ork bones hanging round his neck jangled like wind chimes. ‘You’re a jinx, boy. One of them things sent down to plague us, like the greenskins ain’t bad enough. Don’t you start thinkin’ we’ll look out for you or miss you when you’re dead. Graek’s dead and we’re on our way out, and it’ll all be because we went and
took in a jinx.’

  ‘Graek’s dead?’

  Kallin indicated the loader’s body, laid out in the shade of a rock, one side of his torso dark red and swollen under the tattoos. ‘Dead as they come. Busted all his ribs, turned his guts to groxfood. Like I said, miracle if any of us make it now. Jinx and a Guild boy, Emperor’s teeth.’ He saw Samiel’s confused frown, and smiled with a mouthful of teeth stunted from inhaling acidic air. ‘You didn’t know about Karra-Vrass? You know that damn stick he carries?’

  Samiel nodded. Karra-Vrass always carried a silver swagger stick, but Samiel had assumed it was just a gimmick, like other officers insisted on wearing full dress medals or parade swords.

  ‘It’s a badge of office. Made of titanium. He’s not just any aristo, he’s from the Guild. When he’s not playing soldier with a tank full of us plebs, the bastard sits in orbit and sells the filth we churn out of the Dead Moons. People like him worked everyone I know near to death. Most of us aren’t even cons, we’re second generation or more, but they don’t care. Long as they keep the trade going, we’re just machines to make them creds. Used up Graek like he used up half the men on the Dead Moons.’

  When Karra-Vrass approached with Damrid, Samiel couldn’t help noticing the shining swagger-stick the officer still held in his hand. In the other was a salvaged visor-scope, just one of the pieces of ‘non-standard’ equipment that tended to turn up in any Chem-Dogs vehicle.

  ‘We’re not rejoining the convoy.’ said Karra-Vrass.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Dniep, looking up from his hurried weld job.

  ‘Because it’s not there. We lost about three-quarters strength in that ambush, and the tail-end must have retreated. We can’t hook up with them because our comms are out and the orks have us cut off.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’ said Kallin, quick to anger. ‘Wait for a greenskin patrol to skin us alive?’

  ‘The nearest regimental HQ is the Cadian 24th, fifteen hundred kilometres west.’