by Dan Abnett
But that, of course, took place a long time after every person in this account was many centuries dead.
The mighty Incarnadine and the frigate Harm’s Way drew in tight alongside the Revenant, and began to disgorge the drop-pods and landers of the assault force. What had been hundreds became thousands. Troop pods banged down like tracer bullets. Drop-ships swam away from the carrier decks and began to bank down towards the surface. Heavy landers uncoupled and entered descent mode.
At the rear end of the Incarnadine’s belly, an armoured iris valve slunked open and a small object fired out. Tiny, it had its own integral void shield, and shot like a missile down through the Herodian atmosphere. It left a smoking contrail behind it.
Its solitary occupant had set the trajectory. Now he rode, numb, down towards the planet surface. He had no other awareness except the hunger for blood.
Her blood.
The tumult and concussion of the steep, fast fall was nothing to him.
He dropped like a rocket just beyond the Glassworks quarter of the Civitas. His impact cratered the obsidae for five hundred metres in all directions and kicked out a shockwave flash so hard and bright the Imperials thought for a moment that the archenemy had decided to fire from orbit after all.
He had been very precise about his landing site. The force of his landing drove him down through the planet’s crust and into the deep-seated darkness of the aquifer itself.
His pod splintered through sediment, rolled and came to rest, steaming.
He fired the explosive bolts and got out slowly. He was in a subterranean cavern, steaming with thermal waters.
He got to his feet and shambled forward. His every step shook the ground. His feet were massive, hydraulic limbs. His augmetic sensors began to chase and hunt, reflecting off the glossy limestone walls of the cave.
He set off, hunting his quarry. His name was Karess.
Out on the Great Western Obsidae, the drop-pods were raining in. A thick wave of dust was kicking out from their impacts. Drop-ships were circling down too, landing claws extended as they settled in.
The lander’s hatch dropped open and fifty Blood Pact troopers hurled themselves out into the cold waste. Ahead, through the dust walls, they could see the rising terraces and towers of the Civitas Beati.
Following the troopers out, the Marksman looked at the city. His brethren were fanning off in a wide formation.
The Marksman took off his pack and set it on the dusty ground. He pulled out the sections of his long-las and fitted it together. He kept the scope in his pocket, away from the dust. He was dressed in the dull red uniform of the Blood Pact and had the iron visor and palm-scars to prove his association.
His name was Saul. He was, by any standards of measure, the finest sniper currently attached to the Blood Pact coterie.
Resting the long-las across his shoulder, he began to jog towards the city.
The troop lander settled down in a halo of dust but, unlike its companions, it did not lift off again. It sat there on the obsidae, its turbofan engines dying.
They’d got bored. It had only been a twenty minute ride down from the Incamadine’s carrier bays to the surface, but they’d got bored and hungry.
The co-pilot had been a fine plaything for a few minutes, but he had ultimately disappointed: heart failure through terror before they’d got to the kill. The pilot himself had been better sport. They’d pinned him and forced him to execute a safe landing, peeling off his scalp with their talons all the while.
The moment they had set down safely, they had cracked his bared skull and fed on his brains.
Now there was work to be done That meant they had to go to the human mass living-structure in the distance. The idea was distasteful, but Chto, who had brood command, reminded the other two about the rewards on offer. Their memories were short. Once they were reminded, they got excited.
The triplets slipped away from the dormant lander, their wet grey bodies sliding together as they coursed through the obsidae on their bellies.
Their flechette cannons were loaded and armed.
He settled his Raven in to land on an outcrop of the Stove Hills. The Civitas looked far away.
Skarwael popped his canopy and climbed out of his tiny craft. Between him and the city, assault landers and drop-pods were falling like torrential rain.
If he didn’t get started, it would all be over. And he didn’t want that.
Hellfire take the sniper, and the Pater with his runt-psykers, and the loxatl filth, and the death-machine too.
This was his kill. His kill. The martyr would be his, and he would wear her screams like precious stones.
He was a mandrake, after all. Nothing in creation understood the art of secret murder better than him.
EIGHT
GAR 3
“If you are the last man standing, you’re not fighting hard enough.”
—attr. Kaldenbach’s commissars
Mkoll cried “Down!” His voice, seldom heard so forcefully, echoed over the vox link and everyone, even Gaunt and Rawne, obeyed.
Casting a brief, blurred shadow and visible only for a second, something hook-winged swept low across the hab-block streets. A moment later, blasts tore through the buildings to their left.
The Locust had come in against the wind, its jet-whine inaudible until the last minute. Gaunt had no idea how Mkoll had spotted it.
“The city-shield must be down already,” Rawne muttered, getting up. Ash and brick dust from the blasts were drifting across them.
“Not necessarily,” Gaunt replied. “It’s only a climate shield. A surface bomber like that, with its forward screens maxed up…”
As if demonstrating the colonel-commissar’s point, two more Locusts, in fore and aft formation, whooshed east-west across the city limits about half a kilometre ahead of them. The one-man assault craft, black bodies glinting in the sun, were travelling at rooftop height. They banked up and away into the sunlight, rolling. In their wake, fireballs rippled and flared along the surface. The Ghosts could hear the popping, banging reports.
There were other sounds too. The constant thump and slam of artillery and armour guns from all along the city’s northern skirt. Occasionally, when the wind was in the right direction, they could hear the fierce crackle of small-arms exchanges.
Lugo and his staff strategae had taken over the Civitas tac logis, and were overseeing, literally, the Imperial efforts from the high levels of the hive towers. From there, they were able to despatch remarkably accurate and current assessments of the archenemy invasion. All of it was bad news.
Four strike columns had assembled in the Great Western and Northern Obsidaes within fifty minutes of set down, mobilising fast and spearing into the northern city limits. One was driving into the Glassworks from the north-west, two directly south into Ironhall, and the fourth from the north-east into the Masonae district. Most of this seemed to be light assault armour from landers and storm-troop brigades from the first wave of drop-pods. In total, close to three hundred vehicle elements and eight thousand men, well supported by air cover and the artillery sections setting up in the obsidaes.
That, under any circumstances, would have been bad enough. Imperial numbers in the Civitas Beati hovered just under the seventeen thousand mark, provided militia and arbites units were figured in. But the Imperials had only something in the order of one hundred and eighty armoured machines, of which seventy were unarmed carriers. No air cover. No artillery apart from some light Regiment Civitas field pieces.
This lop-sided equation became a joke when the rest of the picture was factored in. Out in the drop zone, behind the initial, fast mobilising enemy spearhead, a vast force was assembling. It was taking its time, ferrying armour and squads down in wave after wave of drop-ships and heavy lander-transports. It would let the spearhead forces take the brunt and crack the city open. Then it would move in to consolidate. Out on the obsidaes, tac logis calculated, over half a million men and a hundred thousand fighting mac
hines waited to mount the second wave. And the count was rising with every incoming wave.
Well commanded, and with a feth-load of luck on their side, Gaunt estimated, the Imperial resistance would last five, maybe six days before annihilation. With Lugo in the chair, they probably had about two. It was death either way. The only variable was time.
Supported by sections of the Regiment Civitas Beati, the Ghosts advanced through the Masonae district, over which Gaunt had defence command. Kaldenbach was leading the Ironhall resistance, and a Herodian PDF colonel called Vibreson headed the Glassworks line. Biagi, and a life company officer, Major Landfreed, held most of the remaining four thousand troop strengths in the middle city, ready for short-notice deployment. Five hundred men of the Regiment Civitas garrisoned the hive quarter, mainly. Gaunt believed, to buy enough time in the final, inevitable phase of the invasion for Lugo to flee via shuttle from the crest level platforms. Flee to where, only the God-Emperor knew.
The Ghosts and their allies moved up through the narrow streets east of Beati Plaza. This district was largely untouched by war, apart from the strafing damage of the enemy air cover. The thoroughfares were ominously empty. The citizenry had fled. Homes and commercial properties stood empty and lifeless, and discarded possessions littered the roads.
As they prowled forward, bounding cover by squad from block corner to block corner, Gaunt considered they had, despite everything, a kind of luck on their side. Unopposed as they now were, the archenemy warships far above them could have ended the war quickly with aerial bombardment. Instead, the enemy had opted for the gross effort and huge cost of a ground assault. He knew what that meant.
They wanted the Beati.
Poorly protected and underdefended as it was, the Civitas Beati was still large, and taking it a street at a time would be a bloody, painfully expensive task for any army. The archenemy was only undertaking it because of the prize. Indeed, the archenemy had only come to Herodor, only bothered with the place at all, because of that prize. The enemy commander wanted the Saint. A body, at least… but a prisoner, that would be the greatest trophy. So an annihilating orbital bombardment was out of the question. No tangible proof of the Beati’s presence would be left.
This was all about Sabbat. Everything they did, everything the enemy did. It was all about Sabbat.
Tac logis crackled in Gaunt’s ear. Kaldenbach’s forces had engaged.
Gaunt was about to relay this to his officers when Mkoll voxed again.
“Contact!”
Initially unopposed, the invaders rolled into the northern edges of the Masonae district. To the west of them, smoke and low-level flashes above the roofs showed where their associated columns were lancing through the Ironhall.
Phalanxes of Blood Pact led the way, backed by files of stalk-armour, STeG 4 lights and AT70 Reaver-pattern tanks. Their way was unhindered. Two AT70s peeled off to destroy the prayer horn Gorgonaught in a hail of close range fire, and a trio of stalk-tanks assisted Blood Pact sappers in blowing and cutting the ancient arches of the Simeon Aqueduct. Water, the city’s precious life-blood, poured from the shattered aqueduct and flooded several low-lying street blocks. Locust dive bombing had already ruined the North End Agridome. Burning crop produce was billowing yellow-grey smoke into the sky through the ruptured dome seals.
Without seeing a trace of the vaunted Imperial forces, the archenemy crossed Brigat Street into Actes Hill, and began to spread out into the Masonae.
The troopers, moving ahead of the armour, were singing. The song made Mkoll’s stomach heave.
“We’ll have to put a stop to that at least,” he murmured. He took aim.
“Ease!” he warned.
Mkoll squeezed the tube’s trigger spoon and an AT rocket roared down the street, neatly killing the third STeG 4 in the approaching file.
The AT70 behind it started to rev, and spattered fire from its coaxial cannon, but it was pretty much blinded by the black smoke ripping out of the dead STeG.
The two STeGs in front of the kill spurred forward on their heavy, solid wheels, their compact turrets traversing as they hunted for the source of the ambush. The Blood Pact stopped singing and raced for cover positions.
They didn’t get very far. Surch and Loell were set up on the west side of the street, Melyr and Caill on the east. The two .50 cannons had a tight, interlocking field of fire, and preyed on the scattering ground troops mercilessly. Red-armoured bodies tumbled, sprawled, flew backwards, flew apart.
The two STeGs up front wheeled round, now firing, raking the lines of the street and blowing out windows and plaster facades. In another few seconds they would lock on to one of the .50 positions.
But they didn’t have anything like a few seconds.
Caffran’s tread fether bucked and banged, and a smoking rocket slammed down from his upper storey position, blowing one of the STeGs in half.
“Ease,” Mkoll said again, reloaded by Harjeon. He hit the remaining STeG’s munitions locker. The Shockwave brought the front of a nearby house down.
The AT70 lurched forward, grinding up and over the blazing wreckage of the first kill. As it came over, it fired its main gun. The roar was loud and impressive, but the shot was premature and whined away into the empty end of the street.
Caffran put his second rocket through the big, red tank’s port tracks and crippled it. It slewed around, broken wheel bearings shrieking raw on the rockcrete.
Ghosts slipped from cover and leapt up onto its superstructure: Bonin, Domor and Dremmond. Bonin nailed the top hatch with a tube-charge, and left the rest to Dremmond. Gleefully reunited with his flamer, Dremmond pushed the hose muzzle down into the smoking hatch-hole and gutted the tank with combusting promethium.
Bonin dropped down, grabbing the dead 70’s pintle mount — a twin-linked bolter — and swung back to face down the street. He started to fire at the Blood Pact infantry squads pressing up to meet the ambush.
“Duck or dance, choice is yours,” he chuckled grimly as the heavy weapon mount shuddered in his hands.
“That’s enough! Off and out!” Mkoll called over the link.
Bonin, Domor and Dremmond quit the top of the tank and disappeared into the alleys off the street. At the same moment, the .50 teams dismantled their support weapons and hastened out of their positions.
Pushing forward rather more tentatively now, the Blood Pact advance reached the dead AT70. There was no sign of enemy resistance.
But there was a pack of three tube-charges strapped to the AT70’s shell magazine, courtesy of Shoggy Domor.
Three streets away, the lead stalk-tank was hit simultaneously by two tread fether rounds. Wrapped in a brilliant fireball, it spun around, some of its legs thrashing out slackly like a carousel’s arms. One leg severed entirely, and flew off, crashing through the front of a habitat unit.
Unfazed, the two stalk-tanks behind it scuttled forward over the burning debris, weapons pods tracking and firing, and each one was greeted by a rocket that blew its main hull to pieces. One collapsed, the other remained on its feet, limb segments dead and locked out, central body ablaze.
“That’s the way to do it,” Colm Corbec grinned, lowering his empty rocket tube. He was up on the low roof of a hab building, behind the parapet. Varl’s platoon was dashing forward, along the line of the wall beneath him, in single file, firing into the bewildered Blood Pact troopers who suddenly found themselves without armour support.
Brostin’s flamer gushed. Corbec could hear the enemy screaming.
“Now!” ordered Meryn, stone-faced.
Guheen pulled the trip wire and the tube-charges fourteen platoon had laid across the roadway ignited in geysers of fire and rockcrete. The AT70 almost flipped, its tracks blown away. It came down hard on its nose, the long snout of its main gun biting into the roadway before it came up.
It made the mistake of trying to fire. Either its barrel was deformed by the impact or dogged. Whichever, the hi-ex shell choked, and blew back so hard the rear por
tion of the turret vented out like a burst paper bag.
Blood Pact infantry flooded up around the burning beast and began firing. One, an officer, had a missile tube on his shoulder, and he dropped to one knee, aiming it at the store front where Meryn and Guheen were down in cover.
He never got to fire it. At least, not alive. A hot-shot round from Nessa Bourah, up on a nearby roof, tore out his throat. He fell sideways and his dead hand spasmed on the spoon.
The rocket winnowed away across the ground, spewing sparks and white flames. One Blood Pact trooper actually managed to leap up over it. He then died, along with the other dozen around him, when the rocket met the kerb and detonated.
The archenemy forces penetrating the Masonae suddenly realised they were in for a fight after all. They pushed on, resolved now.
In Latinate Road, a slender, picturesque street of tailors’ shops and leatherworkers’ habs, Daur, Raglon and Ewler brought their platoons in tight to meet the Blood Pact storm-thrust. A ferocious small-arms battle began.
Nearby, Arcuda’s platoon — twenty-three — met a flanking push from another five Blood Pact fire-teams. Criid pulled her platoon back from Meryn’s position and joined with Curral’s, Nailer’s and Rask’s at the junction of Toborio Street and Mason Yard, where a vicious, mid-range infantry duel was developing.
Grell and Theiss scurried their platoons in across the Lanxlyn Road and Principal III, smoking two STeGs and a stalk-tank before meeting the infantry rush head on.
In Skye Alley, Soric’s platoon was pinned down by a pair of stalk-tanks that wouldn’t go away. They cowered under the deluge of laser fire, stone chips and debris fluttering around them.