by Dan Abnett
Zhyte came off the rope end hard and slammed sideways into a balustrade. It ran around the lip of the dome’s lowest outer promenade, and Zhyte realised that a few metres to the left and he would have missed the city structure entirely.
He’d cracked a rib on landing. He winced a few paces forward and troopers thumped and rolled around him. The vox-lines were frenetic with distorted chatter.
He tried to marshal his men and group them forward, but he’d never known confusion like it. Bitter, hard fire rained down from an elevated walkway twenty metres west, and dozens of his men were already sprawled and twisted on what had once been a regal, upper class outer walk with stratospheric views.
“Singis!” Zhyte yelled into his vox. “Move them in! Move them in!”
Singis, his young, cadet-school trained subaltern, ran past, trying to get the men up. Zhyte saw a two-man stub-team attempting to erect their weapon, hampered by the men who were dropping all around them and sometimes on top of them. Indeed, there were so many men coming down now that the immediate DZ was filling up. Penned in by the city wall, the edge of the balustrade and the defending gunfire, they were rapidly filling up every precious metre of the drop area. Deployed troopers were being knocked down by the wave behind them. One man was pushed out over the balustrade, and was only just clawed back by his desperate comrades.
Zhyte could feel the powerful downwash of the drop-ships as they came in overhead, jostling for position.
The Urdeshi commander could see for about a kilometre along the length of the curving promenade. All the way along, drop-ships were clustering and roping out the strings of his puzzle-camoed troops. He saw a firefight around a hatchway fifty metres away as his fifth platoon tried to storm entry. He saw the flash of four grenades. He saw a drop-ship pummelled by tube-shot rockets, saw it burn as it tilted sideways, tearing through the drop-ropes of two other ships, cascading men to their deaths. As he watched, it exploded internally and fell, glancing off the promenade with enough force to shake the deck under his feet. A fireball now, it pitched sideways and fell off the city shelf into the abyss.
A trooper to Zhyte’s left had lost his gas-hood in the descent. He was choking and frothing, yellow blisters breaking the skin around his lips and eyes.
Zhyte ran forward, ignoring the las-rounds exploding around him.
He got into cover behind a low wall with four of his squad’s troopers.
“We have to silence that position!” he rasped, indicating the elevated walkway with a gloved hand. The man immediately right of him was suddenly hit twice and went tumbling back. A second defence position had opened up, raking 50-cal auto-cannon fire into the unprotected throng of the landing troops.
They were dying. Dying so fast, Zhyte couldn’t believe what he was seeing. They were packed in like cattle, without cover, with nowhere to move to.
With a curse that came from somewhere deep in his guts, Zhyte ran into the open towards the walkway. Tracer fire stippled the ground at his feet. He hurled a grenade and the back blast knocked him down.
Two men grabbed him and dragged him into cover. The walkway was on fire and sagging. Urdeshi troops poured forward from the dense, corralled mob at the DZ.
“You’re a bloody maniac,” a trooper told him. Zhyte never did find out who it was.
“We’re inside!” Singis voxed.
“Move up, by squad pairs!” Zhyte ordered. “Go!”
Ibram Gaunt was the first man out, the first onto the ropes. The secondary dome of Cirenholm lay below. A huge fog of light and fire throbbed in the night sky behind the silhouetted curve of the more massive primary dome. The Urdeshi assault had been met with huge force.
Gaunt hit the DZ clean, and ran clear of the rope end as his men came down. Las-fire was beginning to spit down at them from gun positions higher up the dome slope. The Tanith were landing, as per instructions, on a wide balcony that ran entirely around the widest part of the dome’s waist. Over the vox came a curt report announcing that both Corbec and Mkoll’s squads were on the balcony too, about a hundred metres away.
Troopers Caober and Wersun were right behind Gaunt. He waved them wide to the right, to set up covering fire. He could see Sergeant Burone’s drop-ship lining up ahead, hatches open as it came in over the balcony. Through the stiff, treated canvas of his hood, he could feel the air resonate with its whining thrusters.
“Hot contact!” the message buzzed over the vox. It was Sergeant Varl, somewhere behind him. A lattice of laser fire lit up the night maybe two hundred metres east, flickering along the balcony.
Gaunt saw figures ahead of him, armed men rushing out onto the balcony shelf. They were shadows, but he knew they weren’t his own.
His bolt pistol barked.
“Move up!” he yelled. “Engage!”
Varl’s squad had come down into the middle of a firefight. Kolea’s unit was dropping to their right, and Obel’s somewhere behind.
Varl scurried forward, popping off random shots with his rifle. The enemy was secured around one of the major hatchways leading off the balcony walk into the dome. They were in behind flakboard and sandbags.
The Tanith edged forward, using ornamental planters and windscreens as cover, pumping fire at the entrance. Varl saw Ifvan and Jajjo scrambling up onto a walkway and running to get good shooting positions.
He ducked in behind a potted fern that had long since been eaten away by acid rain, and fired a sustained burst at a section of flakboard. Five other troopers, also in cover, joined him and the emphatic fire they laid up between them smashed the blast fence down. Bodies fell behind it.
“A flamer! I need a flamer!” Varl voxed. “Where the feth is Brostin?”
Half a kilometre east of Gaunt, Rawne’s assault units were dropping into the worst resistance offered by the secondary dome. A dozen men were shot off the ropes before they’d even reached the deck. Drop 2P had its belly shot out by ground fire and limped away, dragging streamers of men behind it.
There were enemy forces out on the balcony itself, firing up at the troop ships as they came over. And there were at least four multi-barrel autocannon nests firing out of windows further up the dome’s surface.
Rawne paused in the hatchway of his ship.
“Sir?” Feygor asked, behind him.
“No fething way are we going down into that,” Rawne said sharply. Vertical las-fire hissed past the hatch.
“Charges! Give me charges!” Rawne said, turning back inside.
Feygor moved down the waiting squad with an open musette bag, getting every man to toss in one of his tube charges. When it was satisfyingly full, it was passed back up the line to Rawne at the door.
“Pilot to squad leader! Why aren’t you going out? We can’t hold this station for ever!”
“Feth you can! Do it!” Rawne growled back into the vox.
“I’ve got ships backing up behind him, and we’re sitting ducks!” the voice on the vox complained.
“My heart bleeds,” replied Rawne, stripping the det-tape off one last charge, dropping it into the bag and tossing it out. “Don’t make me come up front and make your heart bleed too, you craven sack of crap.”
The satchel landed right in the midst of the ground troopers firing up from the balcony. Rawne could see it clearly. When it went off, it spewed out a doughnut shaped fireball that ripped fifty metres in every direction.
Rawne locked his arrestor hook to the rope.
“Now we go,” he said.
Drop 2K had come in too eagerly behind the troop ships halted by Rawne’s delay. The pilot realised the flotilla ahead had cut to hover mode too late, and had to yaw hard, breaking out of line. In the back of the drop, the waiting lines of Ghosts were sent sprawling sideways. Trooper Nehn, crouching at the open hatch as point man, was thrown out, but managed to hold on to the rope. He was slammed back hard against the hull like a pendulum but maintained his frantic grip though the breath had been smashed out of him.
2K’s pilot tried to avoid fou
ling the other ships and turned wide. Angry and confused, the men in the drop bay had only just regained their feet when the ship threw them over again.
They had dropped down into range of the dome defence, and taken two missiles in the flank.
The drop was ablaze. Domor, the commanding officer, yelled at the men to stay calm. Bonin and Milo were trying to drag Nehn back inside.
“We have to get down!” someone yelled.
“There’s nowhere to put down!” Domor replied.
“We’ve fething well overshot!” bawled Haller, the commander of 2K’s other squad.
Domor grabbed a leather roof strap and hung on, his heavy musette bag, cinched lasgun and arrestor hook banging and flapping against his body as the drop wallowed and pitched. Trooper Guthrie was on the deck, blood leaking down inside his hood from a scalp wound he’d received head-butting a seat restraint on the first wild jolt.
“Medic! Here!” Domor cried, and then clambered over the backs of several sprawled men to reach the port hatch. Milo and Bonin had just succeeded in dragging Nehn back inside.
Domor looked out. Their drop, spewing sheets of flame from somewhere near the ventral line, was limping slowly forward up over the patched, greasy roof plates of the secondary dome itself. They were already a good three hundred metres past the DZ. Looking back, Domor saw the waves of Tanith ships coming in, roping out into a spasming fuzz of light. Domor’s vox-set was awash with radio traffic from the assaulting forces. He recognised voices, coded deployments, call-signs. But it all sounded like it was coming from men who were fading away into a distance, like a party he was leaving too soon. The curve of the dome was chopping the transmissions.
They had missed. They’d had their chance and they’d fethed it. There was no going back, no reversing back through the deploying lines. They were overshooting up and across the target city-dome itself.
Under such circumstances, standing orders applied and they were clear: abort and pull out along 1:03:04 magnetic, and return to the base drogue. That’s it, boys. Nice try, but no thanks. Go home and better luck next time.
But abort wasn’t an option. Domor craned out. They’d clearly damaged a fuel-line, and that was on fire. And from the sway of the old, heavy drop, the pilot had lost a good proportion of his attitude control.
They’d never make it back to the drogue. Not in a million years.
Even if there was a chance, and Domor was fething sure there wasn’t, a pull-out at this height and crawl rate would glide them right over the dome’s lip-guns as a nice, slow, fat, fire-marked target.
They were dead.
Varl ducked. Chunks of stone and scabs of plasteel spattered from the archway above his head. Down the hall, someone was the proud owner of a heavy autocannon.
They’d broken the rim defence and forced access into one of the main hatches leading off the secondary dome’s balcony. His squad was the first one inside, though from the sound of the vox-traffic, Rawne was making headway further around the dome edge.
The hatch they’d fought their way in through gave onto a wide lobby dressed with polished ashlar and set with angular, cosmetic pillars. The floor was littered with brick chips and dust, and the bodies of the enemy dead.
Varl knew he was facing the troops of the notorious Blood Pact. He’d paid special attention in the briefings. The Blood Pact weren’t enflamed zealots. They were professional military, soldiers sworn to the badges of Chaos. He could tell from the tight, well-orchestrated resistance alone that he was dealing with trained warriors.
They were holding the lobby with textbook authority: light support weapons blocking the main throughway, peppering the hatch opening with measured, tight bursts.
Varl ran to the next pillar, and watched in dismay as gunfire chewed away a good chunk of its stone facing.
Stone splinters sprayed from the damage. He pulled himself in.
“Brostin!” he voxed. The flamer had got them through the opening. If they could move Brostin further forward into the lobby’s throat, they might take the next mark.
Las-fire and solid rounds spat past him. Varl could see Brostin in cover three pillars away.
Varl peered out and took a hit to his shoulder that toppled him back. He writhed back into cover, patting out the smouldering hole in his uniform. His augmetic shoulder, heavy and metallic, had absorbed the shot.
“Nine, six!”
“Six, nine!” Kolea voxed back.
“Where are you, nine?” Damn these gas-hoods! Varl couldn’t see a fething thing.
“Behind you, on the other side,” Kolea returned. Crouching around, Varl could see the big Verghastite, ducked down behind a pillar on the right, with two other men from his squad.
Cannonfire pounded down the hallway, filling the air with dust and flying chips. Despite his hood, Varl could hear the clinking rain of spent cases the enemy gun was spilling out onto the marble deck. Varl slid round onto his knees and started to prep a tube charge.
There was a sudden increase in resistance fire, and the flooring between the pillar rows was speckled with the ugly mini-craters of heavy fire. Varl looked up and saw, to his disbelief, that Kolea had successfully run forward into the maw of the enemy, and was now two pillars ahead of him on the other side. Kolea stood with his back to the chipped, punished pillar and lobbed a grenade out over his shoulder.
The blast welled flame down towards them. Varl sprang up and ran through the smoke, dropping down behind a pillar ahead of Kolea. Seeing him, Kolea swung out and drew level, then moved one ahead.
It was like some stupid fething competition, like the brainless games of devil-dare Varl had played as a teenager. There was no skill in this. No tactics, no battle-smarts. It was just sheer balls. Running into gunfire, damning the bullets, shaming the devil and taunting him. They were edging ahead simply by dint of bravado, simply through luck that neither of them had been hit.
Kolea looked back at Varl.
Devil-dare. Bullet, whickered all around.
Varl ran out, sidestepped a tight burst and then pushed his already thread-thin luck further in order to dive behind the next pillar up. He could feel it vibrate against his back as cannonfire punched into the far side.
Devil-dare. Devil-fething-dare. But enough was enough. The Emperor, may he be ever vigilant, had smiled on them this far, but that was it. Another step would be suicide. Varl knew luck was a soldier’s friend. It’d suck by you, but it was fickle, and it hated being asked for favours.
“Nine, six. Stay in cover. I think I—”
Autocannon shots barked out and chewed the wall. Kolea had just made a mad dash down the wall-side of the pillars on his half of the lobby and slid in safe behind a pillar ten metres further forward.
“Nine!”
“Six?”
“You’re a mad fething fool!”
“It’s working, isn’t it?”
“But it shouldn’t be working and it won’t keep working if we do it again!”
“Cold feet, Tanith?”
“Feth you, Kolea!”
Of all the Ghosts, Varl and Kolea epitomised the best aspects of the Tanith/Verghastite rivalry. There were a good few from both backgrounds who manifested the uglier resentments, prejudices or simple racial enmities that made up the worst. Sergeant Varl and Sergeant Kolea had been friends from an early stage, but their friendship was catalysed in rivalry. Each was a notable soldier, popular with the men. Each enjoyed a good relationship with Gaunt. And each was in charge of a section that was considered by all to be fine, solid and second-string.
There was nothing formal about the distinction. It was just a given that a handful of platoons formed the regimental elite: Mkoll’s scouts, Rawne’s merciless band, Corbec’s dedicated unit, Bray’s tightly-drilled, tightly-disciplined squad and the determined, courageous mob schooled by Soric. They were the best, the “front five” as they were often called. Kolea and Varl both yearned to elevate their own squads into that illustrious upper echelon. It was all fine and dan
dy to be regarded as part of the solid, dependable backbone. But it wasn’t enough for either of them.
In combat, that competition came out. It didn’t help that both had missed the epic battle for the Shrinehold on Hagia. They had formed the rearguard then, and done a fine job, but they had not been there to share the glory of the big fight. To prove their worth.
And so now it came down to devil-dare. Stupid, dumb-ass devil-dare games, urging fate and luck and all the other monsters of the cosmic firmament to make one a hero-winner and the other a loser-corpse.
Varl had come up from the ranks. He had fought for his stripes, and not just been given them due to his record as a scratch-company hero like Kolea.
But enough was enough.
“No more, nine! No more, you hear?”
“You’re breaking up on me, six,” Kolea voxed back.
“We need to get a flamer up, Kolea—”
“Do what you like… I’m going ahead—”
“Nine!”
Varl looked out from cover, and saw a fountain spray of las-fire and tracers vomit down the hallway. He saw Kolea running forward, somehow, impossibly, alive in the midst of it. He saw thousands of individual impacts as soot and dust and mortar was smashed out of the bullet-holes in the floor, the roof and the walls.
Kolea ran on. He’d lost his wife at Vervunhive and, he had believed, his children too. Some cruel twitch of fate had allowed them to survive and to end up in the care of the female trooper Tona Criid and her devoted Tanith partner Caffran.
Cruel wasn’t the word. It was too cruel. It was beyond cruel. He’d only discovered the fact on Hagia, and pain had sealed his mouth. Those kids — Dalin and Yoncy — had been through so much, believing their parents lost and gaining fine new ones in the form of Criid and Caffran, Kolea had decided never to disturb their world again.