by Dan Abnett
Flying as part of the second wave were four void-blue Phantine Marauders that carried no bombs at all. Larisel 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Kersherin and the other Skyborne specialists checked the Ghosts over one by one, covering every detail down to boot laces and pocket studs with what would have seemed like obsessive fuss had the tension not been so high.
Each member of the Larisel teams wore a modified version of their standard Tanith uniform. In place of regulation underwear, they had been issued silk-lined, rubberised body-gloves that acted both as insulation against the extreme cold and a seal against the corrosive atmosphere. Over that went the black Tanith tunic, breeches and webbing, and over that a zip-up leather jump-smock that came down to the hips and was laced with chain-mail. Light equipment that would normally have been carried in a kit bag or backpack was distributed into the uniform pockets of the tunic and the webbing pouches and the smock closed up tightly over the top. Gloves and boots were then pulled on, and gaiters buckled around the wrists and boot-tops to form a tight seal.
By then, the Ghosts were already sweating in the hot and abnormally heavy gear. They raised their arms as light belts-and-braces of outer webbing were fitted. These had pouches at the hips for additional kit items, and secure loops for lamp packs, flares, a rope-coil, a short-nose laspistol, a saw-edged cutting knife and the Tanith blade. Their camo-cloaks were tightly wound with a scrim-net around a pack of tube charges and grenades, and stuffed into a musette bag that was lashed horizontally from the front of the outer webbing across the groin. Medi-packs, bag-rations and power-cells for the lasrifles and pistols were loaded into the troopers’ thigh pouches.
Not everyone was carrying a lasrifle. Apart from the four snipers with their long-las variants earned in covers with slings, Milo, Cocoer, Meryn and Varl had the U90 cannons. The solid ammunition took up a lot more space, so while the four of them carried spare cells in their thigh pouches for the other team members’ guns, every member of the squad was strung with a bandolier of drum magazines. For the drop, the four U90’s had slim, twenty-five round clips fitted and wrapped into place with adhesive tape. The higher capacity drum-mags they all carried in their bandoliers were too bulky to jump with. The cannons, like the lasrifles, had their muzzles plugged with wax stoppers to prevent them fouling on impact.
Camo paint was applied to their faces, and micro-beads fitted into their ears and tested. Then they pulled on their woollen hats and did up their smock collars ready for the helmets. Varl kissed the silver aquila that hung on a chain around his neck before dropping it down into his tunic and buckling up the neck of the over-jacket.
The helmets were black steel with integral visors. Inside, they had a leather liner-cap that buckled in place around the chin. A canvas frill around the bottom of the helmet tucked inside the smock collar and sealed with a zip. A pressurised air-bottle, which hooked to the chest webbing, would feed oxygen into the helmet cavity during the jump.
Finally, the jump-packs were lifted onto their backs, strapped on, and the power engaged for a final check. Main weapons were cinched right across their chests. Safeties were double-checked. Kersherin offered up a brief but heartfelt prayer for them all.
They could see little, and hear even less, except the crackle of the vox. It was hard to walk under the weight, and they shuffled around, smacking hands with each other awkwardly for good luck.
Once the four Phantine Skyborne were suited — an operation that took a great deal less time — they were all escorted by ground crew across the Trenchant’s number five flight deck to the four Marauders and man-handled inside.
“Feth!” Milo heard Adare moan. “I’ve had enough already.”
The Marauders they were using for the drop had been stripped for the job, with all bombs and weapons except the nose cannons removed. They normally required a crew of six including gunners, but for this raid only two flight crew, a pilot and a navigator, would take them up. The nose guns were slaved to the pilot’s control, and the navigator would coordinate the drop with the Skyborne officer aboard. The flight crew was already in position in the cockpit above the cabin, completing final checks and blessings.
The squad members eased their overweight bulks down onto the bare cabin floor.
The launch went smoothly. Ornoff took that to be a good sign. One Magog turned back almost at once, reporting bombs hung, and another aborted after about fifteen minutes, voxing in that it had suffered a critical instrument failure. The first landed safely on the Zephyr’s runway deck. The other, presumably blind, missed the drogues completely and flew on east into the burning clouds. It was never seen again.
A raid launch with only two aborts. That was the best they’d managed since they’d begun bombing Ouranberg. On the bridge of the Zephyr, Ornoff felt a confidence rising within him. He summoned the drogue’s chief ecclesiarch and ordered an impromptu service of deliverance.
The passage was noisier, colder and more turbulent than anything the Ghosts had experienced riding the drops in over Cirenholm. They were much higher and travelling much faster. Not long after the violent take-off, with cabin temperature and pressure dropping away and skins of ice forming on the metal surfaces inside the cabin, they all began to appreciate the sweltering layers of clothing they were wearing.
There was a surprising amount to see, given that the cabin had limited ports and they were trussed up in helmets and visors. What had been the payload officer’s pict-plate had been switched on in each of the Marauders, filling the darkness of each cabin with a chilly green glow, and displaying a detailed modar picture of the raid formation.
In Larisel 1, Varl eased forward, struggling with the weight on his body. He keyed his vox and gestured to the Phantine, Unterrio, who was tuning the pict-plate.
“That’s the bomber waves?”
“Yeah,” answered Unterrio. Even using the vox, he had to raise his voice above the engine noise and the constant thunder of the wind. “We’re here in this belt.”
Varl looked closer, trying to focus through the visor’s eye-plates. He realised each foggy band of modar returns was actually made up of hundreds of individual dots, each one accompanied by a graphic number.
“Every craft has an identifying transponder,” Unterrio explained. “It helps us pick up bandits quicker. Time was, enemy cloud-hunters would slip in amongst the bomber shoals and bide their time, moving within the formation, choosing their kills. Now, if you don’t display a code, you’re fair game.”
“Gotcha,” said Varl. It made sense. He looked round at the cabin and saw that the other members of 1st Team — Banda, Vadim and Bonin — were listening in and looking with interest.
“Which ones are the other jump-craft?” voxed Vadim.
Unterrio raised a gloved paw and pointed to spots on the plate. “That’s Larisel 4, Sergeant Mkoll. That’s Sergeant Adare’s ship, Larisel 3. Here, just hidden by the graphic of that Navy Marauder… that’s Larisel 2. Corporal Meryn’s bird.”
It took a moment for Varl to make sense of the jumping, flickering display. It seemed that the four jump-craft were spread out thinly amongst the bomber wave.
The Marauder lurched, and the engines seemed to swoon and stutter.
“What was that?” Varl voxed, his voice sounding dry and hard over the link.
“Turbulence,” replied Unterrio.
In Larisel 3, Specialist Cardinale was conducting a similar explanation of the plate graphics for the benefit of Milo and Doyl. Nessa and Adare, perhaps resigned to being mercilessly insulated against the world, were playing blade, parchment, rock. Their giggles snickered over the vox-link as their heavy-gloved hands beat out the repetitive gestures of the game.
Larkin wished there was a window to see out of, but there wasn’t. He sat on the bare floor of Larisel 2’s cabin and gazed at the others. Kersherin was studying the aiming-plate display. Kuren and Meryn were chatting. Mkvenner looked like he was asleep.
“How long?” Larkin asked Kersherin. “Forty minutes,” replied th
e Phantine.
Scour Sergeant Mkoll had not been designed to fly. But still he had not challenged Gaunt’s decision to pick him for this operation. Mkoll didn’t do things like that. And he knew that when the time came and he got onto the target, he would be the right man for the job.
But the flying. That was a fething nightmare. He’d never been higher than the top branches of a nalwood until Gaunt had taken the Tanith off-world. Space travel — which, like Colm Corbec, he reviled — at least didn’t seem like flying.
This was much worse. The vibration, the elemental wrath beating at the craft. It was as if the air really didn’t want you to forget you were eight kilometres up thanks only to its charitable physics.
And the waiting. That was the mind killer. Waiting for action. Waiting for the moment. It allowed fears to grow. It gave a man time to worry about the struggle ahead. Combat was hell, but at least it was against real enemies, people you could actually shoot. The enemies here were time and fear, imagination and turbulence… and cold.
Mkoll felt sick. He hated the waiting almost as much as he hated the weight they were forced to wear. He felt anchored to the metal deck. When the time came and the jump-call was given, he wasn’t entirely convinced he would be able to get up.
He looked round Larisel 4’s cabin. Babbist, the Phantine trooper, was fighting with the display plate. It kept rolling and flickering on him, showing nothing but green fuzz. Bad tubes, Mkoll decided. If Babbist didn’t get it working, they would be going in blind.
Cocoer and Nour were sitting back as if sleep. Nour probably was. He switched off that way sometimes in the lag before combat. Twitchy and already running on adrenalin, Rilke the team sniper was stripping and reassembling the firing mechanism of his long-las, getting used to manipulating it with his heavy gloves. Mkoll wanted to grab him and tell him to stop, but he knew it was simply a coping strategy.
He keyed his vox and leant forward. “Okay, Rilke?”
“Sure, yeah,” crackled the sniper, his hands repeating the process over and over again. “Actually, I’m fething scared, sarge. I keep wanting to throw up, but I know I can’t in this visor.”
“That would be horrible,” Mkoll agreed. He heard Rilke laugh.
“I only do this to keep my mind off the nausea,” Rilke added, holding up the trigger plate briefly before speedily fitting it again. “Feth, I feel sick. My stomach is doing flips. How do you cope, sarge?”
“I watch you,” said Mkoll.
Thirty minutes from the target, an unidentified contact wavered on to the screens and ten of the fighter escorts broke south to hunt it out.
“Probably just a heavy scald-flare,” Unterrio told the Ghosts. “We’re fine.”
The Marauder lurched badly again, the fifth or sixth time it had done so during the flight. The others didn’t seem to be noticing the jolts anymore, but Bonin was convinced it wasn’t turbulence. The acute wariness that Mkoll had trained into Bonin and all the Tanith scouts was ringing all sorts of alarms in his head.
He got up, slowly, heavily, and thumped forward to the short rungs that led up into the cockpit. Unterrio was hunched over the pict-plate with Varl and he looked up as Bonin shuffled past, unhappy that he was moving around but not about to stop him.
Bonin peered up at the flight crew. They seemed to be fighting with the controls.
“Problem?” he voxed.
“No,” said the pilot. “None at all.”
Bonin thought he recognised the voice. “You sure?”
“Yes!” the pilot snapped and looked back at him. There wasn’t much to see of the face through the visor of the pressure mask, but Bonin recognised the eyes of Commander Jagdea.
“Hello,” he said.
“Scout Trooper Bonin,” she replied. “I thought you were hurt?”
“The break was treated and fused and I’m all strapped up in a pressure sling. You can fly a Marauder one-handed anyway. Not like a Lightning.”
“Whatever. Just so long as you’re okay. You volunteer for this?”
“They asked for volunteers, yes.”
“You must like us,” Bonin ventured. She didn’t answer. “The engines shouldn’t be doing that, should they?”
She looked back at him again. “No, all right? No, they shouldn’t. We’ve got a misfire problem. But I’m not going to let it affect the mission. I’ll get you there.”
“I’m sure you will,” said Bonin.
The shoal’s luck lasted until they were almost in sight of Ouranberg. About ten kilometres out, the scald-storm suddenly collapsed and faded, sinking its fires into the lower stratum and leaving the air bare and empty.
The Ouranberg defences picked them up almost immediately. The fighters were on them about two minutes later.
The cloud-hunters went through the shoal on afterburner, crossing north/south. Two stricken Magogs, on fire, ploughed their way down on steep dives into the Scald. A Navy Marauder ceased to be in a blizzard of shrapnel and ignited gas.
As the enemy craft banked round for another pass, they met the Imperial fighter escort. Through the cabin’s slit window, Milo could see streams of tracers and bright flashes flickering against the clouds.
A brilliant light suddenly shone back through the cockpit, shafting down into the cabin.
“What was that?” asked Adare.
“The pathfinders just lit up the target,” the pilot announced. “Five minutes. Go to stand by.”
The Ghosts all struggled to their feet. Cardinale moved between them, tugging out the air hoses that had linked them to the ship’s supply and cutting in their own air-bottles.
“You’re running on internal now,” he voxed. They nodded their understanding.
Then he opened each jump pack back-plate in turn and threw the start-up rocker switches. Lift power, a blessed relief from the weight, kicked in. The outside roar was so great they couldn’t even hear the turbines.
Cardinale unplugged and refitted his own air hose and then turned his back to Nessa so she could throw his pack switches. Doyl moved to the back hatch and put his hand on the release lever. They all watched the screen.
The first main wave came over the vast bulk of Ouranberg, which was already lit up with flares and combustion bombs. Dragging slowly through the air, the Magogs began to spill bombs from their bellies. Air-cracking flashes slammed out from each hiss of fire.
Above and around the bomber shoal, the fighters danced with the enemy in a furious dog-fight guided mostly by modar. Already, the ground batteries had opened up in full force. Floral patterns of flak decorated the air. Rockets lashed upwards. Hydra batteries zippered the air with tracer rounds.
One of the Magogs blew apart a single engine nacelle still spinning its prop as it dived downwards, on fire like a comet. Another was caught in the spotlights and hammered with flak until it fell apart. A Behemoth, hit in the wing-base by a rocket, dipped slowly towards the city, on fire, and struck the Beta dome edge, causing an explosion that sent flame out more than five hundred metres.
Another was hit as it was opening its bomb-bay. The explosion took out the craft either side of it.
On a cue from Babbist, Nour wrenched open the side hatch of Larisel 4. Typhoon-force wind galed in, rocking them all. Nour flinched back, seeing the Navy Marauder flying next to them in the formation suddenly ignite and veer towards them.
The stricken craft, bleeding flames from behind the cockpit, missed them by only a few metres and dropped away, its fire trail marking out a spiral as it accelerated to its doom.
All that Nour had seen in the split second before the Marauder had pitched away was the pilot and the fore-gunner, hammering at the perspex of their screens, trying to break out as fire sucked into the crew spaces they occupied.
“Ready for drop,” Mkoll cried.
Nour shook himself. He couldn’t get the image of the burning, hammering pilot out of his head. “Ready.”
Babbist ushered Cocoer and Rilke up to the hatch.
The DZ’s for Lar
isel had been selected carefully. Larisel 1, Varl’s mob, was to drop onto the main vapour mills, with Larisel 4, under Mkoll’s command, dropping on the mill worker hab-domes to the north-west Adare’s unit, Larisel 3, was going after the secondary vapour mills, and Larisel 2, under Meryn’s control, was jumping on Beta dome.
Flak whickered up at them from the city. The first wave of Magogs had hammered Beta dome. Patterns of throbbing fire pulsed below: pin-points or clusters. White-hot fires raged up into the night and secondary explosions rippled through the domes.
“Go!” said Cardinale.
Milo leapt from the Marauder. He was instantly struck by a fierce sideways force, a hammerblow of slipstream that turned him over and over. He tumbled, stunned, and fell, gunning his pack. Nothing seemed to happen.
“Relax, relax into it…” Cardinale said over the link, barely audible over the raging wind.
Ouranberg was coming up very fast and very hard. Milo yanked at his thruster control. Training had been all well and good, but nothing could have prepared him for leaping into space in this kind of cross-wind. He was being swept clear of the DZ.
Milo saw Nessa and Adare dropping past him, spread-eagled, trimming their thrusters. He slid in behind them, the wind tearing at his mask.
The vast, dull-grey dome of the secondary mill rose up in front of him, a small city in its own right.
He coasted in.
Larkin passed out as he left the hatch. It was partly fear, and partly the sledgehammer thump of the wind. He came round, felt his entire body vibrating and saw nothing but oily blackness. “Larkin! Larkin!”
He realised he was falling on his back. He fought to right himself, over-cueing the jump-pack controls so he shot up like a cork. The wind was a thundering, buffeting howl in his ears. There was no sign of Mkvenner, Kersherin, Kuren or Meryn. The wounded, battered shape of the Beta dome was twinkling with hundreds of fires. He tried to make sense of it, tried to match what he saw to the carefully memorised picture of the cityscape and the DZ in his head.