Barat jumped to the order, carefully unbuckling Abdiel’s unconscious dangling form.
‘Lend a hand here, Toah!’ Barat was a powerful man, but couldn’t manage to safely detach Abdiel on his own. Toah’s eyes flicked to meet Barrabas’s frown, and the captain shook his head softly. With a shadow of a smile, Toah sloped over to help his misguided colleague.
‘Respect the uniform, not the man,’ grunted the larger man.
Toah had heard this from Barat before. It didn’t wash one bit with him or any of the crew, but his forthright response was drowned out by a loud, wet sucking sound. Barrabas wheeled towards the noise, his head spinning from the rapid movement and it took a few seconds to work out what was happening in the scarlet light. Two of the drop-ships had begun to sink, not the normal settlement of landing pads onto soft ground but a rapid, uneven descent that signalled real danger.
‘Open the gunship holds! Now!’
The heavy rear doors dropped, their leading edges immediately disappearing under the mire with a splat. Twenty men spilled out with a variety of weapons and uniforms grabbed from their respective ships, their enthusiasm on release soon tempered by the danger in which they found themselves. Still airborne, Eutychus saw the problem and pulled up steeply on emergency thrust, forcing the stricken Valkyries down faster than before in his wash. Aft-heavy, their noses rose into the air as men struggled through the quicksand, hauled out by their crewmates who had found the nearest safe footholds. Barrabas blinked away a single flickering shadow that passed to his left, blaming it on the concussion that sang between his ears.
Eutychus landed his Valkyrie on a flat expanse of rock and was out of the cockpit within seconds, hopping between boulders and natural platforms towards his captain’s inverted gunship. Barrabas ran towards the assembled crew as the stricken Valkyries slid downwards, both pilots now balancing precariously on the up-ended noses of their ships, and shouted at Zebah who was closest.
‘Jump. We’ll pull you out as soon as you get in.’
A panting Eutychus skidded to a halt besides Barrabas, while a dazed Abdiel made his unsteady way towards them.
‘They could get sucked right under if they jump from that height,’ said the young man. Barrabas nodded, clearing grit from his collar with a couple of fingers.
‘If they don’t go now, they could get pulled down with their ships. Come on!’
Again, Barrabas saw a fleeting shadow at his feet, bigger this time. He looked to the sky but saw nothing. The two overall-clad men exchanged a glance and then, with a thumbs up, leapt into the innocent-looking black soil below. Landing with a plop, they were as relieved as Barrabas that their rate of descent was surprisingly slow, and carefully waded outwards. Shouts of encouragement from the crew gave them heart, and Barrabas breathed a sigh of relief just as several flickering shadows flashed overhead. Eutychus saw them too, his head snapping upwards into the bright red sky.
‘Captain–’
At first, Barrabas couldn’t process what he’d seen; such was the speed of it. Flashes of grey and white, outstretched leathery wings with glistening edges, the glint of curved, exposed talons craning forwards in a lethal reach. Then there were screams. Again he shook his head, battling the buzzing hive between his ears, but Eutychus was already unholstering his laspistol and taking aim as Abdiel screamed at the stunned crewmen assembled nearby.
‘Don’t just stand there. In the name of the Emperor, kill them!’
Jolted into action, the thirty-nine men frantically grabbed for small arms and lasguns, a jumbled mass of confusion and poor weapons practice. Barrabas pulled his laspistol free, firing into the wheeling mass of creatures descending upon the desperately waving forms of the two pilots. Working as a lethal flock, the huge reptilian beasts flew in a tight circle around the men, a whirlwind of slashing razor-edged wings and dagger-sharp talons, until the men’s features became an unrecognisable mess of blood. An arm disappeared in a gushing instant, taken up high by one creature which, away from the group, presented a more focused target and Abdiel blasted repeatedly at its sinewy form. Surprisingly agile for its size, it ducked, turned and weaved, avoiding the fire and refusing to drop the gruesome trophy from its long, bony beak.
The screaming abruptly stopped and despite the hail of fire now hitting the flashing bodies, only two creatures fell into the swampy ground, immediately diced and devoured by their merciless kin. The pilots were now bloody stumps, cut and sliced apart piece by piece, but at least their misery was over. Some of the larger creatures swooped low over the wildly firing crew, veering off at the last second from their attack. Barrabas was horrified to see a further dark cloud of them approaching.
The ground shook.
Barrabas, Eutychus and Abdiel lost their footing and fell heavily onto the polished rock, immediately scrambling to their feet in fear of an attack from the flying nightmares. Instead, they were surprised to see the flock hurtle upward towards the distant explosion that now rolled across the skies and had surely caused the ground to quake. Their burst of speed created a foetid breeze behind them, leaving nothing more than a stream of lazily-popping air bubbles on the marshy surface and Zebah’s partially stripped leg still in its work boot. Not a fitting end for such a man, thought Barrabas, as he turned to the panting form of Armsman Haddar.
‘Get up that ridge and see what’s going on. Might be someone else made it out of the convoy. The rest of you, inventory what we have. Keep to the rock.’
Barrabas wiped the grime from his face and took a deep breath. It was cold and getting dark. Shelter would be needed, and soon. Abdiel threw him a filthy look, clearly blaming him for the situation they were currently in. Barrabas didn’t turn away from the old man’s gaze, even when the commissar slammed home a new power pack and cocked his weapon deliberately towards him.
Haddar shouted down from the raised embankment to his left. ‘Captain, there’s a big chunk of space hulk about fifteen kilometres away. Too far to make out details, but it looks like those… banshees are circling it.’
Eutychus turned to Barrabas, his face uncharacteristically serious.
‘Orks?’
‘Very likely. We need to get out of here.’
Barrabas peered into the distance through shattered magnoculars, down the wide trench in which they stood towards the towering needle-like columns darkening slowly in the distant sunset. He could just make out two of the creatures wheeling lazily between the spires and it suddenly became obvious to him they knew where their prey might get trapped – a fact they could use to their advantage.
‘We need to know what we’re up against, sir.’
Eutychus was thinking like an officer. This pleased Barrabas.
‘Agreed. Take two armsmen and scout the situation, sub-lieutenant. We’ll make our way over to the base of those towers. There are some caves at ground level.’
Eutychus saluted automatically and strode over to the assembled men, catching a lasrifle with a clatter from the stocky form of Haddar as he approached. With a nod, Toah swiftly fell in behind Eutychus, exchanging a grim smile with Haddar as they marched towards the embankment – they were they boy’s first command, but as it clearly didn’t bother the youth, it didn’t worry them unduly. Barrabas shouted after the trio as they clambered up the rocky slope. ‘Be careful where you step. Look to the skies. If those creatures fly at night, they’ll show you where to avoid.’
Within seconds the men were at the top of the incline and, after a short pause and much pointing, disappeared out of sight into the dark red gloom descending over the planet’s surface. Abdiel strolled over to Barrabas’s side, his face a shadow under his cap.
‘What kind of “captain” are you, Barrabas? What kind of role model for a young officer? He’s a good prospect. A little too well-mannered perhaps, but with the right training he might make an officer. Look at you ¬– you’re a disgrace, like your grandfather. He follows your example at his peril.’
Barrabas spoke as calmly as his hoarse throat
would allow, knowing this infuriated the man beyond measure.
‘You’ve been riding my back for the last three years, Abdiel. We both know why I’m here, but what about you? What did you do wrong?’
The belt at the bottom of Abdiel’s polished breastplate creaked as he leaned menacingly towards Barrabas who, being a good ten centimetres taller than him, didn’t retreat one inch, even at the whiff of the commissar’s stinking breath.
‘The only mistake I made was to give undisciplined, wayward scum like your grandfather the benefit of the doubt. I don’t intend to repeat that error. Ever.’
Eutychus pressed his back against a rock, its dampness soaking into his tunic. To his left, Haddar pulled a battered lasgun to his barrel chest, darting glances all around in the russet darkness. To his right, the ends of Toah’s boots tapped nervously against each other as they dangled downwards at head-height. ‘What can you see?’ hissed Eutychus through cold-clenched teeth.
‘Orks, sir. Thousands of ‘em.’ Toah lay flattened to the ground on the plateau above and behind Eutychus and Haddar, surveying the scene as best he could with his salvaged lascannon scope.
Eutychus frowned. It was likely that the orks were also survivors of the collision with the fleet, and the proximity to their own crash site couldn’t be coincidence.
‘What are they up to, Toah?’
‘Bloody rocks could be hiding anything, sir. They’re trying to assemble vehicles for scouting parties, but they keep sinking under their own weight. Looks like the banshees have gone, but–’
Toah was silenced by a huge throwing axe that cleaved his skull. Wrenching it free with a sickening wet crack, the owner of the clumsy weapon turned to face Eutychus, grunting as Toah’s feet twitched wildly, his body not yet realising that his brain had been bisected. Within seconds the hulking figure was attacking; a raging shadow of muscle and sinew seamlessly connected to the enormous cannon now bearing on its target. The darkness burst into stroboscopic brilliance from Haddar’s weapon as he emptied an entire power pack into the bellowing ork’s head with absolute precision, the cover of night only returning when the greenskin collapsed onto its back.
Eutychus had heard the crew joke about Haddar’s self-proclaimed prowess in battle as the ramblings of a middle-aged, deluded man. What he had just witnessed would have stopped them laughing. Breathing heavily, the armsman looked sharply at the gaping officer.
‘There’ll be more, lad. Time to go.’
Eutychus forced himself away from the hard comfort of the wall and headed back the way they came, the ground soft and sucking on his saturated boots. The jangling of equipment and the men’s panting breath was soon joined by another sound, that of shrieking and whooping directly behind.
‘Into the shadows, Haddar. We might lose them.’
It was optimistic of Eutychus to think that they could successfully retrace their steps in the dull gloom that passed for night on this Emperor-forsaken planet, and within minutes he had absolutely no idea where they were in relation to the crashed hulk or his own crew. Rocks loomed claustrophobically around them, and things took yet another turn for the worst when the ground changed from a sucking mud to a wetter, softer consistency which grabbed at the sub-lieutenant’s legs and pitched him forwards.
‘Watch out Haddar, the ground’s–’ Eutychus’s words were drowned out in a volley of echoing fire from behind and he felt the whistle of projectiles pass his ears. Haddar’s return shots were rewarded with shrieks of pain from the darkness, but this only added to Eutychus’s frustration. He couldn’t turn enough to give any kind of supporting fire, and he knew the armsman was a sitting duck as long as he blocked the orks’ path in this slender corridor. Finally hitting solid ground, he spun and threw himself back-first onto the rock, levelling the lasgun towards Haddar. The passage was too narrow. He still couldn’t fire past or over the portly man without fear of hitting him. Then the armsman’s power pack was exhausted. Seizing the moment, the orks thundered forwards as he stood his ground.
‘Haddar! Get down!’
There was no answer. Tossing his lasgun aside, Haddar calmly reached into the pockets of his webbing and pulled out a pair of frag grenades. As the whooping greenskins smashed into him, Eutychus was thrown back a full five metres by the double explosion’s shockwave. Smoke rose into the air and the smell of singed flesh caught in the back of his throat as, seriously winded, he fought for breath. With no obvious signs of movement from the, now thankfully hidden, carnage, Eutychus wiped an angry tear from his eye and staggered off into the darkness, utterly distraught at failing his first real test as an officer.
Barrabas sat wearily at the mouth of a shallow cave and took a swig from his water bottle, watching the brown-red sunrise with concern. Their location was hardly a perfect defensive position, but the eroded cliff-face had offered some shelter and, with a deep natural passageway behind, a potential escape route. The order to rest had been issued barely four hours before, but the low murmurs from his crew confirmed their state of exhaustion.
Engineers Narris and Lubek, who had busied themselves with the salvaged transmitter to his left, hadn’t stopped since they made camp. Occasional bursts of static punctuated the air, quickly followed by the urgent muttering of invocations and supplications from the two veteran technicians in their attempt to appease and coerce the transmitter’s machine-spirit. Shifting uncomfortably on his rocky seat, Barrabas still wasn’t happy about the distance they’d put between themselves and the greenskin crash site. He could only hope the dumb rage of the orks would drop them straight into the shifting patches they’d managed to avoid. It might buy a little time, but sooner or later they would catch up. As long as it wasn’t here, they might stand a chance.
‘Your crew, such as they are, seem to think they owe you something for stranding them here.’ Abdiel appeared at Barrabas’s side without a sound. ‘Personally, I don’t see it that way.’ The commissar stared straight ahead into the gloomy valley from which they had come, eyes fixed on an unseen point.
‘While we’re alive, we still have a chance.’ Barrabas wasn’t convinced by his own words, but he wasn’t going to let Abdiel ignore the fact that he owed him his life.
‘Marooning us with no chance of rescue on a planet teeming with orks isn’t something to be applauded, Barrabas. You seem to forget I’ve been through this before with your family – giving them a chance, only to see destruction and ruin. My ruin.’
It might have been the deep, numbing fatigue or the last vestiges of concussion, but Barrabas didn’t react to the sound of Abdiel’s bolt pistol being drawn. He found himself looking into its charred muzzle and, behind, the commissar staring impassively at him.
‘I’m taking command. In the name of the Emperor, you’re relieved of–’
Both men jumped at the blaze of noise from the nearby transmitter. Luckily for Barrabas, the commissar’s finger was light on the trigger.
‘Automatic repeat. Attention all survivors of salvage convoy two-three-ten. This is Captain Rale of the Genocide. We are aware of your situation and will dispatch rescue vessels on completion of repairs to our starboard airlocks. Activate landing beacon if safe to do so. Time stamp zero-three-hundred-forty-two. Automatic repeat. Attention…’
Rushing out of the cave at the sound of the amplified voice, the crew’s excitement quickly turned to astonishment as they beheld the commissar’s pistol levelled at their captain and saviour. Lubek turned the volume down and glanced at the squatting Narris, ten years his junior but in far worse physical shape, and the two joined the increasingly tense silence of their shipmates.
From the corner of his vision, First Mate Barat saw the shadow of a weapon being raised but thrust out his muscular arm and pushed the muzzle down, praying Abdiel hadn’t seen the move. The crewman glared at Barat, but the first mate met his stare unflinchingly; this had been coming for a long time. It would have to play out between captain and commissar with no intervention from the crew.
‘It appea
rs that I just might have saved us after all, commissar.’ Barrabas spoke evenly, his eyes staring into the darkness beneath Abdiel’s peaked cap.
‘This doesn’t change a thing, Barrabas. There’s no telling when the Genocide will be able to launch rescue ships. If it’s more than a day, we’ll be done for anyway.’
‘Make that half a day.’
Weapons clattered in clumsy response to the new voice from the dark, but recognition quickly followed as Eutychus staggered up the steep incline to their position. Without turning his attention from Abdiel, Barrabas snapped his fingers and a water canteen was handed to the exhausted man, who drank from it with grateful, heavy gulps.
‘Where are your men, sub-lieutenant?’ Abdiel regarded the filthy, bedraggled officer with no hint of pity or welcome, his arm still locked and arrow-straight despite the weight of the pistol.
‘I… lost them, commissar.’ Eutychus looked down to his mud-encrusted chest, the blue of his tunic hardly visible in the meagre light. ‘Both of them.’
‘Useless. Absolutely useless. You’re as feeble as your mentor.’
Abdiel looked back down to the unflinching Barrabas and over to the wary group behind him. He’d felt hostility from the crew before, burning into the back of his neck, heating the wrinkled skin behind his high collar, but nothing on this scale. Commissars were supposed to stand for discipline and instil the will to serve, but he felt as if he were among the scum of a penal legion and any wrong move would be his last. Easing his finger off the trigger, he casually holstered his bolt pistol and turned his attention to the transmitter and the two squatting men frozen to the spot beside it.
‘See if you can get a vox-message back to Rale. Tell him to hurry.’ He nodded towards Eutychus. ‘That idiot’s probably led the greenskins right to us.’ Turning on his heel, he marched over to the crewmen.
‘Our chances of survival will be maximised in a firefight with the greatest possible number of men. Your captain’s execution will hold – for now.’
With that, Abdiel shoved his way roughly through the line of crewmen back towards his kit inside the cave, exchanging a brief nod with Barat as he passed. Barrabas could feel the anger and confusion mounting in his men and knew he had to act fast. Rising quickly, he strode over to the dejected figure of Eutychus, whose shoulders were slumped in defeat, and turned to face them all.
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