Fire Caste

by Peter Fehervari

  ‘Stormchaser – second kill confirmed – Devilfish,’ Vendrake’s vox reported crisply. The captain nodded, recognising Beauregard Van Hal’s call sign. It seemed Silverstorm’s ace rider was already surging ahead in the kill stakes. Most cavalrymen lived for these fleeting, frantic moments when the world was distilled to the purity of the hunt.

  Even a cesspit world like Phaedra...

  Vendrake spotted a trio of T-shaped Piranhas bearing down on his barge. He skittered his Sentinel over to the stern and met them with a storm of bullets. The skimmer in the centre took the brunt of it and burst open, but its companions banked away to either side and kept coming, weaving a madcap pattern through his fire. Vendrake grinned and answered with a near random spray that clipped the skimmer to his left. It spun out of control and capsized, spilling both its riders into the burning water. He shredded them as he swerved after the remaining Piranha. It was dangerously close now.

  ‘It’s going for our engines!’ someone yelled. Salvos of lighter gunfire erupted from the barge as greybacks crowded around Vendrake and sniped at the open-topped skimmer. Abruptly the Piranha abandoned its manoeuvring and sped straight for them, buzzing like a giant mosquito. Vendrake nailed the pilots in seconds, already knowing he was too late.

  It has been too late for too long, if not forever…

  To Vendrake’s Glory-fried eyes time seemed to stretch taught, pinning the incoming Piranha just metres from its target, strung like an arrow in a bowstring of flames. And suddenly he knew he’d seen all this before, the same lethal hues painted across a different canvas – frozen flames and fate staring at him through his windshield.

  ‘Belle du Morte signing in,’ Leonora’s spiteful voice sang from the vox.

  Then the arrow was released and the skimmer smashed into the barge like a missile.

  ‘Vendrake’s in trouble,’ Machen called over the vox. His voice sounded strained, as if he were struggling to stay awake.

  ‘Confirmed,’ Iverson said, watching the barge to starboard shake and stall. Within seconds Vendrake’s ship had faded into the mist, left behind by its speeding companions.

  ‘We cannot abandon them,’ the witch said quietly.

  ‘I’m going back,’ Machen said. His ship was already turning about.

  Iverson hesitated. Bierce shook his head. ‘Negative,’ Iverson ordered. ‘We press on for the rig.’

  ‘To the Hells with you, Iverson.’ Machen cut the line.

  Another explosion rippled through Vendrake’s barge. This time the whole ship heaved, as if in the throes of a violent seizure. With a creak of tortured metal the stern plummeted towards the lake, sending scrabbling, screaming greybacks tumbling into the burning water. They burst into flames the moment they touched the lake, almost as if they’d combusted from within. Vendrake dug his Sentinel’s claws into the deck and arched backwards, struggling for balance on the sheer slope. A third explosion rocked the barge and more men slid towards the brink. A lucky few found handholds on his machine’s legs. Then a fellow Sentinel lurched over the lip, almost dislodging him.

  Now we’re only six, a distant, clinical part of Vendrake counted. And Arness is on this tug too, somewhere up front. Once the ship goes down we’ll be four. And I won’t be one of them.

  With a throaty roar, Machen’s barge pulled up alongside the dying ship and fired a barrage of grappling hooks. Desperate men abandoned their handholds and leapt for the lifelines. Coughing and cursing, they fought their way across the sloping deck towards the rescue ship. A Zouave who’d wedged himself behind a fuel pipe rocketed over with a greyback under each arm. Arness’s Sentinel hopped across with men clinging to its cockpit. Balanced precariously over the lake, Vendrake didn’t dare move, didn’t see how he could move without falling.

  ‘Belle du Morte, killed in action,’ a sinuous voice whispered from his vox. ‘Your inaction, dear Hardin.’

  Vendrake tried to blank her out. His entire body was taut with the effort of keeping his mount steady. He had never felt more at one with his machine.

  ‘It’s almost time, my love,’ the wraith said.

  ‘What do you want from me, you dead bitch?’ Vendrake snarled, feeling his grip on sanity slipping along with his grip on the deck.

  ‘Why, Hardin, that’s no way to talk to a lady!’ A broken glass giggle, then a death rattle sigh. ‘I just want us to be together. Forever…’

  He saw her dissolve from the smoke and come skittering across the fiery lake like a herald out of the Hells. Her Sentinel’s hide was scorched black and encrusted with coral spines that flickered with unholy current.

  ‘There’s so much to see, Hardin. You just have to open your eyes.’ Rainbow light oozed from her cockpit like prismatic pus, leaving swirling streamers of corruption in its wake.

  ‘You aren’t Leonora,’ he hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You aren’t anything.’

  ‘Then what does that make you, my love?’

  ‘I…’

  A trio of tau tanks stormed from the smog and swept the apparition away. Suddenly Leonora’s challenge didn’t matter anymore because Vendrake’s focus had narrowed to another, more pressing question.

  How do I stop them?

  Two of the tanks were Devilfish, but the third was something much worse. It was built around the same sleek chassis, but sported a massive turret-mounted cannon that turned Vendrake’s blood to ice. He’d never encountered one before, but he’d heard the descriptions: the third attacker was a Hammerhead, the main battle tank of the Tau Empire.

  A couple of shots from that monster cannon will sink Machen’s tug before he knows what’s hit him.

  Suddenly Vendrake saw the aliens’ plan with dreadful clarity. They could have finished his dying barge in seconds, but they’d been patient and used it to lure the others back into a trap. Wedged against the sinking barge, Machen’s vessel was appallingly vulnerable. Vendrake’s mind whirled, soaring on Glory as he sifted and discarded tactics, tearing through options in split seconds, hunting for an answer before it was too late. And somewhere in the desperate alchemy of Glory and guilt he found his answer.

  I am the Silverstorm.

  Vendrake let go and vaulted from the sloping deck. At the height of his arc he ignited his undercarriage thrusters and set the leap on fire. Pushing his customised machine to its limits he soared across the lake to intercept the leading Devilfish. It was an insane, outrageous move that was almost heretical in its abuse of the machine’s tortured spirit, but then the machine itself was a heretical construct, twisted far beyond the sane limits of the Sentinel pattern by his obsessive tinkering. It was something more than a Sentinel, just as Vendrake himself had become something more than a man in this moment when the world had become something less than real.

  This is my Thunderground.

  His Sentinel came down hard on the tank, cracking its carapace and sending it into a wild spin. Calculating trajectories in a blur, Vendrake leapt across to its neighbour with his talons extended and his autocannon blazing. The landing raked deep grooves into the second Devilfish’s canopy and the bullets tore it wide open. And then Vendrake was leaping again.

  This is my redemption.

  Intent on Machen’s barge, the Hammerhead never saw him coming. Its gun was powering up to fire when the Sentinel slammed down onto its barrel. The ion cannon exploded like a miniature sun, disintegrating the tank’s canopy and the Sentinel’s legs. Vendrake’s burning cockpit was hurled into the air like a rocket. Thrust back into his couch by the propulsion, Vendrake watched the sickening clouds soaring towards him. His body was burning and his mind was almost burned out.

  Maybe I’ll see the stars, he thought fleetingly. Maybe I’ll escape Phaedra after all.

  ‘There is no escape, my love,’ Leonora said, sounding peculiarly wistful. He could no longer tell if she was speaking through the vox or inside his head. ‘But don’t despair,
Hardin. I’ll always be with you.’

  And then he jackknifed in the air and plummeted back towards the lake.

  I’m a silver bullet that’s going to punch right through to the heart of this sick world. Vendrake grinned. Who knows, I might even kill the bitch.

  Spilling cascades of water, Iverson’s gunboat surged from the lake and rolled onto the refinery pier. Combat servitors and skitarii were scattered or crushed as they tried to mount a defence against the armoured leviathan; more were mown down by the Triton’s guns and the greybacks crouched behind its walls. The lascannon at the prow flared and rendered a chattering defence turret down to molten slag. The weapon was fully charged and eager to kill, its spirit restored to health by the ministrations of the Arkan tech-priests. It fired again, disintegrating a trio of skitarii as the gunboat rolled up the pier like a mobile fortress.

  Iverson surveyed the scene from the wheelhouse, trying to marry up the reality of the rig with Abel’s painstakingly transcribed maps. Up close, his first impression of an industrial octopus was reinforced. The Diadem was a city-sized sprawl built on a mosaic of interlocking platforms that were packed with manufactories, silos and hab-blocks linked by a network of roads and tunnels. The centre was occupied by the octopus’s mantle, a cyclopean tower block crowned by the beacon light. A cascade of pipes and scaffolding splayed from the mantle like tentacles and enfolded the other buildings. Looking at that covetous tower, Iverson sensed the rig was somehow alive and even dimly aware of their presence.

  ‘We have to get off this thing before it wakes up,’ someone whispered at his ear. Iverson turned, half expecting Reve, but finding only the witch. He could feel the anger radiating from her in waves.

  ‘I hope Abel’s directions are as good as his codes,’ he said. Their informer had plotted their path to the shuttle pad with meticulous care. It lay some two kilometres into the sprawl and the idea was to run the rig’s gauntlet before it closed its grip.

  ‘You should not have left the others behind,’ she said coldly.

  ‘I had no choice. We had to hit the pier hard and fast.’ He activated the loudhailer. ‘All armoured personnel disembark and assume flanking positions.’

  ‘Armoured personnel,’ she mocked. ‘A handful of Sentinels and Zouaves! That’s all we have left now.’

  Something snapped inside him and he rounded on her. ‘I don’t know what your game is, but I won’t tolerate insubordination during a combat operation.’

  Standing beside her, Bierce nodded fierce approval.

  ‘Do you intend to shoot me too, Holt Iverson?’ she challenged.

  Shoot you… too? How do you know about Reve?

  Looking down, he saw his hand had strayed to his holster.

  ‘Commissar,’ Machen called over the vox, ‘we’re coming in now. I saved as many as I could.’ The captain sounded worse than before, his voice a barely audible croak.

  Iverson glanced out the window and saw Machen’s barge pulling up alongside the pier. ‘You disobeyed a direct order, captain.’

  ‘Vendrake is dead,’ Machen said. ‘So are half the men who sailed with him.’

  ‘Deploy around the Triton. We have to get moving.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ Machen said tightly over the vox. ‘And Iverson – when this is done I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘What do you hope to achieve with this insanity?’ O’Seishin asked as Cutler’s team crossed the deserted shuttle pad. The tau ambassador was back on his floating throne drone, but Obadiah Pope was right beside him with a carbine wedged discreetly into the small of his back. Most of the Diadem’s forces had been drawn to the Watchtower and the handful of janissaries they’d encountered along the way hadn’t questioned the ambassador and his ‘retinue’.

  ‘Just hang in there and you’ll get the picture soon enough, Si,’ Cutler said.

  ’emperor’s blood!’ Lieutenant Sandefur exclaimed from up front.

  The party halted, staring at the scene ahead. There was indeed blood, a great deal of it, but Cutler doubted any of it belonged to the Emperor. It was pooled around the shuttle’s cargo hatch in a semi-congealed swathe, black with swarming flies. A severed hand protruded from the ooze, its fingers extended almost apologetically. The shuttle’s ramp was extended into the filth like a questing tongue, its length smeared with trails of blood.

  ‘What in the Hells happened here?’ Sandefur was pale with shock. Violence was nothing new to any of them, but there was an obscene quality to this carnage that went beyond honest killing. Almost a miasma…

  It’s back, Cutler sensed. Drawing his sabre, he stepped onto the ramp.

  ‘I will not enter there,’ O’Seishin said. He tried to pull back from the ship, but Pope shoved him forward. ‘Ensor Cutler, I cannot!’ the alien implored.

  Cutler scowled at him. All the ambassador’s arrogance had dissolved away, leaving behind an ancient, frightened relic.

  ‘You can and you will,’ Cutler said. ‘You think you’ve got us gue’la monkeys worked out, don’t you, Si? Well then, this is something you’ve just got to see.’

  ‘Taking heavy fire!’ Dryden shouted over the vox. ‘Coming in from all sides!’

  Lieutenant Pericles Quint peered through the windshield at his fellow rider. Fifty metres down the road ahead, Dryden’s Sentinel was dancing about frantically, tormented by bright bursts of energy. Every strike bit deep into the machine’s armour and drew a gush of smoke.

  ‘I… I don’t see them,’ Quint blustered, hunting about for the attackers. The energy bursts seemed to be coming out of thin air. ‘Initiate firing pattern Wolf 359…’

  ‘Pull back!’ Beauregard Van Hal cut in. ‘Do it now, Dry!’

  ‘I’ve lost my–’ Dryden’s Sentinel exploded with shocking suddenness.

  ‘Dryden?’ Quint asked dully, staring at the burning wreckage.

  ‘Suppression fire, full auto,’ Van Hal ordered. ‘Purge the street.’

  ‘But there’s nothing…’ Quint’s whine was drowned in a barrage of gunfire as the other Sentinels followed Van Hal’s lead. Almost against his will, the lieutenant followed suit. They battered the empty street ahead with bullets and las-fire for a full thirty seconds before Van Hal called a halt.

  ‘You’ve got us shooting at ghosts,’ Quint snapped, trying to regain the upper hand in the squadron. Now that Vendrake was gone, he was Silverstorm’s commanding officer and Van Hal had no business undermining him.

  ‘Not ghosts,’ the veteran rider said, striding forward. ‘But maybe something close.’

  ‘What are you talking about, man?’

  ‘They moved fast, but we got one.’ Van Hal hopped over to a broken shape lying by the side of the road. It was a tau warrior in bulky black armour. The broken carapace was still phasing in and out of visibility erratically. ‘It’s some kind of cloaking system,’ Van Hal said. ‘Typical blueskin trickery.’

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’ Iverson voxed. ‘We’ve got a whole battalion of skitarii on our tails back here!’

  The Sentinel squad had forged ahead, scouting out the path for the Triton and the infantry. It was dirty, dangerous work and they’d already lost Rees to a skitarii ambush. With Dryden gone they were down to just four machines.

  ‘Bit of a tussle with the blueskins,’ Quint said, ‘but don’t you worry, I’ve nailed them, commissar!’

  ‘There’ll be more,’ Van Hal said. ‘They were working as a squad.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should take point,’ Quint huffed, ‘seeing as your eyes are so blasted sharp!’

  ‘That man’s an idiot,’ Iverson snarled and flicked the vox over to Machen’s channel. ‘What’s your status, captain?’

  ‘We’re holding, but there are hundreds of them now.’ Machen’s reply was framed by a relentless wash of gunfire. ‘They’ve come crawling out of every bloody service tunnel along the way.’

 
The surviving Zouaves were arrayed around the Triton, supporting the beleaguered infantry. At first resistance had been light and they’d made good speed, but then the Diadem had started to wake up and its guardians had massed around the intruders like antibodies. Iverson checked Abel’s map: the shuttle pad was just a couple of blocks away, but the advance was in danger of stalling.

  The infantry are too slow. We need to run for the shuttle.

  Iverson wasn’t sure if the thought was his or Bierce’s… or perhaps even Reve’s. His augmetic eye was playing up badly now, the electric wasp inside flittering about and painting sparks across his vision. He glanced down at the deck. There were some fifty greybacks manning the walls of the ship. Would they be enough?

  ‘Don’t do it,’ the witch cautioned. ‘Don’t leave them behind again.’

  But the mission is all that matters…

  Machen mowed down another pair of charging skitarii. The Mechanicus warriors died as silently as they fought, their pallid Saathlaa faces untouched by pain or fear when they fell. All were clad in the same rust-red flak armour, but they sported a riot of customised augmetics. He saw glowing optics, bionic arms flush with blades, even spring-loaded legs, but every warrior moved with the same implacable purpose, as if controlled by an overarching mind. That mind had already ground down a score of greybacks on the road to the shuttle. There were less than a hundred men left on the ground now, every one of them battered and bleeding. Without the Zouaves they would have been overrun in minutes.

  We forged our path in the blood and bones of our fallen, erecting squalid mortuary markers along the Crow Road…

  ‘Shut up!’ Machen screamed, berating the agony in his leg as much as the ghost in his head. ‘Let me think for a moment, Templeton!’