by Guy Haley
‘Open fire!’ bellowed Bannick. Bright red beams of light stabbed from his laspistol, the crack of its discharge joined by the report of the sandscum’s single-shot rifles. Bannick’s laspistol only seemed to annoy the orks, and they turned to face this new threat, bellowing as they charged, axes raised. The combined fire of the three men brought them down, the last dying as it hit the rockpile, sending its head-sized pistol clattering over to land at Bannick’s feet.
Olli, meanwhile, had been busy. Two more orks had fallen to his long rifle. The orks knew he was there now, and fired at him, but he was out of the effective range of their guns. Bannick saw two bolting together some kind of rocket launcher they’d pulled from a pack, working together intensely, ignoring the battle around them.
‘If they fire that in here, it will bring the roof in,’ hissed Suumsta.
‘We go in now, then. Ready? One, two, three, go, go, go!’
Bannick and the sandscum vaulted over the rockpile, screaming warcries from cultures born light years apart, yet all the same in the eyes of the Emperor. Bannick fired his laspistol as calmly as he could, aim, squeeze, aim, squeeze. He went for the orks’ knees or elbows, hoping to knock them down for a few moments, the weapon lacking the power to penetrate their thick skulls at such a range. Suumsta went down, torso ripped open by ork bullets; his comrade Branka, enraged by his friend’s death, ran full pelt into the camp roaring madly. His crooked legs seemed no hindrance as he cast his rifle aside, drew his long sandscum knife and leapt straight onto an ork’s back, howling as he stabbed and stabbed into the thing’s thick shoulders. The ork grunted in pain and tried to pluck the man from its back, but the sandscum would not let go, sinking his blade into the ork over and over, until it stumbled, and fell.
Bannick was into the thick of the fight shortly afterwards. He played his lasbeam over the orks’ faces now, seeking out eyes and open mouths. He missed his sword, left on Mars Triumphant; the knife he carried in his left hand felt puny.
If I am to die here, he thought, then so be it.
He dodged between grasping orkish hands, but found himself caught and yanked back. He fell to the floor, an ork looming over him. It held him down with one hand and pulled its own blade with the other. Bannick rammed his knife into its chest, the point skidding over broad ribs before it found its way into the softer fibres of the intercostal spaces. The ork did not slow. Bannick brought up his gun, but the ork let go of Bannick’s uniform and slapped the pistol from his hand. It drew back its knife, and Bannick prepared to die.
The ork grinned a millisecond before Olli’s shot entered its left eye and smashed the back of its skull outwards, showering Bannick in globules of brain and blood. The ork swayed for a moment before collapsing with murderous weight onto the lieutenant, trapping him under a warm mountain of stinking, alien flesh.
When the ork was levered off him, it was all over. Two men grabbed at Bannick’s hands and hauled him to his feet. Bannick coughed as he drew breath into his lungs. Pain flared along his side. He pressed his chest. No ribs broken, but he was badly bruised.
Sandscum and ork bodies lay everywhere. Olli sat calmly on the sand berm carving notches into his rifle while his folk walked from ork to ork, plunging their long, sawtoothed knives into eye sockets or shooting through skulls at short range, making sure the tough creatures were truly dead.
Bruta stood in the midst of it all. ‘Twelve men dead.’ He shook his head. ‘And we had them outnumbered and surrounded. If they ever find Scumtown with any numbers, we’re finished.’ He looked to Bannick, who stood there pained and dishevelled, clutching his side. The mayor looked up the tunnel, at the corpses, his face set. ‘You were right, lieutenant, we don’t have any choice. We’ll take you back to your tank.’
Chapter 24
Aronis City, Paragon VI
2003395.M41
Silence fell across the Gardens of the Vermillion Moon, as if the plants and animals within were holding their breath. Tuparillio’s seconds looked on, slackjawed. The corpse of the boy lay upon the blue grass, red staining it black. Bannick stood over the boy, sword arm extended, poised as if to tackle another blow. He clutched at his cheek, blood and tears leaking between his fingers, the pain making him faint. The wound was a lash of agony.
Tuparillio was on his back, one arm thrown out, sword lying on the grass, the other hand clutching at the hole in his chest. His mouth was wide as if he were about to ask a question, his eyes clouding. Blood covered him, there was so much of it. It soaked his clothes to his knees, made his face half-crimson, the other half snow-white, like a carnival mask. His hair was matted with blood.
‘You killed him.’ Tolsten broke the silence, Bannick did not know nor would he ever know the boy’s clan name or patronymic, some friend of Tuparillio’s, some nobody. ‘You killed him after he won.’
The other boy in the garden, a Sankello, sank to his knees and stared at the corpse. Bannick looked from Tolsten to the other second, Tolsten glancing between Bannick’s weapon and his face, the other boy shaking.
Bannick continued to stare as the medic came to him, injecting his arm with a painkiller, wiping blood away from his face. The medic pressed a stick bandage over the wound, and the pain receded.
‘I… I…’ Bannick looked at both boys, then back to the corpse. He was still holding his sword, a present from his father. He cast it aside, he couldn’t bear to hold it. His limbs began to shake.
‘You’ll rot for this, Colaron,’ said Tolsten.
A hammering came at the heatlock outer door. The noise shook the Sankello boy out of his shock. ‘The watch,’ he said.
The door panel began to fizz as the watch burned their way in. Acrid smoke polluted the air of the garden. The inner doors of the heatlock cracked open, a pry inserted in the gap, forcing them wider, pushing them into their wall slots. Freezing air blasted into the greenhouse park.
Bannick panicked, he ran to his furs, but woolly-headed from the anaesthetic he misjudged the distance and scattered half of them on the grass. He snatched up what he could and fled.
The doors slid open. The wrath of winter spilled in. Five watchmen, armed and armoured for the winter patrols came with it. ‘Stop! Halt in the name of the Watch!’ shouted one.
Bannick ran.
Tolsten’s voice followed him. ‘He went that way! That way! Stop him! He killed Tuparillio!’
He sprinted through the garden, plants whipping him in the face. His gloves tumbled from the bundle in his arms. As he started back for them, a stun baton sped through the air past his face, changing his mind.
‘Stop! Stop!’ the watchman called.
Bannick reached the back of the courtyard. There was another doorway there, a service entrance. He reached it and stabbed at its lock. The door ground open, showering rust as it slid into the wall. He ducked through. More baton rounds bounced off the wall. He flinched. He hammered the buttons on the panel inside. The watchmen drew near. One of them reached the door as it began to close, attempting to force it, but the mechanism was too strong and he snatched his hands back before his fingers were crushed.
Bannick locked the door with his clan override code. It would hold the watch for a few minutes.
He pelted along the corridor, ducking to avoid runs of rusty geothermal pipes bringing warmth up from the heart of the tidally stressed moon to heat the park.
He reached the exit to the heating plant and tugged his overtrousers on. He’d dropped his vest. From back the way he had come he heard the sound of pursuit. They’d got through quickly. The information did not faze him, his mind was numb with the anaesthetic, blunted along with the pain. Part of himself urged him to stop but he could not.
He dragged his outer boots up quickly and went for the door, a single, not a heatlock. The handle lever was unheated, and as he grabbed it the cold of the Long Winter shot up his arm. He threw back the lever and the door swung open onto th
e gloom of the day.
Lungs burning, Bannick threw himself into a shelter, a small beehive-shaped building with a slender entrance. He disturbed a pair of lovers, their outer garments partly unwrapped. They left hastily, fleeing the bloodied young man.
Bannick slumped onto the curved bench inside. An array of geothermal pipes formed a fan behind the bench. Bannick sat there on the knife-edge boundary between the cold of the Long Winter and the warmth of Paragon’s heart. His body shuddered, and he stirred himself to rearrange his furs. He peered out of the door of the booth. There was no sign of the watch.
He sat back on the bench, shivering, feeling the cold now the danger had passed. What had he done?
He was on the deserted central plaza, tall buildings all around it, its summer garden buried under snow, fountains frozen. Few people came here to relax during the Long Winter, activity shifting to the frost fairs on the city’s complex of canals.
A bell rang across the square, marking out the hour to Imperial Time.
Bannick had not thought about the church for a long time. Terra was a long way away, the Emperor incomprehensibly distant. Although Bannick had always been aware that his survival rested upon His broken shoulders, the idea that the Emperor was directly aware of him was nonsensical. The needs and demands of the Paragonian aristocracy, of honour, were far more immediate.
And now he had dishonoured himself.
Bannick sought the cathedral among the buildings opposite, there, facade thick with snow. Built early in the post-Crusade period it was the most ancient structure on Paragon, now somewhat overshadowed by the needle spires of the corporate clans. Still it was tall, three stately towers reaching upwards towards Terra and the Emperor’s Golden Throne.
A door opened in its front, one of two small entrances flanking the cyclopean gates in the centre. A cone of orange light spilled onto the dirty snow, framing a man in priest’s robes who hurried off.
Bannick stood. The light called to him; even after the door had closed it seemed to him that he could still see it. He left the booth and walked across the square, his footsteps ever quicker as he drew near the church door.
Chapter 25
Kalidar IV, Hive Meradon Adminstrative Periphery
3349397.M41
Cortein stared hard at his readouts, a welter of meterological information streaming down from augur-sats above, information relayed by the fleet. Comms chatter, some of it long-range, hissed through the command deck’s speakers, the howl of Kalidar’s static reduced to a sibilant protest.
‘They’re sure the storm has passed? Are you certain?’
Epparaliant nodded. Screens on the comms station showed clear skies, a wall of dust retreating on the horizon. ‘Yes, sir, the storm is over. Electomagnetic activity is back down to Kalidar standard. The sunspike is over, fleet metereologians confirm it. Vox communication is possible. We’ll be able to speak to command once the attack commences. If the fleet come in overhead, we’ll probably be able to get them too.’
Cortein sighed and sat back, then let the convoy know the good news. Over the vox ragged cheers went up from the other tanks, joining with that from Mars Triumphant’s crew.
‘How far are we from target alpha?’
‘Forty kilometres, sir.’
‘Any sign we’ve been noticed?’
Epparaliant checked screens, trying to make sense of degraded datafeeds coming in from orbit. ‘No, sir,’ he said eventually. ‘There’s no sign of ork activity in the immediate vicinity.’
Cortein checked his counter. Twenty hours until he was due to launch his attack. ‘Tell the men, in person, that we’re to make camp. Nothing elaborate, we’ll be leaving in eight hours. Hold vox silence, all vehicles. Essential comms only.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Epperaliant checked his watch. ‘All crew synchronise time.’ He looked up to the tank’s chronometer, displaying the countdown to the rendezvous. ‘011.36 in three, two, one.’ The men on the deck adjusted their timepieces. Epperaliant sent out a quick databurst via laser. ‘I’ve let them know I’m coming.’
‘Good. Suit up, standard defence pattern, rotation of twelve sentries.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When that’s done Epperaliant, you’re first in the bunk.’
Epperaliant, pale with tiredness as all the men were, nodded his thanks.
The sandpike raced through the sand, half-submerged, six legs performing a twisting paddle. Its back, arrow-thin, undulated from side to side as it moved, diamond-shaped head rising and falling as it nosed through the desert floor. Only the quilled vane on its back and the saddle before it carrying Bannick and Olli were completely clear of the ground. Bannick’s legs were crooked back, but the sand whispered by millimetres from his toes. Olli wielded a long prod, gently poking the visible part of the pseudo-lizard’s head to guide it.
‘They go where they want without stick. They go down, they dive in the sand. Forget about us!’ the sandscum had explained. The vane on their back picked up on the planet’s chaotic magnetic field, or so Bruta had told him, helping them navigate. Their eyes were little more than eight patches of photo-sensitive cells, sealed with tough flaps as they swam. He’d thought they were fast while they were scuttling through the endless passages of the sandscum’s hidden realm, but it was nothing to the speed they managed through Kalidar’s quickdust. There they were fastest, avoiding the harder packed ground if they could. Bannick understood now why the scum were not often seen, the sandpikes and their riders travelling the areas the men of the Guard avoided.
Wind whipped the scarf over Bannick’s respirator and pulled at the turban and sand-coloured robes he’d been given. They’d emerged from a rent in the transit tube into green day, the storm gone. Bannick had almost forgotten what the sky looked like, the sun bright over the Ozymandian barrier range far away.
There were thirty or more other sandpikes, all bearing a pair of warriors, including Bruta. Scouts had joined them, reporting the location of the Imperial convoy soon after they’d left the wrecked transit tunnel. Bannick had no idea how they communicated. None of them had voxes.
Presently, the dust began to thicken into sand. Islands of sun-shattered rock appeared with increasing regularity. Eventually, the dust gave out, and the lizards were forced to run.
Bruta called a halt in the lee of a hill. Soundlessly, the sandscum dismounted, cast their cloaks about themselves and seemed to become one with the desert floor. The sandpikes made for the nearest dustpan, and sank into it without a trace.
‘They never see us,’ said Bruta. ‘Ever.’ He beckoned Olli and Bannick and together they made their way to the brow of the hill.
‘There’s your tank, Bannick.’
Bannick looked down the escarpment at the tanks below. They were in a wide circle at the top of a bowl-shaped rise in the land, sand dunes masking their presence to the west and east, the hill hiding them from the south. Mars Triumphant sat at the most vulnerable point, lascannon turrets and bolter mounts tracking back and forth. It was a good position, with broad fields of fire. Bannick counted the vehicles. They’d not lost any more, and he was thankful.
‘It’ll be difficult to get down there without being blown to bits. There should be a sentry up here. In fact, I’d put one right there.’ He pointed out a large rock across from them.
‘Ah,’ said Bruta, and pulled Bannick back below the ridgeline, then round the hill. A sandscum dressed in Imperial garb leapt atop the rock. Beneath it, half-dressed, hands on head, covered by two grinning mutants, sat an Atraxian trooper.
Bannick pulled his sandscum robes off, revealing his battered lieutenant’s uniform underneath.
‘I’m going to need the password, private,’ he said.
‘How do I know you’re not a spy?’ said the Atraxian, his lilting accent defiant.
Bannick risked pulling the respirator from his face.
‘Yo
u, you’re from the Baneblade?’ said the Atraxian, eyes widening. ‘Another ghost? We were supposed to be clear of that.’
Bannick held out his hand. The private looked to the sandscum who nodded their approval. He reached out and grasped Bannick’s hand in his own.
‘You’re alive!’
‘Apparently so, private, apparently so,’ said Bannick.
The briefing was getting heated, Mayor Bruta annoyed with Exertraxes, who paid little attention to the man’s knowledge.
‘No, no.’ Bruta shook his head. ‘All this area now is quickdust, you go through there and you’ll be dead within metres, all of you. Here, this is the way you have to go.’ He traced his finger through the chart desk display. Wind lifted the sides of the tent slightly. They hadn’t bothered to seal it, yet all within had their masks off. Bruta insisted it was safe.
‘You say this route is poor? The path you indicate takes us right through the Utrazi Pans.’ Captain Exertraxes, wan after his ordeal in the Ozymandian Basin, otherwise recovered. He stood in the full carapace plate of his regiment, cropped grey hair fuzzing a skull scored with the scars of twenty years of service. ‘A thermal sink exists below the desert there, pressurised gas jets out unpredictably, enough heat in each one to cook a crew in its tank. No. The pre-planned route was pronounced clear of quickdust before we left.
‘Captain,’ said Bruta. ‘This area is well known to us. We use it often as it offers easy passage for our mounts. It fills seasonally – after the storm it will be full again. This way is better.’
‘It’s impassable.’
‘If you are not sandscum; we know the way.’
Exertraxes rubbed at his face, irritated and tired. He scratched where his rebreather had worn a red mark on his face and sighed tiredly. ‘Cortein, what do you think?’
‘Sir.’ He pointed to broad band of red sigils and flashing dots around the periphery of Hive Meradon. ‘The orks have mined this area, augur-sat pict-capture before the storm showed some degree of fortification, albeit ramshackle, heavier fortifications here, here and here. The same with the area around which mayor Bruta says is now dust. But here.’ He tapped at the matrix projector of the chart desk, causing the image to shimmer. ‘Outside the Utrazi Pans, there’s nothing. The orks are lazy. They do not expect anything to come through there at all. I’d trust this man’s expertise in this field. Local knowledge has saved me on more than one occasion.’