by Guy Haley
‘Incoming!’ yelled Epperaliant. The sky filled with smoking trails tipped with fire as Imperial artillery began a long-range bombardment. A building’s parapet on the other side of the sunken expressway exploded. It was soon followed by others. Through this rain of deadly shot, Mars Triumphant rumbled on.
There was a shuttering roar behind them, and the wall they’d exited from collapsed entirely, the Shadowsword trundling through it. Radden fired a shot at it as it tried in vain to turn to face the other tank.
‘It’s stuck, sir,’ said Epperaliant, then: ‘Watch out! Orks!’
Greenskinned warriors were coming in some numbers from the damaged building on the far side of the expressway. Bannick flung his bolters out to maximum rotation, holding them at ninety degrees to the side of the tank. The orks held themselves tight to the retaining wall on the opposite off-ramp, and began to send rockets hurtling toward the super-heavy tank.
‘I can’t get at them sir!’ Bannick said. ‘Cover’s too tight!’
‘Suppressive fire! Stop them taking too many shots.’
The Shadowsword retreated into the building, seeking another way out. The clang and boom of ork rockets on the hull died off as the Baneblade made the square. The orks pulled back from the wall, and made to follow.
Mars Triumphant crushed rubble to powder as its engines hauled its enormous bulk back into the ruined square. Shells rained down all around, the air was thick with smoke and shards of shrapnel. They were re-entering the square a third of a kilometre from where’d they’d left it, diagonally opposite where Exertraxes’s men had been vaporised. A large crater cooled in the space where the Atraxians had been, although according to datafeeds, some of the men and vehicles had survived and retreated into the buildings fringing the plaza.
‘Lux Imperator incoming!’ said Epperaliant. ‘It’s moving parallel to our course.’
‘Get us over the square,’ said Cortein. ‘I want us out of its way again.’
‘No, no, they’ve stopped. I’m getting an energy spike. They’re charging the capacitors!’
‘Where is it?’ said Cortein.
‘Two-fifty metres, a hundred and twenty degrees rear right.’
Orks came out of the buildings to the tank’s left. Bannick drove them back with heavy bolter fire. The orks withdrew, and a trio of clanking ork dreadnoughts shouldered their way out of the ruins. Bannick fried one with a lascannon shot. Return fire from their strange armaments shattered his bolter bank.
‘Honoured Lieutenant Cortein,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got a problem. Ork walkers, coming in. I’ve lost left bolters.’
‘Capacitors at eighty-seven per cent!’ said Epperaliant.
‘They can’t hit us if they can’t see us,’ growled Cortein.
Radden spoke up. ‘At least the bombardment’s stopped.’ The tank rocked as he shot off another shell. It hit the orks’ left flank, killing half a dozen and driving the rest back into cover. The shockwave toppled one of the remaining walkers, where it lay kicking its legs ineffectually, unable to right itself.
‘No it hasn’t,’ said Epperaliant.
‘Emperor,’ said Cortein.
Across the square, ruins fell inwards with a rush, a grinning ork head fashioned from metal hoved into view atop a broad-bellied body, crackling orbs on insulated poles jutting from its back. A dome of energy flared into visibility every time a shell hit it. The scale of the ork witch’s power had grown, for the shield encompassed much of the square. The ork infantry became agitated and excited at its appearance, rushing forwards in the cover of their walkers.
‘Greeneye,’ whispered Cortein.
‘Lux Imperator’s capacitors are charged sir! They’re moving again, what are your orders?’
Cortein had no time to reply. The cabin air took on strange taste, aluminium on the back teeth. There was a wash of green light, and Bannick gripped at his skull. A voice called his name, his head split and chaos reigned in his mind.
Chapter 27
Aronis City, Paragon VI
2003395.M41
‘Colaron! Colaron, damn you! At least look like you are here with us.’
Bannick blinked, confused. He stood on the blue lawn of the Gardens of the Vermillion Moon, flowers nodding in a steady, machine-generated breeze, the warm air thick with their scent. One of Tuparillio’s friends stood by the door, keeping watch, a medic by him.
Surely this had all passed? Bannick felt confused for a space, and his eyes – two human eyes – fell on the flowers. Amid the orangey-red of healthy blooms, a dead flower stood out, petals crumpled, as red as unoxygenated blood.
‘Colaron!’ said Tuparillio.
Bannick shook his head, the sense of déjà vu evaporated.
‘Is your arrogance so great,’ said Tuparillio, ‘that you bring no second?’
Bannick swallowed, his tongue dry with the after-effects of Zero Night. He remembered now, the duel. ‘Tuparillio, why are we doing this? We can stop. Record a no show on my part. Don’t make me fight you. You’ve not got a chance.’
Tuparillio pulled off his winter jerkin, exposing a lean torso shadowed by lines of muscle. Another youth Bannick knew to be called Torsten handed Tuparillio a black jerkin of hardened leather. He shucked it on. ‘Proud enough not to register a win in my favour I see. Do I matter that little to you cousin? Do I matter to you as little as Kaithalar?’
He took his sword from the hand of Torsten, and began stretching his muscles out. ‘Stop wasting time. Get your sword and glove on.’
Bannick reluctantly pulled the thick moulded glove onto his right hand and took up his rapier. ‘What is this all about, Tuparillio! I’m betrothed to her.’
‘And yet you mock her. You don’t deserve a woman like that, you and that orphan basdack Kalligen, always laughing at her and poking fun, you have no respect for the woman who will be your wife.’
‘Come on, Tuparillio, you know what Lazlo’s like, he doesn’t mean any harm, he’s got a sharp tongue on him. He just finds her serious, is all.’
‘Sharp as a snake, and his bite is as deadly. Many times have I suffered his sting, mocking me all my life, the pair of you, and now you make a woman of honour your own private laughing stock because you are too juvenile to commit to her and the great service she will do you and our clan.’
His cousin’s face was angry, so hard with rage the muscles in it shook. There was more to this than a young man’s sense of outraged honour. There was something else. Then it hit Bannick. Tuparillio had been acting peculiarly around him for months ever since the betrothal. The poetry he was rightly famed for had become a furtive, unspoken affair. No recitals. He understood the object of his works, he should have seen this coming and he cursed. ‘You’re not in love with her, Tuparillio, are you?’ he asked hesitantly, trying to be gentle, his sword tip drooping to the floor.
The boy flushed red, and Bannick recalled the number of times he’d seen the look of anger on the boy’s face recently, the amount of time he’d been sitting on his own, brooding. He and Kalligen had had much sport of him. He’d been younger than him, after all. That’s what boys do. But they weren’t so young any more. ‘Oh come on Tuparillio!’ he began to laugh, but the stare the boy gave him cut his laughter short.
‘That’s of no consequence!’ Tuparillio spluttered, and Bannick knew he’d found the truth. ‘I’ve called you out because I’m sick of your venality, you are a shame on our clan and on our way of life.’ He began to adjust the setting buttons at the hilt of his blade. The length of it rippled as the molecules of the metal rearranged themselves, giving the weapon a razor edge.
‘Tuparillio, what are you doing? You don’t have license for sharps!’ No wonder he had called Bannick here; the master of the duelling fields would have stopped the fight. ‘Dammit, listen to me! You’re my cousin, for the Emperor’s sake! Let’s stop! If we must duel, let us do it blunt-b
laded, with masks. Satisfy your honour safely.’
Tuparillio advanced.
‘You, his seconds, are you going to stop him?’
The boy Torsten folded his arms and gave a slight shake of his head, Tuparillio’s other friend, a Sankello, looked away. The medic stood by looking bored.
‘Scared now too?’ the younger man sneered, and he came at the older Bannick with sudden viciousness.
Colaron Bannick reacted with time to spare, but barely, moving his arm up so that his blade was perpendicular, point to the ground, the arc of the first position. It blocked Tuparillio’s weapon, a subtle correction to its course that sent it whisking past Bannick’s side. Bannick was in a fencer’s crouch by then, and responded swiftly, extending his arm and simultaneously moving his blade in a circle to the fourth position, moving quickly forwards, trying to tangle his cousin’s blade and wrench it from his grasp, but the younger Bannick moved back almost as quick, twitching his sword twice in quick succession to block a deception and a thrust from Bannick, returning in kind with two of his own.
Two more quick attacks, and the two cousins found themselves body to body, swords crossed between them. ‘You’ve been practising,’ said Bannick.
‘Solely so I can teach you a much-needed lesson,’ hissed Tuparillio. ‘Why do you not sharpen your sword?’
‘Because I don’t want to kill you, you damn fool!’ said Bannick, and a push from both sides forced them apart. They regained a good distance from one another and began to circle, each looking for an opening. Bannick to disarm his clansman, Tuparillio, Bannick realised, to kill him.
‘I don’t understand!’ shouted Bannick, parrying three wild attacks easily, the blades clanging loud in the still garden air.
‘No, you never did. For you it was play, wasn’t it, all the jibes and the jokes and the mockery!’ He executed a near perfect lunge that came within a whisker of skewering Bannick’s kidney. A jink to the side and a seventh-position parry saved him. Three quick compound attacks nearly got through Bannick’s defence, and he was forced to weave a web of steel about himself. They were sweating in the humid air of the Vermillion Gardens, but both were fit, and now they were warmed up, their sword play increased in accuracy and tempo.
‘Sharpen your blade!’
‘No,’ said Bannick. ‘You will have to kill a defenceless man.’
‘You are hardly that!’ said Tuparillio, and intensified his attack.
Their blades kissed and rang, rattled back and forth, time and again Bannick attempting to remove his cousin’s blade. Time and again Tuparillio foiled his attacks and executed an aggressive response.
Talking ceased as Tuparillio pushed home his advantage. Bannick tried every trick he could think of to disarm him, still not willing to sharpen his blade edge enough to cut, still holding back, hoping that the watch would get here and break up the fight before either of them got hurt.
They forced each other back a series of paces, the blue grass trampled dark by their circling. The sap from it was making the lawn slick and treacherous.
‘If you are not willing to fight me properly, cousin,’ said Tuparillio, ‘I will kill you.’
Bannick opened his mouth, but no words came. He would have to hurt Tuparillio to bring this madness to a close.
‘Sharpen your blade!’
Bannick looked to the hilt buttons. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Then you will die,’ said Tuparillio. He undid the top of his tunic, and pulled out a main-gauche, prongs running either side of the blade, designed to catch and trap an opponent’s sword. Tuparillio attacked again, feinting with one blade, then another, trying to step inside the reach of Bannick’s sword, where the shorter weapon could be employed. Bannick saw what he was doing, and kept his distance, backing away across the lawn.
‘Tuparillio, stop!’ he parried an overhead swipe, dodged sideways as the dagger swished through the air.
‘You can only win by killing me, so do it! Do it! I have nothing to live for, you’ve taken and scorned the only thing I care for!’
Blades rang from one another. ‘I will not be the agent of your suicide, cousin.’
Tuparillio tried and tried again to force a way past Bannick’s guard, but could not. Bannick was the superior swordsman, but he was holding back. There was a chance here that he might get killed if he didn’t think of something soon.
Tuparillio’s anger gave him an edge that Bannick doubted he’d have found at other times. His attacks became wilder and unpredictable. If Bannick had been fighting to win, he could have killed him a dozen times.
Then the younger Bannick leapt, both blades drawn back, the dagger whisked past Colaron’s face, the sword following in a swift circle. He parried one, and not the other. The sword swept across his left cheek, bringing with it a rush of heat and a stinging pain.
‘Tuparillio, stop!’ he heard Torsten say. ‘You have bloodied him, you have won. Honour is satisfied.’
Tuparillio did not listen. With a cry of anguish he leapt high into the air, both blades drawn back, one then another coming towards the older Bannick.
Bannick parried one, then another. Without thinking he lunged, years of training under the duelling masters and the experience of dozens of fights taking over.
The point of his blade, dull as it was, was still sharp enough to kill, and it found its way past Tuparillio’s quick counter-parry, and through the younger man’s jerkin. Thick blood gouted from the hole in his chest as he slid down the blade, spraying red across the lawn as he slipped from the sword onto the grass.
Tuparillio was dying as he hit the ground. He lifted his head weakly from where he lay, blood staining his teeth. ‘You kill your kin in an illegal duel. You dishonour yourself,’ he said. ‘Now Kaithalar will never marry you.’ He smiled triumphantly, and died.
Bannick did not move, sword out still, staring at the body of his cousin.
Chapter 28
Kalidar IV, Hive Meradon Surface Town
3356397.M41
‘Bannick! Bannick!’ Hands shook him, Epperaliant. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ Bannick said. ‘Yes, I think so.’ He patted at himself, then withdrew his hand sharply from the sandscum amulet about his neck.
‘They’re hot,’ said Epperaliant. ‘Bruta was right, thank the Emperor. The witch shorted out the reactor and knocked us all for six, but we’re alive.’
The interior of the tank was dark, all systems down. A few pale warning lights shone in the dark, shafts of light coming in through the viewing slots shone bright shapes on the walls. Cortein stood upon his seat, looking through the glass.
‘The orks want Mars Triumphant as a prize to join Lux Imperator,’ said Cortein. ‘I’m sure of it. That witch tried to knock us out and leave the tank unharmed. Their infantry’s coming up now.’ He jumped down and sat back at his station. ‘I say we give them a surprise. Vorkosigen, prepare to restart the engine on my order.’
‘The others?’ asked Bannick, seating himself by his dead fire-station.
‘Me and Meggen, we’re unhurt,’ croaked Outlanner.
‘My damn head is splitting,’ coughed Radden in the turret.
‘Ralt?’
Epperaliant shook his head. ‘He would not take the amulet.’
Cortein spoke. ‘We have to be quick. Bannick, keep an eye on those orks.’ Bannick nodded and clambered up to peer through the viewing slits.
‘Meggen,’ Cortein shouted down the stairs to the lower deck. ‘Get the lorelei shells up here.’
‘Lift’s out sir!’ shouted Meggen. With the internal vox down, they were having to rely on their own voices. Meggen’s reply was muffled by the armour plate of the tank.
‘Very well. Bring one – it will have to do. Radden?’
‘Sir?’
‘Get down here and help him, you’re going to have to carry it. We can�
�t activate the power systems until we’re ready to go. Load it.’
Radden clanged down from above, and made for the stairs down.
‘Quietly!’ said Cortein. Rumbles sounded from outside, muted battle. It seemed too quiet. ‘Bannick, what are those orks up to?’
‘They’re advancing from three sides. Cautiously, sir, three loose groups covering each other. The nearest is about a hundred metres away and they’re not charging in. The last walker is stationary. Malfunction?’ The vehicles of the orks were ramshackle.
Cortein shook his head. ‘They’re holding it back, in case we prove troublesome,’ said Cortein.
Bannick went round the cabin, clambering over equipment where he had to, peering out through the command deck’s slit windows. He quickly checked the buildings round the square. ‘There’s no sign of Lux Imperator,’ he said, moving to the very front of the cabin.
‘They must really want Mars Triumphant whole,’ said Epperaliant, touching the amulet hanging around his neck. ‘I pray that the witch cannot see us in here.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Cortein. Meggen, chomping on one of his never-ending supply of cigars, and Radden appeared, wrestling the lorelei shell in its special casing up the steps into the command deck. Cortein moved over to help them, grasping one of four inset handles round the top. ‘If they knew they’d try hitting us again. We have to assume the witch cannot see us.’
The three men manhandled the shell up the ladder into the turret as Bannick kept watch.
Cortein came back down the ladder of the central well and paused. He looked to his jacket hanging on the back of his chair, his cap on the desk. He picked them up and deliberately put them on, pulling his hat tight, buttoning his jacket to the top.
‘Bannick, see to those orks as soon as we power up. Outlanner, take us directly towards that Titan. Radden, prepare to fire the main cannon, scramble that witch’s brain and get those shields down. Meggen, take Ralt’s place up front. Bannick, as soon as you’ve dealt with those orks, I want you playing the lascannon on the left arm, got it? Meggen, get the demolisher on the right, strip it of its secondary armament. We’ve got one chance to hit this beast, one. And we’ll have the fight of our lives trying to do it. Are we ready men?’