Dragging myself over rubble splattered with ork innards and human blood I jump down into the compound interior.
I’ve been in a few battles, so I know that usually there’s some kind of shape to it that you can recognise with a glance. This time it’s just anarchy. Lines of fire going everywhere, lasgun blasts and bolts criss-crossing with the muzzle flare of ork shootas and green beams from alien weapons. Ork rockets corkscrew noisily through the beams of searchlights while a strafing Vulture gunship rakes fire along the far wall. I’m glad we didn’t come that way.
The explosion we saw earlier must have been the fuel depot. Burning promethium tanks light the western half of the compound and you can feel the heat of it from where we are, several hundred metres away.
And through it all I have the sinking feeling that there aren’t any ships. It’s hard to believe there’s anything on the ground that hasn’t been hit by shells, bombs or crossfire.
‘Over there!’
Orskya grabs my arm and points to a raised landing pad almost directly opposite us, partly obscured by smoke billowing from the burning depot. A blunt-nosed drop-craft sits there, red-robed adepts moving around its landing gear, other figures appearing and disappearing from the ruddy light that streams from the open rampway in the side of the fuselage, loading something aboard. It’s clearly getting ready to leave, and we don’t have long.
It’s open ground all the way though. Eight hundred metres or so, I reckon, with just enemy fire for company. While the others gather around me I look for anything else, another shuttle that’ll be easier to reach. Instead I spy the crashed remnants of an Imperial Navy Marauder bomber. It looks burnt-out, broken halfway along the east-west runway, nose cone and upper fuselage blackened by fire.
‘We go that way first,’ I say, indicating the wreck with a jabbed finger. ‘Then we hook left to the drop-ship.’
‘That’s further,’ points out Sister Aladia.
‘Yes, but that mess,’ I indicate a pyre of metal and bodies that used to be a watchtower some way to the east, ‘covers us from being shot. We’ll only have half the distance to cross in the open.’
I’m not in a mood for arguing and as soon as Oahebs and a couple of the others have manhandled the warphead down from the broken wall I set off at a run, straight towards the broken Marauder. I don’t look back. Better to trust that they’re following because if they’re not I might as well just head off on my own anyway.
I catch the reassuring thud of boots behind me.
A few seconds later I hear the absolutely unnerving hiss of a bolt-round.
It sears past my left ear, followed by a grunt as it hits a target. A half-second delay and then a wet detonation accompanied by screams and shouts. I keep running, not trusting to anything but speed as I try to see where the shot came from.
There’s nothing in the pools of flickering light. Maybe just a random overshot?
‘Who’s hit?’ I shout, silently praying it isn’t Oahebs or the warphead. ‘Who was hit?’
‘Strasna,’ Orskya yells back, breathing laboured. ‘We leave him.’
A pinprick of light draws my eye to a stretch of wall that divides the main runway with a track beside it, about three hundred metres away. A moment later it resolves into another bolt, flaring a few metres to my right, bringing the same thud and yell as before. I hear a clatter of a gun being lost and someone else cursing.
A las-bolt zips back, way off target at this range.
‘Keep moving!’ I bellow, heaving a breath into lungs that feel tighter than a tech-priest’s nuts. ‘Get to the Marauder!’
Something big vaults the wall. Armoured and fast.
Traitor Astartes. World Eater.
Just the one, but it’s no consolation. He’s firing a damn bolt pistol, picking us off at two hundred and fifty metres even as he starts running towards us. A chainaxe growls into life in his other hand.
‘You run, we stop,’ Orskya calls out.
I should probably argue. I don’t. I just keep running as bullets start to buzz back across the runway into the charging Space Marine. Ceramite chips fly from his armour but he keeps coming, another bolt flashing from the muzzle of his pistol to take out someone behind me in a lethal detonation.
The World Eater’s course curves, taking him towards the group that have stopped to open fire. At least that part of the plan has worked.
Two hundred metres from the wreck of the Marauder I finally risk a glance back. Nazrek has a rope over its shoulder, hauling the drag-sled along with a handful of others, including Oahebs. Half a dozen more follow, throwing panicked glances at the approaching World Eater. Beyond them Orskya and the rest have set up an impromptu firing line, blazing away at the incoming Space Marine. Aladia is with them, bolter readied. At the hundred-metre mark she opens fire, her first shot glancing off a pauldron studded with spikes and grisly trophies. The Space Marine has covered ten more metres before she fires again, this time her round hitting the traitor square in the chest.
He stumbles, falling to one knee and a wordless shout of hope rips from my throat.
The bolt pistol barks its reply, the bolt racing back across the gap towards Aladia. My shout dies away as the bolt hits the side of her helm, exploding across the silvered armour. Aladia falls sideways, her finger closing on the trigger, the bolt in the chamber spearing uselessly into the sky.
‘Kage, come on,’ gasps Oahebs as he pulls level.
I take one last look at the other group. The heretic is running again, fifty metres away, the snarl of the chainaxe audible, bolt pistol flaring to rip the head from a waster.
A really stupid part of me wants to go back. Like I could help… The smarter half of my brain takes over and I fall in behind the sled, ramming my pistol into my belt so I can bend and push with both hands.
A metallic bellow rips through the night behind us.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’
Even at this distance I can hear the chainaxe spinning to full speed. Perhaps it’s my imagination that fills in the next piece, the ripping of flesh and cracking of bones.
Then something like a lightning flash causes me to falter, letting go of the sled as I come to a stop and turn again.
I see three wasters down, one of them crushed under the boot of the berserk warrior. Orskya swings her arquebus like a club, the weighted stock smashing into the Space Marine’s face, breaking on impact. As the monstrous warrior draws back the chainaxe, Aladia leaps through the press of bodies, a gleaming blue sword in hand. The tip of the blade sweeps up, slicing neatly through the wrist of the Space Marine. Chainaxe still in its grip, the hand flies away, spiralling to the ground behind the World Eater. Enraged, the Space Marine brings down the stump, smashing it into Orskya’s face. Her head flies back, neck obviously broken, the force of the blow folding her backwards. I feel the impact in my gut, a sudden pain at seeing the duneseer go down.
Aladia lances her power sword two-handed into the gap between helm and plastron, piercing throat and spine. Turning, she rips the sword free, slashing into the head.
I don’t need to see the rest. I turn and dash after the others, covering the last hundred metres to the broken aircraft with increasingly heavy strides. Reaching the sanctuary of the cracked fuselage I find Nazrek at the opposite side, staring out of a hole in the compartment wall, the others combining their efforts to drag the warphead through the tangle of wires and twisted metal.
‘Bad, boss,’ says the ork. ‘Bad.’
I can see more Space Marines heading towards us from the distant wall. Five at least, their blood-reddened armour shining in the glow of the fires.
‘If we make a break for it now, we might reach the drop-ship,’ says Oahebs.
‘And if we don’t, we’ll be gunned down in open ground,’ I reply. A glance over my shoulder reveals the approach of the wasters and Sister Aladia. If we leave no
w, it’s without them. ‘Can’t risk it. We’ll have to hold here, regroup and then make a break for it.’
And that was a big mistake.
The bulk of the Marauder protects us against direct hits, which is good because the interior is filled with splinters from exploding metal and fragments of bolt detonations. If anything, taking cover in the downed plane has made it easier for the World Eaters, who just have to hit near us to send showers of lethal shrapnel scything through the people packed inside the fuselage.
The floor is already awash with blood and I can’t hear anything for the ring of metal and cries of the wounded. It’s as if my world has shrunk down to a metal cylinder about five metres long and three wide, filled with death and pain.
The fusillade is relentless, giving not even a split second to throw a glance through the warped beams and broken metal. It’s been maybe ten seconds, how much ground would they have covered? A hundred and fifty metres? More?
Aladia stands with her back to one of the reinforced ribs that stretch around the Marauder’s main bomb bay, bolter in hand as small explosions erupt across the surface outside. The side of her tattooed face is covered in blood, pieces of metal stuck in the skin, but she pays it no heed at all.
The dozen and more figures writhing around on the floor with lacerated faces, slashed arteries and spilling guts are not so composed.
If someone had asked me when I’d joined the Imperial Guard what would be the worst thing I might see, I wouldn’t have imagined anything half as bad as this slaughter.
And this is just the prelude to the real carnage, when those heretics burst through the walls and tear us apart with chainaxes. There’s not a damned thing we can do about it. Any kind of counter-fire is impossible. The moment anyone tries to rise or turn out of cover another detonation sends red-hot metal shards into them.
Fragging helpless.
I never thought I’d die without fighting back in some way, but this is just that situation. If I try to fight I’ll die even quicker.
I can only look at the others out of the corner of my eye. I can see Nazrek huddle close to the floor, Grot taking cover in the shadow of the ork. I catch terrified glances from some of the others, but I can’t see Oahebs or the warphead.
Why am I even thinking about them? Nobody is getting out of here alive. The mission is an abject failure.
What’s most galling is imagining what the Colonel would say. No smugness, just that holier-and-better-than-thou righteousness he brings with him. And there’s also the sneaking suspicion that he was absolutely right about me. This is my fragging mess. I think I’d rather stick my head out of the fuselage than say it to him.
I send a prayer to the Emperor, lips soundlessly mouthing the words among the screech of tearing metal and bark of exploding bolts. It’s a simple message and, surprising even myself, it isn’t a prayer for salvation. I just pray that the other missions aren’t as fragged as this one. I pray that the Battle Sisters and the Space Marines have managed to break the ritual.
And then I realise it is about me, after all. Because if the Sisters and the Salamanders can stop the World Eaters then it doesn’t matter what happens here. My total failure becomes an irrelevancy. I will be absolved of my utter inadequacy.
But there’s no way of finding out, so I’m going to die with the knowledge that I’ve thrown away the only chance we had to save Armageddon.
I’m so wrapped up in these thoughts and prayers that it takes a second for me to register the change in the battle-noise. A deeper thunder among the small-arms and occasional snap of heavier weapons.
And the absence of exploding death in my immediate vicinity.
Sister Aladia brings her bolter around the stanchion, aiming outside, but doesn’t open fire.
Nobody else dares move.
Through the shredded roof I see the blue flame of plasma jets and hear a noise that brings recent memories flooding back.
The Thunderhawk.
‘Didn’t we do this already?’ I say, uncoiling from my foetal crouch, looking up to see the Salamanders gunship descending nearby, wing guns blazing into the distance.
Others stand and start cheering, spilling out from the wreck to shout and wave at the landing gunship.
‘No time to celebrate,’ I snap at them, clambering over the corpses wedged into the bottom of the aircraft hull, checking faces.
‘Oahebs?’
‘Here, Kage,’ he replies, pushing out from under two bodies that are more blood and gristle than human. His left arm is a mess of cuts, bone showing through at the elbow and forearm. ‘Still here.’
The warphead is next to him, buried under more corpses. We get a few able bodies together to drag them off and free the ork, which is starting to stir in its sleep, baring its teeth and grumbling.
The Thunderhawk touches down amid swirling dust and a blaze of lights, the front assault ramp whining open. A squad of armoured warriors descends, dwarfing one more among their contingent.
I have to double-take at the sight of the Colonel in formal dress coat, an officer’s cap on his head once more. Underneath are still the ragged clothes of the wasters, but at first glance you’d think he’d just stepped off the parade ground.
‘Frag me,’ I say.
I count ten Space Marines, who fan out around us, firing at distant targets on the walls, against both orks and heretics.
‘Lieutenant Kage, report,’ Schaeffer barks, coming to a stop a few metres away.
Training and instinct take control for a second and I come to attention, hand half-rising in salute before falling back to my side.
‘Heavy casualties, objective not yet achieved,’ I mumble, suddenly feeling like I’ve been dragged before one of my older family members for some misdemeanour. Some of my natural temperament reasserts itself. ‘What the frag are you doing here?’
‘Saving Armageddon,’ the Colonel replies. ‘Unlike you.’
He sweeps over all of us with that icy gaze, jaw set, hands forming fists.
‘Fall in with me, all of you that can still walk,’ he shouts, turning on his heel. I catch up with him with a few hurried steps, still not sure I didn’t die in the wreck and this is some kind of bizarre but short-lived afterlife.
‘How…?’ I look around and see the Space Marines advancing with us, still firing shots out into the firelight. ‘You brought some friends.’
‘Your biggest problem, Kage, is that you are not nearly as intelligent as you think you are,’ the Colonel tells me, striding across the broken runway, heading directly towards the pool of lights around the drop-ship apron. His voice is raised above the noise of bolters and thud of powered armour, but he delivers the words with the same cool precision as always. ‘My missions are not casual underhive scraps, won through on guts and quick-thinking. They are military operations, the scope of which you never seem to comprehend. Did you really think you would succeed by just ploughing ahead without planning, hoping that the Emperor would somehow make everything right for you?’
‘I wouldn’t say–’ I protest, but the Colonel isn’t interested in my contribution to the conversation.
‘Think about every mission we have ever fought together, Kage, and tell me that you did not realise what massive undertakings they were? Starships, transports, weapons. Information about the enemy, covering bombardments, orbital strikes, tech-priests and supply drops. Did all of that just happen?’
We’re only a couple of hundred metres away from the steps up to the landing pad. Occasional rasps of fire come past or whine above us, the brunt of it directed at the Salamanders or the gunship that has lifted off to take station overhead.
‘Shouldn’t we be ready to fight?’ I say, noticing the Colonel doesn’t even have his pistol in hand. ‘Just in case they don’t want to just give us their drop-ship, right?’
The glance the Colonel throws me is more veno
mous than a ripviper bite.
‘Did it occur to you that refuelling and arming a drop-ship in the middle of an ongoing battle was a strange thing to do?’
‘I guessed they were maybe evacuating officers or something. It didn’t seem important.’
‘And did you ever think about bringing along the vox we recovered to communicate with Kraken Station?’
‘Well, I suppose, now–’
Heavy weapons on the western wall open fire, sending rockets and shells streaming over our heads into the tangles of wreckage in the middle of the compound. I follow their fall for a few seconds and see ork bodies caught in the blasts.’
‘And did you have someone that can pilot a ship into orbit for you?’ the Colonel continues, eyes fixed ahead.
‘I hadn’t got that far–’
‘I trust that you have been conducting operational assessments of your team to identify important specialisms and potential mission-vital profiles.’
‘How exactly would–’
‘You would be a joke of a commander, Kage, but those corpses you have left behind are not at all funny.’ His anger is something to witness. No shouting, no theatrics. Just raw, focused ire, all of it directed at me. I wither under his scorn like a forest hit with anti-plant shells. ‘You heard nothing I said to you in the abbey. You cannot win if you are worried about saving lives, yours or anybody else’s. You only live if you succeed, all other routes lead to death. Yours and everybody else’s.’
All my excuses are swept away by the force of his words, but he’s not done yet.
‘From the moment you saw me again, all you have had on your mind is being in charge.’
‘You can talk! You’ve been trying to take over every chance you get.’
‘Now you know why. You are unfit to lead this kind of mission. You are capable of insight, practical improvisation and possess an uncanny sense for survival.’ We come to the foot of the metal stairway leading up to the drop-ship’s pad. He stops and looks at me with a shake of the head. ‘What you are not, Kage, is a colonel in the God-Emperor’s Imperial Guard, and everything that means.’
Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Page 25