SABBAT WAR

by Edited by Dan Abnett

  ‘You’re here to keep our faith with the dead,’ said Stavven. ‘You sneer about respect but it is all I can give them. Treat them equally. Bring their sacred human forms to rest with honour.’

  ‘Respect,’ she sneered. She grabbed a chrome drawer handle and before he could stop her, slid it open. Wisps of vapour coiled away, revealing a plastek body bag shrunken around a torso with no legs. ‘Is this what you do to someone you respect? Is this what you do to the sacred human form if you revere it?’

  ‘Desecration!’ Stavven shoved the drawer closed and shouldered between Dzeck and the locker rack, spreading his arms across them. ‘Why? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because I was put on this Emperor-damned duty for saving lives. Pulling soldiers out of the fire. And for that, I was given this honour of risking my friends’ lives to deliver those who are already dead. Every day I wake up with one goal.’ She stepped back and pointed at the rest of the flight, gathered by the stricken Eternal and looking at the raised voices. ‘To keep those poor bastards from ending up in that damned container. ‘And I won’t risk their lives so a few more skeletons can be piled up on Balhaut. Because the Imperium might only care about them once they’re dead, but I care about them now. They don’t have to die to earn my respect.’

  ‘Look,’ Stavven said. ‘I’m a combat mortuarian. I can’t fix this broken galaxy. Or convince the Militarum to change what it is. The one thing I can do is try to give these dead the dignity they deserve.’

  Dzeck glared at him.

  ‘Would you dump Malkov in a cave, and let him rot? Just abandon him after what he did?’

  Dzeck stepped back, looked over her shoulder at the crews, staring.

  ‘How’s that refit coming?’ she growled at them – which got them moving. She watched, her anger cycling down like a cut turbofan.

  ‘I have a proposal,’ said Stavven. ‘If you want to hear it.’

  Dzeck grunted.

  ‘Can I ask you for a lho-stick first?’

  She looked at him, brow furrowed, but extended a crumpled pack with an igniter tucked inside. ‘Thought you didn’t.’

  ‘Haven’t in a long time.’ Stavven took one and wedged it in the corner of his mouth. Stepped the designated three metres from the aircraft and flicked a light. ‘But after that, I might restart.’

  He handed the pack back, and Dzeck lit her own.

  ‘We can’t leave the officers,’ he said. ‘The Ecclesiarchy and Munitorum would have a fit. They’d decay by the time anyone retrieved them, it would get unpleasant. We need to bring something back to show we tried.’

  ‘So we ditch the enlisted, I suppose,’ said Dzeck.

  ‘Well…’ Stavven took a puff. ‘They’re skeletal and ash remains. No spoilage. And a cathedral is a fitting place for temporary storage waiting for retrieval.’

  ‘Doesn’t help our weight problem,’ said Dzeck.

  ‘Ascension can handle it, she’s a Spectre,’ said Stavven. ‘And lightening up Eternal frees up a lot of promethium. Will that serve?’

  ‘Guess it’ll have to.’

  ‘Hey, firebugs,’ said Banqal.

  They turned to see the mechanic rolling a pair of external fuel tanks on a collapsible cradle.

  ‘Gangway for fuel, unless you checked the cremation box and want to go early. Got one tank for you, one for Duty.’

  ‘Change of plan,’ said Dzeck. ‘How long to unship the mortuary container?’

  He sat in the void, perched on a low rock. Mumbling. Lips moving, forming words Dzeck couldn’t understand.

  Just the two of them. Her, the man, and the unfamiliar words. A prayer maybe. Or a chant. He rocked back and forth with the rhythm of it. This man in the darkness.

  No, not a chant.

  As she stepped closer, she realised he was holding a book, a slim volume the size of a palm. The dark-skinned man stared at it, intent, caring for nothing but the page. Rocking. Taking the marks of ink on paper and speaking them into the void.

  He wore scaled armour. Black and glassy, a substance she found familiar but could not place.

  Maybe because the pressure distracted her. Each step closer pressing on her eardrums and sinuses until she could feel the blood pound. Chill, humid air filled her lungs like syrup as she got close. Circled around him.

  She must look at his face. She knelt, bringing her to eye level with the bobbing volume he held close as a mask.

  And then, he looked up.

  One eye, brown as earth, the white of it stark against his ebony skin – the other a gory tunnel.

  Fly.

  Dzeck sat up, gasping. Hands grasping for her lascarbine, finding only the stone pew she’d lain on for a few hours’ rest.

  She checked her chrono: 0500. Only three hours’ sleep after prepping the Valks and storing the mortuary container in the lava tube the absent brothers used as a crypt.

  It might have to do.

  She slung her lascarbine and walked out into the cavern, her mouth foul from a day of rationing water, skipped oral hygiene, and a half pack of lho-sticks. She saw Xaj standing picket near the Eternal at the cave mouth, his silhouette framed by the false dawn. She waved.

  ‘Shipshape, Xaj?’ she called.

  ‘Yeah, mamzel,’ said a voice behind her. ‘Why?’

  She turned. Saw the kid gunner emerging from a necessarium cloister, buttoning his trousers. Looked back to the figure.

  Then swore and swung her lascarbine up.

  A long las-bolt sizzled past her and caught Xaj in the throat, blowing out the kid’s larynx so his shout of alarm gurgled and died.

  The subcompact was on burst-fire. Meant for personal defence. Her first bleat of fire sent bolts fanning wild at the attacker, most spanging off the Eternal’s armoured bulk. The attacker dropped into a prone position and fired back, but Dzeck had already dodged back into the doorway.

  Dzeck shouted: ‘Contact! Contact! Contact!’ Behind her, Glory crews rolled from their sleep, staggering towards her with their carbines.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Kazaran.

  ‘They’re hitting us,’ said Dzeck. ‘One by the Eternal. We need to dust off in one minute. Storm or no storm. Don’t get caught up. Run for the kites.’

  ‘What about Eternal?’ said Stola. ‘We can’t leave her salvageable. Regs say–’

  ‘Just get to the Valks,’ said Dzeck. ‘We’ll toast her on the way out if we need to. We’re going to fire and move. Ready? Go.’

  Dzeck dashed towards her kite, firing the carbine at waist height, hands on the pistol grip and foregrip. Not winning any marksmanship awards, but keeping the shooter’s head down.

  There were more helmets in the mouth of the cave now, silhouetted against the grey dawn. Red las-fire whickered around her air crew as they sprinted the ten metres to their craft. In front of her, Banqal caught a bolt in the temple and went down on her face. Blue dust, scorched to molten glass by the chop of enemy fire, sizzled on her ruined body.

  To her left, she saw a man in red fatigues emerge from a volcanic tunnel and advance on their kites. He put a lasrifle to his shoulder, the cheek of his snarling facemask pressed to the stock.

  Dzeck pressed her trigger and fanned fire at him, scoring two hits and dropping him to the sand. Another followed him, fumbling with a grenade, but Kazaran felled him with a shot to the head.

  She made the Ascension, mounting with the aid of grip pads and handholds. Dropped into her pilot’s seat and flipped the turbofans live. A red las-bolt spanged off the nose in front of her open canopy, another squealed past a metre above her head.

  The craft shuddered, and she thought they’d been hit before she realised what it was.

  Instead of mounting the cockpit, Stavven had manned the newly installed heavy bolter, chambered a belt, and was pouring suppressive fire towards the cave mouth. He shouted something Dzeck couldn’t make out.

  Until she activated her helmet’s vox-bead.

  ‘The hells is Stola doing?’

  Dz
eck knew she shouldn’t look up, should focus on getting the Ascension in the air – but she did.

  And saw Stola running directly for Eternal, a grey canister in her hand.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said. ‘No, Stola. No, no.’

  Stola’s blonde ponytail bobbed behind her as she ran. Braving the fusillade, zigging and zagging to keep the shooters guessing. Only getting as far as she did due to Stavven’s suppressing fire.

  A shoulder-fired rocket rushed into the cave mouth, corkscrewing wide and detonating against a cathedral buttress.

  Dzeck grabbed the canopy lever and yanked, her vision of the fight briefly cut off as the armoured crystal shut and sealed. Stavven would have to get into the cockpit via the communication hatch.

  ‘Ready to launch,’ Kazaran said over the vox. ‘Do we lift?’

  ‘Lift, come about and lay down fire,’ said Dzeck. ‘We’ll cover you while we wait for Stola.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’

  To her left side, she saw Duty rise on its vector nozzles, light as an interceptor now that its mag-clamps were free of their burden.

  ‘C’mon, Stola,’ Dzeck urged. ‘C’mon.’

  A hundred metres away, she saw Stola hold down the trigger of her carbine, sweeping fire across the cave mouth before dropping it to dangle across her chest on the shoulder strap.

  Enemy heads down, she boosted up onto the grip pads and tossed the cylinder into the open cockpit of Eternal Honour.

  Duty opened up with its chin guns, a stream of heavy bolter rounds hammering the cave mouth, keeping the attackers pinned.

  ‘Now get back, Stola,’ Dzeck said. ‘Get down, why the hells don’t you get down?’

  On the vox, she could hear Stavven praying.

  ‘Stola!’ Dzeck yelled into her headset, realising the pilot’s helmet wasn’t on. She slammed a fist into her canopy, knuckles shielded by her thick glove.

  It was when she saw Stola’s legs kicking that Dzeck realised what had happened – she’d snagged her carbine sling on one of the canopy catches, and was now hanging helpless as–

  The phosphorus grenade Stola had tossed in the cockpit detonated. Hot white sparks rocketed towards the ceiling in a fountain, each a star-bright ember trailing smoke. Fire broiled out of the cockpit, catching immediately, melting avionics and torching the leather seats.

  Stola no longer struggled. She began to burn.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Dzeck shouted, and Duty didn’t wait.

  The Sky Talon rushed forward, chin guns barking to clear a path and dissuade any infantry fire.

  The moment Duty passed, Dzeck kicked her own vector nozzles in and went into a rising pivot. Quad engines howled in the confined space. It would be a tight fit with the burning wreck of the Eternal Honour at the mouth of the cave, but she took it at speed. Black walls and ceiling rushed by, enemy Blood Pact scuttling away from the entrance like tiny crabs fleeing a wave.

  Her left wing passed two metres from the burning wreck as she shot into the cinder cone and spewed thrust downward, rising in an almost uncontrolled ascent. A krak missile whooshed past the right wing, leaving a gauzy trail that her turbofans pulled into spirals. The airframe rocked as medium ordnance, a ballistic grenade maybe, punched the armour panels on the Spectre’s belly, rattling Dzeck’s helmet against the canopy.

  That hit might’ve ended Foxhunt but the Ascension was a bigger, tougher machine and it kept its climb.

  She burned for open sky, teeth clenched so hard they hurt, a rage-filled sob for her lost wing-mates smothered by the cup of her rebreather.

  The traitor Valks were waiting for them up in the blue. And it was blue. For the first time since they had deployed on Herodor, the atmospheric top clouds had blown off, revealing a startling sapphire heaven.

  If it hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have seen them waiting up there. Four of them. Their white-painted undersides stood out like hovering gulls.

  Kazaran had been right. They’d been looking for them. To finish the kill or track them to the next airbase it wasn’t clear, but it was plain enough that they hadn’t expected to find them.

  The Valks were scanning, circling at four hundred ems as spotters and probably dropping squads to do ground searches while they looked for crash debris from the air, and only now converging with the news of their troops’ discovery.

  ‘Angle of attack, Kaz?’ Dzeck asked.

  ‘Stay low, keep your blue topside towards them. Chase the canyon. Remember Malkov and the Navy void-boys?’

  She smiled. Malkov had been pulled for a simulation war game before Morlond. Asymmetrical air war. Aeronautica Valks versus Navy Lightnings.

  The Valks won, every time. If they stayed low and used terrain, the Lightnings couldn’t get a lock. The hovering Valks disappeared into a maze of auspex noise while the Lightnings were silhouettes against a clear sky.

  She took it low, following the mountains, which after the storm had a head of dust-cap deposits frosting them like blue snow. Feeling out the new weight of the Ascension, she noted how it still felt like a gliding anvil.

  ‘Sacred blood,’ she breathed. ‘Can’t believe you guided us through this range blind, Stavven.’

  ‘Saints protect,’ he voxed from his position on the door gun. ‘You want me in the gunner’s seat?’

  ‘I can handle, stay back there and watch our side. I’ll keep the mountain on our right.’

  She brought the Ascension to a slow halt, tilted it skyward like the quad guns on a Hydra battery.

  ‘I have a lock on the right one,’ Dzeck said. ‘Armed. Kazaran? We each have one Hellstrike, better make these shots good.’

  ‘Locked the left one,’ Kazaran voxed.

  ‘Been a pleasure flying with you, people,’ she said. Then: ‘Fire, fire, fire!’

  She felt her right wing lift as the Hellstrike rushed out from the firing skid, temporarily washing the canopy with contrail as it streaked skyward and curled right.

  On the left, Kazaran’s target fired countermeasures and banked – but too early. The Hellstrike chased the flares for a second – then they dimmed out, the guidance systems reacquired its target, and the missile burst right below the fuselage.

  The Valk fell from the sky, one of its wings sliced clean away, tumbling nose over tail like a high-diver until it hit a mountain slope with a burst of flame.

  Dzeck wasn’t so lucky. Her target popped flares and pulled a vector-assisted rollout, the missile exploding harmlessly to its beam. She didn’t see it, only heard Stavven call it as she banked low around a mountain to cut visual contact, fighting crosswinds as they slewed her tail booms to and fro.

  ‘They’re coming,’ said Kazaran. ‘Bearing six-three-nine. One’s right around the peak from you.’

  ‘Copy,’ she voxed, rolling up the shoulder of a mountain slope, skids cutting only five ems above the dust dunes, to come up on the Valk’s four o’clock.

  Dzeck heard the clack of a heavy bolter chambering. Mumbling prayers.

  She settled her sights on the Valk, running above her at a five-degree angle, slipping to her left. Below her feet, servos whined as the chin-mounted autocannon slaved to her helmet display rotated with her head.

  ‘Ready on left bolter,’ said Stavven.

  ‘Engaged!’ shouted Kazaran.

  Dzeck squeezed the trigger, feeling the cockpit kick as the autocannon hammered. An asynchronous drumbeat, muffled in her helmet. Wham-wham. Wham-wham.

  Tracers sketched low and heavy, dropping below the Valk’s belly. One caught a landing skid and slapped it away in a shower of sparks. A door-mounted heavy bolter answered, and she heard the rattle and pop of rounds hitting her armoured left wing.

  The bat viffed upward, using the momentum to carry it diagonally out of the autocannon’s field of fire. But in doing so it miscalculated. A strong crosswind howled down from between the peaks, pressing the Ascension down as if trying to force it into the mountainside.

  The big machine had twice the thrust nozzles of a Valk, and Dzeck sta
yed up. The Valk, though, faced top-on to the wind and fighting it with its thrusters, practically stood suspended in air.

  ‘Splash it!’ she shouted.

  The burr of the heavy bolter vibrated the airframe, golden tracers zipping out towards the Valk. Stavven wasn’t a trained gunner, and undershot – but the Valk might as well have been grounded. Stavven walked the fire up to the Valk’s underwing fuel tanks, rupturing one with a puff of promethium and shearing away a rocket pod.

  And a thrust channel.

  The craft’s right wing vector nozzles quit, the remaining nozzles and wind shear sending it into an irrecoverable roll that smashed it into a mountainside.

  ‘I got it!’ yelled Stavven.

  Dzeck could barely hear him over the howl of a lock tone.

  She throttled up and sprinted, trusting the quad engines and crosswind to carry her clear of the incoming ordnance. To her right, an outcrop exploded, sending chunks of rock clattering off her wing and rolling along the canopy. She prayed, really prayed, none would find the turbofan.

  ‘Valk on our seven,’ voxed Stavven.

  ‘Shit,’ said Dzeck, banking around a cliff. ‘Shit. Shit.’

  As a stable weapons platform, the Ascension was more than a match for these Valks, but as a dogfighter – and this heavy – it had almost no options.

  Another crosswind blew in, and her nose dipped towards the grey of the cliff before she corrected and nursed more fuel into the engines.

  Multi-laser fire flashed in a ribbon above her cockpit and she heard rolling, like ball bearings on steel – the sound of melted armour spalling away under the superheated beam. Close to the engines, too close.

  ‘We’re taking hits! It’s coming through the crew bay. I–’

  Lock tone.

  She banked hard right around the mountain, hoping the crosswind would snarl the pursuer, that their sheer mass would save them.