SABBAT WAR

by Edited by Dan Abnett

  Mnemonic scrubbing, that was what Spika had called it. The selective removal of a recent memory through chem-infusions and hypno-saturation. The memories of the mission to bring the woe machines from Verghast were to be deleted from the lives of all who knew its details.

  ‘Will you be submitting to this, sir?’ asked Miletus.

  ‘Yes, Second Lieutenant Cern. I will be, as will all of you, and you will assist Commissar Kader and her associates to see it is followed through with all crew that this applies to. All those with knowledge of the cargo we carried and the details of what happened to it, and any who you think might have knowledge of it. I am informed that this… process needs to be complete before the memories are too embedded. So, get to it and make it happen. I want it complete and all involved on station when we reach system edge.’

  ‘The ship will remember who died for her, and why,’ said Miletus as Spika stood.

  All the officers looked at him. He could read the signs that he should stop talking on their faces.

  ‘Mister Cern?’ asked Spika.

  ‘She remembers,’ said Miletus. ‘Even if the rest of us forget, she will remember one way or another.’

  Spika’s face twitched in what might have been a smile.

  ‘I hope so, Mister Cern. I hope so.’

  TANGRAVE SYSTEM – VOID PORT AURIELIS

  He woke to the bells ringing general order, and knew they were coming into port. The dream was still clinging to the inside of his eyelids. He shook his head. The brass-framed chrono mounted on the wall clicked its hands over.

  He was on his feet, blast pistol in his hand and aimed at…

  Nothing.

  He lowered the gun. He was shivering. It had been the fifth night of waking like this. He looked at the chrono, watched the cogwork turning through seconds under the dial. It was a fine piece, made to tell time for an officer serving on a great and golden matriarch of war.

  His hand twitched on the gun. He did not know why, but he wanted to put a blast-shell right into the chrono’s ticking face. It was the trauma from when the raiders boarded them, and then the Geller field fluctuation. They would suffer dreams and emotional disturbance for a while. That was what the medicae officers had told them all. Nothing to worry about, just a price of war.

  He began to pull on his dress uniform. There would be no one to greet them when they docked, but they had seen action, even if it was minor, so the shipmaster had ordered all crew arrayed in full formality and on station as they came into port. He fastened his boots and checked the set of new second lieutenant pins on his epaulettes. A silver serpent had been embroidered in silver thread on the back of his collar.

  He stood and made for the door. His new attendant rating was waiting outside, and saluted.

  ‘Not late yet, sir,’ she said.

  Miletus nodded, then paused and looked back into his cabin. ‘Have that taken down,’ he said, pointing at the chrono.

  ‘Very good, sir, don’t want the cogs to cut your time short.’

  Miletus paused, turned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cogs, leave them running when you aren’t looking and they can cut your time down to nothing, like you never were.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  The attendant looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know, sir. Just a thing down on the decks. Ship story, sir, you know.’

  Miletus blinked, then nodded.

  ‘Very good, carry on.’

  ‘It’s nice that they gave you a furlough after only one mission.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Throne, you are gloomy. I thought you would be excited. I heard you were promoted. Promoted and cited in reports, no less, for boarding action against a raiding force! I must hear all the details. A mission escorting damaged war materiel back from Verghast and somehow you manage to end up in the thick of it and with a promotion to boot.’

  ‘Honestly, I can’t remember much about it.’

  ‘Ah… right. Of course… Are you going to put in for a transfer? You can, you know. Might take a few more hops in the old wreck before you can get a fleet billet, but with a report citation you will be in with a good run at something better, much better perhaps.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t think so? What in Terra’s light has got into you?’

  ‘I think I am going to stay with the Armaduke, while I can.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Why are you surprised?’

  ‘I mean, I just thought from what you said before – a ship like that…’

  ‘A ship isn’t just a ship, you know – it is everything that has happened to it, and all the people who have lived and died on it. It is its ghosts and they are its memory.’

  ‘And now you are, what, part of it? One of its future ghosts?’

  ‘Something like that, yes. Something like that.’

  INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

  WRITTEN BY RACHEL HARRISON

  PREFACE

  Rachel’s Severina Raine stories show there’s always ample room for another badass commissar ’round these parts. I love them, I love Rachel’s writing, and I think she’s going to be a force to be reckoned with, if she isn’t already. If you haven’t read her stories, do that thing right now.

  Like me and Justin, she has serious form when it comes to the Astra Militarum, so it seemed entirely sensible to offer her a place in this collection, not that I needed an excuse. The Sabbat Crusade is a predominately Imperial Guard war, after all.

  Lo and behold, that’s not where she went with it. Turns out, she has been longing to get her wings. So strap in, because this is Aeronautica 101. It’s so exciting, so inspiring, it might actually kick me in the seat of my pants hard enough to finally write that sequel to Double Eagle (yeah, I know, sixteen years later… But, full disclosure, I am writing it).

  I tell you what, though. I’m really going to have to raise my game to last even ten seconds in the air against Rach’s dogfighting prowess.

  Dakka, as they say, dakka!

  01

  AIRBASE THETA-SIX, BELSHIIR BINARY.

  771.M41.

  Belshiir Binary’s dawn is blood-red, the light refracted by refinery smog. The wind is hot and urgent, carrying with it a fine mist of pollutant grit that rings against the plasteel roof of the airbase like rain. It blows through the open hangar doors, thrashing against the back of Leana Vidal’s flight jacket. Stinging her skin. Vidal pays no mind to it. Not to the hammer of tools, or the shouting of the deck crew. Not to the thrum of idling transports. She is focused entirely on the aircraft in front of her. A silver-grey Imperial Lightning strike fighter, crouched low on its stanchions.

  Her Lightning.

  Vidal walks around the side of the interceptor, trailing her hand along the leading edge of the wing. Her hand bump, bump, bumps over subtle notches in the metal. Old scars, filled and patched. Vidal cuts around the tip of the wing and approaches the tail of the interceptor. There’s a flat panel there where the Lightning wears her serial number, and her name.

  ‘Indomitable Spirit,’ Vidal says.

  Beneath the name are the Lightning’s honours. Vidal counts off thirty-two hand-painted red skulls, tallying the interceptor’s confirmed machine kills. There are nearly as many white aquilas to mark the pilots lost to pay for them. Beneath that are four crusade badges. Wreathed eagles, painted in gold. Last of all, there is a peeled and faded silver star, circled by a ten-pointed halo. The scroll beneath it is so badly weathered that Vidal has to lean right in, turning the silver saint she wears on a chain around her neck idly as she does so.

  ‘Khulan.’

  Vidal straightens and turns at the sound of the voice. She salutes, at the sight of her flight leader standing there. ‘Sir,’ she says.

  ‘At ease,’ Sova replies, with a half-smile. It’s the only sort of smile she can manage, given that the right side of her face is composed of silvered steel plating and ceramics. Vidal drops her salute and glances back at th
e Lightning. At the old scars, filled and patched.

  ‘This Lightning flew in the crusade for Khulan?’ she asks.

  Sova nods. ‘Not just that. The Spirit flew the siege at Balhaut, too. She survived the skies with me at Parthenope. Brought me home in fewer pieces than my squadron. Than I really deserved, if I’m honest.’ Sova glances down at her right hand. It is silver and ceramic, too. ‘It took me a moment to recognise her when they brought her down from transit,’ she says. ‘All of those refits.’

  Vidal’s mind is alight with a dozen questions about Khulan, and Parthenope, but she elects not to ask them, in favour of a much more burning question.

  ‘If I may, then why give the Spirit to a rookie, sir?’ Vidal asks. ‘Why give her to me?’

  ‘Because she is a veteran, even if you are not. Because she is fierce, and loyal. Full of fighting joy.’

  Sova reaches out and puts her good hand flat on the Spirit’s armour plating.

  ‘The Spirit has seen a lot. Done a lot. She has killed and been killed.’

  She drops her hand away.

  ‘But even then,’ Sova says, with that half-smile of hers. ‘She’s still the same. She’s still the Spirit.’

  Micro-fine grit lashes noisily against the cockpit glass as Vidal puts Indomitable Spirit into a steep banking turn. The Lightning’s airframe shakes, and the instruments rattle in their housings. The silver saint rattles, too, suspended by her chain from the cockpit cage. Vidal can’t blink, though her eyes are dry and stinging. The G-force weighs on her chest, pressing her into the seat. Into the old bloodstain painted like a target on the backrest. Vidal noticed it when she got in. A wide, black circle soaked into the synth-leather. Vidal fancies that she can feel it, damp against her back as though it is new.

  Or maybe that’s just the sweat tracing down her spine.

  The colossal loading pillars of the Heliodar Dockyards rush by on either side of the Spirit, barely visible through the petrochem smog. Black iron blurs, in the blood-red haze. Around her, the rest of Dagger Flight fly in a tight combat formation, all following their flight leader. Sova is dead ahead, her Lightning’s engines glowing through the smoke. Vidal is so focused on the twin bright lights that she doesn’t truly register the moment they break through the smog. All of a sudden, it’s just clear. Vidal can see everything. The vast iron sprawl of the dockyards, stretching out in every direction. She sees landing pads, and lifter gantries. Part-constructed transit craft, and huge, hanging tethers. Then, there, amongst the loading pillars, their target. The silver skeleton of the industrial promethium storage complex that the Pact have taken for their own. Vidal’s vox-set hisses.

  ‘There it is, Dagger,’ Sova says, her voice blurred by distortion. ‘Stay on me. We go steep, then straight. Wait for the logis-lock before you loose. We’re doing this in one run.’

  There’s a twinned ‘Aye, sir,’ from Daggers One and Two, Fontaine and Eevs. One speaks in a low growl, the other quick and cutting. Neither of them has the catch of nerves in their voice that Vidal does when she answers.

  ‘Cut to the bone, Dagger,’ Sova says, and she rolls her Lightning over into a steep dive. Vidal takes a breath of recycled air, and meets the eyes of the silver saint, suspended in her peripheral vision.

  Lend me your wings, she thinks.

  Then Vidal slams the control stick to the right. She feels the giddy lift and float as the world turns around her; then she is falling, the dockyards rushing up to meet her. Vidal’s eyes are streaming, but she finds herself grinning as the altimeter plummets towards hard deck. She has done attack drills before. False flights. Years and years of practice and theory and test after gruelling test. But this is different.

  This is duty.

  This is real.

  Vidal yells into her breather mask. Not words, just a shapeless bellow of joy. The Spirit bellows too, and a heavy judder runs through the airframe. An animal snarl that travels from the Lightning’s bones into Vidal’s own. She thinks she feels it, then. The Spirit’s fierce, fighting joy. Ahead of her, the rest of Dagger snap out of the dive, burners roaring. Vidal tenses her body and does the same, yanking back hard on the stick. The afterburners kick in, thumping so hard that it feels like an extra heartbeat in Vidal’s chest. The G-force bludgeons her. Bones. Brain. Lungs. For a moment, Vidal feels collapsed. Crushed. Her vision narrows until all that she can see is a pinprick circle of light. Vidal’s breath catches. Then, a voice.

  ‘Still with us, Dagger Three?’

  At the sound of Sova’s voice the world comes clear. Vidal takes a loud breath, and blinks away the blurriness in her eyes. Somehow, she has come up level with Fontaine at her two, and Eevs at ten. Sova is up front. Damned near on top of the target. It is coming up fast, the adamantium shell of the complex reflecting the curdled, crimson sky.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Vidal replies, breathlessly. ‘Still with you.’

  ‘Good,’ Sova replies. ‘Let’s get this done.’

  Vidal flips the trigger-guard on her control stick and engages the logis-lock for her Hellstrike missiles. The system peals on repeat in quicker and quicker succession. Ahead, Sova looses her missiles, stitching detonations along the complex roof. Fontaine follows suit. Then Eevs. The logis-lock is nearly one long note, now. Vidal takes another deep breath and rests her thumb against the trigger.

  Lend me your eye, she asks her silver saint.

  Vidal tenses. Readies to fire. And then the Spirit’s combat augurs blare. Vidal catches sight of something ahead and high. A bright flash of bronze. Twin-razor silhouette. A Hell Blade. Her eyes go wide.

  ‘Pact!’ she yells, into the vox.

  ‘Throne,’ Eevs snarls. It’s all he gets to say. A second Hell Blade streaks overhead, raking Eevs’ Lightning with a cluster of hard rounds. Eevs’ interceptor comes apart in a bright flare, red and white and gold. The explosion prints on Vidal’s eyes. On her mind, and her heart. She freezes up and overshoots her target, logis-lock screaming. That single, rasped word echoes in her head. Eevs’ last word.

  Throne.

  ‘Break!’ Sova’s voice cuts through for a second time. ‘Vidal, break left, now!’

  Vidal yanks on the Spirit’s control stick and puts the Lightning into a messy, spine-jerking roll. A Hell Blade screams through the space she just occupied, guns lit and flashing. Vidal yanks the control stick again, dragging the Spirit back onto its original flight path. This roll is better. Less messy. She comes out of it level and lines up her target. It’s the first time Vidal has ever got a good look at an enemy machine, other than in picts. The Hell Blade is a barbed, oil-slick arrowhead, its edges picked out in dirty bronze. The canopy is dark, the rear engine burning blood red. Vidal can hear that massive engine, even through armaglass and open sky. It sounds like a world’s worth of screaming. Vidal grits her teeth and fires the Spirit’s lascannons. Twin lasers spear out from the snout of the Lightning, stinging the Hell Blade rear left. It is really pissing smoke now. Dark smoke. Vidal grits her teeth and fires again, only for the Hell Blade to roll neatly out of her arc of fire. Vidal curses into her breather mask, but before she can match the manoeuvre, twin lascannon beams strike the Hell Blade from above, right between its pointed wings. The enemy fighter explodes, and a Lightning bursts through the centre of the detonation before corkscrewing up and away again, dragging ribbons of smoke and flame from the explosion along with it.

  ‘Strike one bandit,’ Sova says, over the flight vox. ‘Nice tag, Vidal.’

  Vidal’s breath catches. It’s her first kill. An assist, but a kill all the same. She expects to feel something. A rush. Righteousness, maybe. But there’s no time. The pieces of the Hell Blade have already vanished. The smoke too. Gone, in an instant. Vidal pulls the Spirit up and around to see another black streak painted across the ruddy sky.

  ‘Strike a second,’ Fontaine voxes. ‘But I’ve got another on my tail!’

  He is jinking left and right above her with another Hell Blade in close pursuit, the enemy fighter sticking
to him no matter how Fontaine yaws and skids. This one is the flight leader, all bronze, save for gore-red gun mouths, and a black arrow streak along the length of the body.

  ‘Break high,’ Sova orders him. ‘Now!’

  Fontaine pulls into an airframe-buckling climb, kicking the thrust in hard as he goes. His Lightning rockets upwards at near-vertical, but it’s not enough to slip what follows him. The Pact pilot matches Fontaine’s climb and opens fire, stinging him across the wings with a tight burst from its autocannons. Fontaine slews sideways. His climb becomes a roll. An ugly, dizzying spiral. Then his Lightning clips one of the black iron orbital tethers and shears apart in a flurry of silver shards. Gone, in an instant. Vidal can’t see the Pact fighter, either. Just Sova, her engines glowing as she arrests her pursuit and peels off. The vox-channel must still be open, because Vidal can hear her flight leader breathing.

  ‘With me, Dagger Three,’ she says. ‘We’re running.’

  The Spirit’s logis-lock peals before Vidal can answer. She must have flown back into range. Below, the promethium storage complex is burning, but not blown. Still standing. Still serving the enemy.

  ‘Wait,’ Vidal says. She swallows, heavily. ‘Sir, I still have Hellstrikes.’

  ‘Not a chance, Vidal,’ Sova answers. ‘It’s a death sentence.’

  ‘But there is a chance,’ Vidal replies, without thinking. ‘We can still finish this.’

  The pause on Sova’s end is fractional. ‘You really believe that?’

  Vidal’s words are dry and rasping, but they spill straight out of her. No hesitation.

  ‘I do.’

  Sova breathes out slowly. ‘Alright,’ she says. ‘But there’s no breaking off from this. We commit.’

  ‘I know,’ Vidal says. ‘To the bone, sir.’

  There’s a pause, then Sova laughs, cold and empty.

  ‘Take the lead, Dagger Three.’