SABBAT WAR

by Edited by Dan Abnett

  Vidal pushes the Spirit down into a second attack dive. This time there’s no giddiness. No grinning. This time, the judder that runs through the Spirit’s airframe is all rage. The Spirit’s rage. Vidal’s rage. The simple defiance of that last word, spoken by Eevs.

  Throne.

  Vidal pulls out of the dive a heartbeat from hard deck. She feels everything flex with the pressure of it. The Spirit’s airframe. The cockpit armaglass. Her own bones. Her ears pop and her teeth crash together. The logis-lock peals around her, but it is drowned out by the sound of autocannon fire lashing against the Spirit’s fuselage. The Lightning shudders around Vidal, integrity alarums blaring. Vidal chances a look over her shoulder and catches the briefest glimpse of her attacker. Of the black arrow streak, painted front to back on the Hell Blade’s hull. The flight leader, coming on high and fast.

  ‘Keep on it!’ Sova says. ‘I’ll get the bastard!’

  More autocannon fire clatters against the Spirit’s hull. Behind Vidal, something starts venting with a loud, angry hiss. She swears, but keeps going.

  Lend me your sword, she begs of her silver saint. Please!

  Vidal flips the trigger-guard for her Hellstrikes, focused entirely on the quickening peal of the logis-lock, ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing until–

  There!

  Vidal pulls the trigger. Four Hellstrike missiles streak out from their mounts beneath the Spirit’s wings, before arcing down to the target below. They impact in quick succession, throwing gouts of fire high in the air. Secondary detonations trigger along the spine of the complex, ripping along supply pipes and through deep storage. The pressure buffets the Spirit as Vidal pulls up and away. She sees Sova spiralling upwards above her, the Hell Blade hanging at her back. Sova’s Lightning is pockmarked from gunfire, smoke spilling from the undercarriage in thick ribbons. Dark smoke. Vidal opens the vox-channel, but Sova speaks before she can, her voice scratchy with interference.

  ‘Nice tag, Vidal,’ she says.

  Then Sova’s Lightning explodes under the Hell Blade’s guns. Vidal freezes for a second time, her gloved hands locked tight around the Spirit’s control stick. She blinks, her eyes stinging, but there’s no time to feel anything now, either. The Pact pilot is already coming for her, pinpricks of light flashing in the Hell Blade’s gore-red gun mouths. Vidal uses her forward momentum to pitch the Spirit down into an evasive spiral dive. It’s a desperate manoeuvre. Deadly. The Spirit’s airframe rattles around her, the dockyards knotting and blurring through the cockpit armaglass. Vidal feels autocannon rounds crack against the Spirit’s armour plating. She feels the Lightning wallow. She feels the malice of the Hell Blade, hanging close at her back. The Spirit’s bones thrum, and Vidal cuts her speed and kicks in the air brakes. The Hell Blade overshoots her with a bellow, falling directly into her firing arc. Vidal unloads with the Spirit’s lascannons, depleting half the charge. A white-out of laser fire. Vidal blinks reflexively and tenses to fire again, but the sky in front of her is empty, save for smoke. The ace is gone. She stung them. She must have–

  A handful of hard, loud impacts jolt Vidal in her seat, and the Hell Blade passes her again, hellfire engine flaring. She can’t hear the scream of it, this time. Something in the cockpit is hissing too loudly. Blinking heavily, Vidal realises it’s not something venting. It’s air, rushing between her teeth. She glances down to see large circles of blood soaking steadily through her flight suit.

  ‘Huh,’ she murmurs.

  Vidal’s grip on the control stick slackens. She hardly notices the Pact pilot break off. Hardly feels the lift and the float as the Spirit pitches downwards, or the thrum of the airframe as the Lightning arcs towards the blasted ruin of the promethium complex, burning far below. Vidal’s vision greys around the edges, closing swiftly like an iris shutter until all she can see is her silver saint, caught in the invisible pull of the fall.

  02

  LOW ORBIT OVER SRADY BAY, LYUBOV.

  778.M41.

  From the hangar deck of the Dauntless Heart, Lyubov’s horizon line is a harsh white curve, like a stroke of paint against the face of the void. The planet’s primary sun is rising right in the middle of that curve, as bright as a commemorative medal. Bastien Daire sits cross-legged on the wing of his newly assigned Lightning, watching that bright circle rise and swell, the stars fading by comparison. There are other Navy ships out there. Cruisers, and battleships. Dozens of them, glittering in the orbital sunrise. Around Daire, the launch deck of the Dauntless Heart is frantic with activity, the deck crew of the Lunar-class cruiser working hard to get the Navy fighter wings ready for the drop. Daire busies himself by rolling a silver coin absently across the knuckles of his right hand. He’s been ready for hours. Ready since they translated into system.

  ‘Not long now,’ he says to the Lightning.

  ‘Do they ever talk back to you?’

  Daire looks down to see one of the deck crew looking up at him. It’s Liva, like always. She has a preflight board in her hand, and a frown on her broad, scarred face. Daire pockets the silver coin and drops off the Lightning’s wing.

  ‘Only once we’re in the air,’ he says. ‘Then they tell me all kinds of things.’

  Liva looks at the Lightning, crouched low on its stanchions. She smiles in a way Daire has never known her smile at another person. Especially not at him.

  ‘This one will have some stories,’ she says. ‘Serial ten-twelve is an old soul.’

  ‘How old?’

  Liva looks back at him. ‘Older than you.’

  ‘Most things are,’ Daire says with a grin. ‘Guess that’s how it is when you’re the youngest ace in the wing.’

  Liva’s hand whips out and she claps him on the head with the preflight board.

  ‘This isn’t a joke,’ she says. ‘I want this one back. In one piece.’

  Daire rubs at his head where she hit him. ‘Alright,’ he says. ‘Saint’s grace. You need to worry less.’

  ‘You need to worry more,’ Liva replies, flatly. ‘You’re going after a mass carrier, Bas. We’re not talking four-on-four. Even if half of them are out hunting, there’ll still be dozens of them down there. Dozens of dozens. A whole nest of devils.’

  ‘I know,’ Daire says. ‘That’s why I petitioned the flight marshal for the right to go after it.’

  He looks out of the viewport at Lyubov’s horizon line and thinks about it. A sky black with enemy birds. A smell comes back to him at the thought. At the memory. Smoke, and ash. Blood on stone. It’s so strong he can taste it.

  ‘If we don’t stop them, nothing will.’ He pauses, still tasting smoke. ‘They’ll burn this world, and then the next. They won’t stop until every world in the sector is ashes, just like Balhaut.’

  ‘Balhaut was a victory.’

  ‘In the end,’ Daire says.

  ‘You speak as though you saw it.’

  Daire puts his hand in his pocket, and takes out the silver coin. The design on the face of it is worn nearly smooth from handling, but he can still make it out. A circle of mercantile marks around a row of pointed towers. The Oligarchy.

  ‘I don’t remember much about Balhaut, but I remember finding this,’ he says. ‘I came across it in the rubble the day the Gate fell. We’d been running for months by then. Years, probably. Me. My ma, and my brother. Though I was on my own by then. Had been a while.’ He rolls the coin deftly across his knuckles, back and forth. ‘I only saw it because it caught the light. One shiny thing amongst all of the muck. I knew it was a silver crown. The kind they say are lucky. So I climbed out into the mess to pick it up, and that’s when I got picked up too.’

  ‘By the Pact?’ Liva asks, quietly.

  Daire shakes his head. ‘By a scout trooper from the Pardus Twelfth with more heart than sense.’ Daire stops rolling the coin and looks at it sitting there on the flat of his hand. ‘It was lucky, I guess.’

  There’s a long moment of silence before Liva speaks.

  ‘That doesn’t
sound lucky,’ she says. ‘It sounds like you lost everything.’

  Daire slips the coin back into his pocket and shrugs as though it doesn’t matter. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘But I was given something, too.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Wings,’ Daire says. He looks over at the Lightning, taking in the interceptor’s pockmarked armour plating, and her old scars. She looks as though she’s been rebuilt, never mind refitted. Tough old soul.

  ‘Serial ten-twelve, you said.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What’s her real name?’

  Liva checks her preflight board. ‘Indomitable Spirit.’

  Daire laughs, softly. ‘Sounds about right.’

  Launching fighters from the belly of a Navy cruiser is a high-stakes game. It’s the steepest of dives. The swiftest, where even the smallest, most stupid mistake or slip of attention could cost a whole flight of aircraft. On paper, it’s risky. Reckless, even. It should be terrifying. But all that Bastien Daire feels as his Lightning tilts forwards in the hydraulic launch cradle is the thrill of it. The urgent need to fly. He hangs suspended above the face of Lyubov, the unimpeded sun painting hard shadows across the Spirit’s control panel as he performs his final checks. The Lightning’s controls are a muddle of old and new, with cracked dials in places and brand new panels in others. There’s a piece of yellowed adhesive tack over the fuel gauge that has the phrase ‘Low means go’ scribbled on it in a spidery hand.

  ‘Good advice,’ Daire says to the Spirit, as the launch cradle locks into place with a heavy, bone-jarring thud, angled at near vertical. If Daire wasn’t strapped to his seat he’d be against the cockpit glass, or through it. He glances left at the rest of Reaper Flight. The other Lightnings hang ready in their own cradles, the red streaks of paint on their tails as dark as blood under the void-light. Like the Spirit, they have been modified to carry a single high-capacity incendiary bomb, deployable from a hard point on the undercarriage. It’s a set-up that the deck crew have taken to calling a ‘death wish’. Another thing that should terrify Daire, but doesn’t.

  ‘Reaper Flight,’ comes the flight marshal’s voice over the vox. ‘The Thirty-Third Callion have confirmed sight of an enemy mass carrier moving through the Sradhive sprawl. You know your orders. Cut through the fighting. Kill the carrier, and whatever crawls out of it. Leave them with nothing.’

  The connection severs with a hard snap, and Mosi cuts in. The flight lieutenant sounds as though he’s smiling, like always.

  ‘Alright, Reaper,’ he says. ‘You heard the marshal. Ready up, double time. Let’s not keep the devils waiting.’

  Daire acknowledges alongside Himura and Ido. They are crusade orphans, like him. Fast-thinking, and fast-talking. Aching to prove something. The vox-channel switches again, direct comms this time.

  ‘Try not to act the fool this time, Bas,’ Mosi says. ‘It’s going to be a mess down there.’

  Daire grins, setting the altimeter. It’s the same exchange they always have. As much of a tradition as the pre-launch prayer. ‘I’ll try to try,’ he says. ‘No promises.’

  Mosi is sitting in the next Lightning on the line, so he is close enough that Daire can see the flight lieutenant shake his head in mock exasperation. Daire laughs, then the vox crackles again and the launchmaster’s voice cuts through.

  ‘Serial ten-twelve, Indomitable Spirit, confirm ready.’

  Daire checks his instruments one last time, then pats the pocket of his flight coat where the silver coin sits.

  ‘This is serial ten-twelve,’ Daire says. ‘Confirming ready, all systems in the green.’

  There’s a pause as the launchmaster makes her final checks. Then the vox crackles again. Daire’s heart leaps.

  ‘Reaper Flight, you are clear forward. Prepare for launch on my mark.’

  Daire rests his thumb, ready to engage the rocket boost. He grins.

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says to the Spirit.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Let’s see what you can do.’

  ‘Mark!’

  The rocket boost hurls the Spirit from the launch bay like a shell leaves a mortar, all violence and short-lived flame. Daire lets it burn for thirty seconds, dumping enough thrust to get the Lightning clear of the Dauntless Heart’s anchor, and set on its angle of descent. Daire’s world changes rapidly from starlit black to hazy blue, then hot white and red as the pull of gravity takes hold. He doesn’t need the booster now that the planet’s got him. Daire falls hard and fast into Lyubov’s atmosphere, tiny motes of flame catching the Spirit’s edges. Around him the rest of Reaper seem little more than silver darts, streaking downwards. The Spirit is buffeted by the atmosphere. By heat, and then by torrid, bruise-coloured storm clouds. For a moment, Daire finds himself alone inside a thunderhead, his vision black and blue and bright with spreading veins of lightning. It’s beautiful. Brutal. And then it’s gone, and Daire punches his way into Lyubov’s rain-lashed sky. The rest of Reaper are close on his tail, their armour plating snap-cooling in the cold air. They have come down right on top of the Sradhive sprawl, where the hab-towers have been gutted black and hollowed by shelling. Some are still burning, sending up stark columns of smoke. At the heart of the sprawl, Daire can see the mass carrier. A rolling airbase, grinding through the city’s bones on a set of colossal tracks. But between Reaper and the carrier there’s a whole new kind of storm. One made of silvered steel, crimson and brass, punctuated by blooms of fire. It’s a melee in the clouds. A kilometre-wide screen of wing tips and gun mouths.

  The biggest damned dogfight that Daire has ever seen.

  He feels a smile break on his face as the vox clicks live and he hears the words he’s been waiting for since they broke warp.

  ‘On me,’ Mosi says, in his smiling voice. ‘Death from above, Reaper Flight.’

  Daire wasn’t joking when he told Liva that the aircraft speak to him. They don’t use words, of course. He’s no tech-priest. The interceptors speak to Daire through the roar of their guns, and the bellow of their engines. Through every creak of the airframe. The Spirit is different, though. As Daire falls through Lyubov’s violent sky, she does more than just speak.

  She sings.

  It’s furious. Animal. Beautiful. The sound of it surrounds Daire as he sights on a blood-red Hell Razor. The Pact fighter is hounding a wounded Thunderbolt. Clinging to it like a second shadow. The Thunderbolt will never outrun it. The Razor is too quick.

  But Daire is quicker.

  He hammers the Spirit’s afterburners to close the distance. The Hell Razor yaws, and rolls. Then it cuts speed, breaking hard left.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Daire says. He kills the thrust and pops the air brake, snapping the Spirit into a matching turn so tight that the airframe flexes and groans. But the old bird is tough. The Spirit pulls the turn, setting Daire on the inside line of the Razor’s flight path, the enemy fighter falling momentarily into the centre of his firing arc. He squeezes the trigger without hesitation, lascannon fire lancing out to strike the Razor amidships. There’s a flash of light. A bloom of smoke and grit. Then the enemy fighter comes apart down the middle, shearing into two distinct pieces. Daire rolls the Spirit sideways, passing by the wallowing Thunderbolt so close that he can read the warning notice painted on the wing.

  No step.

  ‘Strike one,’ he voxes.

  ‘You nearly struck yourself out, too,’ Mosi says. Daire doesn’t have to look to know that Reaper One is tailing him. Watching his back. It’s how they always fly. Mosi makes Daire the sword to his shield because the flight leader knows that’s what Daire is good for. What he lives for.

  ‘Nearly isn’t good enough,’ Daire says, rolling the Spirit back level. He is in the middle of the dogfight now. Right at the heart of the storm. It’s dense. Close-quarters. Little more than a series of fleeting, violent moments played out like picter-frames through the cockpit armaglass.

  A Locust tearing apart at the edges, s
pilling fire from inside.

  A blue-striped Thunderbolt, wing-struck and spinning downwards.

  A Lightning from the 102 colliding headlong with a Hell Razor, each craft crushing the other and sending debris out in a wide, silver arc.

  ‘Throne,’ Himura says, as he peels away into the melee, Ido hanging on his tail. The two of them bracket a Razor between them, shredding it under their guns. ‘This is hell.’

  Daire should agree with them, but he can’t. He won’t. Because it doesn’t feel like hell sitting in the Spirit’s cradle, surrounded by the smell of oil and fuel and steel.

  It feels like home.

  Daire wings over, feeling the hot rush of vertigo as he falls. The Spirit must feel it too, by the noise she’s making. By the way she drops, swift and straight as an arrow. Daire centres another Razor beneath the Spirit’s guns, shredding the Pact fighter’s starboard forewing. The Razor wallows, dragging along the damaged wing, before spiralling out of sight. Daire doesn’t slow, or look back to confirm the kill. He burns straight through the kill-zone, and into the path of an oncoming stoop bomber. The Pact fighter opens up, hard rounds clattering against the Spirit’s front plating. The Lightning snarls, and Daire laughs. Tough old bird. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. He holds course, tagging the bomber along the underside as the pilot breaks to avoid him, streaking by on his left side.

  ‘Bandit coming your way,’ he voxes to Mosi.

  ‘You know, one day I’ll tire of clearing up after you,’ the flight leader replies.

  Daire laughs. ‘No, you won’t.’

  He puts the Spirit into a long, loose roll. Slips by another Razor. Stings another Locust, bad enough to set it limping. He laughs, giddy. Then levels out in time to tag a Hell Talon as it crosses his path. Daire catches the Pact bomber across the wings. Across the incendiaries mounted on the hard points beneath them. The Talon goes up in an instant, disappearing inside a colossal fireball that whites out Daire’s vision. He hits the burners, and holds straight. When the bright spots fade, he is through the fighter screen, staring down at the gutted wasteland of the Sradhive sprawl. Dust billows up from below in great, thick clouds, rolling away from the mass carrier as it moves inexorably towards the bay. The thing is vast, nearly two kilometres of armed adamantium and steel, its toothed launch maws lit red from within.