SABBAT WAR
Page 42
Abruptly the engines cut out. All of them. Priad’s expression didn’t change, not when the Thunderhawk tumbled in the air and not when the engines blasted back into life and shot the blocky craft up in a parabolic curve over the lowtown rooftops. The shout of the turbofans was clear now, echoing up and down off the angular black cliffs. Priad felt a prickle of uncharitable amusement as he pictured people below flinching from the noise. There should have been few people left at the Cliffs who were unprepared for the noise of war machines by now. As far as Priad understood, any townsfolk the war hadn’t driven away were long since evacuated. With as little obvious fuss as possible the place had been turned into a guardhouse, just in case anyone remembered it was here.
The thought brought the scowl back to Priad’s face again. That was exactly why this was the wrong place. Wrong for him, wrong for his Iron Snakes, wrong for… her. That was as plain to him as his own hand in front of his face, but not to the people he had spent days arguing with, around in circles, trying to push his case through the endless briarpatch of their objections.
He growled and shook his head. He had come up to watch the Thunderhawk’s air tests precisely to give him something practical to think about, get his head clear of all that for a while, and here he was dragging it with him. He looked up again.
Crethon was hanging the craft in the air, letting it tilt this way and that, keeping position by feel in the choppy air coming up off the water. Priad focused his long-vision and watched it, reassured by the steady note of the engines, proud of the skill his pilot was showing. The Iron Snakes required every member of their Phratry to train on every weapon and machine they fielded. Every member of Damocles Squad could fly the gunship if they had to, but none with Crethon’s artistry.
The Thunderhawk skated sideways through the air and pushed through the headwinds until it was over the seawall. Priad walked to the promenade’s rampart and leaned over to watch what it would do next.
It arrowed down towards the central wharves, combat wings unlocked, still twisting in the air to orient itself as it vanished behind the stately domes of the seafront buildings. Priad heard the echoing crunch as it crashed down.
A moment after that, he was over the rampart and dropping like a stone through the air.
Priad
Rhole Cliffs
They could have simply gunned the enemy convoy to pieces as it rolled down the ferry ramp onto the dock, but the Iron Snakes had been on campaign away from Ithaka for a long time now, and supply lines had never been sure. Finding ways to spare power and ammunition were second nature by now.
So Crethon had brought the gunship down in a barely powered drop onto the convoy’s lead vehicle for an impact that would have stunned any normal human crew, and wrecked any lesser craft than an Adeptus Astartes Thunderhawk. After the gunship’s hull bounced off its roof the Salamander command tank juddered on for a few more metres, its top bowed in and its sides bowed out like a stomped-on ration-can, before it simply stalled. It had barely made it off the wharf and into the feeder road that would have taken it towards the uptown. The rest of the motley little convoy, four more pieces of military armour and two civilian haulage trucks, were left jammed nose to tail all the way back to the ferry ramp. Easy prey.
Crethon pulsed the engines and took the gunship aloft again. As the Thunderhawk accelerated towards the cliffs, the hot shockwave of its exhausts swamped the SteG-4 light tank second in line, leaving the burning hulk sinking onto the melted remains of its tyres. The rest of the convoy became dim shapes in a cloud of smoke, grit and dust. A couple of dull red snaps of las-fire came from somewhere inside it. Emperor alone knew what they thought they were shooting at.
The Thunderhawk wrenched itself out of its collision course with the cliff by sheer brute force of its vectored engines, screaming up into a half-loop and flipping to come back down at the convoy. It passed over Priad’s head as he picked himself out of the rooftop he had landed on. The drop had not hurt him at all, but had driven him up to his ankles into the brickwork. He sprinted around the roof’s central dome to the far side, took a second to look over the lip of the roof and then stepped up, turned and dropped, arms out, the wall blurring upward less than half a metre from the tip of his nose. He had one short moment to pray that no one came out of the building’s front entrance, and then he was kneeling in a crater of chipped cobbles in front of the tall double doors. As he looked up they parted and half a wide-eyed face looked out at him.
Click here to buy Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Great Britain in 2021.
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Cover illustration by Lorenzo Mastroianni.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Introduction
THIS IS WHAT VICTORY FEELS LIKE (FOREVER THE SAME)
WHOSE VOICE IS HEARD NO MORE
GLORY FLIGHT
THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET
NINETEEN-THREE COREWARD, RESOLVED
THE TOMB OF VICHRES
DEEP
ARMADUKE
INDOMITABLE SPIRIT
01
02
03
04
05
FROM THERE TO HERE
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
Table of Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Introduction
THIS IS WHAT VICTORY FEELS LIKE (FOREVER THE SAME)
WHOSE VOICE IS HEARD NO MORE
GLORY FLIGHT
THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET
NINETEEN-THREE COREWARD, RESOLVED
THE TOMB OF VICHRES
DEEP
ARMADUKE
INDOMITABLE SPIRIT
01
02
03
04
05
FROM THERE TO HERE
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
Table of Contents
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Introduction
THIS IS WHAT VICTORY FEELS LIKE (FOREVER THE SAME)
WHOSE VOICE IS HEARD NO MORE
GLORY FLIGHT
THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET
NINETEEN-THREE COREWARD, RESOLVED
THE TOMB OF VICHRES
DEEP
ARMADUKE
INDOMITABLE SPIRIT
01
02
03
04
05
FROM THERE TO HERE
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
Table of Contents
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Introduction
THIS IS WHAT VICTORY FEELS LIKE (FOREVER THE SAME)
WHOSE VOICE IS HEARD NO MORE
GLORY FLIGHT
THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET
NINETEEN-THREE COREWARD, RESOLVED
THE TOMB OF VICHRES
DEEP
ARMADUKE
INDOMITABLE SPIRIT
01
02
03
04
05
FROM THERE TO HERE
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license