The Kestrel was a space-capable variant of the Thunderbolt fighter-interceptor and their basic STCs were almost identical, so much so that systems which were redundant for void use were still fitted lest a Mechanicus cult adept upset the machine-spirits. The rudder on the craft’s tail was one such unnecessary feature (though, if the power plant were still active, one that Shira would literally kill to be able to use in her current situation) as was the ejector seat with built-in parachute (again, ironically useful in her current situation if she could get the cockpit open). But the one hangover from the design of the Kestrel’s parent that was most akin to breasts on a fish, were the hydraulic wing flaps.
The only reason Shira knew about them at all was because an instructor had told her class how to use them in the case of coming in for a ‘hot’ landing. Under those ‘rare circumstances’ where an Imperial Navy vessel had to make a quick warp jump, all of its fighter wings would have to scramble back to the ship, quite often making landings at speed: a ‘hot’ landing. The practice was not without risk, and even the most careful of pilots could find themselves planting their fighter into a bulkhead or another fighter. One way of mitigating this risk, according to the instructor tutoring Shira at least, was to operate the wing flaps once you were back in the atmosphere of the ship’s landing bay, the theory being that the added resistance would ‘arrest the craft’s forward momentum’. Up until now, it had been a half-remembered theory somewhere at the back of Shira’s mind, but right now her forward momentum could really use some arresting.
Straining her neck to twist around and look behind her, Shira saw the fearsome visage of the Heldrake no more than a hundred metres behind her and gaining rapidly. Within seconds, she would be in range of the beast’s cone of flame and the temperatures she had been experiencing up until now would feel like a particularly inclement day on Fenris.
The next moment, the view from the cockpit turned to whiteout and steam hissed from the Kestrel’s hull. She had hit cloud cover.
‘Shit,’ she croaked, shocked at hearing the sound of her own voice for the first time in hours. ‘Closer to the ground than I thought.’
As quickly as they had descended, the clouds parted and Shira’s view filled with the emerald and brown of the jungle below rising up to meet her in a deadly embrace. Fighting for all she was worth against G-force, she twisted her veiny neck. The Heldrake had opened its maw, the pre-flame of its balefire evident on its tongue. It was now or never.
Yanking so hard on the lever that her shoulder popped out of its socket, Shira screamed as the flaps lifted, instantly slowing the Kestrel and pushing her further back into her seat. Ribs fractured and her nose started to bleed as even greater forces abused her body. It took every ounce of her being not to black out. Feeling the heat from the Heldrake’s breath weapon, she forced her eyes upwards to see the dark, winged shape overshoot her just as it had done out in space. Unlike in space, its scream of frustration was audible and it pulled out of its dive in time to prevent itself from crashing through the canopies of the tall trees below.
There was to be no such escape for Shira.
Closing her eyes as the top leaves and branches loomed large through the smoke-blackened glass of the cockpit, Shira felt the first few impacts against the hull and wings as tree limbs scraped and tore at the body of the Kestrel that had so very nearly got her to the ground in one piece. She screwed her face up, praying to the God-Emperor and anybody else who would listen that the impact would kill her outright.
When the impact came, it was not at all what she had been expecting.
Instead of a thud followed by a tangle of metal and body parts, there was an almighty splash trailed by the sound of steam rising from the Kestrel’s hull. Cautiously, still not quite believing that she had survived, Shira slowly opened her eyes. She could not see much through the cracked and blackened plastiglass of the cockpit but she could see, hear and feel water trickling in through the fissures. By some blind piece of luck, or divine intervention, she had managed to bring herself down into an ocean. Or, more accurately, judging by the colour and smell of the fluid filling up the floor of her craft, a swamp.
Shira tried to unclasp her harness but, realising that they too had fused under the heat of entry, pulled out the combat blade from its scabbard at her waist and cut herself free. She vainly fiddled with the now cooled cockpit lock but met with the same result as before. Even jamming her knife into it and using it like a prybar had no effect. Using her one good arm, she pushed against the frame of the cockpit, hoping that she could somehow force it open. Again, her attempt at escape was futile. The water level had risen to cover her legs and she was struck by the realisation that the soothing cool water that was easing the pain of her multiple burns would soon be the same water that would fill her lungs and kill her.
She gave two final bangs against the roof of the cockpit, no more than half-hearted attempts to shove it open before letting her head loll forward and sobbed. It wasn’t fair. She had survived the battles in space, outrun and outmanoeuvred a Heldrake and managed to get a powerless fighter-interceptor down to the planet’s surface in one piece but in spite of all that, her final moments were going to be spent waiting to drown. Her sobs turned to laughter as she weighed up the cruel irony of it all.
A new noise made her stop crying and laughing altogether. Over the sound of inrushing water, Shira could hear something moving in the water around the Kestrel. Without warning, a gauntleted fist punched through the glass of the cockpit showering her in tiny fragments and causing the water to flood in at a faster rate. The fist gripped the frame and, after a couple of exploratory tugs, ripped the cockpit away from the rest of the Kestrel. Instantly, Shira was engulfed in the brackish black water. Her first instinct was to kick off and swim away but a massive arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her clear before she had a chance. Belatedly, she held her breath and felt herself being pulled up through the swamp until eventually she broke the surface with a choke and a splutter.
She could hear voices now, muggy and indistinct because her ears were full of water, and she was hoisted out of the wetness and onto soft muddy ground. She tried to open her eyes but glaring sunlight forced her to shut them again. She tried again, this time using her hand as a shield. Rendered as silhouettes against the intense light, two figures stood over her. The first was lithe, taut and obviously female despite her short hair. The other was far bigger, massive shoulder guards and the outline of a backpack clearly indicating he was a Space Marine. Shira instinctively reached for the knife at her belt only to discover it wasn’t there, discarded in the cockpit of her sunken Kestrel during her rescue.
The smaller of the two figures stepped forward and knelt down in front of her. Without the light of the sun to frame her, Shira could see that the dark-skinned woman was wearing a green vest and camouflage fatigues, the hilt of a small knife poking out of the waistband. When she spoke it was with a quiet authority.
‘I am Tzula Digriiz of the Emperor’s Most Holy Ordos,’ she said matter of factly. ‘Your rescuer here is named Epimetheus and, as I’m sure you’ve already figured, out he’s a Space Marine. Very useful to have around, even if he doesn’t generally have much to say.’
Epimetheus stepped forward, the green coated silver of his armour now apparent to Shira. She didn’t recognise which Chapter he was from.
‘And what about you?’ Tzula asked. ‘I’m guessing from the fact that you crash-landed here in a fighter and are wearing a flight suit that looks like it has seen many, many better days that you’re Navy.’
Shira blinked for a moment, her eyes still adjusting to the light and the rest of her to her situation. ‘I’m Shira. Shira Hagen. Pilot first class, assigned to the Imperial Navy battleship Revenge.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘At least I was. I don’t even know if the Revenge exists any more.’
Tzula offered the prone woman her hand, which was part of a crude augmetic that replaced the real limb all the way up to the elbow. Shira gripped it an
d used it to aid herself to her feet.
‘Well, Shira Hagen,’ Tzula said turning to follow Epimetheus who was already heading into the thick jungle. ‘Welcome to Pythos.’
Part Four
Chapter Ten
785960.M41 / Thermenos Stronghold. 1,328 kilometres south of Mount Olympax, Pythos
The hellhammer shell struck the daemon in the thorax, tearing through flesh like kindling and exploding its bloated form in a shower of gore. It remained standing for several moments, unaware that its existence had been ended, before collapsing in a smoking heap. Others of its kind simply ignored the dissolving corpse as the army of the Neverborn advanced upon the cave-mouth entrance to the hold.
‘Reload! Reload!’ barked Strike from his command chair in the Hellhammer. Three burly Catachans heeded his command, one operating the mechanism to open the breech, the other two hefting an enormous shell into position. It was a process they had repeated more times than they could remember in the past year.
Forced to flee Olympax, the 183rd had spread to the four corners of Pythos. Those on foot or in the precious few armoured vehicles they retained dispersing across the main continent of Pythos Prime; those on board Valkyries and other flyers making it as far as the outlying continents and islands. Strike, along with the handful of men crewing his tank, the inquisitor, the Space Marine and the xenos, had made straight for Khan’s Hold – one of the largest holds to remain in Catachan hands and barracks for almost two hundred of his troops. It had taken them thirty days to navigate the swamps and thick jungles, battling as much against the environment as the numerous predators who saw the super-heavy tank as good sport. Catachan through and through, the skulls of three would-be attackers adorned the hull of the war machine.
When they reached Khan’s Hold, all they found was a charnel house.
Mutilated corpses lined the approach to the vast mining complex, some impaled on thick wooden stakes, others merely discarded on the padded-down earth that formed a crude road. Only weeks earlier, Khan’s Hold had been defended from Abaddon’s assault, the first victory of any note for the Imperial forces, but now its defenders lay dead and defiled, the hold itself no more than a burned-out shell.
Other Catachan forces made contact with Strike and as the Hellhammer wound its way slowly through the mire and trees towards Thermenos Stronghold, a remote but relatively easy to defend mine in the south of Pythos Prime, Strike’s tank became as much a mobile command centre as it was a fearsome weapon of war. From all over the planet, small groups of jungle fighters reported in. A dozen taking refuge in High Peak, twelve men and women to defend a population of almost a thousand; three Valkyries finding sanctuary at Mount Blizzard, the second largest stronghold on the planet now under the protection of fifty Catachans with air support capability; thirty soldiers of Devil’s Brigade footslogging for a month to reach the trio of delver-strongholds sited at Glazer’s Plateau.
But the tank became so much more than that too – it became a rallying point, a symbol of Pythos’s defiance. It had even gained a name – Traitor’s Bane in honour of the tally of Archenemy it had claimed in its breakout from Olympax. As it rolled through the boggy jungle, refugees from sacked delver-strongholds and Catachan stragglers flocked to it, vox-operators broadcasting around the clock in an effort to round up survivors. By the time Strike rolled up the steep approach to Thermenos Stronghold, over two hundred Catachans and armed civilians marched behind him.
Now the war could begin in earnest.
Leading his troops from his remote base, Strike launched a guerrilla campaign against the occupying forces. Small teams of Catachans harried enemy patrols at every turn, striking from deep cover before dissolving back into the jungle, for all intents invisible to the aggressors. Abaddon’s force switched tactics in response and sent out larger parties but, with fewer patrols to protect their assets, the Catachan raiders now had other targets to attack. Like phantoms, they operated behind enemy lines, destroying fuel dumps, arms caches and ammunition stocks before anybody knew they were there. There were no great victories, no grandstand moments for history to remember, but these tiny acts of sabotage and resistance were all that was keeping the Catachans in the war, buying time in the vain hope that reinforcements would one day arrive to liberate Pythos.
Despite all these tiny triumphs, this death by a thousand cuts he was slowly eking out on the invaders, three things still hampered Strike in his shadow war.
Whether by mechanical or mystical means, the enemy had been jamming the vox-signals since the dawn of the campaign, and communication over long distances was almost impossible. The Pythosian miners had their own radio communications network but it operated on short range frequencies, which meant that delver-strongholds had to act as relay stations, passing messages forward from station to station until it reached its intended recipient.
It had been almost a year since Brigstone had evacuated the armour and in all that time no Catachan force had had any kind of contact with them. The enemy had not used any of the vehicles against them, intimating that the ships had not been captured, but his non-appearance was suggesting to Strike that the commander and his precious cargo had fallen prey to one of Pythos’s great seaborne predators that made the land-based specimens look like dwarfs.
If the lack of armoured reinforcements was thwarting some of Strike’s more ambitious plans to strike back at the Chaos forces, the enemy’s ability to bolster their ranks almost at will was amplifying it. The assault on Olympax had only been possible as a result of the armies of the warp being unleashed and Strike had no advance intelligence to either mount an effective defence or carry out a planned and organised evacuation. In a hive city the size of Atika resistance cells should still be able to operate to some degree, no matter how large the occupying force. He knew personally of at least six Catachans who had stayed behind to run insurgency operations after the rest of the regiment had abandoned the capital but, like Brigstone, none of them had been heard from in almost a year.
With the number of warp entities burgeoning in the months since they had set up base at Thermenos, Tzula and Epimetheus had decided to head back to Atika, if not to dam the flow then at the very least to get a handle on the situation. The information they could potentially gather was of vital importance to the resistance effort, but the fighting skills of the inquisitor and the Space Marine had been invaluable since the retreat from Olympax. Strike had objected to their leaving, but ultimately, who was he to question the judgement of representatives of both the Holy Ordos and the Adeptus Astartes?
The pair had barely left each other’s side since Epimetheus’s miraculous appearance out of the depths of the mountain stronghold – an appearance that the taciturn Space Marine and secretive inquisitor had both declined to explain to him. Though it was beyond all reason that any form of amorous bond had developed between them, it seemed that the armoured giant had assumed the mantle of Tzula’s protector.
That protection was something that Strike and the small band of fighters defending Thermenos could do with now. Abaddon had turned his attention from the larger holds and hives and was instead attacking any target that presented itself, regardless of strategic or collateral value. It did not matter if it was a bolthole for Catachan resistance or a safe haven for refugees from one of the cities. The Warmaster of Chaos was dismantling Pythos settlement by settlement and it was inevitable that the time would come when he launched an assault on Thermenos. That time was now.
The dull thud of the hellhammer cannon reverberated around the tank’s command compartment, the sound dampeners and recoil suppressors fitted by K’Cee keeping the noise down to tolerable levels. The jokaero, who had not accompanied Tzula back to Atika, loped around the cabin, checking instrument banks and adjusting settings and configurations. Despite all of the enhancements the hairy creature had already made, the tank was still very much a work in progress for him.
More of the disease-carrying monstrosities shambled up the steep approach to the stronghold
, seemingly impervious to the las-fire from the assorted Catachans and militia arrayed behind rocks and barricades close to the entrance. In the wake of the daemons, power-armoured figures ascended the slope: Black Legionnaires and unidentified crimson-clad traitors using the horned beasts as a shield of warp-tainted flesh. Sporadic bolter fire forced the human defenders to seek cover, allowing the Chaos vanguard to gain yet more ground.
Ordering his crew to hold until the last possible moment, Strike waited until the front ranks of rotted daemon flesh were within range of all of the Hellhammer’s weapons systems before ordering, ‘Fire all weapons.’
Flamers and heavy bolters seared and eviscerated the gangly cyclopses, unholy howls heralding them back to whence they came. Lascannons and autocannons targeted the Traitor Astartes, pinning them back and felling several under the withering barrage. Without the enemy’s suppressing fire to contend with, the Catachans and delver militia leapt from cover, setting about any foe not killed outright by the Hellhammer’s onslaught. In their diminished state, the fallen daemons were still a formidable threat, slashing away with corroded swords that instantly melted the flesh of anything they came into contact with. One particularly pernicious beast slew nine men before succumbing to its numerous wounds.
Observing from the turret hatch, Strike saw the Traitor Astartes on the move again, clambering from rock to rock on the hillface, using them as cover to reach their objective while the humans were occupied with trying to kill enemies that stubbornly refused to die. ‘Advance,’ he ordered closing the hatch and returning to his command seat. Tamzarian threw the tank into reverse, moving out from behind the rock wall where it had been hull down and sped down the slope towards the oncoming enemy. Catachans and militiamen threw themselves out of the way as the gargantuan tank moved through them, tearing up the ailing daemons beneath wide tracks.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 330