by Guy Haley
‘Noted, Blue Zephyr. Freedom granted to pursue.’
Aisha grinned wolfishly. This was more like it! ‘Five years sitting behind lines. A great reward for being a good pilot – now I finally get to fly. Wing one, form up, follow me in.’
Four ships answered her call. Three of her squadron were dead, and she hadn’t even noticed.
‘You can’t follow them down!’ voxed Bey. ‘There’s no space. The flight ceiling is too low. If you come back up through the void shields, you’ll be caught in the bombardment.’
‘It’s days like this that made me want to fly. Hold position here, Bey. Help the Legions hold the ships back from the holes. I’m taking flight one down with me.’
Thrusters firing all over her ship, she powered upwards, weathering a fusillade of solid shot from enemy fighters, flipped over, and dived down at the aegis. Her wing, expert pilots all, stayed in perfect formation with her all the while.
The surface of the aegis rushed at her. The upper shield kept rising, only to be torn down over and over again. The taxed lower layers remained up, but wavered forever on the edge of existence at the sort of strength that might – might – permit her craft through. There was no telling if it would work; the aegis made no distinction between friend and foe, but operated solely on esoteric calculations of mass and velocity and dimensional interface.
She flicked a look at her husband’s picture.
‘You always told me I was reckless,’ she said. ‘I guess you were right.’
Blue Zephyr hit the aegis. The stick jerked in her hand as three layers of void shields attempted to hurl her bodily into the warp, but they were stressed, feeble, and she powered through to the other side.
The ground was alarmingly close.
‘Up we go!’ she shouted. Again the push of force on her body threatened to squeeze her into unconsciousness. Implants in her chest cavity squirted chemicals into her bloodstream, and she fought off the blackness.
More enemy aircraft had got through than she’d expected. They were wasting no time, emptying their payloads of missiles at the towers and wall tops, aiming especially for the flattened spheres of void projectors and the larger anti-ship cannon emplacements.
Explosions bloomed in fiery chains along the Daylight Wall.
‘Targets of opportunity,’ she voxed. ‘Split up. Let’s put a stop to this before it gets out of hand.’
Her flight divided instantly, each Panthera chasing after a separate target. Aisha upped her thrust and shot after a pair of Reaper ground attack craft. Their missiles spent, they were turning inwards, pounding the roads and marshalling yards behind the wall with unguided bombs.
She used one of her precious stock of air-to-air missiles to knock the first from the sky. The other lumbered aside as its companion plummeted down and crashed into the side of a hive spire. Aisha drew a bead on it, and fired her lascannons, but the pilot anticipated her move. He turned hard, and her beams seared past, scorching up the ground.
‘Dammit, dammit, dammit!’ she swore, accelerating after it. The bomber was slow, but the pilot was good. He took the Reaper down, close to ground level, using the tangle of spires and canyon streets to stay out of her firing line. She searched overhead, but there wasn’t enough room to climb to come down on top of her target without flying right into the bombardment. In such close confines, her speed was of no use.
She chased the Reaper down one of the Palace’s immense processional ways, jinking to avoid fire from its tail gun. Her own shots were spoiled by her evasions. In the end, the pilot’s luck ran out. She dived down behind him, coming so close to the ground her jet wash shattered windows, and fired up beneath her prey. His attempt to get out of her way saw him clip a starscraper, and that sealed his fate. The craft tumbled viciously from the sky, exploding on impact.
Her exultation was short-lived. She didn’t dare wonder how many people had died when the bomber hit the ground.
There was no time for mourning friends, never mind people she’d never met. She pulled up Blue Zephyr, and swung around to head back towards the wall. At her speed it was a flight of seconds, but in that time there was space to see three things of dreadful note.
The first, Yancy’s ship blasted apart by a trio of enemy fighters.
The second, dozens more bombers punching through the weakened shields.
And the worst, innumerable bombs plummeting unhindered where the void blisters had been cleared, striking home on the defences with all the wrath of armageddon.
‘A woman’s job is never done,’ she whispered, and accelerated Blue Zephyr back into the fight.
Three lines
Abhuman
Spawn of Chaos
Palace outworks, Daylight Wall section 16, 25th of Secundus
‘They’re coming, they’re coming!’
Men sprinted past Katsuhiro’s position. They were on the outside of the rampart line in full view of the enemy, but didn’t seem to know or care. The noise alone was enough to frighten a man out of his wits. The Palace’s peripheral shields were giving out, allowing the enemy munitions to strike the earth. Attack craft strafed the outworks on their way to the walls. Destroyed, the enemy ships were as much danger to the defenders as they were flying, crashing down and cartwheeling over the muddy ground before exploding. The carcasses of landing craft, many on fire, hid the plain. Others poured out an endless stream of hateful creatures that ran at the parapets. Gunfire from the walls scythed them down by the thousands, but they came on, replenished by more ships, and more, landing among the wreckage of those downed earlier. Debris rained from the sky constantly, a hail of grit and metal splinters that pattered off Katsuhiro’s helmet, some big enough to kill a man.
A hand gripped his arm, pulling him back from the parapet edge.
‘Hold the line!’ A veteran in full uniform grabbed him and spun him around. ‘That way! That way!’ The man slapped him hard. In his dirty face his eyes seemed big as saucers, and full of fear.
‘Three lines! Make three lines!’ Jainan had found a handful of veterans like himself, and they kicked, swore and shoved the conscripts into three wavering ranks stretching between the third and second rampart lines. Katsuhiro couldn’t keep his eyes forwards. His head rolled around on his neck of its own accord to look out at the plain, as if some perverse part of him was drunk on the destruction, and wanted more. Bastion 16’s guns were turning from the front, pointing right at him.
‘Three lines! Three lines!’ screamed Jainan. ‘Three lines, damn you all! Get your guns up!’
Whistles shrieked impotently over the boom of guns.
A few more routers were racing across the firing ground between the third and second outwork rings. When they encountered Katsuhiro’s company, they shoved their way through, spreading consternation. Some of them were caught, slapped, turned about. One cannoned right into a veteran, knocking them both flying. The fleeing man was up first.
‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted the veteran.
The runner sprinted on.
Katsuhiro heard the rasp of metal on leather as the veteran pulled out his laspistol, sighted down the barrel, arm straight, and dropped the man with a single shot.
‘Any one of you cowards runs like him, you’ll die the same. Now, three lines!’
Another company was running up, this one a little better disciplined than Katsuhiro’s own, with a third on their heels, enough to fill the space between the two outermost defence works completely. All of their officers were shouting, whistles blowing, voxmitters blaring.
The fleeing men petered out. A sparkle of crossfire was working its way down the killing field towards Bastion 16 as soldiers on the second line fired on the enemy who had overwhelmed the third and were advancing down the gap. A dark mass was moving towards Katsuhiro. He squinted, not quite able to make out what was approaching.
‘There’s the enemy,’ said the man to
his right.
‘Oh no, oh no, oh no,’ said the man to his left.
‘This is a fine mess,’ whispered Doromek from behind. The hard woman was close by him. She gave them both a black look. Katsuhiro had not yet seen another kind on her face.
Faces pale with fear looked out at the enemy. Black figures emerged as individuals from the group, but the flickering battle light made it hard to pick out details.
Jainan pushed his way in front of his company and turned to face them.
‘Look!’ he said, pointing behind him to the running mass of enemy. ‘They are coming for us because people like you lost their nerve and abandoned their positions. Our lords and masters, up there on the walls, are turning their guns upon the overrun sections. If you do not hold, if you do not stand and fire in a straight, Emperor-beloved line, then you will die, because if those monsters don’t kill you, our own side will. And I for one do not wish to die today!’ he bellowed. ‘You will not let me down. You will hold in three lines. The first line will lie prone. The second will kneel, the third will stand, and you will not move, you will not run. You will work your fingers upon the triggers of your guns until they bleed. You will fire until your power packs are empty, but most of all you will hold your ground!’ All up the line of soldiers, similar speeches were being delivered to other terrified conscripts. ‘If you do not, then we’re all dead, not tomorrow, but now, right now.’
Jainan pushed his way back through the troopers, drew his pistol and blew his whistle.
‘Lines, assume position!’
‘First line prone!’ bellowed the veterans, kicking those that did not obey.
‘Second line kneel!’
Shaking, slowly and in poor order, the conscripts obeyed. Katsuhiro, who was in the second line, knelt in the mud. Cold seeped through his trousers.
He noted then that the enemy were running unnaturally quickly towards them.
Bastion 16’s cannons opened up, flinging bright lines of tracer fire over the conscripts’ heads.
‘Oh no, oh no, oh no,’ the gibbering man continued to say.
‘Present arms!’ yelled Jainan. His veterans relayed his orders again, and held their lasguns unwaveringly on the enemy. The conscripts did rather less well. Their unfamiliar weapons wavered in quaking hands. The firestorm was creeping down the kill-zone as the troops stationed on the second line continued to fire, each section opening up as the enemy neared. It was short-lived display. As it ran, the horde attacked the ramparts, some of them leaping over in single bounds.
Katsuhiro blinked. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. No men could jump so high.
His weapon shook in his hands.
A sharp crack sounded over his head. Doromek was firing already.
‘Wait for the signal, acting lieutenant!’ barked Jainan.
‘Not likely,’ said Doromek. ‘I was a sniper. Let me do my thing. I can drop three more before you give the order. Or you can shoot me.’ He fired again without taking his eye from his targets. ‘What a waste that would be.’
The enemy were close enough to see properly. A hundred metres away, no more. They were beasts in the shape of men, long-muzzled creatures with curled horns and manes of coarse hair. They could have been xenos, but Katsuhiro knew instinctively that these were a twisted offshoot of his own race, and they disgusted him.
‘Open fire!’ bellowed Jainan.
The holding force obeyed. A volley of gunfire erupted from all three ranks, then a second. Raggedly at first, then with greater coherency, the regiment put out a torrent of las-beams in time to the shriek of whistles.
Five volleys, then the enemy were upon them. Each of the beasts took three or four shots to put down. Goat-headed monsters leapt up and crashed down among the men, their hooves stamping heads flat, their primitive bludgeons smashing bones with every swing.
Promptly, discipline broke down. The line wavered, then collapsed. Those who fled were laid low as they turned to run. Those who fought were barged aside, cast into the dirt, gored and smashed.
Katsuhiro found himself face to face with one of the creatures. Its mouth sported sharp tusks alongside flat, grazer’s teeth, all slicked with bloody foam that dribbled down its face and off its wispy beard. Its eyes were wide, wild, but human-looking, among the only features it had that were. Sharp horns jutted from its forehead, slathered in gore. It snorted at him, and swung its maul.
There was a split second in which Katsuhiro could react. One side of it was death, on the other life. Deep inside Katsuhiro something gave way like a dam; a flood of rage swept aside his passive, former self.
Launching himself from his kneeling position, he rammed his bayonet into the creature’s gut, shouting into its face as he did.
The creature fell backwards, voicing a wordless, agonised scream halfway between a human cry of pain and an agonised bleat. Katsuhiro leaned his full weight on his lasrifle, twisting the weapon about, as the mutant howled and clawed at the gun barrel.
Its head shook, a fat blue tongue flapped out of its mouth, and it was dead.
Katsuhiro yanked out the blade. The mutants were slaughtering the conscripts. A beastman ran at him, hands held out to throttle. Katsuhiro brought up his gun to fire, but the thing’s head disappeared in a mist of blood and bone that splattered across him and stung his face.
The lines of men were thoroughly disrupted, and pushed back from where Katsuhiro stood, leaving him isolated. Smoke from burning void-ships occluded the field of battle. The fur of the beast things had caught fire from the heat of the las-beams, so that some of their dead were ablaze, putting out greasy blue fumes. Combatants leapt into view and were stolen away again by the fog of war. Blue and red las light blinked through the murk, sometimes nearly hitting him. He walked backwards, alert, searching for his own kind. Strangely, he was not frightened. His body sang with adrenaline.
A sheet of smoke rolled back like the curtain of a proscenium, revealing a bloody play. The conscripts were pushing back against their foes, whose number, despite their hardiness, had dwindled. More fire came in from the second line, cutting into the rear of the mutants. But more were on the way.
A heart-stopping wail cut through the brume. Giant shapes lurched through the smoke, bursting through it, and suddenly there were other things pressing the line of men, huge mounds of quaking flesh that shuddered forwards on twisted legs. They were as slow as the abhumans were fast, but seemingly impervious to las-fire. Behind them pairs of savage men herded the things forwards. Half wielded arc whips crackling with electric force, sweeping them about their heads to crack against the shambling creatures’ flanks. The others worked chains whose hooked heads were buried in the creatures’ flesh.
One of the things lumbered into a knot of men, where it flailed at them with a multiplicity of freakish limbs. Skinless arms shot from sucking apertures, spined with hooks and claws that ripped at flesh. A man was snatched up by a barbed tentacle, whirled about and hurled away with a cry. Men screamed desperately as it coughed wetly and vomited acidic bile to blind their eyes and melt their skin.
These new foes defied description. The first wave had been mutant abominations, but their form was stable, they were of a type. The things facing them now were nightmare composites. They made no sense to look at. They were not xenos or laboratory beasts, but chimerical horrors made of disparate body parts carelessly stuck together. Their physiognomies should not have allowed them to live. But live they did, and move, and kill. They were all different, united only by their complete disparity of form and the horror it kindled in Katsuhiro, for these things too were of human stock. Human heads lolled on boneless necks. Human eyes peeped from fanged orifices. Human tongues screamed lunacy from multiple mouths.
A wailing monster came past him. Katsuhiro stumbled backwards out of the way, managing to fire, but though his beams did no more than brand its skin, it felt the hits,
for its single, furious eye swivelled to look upon Katsuhiro, and its course changed to approach directly.
One of the thing’s handlers saw him, and flashed a grin full of metal teeth. He, too, was deformed, another mutant, albeit of a less gross sort. He yanked hard on his cruel reins, causing the beast to howl from a dozen mouths and increase its speed.
A las-beam flashed past Katsuhiro, taking the handler in the face. He fell, dragging at the chains and causing the beast to turn to the side. The second handler extinguished his arc whip and ran forwards to disentangle his comrade from the chains. A second las-round smacked into his thigh, and he swore loud enough for Katsuhiro to hear. The beast heard too, turning immediately on its injured tormentor. A vertical slit opened bloodily down its front, exposing quivering teeth and a writhing knot of tentacles. These darted out, snatched up the handler and dragged him whole and screaming into its gullet.
At that moment, the hard-faced woman moved in to attack.
She moved so fast, Katsuhiro didn’t recognise her. Only when she slowed to step on the mutant’s swollen foot and launch herself up did he see who it was. She tossed something into the beast’s mouth – a grenade, Katsuhiro realised a moment later – and kicked away from its chest, her foot narrowly missing the mucus-dripping maw.
The creature moved with surprising speed to catch at this new morsel, but the woman was away. The grenade exploded inside the mutant, rupturing its flesh and sending it into keening throes. It was mortally wounded, but still lived, flopping around in pain, thrashing its limbs with deadly ferocity. The dead handler whipped around on the end of his reins.
Katsuhiro shouted, and discharged his gun into the thing’s single eye. It exploded with the first hit, but he did not stop firing until the mutant was lying on the ground, body heaving its last.
He stared at it. He had never seen anything like it. He had no idea things like that even existed.
A hand caught his upper arm gently.
‘Nice job,’ said Doromek. ‘It’s time to get out of here.’