Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

by Warhammer 40K

  The depot itself was a marksman’s dream: a rectangle of terrace roofs, catwalks and flat storage compounds. All with great cover – from the ground at least. Mobs of Mechanicus insurgents had swamped these spaces and rained firepower down on the White Thunder, which lay smashed and broken-backed on the rockcrete of the quad below. Nothing could save them from Vertigo’s own variety of explosive vengeance, though. The incessant thunder of the cannons cut furrows of charred, twisted metal into the rooftops and turned throngs of insurgents into steaming smears of bloody chum.

  This was the last of the terraces and it was just as well: the cannons were almost spent. In the meantime, fearless hordes of revolutionaries had weaved their way towards the disabled aircraft, using every gutted vehicle, every stack of abandoned cargo and piece of debris they could find to use as cover. Rosenkrantz herself had contributed to this. It was the nature of war – every action had an entire host of reactions – some anticipated and some not. The first of the compound rooftops she’d hit had been absolutely crawling with enemy targets and the flight lieutenant had seen little harm in slamming a couple of rockets into the side of the building. The strategy had the desired effect, burying an entire swarm of defectors in tonnes of metal and ceramite. It had also, with the collapse of the unstable compound and several towers, spread huge pieces of cover-friendly debris across the south end of the quad and allowed large numbers of individual insurgents to close on the downed Spectre.

  At least Rosenkrantz had the comfort of knowing that her efforts were not in vain. There were definitely survivors down there. On the wingless starboard side someone had got one of the door weapons operational and was dong a good job of keeping heads down with scenery-shredding bursts of heavy bolter fire. The portside had taken the brunt of the crash and rents and fractures adorning the aircraft’s hull were allowing for an intermittent, if steady, pattern of small arms fire to present a front on the other side.

  Rask and Sass were behind her: the major’s adjutant his usual serious self, the captain unusually so. ‘Okay,’ Rask said, ‘these boys are ready to do this.’

  Rosenkrantz understood. It had been Rask’s suggestion and now that they were here, the full scale and overwhelming futility of the situation had dawned on him. Rask clearly felt that he was sending the snipers to their deaths but believed that it was necessary if the Navy crew were to have any chance at all.

  The pilot brought her assault carrier to a suicidal standstill high above her sister Spectre.

  ‘Chief,’ Rosenkrantz called across the vox and was rewarded with the chatter of fierce cover fire from her own door gunners. Bolt rounds sprayed the rockcrete around White Thunder, mangling cover and the occasional Mechanicus heretic, but more importantly the weapons’ higher elevation forced the hordes of kill-frenzied Illians further back.

  Slick cords tumbled from the bay door and the insanely daring snipers bailed out and rappelled their way to the roof of the smashed Spectre, molested by snaps of las-fire that shot past the lines and the descending soldiers. The strategy was not without cost and Rosenkrantz’s ‘Boltmagnet’ callsign became suddenly and uncomfortably appropriate.

  Vertigo rolled slightly under the weight of pure firepower being directed at an aircraft that had been all but a blur of undercarriage moments before and now presented an irresistibly stationary target. Runescreens and augurs screamed warnings from a hundred different systems. The canopy flashed and sparked as a hail of fire washed over the reinforced armaplas. Rosenkrantz blinked involuntarily.

  ‘Flight Lieutenant!’ Benedict called out with an unusually high level of emotion for one of his kind. Rosenkrantz had expected this. He felt what Vertigo felt. He was more part of the aircraft than the crew: the information coursing through cables and conduits wired straight into his spine from the bird’s various archaic systems was registering simply as pain.

  ‘Rask?’

  It was hard to tell when the captain was genuinely nervous – his face was usually taut with some kind of agony from his knee. He seemed nervous now though, white fingers pressing the vox-link to pursed lips. He hesitated for a moment, unsure.

  ‘They’re on the ground,’ Sass finally confirmed. Rask nodded at her.

  ‘Well it was going to be them or us,’ Rosenkrantz sneered as she threw the vector thrust into direct ascension and blasted skyward away from the shooting gallery bellow. The cockpit auspex streamed a small saga of data at the pilot. ‘Benedict, take over,’ she called after the first hundred metres, tearing off her harness and slipping out of the confines of her seat.

  Sass couldn’t help feasting on the detail sweeping across the console.

  ‘The port tail boom’s registering a gearbox fire,’ he informed her. When she didn’t respond he added, ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘You think?’ she asked before pushing past Rask who gave her a feeble smile.

  ‘Good work,’ he told her and probably meant it.

  ‘I’m going down below. See how badly we’ve been hit,’ she answered coolly and pulled away. Something wasn’t right. Vertigo was hurting and she didn’t need to be Benedict to feel it.

  VI

  Merciless and quiet, Krieg and the Volscians slipped through the smoke-spuming wreckage of the south compound and up through the warren of debris that had redecorated the quad floor.

  A deafening cascade of fire flew overhead from the depot roofs and terraces – all directed at the blast-ridden Spectre. The aircraft was a sorry sight, but gave the Imperials the distraction they needed to work up through the enemy line undetected. The din of gunfire bouncing off the walls of the compound hid the cold-blooded blasts of the Zombie Squad Corpsmen as they trotted up behind Illian rebels, hiding behind girders and smashed slabs of rockcrete. Snyder and his cronies had no problem with shooting the boilersuited figures in the back, slickly working the pumps on their combat shotguns before riddling another unsuspecting heretic with shot and moving on. It was a brutal but effective procedure, leaving Golliant’s heavy stubber to deal with any unwanted attention moving in from their flanks and Krieg to handle the rear.

  They were moving at quite a pace, the shotgun crew ahead seemingly drawn on less by a desire to reach the Spectre than a dead-eyed thirst to spread blood across the esplanade. This gave Krieg little to contend with, very few of the insurgents moving in on White Thunder were faster than they were.

  A begoggled lab-tech, making a dash between two warped girders, nearly ran straight into Krieg. The shock of finding an Imperial commissar in his path was a little more than disconcerting and the lasgun he was carrying came up a moment too late. Krieg blew a furious beam of supercharged laser fire through his chest, stopping the Mechanicus menial dead in his tracks.

  In the no-man’s-land between the crash site and the nearest cover, matters were less simple. Small pockets of insurgents who had successfully worked their way up to the downed assault carrier gathered in tight groups. With little in the way of communication, Snyder, Turkle and Goinz switched tactics from wholesale slaughter to a more cautious approach. Getting in position to make the run across to the aircraft they only gunned down those rebels that became aware of their position and intentions. This in turn stirred up a hornets’ nest for Krieg and his aide, who were coming up from behind.

  One particularly determined group rushed the two men from the servo-carriage of a toppled crane. The crisp crack of las-bolts surrounded them as the gang, still wearing their tight-fitting, rubber filter-hoods, came at them with furious firepower.

  The ear-splitting chatter of the heavy stubber cut the group in two as well as several individual revolutionaries. Krieg stood his ground – storm-trooper style – his back and arm straight and his hellpistol moving smoothly and surely from one target to the next, lancing them with hotshot. The gang was completely pumped and wild, most of their bolts veering and going wide. Several got lucky and plucked at his greatcoat and it was perhaps this that m
ade Krieg miss his own target.

  They were running at him thick and fast and it had been a miracle he’d created the small mound of bodies that he had. His last shot had been intercepted by one of the crane’s crumpled, plasteel cross-beams and several heretics slipped through Golliant’s withering arc of fire and pressed their advantage in the face of Krieg’s first mistake.

  The leader of the group fired, missed and then proceeded to throw his hooded head and shoulder into Krieg’s midriff. Krieg went down in an untidy heap, splitting his efforts between smashing the grip of his hellpistol across his assailant’s blank, rubber face and blasting spasmodically at the shapes of the remaining defectors, who were skidding to the ground beside him, intent on holding down his arms.

  The Mechanicus menial on top of him sat upright, his legs astride the commissar’s prone form – the barrel of the lasgun gripped in two hands – the weapon’s ugly stock wavering above Krieg’s snarling face. In the muffled confusion the cadet-commissar noticed that the heavy stubber wasn’t firing anymore. At first he thought that it had run dry, but an awkward glimpse under the arm of his attacker revealed the weapon lying abandoned in the dust and Golliant, impossibly set upon by six or seven hooded individuals, smacking his foes into the ground with his close combat weapons of choice – the two flight deck club hammers that usually sat snug in his belt.

  Everything was still for a moment. Krieg’s arms had been pinned to the ground and his pistol knocked from his grip. Ghoulish breath sounds filled the air as the hooded heretics, gasping with exertion, held him still.

  It wasn’t a great swing and nowhere near enough to take his head away from his shoulders, but it felt like it. The stock had flashed in front of his eyes, making contact with his cheekbone and dashing his skull into the esplanade. Numb with shock, Krieg found himself keeping it there. A dribble of warm blood rolled across his face from the gash on his cheek and pooled in his eyes. Blinking red ooze, the commissar found himself staring across the quad, the ground-level angle odd and disorientating. He saw Turkle and Goinz bolt across the open ground towards the shattered fuselage of the downed aircraft. Snyder was standing looking back at him, a sinister smugness hanging from a curled lip. He shouldered the squat combat shotgun he was carrying, turned and bolted likewise, leaving Golliant and the cadet-commissar to get on with the business of dying.

  The backswing had taken an eternity but finally it came. The same reverberating deadness in his head; the same flush of blood: this time across the other side of his face. With the world running at slow motion around him, Krieg had time to consider how scars running across both cheeks would make him look like some kind of duellist.

  He couldn’t tell which came first, the sound or the sensation, but suddenly he could move his left arm. The flood of movement and relief was accompanied by a crashing thud and fresh blood on his face – this time not his own. Two more shadows disappeared and as he came back to his senses he saw the revolutionary sitting astride his chest, torn from his seat and his head come apart. With splatter still falling around him, the cadet-commissar managed to roll onto his stomach.

  From the darkness of one of the Spectre’s side doors Krieg could make out the shape of a bipod, the glint of a scope and the long, thick barrel of an anti-materiel sniper rifle. Their closest relative was the ubiquitous long-las, favoured by many a Guard sniper. Redemption Corps marksmen often needed something a little harder hitting for knocking out equipment and suppressing light vehicles, as well as blowing superfluously large holes in enemy combatants. Essentially a large calibre rifle, the fearsome weapon took the same ammunition as an autocannon and hit just as hard.

  Scooping up his hellpistol, sitting in the grit just centimetres out of reach, Krieg turned the weapon on the swarm of bodies all over Golliant’s massive frame. Somehow the aide had just kept swinging his hammers, to devastating effect, even with several rebels hanging off each arm. The numbers had easily doubled since the last time the commissar had glimpsed him and the wrestler was going down under the pure weight of his assailants. Aiming cock-eyed from the ground, Krieg sent a string of sizzling fire into the backs of the hooded workers. Alarmed, some made the mistake of turning their backs on Golliant to face Krieg but got a hammer in the back of the skull for their trouble. Caught in the crossfire of the commissar’s pistol and the Volscian’s brawny reach the rebels rapidly became a carpet of bodies at the brute corpsman’s feet.

  Snatching the heavy stubber in one hand and dragging a dazed Krieg to his feet with the other, Golliant marched them across the open ground, the reassuring crash of sniper fire all around them.

  Inside the troop bay of White Thunder the darkness was startling. It was a shock after the glare of the open quad and it took Krieg’s eyes a moment to adjust. Beams of dust speckled sunlight crisscrossed the bay from holes and rents in the fuselage caused by the crash and some of the heavier weapons carried by the mobs outside. The only functioning heavy bolter kicked out an unrelenting roar from the starboard side and the Spectre crew fired warning shots from their laspistols through holes and doorways on the opposite side. Only just arriving themselves, Snyder, Turkle and Goinz crouched in the middle of the shattered troop bay, catching their breath. They eyed the commissar moodily, reloading their shotguns and taking swigs from their canteens.

  Down on the ground by Krieg’s feet lay one of Mortensen’s storm-troopers wrapped around the brutal angularity of an anti-materiel sniper rifle. He wasn’t even looking through the scope but was firing with complete confidence and in a steady rhythm.

  ‘Thank you,’ the commissar told the sniper. He didn’t answer – just angled his almond face and nodded slowly, continuing to fire and from the screams outside, hit his targets.

  ‘How–’ the commissar began.

  ‘The respirators in their hoods, mostly,’ the Khongkotan trooper told him solemnly, ‘and the hum of your pistol.’ Obviously the sniper was used to questions from new blood in the squad. From a commissar he probably took the question as an order. ‘Also, the mechheads: they smell different.’

  Krieg looked down at the hellpistol in his holster, the cable running between the handgrip and the power pack on his belt. Turning his nose to his shoulder he took an experimental sniff.

  ‘And your coat,’ came a bitter voice from the far end of the bay, ‘sounds like foil through a vox-hailer – even from across the damn quad.’

  Another feral worlder sat upright against the Spectre’s worm-holed hull. He clutched his rifle awkwardly to his chest as though afraid to let it go. As Krieg’s eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness he saw why: the marksman was a mess, riddled through with holes, not unlike the aircraft, his flak jacket smouldering.

  Krieg marvelled: he’d heard of feral world tribes whose senses had attuned to their environments, not unlike the savage, predatory mega-fauna they shared their world with, but the snipers’ talents were something to behold. Krieg imagined what he could hit, if he could hear and smell as well as he could see.

  The Spectre’s co-pilot, still wearing a scuffed flight helmet, was manhandling a crate of bolter ammunition from beside the wounded sniper over to the door gun. His face lit up at the sight of the commissar’s cap and greatcoat. It was not a reaction Krieg was used to. He thrust out a keen hand.

  ‘Boy, are we glad to see you,’ he blurted honestly. ‘Hoyt.’

  Krieg didn’t bother to introduce himself. ‘Pilot?’

  ‘Dead.’

  The commissar nodded. ‘I’ve got good news and bad. The good news is that you’re being rescued. The bad news is that we’re it.’

  Hoyt’s face dropped. ‘No airlift?’

  ‘Too dangerous.’

  ‘What about the convoy?’ the injured sniper shot across the inky interior of the aircraft.

  ‘Can’t get through. We’re it. The convoy will pass a few kilometres to the north of here in about twenty minutes, which means if we want to be on
it we’ve got to haul some.’

  ‘But,’ Hoyt stammered. Several Navy crewmen had stopped firing and were staring at the commissar in disbelief. ‘We’re surrounded.’

  ‘We got in,’ Golliant rumbled, trying to be helpful. Deleval’s men just looked at the ground, kicking empty bolter cartridges between their feet and lighting lho-sticks.

  Krieg’s eyes travelled across the bay, meeting each member of the crew in turn. It was an intoxicating moment. Krieg understood the nature of leadership – he’d been an officer – but with the flight crew staring at him as though their lives depended upon it – which they did – he began to empathise with Mortensen’s predicament. Krieg could not be honest with these men. He couldn’t talk odds and harsh truths. He needed fire in their bellies. He needed them to believe in themselves and in him. Like the major, he had to make them believe that he could get them out alive. He didn’t know if that was cultish practice – as the canoness had seen it – but of all the evils it could be, at that moment in the Spectre’s troop bay, it seemed a necessary one.

  ‘How much bolter ammo have you got left?’ Krieg asked.

  ‘Plenty,’ Hoyt told him. ‘We’ve got enough for four guns, but only one is operational.’

  ‘Golliant, help me.’

  Between them Krieg and the aide took the crate the co-pilot had been carrying and dumped the contents in a pile in the centre of the bay. Then to the baffled crewmen: ‘In order to make it out of the complex we’re going to need a diversion. Pile every piece of ammunition you can find and stop firing that gun.’

  ‘Stop firing?’ an injured crew chief started incredulously, his arm bound with a hasty a sling.

  ‘They’ll think the gun’s dry and that’ll draw them in on the starboard side.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but why would we want to do that?’ Hoyt asked politely.

  ‘Because we want as many of them as close to the bird as possible when we blow it up,’ Krieg stated simply.