Astra Militarum

by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)

  A shadow fell across them and Fesk realised his mistake: Yetske hadn’t been asking for help – he was trying to warn him. He grabbed for his rifle, but he was too late. The shadow wanted his life.

  All he felt was stabbing pain.

  Fesk was dying. He knew the signs from his basic medicae training. He was bleeding out, adding his life-blood to this dry hellhole and staining the cad-ore red. Frekk this planet.

  He tried to speak, but he slipped away for a moment, into dreams. A Cadian snowfall. Standing under a pylon on night-exercise, listening to it sing. Putting his ear to the cool rock, and hearing the melody as the wind blew through the honeycomb holes, and the structure hummed as if alive. Pulling his pack onto his back and turning to the cadet next to him in the embarkation parade. It was Lina. ‘So where we going?’ he asked.

  ‘Throne knows,’ she said.

  He blinked back to consciousness for a moment. ‘Yetske,’ he said, before he remembered. He put out a hand, and pulled Yetske back. The cadet’s eyes had rolled up white into their sockets. His head lolled loose on his neck. Dead.

  You’ll be joining him soon, a voice in his head said. Fesk shut his eyes.

  He was on Cadia again, rubbing bare hands against the cold, fumbling with his las-rifle, cursing the cold. In his dreams there was a roar of aircraft. He looked up into the night sky and saw only the purple stain of the Eye of Terror, rising high into the sky. He thought of Lina’s sweat-soaked top, her lop-sided smile, and the blue aquila on her cheek.

  Then there was singing. That was when Fesk knew he was a goner. These were the companies of souls welcoming him to the Emperor’s Blessing. He closed his eyes. He said his last prayer, fixed in his mind the vision of the Golden Throne. The singing grew louder. The angels were singing Flower of Cadia. Fesk’s mouth moved weakly as he joined in.

  Creed. The word came to him in his delirium. It stalled his dreams for a moment.

  ‘Creed!’ an ecstatic voice shouted from the top of the ridge. ‘It’s frekking Creed!’

  Creed swept Major Luka up with him as he barked out orders and the kasrkin manned the Aegis, unfolded their heavy bolter stands, piled crates of missiles up and flipped the catches open. ‘Luka!’ the general shouted. ‘It’s been a while. I see they made you a major.’

  ‘It was in exchange for the foot.’ Luka lifted his bionic foot as if for proof.

  Creed laughed briefly. ‘How are your lads?’

  ‘Well, we’ve no heavy weaponry and it looks like Anckor has launched his entire army against us. Business as usual,’ he said.

  They made their way between the dugouts. ‘I’ve got reinforcements on the way,’ Creed said. ‘But we’re going to have to hold out until then. It’s just us and whatever the Valkyries can ferry in. How many Whiteshields do you have?’

  ‘I had two hundred this morning,’ Luka said. ‘We’ve lost thirty, I’d say. The cavalry overawed them. And this is the first time they’ve seen heresy.’

  Creed nodded. He knew all about that. Knew exactly the terror your first cultist brought. ‘Well, I’ve brought some bolters, and lots of ammo. I need the ridge to hold. I know it’s a big thing to ask, but it has to be done. We have to stop them here.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘A day,’ Creed said.

  Luka puffed out his cheeks. It didn’t look optimistic. Creed laughed again and slapped him on the arm. ‘I know. It looks a little tight, but the whole crusade is resting on our shoulders here, and I had no one else to send, so I had to come myself!’

  Jasper Fesk was wandering.

  He was still wandering in dreams – and Jasper Fesk’s dreams were not a pleasant place to be.

  He was eight and frightened, hiding under a bed. There were explosions and screaming, and the screams were getting closer. Ingri, his sister, was with him. In one hand she clutched her rag doll. It was dressed in a scrap of old desert camo. The doll was called Sabine after a saint her aunt had told them about, and Ingri loved it more than anything. Her other hand was clamped over Fesk’s mouth. It was clamped so tight he couldn’t breathe. He kicked and struggled.

  ‘Shut up,’ his sister breathed in his ear. ‘They’re coming!’

  There was wild laughter. The door was kicked open. Footsteps came closer. A shadow fell over him and…

  …Fesk struggled to consciousness. It was coming back to him. Fire, flames, pain. He would not be taken alive. His fingers scrabbled for that grenade. A foot pinned his hand to the floor. A gloved hand reached down and grasped him. It lifted him up.

  There was a face close to his. The face was speaking, but not to him.

  ‘He’s still alive,’ it said. ‘One gun-baby still alive. One dead.’

  His vox crackled. The man spoke slowly and loudly. ‘I’m getting you out. Understand? Can you walk?’

  ‘What is that?’ Darkins said as Lina fell back into their pit. Lina bent down and pulled at the straps. There was a black Munitorum canister inside. ‘Look what the Valkyries brought us!’

  She flipped back the clasps and pushed the lid back. Inside lay a compact heavy bolter, brand-spanking-fresh-from-the-Munitorum-new.

  ‘Holy throne! Think you can handle it?’

  ‘Sure I can,’ she said.

  They scrambled to get it up on its tripod, remembering their drills. But they had trained with Godwyn-pattern bolters… Darkins cursed as the coils of shells slipped through his hands. ‘How do you get the bolts in?’

  Lina tried one way then another. In the end she looked at the inside lid of the air-drop canister. ‘Accatran Vd’, the label said, then simple cartoon instructions, with a neat-looking Guardsman. ‘Oh I see,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to pull the bolt back first.’

  Lina set the tripod down on top of the sandbags, pulled the bolt back, and felt the first round engage. ‘Here goes!’ she said.

  She aimed down the hill. Thud thud thud. It was like holding onto a wild dog. She took her finger off the trigger for a moment, and then fired again, panning wildly from side to side as the bands of Anckorites scrambled towards them. Thud thud thud. Thud thud thud.

  ‘Did you hit anything?’ a voice shouted.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lina shouted back.

  Darkins nudged her and she looked back at the man standing over her pit.

  She almost dropped the bolter in surprise. ‘Frekk. Is that…?’

  ‘Yes it is,’ General Creed said. ‘Now, there’s more than one heretic for each of those bolt shells. Make sure you find each one an owner.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ she shouted, and kept firing until her boots were buried beneath bright brass bolter shells.

  It was a battle of immovable object and unstoppable force; the Anckorite army massed on the Route Equatorial trying to squeeze up the causeway in the face of defiant resistance. Creed paced back and forth, shouting orders, bolstering men’s courage when it was lacking and fighting when killing was needed. With him came Kell, power fist crackling with energy, and the colours of the Cadian Eighth held high.

  ‘That’s it lads!’ he called out. ‘We’re showing these heretics what it means to rebel against the Imperium of Mankind!’

  There was a sudden wail and an artillery shell landed about thirty metres beyond them. Creed didn’t even duck. He paced up and down, smoking and firing, and laughed. ‘I’ve missed this,’ he said.

  Every hour the six Valkyries returned on their ferrying mission, kasrkin rappelling, dump canisters being shoved out of the side hatches. They barely replaced the men killed, but they were Cadians, and they made their numbers tell three times over.

  In their desperation the Anckorites sought a route around the sides of the causeway, but the slip-sands swallowed them, drowning them in deep pools of blue cad-ore.

  The day was failing at last. The wind picked up, this time blasting dust into the eyes of the defenders. The Valkyri
es would not be flying in these conditions. Their vents would be clogged in seconds. ‘Pull back!’ Creed ordered, and they stumbled up through the dark and dust to the defence line.

  The Anckorite armour tried to force a passage. It was a terrifying stand off as tank shells hammered the Aegis and the heavy weapons teams returned the hatred. There was a brief and furious exchange of lascannon bursts, bolter shells and missiles.

  Cadians fell in droves as shells exploded about them. Creed roared to the gun crews, and suddenly the surviving tanks clicked into reverse and this time the Anckorite infantry charged. They were met with a blizzard of las and bolter shells.

  The battle was impossibly savage and impossibly brutal, close-quarters, incessant, terrifying. Creed was everywhere. Kell’s power fist crackled furiously, punching holes in any Anckorites that managed to clamber over the Aegis line, pulling their spines out of the front of their chests.

  Then they fell back one last time.

  ‘How are you men doing?’ Creed asked Luka.

  Luka’s top was dark with sweat and splattered blood. He had lost his helmet somewhere. ‘As you’d expect,’ he gasped.

  ‘Time for a smoke,’ Creed said and pulled out a half smoked lho-stub from his breast flap pocket. They fell back to the communications bunker. There was a kasrkin manning it now.

  ‘Got that thing working yet?’ Creed said.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  ‘Keep trying.’ Creed puffed slowly. Luka thought he could see concern in the general’s eyes.

  ‘Need it?’ he asked.

  Creed looked thoughtful. ‘The vox? Well, possibly. It would certainly make things easier. Perhaps when this storm has passed.’

  Darkness fell. The wind dropped. The air cleared.

  The hours passed quietly and Creed sent out scouts. ‘I want to know when they’re coming back before they do.’

  It was an hour after nightfall. Slander was fifty metres back from the front line, standing at the water butt with six bottles to fill. Throne knew how they had held on so far. The funny thing was that all that training they had done was starting to make sense now. Fire drills, fixing bayonets and charging. It all made sense. He was going to tell that to Major Luka.

  The thought made him smile as he turned to fill the bottles he had slung about his neck. He filled one, put it to the side, was opening the second when someone tapped him on the helmet.

  ‘Wait your turn!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve got a whole load to fill up here.’

  The tap came again.

  ‘Is that Lina?’ he asked. Frekking Lina, he thought. They all had had to listen to how much better a shot she was than all the rest of them.

  There was another tap, a little harder this time. ‘Throne!’ he said, turning to see which idiot was doing this. The face that looked down on him was wrapped in the black of the Anckorite Brotherhood, red eyes staring down at him, ritual scars criss-crossing the face.

  ‘They’re behind us!’ Slander yelled. Except there was a hand clamped over his mouth and pain, terrible pain then hot gushing liquid that was his blood. He would never be able to tell Major Luka now.

  Creed was alone in the command bunker studying maps of Besana. The wind blew the curtain open. He heard men laughing not far off. The curtain wafted again. Creed smelled fresh blood. It was all the warning he needed. A blade seared a line along his shoulder. It snagged on his carapace plating.

  He heard the hiss of his foe and twisted, ramming his forearm up under the Anckorite’s neck. Creed saw a face wound round and round with strips of black cloth, red eyes, and a mouth slick with blood. He drove the heretic back against the sandbagged walls and heard a satisfying grunt of pain.

  The serrated sickle blade stabbed for a chink in his carapace armour. Creed drove it deep into the groin of his enemy, keeping the foe pinned to the wall, stabbing until the Anckorite’s guts slipped out of the tattered wreck of his abdomen and his struggles weakened and failed.

  Creed pulled his arm away and let the body slop to the floor amongst its own guts. He fell to one knee, unholstered his pistol and fired from a kneeling position. The hotshot las seared a hole through a second Anckorite’s face as he came through the door. Three more shots punched the figure back. Creed stepped towards the exit and his boot slipped. The cadet sentry lay sprawled against the back of the bunker, the floor slick with blood. ‘Kell!’ Creed bellowed. He could hear his colour sergeant’s vox-amplified voice shouting orders.

  Two more shadows were outside. Creed stepped in close. He had been fighting ever since he could remember. Since his days with his father, sparring in the yard outside their cabin. Afterwards, in Kasr Gallan, he had boxed in the street until his knuckles were raw and bloody, and he soaked them in surgical spirit, despite the pain. The years as an orphan when he had to prove himself, not to others but to himself. He gloried in the danger, the thrill, the joy of fixing the throat of a foe, and then punching his face to mush.

  It was almost a relief to get in close like this. Not to be thinking positions, reinforcements, counter-attacks, logistics – to just be thinking about life and death, the next blow his enemy would throw, and how he was going to kill him.

  Creed hammered the enemy’s wrist, a short hard strike that knocked the blade from his hand while the other hand, clenched into a blunt bull fist, punched the heretic’s windpipe. There was a gasp of pain. Creed stamped on the man’s foot, came in close, caught his head and twisted it to the side, brought it down on his rapidly rising knee. Either could have killed. Both were a surety. There was a crunch. Neck, skull, Creed didn’t care. He pulled a pistol out, fired it point-blank into the Anckorite’s face.

  ‘This takes me back,’ he muttered. ‘Where the frekk is Kell?’

  Jarran Kell causally tore the head from the last of the Anckorite Brotherhood, then deactivated his power fist and let the steaming head drop to the floor with a wet thud.

  Creed was standing with his back to the sandbag wall, breathing hard. The cloth at his shoulder was ripped, blood flowing freely.

  Kell stopped. ‘You all right?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been better.’

  Kell nodded. ‘We’ll get it stitched up.’

  ‘Find out where they came up and cover the rat hole.’

  Kell nodded.

  Half an hour later, Kell appeared through the darkness, his eyebrows singed. He had lost seven men.

  ‘Did you find it?’ Creed asked.

  ‘There’ll be no more coming that way.’

  Creed nodded. There was nothing more offputting for a soldier than to have the enemy in unexpected places. ‘They’ll get around us again. Make sure everyone knows that. I don’t want anyone surprised. We should expect them to surround us. That doesn’t matter. All we have to do is hold on.’

  Kell nodded.

  ‘Have they got through to the Magister Thine yet?’

  Kell’s voice sounded the way it did when he wanted to appear calm. ‘Not yet.’

  Creed thumped the table. ‘Damn it,’ he said. The two men shared a brief glance. Creed was already thinking five steps ahead. ‘I’m going to have to go. You’ll have to stay.’

  Kell stiffened. He had sworn to protect Creed and he hated being put in an impossible position like this. ‘No,’ Kell said. ‘I come with you.’

  ‘Jarran,’ Creed said. ‘I need you here.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Friend,’ Creed said. ‘I’ll be fine. You will be the one in danger. Don’t get yourself killed.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good. Think you can hold the line?’

  Kell waited a long time before answering. But when he did his tone had changed. ‘How long for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You really need this?’

  ‘I do. This planet needs it. Warmaster Ryse needs it.’ Creed gave his frie
nd a wink.

  Kell looked away, but he nodded. ‘We’ll hold,’ he said. Creed smiled briefly. He put his hand to his friend’s arm and they exchanged a brief look. He didn’t need to say more.

  ‘Vox officer!’ Creed shouted. ‘Get me a flight back to Spaceport. I need to have some words with the headquarter staff.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘Don’t try, do.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Fesk woke with a start.

  ‘You’re up.’ Darkins was crouching over him. The night was black about them. Fesk pushed himself up. They’d put a bag of fluid into his veins, and he felt odd with the stimms in the mix. An unpleasant mix of queasy and hyper alert. He winced. The ground was strewn with sleeping men, rolled sandbags used as pillows, lasrifles held in their arms. Fesk yawned, wincing from the pain of his wound, and picked up his own lasrifle. He was on third watch.

  He made his way over the sleeping bodies. From the Long Dry there was the occasional growl of a chainblade, and the sound of chanting that rose and fell. Fesk tried not to listen to it.

  He was on the second point at the middle of the Aegis. Far below, at the bottom of the long causeway, he could see their lights in the lowlands. Camp fires, torches. One man seemingly on patrol, walking up and down in lines. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them and yet more vehicles streaming up along the Route Equatorial.

  How could they hold back such numbers?

  Fesk looked up. The stars burned white. He did not recognise them. He was very far from home. ‘Dear Ingri,’ Fesk said aloud, imagining writing to his sister. ‘We held out against the enemy for as long as we could. You, Sharla and Oleg would have been proud of us. We did Cadia proud. We are her sons. I was not afraid when I died. I have taken many enemies of mankind with me.’

  ‘Cadet,’ a voice said suddenly. ‘Do you have faith in the Emperor?’

  Fesk started. He reached for his gun. ‘Do you have faith?’ the large figure asked, stepping close. It was a bear of a man. The glow of a stub lit his fingers and face as he inhaled.