by Sam Bradbury
I kept going, hunched over, taking heart from their recklessness. Their desperation was making them easy to kill. The assault infantry usually find cover before opening fire – or so we were taught at the academy. Not these, though. They were rushing headlong into battle, more intent on screaming obscenities at me than on killing me. I took down another and he fell, his assault rifle by his outstretched arm. I snatched his ammo, and was about to go through his tactical vest for frag grenades, when something stopped me.
Fluttering to the dirt of the trench floor beside me was a picture and I bent my head to look at it, half expecting to see the ugly mug of Scolar Visari staring back at me. But it wasn’t. It was a Helghast woman. A fellow soldier, by the looks of things. She stood, wearing the uniform of an elite shock trooper, smiling, with her SMG in the crook of one arm and her combat helmet under the other. Looking at her I realized she looked almost pretty; the pictures of Helghast women I’d seen at home made it seem as though they were all in the final stages of radiation poisoning. They had ghostly white skin and white scalps shone through oily, bedraggled hair. Some of the more lurid illustrations even showed them toothless or with rotting teeth.
This one, though. Like I say, almost pretty. Her skin was paler than that of the women I was used to seeing, but otherwise she looked just like any other human. There was even something cute about her smile. I glanced at the dead assault infantryman with new eyes. Were they brother and sister? Husband and wife? For a second I considered ripping off his respirator and helmet as though seeing his face might give me a clue, but just then a commando came screaming over the top of the trench, waving an LS13 like he was doing some kind of dance. I twisted and pumped three bullets into his head then rolled to avoid the body as he fell, blood and brain matter spilling from the jagged hole. Deciding I liked the look of his shotgun for this kind of work, I took it, chambered a round and straight away found myself confronted with two more assault infantry. I dropped them both, continued dashing up the trench, the crater much closer now, the noise of the battle practically deafening – so loud it seemed to drown out all thoughts. So loud that I almost didn’t hear the voice in my headset: a stranded ISA calling to Narville.
‘We can’t get to the crater,’ said the grunt. ‘There are Helghast everywhere.’
‘Don’t give up, son.’ Narville sounded close to breaking himself. ‘We’ll hold this position as long as we can …’
I threw a couple of my frag grenades to take out a pair of advancing assault infantry, ducking away from the blast. At first I thought the screams I heard were the two dying Higs, but realized they came from my headset. It was the same ISA guy as before. ‘We have incoming Helghast, all directions, repeat all –’ he screamed, before the link went dead.
Then came another grunt: ‘We’re tracking multiple APCs coming in your direction.’
Another shouting, ‘Push forward, push forward.’
I shoved more shells into the shotgun, kept running. All I could hear over the comlink was my own men being cut to pieces. Then at last I was emerging from the trench and into the crater.
Into a scene straight out of a nightmare.
The sky was almost black with craft. In the middle were our three cruisers: the Compulsion, Arcturus and the Dauntless. All three of the once-majestic ships showed signs of extensive damage. Fire bloomed along their holds. Flaming debris spiralled away from them. Around them buzzed Helghast ships: their fighters, which attacked in groups of three, making fast, damaging sorties on the cruisers; larger battleships firing missile batteries, gradually depleting the cruisers’ shields; and the leech pods, which pierced the hulls of the cruisers and stuck there like metal ticks. Inside each leech pod were up to six Hig soldiers and the crews of each cruiser would have to reach them and neutralize them before they could deploy.
As I watched, the barrage only seemed to intensify and the cruisers appeared to tremble in the black and orange sky. Below them, the crater. This had been the epicentre of the Red Dust blast and everything within a mile radius was rubble and wreckage. Everything, that is, apart from one building, black and gutted but still standing, right in the centre of the crater. It had been two buildings once, connected by a series of gantries so that it looked like – and here’s irony for you – a huge letter H silhouetted against the nightmarish sky.
It was here that our troops had been assembling. Here from where the Intruders were taking off, transferring their precious cargo from the bomb-bleached planet to the relative safety of the cruisers above. It was a mad dash, a disorganized retreat. Enemy sniper fire was picking off troops caught between taking cover, returning fire and clamouring to board one of the Intruders. At the perimeter I could see the red eyes of the Helghast. They were getting closer. Just assault infantry as far as I could see, and, while our boys were holding them back, if they got an LMG set up, we were sitting ducks.
I had to get over there now and, trying to work out a route from my position at the edge of the crater to the husk of the building, I suddenly heard a great rush of metal from behind me and spun to see a MAWLR rising from a position at my rear. There to my left was another.
I knew what these guys could do. I saw the petrusite cannon on the first begin to spin, winding up, charging, and it fired, the blue electrical bolt lighting the sky, but passing – miraculously – between two of the cruisers, coming closest to the Arcturus, which was highest, rising – surely – to safety.
And it did – the cruiser got lucky. Chalk one up for the good guys. I scrambled out to the lip of the trench and used the cover of the MAWLRs to dash across the crater, scrambling over piles of rubble and towards the AO where four Intruders were picking up the last of our boys. They were doing it by the numbers, some providing covering fire as others clambered aboard, grabbing hold of straps or clinging onto the rail. All had hope in their desperate eyes.
There was no sign of Rico, but Narville was standing on the deck of an Intruder that hung a few feet off the ground, being buffeted by explosions, hanging on for grim life as around him the last of the ground troops were scrambling onto the cargo beds of the dropships.
‘Goddamn, this isn’t a drill,’ he shouted, flinching as a fresh hail of bullets spanged off his Intruder. ‘Get to your transports. Move.’
He saw me. ‘Sevchenko,’ he said, and gave me a thumbs-up. ‘Good job clearing that corridor.’
‘Rico more than me, sir,’ I hollered. ‘Is he here?’
‘No, he is not here, Sergeant, and we’re not waiting for him.’
I felt a surge of anger. ‘You mean you won’t.’
‘I mean I can’t, Sev,’ he insisted, and I saw that this had nothing to do with how he felt about Rico and all to do with getting his men to safety.
With a rushing sound one of the Intruders began to rise. Heavy with troops, some hanging off, some dangling dangerously off the sides, it took a moment to regain its balance and I found myself holding my breath, willing the little battlefield taxi to take the extra weight. It did. A muted cheer went up.
I scanned the AO for Rico.
Come on, Rico. Come on.
The second dropship began its ascent, just as loaded with men. A grunt lost his grip and with a scream plummeted to the waste ground beneath, breaking his back on the stone and lying with his limbs splayed out at odd angles. Above him the Intruder listed at the sudden weight imbalance, then righted itself.
Come on, Rico. Come on, Rico.
A third Intruder went up in a hail of tracer fire.
‘Sevchenko, give me your hand,’ commanded Narville.
I hesitated. ‘Where the hell is Rico?’ I shouted over the roar of engines and tumult of battle. Narville opened his mouth just as a second petrusite blast ripped into the dark skies, exploding on the shields of the Dauntless.
I heard Captain Mandaloniz over the comlink, calling from the Compulsion, ‘Damage report.’
‘The Dauntless reports minor damage. And the Arcturus has safely reached orbit.’
&n
bsp; Despite myself I grinned at Narville to hear the news.
‘Thank God,’ said Mandaloniz over the comlink, ‘looks like we’re going home.’
He had spoken too soon. From the left came the MAWLR, pounding across the wasteland like a giant prehistoric bird towards us. I looked at it, then back to Narville who stood with his hand outstretched, appealing to me to come aboard. Desperately, I scanned once again for Rico. No sign.
Come on, Rico. Come on.
The MAWLR stopped, towering over the AO. Motors engaged as the main turret rotated to target the ISA cruisers above us. Then it opened fire, and with a sound like metal ripping, the blue petrusite bolt split the sky and hit the Dauntless. A direct hit. It fired a second time.
Above us the Dauntless was enveloped in blue-tinged flame, the petrusite seeming to swarm all over it. Suddenly it listed violently.
My headset spat static and Captain Donaggio from the Dauntless came online. He sounded panicked. ‘Dauntless to Compulsion, we have been hit. Do you copy?’
I looked upwards at the cruiser, picturing him on the bridge. He’d be regaining his balance after the lurch, unaware that blue death danced around the outside of his ship.
‘Copy that, Dauntless,’ confirmed Mandaloniz on the Compulsion. He was seeing what we were seeing, the Dauntless besieged by petrusite, and he knew what we knew. That right now the Dauntless was shutting down.
‘We have systems reporting major shield damage,’ said Donaggio, ‘but I’m being given conflicting readings. Compulsion, do you have visual, because I’m getting reports of a hull breach here? What’s my status? Repeat, what’s my status?’
They were dead, was their status – just didn’t know it yet.
‘Uh, status is critical, Dauntless,’ replied Mandaloniz, hopelessness in his voice. ‘Advise immediate evac.’
‘Immediate evac?’ replied Donaggio disbelievingly because you didn’t ‘immediate evac’ a cruiser. Sure, it was possible to evac, and there were procedures for doing it. But immediate?
‘Say again, Compulsion. Did you just advise immediate evac?’
‘Affirmative, Dauntless.’
Donaggio understood now. Perhaps as the last of the lights on his console winked out.
‘Copy that, Compulsion,’ he said. ‘Dauntless out. Tell them we tr–’
Then he was cut off as the ship’s systems imploded and, crippled, it began losing altitude, dropping slowly, like a vast stalactite. I thought of the crew. The ISA troops they had already rescued. All of them, moments away from death.
Over the comlink came Mandaloniz, yelling at Narville to move. At the perimeter I saw Helghast retreating, needing to get as far away from the crash site as possible. I saw Narville look away from the site of the descending cruiser and to me. He was imploring me. ‘Sev, get aboard now.’ One eye on the Dauntless. ‘Get aboard now, soldier. That is an order.’
I took another look around the AO, still desperately scanning for Rico. ‘No. Not without Rico.’
Behind us there was an explosion that ripped through the Dauntless and part of the ship sheared off, as though cleaved in two. Narville’s eyes were wide as he said, ‘I’m sorry, Sev.’ And he yanked me aboard so hard that I was sprawling to the deck before I had a chance to resist.
No. No one gets left behind.
With a roar of boosters the Intruder began to rise. I scrambled to my feet to confront Narville, only to see the Dauntless as she began to break apart like a bottle smashing in slow motion. Arcing from her were giant chunks of flaming shrapnel, the pieces spinning out of control and liable to go anywhere – likely to plough into us, vulnerable in our tiny battlefield taxi.
Then …
Christ knows how I heard him, but I did.
‘Hey.’
It was Rico.
I threw myself to the side and leaned over the railing to see him below us, dust and dirt and our Intruder’s propellant fumes swirling around him, shielding his eyes with one hand and waving his rifle with the other. With him was a girl – Jammer, I guessed – who stood supporting an injured grunt, his arm round her shoulder. With them, another six or so ISA guys. All of them were looking up at us with wide, beseeching eyes.
‘There,’ I shouted. ‘It’s Rico.’
Narville saw. Then looming over us was the main body of the Dauntless about to impact the AO and I was desperately waving to Rico to find cover. He saw too, and just had time to realize the moment was lost before he was urging Jammer and the ISA guys to disperse. Glancing up at me, our eyes met one final time and then he was gone – lost in the eddying dust. The Intruder rocked as with an almighty shockwave the Dauntless finally exploded into the crater. Huge shards of red-hot flaming metal were racing up and past us, narrowly missing us, the air suddenly full of debris and shrapnel. Our Intruder was bounced around and though it was small enough to avoid the larger hunks of metal the Compulsion wasn’t so fortunate. A colossal fragment of the Dauntless collided with it and a series of mini explosions bloomed along its length.
That’s okay, I thought. They had protocols to deal with that; sections of the cruiser could go offline and the ship would remain operational. We powered towards it still.
Then an even larger piece of shrapnel sliced into it and suddenly the entire cruiser was ripped open like a tin can, venting atmosphere and bodies into space.
And we had nowhere to go. I lurched to the other side of the Intruder, shoving grunts out of my way and craning over the side to stare at the ground beneath, and desperately looking for any sign of Rico. All that was below us was the furnace of the Dauntless, flaming debris and shrapnel everywhere, like a series of sentry posts. Then the air seemed to shake as a massive section of the Compulsion stabbed into the ground and split, and we were rocked by yet another explosion as Narville came over the comlink, unable to hide the resignation, the sheer defeat in his voice: ‘This is Captain Narville contacting all surviving personnel. Retreat to emergency fallback locations. I repeat, emergency protocol Five-Nine-Echo is in effect.’
He looked at me. ‘God help us,’ he said.
PART TWO
Chapter Thirteen
It was six months after the ISA’s aborted invasion of Helghan, and Pyrrhus City had been transformed. Though it remained uninhabited and its buildings razed, the Helghast machine had swung into action, reshaping the city from a bomb site into something more. Something that was no longer a city. The people would still gather here when Orlock called a rally. They would come in their tens of thousands to hear him outline his plans for the Helghast future. But they would not live here. It was being developed for another purpose.
Jorhan Stahl gazed upon it now from the windows of Visari Palace, the dark monolithic structure that cast a shadow both literal and metaphorical over the site. He looked towards the crater where most of the activity was focused, where huge structures reached from the ground way, way up into the roof of the sky. They would be finished soon, and Orlock would call his rally, and the people would form in lines to hear him and cheer him on, and once again the Helghast nation would rise.
And Jorhan Stahl would be there. For he had a few plans of his own and was feeling quietly triumphant with their progress so far. Indeed, as he made his way towards the senate rooms of the Imperial Palace, his capture troopers at his heel, the temptation to break into a grin and sneer openly at the other senators, in particular the hapless Admiral Orlock, was so great it was almost overwhelming. So inviting in fact that he found he had to make an almost physical effort to prevent himself from doing so.
Yet how sweet it would be to surrender to the urge. After so many years of having these old and withered men look upon him with disdain, how precious the moment would be when they discovered that the tables had been turned and their time was over. That they were obsolete and that from now on it would be he who looked upon them with disdain. That from now on they would have to acquiesce to his will.
Because the truth was that the senators – most of them at least, enough to
form a majority – were men who held their positions not because they deserved them, or had earned the obedience and respect of the Helghast people, but because of their loyalty to the autarch, Scolar Visari.
The now-deceased autarch, Scolar Visari, that was, who had rewarded his confederates, not only by appointing them to the senate but by making the appointment hereditary, effectively establishing a system of birthright and patrimony to be preserved in perpetuity. All would bow to Visari’s chosen few – forever.
This was unacceptable to Jorhan Stahl. Just as it had been unacceptable to his father before him.
Prior to establishing Stahl Arms, Khage Stahl had worked among the canyon mines of the Maelstra Barrens, maintaining pipelines used to transport the vast reserves of petrusite from the Tharsis refinery. And he had seen for himself how the petrusite that was at first used as a power source was developed and weaponized by none other than Scolar Visari. The very same Scolar Visari who had told the people that the Vektans profited from their suffering, when in fact there was not a single Vektan who profited from Helghast suffering as much as Scolar Visari did himself. The very same Scolar Visari who spoke grandly of returning power to the people while in secret bestowing power upon his associates.
Khage Stahl had tried to wrangle ultimate power himself, but had been foiled by Visari’s associates, Orlock among them. He had remained contemptuous of the man’s hypocrisy until the day he died. A contempt that was hereditary.
So, no, it was not at all acceptable to Jorhan Stahl that Scolar Visari or his associates should be his masters. Thus, the ISA invasion had afforded him an opportunity he had grasped with both hands. Or at the very least, was in the process of grasping with both hands, for there was still some way to go yet. Which was why, as he took his seat along with the rest of the senate, he resisted the temptation to grin and sneer.
