by William King
Whatever protected those heretic psykers from las-bolts clearly had no effect whatsoever against those high-calibre, sanctified slugs.
The guards kept coming closer. I kept shooting and backing away up the ramp on the back of the flyer. Metal flexed under my feet even as las-fire melted the metal of the walkway. The smell reminded me of the factorum workshops of my youth with their casting forges and sacrosanct welding engines.
The flyer began to move, taking off even with the loading bay open. I tumbled forwards and I felt the shotgun slip out of my grasp. I clutched it tight and then a claw-like hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me backwards with such a jerk that I almost fell over. The Understudy had caught me and was dragging me inside.
As ever, he ignored the shots of our enemies as if he simply could not see them. This time one of them hit him and I smelled burning cloth and burning flesh. He grunted but he did not scream and he kept pulling and I kept scrambling and then the loading bay ramp began to fold itself into flight position and the movement of its hydraulic systems tumbled us into the body of the aircraft.
I heard strange sounds as the flyer’s systems creaked under the strain of the take-off: the sizzling sounds of melting paint and metal where las-fire impacted on the hull. Worse than that was the thunder of metal on metal as some sort of heavy weapon was brought to bear. The hull gave way as if an ogryn were hitting it with a sledgehammer. Dents appeared and the flyer began to wobble in the air as if the force of the shooting was driving us off course.
I lay on the floor gasping and trying to calm my nerves. I have never minded being in a tank when it was under fire but there was something about being in an aircraft in similar circumstances that made me want to void myself with fear.
I forced myself to stand upright despite the lurching of the aircraft. A loud scream echoed within the hull and I looked around quickly to see what had caused the panic. It was only Anton shrieking with pure pleasure, as if this was some sort of joyride and he was some sort of child. I fought down the urge to punch him and instead turned to face the Understudy.
I wanted to take a look at his wound but he had already stripped away his officer’s jerkin and was inspecting the scorched skin beneath. It looked nasty. There was a huge blister that had burst and peeled away revealing the moist, sticky flesh beneath. I began to rummage through the emergency medical kit near the rear loading-bay door. Within a few moments I found what was needed and was spraying the damaged skin with synthi-flesh. It closed over the wound, filled with air bubbles and resembled nothing more than a large wart but it would protect the damaged flesh until it could heal. The Understudy nodded as if to thank me and then sat down and strapped himself in.
I looked forwards and I could see that Macharius and Inquisitor Drake were within the cockpit, wrestling with controls. They seemed to be moving them at random and the flyer jumped all around the sky.
Had they gone mad, I wondered?
I looked at the porthole and realised that there was some semblance of sanity in what they were doing. Heavy bolter fire tracked our flight and sometimes impacted on the armoured hull. I could also see that there were other flyers coming in pursuit. I looked at Anton and Ivan and I said, ‘Can you two lazy bastards do something? Doesn’t this flying heap of junk have some turrets that you could be inside?’
They looked at me as if I was speaking another language. If it had been a tank and if it had been on the ground they would have taken up position at once but outside the environment that they were familiar with, the idea had never occurred to them.
‘Why don’t you go bloody fly the thing?’ Anton asked.
‘I would but we already have two people doing that,’ I replied.
‘Well maybe you should take your own advice then!’ Rather than arguing with the idiot I decided to do just that. I found a ladder that led up to the topside turret and in a few seconds I was strapping myself in and chanting litanies that I hoped would activate the weapon.
I ran through the invocation drills with my hands, pushing down the sacred spheres that I hoped would perform the same function as they did on a ground vehicle. I grabbed the handles of the weapon in exactly the same way as I would have grabbed the handles of a similar one in a tank. And then I leaned forwards and looked through the sight and got my first view of our surroundings and the things that pursued us.
The exterior of the hive skimmed by below. Enormous towers rose like tall, narrow fungi from the side of a mossy hill. Industrial effluent ran down the terraces like lava down the side of a volcano. I could see the multi-coloured lights of the jewelled windows of the hab-blocks and vehicles going about their journeys below us. In the distance, a couple of similar flyers to the one that we were in pursued us. They were already shooting with heavy bolters.
I put in a comm-net ear bead and listened but all I could hear was Macharius talking into the local system. ‘We need to take those down now,’ he said calmly. ‘If we don’t we’ll have other airborne swarming all over us in a few minutes.’
I suspected that that was going to be the case anyway but now did not seem like the time to argue about it. Instead I concentrated on shooting and sent a stream of heavy bolter fire towards one of the oncoming flyers.
It swerved to one side, an angry insect trying to avoid being swatted by a drunken man. I kept shooting and tracking it but it moved too fast for me and I had no skill with this weapon.
It was luck more than anything else that destroyed my target flyer. As the pilot swerved to avoid my shot, one of his flyer’s stubby wings struck the side of a nearby building. Immediately, the flyer swerved out of control, tumbling end over end and wing over wing. The damage would not have destroyed it if the pilot had been able to regain control but he simply did not have time and his tumbling vehicle smashed into the side of another hab-block and exploded. Splinters of broken metal smashed the nearby windows. A gas jet within the building ignited, causing blowback. A trail of flame shot out of the side of the hab and I was very glad that I was not alongside when it happened.
The other enemy flyer had gained altitude and was somewhere above us. I could tell by the bolter fire contrails coming down in the sky. Looking up I saw the vehicle’s running lights. I sat as far back in the seat as I could and the guns tilted upwards but they couldn’t elevate enough to get our pursuer into my sights. There was nothing I could do from the present angle. I spoke into the comm-net and said, ‘Take us up and I can get a second shot at the bastard.’ As an afterthought I added, ‘Sir.’
I heard Macharius chuckle and we began to swing upwards. At the same time other turrets on our own craft opened fire and I guessed that Ivan and Anton had finally decided to join the party. All three of us managed to target the flyer but it was just as armoured as our own vehicle and it withstood the impact.
The enemy weapons had found the range now and they kept shooting at us as we kept shooting at them. It was simply a case of which flyer’s armour gave out first or which of us found a weak spot in the other’s hull. I began to play my turret’s fire over the enemy flyer. The impact points sparked. Nothing gave way.
We gained altitude and then suddenly, sickeningly, we flipped over and looped down behind the enemy. I dangled upside down in the turret, trying to stay focused. The other pilot panicked. He veered to one side. We kept shooting, hammering the vehicle with our fire. Macharius dived suddenly and brought us alongside. We kept firing, our bolter shots impacting all along the side. Macharius nudged the other flyer with the stubby wing of our vehicle, forcing it into a nearby wall. It smashed hard, hull breaking apart. Our fire finally took effect, hitting some vital internal part. The explosion turned the enemy flyer into a fireball.
We cheered and flew on, racing over the hive exterior like a runaway rocket, staying low and dodging at speed between the buildings. I rotated my turret so I could look behind us to scan the sky for pursuit. I saw the running lights of hundreds of vehicles but nothing that looked as if it was coming for us.
I of
fered up a prayer of thanks to the Emperor as I watched Irongrad recede into the distance. It loomed behind us like an impossibly vast mountain, covered in glittering contrails of light and lava. At its peak, the monstrous figure of the Angel of Fire loomed, fiery wings spread wide and illuminating the swirling multi-coloured clouds above it. I had a sense of an ominous terrifying presence growing where it stood.
‘What the hell is going on down there?’ I heard Anton ask.
It took me long moments to see what he meant. On the vast industrial perimeter of the hive, it looked as if rivers of fire were boiling up from underground springs. The earth was cracking, buildings had tumbled. Pipes were broken. In a dozen places they vented flames. Ahead of us the wastelands were split by great fiery chasms. Lava bubbled forth, forming rivers and lakes. The flyer carried us closer. The sight was awesome. I was reminded of our original landing site. It looked as if a new lava sea was being born in front of us.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I do not like it one little bit.’
Twenty-Three
Once the city was well behind us, Macharius set the flyer down in the desert. He did not give any explanations. He merely picked a flat-topped mesa and landed. All of us climbed out and began to inspect the flyer and I understood why he had done so. The aircraft was enormously beaten up. In places the hull looked as if it was just about to fall apart. Somehow the general had nursed the flyer this far but I doubt that it would have gone much further.
‘Never an adept around when you want one,’ said Anton with his usual attempt at humour.
‘There are other things to worry about even if we can fly much further,’ said Macharius.
‘Sir?’ I asked.
‘If we get too close to our army we risk being shot down by our own air-cover. This is a heretic vehicle with heretic beacons and I doubt anyone will believe us if we tell them who we are.’
‘Bad security, anyway,’ Drake said. ‘If any enemy aircraft are in the area and intercept the call, they can kill you with one strike.’
I looked out into the distance. A massive dust storm was moving across the desert, a monstrous, moving cloud that obscured everything in its way. It took me a second to realise it was no dust storm.
‘I think the point has just become moot,’ I said.
Inside all those clouds of dust was a huge army. I could see the enormous shadowy shapes of Baneblades and Shadowswords, each a mobile fortress of plasteel and ceramite, each giving a sense of total invulnerability. All around them were thousands of Leman Russ battle tanks and even more Chimera armoured personnel carriers. Valkyries swarmed the air above them like a cloud of angry hornets. It looked like the Imperial Guard had decided to return to Irongrad in force. Macharius must have seen this from the cockpit. It was obviously why he had chosen this spot.
‘I think we have some trouble,’ said Anton. I immediately understood what he meant. Some of those Valkyries were descending towards us. Eagle-eyed pilots had spotted us and were coming to investigate. I prayed to the Emperor that they would ask questions first and shoot later. I was not entirely sure that I would do that under the circumstances but I hoped that the pilots might prove to be somewhat less aggressive.
Macharius had already thought of that. An emergency flare arced skywards, set by the hands of the Lord High Commander himself. I immediately understood his thinking. If we were scouts and spies we would not draw attention to ourselves like that, not unless we were very stupid, which is a possibility you can never rule out when dealing with some. I hoped the pilots would have more respect for our intelligence than that. I knew it would not be long before we found out.
Soon a Valkyrie hovered in the air above us, weapons trained on us. We kept our hands in the air as a second airship descended and soldiers spilled out covering us with their lasguns.
‘Keep your hands in the air, and don’t make any sudden moves,’ said an officer.
‘Captain Argus, is that you?’ Macharius said. I was suddenly very glad of his talent for being able to remember people’s names. Captain Argus’s jaw dropped. He looked like a man who had just encountered a ghost, which is exactly what he thought he was seeing.
‘Lord High Commander Macharius?’ he said. He looked astonished, as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing.
‘In the flesh,’ Macharius said. ‘We talked when I decorated you after the Battle of Khalion.’
As with so much that Macharius did, it was perfect. It let Captain Argus know that he was exactly who he said he was. No spy could have known a little detail like that. You could see the captain standing a little bit straighter as he came under the general’s eye. All of the other soldiers suddenly looked as if they were at attention. I am somewhat proud to report that they did not stop covering us with their weapons though.
‘And I must see General Sejanus at once,’ said Macharius. ‘There is much that needs to be done and very little time to do it in. This world is in the gravest danger and we are the only people that can save it.’
It should have sounded utterly fantastic, completely implausible. But when Macharius said things like that, men jumped to obey. He strode forwards and no one pulled the trigger of a lasgun. They might have done if it was me or Anton or Ivan but they would not do it to him. Drake followed him and Anna then the Understudy. To my surprise, Macharius beckoned the rest of us forwards as well. ‘You’ve been my bodyguard this long,’ he said. ‘You can manage it for a bit longer.’
It was spoken with just the right amount of weariness and humour. We stepped into the Valkyrie filled with pride and a desire to do our duty.
Within seconds we were aloft and heading into the middle of the great dust cloud raised by the army.
As we flew, the pilot must have made a report, for entire squadrons of Valkyries dropped into place around us and formed an honour guard for our protection. I looked at Macharius again as he stood there, calm and implacable, and I began to feel as if I was standing at the centre of the world and that it was moving around me to wherever Macharius went. I began to understand some of his confidence and some of his self-belief. He was one of those men that the world really did rotate around, the focus of all attention.
Some of it spilled over onto us. I could see some of the soldiers were looking at us and wondering who we were. We were with Macharius so we must be important. It was a heady feeling and I suppose in some ways it was true. We had come out of the inferno of Irongrad along with the Lord High Commander. We had guarded him as he had guarded us. We were in some sense his comrades-in-arms. I wondered if he would remember that after today. I knew I was always going to.
The Valkyrie set us down beside an enormous headquarters tent, a vast self-erecting pavilion of flexi-metal capable of being set up within minutes and taken down just as fast. It was big enough to hold a dozen Baneblades. Arcane science let it blend in with its surroundings like those desert-dwelling, colour-changing lizards. We emerged from the aircraft to be greeted by cheering crowds who had obviously braved the settling dust storm to catch a glimpse of the returned Macharius. Somewhere in the midst of the confusion, Anna simply disappeared. One second she was there, the next she had vanished. I looked around but did not see her. I doubted that anything could have happened to her so it must have been of her own free will.
Such was their joy that you would have thought that Mecharius had risen from the dead, which I suppose in their minds he had. They had thought he was lost in the fall of Irongrad and now, beyond all hope, he had emerged from the desert to lead them once more. I began to understand how stories of miracles can cluster around a mortal man. Some of the stories you hear about Macharius today make it sound as if he was superhuman but he was not, not really; he was just a man capable of extraordinary things in a time when such deeds were necessary.
General Sejanus strode forwards to greet Macharius. His face was alight with joy. They embraced like father greeting son and I understood the friendship that existed between them when I saw that. In any other w
orld than the one that had Macharius in it, Sejanus would have dominated the scene. He was a powerfully impressive man, somewhat shorter than Macharius and swarthy, with great bristling moustaches and eyes that glittered with suppressed fury. In the presence of Macharius though he was just another soldier, greeting a hero returned from the wars.
The two of them spoke but I could not overhear what they said and then they turned and walked beneath the huge awning outstretched beside the command vehicle. In its shadows they sat and exchanged words and Macharius beckoned us over and Sejanus spoke.
‘It seems that the Imperium owes you men a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid,’ Sejanus said. We just looked at him. None of us were going to contradict him. It was the sort of thing that every soldier wants to hear and very seldom does. Believe me, in the Imperial Guard, it is not often that you are found worthy of praise by your superiors. When it happens, you luxuriate in it.
‘When it is time, I will see that they are suitably rewarded,’ Macharius said. ‘But right now there is much to be done and very little time to do it in if we are to save this world from the powers of darkness.’
The two generals began to plan. Orders were barked to servitors, holo-map grids invoked, orderlies came and went. We stood there apparently forgotten. No one had dismissed us so we stayed.
I was on the edge of dozing off when the earth shook. A commotion erupted around the table. I noticed everybody gazing at the map. It crawled and changed even as I watched. In the centre was still the huge angel-topped hive of Irongrad. Around it were still the snaking cables of the great pipelines. There was something else, something new, something that reminded me of what I had seen on my way through Irongrad. The earth was splitting all around the hive. Lines of fire appeared.
