by Dan Abnett
‘That was his infraction?’ asks Gage.
‘Looks bloody pitiful from where we’re standing, doesn’t it?’ asks Jaer.
[mark: 7.44.02]
Trooper Bale Rane and Trooper Dogent Krank are running for their lives through the burning streets. Trooper Maxilid was with them for a while, but some fugging thing from hell, something they didn’t even see properly, swept out of the fog and bit Maxilid’s bloody head off, thank you, so now they’re on their own.
They’re only alive because the thing was too busy chomping Maxilid down. Blood fugging everywhere.
Rane is pretty numb. He’s seen it all today. All of it. Everything it’s possible to see. Every horror show. Every shock, every terror. He’s seen men die. He’s seen friends die. He’s seen cities burn and starships fall out of the bloody sky. He’s seen more dead bodies than he thought it was possible to see. He’s seen men torn apart. He’s seen daemons in the fog.
Worst of all, somehow, worse even than the daemons, is that he’s seen men who should be friends, men who were supposed to be friends, turn towards him with unalloyed murder in their eyes. The basis of the Imperium has been up-ended. The fundamental tenets of loyalty to the fugging Throne of Terra have been torn down and pissed on.
Bale Rane knew that death would probably hurt. War would probably hurt. Breaking up with your brand-new bride and leaving her to go off to war, that would hurt too. Like a bastard.
He never, ever, in a million light years, expected treachery to hurt so much.
They’ve been betrayed. Calth, Primarch Guilliman, Ultramar, the Emperor, the fugging Imperium and Bale Rane of the Numinus 61st; they’ve all been betrayed.
Rane wants to kill someone for turning his world upside down. He wants to kill one of those bloody Word bloody Bearers, although he knows he wouldn’t stand a single, solitary chance, not for a second.
What the fug are they thinking? What are they after? What bloody toxic poison shit is in their heads that they thought this was something they should do?
Krank is falling behind. He’s getting tired. The fog’s all around them, and it’s getting hard to know which way to go. They’ve both got rifles, Illuminators, though neither of them are the weapons they were issued with at muster. They took them from corpses during their escape. When they were running from the bloody heathen Army forces that butchered their regiment.
‘Come on, Krank,’ Rane mutters. ‘Come on now, Kranky mate. We can keep going. We can get out of here.’
Krank nods, but he’s weary. There’s shock in his blood, in his spirit. Rane dare not let him stop or sleep. He might not wake up.
It ought to be the other way around. It ought to be Krank, the veteran, bucking up Rane, the rookie. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. That’s the way it’s been until today.
Rane thinks about Neve a little bit. He thinks he needs to go and find her, and take her out of the city with them. He had convinced himself she was pretty safe, tucked up in the cellar at her aunt’s. But that was before the Word Bearers turned, before the Word Bearers and their heathen fugging cult troops turned and started killing everything, before it turned out not to be an accident at all.
That was before the daemons in the fog.
Bale Rane knows that it’s his moral duty to go and find his young bride. He has to go and find her, and her bloody aunt too, if needs be, and get them out of the city before the city becomes an entirely dead place. That’s all. That’s the up and down of it.
He tells Krank that’s what he’s going to do.
‘You can come along, if you like. Won’t blame you if you don’t want to.’
Krank tells him how stupid he is, but he doesn’t stop walking along beside him.
The funny thing is, and Rane doesn’t mention this to Krank because he knows it sounds strange, but the funny thing is, Rane doesn’t believe it will take long to find Neve. He can feel her. He can feel, somehow, that she’s close. She’s almost calling to him. She’s right there, close by, waiting for him.
They say that about people who are in love. They can find each other, find each other through thick and thin, against all the odds. He’s going to find Neve, and she’s going to find him.
The fog is like a silk curtain. Everywhere is grey. Fuzzy amber lights pulse where fires burn in the distance. The ruins are black and smell of smoke, of fycelene, of mud and broken drains.
Bale.
‘What?’ Rane asks Krank.
‘What what?’ Krank replies.
Bale. Bale. Where are you?
‘You hear that?’ Rane asks. ‘Kranky, can you hear that?’
He can hear her. It’s Neve. She’s close. She’s very close and she’s calling to him. It’s like a miracle play where the lovers are finally united at last curtain.
‘Neve?’
He stops. He sees her. Just across the street, through the mist, standing in a doorway. She’s pale. It looks like she’s made out of mist. How the hell did she manage to track him down?
He’s never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life. He feels love. He feels uplifted by love.
He takes a step forward to cross the cratered street.
Krank grabs his arm. Krank can’t speak because his mouth is stoppered up with terror.
What Krank can see doesn’t look like Bale Rane’s young bride at all.
[mark: 8.10.32]
The tunnel system opens out on the perimeter of Leptius Numinus. For the last few kilometres, the subsurface structure is fractured, and the tunnels are flooded to knee-height. Liquid from the dislocated water table and sewage from city treatment plants has seeped up and washed out the tunnel system. They are obliged to wade.
Ventanus leads them out into the palace grounds, flanked by Arook’s primary squad. They’ve added to their force during the journey. Several squads of skitarii have joined them, swelling the Mechanicum numbers to close to one thousand. They’ve also connected with about thirty Ultramarines from various decimated units, and four hundred men from the Neride Regulators 10th, nominally under a Colonel Sparzi.
The palace is elegant, a rectilinear villa complex. It reveals its stately lines slowly through the thick mist. The gardens of the estate are tumbledown. Shockwave winds and blast scorching have denuded the ploin, haps and pistachio orchards, and turned the vines into charred ropes. Ornamental walls have spilled over. Carp ponds are dry basins, the water evaporated. They find the cowering, burned skeletons of gardeners and groundsmen behind splintered trees.
The palace is closed for the winter. The city governor was in residence at Dera Tower in the city. Ventanus reflects that the governor is probably dead by now. All the casements, apart from armourglas and crystalflex reinforced sections, have been blown in by the savage transcontinental winds. The rooms, most of them filled with furniture covered by dustcloths, are littered with broken glass and snapped muntins.
Outside, the valley and the plains beyond are dark under a blanket of fog. There is no wind. Everywhere is eerily tranquil. A calm that recalls the obligatory stillness of death.
To the north-west, the Mountains of Twilight form a grey limit to the fogbound plains. To the south and south-east, the dark shape of the Shield Wall hems the city. A rugged natural formation, the back of the ridge rises above the languid, unctuous fog. Its famous forests are spines of tattered wood, stripped of limbs and leaves.
Numinus burns, a giant haze of golden light. It is not the only massive blaze they can see. Others show up in the distant fog in almost every direction, and the brutalised sky is speckled with them. Every now and then, something falls down the back of the heavens, trailing a tail of flame, and crumps into the hidden landscape with a distant tremor.
They move into the palace, breaking down doors where necessary. Some of the halls and chambers are littered with broken masonry where walls or ceilings have fallen. Ventanus sees fragments of moulded plasterwork, some of it painted. He sees shattered heroes from the early days of the Five Hundred Worlds. He s
ees the Ultima symbol, the one they all wear on their armour, broken in pieces.
Tawren assembles a working party of magi to locate and prepare the palace’s data-engine and the high-cast vox array. Ventanus, in consultation with Selaton, Arook, Sparzi and Captain Sullus, a survivor from 39th Company, prepares the defences. Though its perimeter wall and ditch are quite considerable, the palace proper is not designed for military resistance of any appreciable magnitude. Sparzi’s men find some tractor guns and light field pieces in a stable block to the west, and set them up facing the plains.
‘If they find us here,’ says Sullus, ‘they will punish us.’
‘If they find us here,’ replies Ventanus, ‘I will kill them.’
Sullus nods. A half-smile crosses his mouth. He has lost most of his company brethren since dawn. He has seen other sections of the XIII cut down by troop fire or obliterated by heavy weapons. Ventanus knows that, to keep Sullus effective, he has to spur him out of his despondency. Ventanus has already considered putting Greavus, Sullus’s sergeant, in his place in the chain of command. Sullus is old, a veteran. It is as though the wind has been struck out of him.
Greavus walks over to them. He is carrying his helm under his arm. There is chalky dust on his face and in his hair. Greavus’s close-cropped fair hair is red, like dirty gold. The dust makes him look as though he is prematurely aging.
‘Report from the server, sir,’ he says, addressing Ventanus not Sullus. ‘They’ve found the vox-caster system. There are some power issues, but they hope to make a test broadcast within the hour.’
‘Good. The data-engine?’
‘Nothing on that yet, sir,’ replies Greavus.
Arook suddenly moves, raising his main weapon limb.
‘Contact,’ he reports. ‘Two kilometres from the north gate, coming this way out of the fog.’
‘Identity?’ asks Ventanus.
‘Concealed.’
Ventanus picks up the standard.
‘Selaton, cover the south line. Colonel Sparzi, the north-east. The rest of you with me.’
They head for the gate, crossing once-ornamental lawns. Fireteams of Army troopers are setting up in hastily dug foxholes. Ventanus notes good practical distribution of the few crew-served weapons and mortars. Sparzi has read a manual or two. Probably some of Guilliman’s.
They pass the field guns and reach the gate. Outside, the approach bridge spans the earthwork ditch. Beyond two obelisk mile marks, the road stretches off across scrub, the beginnings of the famous and majestic Plains of Dera. Fog and murk spoil the view.
‘We’ve got heat-sources,’ reports Arook. ‘Warm bodies.’
‘Confirming that,’ says Greavus, using a hand-held auspex.
‘They’re using the fog as cover,’ says Sullus dourly. ‘That can’t be good.’
‘If I was leading reinforcements here from Erud Station,’ says Ventanus, ‘I’d be using the fog as cover too.’
He looks at the skitarii master.
‘Vox signals?’
Arook shakes his head. The light in his damaged red eye is fading slowly in and out.
‘You mentioned a code term,’ says Arook.
‘Yes,’ says Ventanus. ‘Wait.’
A slight breeze stirs. Leaf litter rattles amongst the rubble at their feet.
‘A signal,’ says Arook. They can all hear the muted background binarics. ‘Attention palace,’ he translates. ‘Identify occupation.’
‘Is that Mechanicum?’ asks Ventanus.
‘I can confirm the signal code source is Mechanicum,’ says Arook. ‘Not that it proves anything. If it’s Gargoz, he’s being circumspect.’
‘Again,’ says Ventanus, ‘I would be if I were approaching this location hoping to find friends and fearing I was about to find enemies.’
‘The signal has repeated twice,’ says Arook.
‘Answer it,’ says Ventanus. ‘Request identity.’
Arook makes a quick blurt.
‘Reply reads,’ he relays. ‘Support elements from Erud muster, seeking shelter.’
Ventanus sticks his standard point in the earth so he can clamp on his helm.
‘Too easy,’ he says. ‘No one from my company would expose himself that readily. Not on a day like today. No one from my company, or any other company. Ask them the question.’
‘The number of the painted eldar?’ asks Arook.
‘That’s the one.’
They wait for a second.
‘No response. They repeat the claim that they are support elements from Erud muster.’
‘Ask again,’ says Ventanus. He glances at Sparzi. ‘Get your boys up,’ he says.
The colonel nods and hurries off.
‘Response,’ says Arook. ‘A request for confirmation of xenos activity in this zone. Confirm, eldar forces?’
‘They don’t understand the question,’ says Ventanus.
‘I don’t understand the question,’ remarks Arook.
‘The point is, Sydance would,’ replies Ventanus. ‘And so would any other officer of the 4th Company. Ask them to verify their response. Tell them we will stand by.’
Arook does so.
After a long pause, he says, ‘They ask us to confirm xenos activity in this zone.’
Ventanus lifts the standard. ‘Arook, have your skitarii paint heat-source targets in that fog bank for the benefit of the artillery crews. Tell Colonel Sparzi we will open fire in sixty seconds.’
‘You’re going to open fire?’ Sullus barks. ‘Are you mad? If it’s our own kind–’
‘It isn’t. And I’m not going to allow it to get any closer.’
‘But if they are XIII!’ Sullus insists. ‘If they are of Ultramar!’
‘They are not, captain,’ says Ventanus firmly.
Beyond the ditch, at the very edge of the miserable fog, the first figures begin to loom. The feeble sunlight catches the dull sheen of crimson armour.
‘Fire!’ says Ventanus.
[mark: 8.19.27]
‘Let me go back.’ cries Bale Rane. ‘Let me go the fug back!’
Krank punches him in the gut and winds him badly, just to get him to stop fussing.
‘Sorry,’ Krank says. ‘Sorry, Rane. Sorry, kid. I can’t let you.’
Rane gasps out words, doubled up.
‘I did not shoot at your bloody wife, Bale,’ says Krank. ‘I did not do that. I opened up full auto on something and it definitely weren’t your wife. It most surely weren’t.’
‘It was Neve. She was calling to me!’
‘Rane, shut up. Just shut up. Thank me, why don’t you? You showed me picts of your wife. She was pretty. That thing calling to you, it wasn’t pretty.’
Krank sighs. He sinks down beside Rane.
‘It weren’t your wife, kid. Even if you hadn’t shown me picts, I’d have known. Your wife, she’s got eyes, right? And she ain’t got horns. I don’t know what it was, Rane, but it wasn’t good. It was some xenos thing. Some bloody daemon.’
The foul wind stirs the fog on the blown-out street. Out in the distance, a city hab explodes in a gout of flames, and the rumble of it falling lasts three or four minutes. Artillery thumps. Things boom above, in orbit.
Bale Rane murmurs his wife’s name, tears in his eyes, snot on his lip.
Krank hears running.
‘Get up, get up!’ he says, pulling Rane up by the sleeves. He bundles him into cover.
Two men, Army, run past them, down the street, and then a third. They are tattered and dirty, and they’re running from something. One of them is sobbing like a child.
They’re fleeing. That’s what they’re doing.
Krank pushes Rane up against the wall as the pursuers run into view. They’re Army too, but not the same Army. They’re ragged, wrapped in black, brotherhood cultists like the ones who slaughtered Krank’s unit. There are two of them. One laughs, raises his autorifle, and brings down the lagging trooper with a spine shot.
The other two fugitives skid up, halting.
Two more cultists have appeared in their path.
The hounded men back up. The cultists stroll towards them out of the fog. The ones who were chasing drop to an amble, closing in behind.
‘Please!’ Krank hears one of the men beg. ‘Please!’
He gets a headshot for asking nicely. He goes down like a commercia mannequin.
The other tries to run, but the cultists grab him. They pin him between the four of them, drag his head back by the hair, and cross his exposed throat with a ritual knife. His blood makes a dark red mirror in the gutter under his body.
Rane makes a noise. An involuntary sob.
The four knife brothers turn from their kill. Their eyes are sunken shadows. In the half-light, their faces look like death’s-heads.
Krank fumbles with his rifle. He’s not going to get it aimed in time. One of the killers sees him, and fires. The rounds whine into the brickwork beside them, and spatter them with grit and slime. Krank fires back, but Rane is tangled with him, and his aim is rubbish. His shots go wide.
The knife brothers rush them.
Krank hits one in the chest with a clean shot, point blank, and drops him on his back. Then he gets a rifle-butt in the face and collapses, his nose and mouth a bloody mash. The other two cultists grab Rane and twist his arms. One drags Rane’s head back by the hair.
‘This one first,’ says the one who stock-smashed Krank. He stoops over his chosen victim, dagger drawn. Krank is moaning, clutching his nose. The man turns Krank’s head by the chin, and aims the point of his dagger at Krank’s wide left eye.
Rane goes berserk. He kicks one of his captors in the balls, then tears free and punches the other in the throat. As both of them stumble backwards, Rane hurls himself headlong at the bastard with the knife and tackles him clear of Krank.
They roll together. They writhe. Rane is nothing like strong enough. He’s just a kid. The cultist is big and rangy, thin and hard. His limbs are long, and he is as tough as a wild animal.
The other two rush back in to help him, cursing. Krank reaches for his rifle, but he gets kicked down. One of them puts a pistol to his head.
