On Wings of Blood

by Warhammer 40K

  A couple of seconds later nine explosions blossomed in rapid succession in a cluster across the canyon floor, but Jaeger still couldn’t make out what they were firing at. Now more groundfire was lancing its way along the natural trench towards them. Pulses of tracer fire combined with the green las-blasts he’d seen earlier, but the enemy were aiming too high.

  Looking away at the target-screen for a moment, he saw a grouping of several dozen stationary vehicles ahead.

  ‘See that cluster?’ he asked Berhandt as a shell whistled past a few metres to his left. The bombardier nodded and adjusted a couple of dials on his visor.

  ‘Squadrons, assume formation Bravus for main payload drop,’ Jaeger ordered, directing the two squadrons into position to maximise damage from the bombing run. Without warning, he heard a detonation close behind, and twisting in his pilot’s seat he looked out of the side window. A Marauder was banking off, flames engulfing its tail and rear fuselage. Its uncontrolled descent took it into the canyon wall a second later, its fuel tanks and plasma chamber exploding in a shower of flames and debris.

  ‘Who was that? Who did we lose?’ Jaeger demanded over the comm.

  ‘Devil Three, Scairn’s plane,’ came the reply from Cal Logan, Devil Squadron’s leader.

  ‘Dammit! We’ve lost two engines!’ L’stin cursed, before Jaeger could answer.

  ‘Raptor Three, get back to orbit!’ snapped Jaeger, noticing that las-bolts were streaking down towards them as well as from the ground.

  ‘Arrow, Storm! Strafe enemy positions on the canyon walls!’ Jaeger’s voice was clipped, harsh, as he focused his mind on what to do next. ‘Raptor Squadron, continue with bombing runs. Devil Squadron, use missiles and lascannons to provide covering fire.’

  A series of affirmatives sounded in the flight commander’s ear. Jaeger levelled out the Marauder’s course to prepare for the bombing run. He couldn’t afford to evade the incoming fire; it would make aiming almost impossible for Berhandt. A splintering crack appeared in the canopy between him and the bombardier as a las-bolt ricocheted off. Jaeger heard other impacts rattling along the length of the fuselage as green flashes of laser energy and yellow tracers converged on him, the lead plane.

  He knew Ferix was now working at full stretch, monitoring any malfunctions, coaxing Raptor One’s own systems into repairing themselves, welding, cutting and binding where that wasn’t possible. He could hear the tech-adept chanting liturgies of maintenance and repair behind him. A red warning light flashed on the panel to Jaeger’s right – one of the engines was leaking plasma. Without thought, the flight commander shut down power to the damaged jet and boosted up the others, stabilising the Marauder’s flight path with small movements on the control stick.

  ‘Raptor Four is down, Raptor Three is down,’ reported Phrao heavily. ‘Storm and Arrow have broken off, they’re out of fuel.’

  ‘Emperor damn it all to hell!’ snarled Jaeger, looking back and up over his shoulder for a sign that any enemy fighters had survived the air duel. A sudden blood-curdling shriek over the inter-squadron frequency deafened him, forcing Jaeger to shut down the comm and switch off the pitiful cry. He adjusted one of the secondary viewscreens on his panel to display the rear camera shot. Another Marauder was tumbling groundwards, wreathed in smoke and flames, its wings spinning away on separate trajectories, trailing burning fuel. His chest tight with apprehension, he opened up the comm-link again.

  ‘Who was that?’ he demanded.

  ‘Bombs away!’ Berhandt called out, sitting up from where he’d been crouched over the bombsight. Jaeger’s head whirled as so many things clamoured for his attention.

  ‘It was Devil One, sir,’ came Phrao’s delayed reply.

  Jaeger closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, steadying himself. Opening them again, he looked at the rear view to see massive red flames bursting over the dark shapes of the enemy attack column. The fireballs continued to expand, the special incendiaries igniting the air itself with their heat, filling the canyon from wall to wall with crackling, hungry flame.

  Another massive detonation followed, and then another as the other Marauders dropped their devastating payloads. Jaeger saw secondary explosions along the ground as fuel tanks expanded and burst and ammunition was set on fire. Another blossom of brighter fire, in the air this time, showed where a tailing noctal fighter had flown straight into the inferno as it had attempted to close from below.

  Berhandt was firing off the remaining missiles, as were the other Marauders. In front and behind, the canyon was a blaze of destruction. Burning wrecks littered the valley floor, while the firebomb damage continued to creep along the walls and into the air, slowing now, billowing black smoke rising thousands of metres into the clouds.

  ‘That should give the ships in orbit something to aim at, if nothing else,’ Berhandt commented gruffly, switching his attention to the lascannon controls.

  Jaeger spied a group of vehicles along the east wall and banked the Marauder smoothly towards them. More ground fire sprung up to meet them, sporadic at first but building in intensity until once more Raptor One was banging and clattering with impacts, and the air became iridescent with multiple las-blasts impacting into her thick armour.

  ‘Just another couple of seconds,’ Berhandt told him, and Jaeger could hear the grind and whirr of motors as the multi-barrelled anti-tank gun swivelled in its nose mount. A movement to Jaeger’s right attracted the flight commander’s attention and he looked across, flicking his gaze between this distraction and the approaching canyon wall. It was a bright spark of blue, growing bigger very quickly. With a start, Jaeger realised it was an incoming missile.

  ‘Oh s–’ Jaeger’s curse was cut off by an explosion just to his right and behind him. He heard Marte bellow in pain and Raptor One dipped suddenly to starboard, smashing Berhandt’s head against his sighting array.

  ‘We’ve lost the whole wing!’ screamed one of his crew, the panicked wail making their voice unrecognisable.

  ‘Into the saviour pod!’ shouted Jaeger, punching free of his harness, and releasing the dazed Berhandt as the Marauder’s erratic lurch tumbled him across the bombardier’s chair. He could feel Raptor One plummeting down nose first and had to almost crawl his way up the fuselage. Ferix was there, ushering the others into the armoured compartment, and he saw Marte being bundled in by Arick, the old veteran’s flight suit ripped to shreds, blood pumping from half a dozen shrapnel wounds in his chest.

  Pushing Ferix and Berhandt in first, Jaeger grabbed the door. As he swung it shut he saw the ground screaming up towards him through the canopy. A las-bolt shattered the front screen and the wind howled in, almost wrenching the door from his grasp.

  With a wordless, bestial snarl he grasped the handle with both hands and slammed it shut.

  ‘Strap in, sir!’ Arick pointed towards the empty seat.

  ‘No time,’ Jaeger replied, punching his fist into the release button. Explosive bolts ignited around the base of the pod, hurling it outwards from the doomed wreck of Raptor One. As it tumbled in flight, Jaeger was thrown onto the wall then the ceiling, before the pod steadied on its retro jets and he fell to the floor, dazed, his leg twisted, sending flares of pain up his spine.

  ‘Are you–’ Arick began to ask, but red filled Jaeger’s vision and he heard rather than felt his head thump against the floor. The sound of his blood rushing through his ears filled his mind before unconsciousness swept through him.

  Jaeger opened his eyes and winced as sunlight blinded him. He was sitting with his back to the saviour pod, out in the Mearopyis desert somewhere. Ferix was changing the bandages wrapped around Marte’s chest, while Jaeger’s own numb right leg was splinted, so he guessed it was broken. Arick noticed he was awake, and the young man crouched down in front of him, face solemn.

  ‘Raptor One, there’s nothing left of her.’ The youthful gunner was almost in tears
.

  Jaeger gulped and gathered his thoughts. He pushed himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his leg, and looked around. Just on the horizon was a massive plume of dust.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s the Guard advancing on the capital,’ Arick reassured him.

  ‘Other… other losses?’ Jaeger asked quietly, keeping his eyes on Arick’s.

  ‘Two-thirds of the Marauders are destroyed.’ Arick’s reply was hoarse, and this time there really was a glint of moisture in his eyes. ‘Half the Thunderbolts. Seven pilots dead. Losark won’t be getting any more kills, I’m afraid. Thirty-three other crew members dead. Fourteen wounded, including Marte who has shrapnel lodged in his spine, and you.’

  ‘So, almost the entirety of the Divine Justice’s flight complement destroyed,’ sighed Jaeger bitterly. ‘Was it worth it, Arick?’

  ‘I think so, sir. You saved thousands of lives, by my reckoning,’ Arick replied with a fleeting grin.

  ‘I doubt the Imperial Navy will see it that way,’ Jaeger answered with a heavy heart, already picturing his court martial. He sat down again and rested his chin against his chest for a moment, eyes closed against the harsh light. With another sigh he looked up at Arick, into his fresh, grey eyes. ‘They’ll hang me for this disaster.’

  He gazed out at the distant army, rumbling towards the enemy capital, intent on recapturing this world. Was it worth it? Jaeger asked himself. He honestly didn’t know.

  WINGS OF BONE

  James Swallow

  Aves liked to speak to Griffon. He made sure that the rest of the crew were not around when he did, lest their opinion of him sink any lower. The one occasion he’d been caught crooning to the machine, it had led – typically – to a punishment beating from Nilner. Aves thought about the hulking thug as he sat in the big gunnery officer’s chair, the same knot of impotent hate he always felt for the bully tightening in his chest.

  He ran an oilcloth over the triggers of the twin heavy bolters, wiping away the accumulated sweat and grease. ‘Just right,’ he told Griffon. ‘Good enough for the Emperor Himself.’

  Aves took the controls in his hands and placed his feet on the pedals. He felt at home there, nestled in the cupola across the shoulders of Griffon’s fuselage. To his left and right, the wings of the Marauder-class bomber extended away, blunt leading edges pitched like the blades of a double-headed axe. A white design of the plane’s mythic namesake was drawn there, close to a rendering of the double-headed eagle of the Imperium. The cowling of the engines made the bomber’s profile more muscular at the wing roots, the massive motors silent now, but powerful enough to lift the forty-tonne flyer and a full payload into high orbit.

  Aves pressed a pedal and the turret made a slow circuit; he grinned as it rotated quietly and smoothly. Staring out past the upturned barrels of the bolters, Aves watched the stubby T-shaped tail swing by, and beneath it, Stoi’s posting. The albino tail gunner never told Aves if he was satisfied with the crewman’s maintenance on his station, preferring to hover on the edge of things, quiet and sinister. The flight crew nicknamed Stoi ‘The Ghost’, but Aves was convinced he was something far more sinister: an agent of the Inquisition, maybe. He smothered a flare of irritation, remembering Nilner’s braying laughter when he had voiced this fanciful suggestion.

  The turret rotated over the prow of the bomber where Captain Vought’s cockpit was, with the twin lascannon turret beyond. Aves looked down at the captain’s acceleration couch with barely concealed desire. He wanted so badly to settle into that chair, to feel the potency of Griffon through the flight yoke in his hands, and the need was like a guttering flame inside him, forever burning. But the daydreams that had spurred him into volunteering for duty in the Imperial Navy had not helped him qualify for aircrew status.

  Aves felt a familiar mood, black and dolorous, threaten to overcome him. He’d lost count of the number of times he had tried and failed the flight status exam, and it was his own awkwardness and clumsy nature that kept him forever grounded, forced to work as a maintenance hand on the flyers that captivated him. Naval Crewman Third Class Bryn Aves was doomed to remain grounded.

  Unbidden, his hand strayed to the breast of his tunic, where a unit patch for the 404th Squadron was fixed. Aves coveted the bone-white wings that flight crewmen wore, and for the thousandth time, he wondered what it would be like to wear them himself.

  A glitter of light in the sky distracted him from his thoughts. Low on the horizon a flashing dart moved closer, catching a flicker of orange light from the sunset. Aves licked his lips; he was positive that no aircraft was due to arrive at the base. Griffon and her squadron had returned a few hours ago, fresh from another in a line of inconsequential attacks on the heretic forces. In a rare piece of luck they had suffered no losses, so this was not some straggler limping back. He shifted the turret towards the approaching object – much nearer now – and Aves could identify it as a Lightning, a Naval fighter.

  The crewman’s heart pounded as the turret’s auspex brought the fighter into blurry life on a targeting screen. The Lightning turned, hopping the line of trees at the base perimeter. It was too low to be detected by scanners, skimming the ground. For a moment, the flyer was fixed in the turret’s gun cues and Aves saw clearly where the Imperial aquila had been struck off its wings and daubed over by a many-angled star.

  ‘Heretic!’ The word almost choked him. The crewman’s mind whirled; it was clearly a suicide attacker, probably loaded with munitions, and most likely followed the 404th back from the battle to inflict some payback. On it came, and still the air raid siren did not sound. The captured Lightning powered over the runway.

  Aves found his hands moving without conscious volition, instinctively flicking off the safety catches on the heavy bolters. The red glyph in the firing window appeared and Aves pulled the guns up to bead the target.

  Words tumbled from his trembling lips, ‘Emperor guide me, I implore you.’

  If the heretic pilot saw the movement from the parked Marauder, it was of no consequence, time seemed to slow to a crawl as Aves gripped the twin triggers and squeezed. The bolters crashed into life and spat thick rounds into the air, bullets as big as candlepins cutting through the sky, shell cases arcing away in a glittering fountain of brass. The Lightning flashed over the bomber and the bolts raked its belly like predatory claws cutting into prey. Aves spun in the turret chair to see the stricken fighter flip over and smash straight into the ground. The airframe crumpled like paper under the impact, detonating in a yellow flash.

  Griffon rocked on its landing gear from the shock and Aves lost his sight for a few moments, flash-blinded. He heard voices and footsteps scrambling through the bomber. Blinking, he looked up to see a huge man shape towering over him. Nilner. It seemed a miracle that the big gunner could even begin to fit his massive frame inside the cupola.

  ‘I got him–’ Aves began, fear and elation mixing in his voice.

  Nilner cut him off, grabbing a fistful of his tunic and tearing him out of the chair. Before he could protest, Aves was thrown down into the hull, landing hard on his back. Breath gushed out of him and he tried to lift himself back up. In the poorly lit interior of the bomber he saw only shadows as Nilner’s heavy boot struck him in the ribs. The gunnery officer picked him up again and pitched the crewman out of the egress hatch. Aves tasted blood in his mouth as he fell in a heap on the black ferrocrete runway.

  Aves managed to raise his head, and there he saw Captain Vought and the rest of Griffon’s crew, breathless from running, framed by the burning wreckage of the heretic Lightning.

  ‘Sir?’ Aves managed.

  Vought watched him with cold dispassion; then Nilner was there, hauling him up to his feet like a rag doll.

  ‘Don’t ever use my guns, dullard!’ Nilner growled.

  Aves wanted to protest, but the next punch sent him reeling and consciousness fled. The last thing he saw was Voug
ht, expressionless as he watched Nilner take the crewman’s impertinence out of his hide.

  The medical corpsman gave Aves something for the swelling and told him to get lost. The infirmary had its share of real injuries and a crewman’s damaged face wasn’t worth more than a few seconds of care. Pressing a bandage to the cut on his cheek, Aves began the walk back to the barracks. Night had fallen, revealing a star-dappled sky. The crewman glanced up; bright dots overhead signified the positions of warships, moving slowly between the glow of stars. He liked the nights on Rocene. The planet seemed to grow more reverent and docile in the dark and he somehow felt safer there than in the brightness of day. Aves found it easier to hide at night.

  He stopped at the service road to let a Chimera grumble past, following the vehicle with his gaze as it trundled towards the hangars. Beyond them, he could just make out the faint tracery of the perimeter fence; and beyond that was the horizon, lit with a faint glow.

  The heretics were there. The vast mechanised army that the apostate rebels had created was rolling ever closer with each passing day, sacking towns and torching cities to the ground as they went. Aves had heard rumours from old Dolenz in the tower about how the beleaguered Imperial Guard was being forced to surrender kilometre after kilometre to the oncoming insurrectionists. The missions of the Marauder squadrons from here at Point November base were meant to support the Guardsmen’s efforts, but they seemed to have little success in halting the tide of the advance. The crews were sombre and terse and the failed suicide attack would not improve matters.

  Aves passed the black scar in the ground where the Lightning had crashed. Whatever remained of the turncoat fighter had been hastily concealed under tarps, all of them emblazoned with the sigils of the Inquisition and dire warnings not to approach. He spotted Griffon’s navigator, Kheed, nearby in conversation with one of the Guardsmen standing post by the wreck.