The Relentless Dead, page 28
‘Celebration of what?’ she asked.
He looked at her, scorn on his features. ‘Victory, of course.’
Clang.
Seven.
‘Cruxis! Cut them down! Do not let the cowards flee!’
On a mound of dead stood Marshal Amalrich of the Black Templars, sword extended in challenge at the traitor drop-ship. The power field of his blade crackled as it cooked off heretic blood.
Castellan Mordlied climbed to the Marshal’s side, hoisting the banner of the Cruxis Crusade. Ahead of him, the engines of the traitor transport ignited, washing his armour with a rolling wall of flash-heated air. The engine discharge immolated two hundred Traitor Guardsmen, who had only a moment before been clawing with desperation towards the craft in hopes of evacuating off Cadia. They disappeared into feathery ash clouds that billowed towards the line of black-armoured Astartes converging on the ship.
Mordlied’s hearts lifted along with the pennant as the artificial wind caught it, the twin-forked banner lashing in the gust like a dragon’s tail. With a two-handed heave, he drove the point of the banner-pole into the top of a wrecked rockcrete bunker and drew his chainsword.
A Traitor Guardsman, his face scarified with a heathen rune, came at him with a meltagun. Mordlied keyed his chainsword and took him at the shoulder, sectioning the heretic like a side of meat.
‘Bring it down!’ Amalrich shouted, pointing at the rising drop-ship. His shaven skull was bare, so the pitiful heretics could see the Templar cross branded on his forehead. A las-bolt flickered off his conversion field. ‘Let none escape!’
A host of missiles rushed towards the lander, crashing into armour panels and clipping off landing struts. Crimson lascannon beams lanced the bottom of the rising craft, leaving orange trails of superheated metal and exploding an external fuel tank.
For a moment it appeared to be rising skyward like a sun, slow and drifting on the burn of the lift-nozzles.
Then the engines stuttered, and the ship – wide as two hab-blocks – dropped back to the surface of Cadia.
The explosion washed over Mordlied like the Emperor’s grace.
He took the snapping cloth banner in his armoured fist, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.
Clang.
Eight.
Visibility: Six miles, minimal cloud cover.
Altitude: 3,500 feet.
Speed: 1,100 miles per hour.
And diving.
1,613 feet per second.
Captain Hanna Keztral swallowed the Gs. Clenched her teeth against the discomfort. Watched her altimeter spiral like a chrono gone mad. Cut the engines.
‘One second,’ warned her armament-operator, Darvus.
Keztral tried not to look at the green-brown of the Cadian moors rising up in her Avenger’s canopy. The grey skyline disappearing above her helmet lip. She angled the ram-thrust engine upward, ready.
‘Two seconds,’ Darvus said, alarm rising faster than the ground. ‘Kez, it’s too…’
Keztral hauled back on the stick, slammed her foot on the ignition. Felt the ram-thruster jackknife their nose to almost horizon level, forward momentum ripping air past their aerofoils in a glorious sensation of lift.
Below, a traitor armoured column streaked towards them like a las-bolt. Just a rust-streak on the blurred green of the passing landscape.
‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ she ordered, but it was unnecessary, just the drunk head-rush of circulation returning after the dive.
Under her feet, she could already feel the armament spinning, each black eye of the cylinder firing one after the other.
‘Good approach!’ Darvus yelled behind her, eye in his telescopic sight. ‘Keep steady.’
Enemy fire drilled past. Amber whip-tails of tracer rounds. Red las-beams. Something hard, a heavy bolter round, sparked harmlessly off the armour of the tail assembly.
Avenger strike fighters were fast craft, and a kite like Keztral’s Deadeye – stripped for speed – was hard to hit without advanced warning.
Warning that Keztral, diving in steep from fifteen thousand feet, didn’t give them.
‘Spools empty!’ yelled Darvus.
Keztral stamped the right pedal and hauled the stick back, rolling them over into a sunward climb. Leaving the enemy column behind – utterly untouched by fire.
‘Good captures!’ crowed Darvus. ‘Analysts back at Kraf Air Command will be thrilled with this film. Rotary picter especially. You hit the approach perfect, Kez.’
‘Can you tell where they’re headed?’
‘That’s the best part,’ Darvus answered, voice tinny in her helmet vox. ‘They’re retreating.’
Clang.
Nine.
Major Marda Hellsker swallowed and squeezed the grip of her laspistol.
She had to set an example for her troopers. Show stoicism in the face of the enemy. Not betray her feelings.
She failed, and the smile spread across her features.
Her company sergeant, Ravura, caught the look and grinned. Leaned forward so she could hear him over the roar of the Chimera engine.
‘We’re going, sir!’ he said. ‘The front, at long last.’
She looked down the bay at the troopers, swaying in their jump seats with each jostle. Lasguns between their knees. Packs swinging in the overhead netting.
Despite the shadow of their helmet lips, she could see the sparkle of teeth in every trooper down the bay.
‘Let’s hear you roar, Twenty-Four!’ she shouted.
‘Twenty-Four, in the war!’ they barked as one, then dissolved into a chorus of hoots, howls and cheers.
‘Frekkin’ finally!’ added Corporal Lek.
‘Belay that,’ bellowed Ravura, without much force. ‘Someone needed to keep Kasr Kraf secure. And they gave it to us – because they knew the Despoiler wouldn’t dare hit Kraf with the Twenty-Fourth on the gates.’
More cheers, louder this time. Drowning out a message crackling in Hellsker’s micro-bead. Good on Ravura, flipping the script on Lek’s undermining bullshit.
Spending the war at Kraf had been hard. Not a shot fired in anger. More killed by commissars than enemy rounds. Discipline fraying with the inability to prove themselves.
And the 24th Interior Guard wanted, so badly, to prove themselves. To be able to look the other Cadians – those who had deployed to warfronts across the galaxy – in the eye. Show that even though they’d drawn the unlucky lot of remaining on-world as a garrison force, they were still soldiers of Cadia.
The buzzing in her ear continued, escalated. Hellsker frowned and pushed it deeper with a finger, waving for quiet.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ravura.
‘We’ve stopped,’ said Hellsker. ‘The engine’s cut.’
She banged on the communication hatch until the driver slid it open. Told her what was coming over the vox.
Hellsker bit her lips. Took a moment to compose her face before turning to deliver the news. Keep it short, she told herself. Be stoic.
They were looking at her, expectant, when she turned. Smiles still gleaming under their helmets.
‘Message from the front. Enemy is in full retreat. Pulling back to landing fields. The Thirteenth Black Crusade is over. We are victorious. Our orders are to pull back to Kraf. Eject your powercells, make weapons safe.’
They slumped back into their seats, popped cells and stowed them. Pulled helmets down to cover their eyes and crossed arms over lasrifle barrels. Trooper Keska’s shoulders trembled, and Hellsker knew he was weeping. Corporal Lek dropped his head back against the bulkhead and snorted an ironic laugh. Udza, her vox-operator, dropped any façade of toughness and leaned forward, burying her eyes in the palms of her hands.
Even Ravura had nothing to say.
Marda Hellsker focused on her breathing, maintaining her neutral expression. Sat down, buckled herself back in her safety harness, and stared at the rear hatch of the Chimera.
For a moment, just a moment, she had thought she’d become a real Shock Trooper.
Through the armour of the hull, she could hear a reverberation.
She realised it was cheering, and slammed a fist on the armoured bulkhead beside her.
Clang.
Ten.
Trazyn could hear the bell’s echo even within the hyperspace oubliette.
A thing that should not be possible, but impossibilities seemed to be getting increasingly common.
‘I am obliged for the rescue, Huntmaster. But was it quite necessary to drag your planetary overlord?’
‘My apologies, lord.’ The Huntmaster released his grip on Trazyn’s clavicle collar. The deathmark’s single ocular gleamed. ‘The bellow of the beast was approaching. It cannot find us in here.’
‘Yes, well.’ Trazyn brushed his necrodermis off with his metal hands. The Huntmaster had once been the greatest game warden in the dynasties, but like most necrons, the deathmark was now quite mad. ‘I see you picked up Sannet as well. What is the gallery’s status?’
‘Major damage, lord, cascade failures.’
‘When the ringing stops, I want that relic out of here – cast it through the webway portal, let it bedevil the aeldari. But before that, prepare the Lord of Antiquity for sail.’
‘You,’ stuttered Sannet, ‘you are leaving Solemnace, lord archaeovist? In such a state?’
‘If that bell foretells what I think it does, it means a cataclysm of historic proportions – one that would be most fascinating to observe up close.’ He paused, reading damage glyphs. ‘The legions are inactivated, I see. What about the galleries?’
‘Only the closed collection remains untouched,’ answered Sannet. ‘Its enfolded dimension seems less affected. The Horus Heresy exhibit, the Terran artefacts, and of course the special acquisition.’
‘It will have to do. Get me a complement of mindshackle scarabs. Come, Huntmaster. I daresay there will be game big enough for even you.’
Clang.
Eleven.
‘That price,’ the captain said, ‘is murder.’
‘That price,’ Salvar Ghent responded, mirroring his pause, ‘is final.’
The captain was a Mordian. Off-worlder. Slab-like features with a sharp little moustache. Ghent didn’t like him, but Ghent didn’t like people in general.
‘We have defended this world. You could show some appreciation.’
‘I could, I suppose.’ Ghent leaned back in his chair, looking at the equipment of the bomb-shattered manufactorum. The building had no roof, casting the desk he’d ordered dragged onto the factory floor in gauzy sunlight. A flight of Lightning fighters darted by overhead, rattling the autopistol he’d laid on the desk. ‘How about I show my appreciation by selling you the last ten cases of leolac in Kasr Kraf, so your troopers can celebrate?’
‘But the price…’
‘If you don’t pay it, Cadians will. Leolac is the local favourite. A premium liquor. And a premium liquor demands a premium price.’
The adjunct standing behind the captain sneered. ‘Don’t play with us, gutter-trash. You’re talking to soldiers, not some grubby ganger boss.’
‘Sergeant Jollan, let’s be civil.’
Ghent, back when he was low enough in the underworld to have such a disrespectful nickname, had occasionally been known as Slide-Eye for the way his gaze seemed to wander like a searchlight, never looking at who he was speaking to. Now, the purple eyes settled on the subaltern.
‘So much for Mordian discipline.’
‘Keep pushing and I’ll show you Mordian discipline.’ Jollan laid a white-gloved hand on her glossy leather holster.
‘Lass, I know the commissars tell you your life’s worth nothing, but don’t throw it away over catering expenses.’
‘My apologies, sir,’ continued the captain. ‘Sergeant Jollan is a proud daughter of Mordian. But she is correct – you are trying to cheat us. And I do not appreciate the implicit threat of the pistol in front of you.’
‘I see,’ said Ghent, raising two fingers.
Four gangers stepped out from the rusting equipment, drum-fed autoguns held at waist height as they advanced.
‘Then let’s make the threat explicit. Just so you can appreciate it.’
‘Don’t,’ warned the captain, as Jollan’s hand curled around her laspistol.
‘Listen to the captain, lass, you won’t win this one,’ said Ghent. ‘See, we might not wear the skull-and-wings, but we’re still Cadians. By the time an intake sergeant spat in your face and told you to stand up straight, we’d been doing live-fire drills from age nine.’
Ghent reached down under the desk, pulled up a blue ceramic bottle of leolac and pulled the cork.
‘Now,’ said Ghent. ‘Shall we toast your victory, and return to the question of price?’
Clang.
Twelve.
Corks popped, bouncing off the ceiling and landing on the long table. A group of artillery staff officers were trying to hit the chandelier. They cheered as one missile lodged in the hanging strands of crystal, and the lieutenant who’d fired it celebrated by pulling directly off the bottle.
To Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell, it sounded like the hollow pop of mortar tubes.
He walked down the table, passing a group of Vostroyans snare-drumming the wooden surface with their fists. In their centre, a lieutenant worked her way along a line of blue-glowing shot glasses. The Vostroyans burst into a cheer as she finished the last, triumphantly crushing the glass in her bionic fist.
A captain of the Eighth approached Kell singing ‘Flower of Cadia’, and pushed a flute of sparkling vin into his hand. Kell took it and raised it in a toast, then discreetly ditched it on a sideboard. He picked a cap off the table and deposited it on the head of an intelligence corporal – someone’s aide – who lay face down on the table with his arm wrapped around a leolac bottle. His fellows had kindly decorated him with a collection of flatware.
Kell took a right turn and put a hand on the double door-knob, but stopped when he heard the call of, ‘Creed! Where’s Creed?’
He turned and waved them off.
‘We want the Lord Castellan!’ shouted another. ‘Speech!’
It became a chant then: ‘Speech! Speech! Speech!’
‘Soon,’ he shouted back, knowing that in an hour, most would be so drunk they wouldn’t remember to ask again. ‘After the night’s work is done – someone has to manage the victory.’
As the cheer rose, he disappeared through the blast-proof doors before it became quiet enough for more demands.
‘Those idiots are still at it, I see,’ said Ursarkar Creed.
The commander of the Cadian Eighth, saviour of Tyrok Fields, and Lord Castellan of Cadia bent over a desk collaged with documents and maps. Empty sacra tumblers served as paperweights, and an ashtray fashioned from an Earthshaker shell smouldered with half a dozen cigar-butts. The room – so pristine when Creed had moved into it – reeked of tobacco.
‘The Archenemy is in retreat, pulling off-world,’ Kell answered. ‘You told them to enjoy themselves.’
‘I said to enjoy it while it lasts, there’s a difference.’ Creed turned red-rimmed eyes back to the charts. ‘I know Shock Troopers can’t do anything in moderation, but I didn’t mean for them to undermine readiness. This isn’t over.’
‘So a night of venting heat will be good for morale, especially if this isn’t over.’
Creed grunted. ‘Still, move reveille up an hour tomorrow morning. They can have their fun tonight, but I want them to feel it.’
Kell smirked, the closest he got to a smile, and handed over the data-slate tucked under his arm. ‘Report from South Primus. The Volscani are holding on. They don’t seem to be running with the mutants and irregular cultist militias.’
‘Under all the spikes and blood runes, they’re still Guardsmen,’ mused Creed. ‘That’s what makes them dangerous. Any word from Admiral Quarren and the picket fleet?’
‘No, sir. But he should have established his blockade at the Eye of Terror by now.’
‘Let’s hope that I’m being paranoid.’ Creed leaned backwards with his hands on the small of his back.
‘It’s true what the war council says, you know. The forces that hit us were commensurate with previous Black Crusades. Larger, even.’
‘Not you too, Jarran.’ Creed shook his head.
‘It is possible he was killed in the Eye, fighting some other warlord.’ He saw Creed’s look and added: ‘It’s happened before.’
‘You can’t believe that.’
‘We picked up signals saying so. Good quality intercepts. Hard decryptions, definitely look authentic.’
‘Tell me this, if this was the main Archenemy attack, where are the Terminators? Where’re the waves of Black Legion, the warp engines? We’ve had cultists and mutants, Traitor Astartes in tactical roles, but you’re telling me the Archenemy leadership spent centuries building this force then never landed here in person?’
Through the door, a drunken chorus was singing ‘Flower of Cadia’ again, and Creed had to shout to make himself heard over the din.
‘No one can explain that to me. Not any of them. Not the Navy, not the Aeronautica, not Militarum intelligence or the Scholastica Psykana or the demigods of the Adeptus Astartes. None of them can tell me the one Throne-damned thing I want to know.’
He threw his cigar-butt on the desk in frustration, smearing a debris field of ash across a chart of the Rossvar Mountains. Then he slammed both fists onto the desktop and shouted the last three words:
‘Where is Abaddon?’
Clang.
Thirteen.
The ship emerged from the immaterium with a noise like a child being torn from the womb. A moment of blood, a primal experience of a creature first feeling the cold air and pull of gravity – sucking atmosphere into its lungs before screaming it out in pain and confusion.
