A hooter sounded. Marquall was ready to go. They moved in behind the blast shields.
Racklae closed the canopy and shot Marquall a grin. Clamped into his mask and helmet, Marquall nodded back. He adjusted his air-mix and settled back. Throne, how he hated ramp launches. He felt sweat trickle inside his suit. He watched the diode counter marking down. Systems on. Hypergolic intermix valves open. Operations chatter on the vox. Rocket was primed.
Buzzer. Five seconds. The shimmer nets began to crank open, revealing the soaring blue sky.
Three seconds. Thumb on the fire stud. Two.
With a crackling, gut-shaking roar, Del Ruth fired into the air, then Van Tull. Then…
Marquall looked around in dismay. He’d pressed the stud. He was sure he had. He pressed it again. Nothing. He swore.
“Umbra Eight, status?”
“Malfunction!” he called back. “Restart…”
Again, nothing. Red runes suddenly lit up across his instrumentation. A warning tone sounded.
“Crap!” Marquall snarled.
“Say again? Status?”
“Rocket malfunction!”
“Understood, Umbra Eight. Observe emergency procedures. Stabilise your intermix and activate suppression jets.”
“Yes, Operations.”
He hit several switches, disarming his weapons and payload, sealing his tanks and injecting a neutralising chemical flow into the rocket tanks so that the primed and volatile chemical propellants couldn’t accidentally light or trigger late. It would take hours to wash the tanks out and recharge them.
“Umbra Eight made safe,” he voxed.
Only then did the fitters emerge and hurry to the plane. Inspection hatches were opened, cables hitched in to drain off fuel via the tank cocks. A power lifter and a squad of armourers moved in to unload the wing-mounts and stow them in hardened caissons.
A ladder went up at the machine’s side.
Marquall popped the canopy. “Thanks for frigging nothing, Nine-Nine,” he hissed, and hauled himself out.
When Marquall hit the matting, Racklae was beside himself.
“I’m so sorry, sir, I’m so sorry. We thought she was four-A. Not a sign of anything wrong.”
“Jinxes don’t show up on your diagnostics, do they?” Marquall said bitterly. He could see Racklae was mortified.
His fitters, however, were not. Many were trying to hide their laughter. Nearby, fitters from the 409th, and other base personnel, were not even bothering to conceal their amusement. His face burning, Marquall heard mocking laughter. There was nothing more amusing, apparently, than a cocksure young pilot, on his first combat sortie, in a newly and boldly decorated bird, getting his pride punctured.
He was a laughing stock.
He strode off the pad.
“Bad luck, Marquall,” Jagdea said. “We’ll get you up again this afternoon.”
“Yes, mamzel,” he snapped, walking past her.
He went towards Asche, who was watching the farce. There was laughter in the air still. Marquall spread his hands in a wide shrug.
“What can I say? How crap is this? Maybe we can catch that breakfast together after all.”
Larice Asche stared at him contemptuously. “Another time, killer,” she said, and marched away towards the camp.
Over the forests, 09.02
Kitting up fast, as if it was a snap call, Jagdea lifted her waiting Bolt off its matt on a standard vector launch, and climbed to join Del Ruth and Van Tull, who were in a holding pattern as per Operations’ advice.
“Three, Six? Umbra Lead. Sorry for the delay. Marquall suffered a misfire and he’s out. So you’ll have to make do with me.”
“No problem, Lead,” Van Tull voxed.
“Always a pleasure, mamzel,” Del Ruth came back.
“Let’s get on with the game,” Jagdea said. Serial Zero-Two felt fine, loose and finessed despite the unexpected scramble. “Let’s make our level four thousand, cruise speed, turning one-one-nine.”
“Got that, Lead.”
“Understood.”
“Umbra Three, take the point.”
“Four-A, Lead,” Van Tull voxed back.
They formed a flat V as they climbed hard, with Van Tull at the apex, Jagdea at his port eight. The air was clear and visibility generous, but it was still cold enough for them to be making vapour from wingtips and exhausts. Auspex showed nothing in the sky, except the three Raptors sixty kilometres east.
Jagdea felt uncomfortable. She hadn’t expected to be flying so soon, not before midday, given the original schedule. She’d eaten a full breakfast and was still digesting. Pressure was doing nauseous things to her guts. She tweaked the air-mix and felt a little better.
They cruised for an hour, snagging a wide arc eastwards, until the thickness of the forest cover petered away and they were out across the scrublands of the sierra that marked the hinterland between rainforest and desert. The view was huge. Sundogs from the bright daylight hovered in the canopy lense. Open, coarse land slipped by underneath them, scabbed with rocks, thistle, cactus trees.
“I have a hard metal return, point two west, four kilometres,” Van Tull voxed. “It’s cold.”
“Let’s check it,” Jagdea replied. They turned tight, pulling a quarter G, but it was enough for Jagdea to feel a twinge of cramp in her stomach.
“You okay, One?” Del Ruth called.
“Four-A,” Jagdea replied.
“Little late on the turn there, s’all I was wondering.”
“Too much breakfast,” Jagdea said.
They came up on the contact, and made a low pass. Straggled out over the ragged crest of a dune sea basin, two Imperial tanks and four troop carriers, silent and still. No sign of damage. Some hatches were open. Auspex showed no heat sources. No engines, no life.
“They’re dead,” Van Tull voxed.
“Let’s come around again,” Jagdea said.
They banked west, and came in a second time, lower now, throttles idling so they were almost gliding in. A lingering look. Jagdea saw how the wind-blown sands had begun to cover the machines. She saw what could have been a body, a lump in the dust beside one of the carriers.
The enemy hadn’t done this, or rather, it hadn’t done this directly. This was not the aftermath of an air strike or an ambush. This was extinction brought on by the unforgiving desert. What had they run out of? Fuel? Water? Either one would have killed them. Jagdea supposed it had been fuel first. Grinding to a halt, dry and gritty, power gone. Then heat and thirst. Had any of them tried to walk? The bodies would never be found now.
How miserable. How pointless. Had they known how close they’d come? Another sixty kilometres, and they’d have reached the forest line. She hoped they hadn’t. Death was one thing. Death tormented by the knowledge that salvation was just out of reach…
The vox burbled, snapping her alert.
“Umbra, Umbra. Assist request from Raptor Flight, urgent!”
“Coordinates, please,” Jagdea replied. The squirted data flashed up on her main display. “Received, Operations. We are inbound, nine minutes.”
They banked away and started to climb, opening their throttles.
“Punch it,” Jagdea said.
Lake Gocel FSB, 09.31
“Bites still bothering you?”
Marquall, sitting by the lake shore, glanced up. It was the priest, Kautas. The brisk inshore wind tugged at his blue vestments.
“I was under the impression you scarcely cared,” Marquall replied.
The ayatani shrugged. “I never asked for this. Actually, I’m not sure what it was I asked for. Not this, anyway. But it is my lot. I am reminded by the regular dispatches from my church that I have a job to do. A calling. So try me.”
“You seem very jolly this morning.”
Kautas sat down beside Marquall. “An illusion, I assure you. I’m the very same noxious bastard as I was yesterday.”
Kautas slid a metal flask from his robe pocket and swigged. M
arquall smelled liquor. The priest didn’t offer any to him.
“Ah,” said Marquall.
“Ah what?”
“Nothing.”
“Sounded to me like you’d had some great epiphany, fly-boy.”
“My name is Vander Marquall. And no, it wasn’t a… whatever you just said. I just realised why you were in a better mood.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Enlighten me, Vander Marken.”
“Marquall. If you start drinking at breakfast, father, no wonder you’re happy by nine o’clock.”
Kautas chuckled and took another swig. “Who said I started drinking at breakfast? That’s the behaviour of a hopeless drunkard. Young man, I started drinking many years ago.”
Marquall shook his head. “With respect, what are you doing here?”
“I saw you here, alone on the beach, looking pissed off, so I thought I’d come and share your gloom. I have an appetite for melancholy.”
“I meant here. Enothis. Lake Gocel.”
Kautas prised a pebble from the shoreline mud and tossed it out into the lake. He had a good arm. It went a long way, and sent a ripple out across the oily green water.
“Why did that stone land there?” Kautas asked.
“You threw it.”
“Yes but…” his voice trailed off. “No, you’re right. I threw it. It’s too bloody early for clever philosophical analogies. Or too late. Whatever. I’m here because this is where I stopped. It’s a matter I intend to bring up with the God-Emperor, when at last I am granted celestial audience before the Golden Throne as part of the Beati’s magnificent host.”
“Good luck.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s all about faith.”
“You don’t seem to have much, father. You seem very… bitter.”
“Do I? How crap is that? I meant to supply spiritual reinforcement to this station. And medical assistance. Actually, I think the latter is why they sent me here. I was a medicae first, before I became an ayatani.”
Marquall looked at him. “Take it from me, you’re not excelling at either.”
“Yeah, well…” sighed Kautas. “Stuff you too.”
They sat in silence for a long moment. Scops hissed around them. At length, Kautas cleared his throat and said, “Go on, then. Test my worth. What’s this mood about?”
Marquall smiled sourly. “A plane. A woman.”
“Planes I don’t do,” said Kautas. “Noisy great buggers. Can’t help you there. Women, more my field. Spurned? Unrequited? Inadequate?”
“Whoah, whoah… the first. Spurned. Last night she was all over me like a body bag. This morning—”
“Well, you must learn to get over it…”
“I hadn’t finished.”
“Well. Uhm. Even given that, just get over it.”
“Get over it?”
Kautas nodded sagely.
“Father, you’re really bad at this.”
“Am I? Shit.”
There was another long pause. Kautas helped himself to another swig.
“Okay then,” Marquall said. “You go. Why are you so screwed up?”
Kautas scratched his head, then sighed. At length, he said, “Because I wanted to be there. Right there. When she came back. And I can’t, because I’m stuck here.”
“Who?” Marquall asked.
“The Beati, Vander Marquall. The Beati.”
Over the desert, 09.32
They came in low and hard, engines really cooking. Jagdea was pleased to see that they’d shaved nearly a minute off the projected intercept time.
Raptor Flight had found a retreat convoy in the open desert, and had been watching over it when an attack had thundered in. Stalk tanks and heavier tread armour, fully powered and fuelled, coming up hard on the limping Imperial group.
The Raptors had already loosed their rocket complement, securing some decent kills. Burning armour wreckage littered the dunes.
“Good to see you, Umbra,” voxed Raptor One. “We could do with a little more Hellstrike over here.”
“Roger that leader. Coming around,” Jagdea replied.
The Raptors, which had been doing their damnedest with cannon runs, pulled off high, leaving the air open for Umbra. The Raptors were stark, black machines. They had refused a respray on arrival at Gocel. It was a pride thing, apparently.
Below, the enemy tank squadrons were pluming across the desert, lurching over dunes, firing shot after shot from their main weapons at the scurrying Imperials.
Jagdea saw a Chimera go up, and a Hydra platform shred into flames. Blast vapour sheened the air: white smoke trails, puffs of chalky flare from barrel discharges, rising scuds of black flame-smoke from wrecks.
Sporadic tracer fire rose from the enemy AA carriers.
“Let’s get lucky,” Jagdea said.
Van Tull went in first, whipping through the mosaic of smoke and vapour. Tracer shot laddered over at him, falling short. He loosed his missile load and pulled out hard at the same moment.
A blitz of flame lit up the desert floor. Two enemy tanks atomised, their warloads kicking off.
Del Ruth was right on his tail, snaking in. She flew edgy, nicking around the flares of flak. Her rockets seared out, and crippled a tank, shredding off its tracks. Instead of pulling out, she stayed low and opened up with her quad-cannons, raking a troop carrier to bits. Then she pulled out wide, whooping over the vox.
Jagdea barrel-rolled onto the approach, setting her wing-load live. She felt like heaving, but suppressed her stomach.
A tank… too close. Another, lined up. She let it slide through her scope and fired. On twists of white smoke, her rockets lit off.
She was already rising off the targets when the tank detonated.
She came up long. Right into the bats.
Lake Gocel FSB, 09.33
Kautas sniffed thoughtfully. “Do you know what’s happening on Herodor right now?” he asked.
“Herodor? Where’s that?”
“Down in the Khan Group, about nine weeks from here.”
Marquall shrugged. “No idea. More fighting?”
Kautas sighed. “It’s a trait I’ve often observed in the—excuse me saying this—common fighting man. He seems to have precious little idea of the big picture. Of the great scheme of things. He seems content to leave that to tacticians and nobility, and the priesthood.”
“The common fighting man tends to have a lot of filings to occupy his immediate attention,” said Marquall.
Kautas smiled. “Fair point.”
“Isn’t the true calling of the Imperial warrior to serve and fight? Not to question?” asked Marquall.
“Yes. But a little curiosity never went astray. Why are you fighting?”
“To wrest Enothis back from the clutches of the Archenemy.”
“Of course. And beyond that?”
“To… to prosecute the great Crusade and liberate the Sabbat Worlds?”
“So your greater purpose is…?”
“To win.”
Kautas took a drink from his flask. This time, he offered it to Marquall. The Phantine shook his head.
“Why are the Sabbat Worlds important?” the ayatani asked.
“Well, strategically—”
“No, Marquall. What is their significance?”
“Thousands of years ago, Saint Sabbat purged these worlds of Chaos in the name of the God-Emperor. We are reclaiming what she once established for us.”
“Exactly. These worlds are Saint Sabbat’s. They are blessed with her touch. My first duty, as an ayatani, is to the God-Emperor, but I am specifically a priest of Sabbat, the Beati. We ayatani come in two kinds. Those that dwell in the great templums and shrineholds, and those, like me, who are ‘imhava’—roving priests, sworn to follow her path through the stars and spread her teachings.”
“Okay,” said Marquall.
“This Crusade’s been going on for almost twenty years. Warmaster Macaroth, if m
y information is correct, has pressed ahead, taking a huge gamble in directing an attack into the heart of the Archenemy’s core systems. But his flanks are exposed, and the enemy has driven his forces into those weaknesses, hoping to behead the thrusting Crusade force, and leave Macaroth alone and vulnerable. We are those flanks, Marquall: Enothis, the Khan Group. It is the fighting here that will determine the overall success or failure of the Crusade. If we fail here, it doesn’t matter if Macaroth achieves victory at the front line. All will be for naught. The enemy knows this. But now, according to rumours, the enemy has an even greater incentive. On Herodor, it is said, the Beati has been reborn.”
Marquall blinked. “Is that… possible?”
Kautas pursed his lips. “It tests even the faith of an imhava ayatani, but it seems to be the truth. Right now, Herodor, like Enothis, is under desperate assault by the hosts of Chaos. If either world falls, then the flank is ripped open and the Crusade is doomed. If Herodor falls, and the Beati dies with it, then the Imperium suffers an even greater loss.”
“And you wish you were there?” asked Marquall.
“Oh, indeed. How I wish. In his heart, every ayatani longs to be on Herodor, at Sabbat’s side. But it is my luck, my lot in life, to be stuck here, pinned fast by duty and the turmoil of another combat, unable to make the final pilgrimage to her person.”
A breeze picked up, and played across the lake. The frond-trees along the shore swayed and hissed.
“That makes my own problems seem meagre,” said Marquall. “Maybe you’re better at this priestly advice-giving thing than I thought.”
Kautas shook his head. “I’m good for two things, Vander Marquall. Drinking and being bitter. I waste every miserable day waiting for the end.”
“What end?”
“The end of this war. The end of this world. My own end. Whatever comes first to free me so that I can be with the Beati.”
Marquall got to his feet. “Don’t think that way. It smells too much of pessimism. We can still win, tell yourself that. Here, and on Herodor. The Crusade can still triumph. The Beati can still live. Even one man’s sour thoughts can lend the enemy strength.”
“Besides,” he added. “Did it not occur to you that the Beati must have wanted you to be here?”