“Nine?” Marquall said again.
“Seems so,” said Blansher.
“She’s a foxy one,” said Kautas.
“That must be a record,” Marquall murmured.
“I’ve not heard anything to match it,” agreed Blansher.
The bottle came back to Marquall. He wiped the snout and took another sip.
Nearby, the crews were clapping and cheering Asche as she reached the climax of her turn-by-turn account. Knocking back a drink, she leaned over and mashed her lips into Zemmic’s. There was laughter and whoops.
Zemmic. A clean four. The new hot stuff. The new one with the shine.
Marquall turned away. “Who belonged to the fire I saw?” he asked.
Blansher looked down. “Waldon,” he said.
Waldon had guarded the wounded Lightning back home, every step of the way. Just short of the FSB, his damaged Bolt had given up and dropped nose-down into the rainforest. No chute, according to their Lightning pilot, who had landed safely. No chute.
Someone came out under the awning behind Marquall, and Blansher stiffened. Marquall turned. It was Jagdea. Oil still smeared her face. She looked grim. “Come in,” she said.
The three of them crossed to her.
“What about the others?” Blansher asked.
“Leave them,” Jagdea said. “They’re having fun. I don’t want to spoil it.”
They walked into Operations. Blansher and the priest stubbed out their sticks before entering.
Blaguer was there, leaning over a display intently with Oberlitz. The operators sat at their stations.
Commander Marcinon sat at a desk, reviewing pict slides on a back-lit writing slope.
“Kills confirmed,” Jagdea said. “Two for me, three for Mil. One for you, Vander. Good work.”
“Thank you, mamzel.”
“Zemmic got his four. Turns out, from the picts, Asche got ten.” Kautas whistled.
“Unheard of,” said Jagdea. “Though by the look of the footage, the sky was so full of bats it would have been hard not to hit something.”
“Why so grim?” Blansher asked her.
“We’ve studied the recon data the Lightning was so desperate to bring home.”
Jagdea went over to the light table and cycled up some images into the projector. Hololithic shapes formed in the air.
“What’s that?” said Kautas. “I can’t—”
“That’s armour, father,” said Jagdea. “Seen from above at high altitude. Stalk tanks mostly, but also lines of main battle tanks, troop transporters and some super-heavies.”
“It just looks like specks,” Kautas said.
Marquall stiffened. He was more used to reading aerial picts than the priest.
“Holy Throne…” he sighed.
“Summary count is nine thousand units,” Jagdea said. “Coming in out of the deserts. These enlargements here modify for dust cover. See this? Identified as the sigil markings of the Blood Pact.”
“They’re coming north,” whispered Blansher.
“Undoubtedly,” said Marcinon, coming over to join them. “The Archenemy clearly believes its air war has been successful in hammering the Littoral. The ground forces of Chaos are now invading. I have sent word to the coast. The evacuation is being stepped up. I… I somehow doubt we will be ready in time.”
“What about us?” asked Marquall.
“Us, boy?” Marcinon asked.
“Sir, we’re in the direct path of this. The enemy land forces must already be in the forests.”
“Yes. Auspex returns paint them sixty kilometres south and moving fast. Operations has ordered our immediate withdrawal. Us, and all the other FSBs in the forest region. Transports will arrive tomorrow at 08.00 hours.”
Jagdea looked at Marquall and saw his sadness. “Time to retreat,” she said. “It happens.”
DAY 264
Lake Gocel FSB, 06.30
The extraction transports were an hour and a half away. Marquall watched the dawn come up. All through that long, humid night, the personnel of the base had moved with a single purpose, crating up equipment and spares, bagging possessions, collapsing habitents and getting them stowed, deactivating secondary detection systems. The prefabs would have to be left, and the mats and the ramps probably. Certainly the ring defences. The pilots would fly the planes out, the transports would extract the rest.
Marquall had spent the small hours of the night lugging packages around and making sure his fitters were clearing out swiftly. Racklae insisted they run a full pre-flight on Nine-Nine before they went, and told Marquall plainly that two fitters would stay on station to see him aloft.
The pathways were full of hurrying bodies under the lamps, and the huffing shapes of laden Sentinels.
Everyone was active and alert. No, not everyone. Several of Umbra Flight had drunk too much enjoying Larice Asche’s celebration, and had to be whipped into shape by Jagdea and Blansher.
Asche herself, and Zemmic, had disappeared. Their tent-mates, Del Ruth and Cordiale, picked up their gear. Marquall volunteered to gather up Waldon’s belongings, but Jagdea said she’d do that herself.
The sun was just rising. There was rain in the air, beating on the leaf canopy and the shimmer nets. It was cold.
Weary, strung out, Marquall sat down by a tree bowl, and wiped the rain off his face. He had to go to dispersal to suit up, and then to his bird in time for the pull out.
Shades hurried past him along the pathway. Fitters carrying crates. A power lifter.
He jumped as he heard a strange, crackling noise. It went on for some seconds, so odd and loud, that he failed to realise at first that his alarm bracelet was sounding.
Panic hit the base.
Marquall realised that the crackling noise was the sound of the automated Tarantula guns along the perimeter firing out into the forest.
They’d been tripped.
“Oh hell!” he yelped and leapt up. His kit was nearby, and he reached into the haversack, yanking out his service pistol and a belt of battery clips.
There was a bright flash in the trees ahead of him as something went off. Marquall could smell fyceline and burning oil. Gunfire chattered.
The enemy had arrived, far earlier than expected.
Lasfire zipped through the air, ripping apart shimmer nets and sections of the arboreal canopy. The chunter of the Tarantulas increased.
“Throne alive!” Marquall said. Klaxons were now wailing. Pistol raised, he ran across to one of the maintenance shelters and ducked inside.
Heavy gauge lasfire crisped the air outside. The flak-board shivered.
Marquall ran across the floor space of the shelter and fell over something.
“What the bloody hell…?” a voice murmured.
Marquall looked down. Asche and Zemmic, both naked, were curled up together, half-covered by a section of blast curtain.
“Marquall?” Larice narrowed her eyes, bleary and annoyed. “There better be a bloody good reason why—”
A shelter nearby exploded loudly, raining debris out.
“Shit!” Larice Asche said, leaping up and pulling on her flight pants. She kicked Zemmic.
“Get up! Wake up!” she cried at him.
Zemmic sat up, blinking.
Asche had got her vest on now. She turned to Marquall. “What’s the situation?” she said.
“They’ve found us,” Marquall replied. He was hunkered in the opposite doorway, looking out, gun ready. “I think they—”
He shut up quickly. Three figures, armoured in red, were running up towards the side of the shelter. Without thinking, Marquall leaned out and shot the first one through the head.
He dropped hard.
Shaking, Marquall realised the warrior had been wearing a snarling mask of black metal. Blood Pact. Blood Pact.
Shots ripped his way, punching holes in the side of the shelter. Her boots still undone, Asche joined him by the doorway, and started shooting her own service pistol into the trees.
>
“Where’s Zemmic?” Marquall asked.
“Running? Who cares?” Asche replied. She fired again.
Bright yellow, a stalk tank ripped into the outer clearing of the concealed base. Its underslung turrets recoiled as they spat out bursts of heavy las.
A section of the maintenance block exploded, sending shingles and pieces of spar into the sky. A kinderwood nee creaked and fell over. Stripped-away shimmer netting revealed pale slices of dawn sky. The clattering stalk tank felled more trees, and their collapse severed a series of power cables that showered white crumbs of light out in a savage flurry.
The Blood Pact warriors rushed them. Marquall and Asche, decently covered, opened fire into the charging figures and killed both of them. It took a surprising number of shots to stop the enemy shock troopers. The necessary blasts exhausted their clips.
Asche threw up noisily.
“Not so easy when it’s face-to-face, eh?” Marquall asked, dragging the retching girl upright.
“It’s the drink, you idiot,” she coughed, spitting.
Lasfire tore past them. The stalk tank reached one of the matt-decks.
A Commonwealth trooper with a tube launcher killed it dead. The blast tore out a section of the canopy and lifted smoke into the air clear of the forest.
Calm returned for a while. The attack had been from an advance force. Marquall prayed no more would arrive until the final minutes of the evacuation had counted off. Just before eight, they heard the sound of Navy mass-lifters powering in across the lake. The huge transporters settled on the shoreline mud and opened their gaping maws to accept the lines of aircrew personnel, fitter teams and Sentinels. Pack after pack of machinery and material was carried on board.
About then, drawn in by the land attack, the enemy air cover reached Gocel. The base’s planes were just beginning to lift off.
Razors swept overhead, dropping submunitions. One of the transporters at the lakeshore went up in a haze of flames. Blansher launched clear. So did Van Tull and Del Ruth, then Cordiale. Ortho Blaguer’s rising Thunderbolt collided with a Razor on a strafing run. The blast lit the sky. Two of the fleeing Lightnings, one of them Oberlitz’s, were stung hard as they attempted to climb. Oberlitz went down in the lake, the other into the trees on the far shore.
Asche pulled away. Then two of the Raptors. A Lightning. Another Raptor launched, and was blown apart. Zemmic got away. Ranfre. Then Jagdea, her Bolt struck twice by heavy passing fire.
Marquall ran to Nine-Nine. The sky was on fire. He found Racklae and the chief fitter’s number two waiting for him.
“Go! Leave now!” Marquall yelled.
“Not before we see you safe, sir!” said Racklae.
“Your transport is about to leave, mister!” Marquall shouted.
Las-rounds ripped out of the trees. Racklae’s number two dropped, his head fused into a misshapen blob.
“Racklae, go! Now, for Throne’s sake!”
Marquall fired his pistol into the tree-line.
“Cables are disconnected, sir. You’re clean!” Racklae bellowed.
“Go, Racklae! Go! Go!” yelled Marquall.
“Give that to me, for Throne’s sake,” Kautas shouted, appearing from nowhere and snatching the pistol out of Marquall’s hand.
“Run now, Mister Racklae,” Kautas said. Racklae turned and began to sprint for the shore. The air was full of hard rounds and las-streaks.
Kautas started to fire the pistol. “And you, Vander Marquall,” he said.
“Father…”
“Close your bloody lid, boy.”
Marquall slammed his canopy home. He lit the engines, and kicked over the vector thrusters, ripping up through the remains of the shimmer tents into the smoke-filled air.
He managed one last, frantic look down.
Far below, amongst me trees and flames, Marquall saw a figure with its arms spread wide, as if in benediction. Ayatani Kautas, his robes tugged by Nine-Nine’s down-draft, turned and ran towards the red-armoured soldiers pouring in along the pathways.
The last time Marquall saw him, Kautas was a distant shape, sinking to his knees. Bright las-shots flickered in all directions. Kautas held Marquall’s pistol out before him, firing over and over again.
FATE’S WHEEL
THEDA
Imperial year 773.M41, day 264 - day 266
DAY 264
Theda MAB South, 08.30
Even to someone unfamiliar with the arcane sigils of Navy plotting symbols, it would have been obvious that a huge fight was going on over the Littoral. Nine of the flight controllers were now involved, Eads included. Darrow stood by and watched with mounting concern.
It had become ceaseless, day and night. They came in on shift, and took the reins of some ongoing brawl from a controller almost dead on his feet from fatigue. Weary and strung out, they handed fights off to replacements at shift rotation. The enemy attacks—mass bombing operations, lightning raids, opportunistic intercepts—were happening all the time.
Currently, the rotunda had four points of focus. Two controllers on the far side of the chamber were negotiating interceptions on a wave of bombers over Ezraville. Another had a fighter-on-fighter clash in progress above the Lida Valley. A fourth had control of a Marauder formation heading south. The nine on Darrow’s half of the room were handling the big battle: close on four hundred and fifty enemy bombers, a hundred escorts and fourteen Imperial wings.
The chatter and roll of voices was incessant. Reports, plot statements, corrections, vox transmissions and updates volleyed back and forth. At their screens, the placement officers were inscribing hideously complex tactical maps, constantly adding, deleting, rewriting, reassigning.
The controllers were locked in worlds of their own, fixed on their own tracks while trying to accommodate the overall situation. Most were head-down over their cogitators, but Eads sat like an orchestra conductor, sightless gaze fixed directly ahead as his hands danced over the display. Darrow knew the commander was dog-tired. His face was pale, and he hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly.
“Forty-Four, call off. Nine-One, rise to ten, bearing five-eight-five. Rimfire, make your track eleven-two. Say again, Quarry Leader. You’re breaking up. Switch to channel four. Understood, contacts west of you at nine kilometres. Brass Flight, correct and descend to two thousand. Bat group under you, turning east, three kilometres. Sixteen contacts, you should have visual. Confirmed, Lancer, I show you as attacking.”
The klaxons started to ring, and the deck officer cancelled them at once. Raid warnings had been going off regularly, but no one in Operations ever quit for the bunkers. There was too much at stake. Twice, Darrow had felt the great chamber shudder as bombs quaked the Thedan ground.
His days with Eads had taught Darrow a lot. Once he’d picked up the basics, he’d been able to do more than merely stand by and run simple tasks. They’d evolved a good working pattern. Eads now expected Darrow to monitor peripheral tracks, and pass them over if they impinged on primary activity.
The displays on Darrow’s substation were alive now. But he wouldn’t just cut in and interrupt his chief. Darrow had developed a habit of touching Eads on the left shoulder to let him know he wanted his attention.
“Speak,” Eads said.
“Counter track, Flight. South-east, two hundred kilometres, closing. Formation of forty. Modar reads heat-wash patterns as Locusts.”
“Heading?”
“Four-one-six.”
Eads’s hands drifted. “That’ll fall into catchment twelve. Run it to Scalter.”
“Yes, Flight.”
Darrow noted the details down carefully on a data-slate, took off his headset, and hurried along the busy companionway behind the controller stations to the third one down from Eads.
Major Frans Scalter had been section leader of Seeker Flight up to the moment it had been decimated in a dogfight over Ezraville on the morning of the 257th. Scalter had lost his co-pilot and his bird had been crippled beyond hope
of repair. It was a miracle Scalter had got home at all. His hands and face were still scabbed with healing cuts.
He was an experienced aviator and, in Eads’s opinion, a level-headed pilot officer. With no available machine or unit to transfer to, Scalter had been drafted to Operations, to help out with the increasing pressure. Shifts were back to back, round the clock. Operations needed all the clear-thinking and experienced flight personnel it could rope in to work the stations.
Scalter was good at Operations work. His fine service record stood him in good stead. Like all of the Commonwealth fliers who had been switched to Operations duty—Darrow included—Scalter thought of it as a demotion. But it was vital work, and he took it seriously.
“Make your height five thousand, Ransack,” Scalter was saying tersely as Darrow came up to his station. “Turn eighteen north. I repeat, north. If you pull west, you’ll be over them and dead. Do as you’re told.”
“Flight?”
Scalter held up a hand without looking round. “I don’t care what you can see, Ransack. I can see more. Five thousand, eighteen north. There’s a block of bats under you, out of your visual, that will mince you if you commit west. Copy? Thank you. Lamplight, as you were. Clear for eight kilometres. Be advised, hostiles west sixteen.”
Scalter looked round at Darrow. “Junior?”
Darrow held out the slate. “Coming into your catchment. Eads wants you advised.”
“Express my thanks,” Scalter said. Darrow noticed the man’s hands were shaking as he took the slate. He thought of Heckel. Should he say something?
“Anything else, junior?” Scalter asked. Like all of them, Scalter looked monstrously tired. Darrow knew why. It wasn’t just the stress. All the Commonwealth pilots pulled from active duty had been spending time in the simulators when they should have been sleeping, keeping their skills honed. Darrow had certainly been doing that, and he’d seen Scalter several times in one of the rigs. The Navy had brought in new training programs, simulation routines for Thunderbolts and Marauders. They’d all been eager to try them. To experience what they were missing.