Kolea ran back in. Banda had risen to her feet. “What is it?” Kolea asked.
“Wind just dropped,” said Larkin. “We’ve got a calm. Air’s clearing fast. Thought I saw… wait…”
His scope whirred.
“Yeah,” Larkin said with relish. “Two contacts, airborne, about eight kilometres out, inbound from the south-west.”
II
“This is Nalwood, this is Nalwood. Say again, over.”
Beltayn listened hard to the crackle and hum of his vox set. Gaunt, Daur, Criid and Kolosim stood behind him, waiting. Sections of troopers, forty in all, armed and ready to move, were congregating below them in the bottom level of the base chamber.
“Nalwood, this is Nalwood. Please re-transmit,” Beltayn said. The set snuffled like a snoring baby in a pram.
Kolea came clattering down the main staircase and ran across to Gaunt. “We’ve got visual contact. Lifters heading this way.”
Gaunt nodded. “Bel, can you—”
Not looking up, Beltayn raised his hand sharply for quiet.
A voice crackled out of the caster’s main speaker grille. “Nalwood, Nalwood, this is transport K862 inbound to your location. Estimate four minutes away. Water drop as requested, over.”
There was a raucous cheer from the Ghosts assembled on the staging below. Gaunt and his officers exchanged smiles.
Beltayn adjusted his caster. “K862, K862, this is Nalwood, this is Nalwood. Good to hear you, over.”
“Hello, Nalwood. Need you to define LZ. Please advise. Pop smoke or display mag beacon, over.”
Beltayn glanced up at Gaunt. “What do I tell him?”
“I’ve got smoke and a mag beacon ready,” said Ban Daur. “What’s it doing out there?”
“The wind’s dead. We’ve got a clear window,” said Kolea. “Let’s not muck about. We’ll bring them in outside the main gate and team the supplies inside, double time.”
Gaunt nodded. “Go,” he said.
Kolea, Criid, Daur and Kolosim ran to join the sections waiting below at once, calling orders. The men began to file out towards the gatehouse.
“K862, K862, be advised we are popping smoke as requested,” Beltayn told the mic. “Watch for it at the head of the pass. LZ is flat area in front of main gatehouse, repeat flat area in front of main gatehouse, over.”
“Thank you, Nalwood. Inbound, over.”
Gaunt clicked his microbead. “All sections, this is One. Drop coming in, main gate. Full alert, full cover. This is going to get noticed. Any sign of trouble, you have permission to loose off.”
A fire-team led by Corporal Chiria was opening the outer hatch as Daur and the others arrived. “Sections one and two, you’re on portables,” Daur called out. “Three and four, spread and cover as per brief.”
Daur stepped through the hatch and began to run out into the open. The sunlight was pale and bright, and only the faintest breeze stirred the surface dust. His heels puffed up plumes of the stuff as he ran.
He felt horribly exposed. Pieces of Blood Pact armour and weaponry still littered the dust from the day before, although the enemy had recovered their dead under cover of night. He was running right out into the open. The beige cliffs and outcrops of the pass loomed around him. In his imagination, they were full of enemy skirmishers, drawing aim. Daur was uneasily convinced his imagination wasn’t wrong.
He couldn’t see the transport, but he could hear the pulsing whine of lifter jets echoing around the tops of the cliffs.
Fifty metres from the gate, he dropped to his knees and swung the satchel off his shoulder. He pulled out the metal tube of the mag beacon, twisted the knurled grip and set it going. It began to emit a little, repeating chirrup, and a small light on its facing began to wink. Daur dug it into the dust, upright. Then he removed the smoke flares from the satchel, and pulled their det-tapes one by one, tossing the smoking canisters onto the ground in a crude circle. The smoke billowed up in bright green clouds and trailed off away from the gate.
“Ban, they’re coming,” Criid voxed. Daur turned and jogged back towards the gate. The jet noise grew louder.
Two aircraft suddenly came into view, rushing in over the cliff top. Their hard shadows shot across the white basin outside the gate. They banked east around Hinzerhaus, disappearing from view for a second, and then swung around again in tight formation, dropping speed and altitude.
The larger aircraft was a big Destrier, a bulk lifter, painted drab cream and marked with a flank stencil that read “K862”. It was making the most noise, its big engines howling as the pilot eased it down in a ponderous curve.
The other aircraft was a Valkyrie assault carrier, a hook-nosed machine one-third the size of the heavy lifter. The Valk was painted khaki with a cream belly. Its tail boom was striped with red chevrons and the stencil “CADOGUS 52”.
“Get up and get ready to move!” Daur shouted through the hatch at the waiting men. The downwash from the fliers was creating a Munitorum dust storm in front of the gate area, and the green smoke was being forced upwards into the air in a strangely geometric spiral.
The Valkyrie stood on a hover at about thirty metres, and let the Destrier go in first. The big machine descended gently and crunched down in a fury of dust-kick, its cargo jaws immediately unfolding with a shrill buzz of hydraulics.
“Go! Go!” shouted Daur.
The sections led by Daur and Kolea ran out from the gatehouse towards the big lifter, heads down. They carried their lasrifles strapped across their backs. The other two sections, under Criid and Kolosim, simultaneously fanned out around the edge of the landing site, weapons in hand, watching the rocks for movement or attack.
Daur was first to reach the lifter. The idling engine was raising a tumult of dust, and the air stank of hot metal and exhaust. Three Munitorum officers stood on the payload area, manhandling the first of several laden pallets out through the cargo jaws.
Daur waved at them. “How many?” he yelled.
“A dozen like this,” one of the handlers shouted back. The pallets were thick, flak board bases with rows of hefty fluid drums tight-packed and lashed onto them, twenty drums on each pallet.
“You got no cargo gear?” the handler yelled.
Daur shook his head. “Gonna have to move them by hand!” he shouted back. Daur took out his warknife and sawed through the packing twine lashing the first pallet’s cargo together. As his men came up, they each grabbed as many of the heavy, sloshing drums as they could manage, and headed back towards the gate. Most could carry two, one in each hand. A few of the biggest men, like Brostin, could just about lift three. It was a struggle. Everyone knew speed was of the essence.
“Let’s go! Second load!” Daur yelled. He and Kolea tossed the empty first pallet clear as the handler crew slid the next one out through the jaws.
Too slow, too slow, Daur thought. The first troopers carrying drums had only just reached the gatehouse. The sheer weight of the drums, combined with the soft dust underfoot, made the process of unloading truly punishing.
Men came rushing back from the gate, empty handed, to take up the next load. They were already out of breath and flexing strained and tired arms.
“Come on!” Kolea shouted, taking the drums Daur passed to him and handing them out to each man in turn.
With the Destrier down, the Valkyrie came in to land to its left. It landed with a squeal of jets, inside Criid’s perimeter.
“Derin! Watch those rocks!” Criid yelled, and jogged over into the dust-wrap surrounding the Valkyrie. A crewman had slid the heavy side door of the passenger compartment open and two men had jumped out into the dust under the hooked wing. They came forwards, bent down in the wash, hands shielding their eyes. One was dressed in khaki, the other in black. The man in black was carrying a heavy bag.
“This way!” Criid shouted, gesturing.
They hurried towards her. As they approached, Criid raised her arms and flashed a signal to the Valkyrie pilot. She saw him in his cockp
it, his brightly painted helmet tipping her a nod.
The Valkyrie took off again, thrusters wailing as if in pain. It rose sharply, climbed hard, and began to turn at about three hundred metres, nose down.
Criid saluted the men as they came up to her. The one in khaki was short, slim and fair. For one awful moment Criid thought it was Caffran, back from the dead.
“Major Berenson, Cadogus Fifty-Second,” he yelled above the noise. “This is my tactical advisor. I present my compliments to your commander, and request audience.”
“Criid, First-and-Only,” she replied, shaking his hand. “Follow me, sir. We’re a little exposed out here.”
She turned and ran towards the gate. The two men ran after her.
* * * * *
III
They were onto the third pallet. The Munitorum boys were shoving it out through the cargo jaws. Daur glanced at his chron. Four minutes. Too slow, still too slow. The men running back to collect the next load of drums were already panting and exhausted.
Kolea cut the twine with his knife, and started to pass out the drums as they slid loose, heavy and stubborn.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” he urged above the noise of the Destrier’s engines.
Daur turned. “What was that?” he asked.
“What?” Kolea shouted back, still handing the drums off to the relay of men.
“I heard a noise!” Daur yelled. It had been a dull thwack of a noise, a dense impact.
“Feth,” Daur murmured. “We’ve got a leak here!”
Water, bright and clear, was squirting out of one of the drums on the third pallet, spattering copiously into the dust like a fountain jet.
“We’ve got a damn leak!” he yelled again, reaching the drum and trying to stopper it with his fingers.
There was another thwack. A metre to Daur’s right, another drum began to hose water out of its side. Out of a puncture in its side.
Daur looked around at Kolea. “We’re—” Daur started to shout.
A las-round ricocheted off the cargo-jaw assembly. Two more spanked into the side of the Destrier. One of the Munitorum officers rocked on his feet as a red mist puffed out behind his back. He fell hard, crashing off the pallet and into the dust. A Ghost, a drum in each hand, turned and fell sideways, the side of his head shot off.
“Contact!” Kolea bawled. “Contact! Contact!”
IV
Rhen Merrt turned. Something was up. He was part of Criid’s section fanned out around the perimeter. The bulk lifter behind him was making one hell of a noise.
“What was that?” he yelled at Luhan.
“What?” Luhan shouted back.
“Kolea gn… gn… gn… yelled something!”
“I dunno,” yelled Luhan.
Merrt saw sparks in the rocks ahead of him. He knew what that was. They were taking fire from the crags of the pass. They couldn’t hear the crack of discharge because of the lifter’s engine noise.
“Contact!” Merrt yelled. He raised his rifle and blasted at the rock slope. Nothing happened. His lasrifle had jammed.
Shots whipped in across them. The enemy wasn’t aiming at Merrt and his section. They were targeting the heavy lifter. Merrt saw las and tracer rounds sizzling through the air above him. He struggled to clear his weapon.
Merit’s lasrifle was a particularly battered and unreliable piece. He’d picked it up during the savage street fighting on Gereon after he’d lost his own. It was well-worn, and had a faded yellow Munitorum stencil on the butt. It was ex-Guard issue, but Merrt had a sneaky suspicion the weapon had been used by the enemy for a while.
A captured, recaptured piece, and not in particularly good order. He despised it. Merrt sometimes fancied that the time it had spent, literally, in enemy hands had left a curse on it. It was four kilos of bad luck swinging on a strap. He knew he should have exchanged it for a new issue at the Munitorum supply. He should have told the clerks the weapon’s history and had them destroy it. But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t have been able to say exactly why he hadn’t if asked directly. Deep down, there was an unformed thought that he and the gun somehow deserved each other, an unlucky rifle for a fething unlucky man.
He worked to unjam it. It seemed to cooperate. Merrt trained it and fired. There was a jolt. The lasrifle emptied its entire load in one disastrous cough of energy. The blast threw Merrt down on his back. The blistering ball of discharge hit rocks twenty metres away and exploded like a tube-charge, throwing a drizzle of earth, dust and grit into the air.
Merrt rolled over, and looked around, dazed. He saw a Ghost go down, one of the men in the relay team running between the gate and the lifter. Full, heavy drums of water landed hard and askew in the dust either side of the body. Another member of the team fell as he was winged, got up, and fell again as a second shot burst through one of the drums he was carrying and into his hip.
Merrt got up and grabbed his las. He ejected the clip and forced home a new one.
“Work!” he snarled “Gn… gn… gn… work!”
V
Enemy fire was zipping and pinging in around them. The cargo jaws had been badly dented and the third pallet of water, half unloaded, was spraying out its contents through dozens of shot holes.
“We can’t stay here!” one of the two remaining Munitorum officers yelled at Daur.
“You have to! We need this water!”
The officer shook his head. “Sorry! The pilot says he’s pulling out! Get back!”
“No!” Daur shouted, losing his footing. The Munitorum officers shoved the third pallet clear of the cargo-jaws and ducked back inside the lifter. The jaws whined shut and the Destrier lifted off in a storm of dust, shots thumping against its hull.
“No! Come back, you bastards!” Daur howled.
“Ban! Forget it!” Kolea told him, grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet. “We’re dead out here! Get back to the gate!”
Daur ran, Kolea at his heels. The relay teams and the covering sections were scurrying back towards the gate, chased by shot. Above them, the southern casemates and gunboxes of Hinzerhaus had opened up. Heavy fire raked down from the open shutters and ploughed across the jumbled rocks of the escarpment.
Daur blundered up to the gate hatch. “How much did we get?” he gasped. “How much?”
“Two and a half pallets,” Kolosim replied.
“Out of a dozen?” Daur snapped. “Feth’s sake, that’s not enough! We left half a fething pallet out there in the dust!”
“That’s where it’ll have to stay, Ban,” Kolea said quietly. “We’ve got no choice. Get inside. We need to shut the hatch.”
VI
“K862, K862, we need that load, over,” Beltayn said into the vox.
“I appreciate that, Nalwood, but the LZ is not secure. Am circling.”
Beltayn looked at Gaunt. Gaunt held out his hand and Beltayn put the vox mic into it.
“Destrier K862, this is Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, commanding this position, over.”
“I hear you, sir, over.”
“We’re out of water and we need what you’re carrying, over.”
“No doubt in my mind that you do, sir, but that landing site was compromised. Heavy fire. It cost me one crew member. Another thirty seconds on station, and I’d have taken a round through my engine core. I couldn’t stay there, over.”
“We need that water, K862, over.”
“Suggest we try an alternative drop point, sir, over.”
Gaunt glanced at Beltayn.
“Out the back, sir? Through the tunnel from the power plant workshops?”
“We sealed it last night,” Gaunt told his adjutant. He spoke into the mic. “Stand by, K862.”
“Circling, Nalwood. Be advised fuel load will allow me to remain here for another six minutes only. Then we’re out, over.”
“What about that courtyard?” Beltayn asked.
Gaunt raised the mic. “K862, K862, suggest you try a courtyard in the lower southern face.
You can see it better than we can from up there, over.”
“Turning in, Nalwood. The dust just blew up again.”
“K862?”
“Hold on, Nalwood, it’s blowing up hard suddenly. All right, we see it. Coming around, over.”
“Thank you, K862, over.”
They waited. A wind rose and gusted through the base chamber.
“Nalwood, we have your courtyard in sight. Too small for a landing, over.”
“K862, can you drop, over?” Gaunt asked.
“Not ideal, but we’ll try, Nalwood. Stand by, over.”
Gaunt looked at Beltayn. They both waited in silence. It was taking forever. “One, Throne of Terra… Two, Throne of Terra…” Gaunt began to whisper.
The vox coughed. “Nalwood, Nalwood, this is K862, this is K862. We have dropped cargo at this time. View from here is that some of it may have burst. Did the best we could, over.”
“Thank you, K862. Go home, over.”
“Understood, sir. Hope it works out for you. K862 out.”
Gaunt handed the vox mic back to Beltayn. “So… all we have to do now is find that blasted courtyard,” he said.
VII
“I’m a little busy right now,” said Beltayn. “What was it you wanted?”
Beltayn had been on his way out of the base chamber to work on charts in Gaunt’s office when Dalin had stopped him. Dalin waved his hand. “Nothing, adj. Just wanted to pick your brains.”
“Because?”
“Captain Meryn has appointed me as his adjutant and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, exactly. I thought I could ask you for advice.”
Beltayn shook his head. “Meryn made you his adjutant? You poor bastard. What happened to Fargher?”
“He died,” said Dalin.
“Oh, yeah. Right. I heard that.” Beltayn looked Dalin up and down, thoughtfully. “Can I ask you something, Dalin?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think Meryn asked you to do this because of who you are?”
“Are you kidding? I think it’s safe to assume that was uppermost in his mind.”