Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

SEVEN

Venerit Infernum

‘Control, this is Crixus One, we are in position two hundred and sixty kilometres from high orbit, staggered formation, augur ranging now.’

‘Acknowledged, Crixus One. Good hunting.’

The sixteen spacecraft of the wing extended across some thirty kilometres of empty space. Behind them Ras Hanem loomed, a glowing ochre ball. In front of them were ten billion stars, and the darkness of the void.

Jon Kadare flipped a series of switches in the darkened cockpit. ‘Missiles armed. Gunner, you have fire control. All Furies, follow my lead. We’re moving out, boys.’

One by one the other spacecraft in the wing acknowledged Kadare. Despite their professionalism, he could hear the creep of excitement in their voices. Most had never been in action before. The most experienced had been through a few dogfights with pirates and marauders.

What was approaching them out of the dark was on a whole other level entirely.

‘Navigator, give me an update.’

‘Nothing yet, skipper.’

‘How far out are you scanning, Klaus?’

‘Maximum range. We are all clear.’

Kadare cursed inwardly, and looked at his fuel gauge. Plenty left to drink, but that did not mean he wanted to lead his wing too far out from the planet.

‘All Furies, course one eight five, level out and keep your intervals. Form on me. Navigators, keep sweeping three-sixty. They are out there, lads – our job is to find ‘em.’

The silence of space. Kadare’s breath seemed loud and hoarse in his helmet. Despite his suit, he was sweating, a cold sweat that chilled his flesh.

The sixteen Fury interceptors cruised farther out into the system, their cockpits dimming automatically as the Kargad sun swung from behind Ras Hanem, creeping along the terminator and blasting bright, soundless light across the void. Kadare’s stomach turned over. The Furies had no gravity generators on board, as this was a local mission, and they had loaded up with extra missiles and fuel. He was glad he had not eaten breakfast.

Sixteen years service, and today I feel as nervous as a recruit, he thought angrily. But as he spoke on the vox again his voice was as calm as if he were on a training run.

‘Third Squadron, ease out to port thirty kilometres. Let’s widen the net a little.’

‘Acknowledged.’ At once, four of the interceptors wheeled off to Kadare’s left, opening out the formation.

‘Stay on augur, Brenner. Keep your ships together.’

‘Aye, skipper.’ Philo Brenner was a good man, but a hard charger. No one better to have your tail in a dogfight though.

‘Fury One, this is Six. I have contacts on augur.’ A swallow, audible on vox, and then: ‘One, I have multiple contacts, bearing one seven two, speed – they’re speeding up, Fury One. I have formations closing, closing fast!’

‘Where the hell did they come from?’ someone sputtered over the vox.

‘Voice discipline, Crixus Wing,’ Kadare said sternly, though his own heart was hammering, and he could feel the grip of the pressure suit as it encased his torso, keeping the blood running to his brain.

‘Bear to starboard ten degrees. First Squadron, close in.’

‘I have them, skipper.’ This was his own navigator, Klaus Feydan. They had crewed together for ten years, but Kadare had never yet heard that precise tremor in the veteran’s voice.

‘Seven, eight… no, nine squadrons closing at full speed.’

‘What are they, Klaus – can you make them out?’

‘Swiftdeath fighters, skip, diamond pattern. They’re coming head on.’

‘Head on is fine with me,’ Kadare said calmly. ‘Crixus Wing, squadron teams. Break on my mark. Wait for the command.’

Still nothing to be seen out of the cockpit but the peaceful star-spattered dark of space.

Kadare’s gunner spoke up from his bubble in the nose of the Fury. ‘Missile range in eleven seconds, skip.’

‘Lock on when you can, Mikel.’ He flipped two red lights at his right fist and grasped the yoke more firmly.

‘Lascannons powered up,’ the gunner said.

There, out on the very edge of sight, a tiny silver glint as something caught the light of the Kargad star. It was like catching sight of a fish gleam in deep water.

‘I have multiple missile launches on my twelve,’ someone said.

Sure enough, Kadare could see the minute yellow blooms of flame that sparked out and then died in the chill vacuum dozens of kilometres ahead.

‘Crixus Wing, break, break, break,’ Kadare said, and then yanked back on the yoke while shoving the throttle-levers forward.

The formation exploded as the sixteen spacecraft, each forty metres long, burst into a starlike pattern. Kadare felt the G-force blackening the edges of his sight, the suit squeezing on the blood vessels of his legs to compensate.

‘Klaus, countermeasures,’ he said, and there was a series of bright flashes as the Fury launched a ripple of heat-drones to misguide the oncoming missiles.

‘I have a lock – I have three locks,’ the navigator cried.

Kadare threw the Fury around in the void as though it were a scrap of paper caught in a gale. His heart hammered in his chest. Something bright and soundless erupted close by and the ship shuddered. He heard the clank and rattle of shrapnel on the hull.

‘Missiles away,’ the gunner said, hoarse as a crow.

There were screams on the vox, each lasting only an instant. More bright momentary explosions all around them. And then the red lances of lascannon fire.

There was no up or down. Kadare peered one second at the flickering screens in the cockpit, and then out at the pyrotechnics beyond. Something streaked across his path and he depressed the trigger-switch on the yoke. Spears of las-fire carved an arc in the blackness as he threw the ship on its side, spiralling and firing, the energy bolts winding in a beautiful, deadly pattern.

An explosion, and a rattle of what sounded like hail on the plaspex of the cockpit.

‘Second salvo gone,’ the gunner intoned.

The vox was braying with the voices of the Fury pilots, men screaming, some calmly relaying target information. For three hundred kilometres, the void was lit up with afterburners and missile-streaks, and it bloomed with the transitory yellow globes of fire that meant the death of a ship. Kadare caught his breath – he had forgotten to breathe for the last spiralling dive – and halted the mad spinning of his craft.

‘Gunner, report.’

‘All missiles gone, skip. I reckon five hits, but I can’t be sure.’

‘Take over the lascannons, Mikel. Klaus, give me a situation report.’

His navigator was a disembodied voice that sounded as though it were kilometres away, though Klaus sat directly behind him in the long, narrow crewspace of the Fury.

‘Give me a second,’ he muttered.

‘Talk to me, Klaus.’

‘Acknowledged. Skipper, looks like… looks like we’ve lost half the wing. Brennan is gone, and Marstann. Third Squadron has been destroyed. Skipper, we have seven ships left.’

Eleven crews gone – over thirty men that Kadare had known and lived with for years – all in the space of forty seconds.

The navigator spoke up again. ‘Skip, they’re coming round for a second run at us. I count… Emperor’s blood, I count fourteen squadrons, and there is heavy metal behind them. Cruisers, I think.’

A moment, hanging there in the silent blankness of space, when Kadare was utterly at a loss. He had never in his life before confronted the finality of utter defeat. Strangely, the prospect calmed him. He thumbed the air-to-ground vox button.

‘Control, this is Crixus One.’

‘Control, send, over.’

‘Control, have sustained over fifty per cent casualties. Enemy has not been seriously damaged, and is approaching in overwhelming numbers. I propose to attack with my remaining ships. This is Crixus One, signing off.’

He turned off the vox before the reply came. He did not want to hear it.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said on the wing-vox, ‘it is our honour today to fight and die for our home world, and for the Imperium of Man. Crixus One will engage the enemy more closely, and there will be no retreat. All ships, try and get through the fighter screen and attack the cruisers beyond. Good hunting, brothers.’

A pause, and the vox was silent. Then the gunner spoke up on the ship-frequency. ‘Skip, we have nothing left that will hurt a cruiser.’

‘We have ourselves, Mikel. We’ll ram them.’

One word came back. ‘Acknowledged.’

Kadare slammed forward the throttle-levers and was thrown back in his restraints as the Fury leapt under him. The roar of the engines could not be heard, but it made the entire hull of the ship shake and shudder.

He took the Fury in a high, beautiful arc that snaked above the incoming wave of enemy fighters, and heard the sizzle and crash as las-beams streaked along the hull. The navigator blew the last of the countermeasures, and as Kadare brought the ship round again, swooping like a falcon of Old Earth, he saw below him the clustered formation of the main enemy line of battle. Light cruisers and clouds of interceptors and gunships, twinkling like a new constellation below him.

The bulkheads groaned, but the faithful ship held together. A barrage of plasma and laser fire came up to meet them. Jon Kadare uttered a wordless battle-cry as he slammed down the yoke and took his ship streaking into the midst of the enemy formation like a burning comet. He heard his navigator scream behind him as the rear of the ship was shot away, and the world wheeled with inhuman speed as the Fury spun out of control, a burning star, a falling meteor.

His vision went white for a glorious, blinding instant, and then there was only darkness.

Far below, in the confining heat of the bunker on Ras Hanem, a silence fell, broken only by the crackle of static from the vox-monitors. General Dietrich, Commissar Von Arnim and Marshal Veigh stood as the meaningless blue flicker of the screens before them went on and on, blank and empty. There were over a hundred men in the control room, and not one of them uttered a word for what seemed an unbearable length of time.

It was Von Arnim who ended it. He doffed his peaked cap and bowed his head a moment. ‘Thus do brave men die,’ he said in a low voice.

Dietrich cleared his throat. He leaned on the back of the air-controller’s chair in front of him and stared intently at the screen.

‘Contact the orbital batteries. What is the time to intercept?’

‘I… sir, I–’ The young soldier’s hand flew over the keys of his console.

‘Calm down, son. This is just the beginning. Time to intercept.’

‘Sir, on their current course and speed, the enemy will be in range of Battery Chrosos in eleven minutes.’

‘Let them know, if they don’t already.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘We have one more wing, en route from the far side of the planet as we speak,’ Marshal Veigh said stiffly.

‘Call them back. No point sending out more to die like that. We’ll save them for the landings.’

Veigh nodded. He wiped sweat from his face.

‘They’re coming straight for Askai,’ Von Arnim said, replacing his cap.

‘It would seem so, Ismail. They mean to strike at the heart of the defence straight away. Alert the anti-air defences. There will be drop-troops arriving soon. We’ll hammer them as they land.’

Dietrich turned to Marshal Veigh. ‘I must go to my regiment.’

‘You must?’ Veigh seemed alarmed by the prospect. ‘General, surely you can command from here. It would be safer.’

‘My place is with my men. My Baneblade is fully equipped with vox transmitters on all frequencies.’

‘What can tanks do in the midst of a city?’ Veigh said, raising one hand.

It was Von Arnim who snapped back at him. ‘More than you know, marshal. Gather your thoughts, and improve your attitude. This thing has only just begun.’

The marshal coloured, and seemed to grow taller, the stoop leaving his gaunt frame.

‘You will not find me wanting in resolution, commissar.’

‘I know we won’t,’ Dietrich said, taking Veigh’s hand in an iron grip and forestalling Von Arnim’s retort. ‘Ismail, time we were on our way.’

The sirens were wailing across the city as the speeder swooped low over the packed streets, and crammed masses of people were pulsing this way and that as thick as fish in shoal. Barricades had been set up at all the major intersections and there were sandbagged redoubts on every corner, manned by nervous reservists with lasguns and not much else.

On the rooftops of the tallest hives and warehouses, multi-laser batteries poked their barrels at the yellow sky, and lines of vehicles sat in massive jams. First there had been an influx of refugees, then panic had gone the other way and millions had decamped to the countryside. They were unsure if they wanted to go or stay, but it was of no matter, because the adamantium gates of Askai had been closed.

Whoever was in the city now would remain within it, for good or ill.

‘We should have sent them down into the mines,’ Von Arnim said, looking down at the crowds below. There were half a million in Sol Square alone, all praying at a massive open-air service which invoked the aid of the Emperor and his legions.

‘Can you imagine the panic if a single Chaos warband got down there, five kilometres deep with every passageway and shaft jammed with civilians?’ Dietrich asked. ‘No. Better they die up here in the light.’

‘I was not thinking of them, Pavul, but of us. Our tanks are little more than immobile pill-boxes in this mob. It is no place for armour.’

‘Agreed, but there it is – we must make the best of it. You take the 387th out of Askai and it’s like taking out the spine of the defence.’

Von Arnim was scowling, his face as lined as a walnut. ‘Wait until the first shells come howling down from orbit.’

‘I’m hoping they won’t. I’m hoping they want the manufactoria intact. It’s why they desire this world in the first place. We’ll bog them down in the streets and make them bleed, Ismail.’

‘By the Throne, we will,’ the commissar replied, and his face lightened somewhat.

Dietrich had set up the headquarters of the 387th Armoured in the Armaments District. Outside the citadel, the buildings here were the most easily defended in the city. They had been built by Imperial engineers back when the first deep mines had been sunk upon the planet, and they had been built to last. Massive cyclopean blocks of stone, each the size of a hab, were layered in lines and permacreted into a single, fused mass. These walls reared up some fifty metres, and enclosed a bewildering layout of buildings and marshalling yards, all built in the same extravagant manner. Even the roofs were of bonded stone, and Dietrich reckoned some of them could withstand a direct hit from a Basilisk shell.

The Armaments District had its own water supplies, power generators and comms lines, and was thus a self-contained enclave within the city, even as the citadel itself was. More than that, in the district, the factories were still running, and half a million workers continued to toil at the assembly lines, turning out munitions and other armaments in vast quantities. This was the only place on the planet where Dietrich could hope to have his vehicles repaired and his magazines restocked in short order. It was also the entryway for the subterranean routes which led to the mines.

The citadel might tower over the city, and look both awe-inspiring and threatening, but the squat, brutally strong warehouses of the manufactoria were the key objective on the entire planet, and Dietrich’s men had laboured for days to make them impregnable, aided by a full division of the Hanemite guard which Veigh had stationed there, and thirty thousand civilian volunteers, all of whom were now armed from the factoria production lines.

The walls of Askai, tall and imposing though they might be, were over two hundred kilometres long. Not with a hundred thousand men could Dietrich have defended them. They had therefore been left to a skeleton defence force of militia and another Hanemite division – the governor had insisted.

No, it was inside the walls of Askai that the real bloodletting would take place.

‘I hope Cypra Mundi reacts quickly for once,’ Dietrich said as the transport came in to land in a cloud of yellow dust. ‘Otherwise…’ He let it lie. Ismail knew as well as he what it meant. The commissar met his eyes and simply nodded.

‘It is for this that we are soldiers, Pavul.’

Dietrich nodded. ‘By His Word.’

The rear hatches of the Baneblade were open and its massive engines were idling as Dietrich and Von Arnim strolled through the knot of men and vehicles in the shadow of the tall Departmento Munitorum building. This structure was an austere, utilitarian example of Imperial architecture, the likes of which could be seen on a hundred thousand other worlds, but there was a certain majesty in its brutal lines, all the same.

The rockcrete trembled under their feet with the thrum of the huge Baneblade’s Mars-Pattern engines, and it snorted clouds of smoke into the wind-blown dust, thickening the hot atmosphere even further.

The city sirens wailed as though they would never stop.

Dietrich’s personal command squad was there, and they snapped to attention as the general approached. Nothing more than four lowly troopers, they were nevertheless the most decorated men in the regiment, and were assigned to protect their commanding officer with no thought for their own lives. Instead of the faded green fatigues that the other troopers of the 387th wore, the command squad wore black and green disruptive pattern camouflage, and they had painted the many coloured stripes of their combat decorations onto their breastplates. Dietrich nodded at them, and they stared back into space with the impassive confidence of old soldiers.

Behind them and the muttering Baneblade, three scout Sentinels stood like bipedal monsters in the haze, their hatches all open to combat the heat. And behind those were a trio of squat Chimeras, with a platoon of specialist troopers hurriedly lining up into files at the approach of the general. Younger these, but no less professional in their turnout.

These vehicles and men constituted the command squadron of the regiment.

Dietrich’s adjutant, Captain Lars Dyson, stepped forward with a swift salute and offered the general a strip of plasment.

‘Status report on all companies, sir.’

‘What?’ Dietrich grimaced. ‘I can’t hear myself think with these damn sirens!’

‘All is in order, sir, but we have–’

‘What?’

‘We have–’

And the sirens stopped.

Even with the Baneblade engine running nearby, it suddenly seemed eerily quiet. Across the city, a hush had fallen, and crowds on the streets grew still, everyone looking up at the dust-choked sky as if they expected that very moment to see the clouds part and the enemy begin its attack.

‘Did you see that?’ one of Dietrich’s troopers exclaimed, startled.

A bright flash, like far-off lightning, high up in the wind-driven dust-storm which boiled above the city.

‘Silence in the ranks!’ Commissar Von Arnim barked at once. But he, too, was looking skywards.

More flashes, not brief enough to be lightning. And there was no thunder to accompany them.

‘The orbital batteries have gone into action,’ Dietrich said. ‘Captain Dyson – give me a quick précis if you will.’

‘Yes, sir. All companies are reported fully fuelled and armed, except for Fifth, which is still working on those two Chimeras. The Hydras have been put in place at the north and west gates–’

‘Camouflaged?’

‘Prefab sheds have been built around them, sir – they are completely hidden.’

‘Very good. What else?’

‘A Hanemite infantry battalion has been emplaced with each of our armoured companies.’

‘How are we doing with heavy weapons for these fellows?’

‘Not good, sir. We have lascannons and heavy plasmas or bolters for one company in four.’

Dietrich nodded grimly. There were more flashes overhead, which he ignored. He could hear the crowds again now, a low, rushing sound, like that of the sea at night.

‘All right, Lars, stand-to the regiment. All troopers to their vehicles. Vox discipline to be enforced from here on in. I will be in the command vehicle. All comms traffic to be routed through my station.’

Dyson saluted, his gauntlet slapping against his helmet.

When did captains become so damned young, Dietrich found himself wondering. Then he shook his head as though to clear it, and strode forward into the gaping hatchway at the rear of the Baneblade. Von Arnim and the four troopers of his bodyguard followed. They stood and looked out as the hatch hydraulics whined and the massive ramp began to close. A Sentinel strode past, looking like some prehistoric predator in the dust.

Then the ramp clanged shut, and they were in the belly of the great tank. A further, inner door, and Dietrich found himself in the tightly packed command compartment. He slapped dust off his uniform and sat down on a badly worn metal stool which sprouted out of the steel floor like a mushroom. Four vox technicians were seated at their screens muttering into headsets, and in the corner was the lizard-like presence of the Baneblade’s enginseer, his mechadendrite arms neatly folded away, his eyes a dull scarlet glow. He gave no acknowledgement of the general’s presence, but one of his extra appendages was plugged into the bulkhead at his side, monitoring the machine-spirit of the huge armoured vehicle whose needs he served.

A Baneblade had a crew of ten, but these were all forward in the fighting compartment. This model had been rejigged to house extra vox arrays, and a high-gain antenna had been embedded in the turret. From here, Dietrich meant to monitor and control as much of the coming battle as he could. He did not relish the prospect. It was roasting hot in the cramped compartment, and it stank of oil and sweat. When he wiped his hand across his face it came away gritty with saffron-coloured dust. Everyone else’s faces were streaked with it.

‘Give me a war on a cold planet, any day,’ he said to Von Arnim, grimacing.

‘Message from the marshal, sir,’ one of the signallers said.

‘Punch it through.’

Marshal Veigh’s voice came over the vox, crackling slightly.

‘General Dietrich?’

‘Here, marshal. What news?’

‘The enemy fleet is in high orbit exchanging fire with our orbital batteries as we speak. Orbital defences have been degraded by some forty per cent. We estimate their total destruction in a matter of hours.’

‘Any word on enemy casualties?’

‘We have reports that several of their frigates are dead in the air, and they have lost heavily in fighters.’

‘What about numbers? How many of them are there, marshal?’

A pause, static crackling in the hushed compartment. The engines rumbled mindlessly.

‘Best estimate is at least a dozen cruisers and frigates and one large assault vessel, an adapted transport ship of some kind.’

‘Drop pods?’

‘It seems to be configured for them, yes.’

‘Damn.’ Drop pods were far less vulnerable to anti-air fire than transports, and they could be lobbed almost anywhere.

‘Well, we were right not to try and hold the walls,’ Von Arnim said, his dust-striped face like some malevolent puppet’s mask.

‘Sir–’ this was one of the signallers. ‘We have incoming contacts at forty thousand metres, descending fast.’

‘Excuse me, marshal – trajectory?’

‘They should land within the circuit of the city walls, general.’

‘Signal to all companies, targets approaching. All anti-air to stand by. Marshal, I will have to talk to you later.’

‘Good hunting,’ Veigh’s voice said. And then the vox went dead.

There was noise now, to accompany the soundless flashes in the sky. The Guardsmen on the rooftops of the city looked up at the crack and thunder of sonic booms overhead, and soon they could see black shapes descending in gaps between the dust clouds. The wind began to drop even as they watched, and there were blue patches torn in the yellow curtain above the world. In these swathes of clear air silver shapes darted, towing bright contrails.

Augur-guided anti-aircraft lasers began to open fire, and all over the city bright lances of red and white light jabbed up at the sky, painful to look upon in their intensity. There was the staccato booming of older, shell-firing guns also, and tracer in streams and arcs.

Above Askai, a light show of immense proportions erupted, and in the midst of it the black shapes plummeted down with the red fire of afterburners slowing their fall.

The first drop pods fell on the open landing pads of the city’s spaceport, slamming to earth in fountains of sand and earth and pulverised rockcrete.

Even as they impacted, they were brought under a torrent of lasgun fire from the Hanemite defenders. Two full regiments manned the spaceport defences, while above it the great guns of the citadel began to boom out also, their concussion creating vast, tumbling smoke-rings in the settling dust.

A dozen drop pods were blown to shrapnel before their ramps even opened.

But more followed.

All over the city the clumsy craft fell to earth, some landing upright, others blasted on their side, yet more detonating in the air high above, their contents tumbling out like seeds from a pod.

And down with them swooped squadrons and wings of angular fighters and ground-support craft, spewing fire. They were painted in black and scarlet and wasp-yellow, and they strafed the crowds who were still milling in the streets of Askai, blowing hundreds of people to fragments of steaming meat with every pass.

Thousands more suffocated in the press of humanity as the mobs tried to get under cover, to run away, to seek something approaching safety. In Sol Square four drop pods landed, and as the ramps came down the crowds recoiled from them as one would from an open flame.

And out of the drop pods poured creatures from a nightmare.