Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

EIGHT

Diebus Duodecimus

Rajek sighted down the barrel of his lasgun. He still could not quite believe what was in his sights.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Easy – wait until I open up.’

The rest of his squad lay on the jagged rubble, their uniforms all long since abraded to rags and coated with the mustard-coloured dust of Askai’s ruins.

‘Aim for the eyes.’ We miss, and we’re all dead, he thought.

His target was giving orders. Even from here, two hundred metres away, he could hear the harsh enhanced voice. Low Gothic, but with archaisms all through it. No one on Ras Hanem had spoken such a dialect in centuries.

His target was better than two metres tall, and it was difficult to keep one’s eyes upon it, because of the sheer terror it engendered.

A man perhaps. Or once it had been born a man. Now it was a towering monstrosity, an armoured giant which had encased itself in the dessicated flesh and splintered bones of its vanquished foes. Black, red and garish yellow paint had been slashed across it, and it was bedecked with spikes and chains. Symbols that made Rajek’s flesh crawl were etched upon the armour, most mercifully half hidden by the charnel-house embellishments.

But the face. It was that which was most unsettling. Black eyes, without cornea or pupil, eyes like holes opening onto a depthless abyss. And the white flesh of the face in which they were embedded was scarred and gouged and painted even as the armour was. The mouth was a bloody gash full of splintered fangs which clashed as the creature spoke, slicing its own lips and spattering dark blood like spittle.

It hurt to look upon it. But Rajek’s aim was steady. He had seen worse things in the last fortnight.

He drew a breath, uttering a silent prayer, and squeezed the lasgun’s trigger with infinite gentleness.

Out streaked the bolt of hot energy. It took his target in the left temple. Rajek saw the burned meat of the face flayed open in a black flower.

His comrades opened up a split second later, six more las-bolts lancing out. Two were on target, striking the enemy in the face and searing the meat from the skull. But the giant was already in movement, uttering a terrible gargled roar, the cooked tongue burned black in the fang-maw of its mouth. It pointed, and raised its gobbet-choked chainsword, then fell to its knees.

The air was full of fire, and all about them the mounded rubble erupted as bolter-rounds struck home in fountains of earth and broken stone.

Rajek rolled away. One of his men was blown clear in half and his torso and legs tumbled in different directions like two halves of a discarded doll. Another took a round through the shoulder, his body-armour broken open like baked clay as the adamantium-tipped bullet ripped off his arm.

The rest ran, weaving and ducking, stumbling.

The wounded were left behind.

After the things they had all seen in the first week, they knew better than to be captured while still breathing.

In the second week, orders had come down from the High Command for all immobile wounded to kill themselves, and personal frags had been issued to every man, not to be used until that end was near.

Do not let them take you alive.

The things the enemy did to human flesh were an abomination too great to be contemplated by the sane.

Behind the fleeing troopers a series of massive figures mounted the rubble that had shielded the ambush, and Rajek heard laughter, horribly distinct, crawling like maggots across his brain. He unclipped a grenade from his belt, thumbed the ring, and tossed it over his shoulder as he ran, hardly aware of what he was doing.

One day soon it will be the last one. I will eat fire like the others have before me.

Two more seconds, somehow still running through the storm of bolter rounds, and he dived into a shell-hole, his lasgun coming up to split his lip open as he fell. The grenade went off with a dull crump, and a shower of metallic rattles. The horrible laughter stopped.

He wiped his lip, not knowing that he was shouting wordlessly at the top of his lungs, and then fired another series of bright bursts into the cloud of dust behind him. Then he looked round, breath heaving. Two of the others were still with him, wide-eyed, bloody-faced, but mobile.

‘Come on,’ was all he could say, his throat as dry and sore as if he had been swallowing gravel.

They picked themselves up and ran again.

The infantry were streaming back, as had been planned. But there were so few of them. Commissar Van Arnim leaned on the rim of the hatch and bared his teeth in a moment of helpless anger. Under him, the Leman Russ vibrated like some monstrous beast on a leash. The heat was baking him in his leather coat, his eyes stinging with sweat, but he scarcely felt it. He raised the vox-caster to his thin-lipped mouth.

‘Fifth, stand by for my word.’

He looked to left and right. In the half-ruined buildings and rubbled mounds a line of tanks was waiting, so well hidden that even he could not see them all. They had been backed into broken houses, covered with cameleoline tarps and piled high with shovelled rubbish to keep them from the attention of the fighter-bombers. Behind them, what was left of a full battalion of the Hanemite Guard was in support, crouched in the ruins.

One of the retreating troopers to his front stopped at Von Arnim’s tank, and thumped it with his fist. ‘They’re coming, sir – no vehicles. Heavy infantry, at least a company!’

‘Good work, Sergeant Rajek,’ Von Arnim said. ‘Get to the rear and regroup. Your men will be in reserve.’

Rajek, panting, looked round at the ragged remnants that were running through the line of camouflaged tanks. No more than fifteen or twenty men out of the company that had gone forward an hour ago.

‘Yes, sir.’ He moved off again.

Von Arnim ducked down into the hatch, blinking at the semi-darkness inside the tank. It was hot and airless as an oven inside, but this was no time to open the hatches for a breeze. He pinched the sweat from the end of his nose and spoke to the signals trooper whose face was bathed in blue light.

‘Erford, anything on the auspex?’

‘A few stragglers of our own, sir – beyond that, nothing. Shall I switch to augur for a longer-range scan?’

‘No, it might spook them. Just let me know when they’re at the limit of auspex.’

‘Acknowledged, commissar.’

Von Arnim stood up in the hatch again. It was a stupidly exposed position – the enemy had snipers who liked nothing more than to pick off careless officers – but he needed to be able to see what was going on.

You break your own rules when it suits you, he chided himself.

‘Sir, here they come!’ Erford yelled from within the Russ. ‘Fifty metres, dead ahead. I have eighty signatures.’

Something like relief swept over Von Arnim. He held the vox-caster to his mouth. ‘All callsigns, watch and shoot, watch and shoot.’

He reached for the hatch handle and with a grunt pulled the heavy slab of metal up to a right angle, peering over the top. Up and down the line, the tanks of Fifth Company had edged into gear, the big engines beginning to bellow. Rubble shifted and trickled as the main guns started to traverse in search of targets and the sponson-mounted heavy bolters nosed from under their tarps, like blind snakes seeking prey.

And here they came.

As always, his first reaction was disgust, quickly followed by rage. These creatures did not belong on this planet, in this system, or in this universe. To call them abominations was a vast understatement. They were simply wrong. They should not exist, and their presence defiled the very laws and norms of life. They were creatures of the warp, and must be eradicated utterly.

But they were nothing if not formidable. Some of these degenerates had once been Adeptus Astartes, the greatest warriors the galaxy had ever seen, and though their degradation had blunted their skills somewhat, these Chaos Space Marines were more than a match for his troopers.

Four score of them, or more, were now advancing in extended line towards him over the broken rubble of the city.

A company of the Damned. Let us see how they like to dance with heavy metal, Von Arnim thought. And he smiled. Except it was not a smile. It was the bare-toothed rictus of an animal.

‘All callsigns, open fire!’

The tank rocked under him, and he heard no noise as the main gun went off, only an immense… absence. He lowered himself into the turret and clanged shut the hatch after him, taking his seat in the commander’s cupola. This was ringed with armoured viewports, and through the green-tinged plexi-glass, Von Arnim watched as the opening salvo struck home.

The enemy disappeared in a series of eruptions. He saw several of the huge armoured warriors blown high in the air. Others were dismembered, body parts torn free and scattered. A boiling storm of dust rose up twenty, thirty metres into the air.

As their main armaments reloaded, the tanks opened up with heavy bolters, and the big rounds began to tear up the smoke and dust cloud ahead, reams of tracer disappearing into the murk. The company of Leman Russes chewed up the killing ground until it seemed nothing could survive out there.

But the fire was being returned already. The enemy recovered with superhuman swiftness. The tracers were arcing in both directions now, and he saw the bright fevered lance of a lascannon lick out towards his tanks.

Von Arnim yawned deliberately, and his hearing began to pop back. His eardrums were synthetic implants, replaced long ago, but even they could be stunned now and again.

He spoke into the caster, relishing the words.

‘Fifth Company, tanks, advance!’

The line of massive battle tanks lurched into motion, demolishing entire habs as they slammed forward. He was thrown from side to side in his seat as the Russ lurched and tilted on the uneven ground, grinding rockcrete to powder under the heavy tracks.

‘Infantry, follow up.’

The Hanemites would be on their feet, moving in the wake of the steel behemoths, protecting them from close-quarter attack.

Emperor’s blood, but it was good to be advancing again at last, after all the retreats of the last days, all the disasters.

‘Three Hundred and Seventy-Eighth,’ he bellowed over the net, ‘let us show them the way back to hell!’

He indulged himself with a moment of glaring out of the viewports in unbridled exultation. He saw a champion of the Great Enemy standing up in front of his own vehicle, firing a heavy bolter at point-blank range. Then the Russ rode him down.

Von Arnim closed his eyes and said a swift prayer of thanks. It was for moments like this that he had lived his life, had donned the cap of a commissar and wore the aquila of the Imperium.

‘Blessed be He who teaches my fingers to fight, and my hands to make war,’ he muttered. And then, louder: ‘Erford, get me Zero on the vox.’

‘Flipping channels now, sir.’

‘Zero, this is Granite One. Shift fire, over.’

Now the big guns would join the show.

The crump of artillery had become so commonplace that Dietrich no longer registered it. Only the high swooping whine of incoming airstrikes made him crouch now.

He clicked the magnification wheel on the scopes in minute increments, sweeping the tortured wasteland to the north. Pillars of smoke rose everywhere, and two of the tallest hive-scrapers in Askai were burning steadily, blackened towers that hid all behind them in an impenetrable shroud.

He cursed, not blinking, trying to penetrate the reek and fog of the shattered city. Lines of lasgun fire twinkled here and there, and now and again there was the momentary flash of plasma. From the south, the Basilisks sent showers of shells out into what had until recently been teeming city streets, the heavy ordnance booming overhead in high arcs to come down in rows of smoke and flame. The batteries fired day and night, carpeting the enemy lines with high explosive. The barrels of the guns had to be replaced every few days, their rifling worn smooth by the relentless fire.

But in many places it was all that was holding them back, now: that unceasing barrage.

‘Any word from Commissar Von Arnim?’ he asked.

‘Not since he gave the order at the start-line, sir,’ Captain Dyson said. Dietrich’s adjutant had aged ten years in the last twelve days, but at least he had managed to have that face-wound sewn up. The stitches crawled across his once-handsome features like a column of dead insects, skewing his nose to one side.

‘That was over an hour ago. The barrage will shift soon.’ Dietrich wiped dust off his wrist chrono, a stab of anxiety striking through him. Not Ismail, surely – he was indestructible.

‘Shall I tell the Basilisks to hold fire, sir?’

‘No – no, they’d be all over our forward positions in a heartbeat. Notify the heavy company. Tell them to be ready to move out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He had four Baneblades left out of the nine he had started with. The armoured monsters had spearheaded nearly every attack, and their crews were exhausted. They were supposed to be out of the line today.

Well, they could sleep when they were dead.

The little cluster of men crouched low as an enemy fighter soared past them, spattering the trench lines with bolter fire. Up from the ruined buildings a hail of las-bolts arced up to meet it, including the tearing sizzle of a multi-barrelled Hydra. The fighter seemed to bulge with flame; it burst out of the swept-wing craft in globes and spears. The machine tumbled awkwardly through the air, end over end, and came down with a massive explosion not four hundred metres away. Dietrich wiped airborne grit out of his eyes and from his lips.

‘Nicely done, lads,’ he whispered, his words cracked by thirst.

A crackle of electronic static made him go to one knee at once and reach out a hand. The vox-bearer behind him handed him the receiver.

‘This is Zero, say again, over.’

Again, the mush of static, but there were words in it; he could swear to it.

Finally it came through, the encryption distorting the sound. But he knew that voice.

‘–attack successful, but casualties heavy. Enemy forming up for counterattack. Artillery support requested, grid…’ It faded out, then came back as clearly as if Ismail were standing next to him.

‘Grid 483785, Granite One.’

‘Your last acknowledged. Wait out,’ Dietrich snapped, eyes bright in their red-rimmed sockets. ‘Lars, you get that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Pass it along to the Basilisks. Priority mission.’

‘Priority, aye, sir.’

Dietrich tossed the headpiece back to the vox-bearer, a fierce grin lighting up his face. ‘I knew he would do it. Ismail has the Emperor’s own luck.’

‘Fire mission inbound,’ Lars Dyson said beside him. ‘It’ll be close, sir.’

‘It has to be. They have each other by the belt-buckle down there.’

The roar of artillery rounds, so close over their heads Dietrich could feel the air displaced by them. Earthshaker shells were an awesome spectacle to behold.

He uttered a quick, silent prayer that his commissar had got the coordinates right. Otherwise what was left of his Fifth Company would be obliterated along with the enemy they were fighting, and he could not afford to lose an entire armoured company. Not another one.

He listened in on the net, waiting for the results of the artillery strike. The counterattack had been well planned, but that meant nothing in the fuming chaos of war. No plan survived first contact with the enemy.

Fifteen Leman Russes and a full battalion of the Hanemites. He had thrown over a thousand men into the mix down there, chancing an attack where he thought the enemy was weakest. If successful, then the way to the spaceport itself would be open, and it would be the first gain they had made in days.

Has it only been twelve days, he wondered? Strange, how combat played tricks with one’s perception of time. Minutes and hours dragged out in pain and fear and nervous apprehension, until it seemed impossible to envisage the passage of a single day. It might as well be a decade. The mind and body became so caught up in every moment, every gesture, word, sensation, that seconds passed with infinite slowness. And yet in the midst of it, death arrived like lightning.

How many had died in those twelve days? They could not even begin to count the civilian casualties, though it was certain they ran into the millions. The entire blasted, tortured expanse of Askai stank of the dead, tens of thousands buried under the rubble or sealed and suffocated in shelters.

The citadel was crammed shoulder to shoulder with those who had fled the lower districts, while countless thousands more had found means to cross the blast-walls, scaling them by night. Most, however, had fled over the three Koi bridges, into the wasteland before the mountains. The enemy had let them go, for there was nothing out there but heat and sand and thirst.

Millions dead, but in the midst of that great carnage, Dietrich and his men fought on. They still held the Armaments District, and there were still manufactoria working, turning out the munitions and weapons that kept them all alive.

As the front-line casualties had mounted, so they had been forced to take workers off the production lines, arm them with the weapons they had created, and assemble them into untrained companies, to be thrown into the furnace of the war.

Like twigs tossed on a bonfire. It consumed them with incredible speed.

As for his own command, Dietrich had lost half his vehicles and forty per cent of his men. It was five days now since he had been in touch with Riedling or Veigh in the citadel. The enemy had been jamming transmissions constantly, and when they located the source of any vox traffic they invariably sent in a squadron of fighter-bombers to silence it. The Hell-Talons and ageing Doomfires of the enemy dominated the skies.

They had been bombing the citadel non-stop since the beginning of the battle, concentrating on anything which might look like a communications array. The big guns of the fortress had taken a terrible toll on their aircraft and had broken up several major assaults before they had even fully commenced. But even the deep buried magazines of Askai’s citadel were not inexhaustible, and the larger calibre guns were firing less frequently now that they had begun to ration shells. This had enabled the enemy to close the ring tighter about the walls.

The Armaments District had ammunition in plenty, but was cut off from the citadel by three kilometres of killing-ground.

The wide expanse of the spaceport was key. If Dietrich could make it there, then there was a chance he could reconnect their lines. His dwindling armour would be more effective on those landing pads, with clear fields of fire, and the guns of the citadel could support them, keeping the fighter-bombers off their backs.

If he could break through and establish a new line all the way to the citadel, then they would be fighting united, and they would be able to send supplies up to Riedling and Veigh’s forces. There was a chance then that they could hold out. For a while at least.

It meant stretching his own men perilously thin, and asking them to make savage assaults to retake the ground they had lost at the beginning of the fighting, but if they did not do this, then defeat would come quickly.

If the citadel fell, its guns could be turned on any target in the city, and even the case-hardened structures of the manufactoria would be no defence.

The vox crackled again, but Dietrich ignored it. One of the troopers of his bodyguard leaned close, raising his voice to be heard over the artillery.

‘Sir, I see attack aircraft, a full squadron. This location is compromised. We should get back down to the Baneblade.’

Dietrich nodded. ‘Lead the way, Garner.’

‘With respect, sir, you must go first.’

Garner was right, and when that happened there was no arguing with him. Dietrich scuttled across the rooftop with his vox-bearer in tow, while the three remaining bodyguards raised their lasguns and scanned the western sky.

The shriek of labouring afterburners, and then the whistle of old-style dropped munitions. The Doomfires came in a wide arrow, five of them roaring so low that Dietrich could see the black and yellow bars on their cowling.

Garner unceremoniously shoved him down the wrecked stone stairs and the general managed to turn the fall into a roll, his body-armour taking the blows. He was aware of a great concussion that staggered his lungs and pummelled the dust in the lower rooms into ghostly waves.

Then a wall of heat, and the boom of the explosions. His companions tumbled down the stairs much as he had, until they all lay in a heap at the bottom.

‘Keep moving,’ Garner gasped, coughing. ‘They may come round for another pass.’

They scrambled to their feet and made their way out into the street, looking to right and left like pedestrians watching for swift-moving traffic. Then one by one they dashed across the open space, while the heat of the nearby detonations crisped their eyebrows and made their eyes water.

There were screams at the end of the street, not of pain, but triumph. A cloud of dark figures rose up out of the rubble and charged forward, firing lasguns from the hip. They were cadaverous, bald, bright-eyed, and they looked utterly insane.

‘Cultists!’ Dietrich yelled, and drew his laspistol. He felled two before the rest of his men lowered their weapons and swept the street with laser fire.

The cultists shrieked and pelted forward as though utterly mindless of their own survival. The las-bolts knocked them down like black skittles.

Dietrich, filled with a sudden fury, triggered the twin blades in his gauntlet and gutted the last one standing, feeling the thing’s heart beating through his blades as he skewered it. The cultist tried to bite his face, then slumped, teeth still gnashing feebly, and slid off the good Imperial steel to the ground.

‘Infiltrators,’ Garner said, and he kicked the corpse with sudden venom. ‘You should have let me take that last one, general.’

‘You’re not my mother, Garner. Now let’s move before we find some more at our throats.’

They began running again. Dietrich jerked his arm as he ran, flicking the warm blood off his gauntlet-blades before retracting them. It had been a long time since he had killed an enemy with cold steel, and there was a strange, savage joy in it that he had quite forgotten.

‘Sir – sir! General, I have Marshal Veigh on the vox!’ The drawn white face of the signaller was transfigured. For days he had been labouring at the master vox in the stifling confines of the tank, and for days the useless garble of static had been his only reward. But now he held out the receiver to Dietrich as though it were a holy icon, a wide grin on his face.

‘Well done, Prokiev. Let’s hope he has something good to tell us.’ Dietrich set one hand on the boy’s shoulder – for he was just a boy – and felt a moment of apprehension before setting the receiver to his ear.

Around him, all talk in the command compartment of the Baneblade died out for a second, and the signallers stared blindly at their screens and dials.

Dietrich’s adjutant, Lars Dyson, folded his arms and blew air out through pursed lips, relief written all over his stitched face.

‘Mind your work,’ Dietrich said gruffly. But he closed his own eyes for an instant before speaking.

‘Marshal Veigh, this is a long-delayed pleasure.’

‘Indeed, general. I had thought it might be a pleasure indefinitely postponed. Our foes have been rather keen to prevent us from passing the time of day.’ Veigh sounded old, tired, but not yet beaten. His voice seemed to come from a great distance, and in the background was the never-ending din of artillery.

‘Are you aware of the assault we made this morning?’

‘Yes. We watched it from the citadel. It was very well done. My compliments to you and to the commander who led it.’

Dietrich turned to the young signaller. ‘Prokiev, you’re sure this is an encrypted frequency?’

‘Positive, general. It’s not been used before. It’s pure chance the citadel is running it.’

‘Good boy.’ Dietrich rubbed the filth-ingrained furrows of his forehead.

‘Marshal, our forward positions are now on the southern edge of the spaceport, about two kilometres west of the river. I intend to mass my remaining armour there and try to break through the enemy lines to the citadel itself. We will need your utmost support for this operation. Can I count on it?’

‘One moment, general…’ The line was muffled, as though Veigh were holding his hand over the receiver. Dietrich frowned.

‘Our ammunition levels for the heavier ordnance are at a critical level, general. We can support you with the lighter weaponry, but we must retain a reserve for our key batteries.’

Dietrich’s eyes widened. He clenched the receiver as though it were a snake he meant to strangle.

‘Marshal, with respect, if we do not receive support from your heavy batteries, then the operation will become extremely hazardous. I need your anti-air to keep the fighter-bombers from picking off my armour on the landing pads, and I need your heavy metal to break up the inevitable counterattack. Your lighter pieces do not have the necessary heft or range to do that.

‘You must understand, marshal. I have ammunition in plenty here in the Armaments District, and you have the big guns to use it. If I can break through to you, then your ammunition shortages will be a thing of the past.

‘But we must link up if we are to endure until relief arrives.’

There was a long silence, hissing static. Dietrich wondered if the comms link had been broken. He looked questioningly at signaller Prokiev but the boy shook his head.

‘Still connected, sir.’

At last the reply came back. Veigh’s voice was heavy with disgust. ‘General, I am afraid I cannot authorise the support of our heaviest calibre guns for your attack. We simply do not have the munitions to – to waste on an operation which is at best hazardous and at worst, futile.’

Futile?

‘Whose words are those, marshal? They are not your own, I’ll warrant.’

‘I am subject to the orders of the planetary governor, Lord Riedling.’

‘And he’s standing beside you now, isn’t he, marshal?’

‘General, this discussion is at an end.’ A pause. ‘Good luck.’

Then there was a squawk of static as the comms link was severed.

Dietrich sat looking at the silent receiver as though it had bitten him. He handed it back to the signaller, staring at the blank steel wall of the Baneblade’s compartment.

‘He’s given up on us,’ Dyson said, rubbing so hard at his stitched face that it began to bleed again.

‘It’s Riedling,’ Dietrich said. ‘He’s a coward, right through his marrow. He thinks he can hole up in the citadel until the Imperium sends a relief expedition, and be damned to everyone outside. But he’s wrong. The citadel will fall, and it will happen sooner than anyone thinks.’

Dietrich stood up, and strode into the outer compartment. There was more space here, though it was no less stifling. Even through the chemical-proofed ventilation system of the Baneblade, he could still smell the reek of death from outside. He had been a soldier all his life, but he had never yet known so much killing in so short a space of time.

Twelve days.

Perhaps it was all for nothing. There was no telling how long it would take Cypra Mundi to organise a relief force. It could be months.

He stared at the outer ramp as though things were written upon the blank steel.

Dyson joined him. Hesitantly, he said: ‘Sir, Commissar Von Arnim has left a message on the vox, requesting orders.’

Dietrich smiled. Ismail, he thought, you are one constant in a precarious world.

He straightened.

The hell with it. We were going to make the attack anyway. Might as well follow through with the plan.

‘Put me through to him,’ he said.

He punched out the combat blades on his gauntlet. They were still striped with black cultist blood.

I had forgotten what it was like, he thought.

I had forgotten how good it felt.