117
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.
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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.
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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 lasshots
flickered in all directions. Kautas held Marquall’s pistol out before him, firing over and over
again.
120
FATE’S WHEEL
THEDA
Imperial year 773.M41, day 264 - day 266
121
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-onfighter
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.”
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“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 clearthinking
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.
“Nothing, Flight.”
“Hang on, Darrow,” Scalter said. “While you’re here.” He turned back to his station, snapped off
a few commands over the air, then scribed some details on a slate. “Eads will need this. I was going
