rectangle five hectares square, suspended over the water by monumental vector engines at the
corners and edges. As they slid up to the quays and dropped their metal ramps, squadrons of armour
rolled onto them. The noise of their thrusters filled the bay.
Marshals directed the boarding armour to their stands, lining them up. An entire regimentstrength
could be swallowed onto one raft.
Humming like monsters, laden VTRPs gusted out into the open sea.
“There’s our ride,” said LeGuin.
Viltry nodded. “Theda. How far, do you think?”
LeGuin consulted his chart slate.
“About three hundred kilometres east. Why?”
“Time I got going,” Viltry said.
LeGuin frowned. “We’ll miss you, Osk.”
“You too. It’s been quite an experience.”
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Viltry shook LeGuin by the hand.
As Viltry got down off the tank, Matredes hugged him, and Emdeen slapped his arm.
“Good luck!” Viltry shouted as the Line of Death began to roll forward.
“And to you!” yelled back LeGuin.
“The Emperor protects!”
LeGuin said something, but the racing engines blotted it out.
Viltry stood on the hillside for a while as the slow column threaded past him and LeGuin’s tank
was out of sight.
Then he ran down the grassy bank towards the coastal highway, and began to flag down the
Munitorum transports speeding east.
Theda MAB South, 16.10
As soon as his skids settled on the handstand, Marquall killed the fans and let the ground take the
fourteen tonnes of serial Nine-Nine “Double Eagle”. He sat for a moment, canopy still locked, his
head resting back against the seat and his eyes closed. They’d just run their third sortie of the day, a
snap call up and into a bomber pack. Brief, bitter fighting had followed. Marquall had nearly been
stung twice, on both occasions, by fighters he hadn’t seen.
Racklae knocked on the window and Marquall opened his eyes. The fitter mimed opening the lid
and Marquall nodded, pulling off his breather and goggles.
The canopy lifted and cool, fumy air blew in across Marquall’s face. It let in the roar and whine
of the field too.
“Everything all right, sir?” Racklae asked.
“Four-A,” Marquall replied as he was helped clear, and had his suit leads unplugged. “I need her
turned around quick. We could go up again before evening.”
“Understood, sir.”
“I think the port lascannon needs cleaning or refitting. I was getting an odd fire-pattern.”
“I’ll see to it sir.”
“Any chance of rockets?”
Racklae shook his head. “Between you and me, sir, munitions are getting pretty low. We’re okay
for hard rounds, but all the rack weapons are going to the Marauders.”
Marquall left the fitters to their work and walked out of the revetment shelter. At the mouth of
the hardstand next door, Van Tull was stripping off his jacket and gloves.
“Nice one,” Marquall said. “I saw you sting that Tormentor.”
“Thanks,” said Van Tull. “I thought the bastard was going to get past me for a moment. Any
luck yourself?”
Marquall shook his head.
“I thought I saw you on a Razor.”
“Yeah, but it slipped out and I lost it.”
“There’s always the next time,” said Van Tull.
Zemmic wandered up to join them. His lucky charms jingled about him on a new chain. “What’s
that about?” he asked, gesturing down the line of hardstands.
A large staff limousine was approaching, pulling to a halt. The driver, a Navy cadet, got out,
went around to the other side, and opened the rear door, saluting. A figure got out.
“That’s the Apostles’ chief, isn’t it?” asked Van Tull.
“Seekan,” said Marquall.
“What the hell does he want?” said Zemmic.
They watched as Seekan crossed to number three stand. Asche was just dismounting from her
Bolt. She saluted Seekan, and was saluted back. Seekan began to speak and handed her something.
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A data-slate, it looked like. Even from a distance, they could see the strange, startled look on
Asche’s face.
“What’s going on?” Zemmic said.
Seekan and Asche exchanged salutes again, then Seekan shook her by the hand and returned to
his car. As it carried him away off the field enclosure, Asche remained where she was, studying the
slate.
Marquall, Zemmic and Van Tull jogged down to her. Blansher had appeared, and Ranfre,
Cordiale and Del Ruth were also approaching.
“Larice?” Zemmic said.
She glanced up. There was such a strange look in her eyes. “Hey, Zem.”
“What’s going on? What did Seekan want?”
“Me,” she said.
“What?”
She looked at them all for a moment. “You’re not going to believe this…” she began.
135
DAY 266
Theda seafront, 06.02
Viltry’s first glimpse of Theda City was from the cab of a Munitorum fleet transport in the small
hours of the night. It was the first time he’d set eyes on it since the morning of the 259th when he’d
taken G for Greta aloft on her final flight. Things had changed.
In the dark, from many kilometres distant, the city itself was invisible because of black-out
regulations, but the shape of it was defined against the sky by the ruddy glow of firestorms
throbbing in its heart.
“Holy Throne…” he’d breathed.
“Told you it was bad,” the driver had said.
Viltry had made the journey along the coast overnight, begging lifts from a series of transport
drivers. There was activity all along the seaboard, part of the frenzy of evacuation. Munitorum
transit fleets were pouring out of Theda and the surrounding towns, laden with materiel and
personnel for the evacuation ports, and then streaming back to depot empty for another run. The vast
night sky was a maelstrom of tracer, flak bursts and burner trails. At Madenta, trying to find a ride to
hitch amongst the chaos of traffic in the town centre, Viltry had been about three hundred metres
from a bomb strike that had destroyed a templum, nine habs and a machine shop. Everywhere he
went, he could hear the drone of the Archenemy’s engines in the sky.
The cargo-10 drove into Theda’s outskirts at first light, stopping at several Munitorum or
Commissariat checkpoints. The streets were deserted, apart from other military traffic. The slowly
rising light, pale and thin, revealed a dusty, smoky world. They passed row after row of bombedplaces,
fire control teams fought with blazing tenements and hab stacks gripped by swirling
infernos. Some streets were closed. Medicae shuttles, bells clattering, rushed by.
Just after five thirty, they reached the Old Town area. Like everywhere else, it had taken a
pasting. Viltry had a clawing, sick feeling in his chest.
“I’m due at the assembly yards in Danzerplatz,” the driver said. “Any good to you?”
“No. Uh, just let me out here.”
The driver pulled the truck up at a street corner.
“Thanks,” Viltry said, climbing down.
“No problem. Good luck rejoining your unit. Shoot some of them bastards down for me.”
“I’ll try.”
The driver nodded, and then pulled the truck away.
Viltry began to walk. His tattered flight jacket still had the emergency compass sewn into the
cuff, so he followed the needle and went north. It took him about thirty minutes to skirt up through
the ruins of the Old Town to the seafront.
The air was cooler here, fresher, despite the cloying smoke that wrapped the whole city. He
heard the strange yet familiar sound of rushing breakers, the clatter of pebbles. He smelled the sea.
How ironic that a smell, so recently new, so alien to his background, should now be so evocative.
He wandered down the broad seafront road for a while, trying to get his bearings. He was sure
he should be able to see the piers. Finally, almost by accident, he realised he was standing by the
familiar entrance arch. There was the chalkboard, propped up against the ironwork gate. “Palace
Refreshments. Table service, sea views.”
136
Beyond the arch, there was nothing, except a tangled mess of black iron and charred wood
sprawled out into the surging tide. The piers were gone, destroyed, all three of them.
I think it’d take a lot to bring the palace down, Beqa Mayer had said.
Oskar Viltry felt his legs go numb and weak. He leaned against the cast iron railing and closed
his weary eyes.
Theda Old Town, 06.30
There’d been a plan. A trip down to the Hydra on Voldney, all of Umbra, and the fitters too, to toast
Asche on her way. Blansher had sent a message, ordering cases of joiliq and the private hire of the
main bar.
But then the snap call had come in at 20.00, and they’d gone aloft into the night, into the
mayhem of darkness and fire. By the time they’d returned, debriefed, showered and been stood
down, Larice Asche had already packed her bags and departed to meet her report time. She’d left a
note.
Good flying, Umbra. See you up there, somewhere. Larice.
There was an empty feeling in the billet. A dark mood, somehow worse than if they’d lost a
comrade in action. “We’re going anyway,” Blansher said.
They’d reached the Hydra at four in the morning, just as the staff were hoping to close, and tried
their level best to rouse a party mood. But it was like a wake. Blansher said a few words about
Asche, and they were good words too, but they’d have sounded better coming from Jagdea. The
crew of Umbra sat around, morose. The fitters, always up for a free drink, got drunk and loud, but
kept themselves to themselves. Van Tull and Cordiale left after an hour. Zemmic, who had been
discarded by Larice Asche as quickly as Marquall, got brutally intoxicated and then violently ill.
Ranfre took pity on him, found a driver with a truck, and took him back to the base.
Which left Marquall, Del Ruth and Blansher.
“Not exactly what I’d planned,” Blansher said. The three of them sat around a table, toying with
shot glasses. On the other side of the bar, Racklae and the fitters were playing drinking games,
roaring out with laughter and good humour. The red-eyed bar staff sat behind the counter, longing
for them all to go home.
“We could join them,” Del Ruth suggested, tipping her head in the direction of the fitters.
“And spoil their fun?” Blansher said. “Pilots need fitters and fitters need pilots, and there is a
bond close to love between them. But socially? No. Different worlds. Different classes. We go over
there, try to join in, we’ll be as welcome as a turd in a foot bath.”
Agguila Del Ruth had been halfway through a sip, and snorted with laughter, choking so hard
Marquall had to slap her on the back.
It was the best laugh they’d had all night.
“Throne save me,” Blansher sighed. “This is so not what I’d planned.”
“Story of my life,” muttered Marquall, pouring out another measure of joiliq for each of them.
“What’s this now?” said Del Ruth. “Self-directed misery too?”
Marquall shrugged. “Do you know, I was top of my class at Hessenville.”
“Weren’t we all?” said Del Ruth, raising her eyebrows at Blansher.
“No, not me,” said Blansher sadly, reaching for his drink. “I was… bottom. Pilot-cadet voted
most likely to wash out. I failed every exercise. Not just failed, mind. Failed dismally. One day, my
instructor took me to one side, led me out to an obs deck overlooking the Scald. He pointed to it. He
said, “Milan, this is your birth-world. Plenty of sky, not very much land. If you can’t fly, boy, what
the frig else do you think you’re going to do? Swim for the Emperor?”
Del Ruth snorted her drink again and started coughing.
“Damn you!” she gagged, wiping her mouth on a napkin. “That’s twice.”
Blansher smiled.
137
“I was top of my class,” Marquall said. “Accelerated program, right at the end of the liberation
war. I mean, I was good. I longed to fly combat. Kill bats. But now I’m in it, in the combat zone… I
screw up. I can’t hit a thing. My birds break down on me. I get people hurt.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Blansher said.
“There’s another way?”
“Well, for a start there’s the matter of two fine kills. Besides that, you’ve saved my life in the
air, and I can’t speak for others. You survived an eject from a slain machine… not many do that.
And there’s that heroic use of rocket drive to break out of a kill-shot. That last thing alone, Vander,
that’s one for the archives. I don’t know of anyone who’s even tried that, let alone come back to talk
about it. Seekan should have come to you, not Larice.”
Marquall managed a smile. “Thanks,” he said.
“I mean it.”
“You’re a very good exec, sir. Just what Jagdea expects. You say the right things and boost
morale.”
“Maybe,” said Blansher. “Personally, I think there’s an up side to everything. You just have to
see it. Say to yourself, is the glass half full or half empty?”
“They’re shot glasses,” said Del Ruth flatly, staring at her own. “They’re either full or empty.
Anything else, and someone isn’t trying.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Blansher, and reached for the bottle.
The three of them left the Hydra at twenty past six in the morning, dim light filling the sky. The
fitters were still carousing. Blansher led them to the nearest Munitorum depot, booked out three
transports and drivers from the pool, and then returned to the Hydra to collect the reluctant ground
crew.
They drove out along the highway. It seemed otherwise deserted. The strip of road was littered
with trash and discarded possessions. Some broken down vehicles sat on the hard shoulder.
Marquall was riding in the back of one of the trucks with Racklae and a group of the ground crew.
“You hear that?” he said suddenly.
Racklae turned and cocked his head, trying to hear above the noise of the truck engine. “Fan
drives. Lots of them.”
“Another raid?” asked one of the men. “Doesn’t sound like bombers,” said Racklae.
“Heavier…”
“Oh shit… look!” Marquall cried, pointing to the southern sky.
Massive, multi-vectored drop-ships were sliding in across skies above the eastern suburbs.
Thousands of dots were showering out of them, like windblown pollen.
Storm troopers, on jump packs.
From the depths of the war-torn city behind them, sirens began to rise into a howl. The mass
invasion had begun.
Theda MAB South, 06.39
The flashes of the detonations were coming so fast the early daylight appeared to be strobing. There
was a gritty, sizzling noise from the continuous bombardment. How could the sky hold up so many
aircraft?
Darrow ran towards the Operations centre. Bombs were falling on the inner city, and several
Tormentors had swung over the field wide, loads gone, turning out over the sea. The airfield’s
