“Two? Two, are you receiving? This is Four.”
“Go ahead, I hear you.”
“Coming up now.”
Blansher banked again and saw the tiny, cruciform shape of Del Ruth’s yellow Thunderbolt as it
emerged from the smoke line. It was rising cleanly. Instinctively, Blansher turned his rudder and
rolled down so that he was coming in behind her as she climbed.
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A Hell Talon, having just emptied its payload onto the field’s main drome, swept out of the
smoke and saw the flare of her burners. Opportunistic, it lined up immediately, using its pull-out
momentum to propel it into a rear attack.
It was five hundred metres lower than Blansher, and about the same distance ahead. Blansher hit
the throttle, punched back into his seat, and dropped low, flicking on his targeters and activating his
gunsight. He selected quad. He didn’t want to risk hitting Del Ruth with lasfire if he missed.
All Thunderbolts had their own feel, their own temperament. Del Ruth was still getting used to
the individual character of her new machine, and as a result was flying slightly erratically.
It saved her life.
The Talon’s first bursts, which looked like the sparks of a striking tinderbox from Blansher’s
position, went wide.
Blansher tore down, levelled out, viffed slightly to adjust, and got the tone ping he’d been
praying for.
His thumb pressed hard.
A cone of smoke gouted out around the nose of his bird as the quads chattered.
A sudden, savage spray of fragments burst out of the Hell Talon. Blansher kept firing, smacking
his shots into its midsection. Fire guttered out, then the enemy machine split into two large sections,
almost divided along its centreline. The shorn segments fluttered away below him.
“You’re clear, Four. Get moving,” he voxed.
“You shouldn’t have come back for me, Mil,” her reply crackled. “You should already be gone.”
Not true, he thought. Not true at all. As acting flight commander, it was his duty to make sure all
his pilots got clear, even if it meant his own life.
And the real tragedy was Umbra Flight had left one pilot behind, and there was now nothing any
of them could do about it.
Western District Theda, 07.26
Jagdea struggled along the transitway between hab stacks, yelling at every vehicle that rumbled by.
Nothing stopped. There were people in the streets, and a penetrating, sickly air of distress,
something which the word “panic” no longer did justice to. Every few seconds there was a flash or a
rumble from the east, and the ground shook several times. One particularly large detonation away to
the south was followed by a failure in power supply betrayed only by the sudden cessation of the
raid sirens. After that, in the strange quiet, there was just the distant booming, the whistle and crump
of munitions, the drone of aviation engines. Once or twice, Jagdea thought she heard distant gunfire,
small-arms. She put that down to her imagination.
Her wound throbbed. She’d brought no meds with her, and she had managed to knock her sling
half a dozen times during dashes for cover when bombers came over.
Fatigue overcame her, quite suddenly. Fatigue, and a sense of hopelessness. She sat down on a
kerb and felt tears running down her cheeks. How weak was that? How bloody weak was that?
A truck went past. She didn’t even look up. She heard a screech of brakes.
Jagdea lifted her head. A Munitorum transporter, laden with packing cartons, had pulled to a halt
twenty metres away, and the driver was dismounting.
Jagdea rose to her feet. It was the driver, the man with the burn-scarred face. What was his
name? She couldn’t remember. She wondered if he’d told her. She wondered if she’d ever bothered
to ask.
“Commander Jagdea? Is that you?”
She nodded. He hurried over to her. “I saw the jacket. Recognised an aviator’s uniform. God-
Emperor, are you all right?”
“No,” she said.
“You need a lift?”
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“Of course I bloody do.”
He helped her over to the cab and supported her as she climbed up. Then he ran around to the
driver’s side and got in.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he threw the truck into forward gear.
“I was in a hab clinic. Wounded on a sortie. I heard the raid begin and… I started to walk.”
“What? To MAB South?”
She wiped her face. “I’m not sure I know where I was going. Just… trying to rejoin my unit.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t want another FTR,” he said.
She hesitated. “I never did thank you for your help that night.”
“What help? I was out of line, talking to the boy like that. You had every reason to be angry at
me. Apart from that, what did I do? A bit of driving for you. That’s all I’m good for these days. The
Munitorum gives me instructions, and I do some driving for them.”
“Even now? In the middle of this?”
“Even now. I am a servant of the Throne, commander. I do as I’m bid. My senior sent me to
Kozkoh Administorum, with orders to collect a bunch of Munitorum record files that someone
somewhere didn’t want falling into enemy hands.”
Jagdea shook her head. “Record files? Not people? You could be carrying a couple of dozen
human lives to safety in this truck.”
“That had occurred to me, commander. The Munitorum has curious priorities, especially at times
like this.”
She looked round at him. He was concentrating on the road ahead. She realised for the first time
that he had probably been a good looking man before half his face had been melted.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“Kaminsky,” he replied. “August Kaminsky. Munitorum Transit Division, vehicle 167.”
“You were aircrew before that.”
“Combat pilot, Commonwealth Airforce. Wolfcubs and the like. Sixteen years. But that’s
ancient history.”
“Look, Kaminsky,” she began. “Can you get me to the field? I know you have orders, but I
really need to rejoin my command.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. From here, it would be a long slog, especially given
the circumstances.”
“Then I need to evac at least. Anywhere closer?”
“Well, I’ve been told to report to an extraction centre at Mandora Point on the north shore.
That’s where these damn record files are supposed to be delivered. There should be mass-barges
there, maybe even lifters. Good enough?”
“Okay, that’ll do. I just need to get out. Get out and clear and then back in the game.” He smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking that for months,” he said.
They rode on for fifteen minutes without talking. Kaminsky drove hard, almost recklessly,
through the shattered streets. Several times, Jagdea winced as he ran them into walls of smoke that
washed across the roadway, without knowing what might be concealed by them. Twice, Kaminsky
had to brake hard to avoid debris and slopes of rubble.
“Theda’s done for,” he said at last.
“Yes. I’m afraid it might be.”
“I guess these are the end times.”
“There’s still a chance,” she said.
Swinging the wheel, he laughed at her. “I don’t think so. Not now.”
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“If a member of my flight spoke like that, I’d have them up on charges. There’s always a
chance. While we still breathe, by the grace of the Emperor, there’s still a chance.”
“Then I count myself fortunate that I’m not a member of your flight, mamzel. Enothis is my
homeworld, and I gave everything I had to protect it. There comes a time when a person has to be
pragmatic.”
“I fought for my homeworld too. Now I’m here fighting for yours. Don’t talk to me about effort.
Don’t talk to me about contribution. And as for being pragmatic, that’s sometimes just another word
for defeatist.”
“Well, screw you too, mamzel—”
“Kaminsky! Look out!”
They’d just come through another drift of smoke. In the suddenly-revealed road ahead, a group
of figures, dressed in dark red uniforms, turned to face them.
Jagdea saw leering iron masks, bowl helmets, lasrifles.
“Blood Pact!” she blurted out.
“Turn round! Turn us around!”
Kaminsky was already hauling on the wheel. He swore loudly, fighting to avoid a full skid. The
truck slewed around madly, stripping tread from its fat tyres. It came side-on to the Archenemy
troopers.
And stalled.
“Kaminsky! Kaminsky!” Jagdea yelled.
“Stop shouting at me!” he yelled, gunning the starter. The Blood Part drop-troops began to fire
at them, running forward. Las-rounds smacked into the mack’s side and one crazed the door
window.
“Kaminsky! For Throne’s sake!”
“Will you shut up, woman?” A las-round went clean through the cab in front of their faces,
shattering Kaminsky’s side pane.
The truck’s engines burst back into life.
Jagdea was thrown back against the seat by the violent restart. Her left arm cracked against the
door jamb and she howled in pain.
Kaminsky swung them round to the left, standing on the accelerator. The big truck side-swiped
the burned-out shell of a car, and slammed it out of the way. Then the Blood Pact squad was behind
them and they were barrelling away down a side street at nearly sixty.
“Are you hit?” he said.
“No.”
“You cried out.”
“I’m not hit.”
“I’m sorry I shouted at you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Looks like we’re not going that way,” Kaminsky said.
Theda Old Town, 07.43
All along the canal side, recent bombing had felled the ancient buildings and tenements, even the
old Kazergat Bridge. But the templum was miraculously unscathed. Coughing in the smoke and
brick dust, Viltry hurried along the canal’s bank and went down to the church door.
He paused there, and glanced up at the effigy of the God-Emperor. “Remember me?” he asked.
Viltry opened the door.
It was almost disturbingly calm inside. The air was clear, though he could still smell the stink of
smoke from the firebombing. The templum was empty. The rows of pews, the alabaster columns,
the faint residue of camphor and incense.
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He walked down the aisle, his boots dipping on the mosaic flooring. Saints and daemons passed
under his heels. The Ministorum priests had long since fled.
He came to a halt in front of the votary shrine.
Three candles burned there. Just three.
“God-Emperor…” he sighed.
“Oskar?”
Oskar Viltry turned slowly.
She had been sitting at the end of a pew row, hidden behind a column. He hadn’t seen her. She
was shivering in her thin coat.
He took a step towards her, almost laughing out in strange delight.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“Where else could I go?” Beqa Mayer said. “How else would you know where to find me?”
Northern Theda, 08.12
They tore out of the dying city and onto a coastal highland where the habs became infrequent and
scattered. Jagdea glimpsed the sea beyond the headland.
“Kaminsky? Where are we going?” she asked.
“Not the field, that’s for sure. Or the extraction either. The bastards have the whole place locked
down. I’m running on a hunch.”
“What sort of hunch?”
“The sort of hunch that will disappoint you if it doesn’t work.”
“Kaminsky?”
“I think there comes a point,” said Kaminsky, “where the act of being pragmatic and the notion
there’s always still a chance become the same thing.”
They went under a road-bridge and then down a steep hill between rows of fish processing
plants. Kaminsky suddenly turned right, and drove the truck down an access way into a yard behind
the manufactories.
Ahead of them stood a line of flakboard sheds facing the edge of the sea cliff. The sheds were
painted green. The nearest had a large, shuttered door in the side of it. It was barred and locked.
“Get out, commander,” he said.
She looked at him.
“I mean it. Get out.”
Jagdea climbed down from the cab and slammed the door.
Kaminsky reversed and then drove the truck at the shutter. Jagdea winced at the impact. Trailing
a fender, the truck reversed and drove in again.
“Throne’s sake, Kaminsky!” Jagdea cried out.
A third battering run, and the shutter tore away at the sills, partially crunched out of its flakboard
frame. Kaminsky got down out of his mashed truck.
“Come on,” he said.
Jagdea hurried over to him, and they bent in low to pass under the crumpled metal sheets of the
door shutter.
She found herself in a damp, echoing chamber. It smelled of rotting plyboard and salt water.
“What the hell is this?” she asked.
“Shut up and follow me,” he said.
They edged through the gloom, Kaminsky leading. Jagdea saw fitter trolleys, compact bowsers,
shelf-racks of tools. There was a scent of promethium jelly in the air.
Kaminsky opened another hatch and daylight spilled through. “This way,” he said.
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She followed him through the hatch and out onto a metal catwalk. They had entered a deep,
flakboard-built hangar. The mouth of the bay, facing the sea, was open to the air, the floor cut away
right down to the lip of the cliffs. Pale light flooded in through the opening. Jagdea could hear the
breakers far away and below.
Directly beneath them, in the shadows, two Commonwealth Cyclones sat on steam catapult
launch racks.
“Coastal defence,” said Kaminsky, clattering down the metal staircase ahead of her. “They
haven’t been used in months, but I hoped they were still here.”
“My lord,” gasped Jagdea, following him down.
Kaminsky ran to the nearest machine, opened the cockpit door, and leaned in.
“It’s got electrics, but we’ll need fuel. And a primer can.”
Jagdea came up behind him. “And then what? Fly one out of here?”
He looked at her. “Exactly.”
“We can’t…” Jagdea began.
“Of course we can. You’ll quickly get the hang of it. Simple, basic, that’s all a Cyclone is.”
Kaminsky ran back along the machine’s length, and opened the tank cocks. He hefted a fuelling line
from nearby bowser and connected it, fumbling slightly because of his prosthetic hand.
“I can’t fly that,” Jagdea said.
Kaminsky started the bowser’s pump motor. The fuel line wriggled and flexed as pressurised
liquid surged through it.
“I know you’re not used to props, but she’s real easy to handle, I promise,” he said, and hurried
to the catapult stations at the back of the bay. Kaminsky threw some switches, and got a generator
firing. Then he pulled down a handle that started the catapult’s steam engines, pumping up me
piston track mechanism.
“No, Kaminsky,” Jagdea said. She held up her slung arm. “Even a machine like this needs both
hands. Throttle and stick. Remember that, airman? With the best will in the cosmos, I can’t do it.”
