Pharos Page 15

  ‘It’s not like this on your world?’

  ‘Where I was born? There were plenty of trees, but they grew slowly. Although,’ he added, ‘I can’t speak for anywhere else.’

  ‘What about you, captain?’

  ‘Me? The same as Mericus. Back on my world, trees grow slowly.’

  ‘Mericus is wrong anyway,’ said Bolarion.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You can’t see them, it’s dark,’ said Bolarion.

  ‘Pedant. You can certainly hear them.’

  Bolarion grinned. He passed Mericus a flask, which he took appreciatively.

  Mericus enjoyed his stints as soldier; the comradeship, the patrols deep into the wilds. Not that he was going to own up to it. If he looked too keen he’d be shipped off-world to fight in a proper war. As far as his limited plans for life went, that particular item was not on the list.

  The fire snapped and popped, the death of trees singing out to the living boughs. Govenisk hunkered down lower. ‘I’ll be glad to get home,’ he said. ‘The mountain shaking like that. I don’t like it. No good will come of it. They could have at least warned us.’

  Bolarion slapped him on the back. ‘Gov! You’re a misery and no mistake, always grumbling about something.’

  ‘I’m a realist,’ said Govenisk. ‘The galaxy’s finished. You’re the fools, laughing it up like there’s nothing wrong with the sky.’

  ‘Drink some of this, then we’ll see how realistic you are.’

  Govenisk scowled, but took the flask anyway.

  A group of men detached themselves from the camp, and an expectant hush fell. The noises of the forest pressed in harder.

  A few moments later, the faint notes of a psaltery groaned out from the hollow in the side of the mountain.

  ‘Damn it! The men know they’re not supposed to be in there,’ said Vitellius.

  ‘Leave them be, Vit,’ said Mericus. ‘That cave is a dead end. It doesn’t go anywhere. The music is good for morale. It’s all we’ve got here on the mountain. No picts, no writing – nothing recorded, as per Lord Guilliman’s orders. Don’t stop the music. They’re not doing any harm.’

  ‘You can’t know that,’ said Vitellius.

  ‘I can’t know,’ said Mericus. ‘But I can feel it. You ever notice that?’ He looked to the other two sergeants. ‘The way things feel up here? Calm on a good day, tense before a storm, threatening when there’s a phantine about?’

  The other two nodded. ‘Yeah,’ said Bolarion. ‘It’s the mountain.’

  ‘So, if it was bad, we’d know about it,’ said Mericus to Vitellius.

  Vitellius looked over at the glossy cave opening. The treated stone sucked in most of the light, but mineral crystals winked here and there invitingly in the grey rock around it. Outside, white quicktree trunks stuck up like the peg teeth of a quarian. Judging by the height of the new growth, the clearing teams had been there six months ago. The saplings between the stumps were already twice the height of the men.

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter too much,’ said Vitellius after a while.

  Mericus smiled broadly. ‘There you are! Remember when you first came here, Vitellius, what a stickler you were?’

  Vitellius poked at the fire.

  ‘A typical Macragge man – all rules,’ said Bolarion. ‘Now look at you. You’re almost relaxed.’

  The other sergeants laughed.

  ‘The mountain affects us all,’ said Vitellius.

  ‘Except Govenisk!’ said Mericus.

  Vitellius smiled. ‘I shouldn’t put up with this.’

  ‘But isn’t life so much more fun now that you do?’ said Mericus. ‘It’s called “having friends”. Although I suppose you must have friends on Macragge. Time with them is probably timetabled in.’ He took papers and dried leaf out from one of his pouches. There were a number of plants on Sotha that made for pleasant smoking. He rolled himself a stick, and offered the leaf around.

  ‘Filthy habit,’ said Vitellius.

  Mericus took a burning twig from the fire and lit his smoke. ‘Life’s too short to live purely.’

  ‘Aren’t you the living proof of that?’ chuckled Bolarion.

  ‘True, true. I wonder often how by Terra I got sent out here.’

  ‘The lords of Macragge don’t do anything without good reason, Mericus,’ said Vitellius. ‘If you’re here, it will be for some purpose. A scribe somewhere will have looked down a chart on his parchment and said, “What Sotha really needs is a self-satisfied braggart, that should achieve optimum social cohesion,” and off you go.’

  All of them laughed at that.

  ‘See?’ said Mericus. ‘Even you see it’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Not really. There will be a reason you are here, Mericus. A good one. You’re a number in an algorithm. It mightn’t make sense to you, but Roboute Guilliman does not like to leave anything to chance.’

  They fell quiet awhile. Mericus stood up and threw his finished smoke into the fire.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, I need to see to a little business. Then I think it may be time to turn in. I’m looking forward to finding a nice hard root to not sleep on.’

  He went to the edge of the rock slab. The stone pavement stretched on for forty metres before a sharp angle turned it into a cliff. From the top he got a little privacy and a stunning view of Mount Pharos’ foothills marching down to the plain.

  He remained there for some moments, listening to the melancholy wail of Sothan music echoing from the mountain. The strange finish to the stone of the cave dulled and amplified the music simultaneously, taking away the sharp edges and adding an indefinable eeriness to it. The tune was sad, as most Sothan airs were, and fitting to the storm-tinted vista. The tiny square of the orbital gleamed directly overhead, a steady light in the red of the night sky. Beside the orbital a single star shone, so brightly its rays danced on the swell of the distant sea. That was Macragge, lit up by the strange machinery of the mountain. Looking at it made the roil of the storm less fearful, somehow.

  Mericus turned back to the fires, thinking already of his sleeping roll, but then something caught his eye that put all thought of rest from his mind.

  There were lights in the sky.

  He frowned. There had been no stars beyond the systems of Ultramar in the skies over Sotha for nearly two years, only the pale, ruddy rage of the Ruinstorm. And these stars were moving…

  He hurried back to his fellow officers. The lights weren’t visible from the campsite, but he crouched and spoke quietly, careful not to alarm the men.

  ‘Give me your field glasses,’ he said to Vitellius.

  ‘Sure. Why?’

  ‘I think we’ve got a problem.’

  ‘What’s got into you?’ said Bolarion. ‘See a big spider?’

  Mericus gave him a look that killed the smile dead on Bolarion’s face.

  ‘Vitellius, are there any fleet movements due?’

  Vitellius shrugged. ‘Not that I’m aware.’

  ‘Supply fleet, or Legion? They’d tell you if there were a lot coming in, surely?’

  ‘No one’s mentioned anything,’ frowned Vitellius.

  Mericus spoke urgently. The others had picked up on his worry, and listened closely. ‘You better look at this, all three of you.’

  ‘There are ships?’ said Govenisk.

  ‘Keep your voice down!’

  ‘There are ships coming and going all the time,’ said Bolarion.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mericus, ‘but not this many.’

  He led his comrades from their fire, where they slapped their arms at the cold of the mountain night. Their complaints ceased when he pointed upward. Against the rubicund light of the storm, an ordered constellation moved purposefully towards the orbital.

  ‘There must be dozens of them!’ said Govenisk.

&
nbsp; ‘They are coming in outside of the normal approach,’ said Mericus. He pointed. ‘Look. They’re coming at the station obliquely. That’s not a normal anchoring vector.’

  ‘You can’t be sure,’ said Bolarion, but his protest was a token one. The size of the fleet troubled them all.

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd?’ said Mericus.

  ‘Damn it,’ said Vitellius. ‘Men! Get those fires out!’ he shouted. ‘Platoon, to arms!’

  The music stopped. Men grumbled about the pointlessness of drills and over-eager off-world officers, but stamped out the fires, grabbed up their gear and dived into cover. The last embers burned out, and the darkness flooded out of the woods. The light of the Ruinstorm lit upon the clearing, turning the leaves around it a glossy red-black. It reminded Mericus of blood in moonlight. Foreboding gripped him. Questions came from the dark woods.

  ‘Lights in the sky! Fleet approaching,’ said Vitellius. ‘Shut up!’

  The lights sailed at low orbit in ghostly silence. The lesser craft were bright globes of albedo shine, catching rays from the hidden sun. The capital ships were small, indistinct shapes marked by their running lights.

  ‘They’re going too fast to take up anchor. That’s intercept speed,’ said Govenisk.

  A wailing went up from Sothopolis.

  ‘The sirens,’ said Vitellius.

  The ships passed overhead. Their shapes became firmer, silhouettes against the storm.

  They sailed over the peak of the mountain.

  ‘It’s an exercise, surely?’ said Bolarion.

  ‘Try the vox,’ Vitellius hissed.

  His vox-bearer knelt to the task. The sharp click of dials snapped through the clearing. ‘It’s dead, sir!’ he reported. ‘I’m getting nothing. Hang on, here’s–’

  A sudden shriek leapt out of the apparatus.

  ‘Screaming?’ said Govenisk. His face betrayed his shock. ‘They’re screams!’

  Mericus gave Vitellius a questioning look as sounds of agony echoed around the campsite.

  ‘Shut it off!’ ordered the lieutenant, catching Mericus’ meaning. The noise cut out.

  Flashes of false lightning burst across the heavens as the Legion orbital opened fire. Bright points of missiles, the short-lived lines of las, all eerily silent in the void overhead.

  ‘That’s not an exercise,’ Mericus murmured. ‘This sounds like what happened on Calth. It’s an attack.’

  The ships slowed, spread out. The roiling explosions of detonating warheads and annihilated matter preceded shield flares so bright that hard shadows leapt from the forest. Beads of light shot from the invading force towards the station.

  ‘Why aren’t they returning fire back at the platform?’ asked Bolarion. ‘A fleet that size could smash it out of the sky.’

  ‘Boarding craft,’ said Mericus. ‘They mean to take it.’

  ‘Who are they?’ said Govenisk.

  ‘That’s not something we need to worry about.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Govenisk asked. The men were watching in hushed silence. Pinpoint lights were closing on the orbital from the west.

  ‘That’s the real question, isn’t it?’ said Mericus.

  ‘We must move lower down the mountain,’ said Vitellius decisively. ‘Sothopolis will be evacuated, we must be there for the population.’

  ‘And our families,’ added Bolarion.

  Mericus nodded. ‘Best not do anything hasty.’

  Ten minutes later, a silent column of men filed out into the forests on the mountain, while the thunder of treachery tore apart the skies of their world and sirens wailed up from the city.

  After little over a century of mankind’s stewardship, war had come to Sotha.

  FOURTEEN

  Lessons in flight

  Re-entry

  The forests of Odessa

  The fighters peeled off from the main attack force and came in pursuit of the Thunderhawk. Arkus opened the throttles as far as they would go, aiming directly for the planet to harness its gravity to their need. Being dedicated fighter craft the Xiphons were far quicker than the gunship, and gained on it with tremendous speed.

  Explosions bloomed all around the Thunderhawk. Arkus threw the ship into a punishing series of evasive manoeuvres that slammed the Scouts into their restraints.

  ‘Tebecai, open fire!’

  The Scout brought the ship’s weapons system to bear on the interceptors. Soundless flashes burst into the cockpit as he turned the wing-mounted heavy bolters back and fired on the Xiphons.

  ‘I can’t draw a target on them!’

  ‘Their destruction is not the primary practical. Keep them away from us.’

  ‘They’re splitting and coming round,’ said Tebecai. One interceptor hung back, the others jetted past the Thunderhawk at full burn and diverged. They went out dozens of kilometres, looping round to perform a head-on attack run. Light flashed as their rotary missile launchers opened fire.

  ‘Countermeasures!’ shouted Arkus. Oberdeii worked his controls, trusting to his hypnotically inculcated learning to guide his hands. To his amazement they moved surely, and his confidence grew. Chaff burst in wide clouds of glittering ribbons all around the Thunderhawk.

  Explosions bloomed as the missiles detonated short of the ship, the blasts rocking it with their proximity. Warning lights flashed and alarms peeped. Oberdeii ran his eye over the endless banks of instruments. They made more sense now, even if he understood less than half of what he saw.

  ‘Do they want us alive?’ breathed Tebecai. ‘I’ve heard stories…’

  ‘Probably, lad – they never were a good Legion,’ said Arkus. ‘Obsessed with bloodshed and torture. Their arrogance and sadism plays to our favour, for the time being.’

  A flickering discharge of static flared around the craft’s nose as they hit the upper part of Sotha’s thermosphere. The ship juddered, bouncing around on the thin air. The jolts smoothed out, becoming a steady growl that grew to a roar. Heat glare flickered around the ship’s leading edges, getting steadier until it burned with a hot, white light.

  ‘This will buy us some time,’ said Arkus. ‘They will not be able to fire their missiles at us during re-entry, and the heat of it will confuse their other targeting systems.’

  ‘So they won’t be able to hit us?’ asked Tebecai.

  ‘There will be a brief window of safety while we breach the upper layers of the atmosphere, neophyte,’ said Arkus. ‘Once we commence true flight, they will come for us again. Then they will certainly hit us. They are traitors, but they are still legionaries, and their craft outmatch our own.’

  The roar of the atmosphere became deafening. The glow of heat spread further along the ship. The temperature rose.

  ‘This situation is outside your current level of indoctrination, so listen. Standard operating procedure during atmospheric penetration is to raise the nose, and take the craft in ventral aspect first,’ explained Arkus, calmly as if he stood at the front of the class in the cohort lyceum. ‘The profile of the ship in this orientation acts as a large airbrake. The drag from the atmosphere is larger, and so the ceramite shielding is thickest upon the underside.’

  Oberdeii looked at his sergeant in disbelief. Under fire and affecting a perilous re-entry, he was still instructing them.

  ‘Today, we are landing under sub-optimal circumstances. In this particular instance, however, the later we engage atmospheric engines, the better. Next time you do this, do it as I have just described, not as I am about to perform.’

  Arkus angled the nose steeply down. The ship groaned under the stress. Metal creaked. Fire streaked from its overheating prow as it plunged into the atmosphere like a javelin. If the fighters still followed them they could not see, for the Thunderhawk’s senses were blinded.

  The armourglass canopy blackened around the edges. One pane’
s outer layer cracked with a sound whose softness belied the risk it posed. Oberdeii reached out against the push of acceleration for the lever that would close the shutters.

  ‘Leave them!’ said Arkus. ‘We need to see. Never trust to machine senses when you might use your own eyes.’

  ‘The glass is breaking,’ replied Oberdeii. The noise of superheated air howling over their hull was as loud as a blast furnace.

  ‘If we cannot see when we initiate atmospheric flight, we will die,’ said Arkus. ‘If you should have learned one thing from my tutelage, it is that survival in war is only seventy per cent preparation and training. The rest is luck.’

  The temperature rose and rose. The forces engendered by their immense acceleration pushed the Scout back into his flight seat, taxing Oberdeii’s immature physiology. The seconds passed and more systems spoke their shrill language of bleeps and ringing, until it seemed that every machine in the cockpit cried out in alarm. An explosion rocked the ship, tilting it to the left.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Heavy bolter shells cooking off in the wing mount. We have overheated them. Jettison the others. That panel there.’

  Arkus pointed at a bank of square black buttons. Tebecai reached for them.

  ‘We approach the surface too rapidly.’ Arkus watched a number of gauges intently. ‘Look at these instruments. We are at the edge of the craft’s tolerance. I will now pull the craft out of its dive. Prepare yourself for renewed engagement.’ He punched out a complicated pattern on a number of controls. Another roar joined the rush of the atmosphere. Braking jets fought ferociously against the relentless draw of gravity.

  ‘Oberdeii, close off the rocket motors and open up the air intakes for the jet chambers.’

  Oberdeii hesitantly reached for a control array.

  ‘To your left, lad!’

  Oberdeii did as instructed. Chimes sounded. Lights turned from green to red to green.

  ‘Take the controls and help me bring the nose up. We need to level out. Our only hope is to get down into the forests. In the air we lack the agility to evade those interceptors. Never pit a gunship against a superiority fighter if you might avoid it, it is a poor practical.’