Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

It’s beyond anything he can imagine. It’s too big to be real.

All he can think of is Neve on the far side of the river. She’ll be scared. She should be alive; he reassures himself of that, at least. The starship fell on the Kalkas side of the river. Numinus was spared, though debris is fireballing the whole region. Whoever knew there was so much stuff up there in space that could fall out of it? She’ll have gone to her aunt’s, most likely. She’s a smart girl. She’ll have gone to her aunt’s and got in the cellar. Safe as houses.

Rane swallows hard.

He realises he doesn’t love her. He probably never did. He sees that with clarity, suddenly. It was all so easy, so romantic. He was going to be a soldier, and go off with the Army muster, so their time was precious. They’d probably never see each other again. So it was easy. It was easy to commit. It was easy to make grand gestures when nothing had to last. Everything was romantic. Everything was poignant. Everything took on a significance because they had so little time. They got married. It was like a huge send-off. Everyone cried. So romantic. So romantic.

So unreal. As unreal and unlikely as a broken starship sitting where Kalkas Fortalice used to be. As unreal as this whole day.

It’s as though he’s gone from a daydream into a living nightmare where everything makes more sense.

Krank knocks him over.

‘What the hell–?’ Rane gasps.

Something that is almost definitely a wheel from a battle tank, glowing red hot, has come bouncing across the compound, flattening tents and water bowsers. It would have mowed him down, but for Krank.

‘We’re moving!’ yells Krank.

‘Where?’

‘The dug-outs!’ Sergeant Hellock is shouting. ‘Get into the dug-outs!’

That makes no sense either. There are several thousand troopers in the immediate zone, and a few dozen dug-outs, constructed for air raids as per regulations. And if another starship falls on them, a bastard hole in the ground isn’t going to save them anyway.

‘Look!’ Trooper Yusuf calls out. ‘Look at the wire!’

They look at the fence dividing their compound from the Army auxiliaries serving the XVII. They were chanting earlier. Now they’re up against the fence. They’re pressing pale hands and woeful faces against the metal link. They’re calling out. Rane can see flames licking on the far side of the neighbouring compound.

‘They’re trapped,’ Hellock says. ‘Bloody bastards. They’re trapped in there. They can’t get out.’

Some of the men run forward to see if they can open the connecting gate.

‘Wait,’ says Rane. ‘Don’t.’

They’re too close. His squad mates are too close to the wire, too close to the pale, staring faces.

The fence goes down. It’s been cut in places, and it simply falls flat on the ground, jingling and rattling. The foreign auxiliaries spill over into the compound of the Numinus 61st.

‘What the bastard hell is this?’ Hellock says.

The foreigners have guns. Rifles. Side arms. Blades. Hafted weapons. They’ve got bastard spears.

The first shots take out the nearest Numinus troops. They buckle and drop. The heathens are howling as they charge in. One rams a spear through Yusuf’s gut. Yusuf screams like no one ought to ever have to scream, and the scream carries on, in broken sections, as the heathen twists and jerks the haft. Seddom, another man Rane has got to know, takes a las-round to the cheek, and his head goes a peculiar shape as he falls over. Zwaytis is shot as he turns to run. Bardra is stabbed repeatedly. Urt Vass is shot, then Keyson, then Gorben.

Rane and Krank start to run. Haspian turns to flee with them, but he trips over Seddom, and then the heathens are on him, pounding him to death with spears like washer women using beetles at the river side.

Hellock screams out a curse, draws his autopistol and fires. He makes the first active loyalist kill of the Battle of Calth, though the fact is not remembered by posterity. He shoots a heathen with a spear and puts him down dead.

Then a spear goes through his arm and another splits his thigh, and he falls. He’s screaming as they pin him to the ground, screaming every insult he can dredge up.

The Ushmetar Kaul pour past, slaughtering his men. Hellock, through his rage and pain, realises they are chanting again.

One of the bastards pinning him bends down to slit his throat with a knife, but another bastard stops him.

Criol Fowst looks down at the man his soldiers have pinned. An officer. Rank has value, ritual significance.

He can use the wounded sergeant. There are things that will have to be fed, after all.

Ventanus carries Arbute through the burning port complex, but she directs the way. Selaton and the seneschal’s aides follow them, escorted by Amant and his squad.

‘This way,’ she says. ‘Down that ramp. Down there.’

There are two huge listening pylons ahead of them, scaffold-frame monsters with a dish receiver set between them. It’s old stuff, very basic, probably constructed by the first pioneers when they began the Calth colonies. It’s military grade, though. No frills. Built to last.

‘My father worked the port for thirty years. I spent time here. This was part of the original port authority traffic system, before the Mechanicum arrived and set up a proper manifold. It should have been scrapped a century ago, but they kept it serviced.’

‘Why?’ asked Vantanus.

‘Because it’s reliable. When the solar storms kick off, every fifteen years or so, they’re much more resilient during the radiation flares than the manifold systems.’

‘Good,’ says Ventanus.

Flaming debris bombs are still slicing overhead. None of the party has quite got over the sight of the Antrodamicus hitting the surface. Some of the aides are tearful.

The pylons are built on a platform in the middle of a rockcrete basin beside landing platform sixty. It’s a natural shelter. About two hundred port workers and cargo-men have huddled there, under the lip of the platform. It’s not much of a refuge, but it’s better than nothing. Hot ash is raining down, burning scraps. Every now and then something small but heavy, like a sheared mooring bolt or an airgate handle, hits the ground like a bullet.

The sheltering personnel move forward when they see the Space Marines. There are questions, a lot of questions, and pleas for help.

‘We don’t know anything,’ Ventanus tells them, putting Arbute down and raising his hands. ‘A state of emergency is now in force, obviously. I need to get that listening post operational. Maybe we’ll get some answers that way. I need vox operators.’

Several men step forward as volunteers. He chooses two.

‘Let’s move,’ Ventanus says.

He’s getting edgy. It’s been almost ten minutes since the disaster struck, and he still knows absolutely nothing.

The control rooms for the post are a trio of standard pattern module habitats mounted thirty-five metres up on the girder-work frame of the pylon array. An open switchback staircase of grilled steps leads up to them.

Ventanus picks up Arbute again, and leads the way. The vox volunteers follow, along with a couple of the seneschal’s aides, Selaton and Amant. Amant’s troops spread out to quell the agitated crowd.

They open one of the modules. There’s still power. The technicians get to work warming up the station’s main caster grid. Ventanus takes a data-slate and records the channel frequencies he wants to raise. Erud muster control. Fleet command. His own company command.

The vox operators sit down at the main caster desks facing the module’s windows. Whooping static and radiation distort sobs through the old, hefty speakers.