Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

Arook does so.

After a long pause, he says, ‘They ask us to confirm xenos activity in this zone.’

Ventanus lifts the standard. ‘Arook, have your skitarii paint heat-source targets in that fog bank for the benefit of the artillery crews. Tell Colonel Sparzi we will open fire in sixty seconds.’

‘You’re going to open fire?’ Sullus barks. ‘Are you mad? If it’s our own kind–’

‘It isn’t. And I’m not going to allow it to get any closer.’

‘But if they are XIII!’ Sullus insists. ‘If they are of Ultramar!’

‘They are not, captain,’ says Ventanus firmly.

Beyond the ditch, at the very edge of the miserable fog, the first figures begin to loom. The feeble sunlight catches the dull sheen of crimson armour.

‘Fire!’ says Ventanus.

‘Let me go back.’ cries Bale Rane. ‘Let me go the fug back!’

Krank punches him in the gut and winds him badly, just to get him to stop fussing.

‘Sorry,’ Krank says. ‘Sorry, Rane. Sorry, kid. I can’t let you.’

Rane gasps out words, doubled up.

‘I did not shoot at your bloody wife, Bale,’ says Krank. ‘I did not do that. I opened up full auto on something and it definitely weren’t your wife. It most surely weren’t.’

‘It was Neve. She was calling to me!’

‘Rane, shut up. Just shut up. Thank me, why don’t you? You showed me picts of your wife. She was pretty. That thing calling to you, it wasn’t pretty.’

Krank sighs. He sinks down beside Rane.

‘It weren’t your wife, kid. Even if you hadn’t shown me picts, I’d have known. Your wife, she’s got eyes, right? And she ain’t got horns. I don’t know what it was, Rane, but it wasn’t good. It was some xenos thing. Some bloody daemon.’

The foul wind stirs the fog on the blown-out street. Out in the distance, a city hab explodes in a gout of flames, and the rumble of it falling lasts three or four minutes. Artillery thumps. Things boom above, in orbit.

Bale Rane murmurs his wife’s name, tears in his eyes, snot on his lip.

Krank hears running.

‘Get up, get up!’ he says, pulling Rane up by the sleeves. He bundles him into cover.

Two men, Army, run past them, down the street, and then a third. They are tattered and dirty, and they’re running from something. One of them is sobbing like a child.

They’re fleeing. That’s what they’re doing.

Krank pushes Rane up against the wall as the pursuers run into view. They’re Army too, but not the same Army. They’re ragged, wrapped in black, brotherhood cultists like the ones who slaughtered Krank’s unit. There are two of them. One laughs, raises his autorifle, and brings down the lagging trooper with a spine shot.

The other two fugitives skid up, halting. Two more cultists have appeared in their path.

The hounded men back up. The cultists stroll towards them out of the fog. The ones who were chasing drop to an amble, closing in behind.

‘Please!’ Krank hears one of the men beg. ‘Please!’

He gets a headshot for asking nicely. He goes down like a commercia mannequin.

The other tries to run, but the cultists grab him. They pin him between the four of them, drag his head back by the hair, and cross his exposed throat with a ritual knife. His blood makes a dark red mirror in the gutter under his body.

Rane makes a noise. An involuntary sob.

The four knife brothers turn from their kill. Their eyes are sunken shadows. In the half-light, their faces look like death’s-heads.

Krank fumbles with his rifle. He’s not going to get it aimed in time. One of the killers sees him, and fires. The rounds whine into the brickwork beside them, and spatter them with grit and slime. Krank fires back, but Rane is tangled with him, and his aim is rubbish. His shots go wide.

The knife brothers rush them.

Krank hits one in the chest with a clean shot, point blank, and drops him on his back. Then he gets a rifle-butt in the face and collapses, his nose and mouth a bloody mash. The other two cultists grab Rane and twist his arms. One drags Rane’s head back by the hair.

‘This one first,’ says the one who stock-smashed Krank. He stoops over his chosen victim, dagger drawn. Krank is moaning, clutching his nose. The man turns Krank’s head by the chin, and aims the point of his dagger at Krank’s wide left eye.

Rane goes berserk. He kicks one of his captors in the balls, then tears free and punches the other in the throat. As both of them stumble backwards, Rane hurls himself headlong at the bastard with the knife and tackles him clear of Krank.

They roll together. They writhe. Rane is nothing like strong enough. He’s just a kid. The cultist is big and rangy, thin and hard. His limbs are long, and he is as tough as a wild animal.

The other two rush back in to help him, cursing. Krank reaches for his rifle, but he gets kicked down. One of them puts a pistol to his head.

The gun goes off. Krank feels surprisingly little pain considering he’s been shot through the forehead. Blood runs down his face. It’s hot. But there’s no pain. There’s not even any recoil or blowback.

The man with the pistol falls over. It’s his blood decorating Krank’s face. The side of the cultist’s skull has been shot off. It’s all matted hair and white bone shards and leaking pink.

Another man stands on the roadway. He’s got a lasrifle. He fires it again, and snaps the second cultist over on his back. Headshot. A really clean headshot. Marksman standard.

Krank blinks. Where did this guy come from? He’s Army. Krank can’t tell which unit. The shooter clambers off the street to join them.

Rane and the other cultist have stopped fighting. Rane rolls the dead cultist off him. The big, rangy freak has got a dagger wedged in his heart. Somehow, in the frenzy, Rane managed to stick the bastard with his own knife.

‘Probably an accident,’ Rane says, sitting up, saying what Krank was thinking. Krank laughs, despite the fact that absolutely fugging nothing in the world is funny.

They look up at the shooter.

‘Thanks,’ says Krank.

‘You needed help,’ says the man. He’s a veteran. His face is lined and his kit is faded. He’s got silver in his hair.

‘We all need help today, friend,’ says Krank.

‘True words,’ says the man, offering his hand. He pulls Krank to his feet.

‘I’m Krank. The kid is Rane. Bale Rane. We’re Numinus 61st. Well, we were. For whatever that counts.’

‘Ollanius Persson, retired,’ says the man. ‘I’m trying to fight my way out of this shit hole. You boys want to come along?’

Krank nods.

‘Safety in numbers,’ he says.

‘Or company in death,’ replies the old guy. ‘But I’ll take either. Grab your guns.’

Persson looks at Bale Rane.

‘You all right, boy?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ replies Rane.

‘He had a shake-up,’ says Krank. ‘He thought he saw his bride. His little wife. But it wasn’t her. It wasn’t human.’

‘I saw her,’ Rane insists.

‘Nothing looks like what it’s supposed to today,’ says Persson. ‘You can’t trust your eyes. The warp’s at work, and it’s cursing us all.’

‘But–’ Rane begins.

‘Your friend is right,’ says Persson. ‘It wasn’t your wife.’

‘How do you know so much about it?’ asks Rane.

‘I got old,’ says Persson. ‘I saw plenty.’

‘You’re not that old,’ says Rane.

‘Not compared to some, I suppose,’ says Persson.

He crouches down, and plucks the ritual knife out of the cultist’s blood-soaked chest. It’s a black stone blade with a hand-wound wire handle, home-made. An athame. It reminds Oll Persson of something, but it’s not quite right. He tosses the wretched thing away.