Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

‘We’re evacuating this site,’ he says. ‘We’re going back to the port. Gather as much punch as you can. Fighting vehicles especially. We’re going to have to cut our way into it.’

‘This doesn’t sound good,’ says Sydance.

‘It sounds like it sounds,’ says Ventanus. ‘It’s the only worthwhile practical we have left. I need that link. I need the vox. We’ll be wasting our time without fleet coordination. Tell the magi I need vox.’

They move off, urgent. He waits. He thinks.

Arook appears.

‘I’m staying,’ says the skitarii.

‘I could use you.’

‘My duty is to the Mechanicum, Ventanus. This data-engine needs to stay alive for as long as possible. You understand duty.’

Ventanus nods. He holds out his hand.

Arook looks at it for a moment, baffled by the unfamiliar business of social interaction.

He grips Ventanus’s hand.

‘We march for Macragge,’ says Ventanus.

‘We stand for Mars,’ replies Arook. ‘It means the same thing.’

They turn as Sullus approaches. The captain’s armour is badly scratched and dented. He is limping. It will take a long while for his bones to knit.

‘I will remain here too, Ventanus,’ he says. ‘The skitarii could use a few Legion guns. Right now, I’m not fit to march far. But I can stand and shoot.’

Ventanus looks Sullus in the eyes.

‘Teus, this wasn’t your fault,’ he says. ‘It–’

‘This isn’t atonement, Remus,’ Sullus replies. ‘I don’t feel sorry for myself. This wasn’t anybody’s fault, but we’re all going to end up paying whatever we can. Take the port, win the grid, kill their fleet. Remember my name while you’re doing it.’

‘We have vox!’ Sydance yells.

Ventanus takes the speaker horn the magos offers him.

‘This is Ventanus, commanding Leptius Numinus. Ventanus, Ventanus. Requesting priority encrypt link with the XIII Fleet. Respond.’

‘This is XIII Fleet flagship,’ the vox crackles. ‘Your authority codes are recognised. Stand by.’

A new voice comes onto the link.

‘Remus.’

‘My primarch,’ says Ventanus.

‘You sound surprised.’

‘I thought you had officers to run vox-nets for you, sir.’

‘I do. But just this once. I was worried that your surprise might stem from rumours of my death.’

‘That too, my primarch. It will boost spirits here to know that you are healthy.’

The vox fizzles and whines.

‘I said, you’ve done a good day’s work, captain,’ says the vox. ‘The data you are sending is invaluable. Gage is coordinating our forces.’

‘It’s a bad day, sir.’

‘I can’t remember a worse one, Remus.’

‘This facility may not remain functional for very much longer, sir. Expect to lose the data feed in the next few hours. But we’re going to get the grid, sir. We’re going to retake the grid.’

‘Good news, Remus. It’s killing us. It’s killing the sun, too. I think the XVII want to kill everything that ever lived.’

‘It looks that way down here too, sir. Sir, this is important. We–’

‘The vox washes and crackles again.

‘–say again, Leptius. Say again. Ventanus, do you copy?’

‘Ventanus, sir. I read you. The interrupts are getting worse. Sir, we can’t complete our control of the grid unless the fleet can take out the orbital the enemy is running it from. We can purge their code once we’re in, but we can’t break it. The fleet needs to target and destroy their grid command location as a priority.’

‘Understood, Remus. A priority. Can you identify the target?’

Ventanus looks at Sydance. Sydance hands him a data-slate.

‘I can, sir,’ says Ventanus.

‘Remus? Say again!’ demands Guilliman. ‘Ventanus, respond! Respond! What is the target? What is the target?’

He looks at the Master of Vox.

‘Vox lost, sir,’ says the Master of Vox. Electromagnetic screeches issue from the speakers.

‘Datalink from Leptius also just went down,’ says Gage.

‘Did we lose them?’ asks Guilliman. ‘Damn it, did we just lose Ventanus and his force?’

‘No, sir,’ says the Master of Vox. ‘It’s an interrupt. A severe interrupt.’

‘It’s the sun,’ says Empion.

They all look at the main viewer.

Bombarded by concentrated energy and laced with toxic, reactive heavy metals, the Veridian star is suffering a gross imbalance in its solar metabolism. Its natural, internal chain reactions and energetic processes have been disrupted and agitated. Its radiation levels are rising. Its output is visibly increasing as it starts to burn through its fuel resources at an unnaturally accelerated rate.

Its blue-white wrath is growing more fierce, like a malignant light. A daemonic light. Black sunspot crusts seethe across its tortured surface. Staggering, lethal flares rip away from it in tongues of flame and lashing arcs of energy millions of kilometres across.

It is going nova.

Thunder rolls.

Out in the dismal fog of the channel, Oll steers the skiff through the black water, passing burning water craft that are half sunk, passing pale, ballooned corpses floating in the brown scum.

He thinks there’s a boat behind them, a way behind. Another skiff or a launch. But it might just be the echo of their own engine in the fog.

Krank is sleeping. Zybes sits staring off the bow. Katt and Graft are wherever their minds go to.

Rane twitches, in the clutch of a nightmare. They have bundled him in blankets. He probably won’t recover from his ordeal.

Oll takes out his compass, and checks the bearing as best he can.

Thrascias. It still seems to be Thrascias. That used to be the word for the wind from the north-north-west, before the cardinal points of the compass rose were co-opted for other purposes and given more esoteric meanings. Thrascias. That’s what the Grekans called it. That’s what they called it when he sailed back across the sun-kissed waters to Thessaly in Iason’s crew, with a witch and a sheep-skin to show for their efforts. The Romanii, they called it Circius. Down in the oardecks of the galleys, he hadn’t much cared about the names of the winds they were rowing against. The Franks called it Nordvuestroni.

Oll looks up. A star has suddenly appeared, visible even through the black fog and atmospheric filth. It is harsh, bright, blue-white. It is malevolent. A star of ill omen.

It means the end is coming, and coming fast.

But at least he now has a star to steer by.

Above ground, it is raining. It has been raining for about seven hours without a break. The evaporated southern oceans, thrust into the upper atmosphere as steam, have returned, first as poison fog, and then as an apocalyptic deluge.

The burning population centres steam and sizzle, their fires inextinguishable. The molten cores of city-graves glow in sinkholes hundreds of kilometres across. Craters and impact scars fill with water, from the most massive hive sinkhole to the smallest bullet pock-mark. Plains turn to mud, an ooze as dark as blood. River basins flood. The forested sweeps of Calth’s highlands and valley systems crackle and roar as they combust, fire-fronts a thousand kilometres broad.

The rain forms a curtain as thick as the fog that preceded it.

There is a plague of rainbows. The downpour combines with the swelling blue-white radiance of the terminal star to decorate every prospect, every ruined street, every burning hab-block, every fire-blackened forest, with a scintillating rainbow.