Fire Caste Page 8

  Carrion hawks, circling in strident contemplation of man’s fathomless loss…

  Lieutenant Thone staggered from the boat behind Templeton and slipped, sending them both tumbling to the beach. The captain thrust his hands out to catch his fall and felt them punch through something soft and brittle that exploded into a cloud of liquid fetor. Choking and spluttering, he found himself straddling a fleshy fungus that looked like a crude parody of a man. Then he saw the dull eyes staring up at him from the violet balloon of its face… Saw the distended jaws rammed open by the gnarled toadstool erupting from within… Saw the gleaming dog tags engraved into its bloated neck. By a small miracle his spectacles hadn’t slipped loose and he could even read the name of the fungus: Falmer, C.A., Corporal. Templeton squinted in confusion, trying to make sense of it, hunting for a metaphor…

  …Like bittersweet flowers of boundary, the dead shall bloom and the blossoms shall devour those that linger at the threshold…

  And then he saw Falmer’s skin rippling and quaking and he felt something nipping at his hands inside the ribcage. Nearby Thone was screaming and Templeton felt an echo welling up inside himself. If he let that scream out he knew it would never end, so he tried to drown it with more…

  …words to snare and bury and deny all the sins that…

  ‘On your feet Kapitan Bloodbait!’ The voice was guttural and thick with the accent of the battleship crew. Lethean, Templeton recalled through his rising panic.

  The speaker grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet, tearing his hands free of the corpse in an eruption that spattered his glasses with ichor. He tried to wipe the slime away, but his hands were knocked aside and someone began to brush him down urgently. Through a liquid haze he could see dozens of pale, coin-sized grubs being swept from his sleeves. The vermin were all shells and pincers and thorny tendrils, something between a crab and a jellyfish. Several clung stubbornly to his hands, fighting to burrow into his flesh, but his rescuer tore them off with practised efficiency.

  ‘The dead, they are full with the skrabs.’ The Lethean laughed harshly. ‘Mostly they only bite, but is not good to be bleeding inside a meatbag!’

  Behind the voice Templeton could hear his men cursing as they deployed to the beach. Lieutenant Thone was still shrieking like a madman and Sergeant Brennan was bawling at him to stand still. Lubin, his vox-operator was praying in a breathless staccato rhythm. Behind the familiar voices he could hear distant shouts and cries punctuated by the clatter of Steambloods and a shrill blare of whistles.

  ‘Is done,’ said the Lethean. ‘Welcome to the Dolorosa Breach, Kapitan Bloodbait.’

  Wiping the slime from his glasses, Templeton peered at his saviour and groaned inside. Another damnable commissar! This planet was crawling with them!

  Under a quagmire of scars and sores the fellow looked too young for the role, but there was no mistaking his black storm coat and high-peaked cap, though both were threadbare. Like the commissars on the battleship he’d woven razorwire into the blue band of his cap and epaulettes, ornamenting his faith with the promise of pain. Pinned to his lapel alongside the traditional Imperial aquila was an unusual silver icon: a diamond-shaped eye framed with angular wings. Templeton had never seen anything like it, but every regiment had its own traditions and the ram’s skull of the 19th probably looked equally peculiar to this commissar.

  ‘I am the Commissar Cadet Zemyon Rudyk of the Lethean mariner corps,’ the youth announced, gesticulating fiercely to punctuate his words. The brass whistle hanging from his cap bobbed about in accompaniment.

  Before Templeton could answer, Thone lurched towards him, clutching at his coat with beseeching hands. The lieutenant was still screaming and Templeton caught a glimpse of his eyes glittering through a writhing crustacean carpet. To his horror Templeton realised the man was covered in the creeping, clawing skrabs. Instinctively he reached out to help, but Rudyk shoved him aside and launched a brutal kick at Thone, sending the hapless officer reeling to the ground. A moment later the commissar’s autopistol barked and silenced the screams.

  ‘Was too late for that one, yes?’ Rudyk grinned at Templeton, exposing blackened teeth that had been filed to sharp points. ‘And the Emperor, he condemns.’

  Templeton recognised the phrase from the Lethean battleship. The savage confessor had uttered the same words after he’d murdered poor Elias Waite. That injustice was still burning a hole in Templeton’s heart, but the recriminations would have to wait. Back there on the battleship capitulation had been their only option. It had been a crisis for all of them, but only Templeton had grasped the extent of the confessor’s madness and seen his regiment’s peril. Just like the hellfire puritans back home, the Letheans had turned the sharp, cleansing blade of the Imperial Gospel into something twisted. There could be no reasoning with such men.

  Once again, Templeton thanked Providence he’d been able to vox a warning to the colonel during their sea crossing. What Cutler would do with the warning was anybody’s guess, but at least he wouldn’t be coming in blind. Even so, Templeton sensed that nothing could prepare a newcomer for this world. There was a sickness here that ran deeper than the stench and the vermin, a malaise that could rot away a man’s very soul. But there was also inspiration here. Gazing across the open graveyard of the beach, Templeton felt his soul ignite with imagery for his dark saga. Where the sea of sewage ended, the sea of decay began, drowning the shore in a swathe of death. Corpses were strewn everywhere…

  …deposited in geological sediments of corruption, the bleached skeletons of the first wave buried beneath the suppurating efflorescence of the last…

  ‘Kapitan Bloodbait!’ The commissar snapped at him, misreading Templeton’s awe for fear. ‘The Emperor, He demands the courage!’

  Templeton turned to him, the wonder in his eyes magnified by his thick glasses. ‘Or else the Emperor condemns?’

  ‘Is so, yes,’ Rudyk agreed. ‘Now get your newbloods off beach before the skrabs eats them all!’ He gave Templeton a comradely slap on the shoulder and jerked the whistle to his lips.

  Sergeant Calhoun heard another shrill whistle blast and yelled at his squad to shift their arses. There were at least three of the snakebite commissars prowling the shore, pouncing on the new arrivals as they spilled from the boats, bawling and cussing at the muddled men. He’d already seen two greybacks and an officer gunned down and he was damned if he’d lose anyone to the bloodthirsty blackcoats. Boone lumbered past with Toomy slung over his broad shoulders. Catching a glimpse of the broken man’s bloody scalp, Calhoun swore viciously. It was a helluva thing to lose their sniper before the bullets had even started to fly.

  ‘It just gets better and better don’t it, sarge?’ called Roach as he sped past, dancing nimbly between the corpses.

  Calhoun shook his head, taking it all in. The beach was a screwed up hellhole, but when all was said and done things could have been much worse. It looked like the 19th had arrived on the tail end of the really bad stuff, after the fighting had already moved inland. This coastline had already been captured and the corpses choking its shores had paid the price. There was no telling how long it had taken and how many waves of men it had cost. For all he knew the beach might have been won and lost over and over again across the course of this decades old war. That grim thought turned his mind back to the boy. Why had he let Maude talk him into bringing young Audie along? And where was he anyway?

  Everyone was off the boats now and racing towards the distant tree line, but he hadn’t seen the greencap go past. Stubbornly he refused to acknowledge his anxiety. Despite what Maude had said he wasn’t convinced the boy was his. The kid seemed too creed-struck to be a genuine Calhoun. Even so, he couldn’t deny his relief when Joyce emerged from the boat. The boy paused on the ramp, gazing at the shore with a faraway look.

  ‘What in the Seven Hells are you doing back there, greencap?’ Calhoun hollered.
/>
  Joyce turned his distant eyes on him and Calhoun saw something almost furtive in his expression. Then the boy leapt to the shore and saluted smartly. ‘Just checking something out, Sergeant Calhoun, sir,’ he said.

  Calhoun was about to question him further when Dix started shrieking.

  ‘Looks like Brother Dix is in need of salvation, sir.’ Joyce pointed further up the beach and Calhoun grimaced. Too damn right Brother Dix was in need of salvation! The rangy Badlander was struggling frantically to free his foot from the clinging carcass he’d trodden in. Cursing, Calhoun stalked over and hauled the idiot out of the rotten mire.

  ‘Get it together, greyback!’ Calhoun bellowed. ‘I’m not pulling your grox feet out of every meatbag on this beach!’

  ‘It ain’t right sarge!’ Dix wailed. ‘It ain’t right to just leave ’em here like trash. Thousands of ’em gone to feed the ‘shrooms and the grubs like meat candy and…’ The words bubbled out in a manic stream that told Calhoun the man was heading for the edge.

  ‘I’ll feed you to ’em right now if you don’t can it!’ Calhoun slapped Dix across the face. Hard. The greyback stared at him stupidly and Calhoun slapped him again, catching him as he stumbled. ‘Are we done here, Trooper Dix?’

  Dix nodded uncertainly, still snivelling. Calhoun snorted and thrust Modine’s flamer towards him, but the Badlander jerked away as if he was being offered a venomous snake.

  ‘He’d want you to have it,’ Calhoun said stiffly. ‘You going to dishonour the man, trooper?’

  ‘No sarge, you got it all wrong.’ There was a pleading look in Dix’s eyes. ‘See Klete, he’ll be back real soon, just like them cogboys promised. I ain’t touching his girl!’

  ‘I’ll take her, sergeant,’ Joyce said, startling Calhoun. He hadn’t seen the boy come up alongside him. ‘I did some practising with burners in basic and they told me I got a gift for it. I always loved the sacred burnings back home. There’s a holiness in fire you can’t get from a bolt or a bullet.’

  That serene glaze was back in the boy’s eyes and Calhoun found himself feeling oddly uneasy. ‘You still with us, boy?’ he asked gruffly, feeling awkward.

  ‘I’m just fine, sergeant.’ Joyce reached for the flamer and Calhoun found himself handing it over. The greencap slung the bulky fuel canister over his shoulder and smiled happily. ‘And Lady Hellfire’s going to be just fine too.’

  Captain Jon Milton Machen loped up the beach, the pistons of his colossal Thundersuit bellowing and wheezing furiously in the heat. The machine armour was a cantankerous old monster, but he knew it would never fail him. Like Machen himself, it was too full of bile and spite to lie down and die. Too hungry for war!

  Prentiss and Wade kept pace with him on either flank, leaping over the corpses in their lighter Stormsuits while Machen simply waded through them, pounding the dead into pulp beneath his iron boots. He’d lost contact with Gledhill and Ashe but the rest of the Zouaves had signed in on the intra-suit vox. They were scattered along the beach, supporting the Arkan infantry like hard points in a tapestry of soft meat. His iron knights!

  He surged past the blackened husk of a tank, catching sight of the yawning cavity in its hull. It was just one of countless broken hulks littering the beach. He’d clocked dozens of Chimera transports and Hellhound tanks, even a couple of heavier machines he didn’t recognise, all shredded into scrap metal in mute testament to the power of the enemy munitions. There was no clue to the identity of the tank killers, but he knew that even a glancing shot from one of those mystery guns would obliterate his armour in an instant. The thought made him uncomfortable and he suddenly felt vulnerable out on the open coral. He didn’t fear death, but he wouldn’t welcome a fool’s end!

  Finally he saw the jungle looming over the coral dunes. The tangled wall of foliage looked like it had been dredged up from the sea bed and left to rot in the sun. Wherever he looked he saw stems and stalks and bladders and tendrils, puffed up with a fleshy, unclean vitality that sickened him and urged him to burn and burn. Lovingly he stroked the trigger of his flamer…

  And a screaming torrent of fire lanced up from behind the dunes, immolating a cluster of cancerous trees. A moment later a second stream leapt up alongside the first, then another and another, uniting into a blazing, cleansing wave that surged through the jungle. It was as if the Emperor himself had granted Machen’s desire to burn.

  Puzzled, the captain crested a final dune and saw the base. The Letheans had only offered a cursory briefing on the battleship, but they’d mentioned Dolorosa Breach. It was the only Imperial base on the southern archipelago, a rag tag camp manned by the remnants of several decimated regiments. There were at least twenty Hellhound tanks down there, stretched out along the tree line, their inferno cannons shrouded in steam as they cooled down. Scattered among the flame tanks were dozens of Chimeras and a pair of Leman Russ Vanquishers. Machen scowled at their slipshod formations: they were spaced almost randomly and some weren’t even facing the jungle. Behind the mechanised perimeter things looked even worse.

  The outpost was a sprawling shanty town of tents and makeshift huts that had obviously grown without any central or defensive planning. There were at least a thousand men bustling about the camp, but there was no cohesion or discipline to them. The troops were clustered up in their original regiments, still bound – and doubtless divided – by their old allegiances. Their uniforms spanned countless traditions, ranging from simple khaki fatigues to faded velvet finery to rusting suits of armour. Machen even spotted a gaggle of dark-skinned warriors galloping along the perimeter on horseback, whooping manically as they raced each other between the flames. To the captain’s rigorous eye it was absolute bloody chaos.

  By the Golden Throne, the Dustsnakes will fit right in with this rabble! Machen thought grimly.

  ‘Do we go in, sir?’ Wade voxed, his disgust mirroring Machen’s own.

  The captain had stopped on the dune and the rest of his company were catching up and fanning out on either side of him, awaiting his orders. Further along he saw young Lieutenant Grayburn leading the 2nd Company towards the outpost, while that dreamer Templeton lagged halfway up the beach with the 4th. And there was still no word from the colonel and his vaunted Burning Eagles. Doubtless the old man was still fooling around with his Norlander witch while his regiment was thrown to the wolves, leaving Jon Milton Machen to pick up the pieces.

  The Hellhounds roared again and their stubby inferno cannons doused the jungle in a fresh wave of fire. Watching that filthy tangle burn, Machen grinned and boosted the output of his shoulder speakers, assaulting the dunes with a riot of martial chords. This war was a mess, but it would offer countless opportunities for a man who cared only for vengeance.

  ‘Of course we’re going in!’ Machen bellowed. ‘We didn’t cross the damned stars to rust away on this Throne-forsaken hill!’

  ‘No colonel, what you must understand about Phaedra is that there are countless spiders caught in Her web alongside the flies like us,’ the portly co-pilot, Guido Ortega, observed sagely. ‘They’ve been weaving their own little traps within the greater trap for decades, building petty fiefdoms in hell. For instance, take this Admiral Karjalan – the Sea Spider we call him…’

  Keeping his eyes on the control panel, Jaime Garrido frowned. Ortega was still gabbling away to the crazed Guard officer as if they were old comrades reunited across a gulf of lost years, waxing lyrical about his conspiracy theories and picking holes in their sacred crusade. With mounting fury Garrido touched the silver icon on his lapel, praying for guidance. The shuttle was coasting through a relatively clean pocket of air right now and the turbulence had died down. With the Emperor’s grace the ship’s machine spirit could be trusted to coast along untended for a minute or so. If Garrido moved swiftly…

  ‘Diseased you say?’ the colonel was asking.

  ‘So the rumours go,’ Ortega paused for effect. ‘Na
turally the admiral keeps himself locked away in the high towers of his accursed warship, hiding away like one of those bloodsucking monsters from the old myths. Nobody has actually seen the man in years save for his priests. Ah, but they’re a grim crowd! The Lethean Penitents they call themselves. I tell you señor, those bastards will crucify you as soon as look at you!’

  ‘Would I be right in thinking you’re not a devout man, Guido Ortega?’ Cutler asked.

  ‘On the contrary señor, I would cast my soul into the warpsea for the God-Emperor!’ Ortega protested. ‘But these Penitents are a perversion of the Imperial creed. They have made a virtue of malice, a sanctity of suffering…’

  ‘And what about the Sky Marshall?’ Cutler cut through the man’s increasingly purple rhetoric. ‘Seems to me he’s sleeping on the job up there in orbit…’

  ‘Sky Marshall Zebasteyn Kircher is a hero of the Imperium!’ Garrido snarled, spinning to face them. There was a stubby service pistol in his hand. Cutler dived aside as the youth fired. A round whizzed past his face and another tore through the shoulder of his jacket, but the third was completely off. As the bullets ricocheted wildly around the confined space a distant, coldly professional part of the colonel’s mind observed that Garrido was an appalling shot. Then Cutler was on his knees, levelling his own pistol, but Guido Ortega was already on top of the young pilot, wrestling for the weapon like an angry old bear. Garrido was spitting and snarling furiously, but like his aim, his muscles weren’t much to speak of and he couldn’t shift Ortega’s bulk. The co-pilot smacked the youth’s trigger hand against the control panel, mashing it against the sharp edges until the gun slipped free. As Garrido howled in pain Ortega head-butted him full in the face. Once. Twice. After the third crack the youth slumped senselessly into his chair.