Hell Night - Nick Kyme

  WARHAMMER 40,000

  HELL NIGHT

  Nick Kyme

  HELL NIGHT

  By Nick Kyme

  It can't rain all the time…

  The trooper's mood was sullen as he helped drag the unlimbered lascannon through the mire.

  The Earthshakers had begun their bombardment. A slow and steady crump-crump - stop - crump-crump far behind him at the outskirts of bastion headquarters made the trooper flinch instinctively every time a shell whined overhead.

  It was ridiculous: the deadly cargo fired by the siege guns was at least thirty metres at the apex of its trajectory, yet still he ducked.

  Survival was high on the trooper's list of priorities, that and service to the Emperor of course.

  Ave Imperator.

  A cry to the trooper's right, though muffled by the droning rain, got his attention. He turned, rivulets teeming off his nose like at the precipice of a waterfall, and saw the lascannon had foundered. One of its carriage's rear wheels was sunk in mud, sucked into an invisible bog. 'Bostok, gimme a hand.'

  Another trooper, Genk, an old guy - a lifer - grimaced to Bostok as he tried to wedge the butt of his lasgun under the trapped wheel and use it like a lever.

  Tracer fire was whipping overhead, slits of magnesium carving up the darkness. It sizzled and spat when it pierced the sheeting rain.

  Bostok grumbled. Staying low, he tramped over heavily to help his fellow gunner. Adding his own weapon to the hopeful excavation, he pushed down and tried to work his way under the wheel.

  'Get it deeper,' urged Genk, the lines in his weathered face becoming dark crevices with every distant flash-flare of siege shells striking the void shield.

  Though each hit brought a fresh blossom of energy rippling across the shield, the city's defences were holding. If the 135th Phalanx was to breach it - for the Emperor's glory and righteous will - they'd need to bring more firepower to bear.

  'Overload the generators,' Sergeant Harver had said.

  'Bring our guns close,' he'd said. 'Orders from Colonel Tench.'

  Not particularly subtle, but then they were the Guard, the Hammer of the Emperor: blunt was what the common soldiery did best.

  Genk was starting to panic: they were falling behind.

  Across a killing field dug with abandoned trenches, tufts of razor wire protruding like wild gorse in some untamed prairie, teams of Phalanx troopers dragged heavy weapons or marched hastily in squad formation.

  It took a lot of men to break a siege; more still, and with artillery support, to bring down a fully functioning void shield. Men the Phalanx had: some ten thousand souls willing to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the Throne; the big guns - leastways the shells for the big guns - they did not. A Departmento Munitorum clerical error had left the battle group short some fifty thousand anti-tank, arrowhead shells. Fewer shells meant more boots and bodies. A more aggressive strategy was taken immediately: all lascannons and heavy weapons to advance to five hundred metres and lay void shield-sapping support fire.

  Bad luck for Phalanx: wars were easier to fight from behind distant crosshairs. And safer. Bad luck for Bostok, too.

  Though he was working hard at freeing the gun with Genk, he noticed some of their comrades falling to the defensive return fire of the secessionist rebels, holed up and cosy behind their shield and their armour and their fraggin' gun emplacements.

  Bastards.

  Bet they're dry too, Bostok thought ruefully. His slicker came undone when he snagged it on the elevation winch of the lascannon and he swore loudly as the downpour soaked his red-brown standard-issue uniform beneath.

  There was a muted cry ahead as he fastened up the slicker and pulled his wide-brimmed helmet down further to keep out the worst of the rain - a heavy bolter team and half an infantry squad disappeared from view, seemingly swallowed by the earth. Some of the old firing pits and trenches had been left unfilled, except now they contained muddy water and sucking earth. As deadly as quicksand they were.

  Bostok muttered a prayer, making the sign of the aquila. Least it wasn't him and Genk.

  'Eye be damned, what is holding you up, troopers?'

  It was Sergeant Harver. The tumult was deafening, that and the artillery exchange. He had to bellow just to be heard. Not that Harver ever did anything but bellow when addressing his squad.

  'Get this fraggin' rig moving you sump rats,' he barracked, 'You're lagging troopers, lagging.'

  Harver munched a fat, vine-leaf cigar below the black wire of his twirled moustache. He didn't seem to mind or notice that it had long been doused and hung like a fat, soggy finger from the corner of his mouth.

  A static crackle from the vox-operator's comms unit interrupted the sergeant's tirade.

  'More volume: louder Rhoper, louder.'

  Rhoper, the vox-operator, nodded, before setting the unit down and fiddling with a bunch of controls.

  The receiver was amplified in a few seconds and returned with the voice of Sergeant Rampe.

  '…Enemy sighted! They're here in no-man's land! Bastards are out beyond the shield! I see, oh sh—'

  'Rampe, Rampe,' Harver bellowed into the receiver cup. 'Respond, man!' His attention switched to Rhoper.

  'Another channel, trooper - at the double, if you please.'

  Rhoper was already working on it. The comms channels linking the infantry squads to artillery command and one another flicked by in a mixture of static, shouting and oddly muted gunfire.

  At last, they got a response.

  '…aggin out here with us! Throne of Earth, that's not poss—'

  The voice stopped but the link continued unbroken. There was more distant weapons fire, and something else.

  'Did I hear—' Harver began.

  'Bells, sir,' offered Rhoper, in a rare spurt of dialogue. 'It was bells ringing.'

  Static killed the link and this time Harver turned to Trooper Bostok, who had all but given up trying to free the lascannon.

  The bells hadn't stopped. They were on this part of the battlefield too.

  'Could be the sounds carrying on the wind, sir?' suggested Genk, caked in mud from his efforts.

  Too loud, too close to be just the wind, thought Bostok and took up his lasgun as he turned to face the dark.

  Silhouettes lived there, jerking in stop-motion with every void impact flare - they were his comrades, those who had made it to the five hundred metre line.

  Bostok's eyes narrowed.

  There was something else out there too. Not guns or Phalanx, not even rebels.

  It was white, rippling and flowing on an unseen breeze. The rain was so dense it just flattened; the air didn't zephyr, there were no eddies skirling across the killing ground.

  'Sarge, do we 'ave Ecclesiarchy in our ranks?'

  'Negative, trooper, just the Emperor's own: boots, bayonets and blood.'

  Bostok pointed towards the flicker of white.

  'Then who the frag is that?'

  But the flicker had already gone. Though the bells tolled on. Louder and louder.

  Fifty metres away, men were screaming. And running.

  Bostok saw their faces through his gun sight, saw the horror written there. Then they were gone. He scanned the area, using his scope like a magnocular, but couldn't find them. At first, Bostok thought they'd fallen foul of an earth ditch, like the heavy bolter and infantry he'd seen earlier, but he could see no ditches, no trench or fire pit that could've swallowed them. But they'd been claimed all right, claimed by whatever moved amongst them.

  More screaming; merging with the bells into a disturbing clamour.

  It put the wind up Sergeant Harver - Phalanx soldiers were disappearing in all directions.

  'Bostok, Genk, get th
at cannon turned about,' he ordered, slipping out his service pistol.

  The lascannon was well and truly stuck, but worked on a pintle mount, so could be swivelled into position. Genk darted around the carriage, not sure what was happening but falling back on orders to anchor himself and stave off rising terror. He yanked out the holding pin with more force than was necessary and swung the gun around towards the white flickers and the screaming, just as his sergeant requested.

  'Covering fire, Mr Rhoper,' added Harver, and the vox-operator slung the boxy comms unit on his back and drew his lasgun, crouching in a shooting position just behind the lascannon.

  Bostok took up his post by the firing shield, slamming a fresh power cell into the heavy weapon's breech.

  'Lit and clear!'

  'At your discretion, trooper,' said Harver.

  Genk didn't need a written invitation. He sighted down the barrel and the targeting nub, seeing a flicker, and hauled back the triggers.

  Red beams, hot and angry ripped up the night. Genk laid suppressing fire in a forward arc that smacked of fear and desperation. He was sweating by the end of his salvo, and not from the heat discharge.

  The bells were tolling still, though it was impossible to place their origin. The void-shrouded city was too far away, a black smudge on an already dark canvas, and the resonant din sounded close and all around them.

  Cordite wafted on the breeze; cordite and screaming.

  Bostok tried to squint past the driving rain, more effective than any camo-paint for concealment.

  The flickers were still out there, ephemeral and indistinct… and they were closing.

  'Again, if you please,' ordered Harver, an odd tremor affecting his voice.

  It took Bostok a few seconds to recognise it as fear.

  'Lit and clear!' he announced, slamming in a second power cell.

  'Not stopping, sir,' said Rhoper and sighted down his lasgun before firing.

  Sergeant Harver responded by loosing his own weapon, pistol cracks adding to the fusillade.

  Casting about, Bostok found they were alone; an island of Phalanx in a sea of mud, but the advanced line was coming to meet them. They were fleeing, driven wild by sheer terror. Men were disappearing as they ran, sucked under the earth, abruptly silenced.

  'Sarge…' Bostok began.

  Onwards the line came, something moving within it, preying on it like piranhas stalking a shoal of frightened fish.

  Harver was nearly gone, just firing on impulse now. Some of his shots and that of Genk's lascannon were tearing up their own troops.

  Rhoper still had his wits, and came forwards as the heavy weapon ran dry.

  'F-f…' Harver was saying when Bostok got to his feet and ran like hell.

  Rhoper disappeared a moment later. No cries for help, no nothing; just a cessation of his lasgun fire and then silence to show for the end of the doughty vox-officer.

  Heart hammering in his chest, his slicker having now parted and exposing him to the elements, Bostok ran, promising never to bemoan his lot again, if the Emperor would just spare him this time, spare him from being pulled into the earth and buried alive. He didn't want to die like that.

  Bostok must've been dragging his feet, because troopers from the advanced line were passing him. A trooper disappeared to his left, a white flicker and the waft of something old and dank presaging his demise. Another, just ahead, was pulled asunder, and Bostok jinked away from a course that would lead him into that path. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Harver and Genk were gone - the lascannon was still mired but now abandoned - fled or taken, he didn't know.

  Some of the Phalanx were staging a fighting withdrawal. Gallant, but what did they have to hold off? It was no enemy Bostok had ever seen or known.

  Running was all that concerned him now, running for his life.

  Just reach the artillery batteries and I'll be fine.

  But then a hollow cry echoed ahead, and Bostok saw a white flicker around the siege guns. A tanker disappeared under the earth, his cap left on the grille of the firing platform.

  The fat lump of numbing panic in his chest rose into Bostok's throat and threatened to choke him.

  Can't go back, can't go forward…

  He peeled off to the left. Maybe he could take a circuitous route to bastion headquarters.

  No, too long. They'd be on him before then.

  In the dark and the rain, he couldn't even see the mighty structure. No beacon-lamps to guide him, no searchlights to cling to. Death, like the darkness, was closing.

  The bells were tolling.

  Men screamed.

  Bostok ran, his vision fragmenting in sheer terror, the pieces collapsing in on one another like a kaleidoscope.

  Got to get away… Please Throne, oh pi—

  Earth became swamp beneath his feet, and Bostok sank. He panicked, thinking he was about to be taken, when he realised he'd fallen into an earth ditch, right up to his chin. Fighting the urge to wade across, he dipped lower until the muddy water reached his nose, filling his nostrils with a rank and stagnant odour. Clinging to the edge with trembling, bone-cold fingers, he prayed to the Emperor for the end of the night, for the end of the rain and the cessation of the bells. But the bells didn't stop. They just kept on tolling.

  * * *

  Three weeks later…

  'FIFTY METRES TO landfall,' announced Hak'en. The pilot's voice sounded tinny through the vox-speaker in the Chamber Sanctuarine of Fire-wyvern.

  Looking through the occuliport in the gunship's flank, Dak'ir saw a grey day sheeting with rain.

  Hak'en was bringing the vessel around, flying a course that would take them within a few metres of Mercy Rock, the headquarters of the 135th Phalanx and the Imperial forces they were joining on Vaporis. As the gunship banked, angling Dak'ir's slit-view downward, a sodden earth field riddled with dirty pools and sludge-like emplacements was revealed. The view came in frustrating slashes.

  Dak'ir was curious to see more.

  'Brother,' he addressed the vox-speaker, 'open up the embarkation ramp.'

  'As you wish, brother-sergeant. Landfall in twenty metres.'

  Hak'en disengaged the locking protocols that kept the Thunderhawk's hatches sealed during transit. As the operational rune went green, Dak'ir punched it and the ramp started to open and lower.

  Light and air rushed into the gunship's troop compartment where Dak'ir's battle-brothers were sat in meditative silence. Even in the grey dawn, their bright green battle-plate flashed, the snarling fire-drake icon on their left pauldrons - orange on a black field - revealing them to be Salamanders of the 3rd Company.

  As well as illuminating their power armour, the feeble light also managed to banish the glare from their eyes. Blazing red with captured fire, it echoed the heat of the Salamanders' volcanic home world, Nocturne.

  'A far cry from the forge-pits under Mount Deathfire,' groaned Ba'ken.

  Though he couldn't see his face beneath the battle-helm he was wearing, Dak'ir knew his brother also wore a scowl at the inclement weather.

  'Wetter too,' added Emek, coming to stand beside the hulking form of Ba'ken and peering over Dak'ir's broad shoulders. 'But then what else are we to expect from a monsoon world?'

  The ground was coming to meet them and as Hak'en straightened up Fire-wyvern the full glory of Mercy Rock was laid before them.

  It might once have been beautiful, but now the bastion squatted like an ugly gargoyle in a brown mud-plain. Angular gun towers, bristling with auto-cannon and heavy stubber, crushed the angelic spires that had once soared into the turbulent Vaporis sky; ablative armour concealed murals and baroque columns; the old triumphal gate, with its frescos and ornate filigree, had been replaced with something grey, dark and practical. These specific details were unknown to Dak'ir, but he could see in the structure's curves an echo of its architectural bearing, hints of something artful and not merely functional.

  'I see we are not the only recent arrivals,' said Ba'ken. The other
Salamanders at the open hatch followed his gaze to where a black Valkyrie gunship had touched down in the mud, its landing stanchions slowly sinking.

  'Imperial Commissariat,' replied Emek, recognising the official seal on the side of the transport.

  Dak'ir kept his silence. His eyes strayed across the horizon to the distant city of Aphium and the void dome surrounding it. Even above the droning gun-ship engines, he could hear the hum of generatoria powering the field. It was like those which protected the Sanctuary Cities of his home world from the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that were a way of life for the hardy folk of Nocturne. The air was thick with the stench of ozone; another by-product of the void fields. Even the constant rain couldn't wash it away.

  As Fire-wyvern came in to land with a scream of stabiliser-jets, Dak'ir closed his eyes. Rain was coming in through the hatch and he let it patter against his armour. The dulcet ring of it was calming. Rain - at least the cool, wet, non-acidic kind - was rare on Nocturne, and even against his armour he enjoyed the sensation. There was an undercurrent of something else that came with it, though. It was unease, disquiet, a sense of watchfulness.

  I feel it too, a voice echoed inside Dak'ir's head, and his eyes snapped open again. He turned to find Brother Pyriel watching him intently. Pyriel was a Librarian, a wielder of the psychic arts, and he could read people's thoughts as they might read an open book. The psyker's eyes flashed cerulean blue before returning to burning red. Dak'ir didn't like the idea of him poking around in his subconscious, but he sensed that Pyriel had merely browsed the surface of his mind. Even still, Dak'ir looked away and was glad when the earth met them at last and Fire-wyvern touched down.

  THE COLD SNAP of las-fire carried on the breeze as the Salamanders debarked.

  Across the muddied field, just fifty metres from the approach road to Mercy Rock, a commissarial firing squad were executing a traitor.

  An Imperial Guard colonel, wearing the red-brown uniform of the Phalanx, jerked spastically as the hot rounds struck him and was still. Tied to a thick, wooden pole, he slumped and sagged against his bonds. First his knees folded and he sank, then his head lolled forward, his eyes open and glassy.