Wings of Bone - James Swallow Read online

  WINGS OF BONE

  James Swallow

  AVES LIKED TO speak to Griffon. He made sure that the rest of the crew were not around when he did, lest their opinion of him sink any lower. The one occasion he’d been caught crooning to the machine, it had led - typically - to a punishment beating from Nilner. Aves thought about the hulking thug as he sat in the big gunnery officer’s chair, the same knot of impotent hate he always felt for the bully tightening in his chest.

  He ran an oilcloth over the triggers of the twin bolter cannons, wiping away the accumulated sweat and grease. ‘Just right,’ he told Griffon. ‘Good enough for the Emperor himself.’

  Aves took the controls in his hands and placed his feet on the pedals. He felt at home there, nestled in the cupola across the shoulders of Griffon’s fuselage. To his left and right, the wings of the Marauder class bomber extended away, blunt leading edges pitched like the blades of a double-headed axe. A white design of the plane’s mythic namesake was drawn there, close to a rendering of the double-headed eagle of the Imperium. The cowling of the engines made the bomber’s profile more muscular at the wing roots, the massive motors silent now, but powerful enough to lift the forty-tonne flyer and a full payload into high orbit.

  Aves pressed a pedal and the turret made a slow circuit; he grinned as it rotated quietly and smoothly. Staring out past the upturned barrels of the bolters, Aves watched the stubby t-shaped tail swing by, and beneath it, Stoi’s posting. The albino tailgunner never told Aves if he was satisfied with the crewman’s maintenance on his station, preferring to hover on the edge of things, quiet and sinister. The flight crew nicknamed Stoi ‘The Ghost’, but Aves was convinced he was something far more sinister: an agent of the Inquisition, maybe. He smothered a flare of irritation, remembering Nilner’s braying laughter when he had voiced this fanciful suggestion.

  The turret rotated over the prow of the bomber where Captain Vought’s cockpit was, with the twin lascannon turret beyond. Aves looked down at the captain’s acceleration couch with barely concealed desire. He wanted so badly to settle into that chair, to feel the potency of Griffon through the flight yoke in his hands, and the need was like a guttering flame inside him, forever burning. But the daydreams that had spurred him into volunteering for duty in the Imperial Navy had not helped him qualify for aircrew status.

  Aves felt a familiar mood, black and dolorous, threaten to overcome him. He’d lost count of the number of times he had tried and failed the flight status exam, and it was his own awkwardness and clumsy nature that kept him forever grounded, forced to work as a maintenance hand on the flyers that captivated him. Naval Crewman 3rd Class Bryn Aves was doomed to remain grounded.

  Unbidden, his hand strayed to the breast of his tunic, where a unit patch for the 404th squadron was fixed. Aves coveted the bone white wings that flight crewmen wore, and for the thousandth time, he wondered what it would be like to wear them himself.

  A glitter of light in the sky distracted him from his thoughts. Low on the horizon a flashing dart moved closer, catching a flicker of orange light from the sunset. Aves licked his lips; he was positive that no aircraft was due to arrive at the base. Griffon and her squadron had returned a few hours ago, fresh from another in a line of inconsequential attacks on the heretic forces. In a rare piece of luck they had suffered no losses, so this was not some straggler limping back. He shifted the turret toward the approaching object - much nearer now -and Aves could identify it as a Lightning, a Naval fighter.

  The crewman’s heart pounded as the turret’s auspex brought the fighter into blurry life on a targetting screen. The Lightning turned, hopping the line of trees at the base perimeter. It was too low to be detected by scanners, skimming the ground. For an moment, the flyer was fixed in the turret’s gun cues and Aves saw clearly where the Imperial aquila had been struck off its wings and daubed over by a many angled star.

  ‘Heretic!’ The word almost choked him. The crewman’s mind whirled; it was clearly a suicide attacker, probably loaded with munitions, and most likely followed the 404th back from the battle to inflict some payback. On it came, and still the air raid siren did not sound. The captured Lightning powered over the runway.

  Aves found his hands moving without conscious volition, instinctively flicking off the safety catches on the heavy bolters. The red glyph in the firing window appeared and Aves pulled the guns up to bead the target.

  Words tumbled from his trembling lips, ‘Emperor guide me, I implore you.’

  If the heretic pilot saw the movement from the parked Marauder, it was of no consequence, time seemed to slow to a crawl as Aves gripped the twin triggers and squeezed. The bolters crashed into life and spat thick rounds into the air, bullets as big as candlepins cutting through the sky, shell cases arcing away in a glittering fountain of brass. The Lightning flashed over the bomber and the bolts raked its belly like predatory claws cutting into prey. Aves spun in the turret chair to see the stricken fighter flip over and smash straight into the ground. The airframe crumpled like paper under the impact, detonating in a yellow flash.

  Griffon rocked on its landing gear from the shock and Aves lost his sight for a few moments, flash-blinded. He heard voices and footsteps scrambling through the bomber. Blinking, he looked up to see a huge man shape towering over him. Nilner. It seemed a miracle that the big gunner could even begin to fit his massive frame inside the cupola.

  ‘I got him-’ Aves began, fear and elation mixing in his voice.

  Nilner cut him off, grabbing a fistful of his tunic and tearing him out of the chair. Before he could protest, Aves was thrown down into the hull, landing hard on his back. Breath gushed out of him and he tried to lift himself back up. In the poorly lit interior of the bomber he saw only shadows as Miner’s heavy boot struck him in the ribs. The gunnery officer picked him up again and pitched the crewman out of the egress hatch. Aves tasted blood in his mouth as he fell in a heap on the black ferrocrete runway.

  Aves managed to raise his head, and there he saw Captain Vought and the rest of Griffon’s crew, breathless from running, framed by the burning wreckage of the heretic Lightning.

  ‘Sir?’ Aves managed.

  Vought watched him with cold dispassion; then Nilner was there, hauling him up to his feet like a rag doll.

  ‘Don’t ever use my guns, dullard!’ Nilner growled.

  Aves wanted to protest, but the next punch sent him reeling and consciousness fled. The last thing he saw was Vought, expressionless as he watched Nilner take the crewman’s impertinence out of his hide.

  * * *

  THE MEDICAL corpsman gave Aves something for the swelling and told him to get lost. The infirmary had its share of real injuries and a crewman’s damaged face wasn’t worth more than a few seconds of care. Pressing a bandage to the cut on his cheek, Aves began the walk back to the barracks. Night had fallen, revealing a star-dappled sky. The crewman glanced up; bright dots overhead signified the positions of warships, moving slowly between the glow of stars. He liked the nights on Rocene. The planet seemed to grow more reverent and docile in the dark and he somehow felt safer there than in the brightness of day. Aves found it easier to hide at night.

  He stopped at the service road to let a Chimera grumble past, following the vehicle with his gaze as it trundled toward the hangars. Beyond them, he could just make out the faint tracery of the perimeter fence; and beyond that was the horizon, lit with a faint glow.

  The heretics were there. The vast mechanised army that the apostate rebels had created was rolling ever closer with each passing day, sacking towns and torching cities to the ground as they went. Aves had heard rumours from old Dolenz in the tower about how the beleaguered Imperial Guard was being
forced to surrender kilometre after kilometre to the oncoming insurrectionists. The missions of the Marauder squadrons from here at Point November base were meant to support the Guardsmen’s efforts, but they seemed to have little success in halting the tide of the advance. The crews were sombre and terse and the failed suicide attack would not improve matters.

  Aves passed the black scar in the ground where the Lightning had crashed. Whatever remained of the turncoat fighter had been hastily concealed under tarps, all of them emblazoned with the sigils of the Inquisition and dire warnings not to approach. He spotted Griffon’s navigator, Kheed, nearby in conversation with one of the Guardsmen standing post by the wreck.

  Aves made sure he did not make eye contact with him. Although he and Kheed were the same age, the arrogant young officer was everything Aves was not. A high born caste member from a hive world, the navigator looked down his nose at everyone but the captain, and strutted about Point November as if he expected a command of his own to appear by the Emperor’s grace. Kheed made no secret of the fact he thought of the crewman as less than a servant. Aves hated him almost as much as he hated Nilner.

  Aves walked on past the fighter he had destroyed. The momentary elation he had felt at striking a blow against Terra’s enemies was gone now, it had faded like a distant memory. In its place remained only the dull pain from where Nilner had repeatedly struck him. It seemed that despite his actions, Aves still had no leniency to come after breaking the rules, and Nilner had been very clear on many occasions that Aves was not worthy to man a post aboard Griffon. The gunner seemed to have made it his life’s work to victimise him, and the other junior crewmen were content to let it happen, rather than risk being the target of the officer’s ire themselves. Aves kept to the shadows, hoping to avoid another confrontation with the gunner, slipping through pools of dark cast by the officers’ quarters.

  ‘-Aves.’

  He froze as he heard his name spoken aloud. The voice came from Captain Vought’s private quarters. Aves moved closer and recognised the deep tones of Sorda, Griffon’s bombardier and Vought’s second-in-command. The crewman crouched down, afraid of discovery, but equally afraid of missing something vital in the conversation.

  Inside the captain’s hut, Sorda was helping himself to a brackish local brandy from Vought’s private store. ‘You must admit he displayed quick thinking.’

  Vought said nothing, and arched an aristocratic eyebrow in response. Sorda downed the drink in one jolt. In the half-light of the room, the bombardier’s bald head seemed to shine, the glow of the lamp glittering off the steel on his temple and his bulbous, bionic eye.

  ‘Crewmen are not trained to think,’ Vought said, his rich core-world accent adding gravity to every word. Aves has ideas above his station. He must understand that the Emperor places his servants where they are needed, not where they want to be.’

  ‘You would rather he had let the heretic pass unchallenged?’ Sorda eyed the brandy bottle but thought better of it. ‘You may be correct, but why do you let Nilner treat the poor fool as a whipping boy? Aves does his job well, yet that thug berates and abuses him at every opportunity. And you allow it to go on.’

  Vexation flickered on Vought’s face; he was not one to encourage the questioning of his orders. ‘Sorda, there are many other captains who would see your behaviour as insubordinate. Do you know why I tolerate your familiarity?’

  The bombardier was not cowed. ‘Because you owe me your life twice over? Because we flew through hell together at the Tellus Marches and Ogre IV?’

  Vought allowed himself the smallest of smiles. ‘No, Sorda. It is because that bionic eye of yours makes you the best bombardier in the squadron. But sometimes I wonder if you see a little too much with it.’

  Sorda shrugged. ‘What I see is a poor wretch that the crew consider a joke of a man, a failure who lacks the spine to be a true soldier of the Emperor… And yet, when he serves the Imperium he is punished for it.’

  The captain’s expression went cold again. ‘Griffon has the finest combat rating in the 404th, because I allow my men to do what they will as long as that battle record stays unblemished.’ He poured a little of the brandy for himself. ‘Nilner is a thug and a bully, but he keeps the gun crew in line. To maintain that, I’d let him beat Aves all day if need be. Only the mission matters, Sorda. If you ever lose sight of that, I’ll put you off my crew.’

  Outside, Aves held his breath. Sorda had never spoken anything but clipped orders to him since he had been assigned to Griffon, and it surprised him to think the officer might actually show some compassion. He was still turning this over in his mind when a strident voice cried out his name, startling him.

  ‘What are you loitering around here for?’ Aves spun on his heel to confront Weslund, Griffon’s lascannon gunner. His sallow face was set with annoyance, and he gestured sharply at the crewman with his free hand, the other gripping a volume of Ministorium doctrine. Weslund advanced menacingly, the light of zealotry flaring in his eyes. ‘Spying, perhaps? Listening and skulking?’

  Aves realised that the gunner must have just returned from his regular prayers at the base’s tiny chapel. Weslund was extremely pious and fervent in his devotion to the Golden Throne, given to seeing the taint of heresy in every corner.

  ‘I was just walking…’ Aves fumbled at an answer, eyes downcast.

  ‘Lies trip off your tongue so easily!’ Weslund snapped.

  The door to Captain Vought’s quarters opened, revealing Griffon’s commander and Sorda. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Vought’s voice cut like an icy scalpel.

  Weslund spoke before Aves could even think. ‘I discovered him hiding outside your door, sir, eavesdropping.’

  Vought gave Aves a hard stare. ‘Is this true, crewman?’

  Aves shook his head, his cheeks reddening, unable to speak.

  ‘Nilner was too lenient with him, captain. The fool is corrupted, I’m sure of it. He should be shot as a traitor!’

  ‘Weslund, Aves shot down a suicide flyer. He’s no heretic,’ Sorda said. The lasgunner’s manner exasperated the bombardier.

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. He may have been trying to silence-‘

  ‘Enough of this prattle!’ Vought growled. ‘While I admire your zeal in searching for immorality, you will not find it among my crewmen, Mister Weslund. Understand?’

  The gunner closed his mouth with an audible snap and nodded.

  ‘As for you, crewman,’ Vought flicked a glance at Sorda, ‘if you were listening at my door, you’ll take another hiding from Nilner in punishment.’

  Aves felt the blood drain from his face, seeing Nilner in his mind’s eye, the big man grinning as he laid into him.

  ‘Captain, if I may,’ Sorda broke in, tapping his bionic eye. ‘If Aves had been loitering outside, I would have seen his heat trace with my optics.’ He made a show of looking around. ‘I saw no such trace,’ Sorda lied.

  Vought gave the bombardier a measuring look, then nodded. ‘Very well. You men are dismissed. We have a mission at dawn and I expect you to be ready.’ The captain slammed shut the door of his cabin and Weslund took the cue to walk away, giving Aves a lingering sneer as he shouldered past him.

  After a moment, Sorda addressed Aves in a quiet voice. ‘You did well today, lad, but take some advice. Keep to yourself. You’ll live longer.’

  Aves nodded jerkily. Sorda’s were the first words of encouragement he could ever remember hearing from a superior officer.

  * * *

  THE INTERIOR OF Point November’s operations bunker was dingy and grim, an array of seated men gazing into auspex screens or buried in scanner hoods. In the centre of the room was a chart table sporting a map covering the whole of the peninsula around the base. Even from a few feet away, Aves could see that the red tide of markers denoting heretic forces was slowly consuming the Imperial held zone. A tactical officer moved a set of symbols closer to the enemy line, the tags represented the 404th’s bombers.

  ‘Aves, la
d,’ Dolenz beckoned him over. ‘Don’t stand in the way there.’

  The crewman did has he was asked. Dolenz gave him a weak smile as he approached. Aves forced himself not to look below the old man’s waist; where his legs should have been there were two spindly bionic replacements. Their steel exteriors made them seem like arcane metal bones grafted from an iron skeleton. The sight of Dolenz’s disability always made Aves feel uncomfortable, but the old soldier seemed not to notice. He handed Dolenz a small jar of machine lubricant, secreted from the aircraft stores.

  ‘Here you are. Enough for another few weeks.’

  Dolenz took the jar with a crack-toothed smile and daubed a little of the fluid on his leg joints. ‘Good boy. I’d have rusted stiff long ago if not for you.’

  Aves looked around, listening to the mumbled litany of battle prayer and communications chatter. ‘How goes the mission?’

  Dolenz nodded at his auspex screen, the green display shimmering like a tank of stagnant water. ‘Close now. Griffon is on target, with Basilisk in support.’

  Aves took this in with a nod. Basilisk was Captain Marko’s Marauder, a good crew with a record almost equalling Griffon’s. He rubbed a hand over his brow; it was blood-warm in the bunker and the crewman was sweating.

  ‘I heard what you did last night,’ Dolenz said. ‘Terra be proud, you were sharp and no mistake.’

  ‘I was just lucky.’

  ‘Luck?’ The old soldier’s face screwed up in dismay. ‘No such thing. Some say I was lucky when I got shot down and lived to tell the tale.’ He tapped a finger on his metal legs. ‘I don’t call having these pieces of iron welded to me lucky.’ Dolenz gave a heavy sigh. ‘Matters little, anyway. We’ll quit this piece of dirt soon enough.’

  Aves gave him a quizzical look. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard, would you?’ The sensor operator looked around to see if any officers were listening to their conversation. ‘There’s talk, lad. A retreat is in the offing. We’ll give up this forsaken piece of turf and let the Astartes take the lead instead.’