Wings of Bone - James Swallow Read online

  ‘Space Marines? Here? But what about the base?’

  Dolenz shrugged. ‘Probably be abandoned. If the rumours are true, mind.’

  Aves tried to assimilate this new piece of information. The sudden idea of the unknown left him with a jumble of excitement and fear.

  ‘Here, lad, it’s starting,’ hissed Dolenz, as the comm channels came to life. ‘They’re in sight of the mark.’

  ‘Point November base, Griffon,’ Vought’s voice issued out of the air. ‘Commencing attack.’

  * * *

  CLOUDS OF FLAK thrown up from guns on the ground burst about Griffon in dark spheres of smoke, opening like deadly black poppies. Vought dismissed them, concentrating on steering the fully-laden Marauder through streams of bright red tracer, spat into the sky from Hydra anti-aircraft batteries that had been captured by heretic units. Every few moments, a brilliant white flash on the ground signalled the launch of a massive Manticore missile, prompting the captain to trigger a flare shell or chaff cylinder from a control on his yoke. Vought could see the ground as a seething carpet of armoured vehicles and enemy soldiers, all of them pouring weapons fire into the bomber’s path. The air was his medium, and he was master of it, powering the massive tonnage of the Marauder through the flak and into the kill zone.

  ‘Griffon, Basilisk. Your three o’clock low,’ Captain Marko’s voice said in his ear. ‘I have the lead.’

  ‘Copy, Basilisk. We’ll follow you in,’ Vought replied, then switched to the Griffon’s intercom channel. ‘Sorda, arm the weapons. Open the bay.’ A red indicator glyph on Vought’s console glowed, indicating the bombardier’s readiness, and across the ventral hull of the bomber, heavy metal doors yawned open revealing a tightly packed payload of ten spin-stabilised, gravity assisted bombs. Each of the warheads contained two hundred kilos of dense high explosive compound and an iridium penetrator fuse, designed to pierce through enemy armour before detonating. From the nose turret, Weslund began to sing a hymn about blood and fire, his reedy voice carrying through the fuselage.

  In the weapons bay Sorda gave the bombs a smile, like a proud parent about to send a child out into the world. He had chalked a devotional message on every one of the grey cases; the closest one bore the words ‘The Emperor’s Might Knows no Boundaries’ in his precise gothic hand. He glanced down through the open hatch, watching shot and shell flash by beneath Griffon’s wings.

  Vought saw a flare of power from the Basilisk’s engines and the other Marauder dipped down toward the centre of the heretic army. Griffon shivered violently as a flak shell blew close by, spent shrapnel clattering off the wing. The aircraft commander sighted down over the nose, past the lascannon turret. For a moment, Vought thought his eyes had deceived him; there appeared to be a grounded starship down there in the mud, a flat expanse of hull like a beached steel whale. What he saw was the mobile command post of the heretics, a colossal land leviathan easily the size of an Imperial frigate. Great tracks and spiked wheels churned at mud and earth, labouring the vehicle forward, flattening hills and uprooting woodlands before it. And there at the very centre of it, beckoning Vought like a target on a range, was a hideous grinning skull set upon a star.

  At the sight of it, Weslund spat a foul curse over the intercom and began to babble in dark, stentorian tones, breaking his litany every few moments with a discharge from his cannons.

  Basilisk swooped down over the prow of the leviathan, jinking from side to side to dodge tracer spat from Hydra batteries. ‘Ready. Ready,’ said Marko. ‘Drop-‘

  The bomber’s commander never finished his sentence; a vibrant laser flare tore into Basilisk from the eye of the skull and cut down the middle. The aircraft’s fuel reservoir tore open and exploded, instantly flashing the bomber to ash.

  ‘Lord’s blood!’ Weslund gasped.

  Vought set his jaw and pushed the yoke forward, mirroring Basilisk’s attack run. All about him, he heard the bomber’s bolter turrets chatter as Nilner and Stoi raked the enemy with punishing salvoes. He would only have seconds before the leviathan would be able to recharge the massive lascannon for another shot.

  ‘Ready. Ready,’ Vought called.

  Sorda made a sign of supplication to the Golden Throne and gripped the release switch, pressing his eye to the sightglass.

  ‘Drop.’ The instant the captain’s command left his lips, Sorda slammed the knife switch down and with a well oiled whirr of machinery, the clamps holding the bombs in place opened in perfect order. Each of the weapons shrieked as it dropped out of the bomb bay and into the fast flowing air, the wind whistling through the fusing propeller and steering vanes. The bombs struck hard across the leviathan’s hull in bright flares of flame.

  Vought poured power into Griffon’s engines and pulled back on the yoke, arcing the aircraft up and away from the target site. He allowed himself a sneer at the heretic’s expense as the laser cannon cracked through the air where the Marauder had just been. ‘Too slow,’ he whispered, from behind his breather mask.

  As the flyer turned outbound, Vought’s concentration returned to threading the bomber through the storm of anti-aircraft fire. Almost as an afterthought, he toggled the intercom. ‘Stoi, report,’ he demanded from the tailgunner. ‘Target status?’

  When the weapons officer didn’t reply straight away, Vought felt a flicker of irritation. ‘Stoi, wake up! What is the status of the target?’

  Every crewman on Griffon was surprised when the gunner gave a terse, single word response. ‘Undamaged.’

  * * *

  KILOMETERS FROM the combat, Aves and Dolenz exchanged glances. ‘What does that mean?’ said the crewman. ‘The bombs misfired?’

  Dolenz shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. That great bloody tank, I’ll warrant it’ll take more than standard ordnance and cordite to crack it.’

  Aves fell silent as Vought’s commands echoed out from the faraway bomber.

  * * *

  THE CAPTAIN turned to call down into the fuselage below the cockpit. ‘Kheed, get down there and confirm Stoi’s sighting. I want to know if there were secondary explosions, anything.’

  Without looking to see if his orders were being followed, Vought flicked to the main comm channel and relayed a warning about the leviathan’s lascannon, but the remainder of the 404th were still caught in the flak, fighting to stay on course and bomb the living hell out of the heretics below them.

  Kheed reached the hatch to Stoi’s turret and cranked it open. The albino gunner said nothing, and handed him a pair of ageing field glasses, stabbing one bony finger at the smoke wreathed horizon below. The navigator searched for the steel deck of the land leviathan and found it. Smoke poured from massive chimneys along its spine, and tracer fire arced skyward from myriad guns along its armoured hide, but no flames or structural damage were evident, beyond a few pits and dents across the face of the grinning skull.

  The navigator keyed the intercom and spoke in a flat, toneless voice. ‘Target remains, captain. Confirming, status is undamaged.’

  Vought’s lip curled in annoyance and he pitched the Marauder round in a harsh wingover, determined to see the leviathan for himself. A force field, Kheed?’ he snapped.

  ‘Negative. Sir, they must have armour as thick as a battlecruiser to shrug off a strike like that.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Vought fumed quietly. The intelligence reports from Imperial Guard on the ground had mentioned nothing of this, and now the squadron had lost aircraft in an attack that would have failed even if the enemy crew were blind or asleep. The captain decided that there would be harsh words spoken with his Guard counterparts on return to Point November.

  ‘Incoming!’ Nilner’s rough shout cut through Vought’s train of thought. ‘Lightnings, coming out of the suns!’

  The pilot turned the bomber hard to port and flicked a glance upward. He saw a trio of bat-winged fighters vectoring in on their position. ‘Gunners, target and annihilate! Sweep the heretic scum out of the sky!’

  Nilner pedalled h
is turret around to follow the lead fighter as it swooped down on Griffon. His big, sweaty hands enveloped the firing grips and squeezed. In answer, the heavy bolter cannons screamed death into the flashing shape of the seized Lightning. The massive bolts tore through the engine cowlings of the flyer and shattered the glass cockpit, turning the interior into a red ruin. Nilner grunted his approval and turned the turret around, looking for another kill.

  The gunner had been quick to spot the trio of interceptors, and true to the training doctrine that had been drilled into him, Nilner concentrated his attention on the most immediate targets. Consequently, he never saw the fourth Lightning, hanging back from the trio, as it emerged from the brightness of Rocene’s twin suns. As Griffon turned to avoid the laser trails from its surviving squadmates, the other fighter tore over the nose of the Marauder, triggering a long burst from the autocannon mounted on its chin. The first burst struck the number three engine, which blasted out a cascade of flame and broken turbine blades before choking into silence.

  Vought saw nothing but a grey shadow as the heretic pilot passed by his cockpit with only a few metres to spare. Autocannon rounds crashed through the bomber’s hull at point blank range, silencing Weslund’s songs for the Emperor forever as they ripped him apart. Part of the captain’s canopy shredded as shots grazed the air near where he sat, but left him unharmed.

  Nilner fired blindly at the oncoming Lightning and tore off one of its wing-mounted engines for good measure; but in return, a hot shell from the autocannon, big enough to punch through a ceramite plate, took all of his left leg below the knee. The big gunner screamed and spat blood.

  Vought swore a blistering curse that would have earned him a dozen lashes if it had been spoken in earshot of a commissar, hands rigid around the yoke as cold air howled through holes in his cockpit. He shouted into the communicator, not knowing if his voice would be carried back to the airfield.

  ‘Point November, this is Griffon. Mission failed. Returning to base.’

  * * *

  AVES WAS WAITING by the runway when the first of the Marauders emerged from the clouds. Sentinel powerlifters and Trojan crawlers fitted for firefighting details were clustered by the ramp, ready to move at a moment’s notice if a bomber made a crash landing. The crewman squinted into the murky sky and his breath caught as he counted the steel grey shapes as they closed in, many of them trailing smoke in black streams. By his count, only a quarter of the squadron had returned.

  Aves saw Griffon then, the watery sunlight glinting off the shattered nose turret. One of the lascannons had been completely sheared away, and the broken spars of the turret sphere looked like ragged teeth in a howling, angry mouth. As he watched, the landing skids emerged from their hatches and locked into place. With the number three engine a shredded wreck, it seemed that Captain Vought was preparing to forego the more difficult vertical touchdown and attempt a runway landing. The fire crews saw this as well, and the Trojans started up their motors, rotating in place to tear after the bomber if the need arose.

  Griffon turned into the wind at the end of the runway and trembled slightly. Aves found he could not take his eyes off the wounded flyer as it descended towards the ferrocrete airstrip. At the last second, Vought chopped the Marauder’s throttles and the heavy bomber touched down with an echoing scrape. The landing skids spat sparks and wisps of vaporised paint where they kissed the runway. The aircraft flashed past Aves, choking him with a lungful of smoke from the damaged engine. Two Trojans roared into life and made off after the Marauder; Aves leapt and grabbed a handhold on the second, clinging on as it rumbled toward the slowing bomber.

  At the end of the runway, Griffon skidded to the right and almost left the paved airstrip, finally shuddering to a halt on the grassy abutment nearby. Guardsmen scrambled over to the flyer, wrenching open the hatchway, and Aves followed. Up close, he could see the myriad holes and scars from bolter impacts and laser burns that dotted the underside of the fuselage. The Marauder stank of spilled fuel, and dark puddles of lubricant were already beginning to pool beneath it where conduits had been severed by shrapnel. Griffon seemed to sag beneath her own weight, bleeding fluid into the mud.

  Aves heard a strangled scream and turned to see Kheed and one of the Guardsmen moving Nilner out of the hatch. The gunnery officer’s uniform was slick with blood, the stark white of bone dangling from where his leg used to be; the leg he’d used to kick Aves savagely, gone now, torn to fleshy tatters. Kheed caught his eye and shouted.

  ‘Aves, get over here! He’s bleeding out and I can’t stop it.’ He nodded toward a small three-wheeled rover parked at the end of the runway. ‘Get him to the infirmary, fast!’

  The Guardsman laid Nilner down on the flatbed and strapped him in. Kheed waved a blood smeared hand at Aves. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood. If you don’t hurry, he’ll be dead, understand? So get going!’

  ‘Yessir!’ Aves replied nervously, but Kneed was already gone, rushing back to the bomber. The Trojan crews were squirting fire retardants over the wing, leaving him alone with his charge. Aves climbed into the saddle and gunned the engine, yanking the handlebars around in a tight turn. He heard Nilner wail as the rover bounced over a bump in the road.

  Aves pushed down the accelerator and cut across the tracks between the runways. The direct route to the infirmary would take a few minutes, following the service road around the barracks and hangars. It would be quicker to thread through the alleys formed by the maintenance sheds. Aves made a tight turn and drove out of sight, into the shadows by the base wall.

  Nilner was babbling something incoherent from the litter behind him, alternatively weeping and coughing as the trike skipped over the ferrocrete paving. Aves brought the rover skidding to a halt at a junction and hesitated.

  ‘Aves!’ the delirious gunner shouted. ‘You took my leg, you little bastard!’ The crewman watched Nilner thrash against the restraints. His eyes were unfocused as he raved. Aves realised that Nilner was completely unaware of his surroundings, maddened with shock and pain. ‘Worthless piece of excrement! You’re pathetic!’

  He took his foot off the accelerator and watched Nilner silently. There was nobody around this part of the base, nobody to hear the gunner’s shouts. Aves watched the crimson patch of blood soaked cloth on Nilner’s litter as it grew and grew, fed by the big man’s vital fluid. A cold, callous thought began to form in his mind.

  ‘If you don’t hurry, he’ll be dead.’ Aves spoke Kheed’s words out loud. It would be so simple to just wait, he mused. So easy to stay here and watch Nilner bleed out his last in agonised delirium. He studied the gunner’s tunic, the bloodstained wings on his uniform breast.

  ‘I hate you,’ Aves told him in a quiet voice. ‘You make my life a misery for your own sport and now I have yours in my hands.’ He leaned closer to Nilner’s sweaty face and recognition glimmered in the gunner’s eyes.

  ‘Aves,’ he rasped. ‘Help me!’

  The crewman’s face twisted in anger; suddenly he wanted to make Nilner beg for his life, he wanted him to suffer. ‘It’s my choice now!’ Aves growled. ‘My choice if you live and die!’

  Nilner seemed very small then, a wretched and feeble shadow of the thug that had tormented Aves for months. ‘Please…’ he whispered.

  * * *

  SORDA TAPPED AVES on the shoulder and the crewman gave a start. ‘Sir! Forgive me, I was just loading parts for the repairs on Griffon-‘

  ‘I know. The captain tells me that we have a replacement engine and spares for the lascannon.’ He paused. ‘This is not about Griffon.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘This is about Nilner.’

  Aves looked away. ‘I followed my orders, bombardier.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you did.’ Sorda gestured towards the infirmary. ‘He’ll live. The tech-priests will be able to give him a mechanical leg, just like Dolenz. The apothecaries told me you got him there just in time. A few minutes more, and they would not have been able to save him.’

  �
�I followed my orders,’ Aves repeated.

  ‘And I can’t imagine why you did.’ Sorda stepped closer, lowering his voice. ‘Do you think that he will thank you for it or be grateful? That’s not his way, Aves. Nilner has no compassion in him, not a spark of it. If your places had been reversed, he would not have hesitated to let you perish.’

  Aves spoke after a long pause. ‘I know, sir. But I’m not him. As much as I wish I could be sometimes, I’m not like Nilner.’

  The officer gave him a measuring gaze and then nodded toward the load of equipment the crewman had been assembling. ‘Captain Vought has been summoned to the command post for new orders. Griffon will be airworthy before nightfall, yes?’ ‘With the Emperor’s blessing, yes.’ ‘Get to it then, and we’ll fly against these heretics again.’

  * * *

  AVES CLIMBED OUT of the bomb bay, rubbing a cloth over his hands to wipe off the grease and muck. The fuel feeds for the replacement engine were now secured, and his job was done. Griffon would fly, if the Imperium so commanded it. The crewman noticed a train of ordnance carriers snaking across the service road. Dragged by a Trojan crawler were a dozen flatbeds, each dominated by the bulk of an Atlas bomb. Aves had never seen an Atlas up close before. They were like long, distended teardrops ending in a splay of winglets, heavy and threatening. Unlike the standard bombs the Marauders usually carried, Atlas warheads were so huge that only one could be taken aboard each aircraft. Aves knew little about ordnance but everyone in the Navy knew what an Adas looked like. Concealed inside that oblate black cowling was an atomic charge big enough to crack a mountain.

  Nearby, Sorda was speaking with the remainder of the bomber’s crew. ‘With Weslund dead, we’ll need someone to man the lascannon. Kheed, you can take that post. We won’t need a navigator to find that cursed leviathan again.’