Hell Night - Nick Kyme Read online

  'They say they're under attack… from spectres,' said Emek.

  'Patch it to all comms, brother. Every combat squad.'

  Emek did as asked, and Dak'ir's battle-helm, together with his brothers', was filled with the broken reports from the Phalanx command units.

  '…ergeant is dead. Falling hack to secondary positions…'

  '…all around us! Throne of Earth, I can't see a target, I can't se—'

  '…ead, everyone. They're out here among us! Oh hell, oh Emperor sa—'

  Scattered gunfire and hollow screams punctuated these reports. Some units were attempting to restore order. The barking commands of sergeants and corporals sounded desperate as they tried to re-organise in the face of sudden attack.

  Commissar Loth's voice broke in sporadically, his replies curt and scathing. They must hold and then advance. The Imperium would brook no cowardice in the face of the enemy. Staggered bursts from his bolt pistol concluded each order, suggesting further executions.

  Above and omnipresent, the sound of tolling bells filled the air.

  'I saw no chapel or basilica in the Phalanx bastion,' said Ba'ken. He swept his gaze around slowly, panning with his heavy flamer as he did so.

  'The rebels?' offered Brother Romulus.

  'How do you explain it being everywhere?' asked Pyriel, his eyes aglow once more. He regarded the blood-red clouds that hinted at the churning warp storm above. 'This is an unnatural phenomenon. We are dealing with more than secessionists.'

  Dak'ir swore under his breath; he'd made his decision.

  'Spectres or not, we can't leave the Phalanx to be butchered.' He switched the comm-feed in his battle-helm to transmit.

  'All squads regroup, and converge on Phalanx command positions.'

  Brother Apion responded with a rapid affirmative, as did a second combat squad led by Brother Lazarus. Tsu'gan took a little longer to capitulate, evidently unimpressed, but seeing the need to rescue the Guardsmen from whatever was attacking them. Without the support fire offered by their heavy guns, the Salamanders were horribly exposed to the secessionist artillery and with the shield intact they had no feasible mission to prosecute.

  'Understood.' Tsu'gan then cut the link.

  SILHOUETTES MOVED THROUGH the downpour. Lasgun snap-shot fizzed out from Imperial positions, revealing Phalanx troopers that were shooting at unseen foes.

  Most were running. Even the Basilisks were starting to withdraw. Commissar Loth, despite all of his fervour and promised retribution, couldn't prevent it.

  The Phalanx were fleeing. 'Enemy contacts?'

  Dak'ir was tracking through the mire, pistol held low, chainsword still but ready. He was the fulcrum of a dispersed battle-formation, Pyriel to his immediate left and two battle-brothers either side of them.

  Ahead, he saw another combat squad led by Apion, the secondary insertion group. He too had dispersed his warriors, and they were plying every metre of the field for enemies.

  'Negative,' was the curt response from Lazarus, approaching from the west.

  Artillery bombardment from the entrenched rebel positions was falling with the intense rain. A great plume of sodden earth and broken bodies surged into the air a few metres away from where Dak'ir's squad advanced.

  'Pyriel, anything?'

  The Librarian shook his head, intent on his otherworldly instincts but finding no sense in what he felt or saw.

  The broken chatter in Dak'ir's ear continued, the tolling of the bells providing an ominous chorus to gunfire and screaming. The Phalanx were close to a rout, having been pushed too far by a commissar who didn't understand or care about the nature of the enemy they were facing. Loth's only answer was threat of death to galvanise the men under his command. The bark of the Imperial officer's bolt pistol was close. Dak'ir could make out the telltale muzzle flash of the weapon in his peripheral vision.

  Loth was firing at shadows and hitting his own men in the process; those fleeing and those who were standing their ground.

  'I'll deal with him,' promised Pyriel, snapping out of his psychic trance without warning and peeling off to intercept the commissar.

  Another artillery blast detonated nearby, showering the Salamanders with debris. Without the Earthshaker bombardment, the rebels were using their shell-hunting cannons to punish the Imperials. Tracer fire from high-calibre gunnery positions added to the carnage. That and whatever was stalking them through the mud and rain.

  'It's infiltrators.' Tsu'gan's harsh voice was made harder still as it came through the comm-feed. 'Maybe fifty men, strung out in small groups, operating under camouflage. The humans are easily spooked. We will find them, Fire-born, and eliminate the threat.'

  'How can you be—'

  Dak'ir stopped when he caught a glimpse of something, away to his right.

  'Did you see that?' he asked Ba'ken.

  The hulking trooper followed him, swinging his heavy flamer around.

  'No target,' Ba'ken replied. 'What was it, brother?'

  'Not sure…' It had looked like just a flicker of… white robes, fluttering lightly but against the wind. The air suddenly became redolent with dank and age.

  'Ignean!' Tsu'gan demanded.

  'It's not infiltrators,' Dak'ir replied flatly. Static flared in the feed before the other sergeant's voice returned. 'You can't be sure of that.'

  'I know it, brother.' This time, Dak'ir cut the link. It had eluded him at first, but now he felt it, a… presence, out in the darkness of the killing field. It was angry.

  'Eyes open,' he warned his squad, the half-seen image at the forefront of his mind and the stench all too real as the bells rang on.

  Ahead, Dak'ir made out the form of a Phalanx officer, a captain according to his rank pins and attire. The Salamanders headed towards him, hoping to link up their forces and stage some kind of counterattack. That was assuming there were enough troopers left to make any difference.

  COMMISSAR LOTH WAS consumed by frenzy.

  'Hold your ground!' he screeched. 'The Emperor demands your courage!' The bolt pistol rang out and another trooper fell, his torso gaping and red.

  'Forward, damn you! Advance for His greater glory and the glory of the Imperium!'

  Another Phalanx died, this time a sergeant who'd been rallying his men.

  Pyriel was hurrying to get close, his force sword drawn, whilst his other hand was free. In the darkness and the driving rain he saw… spectres. They were white-grey and indistinct. Their movements were jagged, as if partially out of synch with reality, the non-corporeal breaching the fabric of the corporeal realm.

  Loth saw them too, and the fear of it, whatever this phenomenon was, was etched over his pugilist's face.

  'Ave Imperator. By the light of the Emperor, I shall fear no evil,' he intoned, falling back on the catechisms of warding and preservation he had learned in the schola progenium. 'Ave Imperator. My soul is free of taint. Chaos will never claim it whilst He is my shield.'

  The spectres were closing, flitting in and out of reality like a bad pict recording. Turning left and right, Loth loosed off shots at his aggressors, the brass rounds passing through them or missing completely, driving on to hit fleeing Phalanx infantryman instead.

  With each manifestation, the spectres got nearer.

  Pyriel was only a few metres away when one appeared ahead of him. Loth's shot struck the Salamander in the pauldron as it went through and through, and a damage rune flared into life on the Librarian's tactical display inside his battle-helm.

  'Ave Imp—' Too late. The spectre was upon Commissar Loth. He barely rasped the words—

  ''Oh God-Emperor…''

  —when a blazing wall of psychic fire spilled from Pyriel's outstretched palm, smothering the apparition and banishing it from sight.

  Loth was raising his pistol to his lips, jamming the still hot barrel into his mouth as his mind was unmanned by what he had seen.

  Pyriel reached him just in time, smacking the pistol away before the commissar could summa
rily execute himself. The irony of it wasn't lost on the Librarian as the bolt round flew harmlessly into the air. Still trailing tendrils of fire, Pyriel placed two fingers from his outstretched hand onto Loth's brow, who promptly crumpled to the ground and was still.

  'He'll be out for several hours. Get him out of here, back to the bastion,' he ordered one of the commissar's attendants.

  The attendant nodded, still shaken, calling for help, and together the storm troopers dragged Loth away.

  'And he'll remember nothing of this or Vaporis,' Pyriel added beneath his breath.

  Sensing his power, the spectres Pyriel had seen had retreated. Something else prickled at his senses now, something far off into the wilderness, away from the main battle site. There was neither time nor opportunity to investigate. Pyriel knew the nature of the foe they were facing now. He also knew there was no defence against it his brothers could muster. Space Marines were the ultimate warriors, but they needed enemies of flesh and blood. They couldn't fight mist and shadow.

  Huge chunks of the Phalanx army were fleeing. But there was nothing Pyriel could do about that. Nor could he save those claimed by the earth, though this was the malice of the spectres at work again.

  Instead, he raised a channel to Dak'ir through his battle-helm. All the while, the bells tolled on.

  'THE ENTIRE FORCE is broken,' the captain explained. He was a little hoarse from shouting commands, but had rallied what platoons were around him into some sort of order. 'Captain…'

  'Mannheim,' the officer supplied.

  'Captain Mannheim, what happened here? What is preying on your men?' asked Dak'ir. The rain was pounding heavily now, and tinked rapidly off his battle-plate. Explosions boomed all around them.

  'I never saw it, my lord,' Mannheim admitted, wincing as a flare of incendiary came close, 'only Phalanx troopers disappearing from sight. At first, I thought enemy commandoes, but our bio-scanners were blank. The only heat signatures came from our own men.'

  Malfunctioning equipment was a possibility, but it still cast doubt on Tsu'gan's infiltrators theory.

  Dak'ir turned to Emek, who carried the squad's auspex. The Salamander shook his head. Nothing had come from the rebel positions behind the shield, either.

  'Could they have already been out here? Masked their heat traces?' asked Ba'ken on a closed channel.

  Mannheim was distracted by his vox-officer. Making a rapid apology, he turned his back and pressed the receiver cup to his ear, straining to hear against the rain and thunder.

  'Not possible,' replied Dak'ir. 'We would have seen them.'

  'Then what?'

  Dak'ir shook his head, as the rain came on in swathes.

  'My lord…' It was Mannheim again. 'I've lost contact with Lieutenant Bahnhoff. We were coordinating a tactical consolidation of troops to launch a fresh assault. Strength in numbers.'

  It was a rarefied concept on Nocturne, where self-reliance and isolationism were the main tenets.

  'Where?' asked Dak'ir.

  Mannheim pointed ahead. 'The lieutenant was part of our vanguard, occupying a more advanced position. His men had already reached the assault line when we were attacked.'

  Explosions rippled in the distance where the captain gestured with a quavering finger. These were brave men, but their resolve was nearing its limit. Loth, and his blood-minded draconianism, had almost pushed them over the edge.

  It was hard to imagine much surviving in that barrage, and with whatever was abroad in the killing field to contend with too…

  'If Lieutenant Bahnhoff lives, we will extract him and his men,' Dak'ir promised. He abandoned thoughts of a counter-attack almost immediately. The Phalanx were in disarray. Retreat was the only sensible option that preserved a later opportunity to attack. Though it went against his Promethean code, the very ideals of endurance and tenacity the Salamanders prided themselves on, Dak'ir had no choice but to admit it.

  'Fall back with your men, captain. Get as many as you can to the bastion. Inform any other officers you can raise that the Imperial forces are in full retreat.'

  Captain Mannheim motioned to protest.

  'Full retreat, captain,' Dak'ir asserted. 'No victory was ever won with foolish sacrifice,' he added, quoting one of Zen'de's Tenets of Pragmatism.

  The Phalanx officer saluted, and started pulling his men back. Orders were already being barked down the vox to any other coherent platoons in the army.

  'We don't know what is out there, Dak'ir,' Ba'ken warned as they started running in Bahnhoff's direction. Though distant, silhouettes of the lieutenant's forces were visible. Worryingly, their las-fire spat in frantic bursts.

  'Then we prepare for anything,' the sergeant replied grimly and forged on into the churned earth.

  BAHNHOFF'S MEN HAD formed a defensive perimeter, their backs facing one another with the lieutenant himself at the centre, shouting orders. He positively sagged with relief upon sighting the Emperor's Angels coming to their aid.

  The Salamanders were only a few metres away when something flickered into being nearby the circle of lasguns and one of the men simply vanished. One moment he was there, and the next… gone.

  Panic flared and the order Bahnhoff had gallantly established threatened to break down. Troopers had their eyes on flight and not battle against apparitions they could barely see, let alone shoot or kill.

  A second trooper followed the first, another white flicker signalling his death. This time Dak'ir saw the human's fate. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him whole. Except the trooper hadn't fallen or been sucked into a bog, he'd been dragged. Pearlescent hands, with thin fingers like talons, had seized the poor bastard by the ankles and pulled him under.

  Despite Bahnhoffs efforts his platoon's resolve shattered and they fled. Several more perished as they ran, sharing the same grisly fate as the others, dragged down in an eye-blink. The lieutenant ran with them, trying to turn the rout into an ordered retreat, but failing.

  Emboldened by the troopers' fear, the things that were preying on the Phalanx manifested and the Salamanders saw them clearly for the first time.

  'Are they daemons?' spat Emek, levelling his bolter.

  They looked more like ragged corpses, swathed in rotting surplices and robes, the tattered fabric flapping like the tendrils of some incorporeal squid. Their eyes were hollow and black, and they were bone-thin with the essence of clergy about them. Priests they may once have been; now they were devils.

  'Let us see if they can burn,' snarled Ba'ken, unleashing a gout of promethium from his heavy flamer. The spectres dissipated against the glare of liquid fire coursing over them, as Ba'ken set the killing fields ablaze, but returned almost as soon as the fires had died down, utterly unscathed.

  He was about to douse them again when they evaporated like mist before his eyes.

  An uncertain second or two passed, before the hulking Fire-born turned to his sergeant and shrugged.

  'I've fought tougher foes—' he began, before crying out as his booted feet sank beneath the earth.

  'Name of Vulkan!' Emek swore, scarcely believing his eyes.

  'Hold him!' bellowed Dak'ir, seeing white talons snaring Ba'ken's feet and ankles. Brothers Romulus and G'heb sprang to their fellow Salamander's aid, each hooking their arms under Ba'ken's. In moments, they were straining against the strength of the spectres.

  'Let me go, you'll tear me in half,' roared Ba'ken, part anger, part pain.

  'Hang on, brother,' Dak'ir told him. He was about to call for reinforcements, noting Pyriel's contact rune on his tac-display, when an apparition materialised in front of him. It was an old preacher, his grey face lined with age and malice, a belligerent light illuminating the sockets of his eyes. His mouth formed words Dak'ir could not discern and he raised an accusing finger.

  'Release him, hell-spawn!' Dak'ir lashed out with his chainsword, but the preacher blinked out of existence and the blade passed on harmlessly to embed itself in the soft earth behind him. Dak'ir raised
his plasma pistol to shoot when a terrible, numbing cold filled his body. Icy fire surged through him as his blood was chilled by something old and vengeful. It stole away the breath from his lungs and made them burn, as if he had plunged naked beneath the surface of an arctic river. It took Dak'ir a few moments to realise the crooked fingers of the preacher were penetrating his battle-plate. Worming beyond the aegis of ceramite, making a mockery of his power armour's normally staunch defences, the grey preacher's talons sought vital organs in their quest for vengeance.

  Trying to cry out, Dak'ir found his larynx frozen, his tongue made leaden by the spectral assault. In his mind his intoned words of Promethean lore kept him from slipping into utter darkness.

  Vulkan's fire beats in my breast. With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor.

  A heavy pressure hammered at his thunderous hearts, pressing, pressing…

  Dak'ir's senses were ablaze and the smell of dank and old wood permeated through his battle-helm.

  Then a bright flame engulfed him and the pressure eased. Cold withered, melted away by soothing heat, and as his darkening vision faded Dak'ir saw Pyriel standing amidst a pillar of fire. At the periphery, Ba'ken was being dragged free of the earth that had claimed him. Someone else was lifting Dak'ir. He felt strong hands hooking under his arms and pulling him. It was only then as his body became weightless and light that he realised he must've fallen. Semi-conscious, Dak'ir was aware of a fading voice addressing him.

  'Dragging your carcass out of the fire again, Ignean…'

  Then the darkness claimed him.

  THE STRATEGIUM WAS actually an old refectory inside the bastion compound that smelled strongly of tabac and stale sweat. A sturdy-looking cantina table had been commandeered to act as a tacticarium, and was strewn with oiled maps, geographical charts and data-slates. The vaulted ceiling leaked, and drips of water were constantly being wiped from the various scrolls and picts layering the table by aides and officers alike. Buzzing around the moderately sized room's edges were Departmento Munitorum clerks and logisticians, counting up men and materiel with their styluses and exchanging dark glances with one another when they thought the Guard weren't looking.