Angel of Fire

I crouched behind the wreck of an autocar while a bunch of maniacal gangers took pot-shots at us with their home-made pistols. A slug ricocheted off the hood of the vehicle and bounced through a shop window, shattering the glass.

‘Just like the old neighbourhood on a feast-day night,’ Anton said, rising and snapping off a shot with his lasgun. Somebody screamed. Anton dropped back into place and grinned.

‘Makes me nostalgic,’ Ivan said and whistled through his iron teeth. I could tell he was thinking of taking a few shots himself or maybe even charging. He had always been fond of a brawl in the old days.

I stuck my head up and gazed around the street. There were still plenty of armed youngsters there, high on blaze and full of fight. They lurked behind overturned autocars and inside burned-out ground transporters. The battle to take Irongrad might have been over but it’s always a war inside a hive. In this neighbourhood it had probably been war since the hab-blocks went up.

Many of the local gangers had taken the overthrow of the Sons of the Flame as a signal to indulge in an orgy of looting and rape and general score-settling. The Fire worshippers must have been feared indeed to have kept so tight a lid on the seething cauldron of violence that was Irongrad. We had been sent out into the street with the rest of our new company to restore some order.

Overhead iron angels looked down from the high spots that their wings of fire had carried them to. Ordinary citizens had dived for cover in doorways, behind trash cans, in the sumps that led down to the sewers. A ganger shouted abuse in his incomprehensible dialect and took another shot.

Once we had been decorated and the colonel had had his chance to strut in front of Macharius we were returned to duty. Our medals had not brought us any special privileges. We were assigned to a new scrub company made up of a motley assortment of soldiers – crews who had lost their vehicles, squads who were the only survivors of their companies, officers who had been wounded when the last big push came and had missed the chance to die in glorious battle when the heretics overran us. I could see some of the others huddled down in a doorway, getting ready to move up the street. One of them signalled that he wanted covering fire. I raised my hand in acknowledgement and got ready to give it to him.

‘What in the name of the Emperor...’ Anton said. I followed his gaze and saw what had him so upset. The Understudy was walking up the street. He had his pistol held in his hand but it was by his side and he was not aiming at anything. Bullets ricocheted all around him, kicking up small clouds of dust in the street. He walked through them as if they were raindrops dropping from the sky on Jurasik. It was as if he did not believe he could be hit and somehow his faith created a force field around him that prevented that from happening. His face was pale. His eyes were focused on the distance. A bullet knocked off his cap and he bent down to pick it up and adjusted it on his head as if the wind had blown it off. I swear another bullet passed through the air where his face had just been.

It did provoke some action though. He stood up, pointed his pistol and snapped off a shot. I heard a scream from the direction he was firing in. He just kept walking forwards, firing as he went, and was occasionally rewarded with another scream. I looked at Ivan. Ivan looked at me. We were equally bemused. Anton grinned and said, ‘What the hell!’ He stood up and fired his lasgun. The bolt passed over the Understudy’s shoulder and struck another ganger. Ivan and I sprang to our feet and raced forwards. The rest of the squad did the same. It seemed like the Understudy was getting all the attention anyway. They sent a hail of las-bolts pounding into the gangers and mowed a few down. Some of the others broke away and ran.

I had the shotgun in my hand but I couldn’t use it because the Understudy was in front of me. That did not stop Ivan from shooting. I think he was doing it more to keep the gangers pinned down than because he expected to hit anything. All three of us, the Understudy, Ivan and me, reached the gangers at the same time. I pushed my combat shotgun forwards and pulled the trigger and the spray from the pellet cartridge took out another three of them. The Understudy shot one and Ivan simply pointed his lasgun and said, ‘Surrender!’

The gangers dropped their guns. I don’t know what they found more frightening: the look on the Understudy’s face or the look of Ivan’s metal jaws. To tell the truth, there was little to choose between the two in terms of their frightfulness.

The Understudy studied the gangers with no more animosity than if they had been squabbling children making a noise round about him. I cannot say that Ivan and Anton and myself were particularly gentle with them. I’ve never really cared for people who shoot at me.

The gangers were hauled off for either execution or forced conscription and we returned to patrolling the streets and keeping our eyes open for devotees of the Angel of Fire.

It was another typical day on the streets of Irongrad. I remember it only because it was that night we met the girls.

We sat in the cellar of the Angel’s Blessing. I studied the room from my seat in the corner. It was small, it was dark and it was full of fug from lho sticks and glittersmoke. Small gas-lights guarded by crystal bowls threw flickering light out into the gloom. Behind the bar, a shaven-headed local dispensed rotgut alcohol from bottles that inevitably displayed on the label some scene from the career of the Angel of Fire or one of his many associated saints, and the name of the factorum that produced it.

I looked across the table at Anton and Ivan and the New Boy. They all had glasses in front of them. Ivan had an open bottle which he was reserving for his own exclusive use. The rest of us went the more conventional route and had a waitress bring us drinks.

‘Well this is cosy,’ said Anton. Locals were coming down the narrow stairs, taking in the clientele at a glance and mostly leaving. At least the men were. Some of the local girls stayed. It was the usual pattern. You see it on a thousand worlds.

There were plenty of men from our unit there. Some wore the local trinkets, little metal angel pins or chokers. Others had more sinister souvenirs, numbers made up of small skulls inked on arms and necks and foreheads with the name of Irongrad underneath them. The tattoos were an old regimental way of indicating how many people they had killed in that battle. Some of those were lies, some of them were boasts and some of them were understatements. I thought it was premature. I was not entirely certain that the battle for the city was really over. The gangs were still fighting in the streets. There was unrest in many of the hab-zones and no one really knew what had happened to the cultists who had caused so much trouble.

‘Did you see the Understudy today?’ the New Boy asked. ‘He walked through the hail of fire as if he never even noticed it.’

‘Maybe he didn’t,’ I said.

‘I can’t believe it’s the same man I had to carry out of the cockpit of Number Ten.’ How easily he called it Number Ten, I thought. It was almost as if he had spent ten years in the tank the same as me, and not the few days he had. I felt like telling him you had to earn the right to use the nickname but what was the point.

‘He’s gone daft,’ said Anton.

‘You know it’s pretty bad when Anton calls you daft,’ said Ivan.

‘I am serious,’ said Anton. ‘Come on, we’ve all seen it. Sometimes men snap. Something in their brain breaks and it changes them. Remember Yuri after we pulled him out of the bunker on Jurasik? Kept gibbering that the green men were all around and coming to get him.’

‘Well, we had been fighting orks,’ I said. ‘So he was probably right.’

‘We had killed them all. He was seeing bloody invisible orks.’

‘You can’t see invisible things,’ Ivan pointed out. ‘That’s what being invisible is all about.’

‘You know what I mean. He was mad, gibbering mad.’

‘The Understudy is not like that,’ I said.

‘I know but it’s a similar thing. Sometimes men see something and their minds break.’

‘You’re safe then,’ said Ivan. ‘You don’t have a mind.’

‘Ha bloody ha!’

The New Boy shuddered and took a swig of his greenish-coloured drink. ‘I think there are things here that might do that to a man, if he stuck around long enough.’

He was starting to get round to it now, the thing that was really on his mind. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, to give him a reason to go on talking.

‘I mean what are all those cages about?’

‘They are for putting people to death,’ I said.

‘Who the hell puts anyone to death that way?’

‘Does it matter? People die whatever.’

‘Yeah but...’

‘We use firing squads,’ I said. ‘They use cages.’

‘It’s not the same,’ the New Boy said.

He was right of course, but there was drink in my belly and I was feeling contrary. I usually do once I’ve had a few. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘You know it’s not, Leo,’ said Ivan. ‘One way is quick and clean, the other is slow and cruel.’

‘And yeah, the Imperium is never slow or cruel,’ I said.

‘Not this way.’

‘Ivan’s right, Leo,’ Anton said. ‘There’s something rotten about killing people that way, something strange. It’s the work of those priests.’

‘You may be right,’ I said.

‘You know I am. It has the stink of heresy to it.’

The debate might have taken a downright theological turn but we were interrupted.

Corporal Hesse came in. His uniform was clean. His boots were polished. His small moustache was well-trimmed. He had a girl under each arm. He did not look like much, did the corporal, but he was always a hit with the ladies. He looked kind and jolly and he was always generous to them so I suppose it was understandable. His presence dispelled the last of the gloom hanging over the table even though all he did was sweep past us, slap some of the local scrip on the table and say loudly, ‘Have a farewell drink for old Number Ten on me.’ Then he was gone. It was like a personal ritual he had to perform and we all have some of those.

‘Thanks, corporal,’ I said to his departing back. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

Anton nudged me in the ribs with an elbow. I glanced up to see what he was looking at. A group of three pretty young women had entered.

‘Just what I need to take my mind off your gloomy chatter,’ he said. He rose and went to introduce himself. He spoke for a while and returned to our table, leading a small blonde girl by the arm. ‘This is Katrina,’ he said.

He indicated a tall, dark girl. ‘This is Lutzka and this is Yanis.’ The third was a plump and pretty girl. ‘They are nurses at the Hospice of Saint…?’

‘Saint Oberon,’ said Katrina. ‘It’s the best hospice in the hive. All of the nobles go there for treatment.’ She seemed very proud of that.

‘I’m sure they do,’ said Anton smoothing his hair. ‘And I’m sure you give them the treatment they deserve.’

Ivan dragged over some chairs for them with a courtliness you would not have believed possible and they sat down. Katrina was next to Anton. Lutzka was next to Ivan and Yanis was next to the New Boy. I was stranded in my corner, next to none of the girls. Not that I cared enough to move anyway. I was in a foul and contrary mood.

They settled down to chat and smooch and I settled down to drink. Maybe I should have chatted to one of the girls. If I had my life would have been much different. I would probably not have fallen in with Anna for one thing. I had a few more drinks and then I staggered back to the barracks. We had a patrol in the morning. The others did not seem to mind. Their attention was all on the women.

It was crowded in the Chimera. I didn’t care. I was in the turret, watching the streets go by. On these, the deeper levels of the hive, it was always the same. The buildings towered over us, festooned with metal seraphim. A titanic angel glared down on us from gigantic murals set in the roof, details picked out by wandering spotlights on the hab-tops. Trash had piled up like snow drifts along the side of the buildings, where maintenance tubes had broken down and services were impaired. Rats the size of a man’s head watched us with glittering, malign eyes and chittered to each other in the language of their kind.

There had been an ambush. One of our patrols had been set upon by hordes of the heretics. They had called in for help. We had been sent in response.

Ivan held the controls of the heavy bolter and studied the streets. If he was hungover you couldn’t tell. He was looking for targets. All we could see were people garbed in the light robes so common among the workers here. We were getting closer to the ambush site though. You could tell from the smell of burning flesh.

The fight had come to a climax in one of those plazas that centred around a burning cage. Our boys had made a good show of it. They had left hundreds of dead behind them as they went. Corpses still littered the ground despite the hordes of collectors who had gathered to strip the bodies and drag them away to the gigantic crematorium. Bounties were still paid for that. It was one of the local laws that Macharius had let stand.

A few of the dead might have been innocent bystanders. I doubted it. In my experience, factorum workers are rarely so heavily armed.

We were not the first on the spot. A company had already deployed in the square. I saw officers gesturing and shouting orders. I saw a ratling sniper perched on top of a winged angel statue and surveying the crowd of corpse collectors through the scope of his high-powered rifle.

The Chimera crunched bodies under its treads until a commissar gave the signal to halt. We stopped. The squad deployed. I clambered out of the turret and dropped into place beside Anton, my shotgun at the ready. Ivan stayed in the turret, hands still on the gun. I felt reassured to have him there. If trouble broke out, he knew how to handle such a weapon.

The commissar strode up to us. He was one of the icy-faced types. ‘Secure the perimeter, Lieutenant Ryker,’ he said. His voice was beautiful and mellow like that of an avuncular priest. It was surprising that such a man had such a voice.

‘Sir,’ said the Understudy. He began to rasp out the orders and we responded, moving to the edge of the plaza, taking cover behind burned-out cars, plascrete walls and podiums of statues. Anyone could see that it was too late, that the fighting was over, but no one was taking any chances. If an angry torch-bearing mob came back this way they would find themselves cut down in a hail of las-fire.

I found myself sheltering behind a plascrete bench with Corporal Hesse and the New Boy. Hesse did not look so jolly this morning. He was all business, just like the lasgun he held ready in his hand.

‘You see what they did back there?’ he asked, when he was sure that a horde of fanatics were not about to erupt from the side alleys and assault us at just this moment.

I had and I had been trying not to think about it. Around the fire fountain were half-burned bodies. More had been stuffed into a cage and set alight. I did not doubt for a moment they had been our boys and they had been alive at the time. It could not have been a nice way to go.

‘I don’t think I want to be taken alive by these heretics,’ said the New Boy. He was not being flippant.

‘Best way to do that is shoot them with a lasgun,’ said Hesse. ‘See how they like being burned.’

‘I saw some of those priests back at the factorum,’ said the New Boy. ‘Las-fire did not even slow them down. It just made them stronger, like they fed on it.’

Hesse smiled grimly. ‘Then don’t shoot the priests, shoot the people with them. Leave the local holy men to Lemuel here. See if they like shotgun cartridges as much as they like las-bolts.’

I was not at all sure that I appreciated Hesse volunteering me for priest-killing duty but what he said made a certain amount of sense.

‘Alternatively you could always try a grenade,’ I said.

‘I don’t care if you piss on the bastards to put out their burning heads, you see one of those psykers, you put him down, however you have to.’ The corporal sounded angry, which was understandable given the circumstances. I was not in the best of moods myself. We stared at the plaza as if we expected a horde of fire-worshipping heretics to manifest at any moment. They kept stubbornly away.

We waited and waited but the heretics did not return to do any more burning. Clearly odds of less than a hundred to one did not suit them. Eventually the officers and the commissar and the people who seemed to be consulting with them decided they had seen enough. We were ordered back to the vehicles and headed back to base.