Angel of Fire

Looking out of the scope I saw endless rows of armoured vehicles glittering in the early morning light. Greyish exhaust fumes made the air shimmer. Horns sounded. Engines roared. In my ear bead I could hear the constant chatter of comm-net communications. I was only supposed to be able to hear the lieutenant but there was some bleed through his monitor and very faintly in the background I heard signals coming down from the higher command echelons.

Out there, the army stirred like a great beast. Company after company of armoured vehicles made off, rolling downslope, crushing friable stone beneath their huge treads, raising enormous plumes of dust and ash as they gathered momentum.

I relaxed in the bucket seat and offered up some more technical prayers. I knew it would be several hours before we had to move. Our place was quite far back in the column. I looked down at the crystal of the console and watched the dots that represented units shimmer and shift, bees of greenish light swarming against a blood-red background.

I looked over at the New Boy. He had tilted his cap to one side in emulation of my manner. He caught me looking at him and grinned, a little nervously. It was understandable. We were not yet in any danger but this was the start of his first campaign and we would soon be moving into the eye of the storm of violence the Imperial Guard had brought to this world. He swallowed and made an aquila over his heart with his fingers and then closed his eyes. His lips twisted slightly and I knew he was praying.

Over the Baneblade’s internal comm-net the lieutenant’s calm voice sounded, chanting out the First Battle Catechism and getting the expected answers first from Corporal Hesse then from the remainder of the crew stations, then the gunners. From deeper within the Indomitable came the sound of turrets rotating and guns elevating. The machine shuddered a little as barrels reached maximum elevation and locked.

One by one the great tanks of our company rolled out; I watched their massive forms disappear downslope into the great cloud of dust like enormous mastodons moving through the dawn of time.

‘Lemuel, move us out,’ said the lieutenant. I invoked the spirit and our engines roared to full life. Somewhere in the depths of the vehicle I heard cheers and prayers as the crew reacted to the movement each in their own way.

The great armoured monster that was the Indomitable rumbled to life beneath my hands. In that moment, I wondered if this was how Macharius felt when he gave orders to an army. The mighty vehicle responded to my commands like some great beast responding to its rider. I felt all of those hundreds of tons of weight move at my will. An armoured behemoth capable of crushing men to jelly beneath its treads, of crashing through buildings and destroying lesser vehicles by mass alone, responded to my hands on its ancient controls.

At that moment, I felt alive, as if I was doing what I was put in this world to do.

Ahead of us a wall of flames stretched to the horizon, as if the entire planet had caught fire and the world itself was burning. The sands of the desert were the red of blood. Even through the filters, the air had taken on a curious metallic tang. The column slowed almost to a halt and began to move forwards cautiously as the leading scouting vehicles reached the edge of the lava seas.

‘You’ll want to be careful here, Lemuel,’ the lieutenant said. ‘This is not the place to make a mistake. We’re approaching the causeways and if we fall off we’ll never see Belial again or anywhere else for that matter.’

The New Boy gulped. I suspected that if I could have seen his expression I would have discovered that he was glad that he was not the one driving right now. I did not look. I was too busy concentrating on the paths ahead.

You could have marched an army over them company by company, but a Baneblade is not a company of soldiers. It can’t narrow its frontage or move along in single file if it has to.

I could not see much ahead except for the clouds of dust raised by the tanks that had gone this way before, and the marks of their tracks in the reddish sand, and the ever-narrowing roadway as it pushed out into the lava sea.

Sea is misleading, it suggests waves and tides and regular movement. The lava was not like that. It glowed in different colours, from almost incandescent white to cherry red. It bubbled and it spurted. It was like a living thing. It was all too easy to imagine daemons living below its surface and emerging to devour the souls of men.

It was easy too to understand how the inhabitants of Karsk IV believed that the Angel of Fire stood at the right hand of the Emperor. Flame was the most powerful thing in this world. Its potency was a self-evident truth. Even the mighty frame of the Indomitable seemed a pitifully small thing compared to the endless, encroaching lava.

Not that I gave it too much attention. I was too busy keeping an eye on the path and making adjustments with the control sticks to keep us as close to the centre of it as possible. It was not easy. The way was neither regular nor smooth. Sometimes we would run up small slopes and I would feel the Indomitable tilt and for a horrible moment wonder if we were going to start sliding.

Ahead of us another Baneblade loomed out of the dust fog. The rock beneath its left tread had started to crumble. The weight of so many massive vehicles moving over the thin crust of this burning land was taking its toll. The driver struggled to keep the tank moving straight. As I watched it swerved dangerously close to the edge.

I wondered what was going on: guidance servo malfunction, driver drunkenness, misheard command over the comm-net. I slowed down to avoid a possible collision. It was easy to imagine getting knocked into the boiling lava by a misjudgement on the part of the lead driver. I hoped the drivers behind us were paying the same attention as I was.

I let out a long breath I did not know I had been holding as the tank in front got back on course. I heard a gentle curse from the New Boy.

It was going to be a long day.

We emerged from the lava paths into the ash deserts beyond. I felt as if a weight had lifted from my shoulders. All around huge Imperial tanks ploughed ahead at full speed, raising bow-sprays of sand and dust. There was a sense of swiftness and motion that had been sorely missed in the cramped volcanic paths through the lava.

The sun glared down, a gigantic cyclopean eye. I studied a horizon that looked like a sea suddenly petrified by the magic of daemons, waves turned red as blood, layered with cobalt blue. Everything had a tainted chemical look to it. Huge, chitinous things scurried out of the way of the tanks. A few were crushed to a bloody purple gel by the tracks.

Over the comm-net relieved chatter filled the lower-level links. Anton and Ivan must have been as worried as I; they could see what was happening from their gun-position and could not do anything about it. At least I had some say in what happened.

Vulture gunships skimmed overhead, engines thundering, exhaust contrails scarring the desert sky white, like claw-marks made by the talons of some huge invisible beast, their twin-tailed shadows gliding over the sand beneath them.

The tac-map showed the position of an oasis ahead. The holo-spheres representing our forces were already surrounding it. In the distance a few brief high explosive shots rang out as some pueblo village rejoined the dust from which it emerged before our position could be reported.

Anton grumbled over the comm-net to Ivan. ‘The vanguard get all the fun.’

‘We’ll be in battle soon enough,’ Ivan replied. ‘You’ll have your chance to blow something up then.’

‘Can’t come soon enough for me,’ said Anton.

‘Stow the chatter, lads,’ said the lieutenant, patching himself in to the lower level. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for heretics. They will be out there somewhere.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said Ivan. He sounded almost cheerful but then he always did when there was a fight in the offing. There was a darkness in Ivan that responded to incipient violence. I’ve seen a lot of soldiers get that way. Combat is a drug for them.

We thundered across the wastelands, engines roaring, officers barking out calm commands. I felt part of a vast invincible war machine, certain of victory, assured of triumph. I tried to enjoy the feeling while I could.

I knew it wouldn’t last.

The night was quiet. We stood beside the tank and looked at the stars. They glittered cold and clear in the blackness of the firmament. All around us lay the rubble of a pueblo. There was no sign it had ever been a military outpost, no sign that it had been anything much. The buildings were in ruins. If it had not been for the fires that still burned in some, they might have been that way for tens of thousands of years.

One by one we clambered up the side of the Indomitable and looked out of the crater we had set ourselves hull-down in. As far as the eye could see were the silhouettes of armoured vehicles. Men swarmed over and around them, doing what we were doing, escaping from the cramped inner quarters, stretching their legs looking at the night sky. Somewhere in the distance someone was playing a harmonica. It was an old tune from Belial, My Girl Has Eyes of Blue.

To the south, the sky turned white then black then white again in eerie flickers. A sound like thunder raced across the desert in its wake. If I had not known there was a battle being fought below the horizon, I would have suspected it was the mother of all storms, racing towards us through the night.

I sat with my back to the main turret of the machine with my legs dangling over the side. Anton had draped himself over the barrel of a gun and hung there like a spider-lemur we had once paid to see in the zoo in Jansen Hive. Ivan took a swig of coolant fluid from his flask, wiped the mouth of it and passed it to me. I took a swig and handed it up to Anton.

‘It was awesome today, passing through the lava sea,’ he said eventually.

Ivan belched loudly then whistled.

‘You didn’t have to do the driving,’ I said.

‘I suppose you want us to thank you for getting us through alive,’ Anton said.

‘It’s my job,’ I said.

‘What you think they were like?’ Ivan asked.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘The folks who lived here.’

‘Like us I suppose. This is a human world.’

‘You think they woke up this morning expecting to be dead?’ Ivan asked. The booze was making him melancholy, as it usually did.

‘A world like this, yes, most likely.’ Anton replied. ‘It does not seem the most pleasant of places.’

‘Why would you build a place out here in the desert?’

‘Could be a relay station,’ I said. ‘Could be a rich man’s ranch. Could be an energy farm. Who knows? Who cares?’

The coolant fluid came back my way. I took another swig. It tasted like medicine but kicked like a drill sergeant. Lasgun fire flickered down below us. I reached for my combat shotgun but Ivan shook his head. ‘It’s just Oily and the boys tormenting one of those big scorpions.’

I squinted into the darkness. By the light of las-burst I recognised the mechanic’s squat form. He and a bunch of others from Number Six were flash-frying one of the beasts, probably wanted to know what it tasted like.

‘You know it’s strange,’ Ivan said, not in the least distracted from the job of depressing the rest of us. ‘There’s a whole army down there. This is probably the most people who have ever stood in this spot. Will most likely be until the end of time, till the stars burn out and the Emperor walks again.’

‘And your point is?’ I asked. Ivan shook his head and laughed bitterly. I heard the metal of the flask clink against the metal of his jaw.

‘We’ll never come back this way. We’ll never see this place again. We blasted it to bits in the name of the Emperor and tomorrow we will be gone and all that will be left will be wasteland.’

‘By the Emperor’s Throne, you are a miserable bastard, Ivan,’ Anton said. ‘I came out here happy to see the stars. Another five minutes of listening to you and I’ll be ready to eat a grenade.’

‘You’ll never get to be a Space Marine if you do that,’ Ivan said. His mood was contagious though. Even Anton seemed thoughtful now.

‘You think they’ll have big guns over there?’ he asked.

‘It’s a hive city – what do you think?’ I said.

‘Big enough to blow a hole in a Baneblade the way we blew this place up?’

‘Big enough,’ I said.

‘I can see what this miserable bastard is so depressed about then,’ said Anton.

‘It’s the way the world is,’ said Ivan. ‘Always somebody with a bigger gun. One day you’re doing the blowing up, next day you’re being exploded yourself.’

‘Not if we’re lucky,’ I said. ‘It’ll be some other poor bastard’s turn.’

I was fighting hard to keep up my spirits. The mood of total belief in victory that Macharius had given us had vanished into the night air. At least so it seemed for just a moment.

‘How can we lose?’ said Anton. ‘We’ve got Macharius with us.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Ivan. ‘He does not seem like a man in the habit of losing.’

And as quickly as it had come, the mood of pessimism vanished, seemingly dispelled by the magic of the general’s name. In the distance thunder rumbled. The ancient daemon gods of war beat their drums. Man-made lightning flickered. Somebody somewhere was dying.

Soon it would be time for us to join in.

A monstrous storm blew in from the north. The hot desert winds brought clouds of abrasive dust. It ground along the side of the Indomitable, stripping the paintwork in places. The filters kept most of it out, but the air had a strange taste and my mouth felt gritty. My eyes watered so much I was forced to pull down my visor. Everybody else in the cockpit did the same thing.

The winds were strong enough to send small pebbles pinging like bullets off our hull. The external comm-net crackled. Only occasional fragments of vox were audible. There was something about the weather on this planet potent enough to disrupt even our comm-grids. That was disturbing to say the least.

I kept the Baneblade rumbling forwards, knowing that the dust would work its way into the mechanisms of the treads and eventually break them down. It would be unfortunate if it happened. There was no way anyone could go outside and perform field repairs. If we dropped behind the main battlegroup there would be no help available either. We would be stuck out in the desert until the recycling systems overloaded and we died of hunger, thirst or bad air. It seemed unlikely that anyone would come looking for us while a war was being fought.

Even as these thoughts flitted through my mind, I concentrated on the way forwards. The New Boy was driving as my relief but I watched him like a hawk in case he made a mistake. I was ready to override the controls if any enemy appeared.

The lieutenant obviously felt the tension in the air. He spoke reassuringly into our local net, as if to make up for the lack of external chatter. ‘I’m glad I am inside on a day like today,’ he said. ‘Now is not the time for going for a little walk in the fresh air.’

There were some chuckles at that, and the truth of it was that he was right. There was something oddly reassuring and even perhaps a little enjoyable about being inside a monstrous armoured vehicle and immune to the ravages of the deadly storm outside.

‘Even the weather is on Macharius’s side,’ he said. ‘If this storm does not cover our approach nothing will.’

That was certainly an optimistic interpretation of events but who was I to disagree? It was possible he was right. The lieutenant knew more about these things than I did.

‘How long you think this will go on for, sir?’ the New Boy asked.

‘Our tac briefing says these storms can last for days. Sometimes the air outside can get so hot it’s like stepping into a furnace. The heat would kill you if the dust did not strip you to the bone first.’

A pebble ricocheted off the hull as if to emphasise his point. It sounded as if someone was firing a boltgun at us.

‘It’s why every part of this force is mechanised. There’s no other way of fighting on this planet until we’re close enough to the hives to find some cover. Now keep your eyes peeled. We’re getting close to the outer perimeter defences. There are bunkers full of big guns and lascannons. If this storm keeps up we’ll bypass them and cut them off from supply. If it dies down all of a sudden, we need to be ready to fight.’

As if some daemon of the storm had heard him, the sound of the wind began to die away. The grinding noise lessened. Chatter on the external comm-net became audible again.

The great billowing clouds of dust started to settle, except where the passing of the tanks set it swirling.

‘Oh shit,’ I heard someone say. A glance into the periscope told me why.