Duty Calls, page 8
‘There seems to be a bit of a problem in traffic control,’ Jurgen reported after a moment. ‘They’ve got everything in a holding pattern while they try to sort it out.’
‘What sort of a problem?’ I asked, cutting into the right frequency to hear for myself, my sense of trepidation immediately reinforced by the unmistakable flat tones of suppressed panic in the traffic controller’s voice.
‘HL 687, respond. This is Darien Down,[29] calling HL 687. You are continuing to deviate from your assigned trajectory. Correct course and respond immediately.’
‘They’ve lost track of one of the heavy lift dirigibles,’ Jurgen explained helpfully. ‘It was delivering a cargo of promethium to the storage tanks on the edge of the plateau, but its mooring lines broke, and it’s drifting across the field towards the city.’
‘Drifting my arse,’ Kasteen said, shading her eyes and looking upwards. A vast shadow blotted out the opalescent haze forcing its way through the snow clouds, plunging us into a partial eclipse. ‘That thing’s moving under power.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, the shiver of apprehension rippling though me at the realisation even more acute than the effects of the wind. A low drone of engines reverberated from the snow-dusted rockrete around us. I glanced at the idling Chimera. ‘Lustig, can we bring it down with the heavy bolters?’
‘We can give it a try,’ the veteran sergeant in charge of the squad assented, running for the vehicle. ‘Jinxie, with me.’
‘Sarge.’ Trooper Penlan, whose nickname I have to admit wasn’t entirely unmerited, doubled in her squad leader’s wake, the flash burn scar on her cheek flushing with the sudden exertion. Despite her reputation for being somewhat accident-prone, I felt Lustig had made the right choice. She was a solid and competent trooper, unlikely to lose her head, and we were going to need a steady hand on the heavy weapons if we were going to bring the gas-filled behemoth down without touching off its volatile cargo. That reminded me…
‘This is Commissar Cain,’ I broadcast, cutting in on the traffic control frequency with my commissarial override code. ‘In view of the clear and present danger to the civilian population, I’m bringing this matter under military jurisdiction at once.’ In actual fact I couldn’t give a flying frak about the civilian population, of course, but it sounded good, and if I was any judge the aerodrome staff would be only too eager to pass the problem on to anyone else daft enough to put their hand up, which of course they were. ‘How much promethium is that thing carrying?’
‘Three kilotonnes,’ the controller told me, making my blood run even colder than it had seemed to on Simia Orichalcae. ‘If it detonates…’ His voice trailed away, and I could hardly blame him; an explosion that size would level most of the city, taking the starport and our garrison along with it. With a vertiginous lurch of horrified understanding I realised at last why Amberley and Keesh hadn’t been able to uncover any ’stealer cult activity in Darien. The damned hybrids had fled the place in preparation for this atrocity, which would surely spark panic and rioting all over the globe if it succeeded. More to the point, though, I’d be barbequed along with the rest of the city. Whatever it took, the dirigible had to be stopped.
‘Aim for the gas cells,’[30] I voxed Lustig and Penlan, noticing with a surge of relief that the envelope containing them extended some distance beyond the cluster of fuel tanks slung beneath the taut fabric, each one of which was large enough to have parked a whole company’s Chimeras in with room to spare. The hail of heavy explosive ordnance should rip the relatively fragile material apart with ease, releasing the gas, and robbing the airship of lift. I turned to the other troopers. ‘Target the engines.’ They were a little more solid, it was true, but unarmoured all the same, and the lasbolts from our small arms ought to do a reasonable amount of damage.
‘Sounds good to me,’ Kasteen agreed, drawing her sidearm, and placing a couple of shots squarely into the front starboard engine, which began to leak fluid and a trickle of smoke. Only then did I remember she habitually carried a bolt pistol, but she didn’t seem to have blown us up yet, so I left her to it and headed back towards the Chimera, Jurgen trotting at my heels as always. I’d be able to supervise things a lot more effectively without the wind throwing snow in my face every few seconds, possibly distracting me at a crucial moment, and if things did go horribly wrong I stood a slightly better chance of escaping the worst effects of the fireball behind a nice thick slab of armour plate. (Not an appreciably greater one, it’s true, but give me the choice between virtually certain death and its absolute guarantee and I’ll take the forlorn hope every time.) I half expected Kasteen to follow, but she seemed to be having too much fun playing pop the balloon with the troopers, who had all opened up with their lasguns, knocking holes through the labouring engines with every sign of enjoyment.
I dived inside the sturdy little vehicle just as Penlan opened up with the bolter in the turret, Lustig joining in a moment later with the forward mounted one, although he couldn’t have got much elevation on it. Not that it mattered, I suppose, the target was certainly big enough. Even though it was practically on top of us by now, I could still see Lustig ripping a line of holes along its trailing edge as I stuck my head out of the top hatch to see what was going on. (A little foolhardy, perhaps, but I could always duck back inside if things looked like getting uncomfortably warm, and if I was going to preserve my unmerited reputation for leading from the front I’d need to be visible.)
‘Frak,’ Lustig said, the rear of the dirigible finally passing the point where he could bring our secondary armament to bear. Penlan was having no such difficulty, her eyes glued to the targeting auspex, swinging the turret around beneath me to cleave a long, jagged tear along one flank of the wallowing behemoth.
‘Jurgen,’ I called. ‘Get this thing turned around!’
‘Right you are, sir,’ my aide agreed, and a moment later our idling engine roared fully into life, the Chimera’s tracks flinging up a spray of freezing slush as it slewed on the spot, bringing our forward-mounted weapon to bear again. ‘How’s that?’
‘Good enough,’ Lustig said, confirming the fact a moment later by chewing another hole through the gasbag.
‘It’s working!’ Kasteen reported, her voice echoing tensely in my comm-bead, and glancing up at the perforated dirigible I was forced to agree. It was definitely losing lift, the fabric loose and flapping in several places where once it had been taut with the pressure of the gas within, not quite crippled, but undeniably wounded. Two of its engines were trailing smoke, but none of them had cut out yet, the fans canted downwards to provide as much extra lift as possible while maintaining its inexorable progress towards the unsuspecting city. ‘Keep firing!’ Possibly the most unnecessary order she’d ever given, but everyone complied with undiminished enthusiasm nevertheless, Penlan whipping the turret around to tear another handful of gas cells open so fast I almost lost my balance.
It was at that point I became aware of another danger, which had escaped me in the more immediate prospect of immolation. As the slowly descending leviathan lost ever more altitude, the mooring lines dangling beneath it were beginning to scrape along the ground like the tendrils of a vast jellyfish, raising small blizzards of ice and snow as they came. Mindful of the fact that anyone becoming entangled in one would be ripped apart, and therefore in no position to go on ensuring my safety, I issued a general warning over the vox.
‘Mind out for the mooring lines,’ I broadcast, with another glance upwards as I did so. That last burst of bolter shells seemed to have done the trick, anyway, the dirigible was definitely losing height and manoeuvrability, wallowing this way and that as it descended.
‘Very good, sir,’ Jurgen responded, taking my words as literally as he always did, and slammed the Chimera into reverse.
‘Frak!’ Taken unawares by the sudden jerk, Penlan’s hand tightened on the traverser, swinging the turret wildly with a whine of abused servos. The hail of bolter shells veered off target, impacting somewhere in the tangle of metalwork shrouding the ominous bulk of the tanker module, bloated with its volatile cargo. She snatched her finger away from the trigger as though it had suddenly become white hot, and stared up at me, her startled eyes wide beneath her enveloping hat. ‘Sorry sir, that took me a bit by surprise.’
‘Me too,’ I admitted, forcing a carefree smile past the rictus of terror that seemed determined to plaster itself across my face. ‘No harm done…’
‘I can see flames,’ Kasteen reported, her voice tenser than ever. A chill hand seemed to clamp itself around my heart, squeezing as it did so, and I forced myself to look upwards. It was true, a vivid orange bloom had appeared on the starboard tank, and, merciful Emperor, it was spreading even as I watched. Any moment now the whole cluster would blow, taking the entire starport to perdition, and us along with it. Even if we could somehow get aboard the thing and overcome the hybrids manning the flight deck we’d crippled it so badly that we’d never be able to fly it to somewhere it could detonate harmlessly, let alone manage to escape in one piece if we made the attempt.
It was at that moment inspiration struck. Glancing around desperately for some way of saving our necks, or mine at any rate, I saw one of the mooring lines scoring its way across the landing pad in front of us, a little cloud of snow, steam, and pulverised rockrete rising around it like a miniaturised foretaste of the apocalypse to come.
‘Jurgen!’ I shouted. ‘Ram the mooring line!’
I’ve no doubt that most men in his position would have at least hesitated, probably wondering if I’d lost my wits, but not least among my aide’s well-hidden virtues was a dogged deference to authority, and he responded without question or a moment’s pause. The Chimera rocked on its suspension as he slammed it back into a forward gear so high no other driver would even have considered attempting it, gunned the engine to a high-pitched scream that would have set the teeth of an eldar banshee on edge, and let in the clutch. Despite the abuse it had suffered the Chimera leapt forward like a hound off the leash, throwing me back against the lip of the hatch so hard I felt a bruising impact even through the thickness of my greatcoat, and found myself wishing briefly that I’d thought to don my own body armour beneath it, before all my attention became caught up in the urgent necessity of regaining my balance and hanging on. My companions at least were in seats, which protected them from the worst of the buffeting, but I didn’t dare leave the vantage point of the cupola. We’d have only one chance at this, and a slender one at that. Timing was going to be absolutely crucial.
‘Penlan,’ I said, hoping to the Golden Throne that her wits hadn’t been too addled by Jurgen’s typically robust driving, ‘get ready to rotate the turret on my mark. As fast as you can, and don’t stop whatever happens. OK?’
‘Right sir.’ She nodded, her face grim, too seasoned a campaigner to ask any questions at so critical a juncture.
‘Brace for impact!’ Lustig called from his station next to the driver’s seat, and forewarned I did so, just as Jurgen ploughed us into the dangling hawser, thicker than my forearm, which was still gouging a shallow channel across the solid rockrete of the landing pad. The whole vehicle shook with the violence of the collision. From my vantage point in the top hatch I could see the thick frontal armour buckling, and for a panic-stricken moment I thought it would kill the engine or turn us over, but Jurgen fought for control and our tracks bit into the solid surface beneath the thin coating of slush. Then the writhing cable was falling across us, threatening to take my head off as it lashed about, anchored for a fleeting moment by the weight of our treads.
‘Now!’ I howled, dropping through the hatch for my very life, and Penlan began to swing the turret, rotating it faster than the enginseers who maintained our vehicle pool would either have believed possible or approved of. For a moment I thought my desperate gamble had failed, as it completed two full turns, then with a sound of rending metal it came to a sudden halt, filling the passenger compartment with the smell of burning insulation.
‘Sorry sir,’ Penlan said, looking at me dolefully. ‘It’s stuck.’
‘Good.’ I poked my head up again, just to make sure, and my heart leapt. The dangling cable had fouled the turret, just as I’d hoped it would, wrapping itself around it and all but tearing off the bolter, which now dangled uselessly from what remained of its mounting. ‘Jurgen, drop the ramp!’
‘Very good, sir.’ My aide complied, his voice as unconcerned as though the order was nothing more unusual than a request for more tanna, and the boarding ramp clanged down behind us, scraping against the surface of the pad as the dangling hawser jerked us around like a fish on a hook.
‘Lustig, Penlan, out!’ I bawled, wishing I could follow them, but that wasn’t going to be possible just yet, and the two troopers obeyed at once, discipline and their unaccountable confidence in me combining to get them moving even faster than I’d expected. As they baled out past me I drew my chainsword, and began hacking at the heavy hinges supporting the thick slab of metal. ‘Jurgen, go! Head straight for the edge!’
‘Ciaphas?’ Kasteen’s voice sounded a little strange for some reason, less crisp and incisive than usual. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ I admitted, as my screaming blade began to cut through the hinges in a shower of sparks almost as spectacular as the one being left in our wake by the dragging ramp. With our engine howling in protest we began to move, painfully slowly at first, our hull booming as though from a series of heavy weapon strikes as the abused metal took the strain of the tangled cable and the immense inertia of the slowly falling dirigible. Abruptly the boarding ramp fell free, and we lurched forwards, picking up speed. ‘But it’s all I can think of.’
‘Emperor be with you,’ Kasteen said, and fighting down the suspicion that it could very well be the other way round in a few more minutes if my luck didn’t hold, I waved at her as insouciantly as I could and hurried back to the seat so recently vacated by Lustig.
‘Which way, sir?’ Jurgen asked, his vision slit all but obscured by the dangling cable and the spider web of cracks radiating across the armourcrys. Truth to tell, the gunner’s station wasn’t much better, but I could see enough through the sights of the bolter to guide us, and to my immense relief the weapon still appeared to be functional. That would make things a little easier, at least.
‘A bit more to the left,’ I said, catching sight of one of the vivid orange reflectors marking the boundary of the landing field, and taking us as far away from the promethium dock as I could. There was no point in making things even worse than they already were, if that was possible. The battered APC responded to his nudge on the controls with what sounded like a groan of resignation.
‘Ciaphas!’ Kasteen’s voice was urgent in my comm-bead. ‘It’s losing height faster than ever. It’s going to come down right on top of you!’
‘Then we’d better make this quick,’ I said, fighting the impulse to look up and see just how close three thousand tonnes of burning promethium was getting. ‘How’s the fire?’
‘Spreading fast,’ she said grimly. Better and better. Forcing the matter to the back of my mind by an act of will that vaguely surprised me, I returned my attention to the sights of the bolter, and the narrow strip of snow-powdered rockrete I could see through them. I was only going to get one shot at this.
‘Can you jam the throttle open with something?’ I asked Jurgen, and he nodded, directing a blast of halitosis in my direction as he glanced over to reply.
‘No problem,’ he assured me, beginning to rummage through his motley collection of pouches and webbing with his free hand. ‘Oh, I wondered what had happened to that.’ He pulled out what looked suspiciously like the fossilised remains of one of Zemelda’s pastries, although as I was concentrating on the bolter at the time, and understandably disinclined to bring the thing in his hand any further out of my peripheral vision than I had to, I might have been mistaken. At any event he jammed whatever it was into the slot of the throttle control, and nodded in evident satisfaction. ‘Firm as our faith in the Emperor,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Good,’ I said, hoping it was a good deal firmer than mine, but now was hardly the time to consider the matter. The perimeter wall of the starport was looming up ahead of us, and I triggered the bolter, hoping the barrier was as fragile as I’d deduced. Often they’re more like fortifications than boundaries, intended to contain the blast of a shuttle accident, but here there would be no point in taking that kind of precaution. The only thing beyond the wall was a sheer drop of Emperor knew how many kilometres, and it was only there at all to keep the occasional starport employee visiting the outlying installations from falling off the edge. With any luck it had been put together as cheaply as possible, and no more solidly than most civilian constructions.
To my immense relief, I was right: the wall ahead of us disintegrated in a hail of heavy ordnance and brick dust, revealing a terrifyingly narrow strip of snow-dusted scrub, with a vertiginously disconcerting vista of cloud tops beyond.
‘Ciaphas! It’s right on top of you!’ Kasteen shouted, her voice shrill in my comm-bead, and I leapt out of my seat.
‘Run for it!’ I yelled to Jurgen, and we pelted for the yawning gap at the back of the Chimera, our boots ringing on the floor plating almost loudly enough to drown out the complaints of its battered bodywork and overloaded engine. We jumped almost simultaneously as the floor beneath us lurched and fell away, bounding over the rubble where the wall had been and disappearing over the lip of the bottomless chasm.
