I heard strange sounds as the flyer’s systems creaked under the strain of the take-off: the sizzling sounds of melting paint and metal where las-fire impacted on the hull. Worse than that was the thunder of metal on metal as some sort of heavy weapon was brought to bear. The hull gave way as if an ogryn were hitting it with a sledgehammer. Dents appeared and the flyer began to wobble in the air as if the force of the shooting was driving us off course.
I lay on the floor gasping and trying to calm my nerves. I have never minded being in a tank when it was under fire but there was something about being in an aircraft in similar circumstances that made me want to void myself with fear.
I forced myself to stand upright despite the lurching of the aircraft. A loud scream echoed within the hull and I looked around quickly to see what had caused the panic. It was only Anton shrieking with pure pleasure, as if this was some sort of joyride and he was some sort of child. I fought down the urge to punch him and instead turned to face the Understudy.
I wanted to take a look at his wound but he had already stripped away his officer’s jerkin and was inspecting the scorched skin beneath. It looked nasty. There was a huge blister that had burst and peeled away revealing the moist, sticky flesh beneath. I began to rummage through the emergency medical kit near the rear loading-bay door. Within a few moments I found what was needed and was spraying the damaged skin with synthi-flesh. It closed over the wound, filled with air bubbles and resembled nothing more than a large wart but it would protect the damaged flesh until it could heal. The Understudy nodded as if to thank me and then sat down and strapped himself in.
I looked forwards and I could see that Macharius and Inquisitor Drake were within the cockpit, wrestling with controls. They seemed to be moving them at random and the flyer jumped all around the sky.
Had they gone mad, I wondered?
I looked at the porthole and realised that there was some semblance of sanity in what they were doing. Heavy bolter fire tracked our flight and sometimes impacted on the armoured hull. I could also see that there were other flyers coming in pursuit. I looked at Anton and Ivan and I said, ‘Can you two lazy bastards do something? Doesn’t this flying heap of junk have some turrets that you could be inside?’
They looked at me as if I was speaking another language. If it had been a tank and if it had been on the ground they would have taken up position at once but outside the environment that they were familiar with, the idea had never occurred to them.
‘Why don’t you go bloody fly the thing?’ Anton asked.
‘I would but we already have two people doing that,’ I replied.
‘Well maybe you should take your own advice then!’ Rather than arguing with the idiot I decided to do just that. I found a ladder that led up to the topside turret and in a few seconds I was strapping myself in and chanting litanies that I hoped would activate the weapon.
I ran through the invocation drills with my hands, pushing down the sacred spheres that I hoped would perform the same function as they did on a ground vehicle. I grabbed the handles of the weapon in exactly the same way as I would have grabbed the handles of a similar one in a tank. And then I leaned forwards and looked through the sight and got my first view of our surroundings and the things that pursued us.
The exterior of the hive skimmed by below. Enormous towers rose like tall, narrow fungi from the side of a mossy hill. Industrial effluent ran down the terraces like lava down the side of a volcano. I could see the multi-coloured lights of the jewelled windows of the hab-blocks and vehicles going about their journeys below us. In the distance, a couple of similar flyers to the one that we were in pursued us. They were already shooting with heavy bolters.
I put in a comm-net ear bead and listened but all I could hear was Macharius talking into the local system. ‘We need to take those down now,’ he said calmly. ‘If we don’t we’ll have other airborne swarming all over us in a few minutes.’
I suspected that that was going to be the case anyway but now did not seem like the time to argue about it. Instead I concentrated on shooting and sent a stream of heavy bolter fire towards one of the oncoming flyers.
It swerved to one side, an angry insect trying to avoid being swatted by a drunken man. I kept shooting and tracking it but it moved too fast for me and I had no skill with this weapon.
It was luck more than anything else that destroyed my target flyer. As the pilot swerved to avoid my shot, one of his flyer’s stubby wings struck the side of a nearby building. Immediately, the flyer swerved out of control, tumbling end over end and wing over wing. The damage would not have destroyed it if the pilot had been able to regain control but he simply did not have time and his tumbling vehicle smashed into the side of another hab-block and exploded. Splinters of broken metal smashed the nearby windows. A gas jet within the building ignited, causing blowback. A trail of flame shot out of the side of the hab and I was very glad that I was not alongside when it happened.
The other enemy flyer had gained altitude and was somewhere above us. I could tell by the bolter fire contrails coming down in the sky. Looking up I saw the vehicle’s running lights. I sat as far back in the seat as I could and the guns tilted upwards but they couldn’t elevate enough to get our pursuer into my sights. There was nothing I could do from the present angle. I spoke into the comm-net and said, ‘Take us up and I can get a second shot at the bastard.’ As an afterthought I added, ‘Sir.’
I heard Macharius chuckle and we began to swing upwards. At the same time other turrets on our own craft opened fire and I guessed that Ivan and Anton had finally decided to join the party. All three of us managed to target the flyer but it was just as armoured as our own vehicle and it withstood the impact.
The enemy weapons had found the range now and they kept shooting at us as we kept shooting at them. It was simply a case of which flyer’s armour gave out first or which of us found a weak spot in the other’s hull. I began to play my turret’s fire over the enemy flyer. The impact points sparked. Nothing gave way.
We gained altitude and then suddenly, sickeningly, we flipped over and looped down behind the enemy. I dangled upside down in the turret, trying to stay focused. The other pilot panicked. He veered to one side. We kept shooting, hammering the vehicle with our fire. Macharius dived suddenly and brought us alongside. We kept firing, our bolter shots impacting all along the side. Macharius nudged the other flyer with the stubby wing of our vehicle, forcing it into a nearby wall. It smashed hard, hull breaking apart. Our fire finally took effect, hitting some vital internal part. The explosion turned the enemy flyer into a fireball.
We cheered and flew on, racing over the hive exterior like a runaway rocket, staying low and dodging at speed between the buildings. I rotated my turret so I could look behind us to scan the sky for pursuit. I saw the running lights of hundreds of vehicles but nothing that looked as if it was coming for us.
I offered up a prayer of thanks to the Emperor as I watched Irongrad recede into the distance. It loomed behind us like an impossibly vast mountain, covered in glittering contrails of light and lava. At its peak, the monstrous figure of the Angel of Fire loomed, fiery wings spread wide and illuminating the swirling multi-coloured clouds above it. I had a sense of an ominous terrifying presence growing where it stood.
‘What the hell is going on down there?’ I heard Anton ask.
It took me long moments to see what he meant. On the vast industrial perimeter of the hive, it looked as if rivers of fire were boiling up from underground springs. The earth was cracking, buildings had tumbled. Pipes were broken. In a dozen places they vented flames. Ahead of us the wastelands were split by great fiery chasms. Lava bubbled forth, forming rivers and lakes. The flyer carried us closer. The sight was awesome. I was reminded of our original landing site. It looked as if a new lava sea was being born in front of us.