‘There were, outright. But there are another five more of them are too torn up to walk away. Out here, they’ll all be dead in an hour, less perhaps. Even with express evacuation to a medicae frigate, they probably wouldn’t make it.’
‘We move out,’ said Daylight. ‘Find high vantage. Assess the landscape and consider our next action.’
Tranquility nodded.
Daylight strode back through the flowering grasses towards the Stormbird wreck. Zarathustra was just emerging, spear in hand. He reminded Daylight of one of the ancient, pre-Unity demigods, born alive from the belly of a fallen eagle. He liked the old myths. Paintings and tapestries of them filled the galleries and halls of the Imperial Palace, their meanings, names and symbolism lost forever, except perhaps in the memories and dreams of the Emperor.
‘Bad?’ asked Zarathustra.
‘And getting worse,’ Daylight replied. ‘We’re heading for those hills. You and I will move ahead with Bastion. Tranquility can escort the Guardsmen.’
‘We should stay together.’
‘They’ll slow us down. They’ll never cover the ground like we can. Besides, they’re in shock.’
‘What of their wounded? They’ll make them even slower.’
‘I know. I’ll do it.’
They walked back to the gathered survivors. A few of the Asmodai were carrying munitions and equipment crates from the opened stowage cavities of the Stormbird. Others crouched beside their injured brethren. Daylight noted that a few had formed a perimeter, lasweapons ready. Not in such shock, then. They remembered their duty.
The sun came out suddenly, covering the ragged plain and its sea of straw-coloured grasses and nodding flowers in a hot golden light. The roiling black clouds had parted briefly. The Stormbird had torn a two-kilometre scar across the ground, a long gouge like the one that the Horusian blade had left on Zarathustra’s faceplate. The Stormbird’s impact had ripped up grasses and soil and bedrock, and scattered silvered shreds of its bodywork, wings and undercarriage. The fragments of metal caught the sudden sunlight like pieces of mirror or broken glass scattered in the swishing grasses, or like the cut jewels of a broad cloak spread out behind the noble craft.
‘We’re moving for those hills,’ Daylight told Major Nyman.
‘I’ve activated a beacon, sir,’ said Nyman. His voice was a reedy croak issuing through the speaker grille of his orbital armour. Through the tint of the man’s visor, Daylight could see an abrasion head wound that was starting to clot.
‘Good. At least any who follow can trace our landing point.’
‘Will any follow?’ asked Nyman.
Daylight was turning away, but he stopped to look back down at the human soldier.
‘I told them not to, but Lord Commander Militant Heth will send others,’ he said. ‘He will not give up. I would not in his place.’
Nyman followed Daylight over to the Asmodai casualties.
‘Some of us will scout ahead,’ Daylight told him, ‘but even allowing for your rate of advance, we cannot be encumbered. You know what I have to do.’
Nyman’s mouth opened in horror, but he had no words.
‘They will all be dead in an hour, less perhaps,’ put in Tranquility, repeating the summation he’d made to Daylight. ‘Even with express evacuation to a medicae frigate, they probably wouldn’t make it.’
There was a moment’s pause. The sunlight blazed. Radiation made their built-in meters crackle like crickets at dusk. Thunder, wind and volcanics rumbled in the distance and made the ground fidget.
‘Is there going to be an issue here?’ Daylight asked Major Nyman.
‘No issue, sir,’ Nyman replied with great effort. He turned his back, and signalled his men to do the same. In slow realisation and horror, they stepped back and looked towards the bleak edges of the horizon bowl. One hesitated, a hand on the grip of his sidearm. Bastion looked at him, and that was enough.
Zarathustra came to stand with Nyman and his men, and gazed at the distant hills and the sky filled with smoke. He began to declare the Litany of the Fallen, as it was said in chapels and templums and sacristies across the loving Imperium, the words set down by Malcador himself during the bloodiest months of the Heresy. His voice was clear and strong, and carried from the speaker of his battle-helm. Bastion and Tranquility joined him in his declaration, a mark of honour to the fallen Guard and the sacrifice of the Asmodai. Nyman made the sign of the aquila.
The three wall-brothers boosted the amplification of their speakers as they intoned the Litany, partly to add power to their statement of respect, and partly to mask the sound of bones snapping.
Daylight drew a breath and then, quickly and gently, broke five human necks in quick succession.
Seventeen
The sunlight seemed to be at odds with them. It followed them across the grassy plain, away from the crash site. From underfoot came the thump and shake of a planet in convulsion, and great sprays of burning ash lit up the sky far away, volcanic plumes thousands of kilometres wide.
The sunlight followed them still, as if their world were a tranquil place.
Daylight, Zarathustra and Bastion moved ahead, covering the grasses with clean, strong, bounding strides, outpacing the sturdy efforts of Nyman’s fighting pack. Daylight wondered if he ought to have finished the tech-adept too. The man had been cortex-plugged to the Stormbird’s cogitator system when they crashed. He had suffered neural feedback, and the impact had torn his plug out and mangled the primary socket in the back of his neck. He was stumbling along at the back of the secondary group, escorted by one of the Guardsmen. Daylight thought he would give him an hour or so to see if his head cleared and reset. If it did, the adept might usefully operate some of their portable equipment. If it didn’t, Daylight would revise his decision.
Plumes of ash smoke and white streamers of steam were borne across the plain on the wind, residue of distant cataclysms. They left the crash site far behind, the wreck and the heresy-scar of its death across a foreign field, and moved towards the nearest hills.
Noise bursts continued to beset them, coming from both near at hand and far away, as if wilderness spirits, the genius loci of Ardamantua, were howling at them and taunting them for their efforts. Daylight wished the tech-adept could set up and examine the audio patterns, but the man was incapable. The noise bursts, some of them long and tortured, were overwhelming their limited-range vox too, and causing discomfort to the Asmodai. Daylight instructed Nyman and his men to switch off their suit comms. Thus, the only communication between the two moving groups was the vox-link between Daylight’s party and Tranquility who was escorting the Guard. It was not ideal.
Daylight also possessed enough imagination to know that it was not ideal for the individual Guardsmen either. Each one of them was alone in his stifling and cumbersome orbital drop-suit, the armour heavy and rubbing, with fear and disorientation in his heart, and trauma and grief in his bones. They were trudging along in the strange and sickly sunlight, hearing the distant roar of the noise bursts as contact vibrations transmitted by their atmospheric armour-helms, with no voices and no vox-chatter, only the inexorable sound of their own breathing inside their suits for company.
The three Space Marines, advancing away from the beleaguered troopers, were approaching the foothill slopes of the ragged outcrops that edged the plain. Now the sun was going in and out as clouds gathered and spilled across the sky. Something had detonated on the horizon and the sky was filling up with blackness, the smoke trying to erase every corner of light.
Zarathustra led the way, using the haft of his war-spear as a climbing staff, leaping up slumped boulders and ridges of displaced stone. Bastion and Daylight followed, almost amused by the old veteran’s vitality.