Angel of Fire Read online

  His words were almost kindly. There was that thing about Ivan. Just when you thought with a fair degree of certainty that he was a brute, he surprised you with his sensitivity. He had been the same as a boy back on Belial but his ruined face and metal-plated skull made me forget that sometimes.

  I nodded. ‘We’ll all go,’ I said. ‘Just in case there are a few heretics left over.’

  We stepped out into the fresh air, if that was the right word for it. It had some of the tang of the desert in it but it was also the air of a hive city, full of trace chemicals and the stink of heavy industry. Added to that was the taint of the dust of fallen buildings and the smell of explosive and burned flesh and burned-out machinery. Not even the filters of rebreathers could extract every trace of all of that.

  I looked around. There were bodies everywhere, like in some of those religious paintings showing the Day of Judgement when the Emperor returns to pass sentence on the Guilty. Some of the bodies were still moving, with the faint pathetic shifts of posture that men slowly dying of thirst, air poison and terminal wounds make. Most of them were in the uniforms of heretics. I told myself I had no sympathy with them, that they had been trying to kill me only a few hours before, but, of course, it is never that simple.

  There was one young boy lying there. There did not seem to be anything wrong with him except for the red stain spreading across the chest of his tunic. His face was very pale and he licked his lips when he saw me. He was frightened and he wanted to ask for something at the same time. I tried to ignore him and walk past.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. He was speaking Low Gothic. The local accent distorted the word but it was recognisable. Something made me turn to face him. ‘Drink. Please.’

  I looked him in the eye. He was very young, even younger than the New Boy, younger than I had been when me, Ivan and Anton had run away to join the Guard. He held my gaze evenly. Who knew what he was really seeing? He had that visionary look that some of the dying get. I’ve seen it a thousand times. A man gets past a certain point and he just lets go. Indifference and a certain sympathy battled in my mind. I stuck out my hand. It surprised me to see there was a canteen in it.

  ‘Thank. You.’ He took a swig and lay back. He was dead before his head hit the ground. I wondered whether the act of drinking had killed him.

  ‘You going soft, Leo?’ Anton asked. He still looked thoughtful but the hint of his usual maniacal grin turned the corner of his lip up.

  ‘One day that might be me,’ I said. ‘Or you.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I am planning on living forever.’

  ‘The Guard might have something to say about that.’

  ‘I know. They have their stupid plan to get us killed at every chance they can, but we are too smart for them.’

  ‘Anton, you could not outsmart that rock.’

  ‘I am still smarter than the Imperial Guard.’

  ‘You may be on to something there.’

  ‘You know it.’ He bent over and closed the young boy’s eyes.

  ‘They are not so different,’ he said. Somehow I could tell he was still thinking about the Space Marine. I think what he had realised that day had really shocked him. All his life he had idolised Space Marines. There had been a day when he thought he could become one.

  ‘You still want to be a Space Marine?’ I asked. He stared off at the rising dust clouds in the distance for a long time before he turned and grinned at me.

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ he said. ‘Put in a good word for me with Lord High Commander Macharius.’

  ‘I will when I see him,’ I said. At the time, I thought it was a joke.

  Eight

  We squatted beside the burned-out shell of the Baneblade, listening to the Understudy mumble to himself and keeping our weapons close at hand just in case. It was quiet where we were but the thunder of battle muttered on in the distance. Sometimes the earth shook and I wondered what had happened. The New Boy rummaged about inside the tank for a while, then I heard his voice.

  ‘Hey, Leo?’ He peeked out from beneath the belly of the Bane-blade. He gestured for me to come follow him. I considered shouting at him but the fun was fast fading from that so I crawled underneath the corpse of the old monster and saw what he wanted me to see.

  Corporal Hesse was there. At first I thought he was a goner but I saw his chest was rising and falling and it took me a moment to realise he was asleep. I moved closer and noticed the open maintenance hatch above him. He must have crawled through it and just waited out the fire-fight raging above and around him.

  Asleep though he was, he had a lasgun near at hand so I gestured for New Boy to come away. You can have some truly terrible accidents when you wake an armed man suddenly.

  ‘What you find under there?’ Ivan asked as I crawled back out.

  ‘Corporal Hesse – the fat bastard is snoring away under the maintenance hatch.’

  ‘Good for him,’ Ivan said. He whistled as he did to show when he was pleased. Anton smiled as well. I think he was just happy that there would be another familiar face about. I was happy that my brief period as a figure of authority was over.

  Even as that thought occurred to me, I felt the earth shake and heard the rumble and clank of a massive machine coming closer. Turning, I saw it was a huge multi-sectioned transporter. A horde of smaller vehicles followed in its wake, mostly Atlas recovery tanks with the crane attachment. Some of them had bulldozer blades attached to their modified Leman Russ chassis. Loping around them were Sentinel power lifters, little bi-pedal hounds snapping at the heels of their tracked masters. They pulled up next to our position. It took about a minute for the cloud of dust to settle.

  I caught the whiff of technical incense and sanctified grease. I heard the plainsong chants that the tech-adepts repeat to themselves even when they are not performing their rituals. They had come to see which tanks could be repaired and which they would need to perform the last rites on.

  ‘Red cowls,’ said Ivan. The Adeptus Mechanicus and their devotion to their ancient mysteries always made him nervous, had done ever since he had the mechanical parts added to his face. I think maybe he thought the devotees of the Omnissiah might want to salvage them some day. He was probably right but they would likely wait until he was dead. On second thoughts, I can see why he found their presence disturbing.

  A few of the adepts clambered down from their vehicles. In their power armour, with their cowls and face masks they looked more like Space Marines than members of the Imperial Guard. At least, they did until they moved in that lumbering way of theirs. They had none of the deadly grace of the Adeptus Astartes. They moved more like the clockwork wind-up toys my mother had bought me before the sickness took her when I was a kid.

  They stepped up to the wrecked Baneblade, looked at it and shook their heads. Their leader stared at me as if the destruction of the ancient tank was somehow my fault.

  ‘Who is ranking here?’ their chieftain asked. I indicated the Understudy with a jerk of my thumb. The enginseer made that weird clicking noise they use to indicate disapproval.

  ‘He is malfunctioning,’ he said. ‘Where is the fallback control?’

  ‘That would be Corporal Hesse,’ I said.

  ‘And where would I find this unit?’

  ‘Carrying out an inspection under the main chassis,’ I said.

  ‘Such is not his prerogative.’

  ‘That is a matter you should take up with him.’

  ‘I will.’ One of the adepts produced a small tracked trolley from within the Atlas. He placed it on the ground and the chief lay down on it. At a command in technical dialect it carried him flat on his back to where Hesse was. A few moments later he and the corporal were in heated discussion.

  The rest of the tech-adepts moved around the wreckage. They paid as much attention to the heretic vehicles as they did to our own, which felt subtly wrong, until I realised they were looking for salvage and what they could strip down for parts. They walked around wrecks, banged them with m
assive, ceremonial spanners, chanting diagnostic catechisms and consulting with their portable divinatory altars.

  Once the basic rituals had been performed, they marked some of the less damaged vehicles with reclamation sigils. The rest they began to strip. Soon I saw sparks flying from welding cutters. It reminded me of the guild factorum back on Belial.

  Corporal Hesse emerged from beneath the Baneblade. He looked as if he was almost in tears. I would not have believed it myself if I had not seen it.

  He indicated the chief with a nod of his head. ‘They are going to perform the last rites on Number Ten,’ he said, ‘then they are going to drag him away for reclamation.’

  It did not surprise me. It meant the tech-adepts thought the martial spirit had definitely fled from the old tank. It would be sent back to one of the Temple factorums and be imbued with a new one if that was possible, broken up for parts if it was not.

  ‘He wants me to surrender the logbooks,’ Hesse said. He made it sound as if they were asking him to give up his first-born child.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go and get them then,’ I said. It was not something I was looking forward to. Of course, I had known I was going to have to at some point but it meant going back into the control cabin of the Baneblade once again.

  Corporal Hesse nodded. He was going to go and get them himself but he looked as if he would be grateful for the company. I climbed up into the Indomitable with him. The control cabin did not smell any better. I wondered whether they were going to remove the bodies themselves or whether they expected us to do so. I guessed it would be the latter – if there’s a dirty job needs doing it’s always the poor bloody Guard that needs to do it. It’s a universal law.

  Hesse looked at the lieutenant – it was the first time he had seen the body. He made an aquila over his heart and turned and looked away and if I had not known better, I would have sworn there was a tear in his eye. I did not look any closer than I had to. I walked over to the lieutenant’s body and I rummaged around until I found his keys. I will spare you the details of exactly what was needed to extricate them from the decomposing mess that was his corpse.

  I walked over to the locker and opened it and removed the large leather-bound books I found in it. I raised them reverently, knowing that these were the last in a long line of volumes dating back to when the first commander took charge of this vehicle after it emerged from the Temple factorum.

  Curiosity forced me to open one.

  I started with the pages towards the back and noticed that they were all in the lieutenant’s fine handwriting. There was nothing particularly thrilling about the text. Mostly it seemed to be descriptions of maintenance routines, notes about how far we had travelled and similar such stuff. Even so, just looking at some of it made me nostalgic. I saw one passage noting the death of Henrik on Jurasik. I noticed the names of several old battles we had fought in. Just the words made me think about them. I found that I had a lump in my throat and I swiftly leafed through the book towards the beginning. The handwriting changed many times and the dates stretched back over decades then centuries.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around to see Corporal Hesse standing there with his hands held out. I handed the book over to him and he took it reverently and he muttered some words over it as if he was a tech-priest performing some sacerdotal ritual.

  Of course, it was just gibberish he had picked up back on Belial the same as the rest of us. He was no more a tech-priest than I. And yet, at that moment, for all the difference it made, he might as well have been a member of one of the sacred orders. He spoke with just as much devotion. There was something touching about it and I did feel as if I was in the presence of something holy just for a moment.

  The moment passed and we clambered back down out of the Baneblade and, reluctantly, Corporal Hesse handed the logbooks over to the chief. He accepted them formally with all the ceremony of someone performing a high religious duty. He turned and he handed them to one of his minions and then he requested that we remove the bodies for burning so that he could, in turn, purify the Baneblade for its long journey back to its eternal home.

  There was not a lot left of the lieutenant and many of the others were heavily mutilated. We piled their corpses together with those of the heretics, bodies mixed with anything inflammable that we could find. We threw technical oil over the whole damned mess and lit it with a lho stick igniter.

  It seemed somehow appropriate that the worshippers of the Angel of Fire should be consumed by flame. Even as that thought struck me, I felt vaguely disturbed by it. The flames ate their flesh hungrily and sometimes I thought I saw small, snarling faces looking out of the fire. Corporal Hesse spoke the words of the funeral ritual, commending their souls to the Emperor’s Light. We stood staring into the fire for ages afterwards, despite the stink of burning meat. We were thinking about the dead we had known and remembering them. I even remembered the boy I had given a drink of water.

  Where did they go, I wondered? What really happens when the life goes out of us? The Texts tell us that our souls walk into the Emperor’s Light, but do they? I have been on many worlds and seen and heard many things and I do not know if I believe that any more. Perhaps I never truly did.

  One or two of the tech-adepts joined in the ritual, more from curiosity it seemed than for any reason of sentiment or belief. Perhaps I do them wrong. Or perhaps they were simply being diplomatic. While we saw to the empty shells of our fallen comrades, they did the same for the vehicles. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye I saw them performing their rituals with the same care that we did.

  For a brief moment, the oddness of it struck me. I felt as lost and alone as I sometimes did as a child. I was standing amid the rubble of a burned-out hive city breathing the strange air of a world unimaginably far from the planet where I had been born. All around me men were performing rituals that had been old when my home-world was first colonised.

  Near at hand were the corpses of those whose souls were about to take a journey beyond all comprehension. By the light of burning bodies, amid the shadows of ancient war machines, I saw the rapt faces of Ivan and Anton and the New Boy and Hesse and I felt something, a closeness that I cannot find the words to describe even now.

  Amid the ancient darkness and gloom, I felt the comradeship the living have in the face of the immeasurable dead. We were all tiny sparks of light, like those rising from the flames of that pyre and disappearing into the unknowable darkness.

  Sometime after the funeral ceremony, the Understudy stopped gibbering. The light of intelligence returned to his eyes.

  ‘Water,’ he said. His voice was strange and rasping as if all those hours of making that inhuman sound had damaged his vocal cords. His face was grim. I am not sure what had happened to him. It was as if during the long madness of that day his spirit had left his body and something new and darker had crept in. When he looked at me, there was a feral insanity in his eyes, well-concealed but present.

  I handed him the canteen and he drank from it without wiping the mouth, which is not something he would have done in the past.

  ‘Report,’ he said in that croaking voice.

  Corporal Hesse brought him up to date on the situation. His burning glance moved from face to face. If he was embarrassed by what he had been told of his performance he gave no sign. He accepted all of the information with a brusque nod of his head. He got up and he walked around what was left of the pyre. He stirred the ashes with the toe of his boot and then he returned to where we sat.

  ‘We need to report to Company HQ for reassignment,’ he said.

  ‘We need to find it first, sir,’ said Hesse. I could tell he was as disturbed by this apparition as we all were.

  ‘I don’t think that should prove beyond our wit, corporal,’ said the Understudy. ‘Those adepts have access to the comm-net. We can use their machinery to contact Company.’

  Hesse looked confused for a moment then he smiled and said, ‘Yes, sir.’

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nbsp; All of us nodded. We were accustomed to following orders and it was reassuring to have someone who could tell us what to do again. ‘I’ll see to it at once, sir,’ Hesse said.

  ‘We need to set sentries for this evening,’ he said. ‘This sloppiness stops now.’

  He kept barking out commands until we responded like a well-drilled infantry company and only once everything was organised to his satisfaction did he settle down by what was left of our fire. He just sat there staring into the flames, unmoving as a puppet whose strings had been cut. He was still doing it as those of us not on watch drifted off to sleep.

  He was in the same position when Anton woke me at dawn to relieve him on watch. I wondered what he was seeing in the ashes.

  Nine

  The next morning one of the techs came over and spoke to the Understudy.

  ‘Some of our units are going to Central Command. If you wish you may accompany them in our vehicles.’

  The Understudy nodded. ‘Get ready to move out,’ he said to us. He turned to the adept and said, ‘We’re ready to go whenever you are.’

  ‘Our units will be in ready state for departure in five minutes and thirty-one seconds,’ the adept said. ‘You may ride in vehicle number two. Be warned – tamper with nothing on pain of extinction.’

  The Understudy looked at the tech. ‘You do not have the authority to execute me or my men.’

  ‘You misunderstand me – tampering with our equipment without the requisite ritual may cause extinction without intervention on the part of any.’

  The Understudy nodded. It was as clear to him as it was to me what the tech meant. He looked at Corporal Hesse. ‘You heard that! Make sure every man in the unit knows the same.’

  Hesse nodded and turned to me and said, ‘You heard the second lieutenant. Make sure everyone knows not to touch any of the stuff. Explain to them that if the techs or the gear do not kill any would-be tinkerer then I will. And I particularly mean you, Anton!’

  ‘When have you ever known me not to do something stupid, corporal?’ Anton said with one of his most maddening grins.