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Finest Hour – Extract

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FINEST HOUR

Sam Ryan

Colour Sergeant Renna Vale awoke within the troop compartment of the 72nd Mechanised’s command Chimera. She blinked her purple eyes, then checked the pict screen linked to the forward periscopes. Beyond a vanguard of Vostroyan tanks, a mile of ice flats and snow banks separated them from an Iosian Defence Corps-held space port. Emperor, this felt too damned familiar.

Vale turned from the display to look upon her troopers. There were eight of them, excluding Colonel Raize. Their eyes were closed, chins tucked into their flak vests. Half of them had never seen Cadia. They were the children of Ios, belonging to the arctic wastes and subterranean mining facilities that defined this world.

Had everything gone according to plan, the Iosians would still be in training. Six months of gruelling drills should have shaped them into the 72nd’s next generation of troopers. Such replenishments were desperately needed after the fall of Cadia.

The Iosians had only just begun their Cadian training when the Cult of Slaughter had reared its head. From the bowels of Ios’ mining installations, an endless tide of blood-crazed cannibals spilled forth in a frothing red rage.

Hundreds perished in the first five hours. Cadians, Elysians, Vostroyans and Krieg had been set upon in their billets. Yet it was the Iosian conscripts who had suffered the most. Renna knew the pain of losing one’s home world, but in memory and spirit, Cadia stood. Ios was well and truly dead.

‘Colour sergeant?’ someone said. It was an Iosian, his hazel eyes peeking out from beneath an olive-green helmet two sizes too large. He was slight all around, swimming within the winter-white storm coat that had been thrust into his arms six weeks ago.

‘Trooper?’ she replied.

‘What happens next?’ the conscript asked. ‘Once we reach the void port, I mean.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Mathias… Thorne.’

‘Well, Trooper Thorne, I’m hoping your defence corps will greet us with a cup or two of hot recaff. After that, we’ll take ourselves to orbit. Things will be clearer from there. High command will press their heads together and come up with a plan.’

‘So we are staying?’

Vale knew the answer to be an unequivocal ‘no’, but this young man wasn’t ready to hear that. Someday, if he lived long enough, he would learn to hold faith over hope. Until then, he would need a bit of shepherding.

Renna looked down at the banner that lay across her lap. A many-headed beast hid within the fabric’s folds, stamped with the LXXII of the 72nd Cadian Mechanised Regiment.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t so long ago that I left home, in very similar circumstances. I felt a lot of different things. My home – Cadia – is gone now. I can never go back. But the longer I’m away, the more I realise that home isn’t about where you are standing. Home is who you are standing with, Mathias. That might not seem true right now, but I promise you it will.’

‘I’m not sure I’m meant for this.’ Mathias stared at the lasgun tucked beneath his shoulder. ‘Not like you, anyway.’

‘I may have been born a soldier, but I certainly wasn’t born to carry the colours. I was terrified when they asked me to take the standard. It had got lost behind the enemy’s lines, along with myself. I ran it back because it seemed like the right thing to do. Then they told me to keep it. The finest hours of your life, Mathias, you will never be ready for. Yet you will face them all the same, with the Emperor at your side.’

‘That’s good advice, boy,’ Colonel Raize said. He had been sitting quietly by the ramp, his officer’s cap tucked over his eyes. ‘You’d do well to hold on to that.’

The trooper shrank into his uniform. Undoubtedly he had thought the man was sleeping when he voiced his reservations. Vale gave him a reassuring look. It wasn’t a sin to be afraid, not unless you were one of the 44th’s Death Riders, and it was quite evident what that philosophy had cost them.

‘Colonel,’ the Chimera’s commander voxed from his cupola. ‘We are approaching the void port now, but there appears to be an issue with communications.’

‘Report,’ Raize answered, fixing his cap over his peppered hair.

‘We’ve attempted to hail the defence corps garrison numerous times to inform them of our arrival, but they have yet to respond.’

Vale took another look at the pict screen. There was a frenzy of activity at the void port. Planetary defenders were filing into the trenches of a hastily constructed defence network. ‘We may have spooked them, sir. They’re in a flurry.’

‘Captain, order a general halt. We need to resolve this quickly, and without any incidents of friendly fire. It is imperative we have the landers loaded by the time the Forty-Fourth returns from rearguard.’

‘Yes, colonel. I’ll relay your decision to the other…’ The captain paused.

‘What is it?’ Raize had started to lean forward. Vale nudged the Cadians to either side of her, stirring them awake, then kicked the shin of the trooper across from her.

‘Multiple units are reporting target locks. They’re coming from the front, sir, from the defence corps.’

The colonel snatched the horn from the side of his vox-operator’s rig, giving the trooper but a moment to tune to the proper frequency. ‘Garrison Two-Six-Two from Colonel Raize of the Seventy-Second Mechanised, we are approaching your position from the south. Hold your fire.’

Silence.

‘We could hail Major Luthor,’ Vale suggested. ‘Perhaps if we send a Sentinel forward, we–’

A deafening blast shook the Chimera. Shredded wiring and fragments of metal burst into the troop compartment. The interior lighting shut off, blinding Vale to everything but the stench of blood and hydraulic fluid. Klaxons buzzed as the vehicle began to fill with smoke and screams. Someone punched the emergency ramp release, and the heavy door blew off its hinges.

The howling Iosian wind bit into Vale’s skin as the surviving troopers rushed out of their vehicles and into a crucible of mortar and heavy stubber fire. The first man to round the corner of the Chimera pinwheeled into the snow as a plume of blue plasma vaporised his chest. Every instinct told Vale to stay behind the vehicle, to hunker down until the void port garrison realised who they had just engaged.

Hundreds of troopers were streaming out of their Chimeras as anti-tank munitions lanced through their formation. Most squads made for the refuge of nearby snow banks or huddled behind their lightly armoured transports. In Vale’s ear, the vox-net burned with panicked voices.

‘Cease fire! Cease fire!’

‘Two-Six-Two, rogue elements present!’

‘They’ve turned traitor!’

‘Colour sergeant!’ Raize shouted into the din. ‘Get these men fighting! This is no mistake!’

Fear, uncertainty, and hatred vied for the throne of Vale’s mind, but with practised discipline, she quelled them all. ‘Sons and daughters of the Imperium,’ she said into her comm-bead. ‘Forged in the fires of Kasr Mourne, you are no strangers to treachery. The Iosian Defence Corps has turned to the dark, and now they will know His justice. Show them the fate of betrayers. In the name of your colours, your Cadia, your Emperor, advance!’

The 72nd’s banner danced wildly overhead as Vale began the charge, a tide of mixed uniforms following in her wake. The Vostroyan tanks were eighty yards ahead, trading fire with the void port’s fortifications. If they could reach them, the 72nd would have hard and mobile cover with which to cross the ice flats.

The void port’s bunkers loosed ropes of tracer fire into the 72nd’s ranks, complemented by enfilades of las beams and bolts of plasma. The Iosian snow ran red with the blood of martyrs, but the Imperium was making ground. Vale was within ten paces of the Vostroyan armoured line when the ground at her feet detonated. A deafening blast, paired with a blinding explosion of snow and ice. Her ears rang with a high-pitched whine. When she tried to open her eyes, to right herself, her body refused to move. The world had become a smeared painting of whites and greys, one in which there was neither up nor down.

Someone materialised into her field of view, and as her vision coalesced, she vaguely recognised his face. He was young, and afraid, and saying something to her that she had no hope of hearing. Then he was fumbling with a medical kit, unravelling gauze and struggling with flesh-ties until his arms were red and wet. Emperor save whoever he was fussing over, for surely they were about to die.

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