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Fire and Thunder – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Fire and Thunder

Rachel Harrison

The people of Balfar call their planet’s twin suns the Eyes of the Emperor.

Before Severina Raine set foot in the cathedral city of Whend, she thought the name an archaism, something poetic that arose from the world’s particular interpretation of the Imperial faith. That was before Raine stood beneath the twin suns and felt their unblinking glare. Before the Balfar command group ordered Raine and her regiment to abandon their hard-fought forward position and fall back to the cathedral city’s outlands.

Now, as Raine and the 11th Antari Rifles move through Whend’s labyrinthine streets, the name doesn’t seem an archaism at all. The light of Balfar’s twin suns feels fierce. It feels judgemental. And even though they are faithfully enacting orders and they have no choice but to retreat, there is a part of Raine that feels as though she deserves that judgement, because whether the command group call it falling back or tactical redeployment, it feels like neither to Raine.

It feels like running from a fight.

The avenue around Raine echoes to the sounds of war. The hard, dry-wood snap of las-fire, and the clatter of solid-shot weapons. Overhead, aircraft scream by, leaving jet-trail streaks against the wide blue sky. Distant explosions rumble like thunder, sending mortar dust billowing into the air in clouds. It clings to Raine’s uniform and dulls the blade of her sabre. It stings her eyes, as she trains her bolt pistol on the enemy and fires. Penance bucks in her hand and the bolt-round hits her target centre-mass. The Sighted soldier is knocked from his feet in a plume of flame, his dull blue flak armour splintered right at the centre of the spiral painted on the chest-plate. A cloud of black blood mists the air.

‘Retreat does not mean surrender,’ Raine shouts, even as the Sighted she killed is replaced by two more. There are dozens of them giving chase from further up the avenue, harrying Raine and the Antari like a flock of carrion birds. Their laughter and heretical chanting carries on the scorching wind.

‘Make them pay for every step!’ Raine cries, as she fires the last round in her pistol’s magazine. It sends another of the Sighted sprawling over backwards. More black blood mists the air, and a ragged, hoarse cheer goes up from the Antari falling back all along the avenue around her. Raine ducks into cover with a number of her troops behind a vast slump of rubble and shattered masonry as the Sighted return fire. Hard rounds impact against the white stone, sending gasps of dust into the air. It scatters across Raine as she reloads her bolt pistol with a heavy click. She only has two magazines left before she is down to her sabre and her fists. Raine chances a look over the cover. The Sighted are blue-grey shadows, moving between the columns of pale stone. Shards of mirrored glass glitter against their flak armour.

‘They are trying to close a noose around us, captain,’ Raine says to Yuri Hale.

Hale nods. He is covered in mortar dust that has recoloured his fair hair and settled into the old scars on his face. Raine can barely tell the green of Hale’s uniform from the grey, now. His command squad are just as much of a mess, all bandaged and breathing hard, their lasguns scorched black from use. Across the avenue, the rest of Grey Company’s infantry squads are pinned down. The Fenwalkers, Hartkin and Mistvypers, all caught between fighting back and keeping their wounded from becoming their dead.

‘Mark three infantry squads,’ Hale says, as he takes a look over the rubble. ‘Carbines and shotguns, moving to outflank.’

A twinned whirring sound echoes across the avenue, then, and Hale is forced to duck as heavy gunfire splits the air. The solid shells scatter more thick dust and fragments of coloured glassaic.

‘And two heavy guns,’ Hale says, flatly. Blood starts soaking through the arm of his fatigues where one of the rounds nicked him. He pays it no mind. ‘Crew-served and mobile. Moving through the buildings. They’ll chew through us in seconds if we make a break for it.’

‘We run, we die. We stay here, we die. Have I got that right?’

The question comes from Daven Wyck. The squad sergeant is crouched behind the rubble with what’s left of his Wyldfolk. Wyck is sunburned and filthy, his grey eyes bloodshot. A single, smeared handprint is painted in blood on his flak-plate.

‘Unless we stagger the Sighted, or make a mess of those guns,’ Hale says.

‘Aye, captain,’ Wyck says, and looks to his combat engineer. ‘Crys, what have you got?’

Yulia Crys shakes her head. The bandage wrapped tightly around the combat engineer’s head is flooded dark, and her tattooed knuckles are split almost to the bone.

‘Absolutely bugger all, sarge,’ she says. ‘No grenades. Not even smoke. Just det-cord, and I reckon if I try to set that now, they might just notice.’

Wyck shakes his head. ‘Fat lot of use you are,’ he says.

Despite how much she is bleeding, and the Sighted trying their best to kill her, Yulia Crys responds the way she always does. She laughs, loudly. For a moment, it seems to drown out the Sighted guns. The rest of the Antari laugh with her. Raine doesn’t. She is busy looking at all of that dust eddying in the air.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Dave Gallagher.

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ISBN: 978-1-78030-765-7

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