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Longshot – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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1

The city of Miracil burned.

Its red-bricked cathedrals of industry blackened and crumbled alongside broken hab-blocks, all long since abandoned by the city’s indentured classes. Manufactoria that had stood undaunted beneath Attruso’s corrosive atmosphere for millennia were felled by shells, orbital lance strikes and the grinding tracks of war machines. The Astra Militarum didn’t stop to consider the provenance of their enemy’s defences – they belonged to the enemy, so they must fall.

And fall they did, turning the air into a barely breathable haze in the perfectly gridded order of the manufactorum city, the fingerprints of the Adeptus Mechanicus clear in the obsessively ordered design of each street, plaza and thoroughfare. The empty-eyed skull emblem of the Mechanicus watched as acrid black smoke billowed out of shattered windows like blood into water, but with no breeze to carry it away it lingered in the air, drawing a false night over the western fringes of the city. Ash and dust mingled with the first flurries of filthy snow, carpeting the path of the Imperial advance with a murky grey slurry.

The Astra Militarum ground onward beneath it all, soldiers bleeding for every yard they clawed back from enemy hands. Their cries of anger and pain were lost beneath the constant barrage of artillery, drumming a staccato beat that seemed to shake the planet itself. Acts of individual heroism were so common that they went unremarked. A trooper armed with a flamer breaking cover as his fuel tank was punctured by a stray shot, saving the lives of his squadmates as he was immolated alone in the middle of the street. Another soldier diving in front of his commanding officer, taking the superheated plasma bolt that was meant for her and dying in agony as he fought to breathe through liquified lungs. A soldier dragging his oldest friend back to cover under withering enemy fire, honouring a promise not to let them die alone.

Amidst it all, a lone officer knelt in the scant cover offered by a tenement’s rubble-strewn roof, the southernmost corner of the building torn away to reveal the meagre lives once lived by its inhabitants. He held a pair of magnoculars to his eyes, straining for a better view from the building’s eastern edge.

The vox-bead in his ear crackled with a nearby signal, but he ignored it. His view finally settled on what he had been waiting for – the heat haze and smoke from the east cleared for a few tense heartbeats, revealing a distant bridge over an unseen river. Human forms were on the nearest bank, springing out of improvised cover to fire at glowing blue barricades set along the bridge’s length, their defenders holding their ground with bright bursts of fire from their own weapons.

He sighed as his vox-bead crackled again and ground his teeth. Keeping low, he stashed the magnoculars inside his jacket and crawled back over to the roof’s southern edge and began to work his way down to the ground.

‘Anything, sir?’ a pale trooper asked as the officer navigated the last few feet down a rubble incline, spraying dirt and fist-sized rock fragments as he slid to a stop at the foot of the rise. The trooper was still sitting astride his dirtcycle in an alley between two hab-blocks, the engine inactive as he waited for the officer’s return.

‘Keep your voice down,’ the officer hissed as he cleared the ruin and swung his leg over his own dirtcycle, which had been leant up against the next building’s wall.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the trooper said, moving to remove the vox-bead from his ear.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ the officer grunted, checking a dull steel chronometer on his wrist. ‘Get back to headquarters, let them know that the vox-blunt is stronger in the city. It doesn’t look like Third Company have taken the Glazer’s Gate bridge yet. I’m carrying on to Saintsbridge to see how House Gyrrant are progressing, then I’ll look for First Company.’

‘Understood, sir,’ the trooper said, kicking his dirtcycle into growling life. ‘Lieutenant Eridan?’

‘Yes?’

‘Emperor be with you, sir.’

‘And with you, trooper. Now get going,’ Eridan said, making the sign of the aquila as the trooper roared off out of the alley and out of sight.

Eridan kicked his own dirtcycle back into life and took a deep breath before accelerating towards the sounds of gunfire.

He sped through the maelstrom of war without any sign of hesitation. He sloughed his battered dirtcycle through the slurry of ash and blood that caked the rockcrete, weaving between advancing troopers and fallen masonry as he fought for every ounce of grip. Where the terrain was most uneven he was forced to stand using the bike’s pegs, before dropping back into the saddle when he needed a burst of speed.

Eridan gritted his teeth with every tortured note from the engine, wringing yet more speed from his tired and battered mount. Most troopers dived out of his way as he raced through, the bike’s exhaust baffles long since disengaged, the sound warning his comrades that he was coming, which lessened the risk of being shot by a jumpy Guardsman.

‘Don’t fail me now, old friend,’ Eridan said to the bike.

A Leman Russ powered through the wall of a refectorum hall less than half a block ahead, followed closely by a ragged band of flak-armoured Cadians, the dusting of ash and powdered stone giving them the look of spectres that haunted the tank’s shadow.

Lights ignited in the building opposite the Leman Russ, blinding in their intensity, as the enemy peppered its inches-thick armour with their plasma weapons. Eridan heard the tell-tale delayed snap-crack reports a moment after he saw the shot, and clamped down on the dirtcycle’s brakes as the troopers ahead scattered for cover.

The Leman Russ reacted with arrogant slowness, slamming to a halt and slowly traversing its battle cannon to aim at the offending building.

Not this way, Eridan thought, swinging the bike around in the opposite direction as the Leman Russ fired, the shockwave violently kicking up the loose ash and dust for a hundred yards in every direction. He could hear the building collapsing behind him and the unmistakable barrage of las-fire as the troopers strafed the ruin with their weapons.

He darted down a side street half choked with the detritus of war: abandoned possessions that the city’s wayward citizens had abandoned to the coming inferno, meagre trinkets whose sentimental value had been outweighed by their owners’ desire for survival. Charred papers floated through the air, disturbed and given animus by the battle raging nearby.

The alley opened out onto a street that looked remarkably like the one he had just left. Its blackened and broken buildings were silhouetted against the sickly magenta light of the Cicatrix Maledictum, still faintly visible through the columns of smoke hazing the twilight sky. Occasional lance strikes flared down from the heavens like pillars of lightning, briefly illuminating the broken spires and shattered manufactorum halls as they cleared the way for ground troops to advance.

Clearly, the new orders hadn’t reached the fleet yet. He patted his chest pocket out of habit. The order packet was still there, and he offered up a prayer to the God-Emperor to see it safely to its destination.

Eridan raced through tight alleys and clouds of stinging embers beneath the thickening smoke above, a false ceiling that capped the heavens and made each street seem smaller and more claustrophobic.

He whipped past the myriad tableaus of city war, catching glimpses of Cadians breaching glowing energy barricades and firefights of dazzling light as lasguns traded fire with t’au plasma weaponry. He rushed past it all, a blur of featureless Cadian fatigues and promethium fumes, before he was waved down by a squad from Third Company.

‘Stop!’ one cried, breaking cover to leap into Eridan’s path. Enemy fire stitched his footsteps in the ash as he dashed out of cover towards the mounted messenger, coming to a sliding stop in the cover of a fallen aquila, blown clear of a manufactorum spire high above. Eridan skidded to a stop just in front of the other Cadian, the dirtcycle’s engine barking as it was forced into idleness.

‘This way is blocked,’ the trooper explained quickly, pointing a gloved hand up the street in the direction of the enemy fire. ‘Enemy firing line, we’re waiting for armoured support.’

‘Understood,’ Eridan said, nodding his thanks. Enemy shots carved scorching rents in the fallen masonry, forcing both to duck a little lower as splinters of stone scattered between them. The Cadians’ lasguns barked out their response, the exchange of fire intensifying momentarily as the air was stitched with blue-white lights of pure energy.

‘Lieutenant Markas Eridan, under Major Wester,’ Eridan said, extending a hand to the other man.

‘Lieutenant Bamber, Third Company of the Two-Hundred-and-Seventeenth,’ the other man replied. ‘You here to tell us why the vox is down?’

‘Vox-blunt,’ Eridan said. ‘Deployed just after dawn to maximise the confusion.’

‘It’s working,’ Bamber said. ‘Have you got some new orders for us?’

‘Not exactly. Your primary objective is still to take the bridge at Glazer’s Gate and establish a beachhead on the eastern bank.’

‘Is that all?’ Bamber was half-shouting over a sudden crescendo in the fighting along the street. Behind him, a soldier primed a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and counted down on his fingers. On three, his fellows sprang from shelter to provide covering fire as he stepped out and loosed the missile up the street and out of sight. The Cadian was back in cover before the smoke trail cleared, and a distant boom was met with ragged cheers.

‘Those are your orders, straight from the top,’ Eridan shouted back over the noise. ‘Second wave will be coming up from behind to reinforce you before nightfall. What’s your disposition?’

‘I’m down to four squads, two flanking this position whilst we wait for some armour,’ Bamber said, pointing up the street towards the t’au barricade. ‘Captain Lowes has the main bulk of Third Company pushing on the bridge, but we’ve not heard from him in a few hours.’

‘Understood.’ Eridan pulled a folded map from his pocket and started making notes with a red wax pencil. ‘Have you heard from House Gyrrant?’

‘Nothing. Just the occasional explosion.’

‘Thank you. I’ve got to get to First Company. Relief is on the way, just keep pushing forwards,’ Eridan said, shaking the other officer’s hand once more.

‘I wouldn’t know how to do anything else,’ Bamber said, laughing. ‘For Cadia.’

‘For Cadia,’ Eridan replied. He wheeled his dirtcycle around and pointed to the west. Bamber’s eyes followed, and he smiled.

‘Your support has arrived, lieutenant,’ Eridan said, pointing towards the distant sound of squealing tracks chewing their way across rockcrete. The enemy guns increased their fire as a Leman Russ rounded the corner at the far end of the avenue and unleashed its battle cannon with a deafening roar. Dust and rubble seemed to leap up in the shell’s wake as it flashed down the street, before exploding against the t’au emplacement with an earth-shaking blast of earth and alloy fragments.

The Cadians were up and charging before the debris had cleared, their roars blending with the sound of Eridan’s engine as he accelerated away.

Eridan raced south at speed, trying to ignore the uncomfortable heat that the dirtcycle’s engine was radiating the further he rode.

The bike was old, tired and in dire need of refitting and maintenance. Attruso was the fourth planet on which Eridan had ridden it in as many years as the primarch’s crusade barrelled headlong through the galaxy, retaking worlds in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind.

Eridan still remembered the day that news of Cadia’s fall had reached the 217th as they had raced back to defend their home world. The anger and shame at not being there to defend Cadia still burned hot; it didn’t matter that word had reached them too late, that the regiment had been too deeply entrenched against their foes to leave immediately. Cadia had fallen and they had been too far away to help it, and the entire regiment mourned as the Cicatrix Maledictum had torn its red route across the sky.

The Imperium had reeled from that blow like none before. The tenuous hold that so many worlds had on order and civilisation failed, seeing them fall to Chaos and ruin as the empire of humanity tore itself apart. Its citizens rose up against each other and the Emperor, embracing the Ruinous Powers or giving themselves willingly to xenos dominion. Worlds like Attruso.

That was, until he returned. The primarch Roboute Guilliman, who strode boldly from the jaws of death and assembled the greatest crusade since the Emperor Himself had walked the galaxy. Guilliman had returned order and civilisation to the worlds of the Imperium, either with long-needed aid or by lasgun and bolter.

The sound of both lasgun and bolter rose to a crescendo as Eridan sped across the cleared floor of a refectory hall, its high walls and damage-pocked ceiling echoing with the sounds of approaching battle. He headed for a huge gap smashed through the opposite wall, a sixty-foot high wound in the building’s side that opened out onto a street flooded with smoke and dust.

With a deep breath he plunged through the cloud, and emerged into the centre of a battle between giants.

Imperial Knights in the blazing orange livery of House Gyrrant duelled with flights of white-alloy Crisis suits, each side fighting for dominance in a raging exchange of solid munitions and energy rounds. Ion shields flared and force shields shattered in blazes of light, overpowering all other colours so they appeared to momentarily fight in shades of black and white.

Eridan gritted his teeth and dropped a gear in his dirtcycle, fighting for grip as the titanic footfalls of the Knights shook the earth beneath his wheels. This was exactly where he didn’t want to be, caught between two forces deep in the heat of combat who would barely notice if they stepped on him. But that insignificance was also the best protection he had – with luck and no small measure of speed, he might be able to escape before they noticed that he was there.

He kicked out the rear wheel and scythed his bike to the right, raising his weight on the dirtcycle’s pegs for better manoeuvrability – he knew he was going to need it.

Eridan darted beneath the nearest Knight, Ignatus, as it swivelled at its waist to swat a Crisis suit from the sky in a shower of sparks and scrap alloy. It reached out to grasp at another battlesuit with its Thunderstrike gauntlet as a third hurled a barrage of plasma into the Knight’s ion shield, distracting it long enough for the first to take to the air once more.

Then Eridan was clear of the first melee and dodging the second, as an Imperial Knight lurched backwards towards him. He pressed himself to the dirtcycle’s fuel tank as the war machine fell over him, catching on the facade of a hab-block in a spray of dust and stone fragments just long enough for him to escape before being crushed. He barely had time to reseat himself before an ion blast scoured the air overhead, fired by a descending XV104 Riptide to shatter the shield of a Knight further down the street.

The shield broke with an apocalyptic thunderclap, the tamed lightning stripping the shoulder assembly from Relentless Defender in a screech of tearing metal that Eridan felt deep in his bones. The limb fell slowly through the air, the Avenger gatling cannon still spitting death as its barrels slowed their lethal spin and Crisis suits descended from the sky to swarm the maimed Knight.

Eridan barely had a moment to process the spectacle of a god-machine being brought low by xenos artifice before the air around him shimmered and howled as gatling rounds screamed past. The backwash of pressure almost tossed him from the saddle but he held on with a hissed curse – his luck was running out.

Three Imperial Knights turned the corner at the end of the street, announcing their arrival with a chorus of war-horns and raising titanic chainswords in challenge to the xenos assaulting their battle-brothers.

Eridan shot past them as they tilted forwards into a charge, the Knights forming into a spear-tip led by a Knight festooned with blessings and wax seals. He swerved out of the way of the orange-garbed men-at-arms who followed their liege lords into glorious battle, and left the clamour of renewed combat in his wake.

Trackway Span was a freight zone which had once ferried the heavy machinery manufactured at the heart of Miracil out towards the space port on the city’s edge.

In order to pass out of the city, it first had to cross the river Spatka.

The river’s brackish brown water cut a meandering path through the city’s edge, a hundred yards wide at its narrowest points. It was a raging torrent, with both sides of the bank thick with hydromotive plants that had harnessed the energy of the river for the Mechanicus.

Of course, that had been before the planet’s fall.

Now both banks were a ragged ruin, the raw edge of a wound that bled men and tanks into the roiling tide. Bodies floated down the river from upstream, carried by the current like so much flotsam to be disgorged and forgotten in the oceans of Attruso.

The span itself was a rail bridge of grey stone over adamantine-veined rockcrete, designed to carry the heaviest freight over the water safely. It was buttressed and reinforced to near invincibility, each stanchion blessed by arch-magi of the Mechanicus for strength in spite of Miracil’s acidic rain and the corrosive waters of the Spatka. That wasn’t to say that the enemy hadn’t tried to bring the bridge down: deep gouges pocked its support columns to expose the reinforcement bars within, where t’au energy weapons had assaulted the unyielding frame. The baroque artifice that had created the bridge was strong enough to withstand it all, which made it an essential objective for the Imperial forces.

Unfortunately, it was clear that the enemy were well aware of its importance and weren’t letting the Astra Militarum take it without a fight. Cadian heavy weapons teams traded fire with t’au positions across the river, the bark of heavy bolters mixing with the hissing snap of plasma rounds blasting chunks from the Cadians’ improvised cover.

Eridan rode in the shadow of the bridge for almost half a mile, streaking past squads of Guardsmen as they cleared each building along the western bank with flamers, grenades and lasgun fire. He was only stopped as he neared the rear of the Cadian position, as a trooper stepped out from an improvised barricade that blocked the approach to the bridge. He walked towards Eridan with his lasgun raised, covered by several others in his unit as he called out to the messenger.

‘Identify yourself!’ the soldier yelled over the nearby gunfire. Eridan slowed to a careful stop, the dirtcycle’s engine coughing and misfiring as it idled beneath him.

‘Lieutenant Eridan, Cadian Signal Corps,’ Eridan called back, raising both hands from the handlebars to show that they were empty. ‘I need to speak to your commanding officer immediately.’

The soldier stopped a few feet away from Eridan. His features were drawn, with dark shadows developing in the hollows under his eyes, his bone-deep fatigue clear as he performed the familiar glance at Eridan’s eyes to check their colour.

‘He’s Cadian born,’ the soldier called out. The men behind him lowered their rifles and turned back to watching the road. ‘This way please, sir.’

Eridan dismounted and walked his bike into a shelled-out building that the Cadians had fortified with improvised barricades. It was roofless, the building’s high fractured walls framing the smoke-black sky above, sheltering the soldiers within as they dressed their wounds or took a moment to wolf down rations from dull grey sachets.

‘You’ll have to forgive the security measures, sir,’ the trooper explained as they walked past grey-faced soldiers and a Munitorum priest who ministered to a dying soldier. ‘Captain Kohl has suspended saluting too, since Lieutenant Neames got himself sniped.’

‘Where is the captain?’ Eridan asked, as they reached a narrow doorway that looked out over the bridge.

‘He’s on the beachhead, sir, other side of the bridge,’ the trooper explained. ‘You’ll have to leave that here,’ he added, nodding at the dirtcycle.

With a clear view of the bridge, Eridan agreed with the soldier. Whilst the structure seemed almost untouched by the enemy bombardment, the bridge’s deck had been chewed into an almost unpassable morass of shell craters and spurs of twisted metal. There would be no way across for a rider, not whilst the enemy still held firing positions on the opposite bank.

‘Have you had any word from the other side?’ Eridan asked, pointing at the Imperial beachhead on the eastern bank.

‘Some, but long-range vox is down so we’re limited to short-range vox and messenger runs. There should be a supply run heading out soon. We’ll see if we can’t get you across, sir.’

A shout rang out for covering fire, and the Cadians arrayed on the riverbank let loose a withering firestorm of las-bolts and heavy-bolter rounds which curbed the enemy fire as three battered Chimeras sped into view and onto the bridge.

There, they were forced to slow as they navigated the deep craters and jutting spars of slagged rails, their turret-mounted multi-lasers laying down punishing sprays of suppressing fire through their own exhaust fumes.

But slowly, inevitably, the enemy volleys began again, focused on the troop transports on the bridge instead of the bridge itself. Searing white energy beams flashed into momentary existence, most missing their targets to plough through buildings on the western bank. Shouts of alarm and pain began to rise up through the sounds of gunfire across the Cadian position as fresh ruins were cast down on the Imperial side. Eridan grabbed a lasgun from a nearby soldier who was too badly wounded to wield it himself, and added his own shots to the Cadian fusillade.

The first Chimera hit the fractured rockcrete on the western bank and was met by cheers from the Cadians, followed by the second, which trailed bluish smoke from its overheating exhausts. The third almost made the western bank, but was hit as it rose out of a high-lipped crater. The shot’s report was audible for a millisecond before the vehicle exploded, the turret shearing free of the vehicle’s chassis to fly through the air as if it were made of paper rather than thick metal armour. The Cadians’ cheering ceased as the boom echoed through the streets, and Eridan couldn’t help but watch as flames gouted through the turret hole and driver’s slit.

The other two Chimeras didn’t stop until they were out of sight of the opposite bank across the street from Eridan. The rear ramps dropped with a shuddering clang, their hydraulic motors long since exhausted, and an officer emerged from the lead vehicle with a wounded soldier by his side.

‘Get these men to the medicae!’ he roared as troopers rushed forwards to retrieve the injured from the transport.

Eridan was already moving towards the officer, his escort in tow.

‘Sir, a Lieutenant Eridan to see–’

‘Are you Captain Kohl?’ Eridan interrupted, moving aside as another injured Cadian was carried past on a stretcher, her face a mass of bloodied bandages.

‘Lieutenant Munro,’ the officer said with a scowl, waving forward more men to clear the wounded. ‘You’re Major Wester’s man.’

‘I am,’ Eridan said, nodding. ‘I have orders for Captain Kohl, if he still lives?’

‘The captain’s alive all right,’ Munro said, ‘but I’m a transport down for this run and I’m not sure that I have space for you. Give me the orders and I’ll make sure he gets them.’

‘You’ll find space, lieutenant,’ Eridan growled. His hands tightened around his borrowed lasgun, which Munro noticed with narrowed eyes.

‘Frag it,’ he cursed. ‘Help us load up and I’ll see what I can do.’

Eridan shouldered the weapon and set to helping unload the last of the wounded alongside Munro, then filled the Chimera’s bloodstained interior with crates of munitions, medicae supplies and casks of chem-cleaned and sanctified water. The rest of the space was taken up by a squad of Cadian troopers from the rearguard, who were being sent in to replace the wounded at the front. It was a tight squeeze, but they all made it into the two remaining vehicles.

Eridan held tight to the Chimera’s roof webbing as the rear hatch closed on him and six other Cadians, and the vehicle lurched forwards and back into the line of fire.

Inside, the only light came from the firing slits set into each side panel, and a dull red lumen positioned on the dividing wall between the troop bay and the driver’s compartment.

‘Hold on tight,’ a tense voice crackled over the vox, before the Chimera’s occupants were thrown forwards, then backwards violently enough that several lost their grip on the webbing and tumbled on the blood-slicked floor. They’d secured the crates to hooks set into the walls and floor with thick canvas straps, but even they strained against the weight as their contents were thrown about over the rough ground of the bridge.

The smell turned Eridan’s stomach: warm, clotting blood mixed with the days-old sweat of the occupants, whilst the fumes of burning promethium saturated everything with their clinging actinic stink.

Then the transport came under fire, and there was no time to feel nausea at all.

Plasma rounds hammered the walls and roof of the passenger compartment, and they hunkered down as far as they could in the belly of the Chimera, where the armour was thickest. A trooper defied his comrades’ shouts to stay low as he pulled himself up to a firing port.

Two titanic thuds rocked the Chimera in quick succession as a t’au heavy weapon caught the vehicle in the flank. It blasted a neat circular hole in the right wall and exited through the left, splitting the standing man in two with a spray of blood and viscera. His squadmates cried out as he fell, but there was little time to do anything before choking smoke filled the passenger compartment and the transport turned sharply.

Eridan felt his way forward through the press and hammered his fist desperately against the rear hatch release, but it didn’t open. Panic rose unbidden in his chest as the last of the lumen’s light was smothered by the smoke, and he dropped to his knees as a coughing fit racked his chest. Someone shouted for them to be let out, before their voice failed beneath their own barking coughs.

The Chimera slammed to a sudden halt and the rear hatch released, spewing forth a cloud of greasy black smoke, and five choking and bloodstained Cadians fell into the shelter of a massive manufactorum building.

Eridan crawled clear, his breath coming in shallow gulps as booted feet rushed past.

‘Get the supplies out! Clear these men out of the way!’

Eridan felt a strong hand grab his collar and drag him from the burning transport.

He looked up and found himself in the shadow of a looming black spectre, his knee-high boots polished to a mirror sheen, his black leather greatcoat untouched by dirt, ash or dust. He was broadly built and intimidating just for his size, and doubly so for the peaked cap and garb of the Commissariat that he wore.

‘On your feet, lieutenant,’ he ordered in a deep, resonant voice. ‘Officers shouldn’t show weakness in front of the enlisted.’

Eridan pushed himself to his knees and coughed again, before standing up in front of the commissar. Behind him, soldiers were running to retrieve the supply crates from the burning transport, each spluttering as they emerged from the billowing smoke within.

‘Munro voxed ahead as soon as the Chimeras came within range,’ the commissar said, raising a dark eyebrow as he looked down at Eridan. ‘The captain is expecting you. This way.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
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Cover illustration by Miklós Ligeti.

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