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Only War: Stories from the 41st Millennium – Extract

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The Taste of Fire

Steven B Fischer

There was a beauty in the stillness of the Ourean night. A bitter clarity in the chill predawn air that seemed to echo through the very darkness itself. An illusion of peace in the dim saffron glow of the mountainous world’s sister moons filtering down through the branches of frost-laden conifers and reflecting off the slopes below.

But it was only an illusion.

Lieutenant Glavia Aerand knew this world was no different from any other. No purer than the filthy, crawling hives of Machari and Scintilla. No less obscene than the Chaos-ridden remnants of her home world. She had learned long ago that no world held a monopoly on evil, because her species carried evil with it. In one movement, she raised her hand and shattered the facade.

One last breath of blessed silence before the earth shuddered with the paired concussions of starfire mortars, which burst in the sky seconds later, bathing the high mountain valley in the watery-green incandescence of illumination rounds. Beneath that fiery dusk, Secundus Company descended on the cultist den like birds of prey.

At the back of Aerand’s mind, a familiar disquiet grew, paired with the caustic scent of charred copper in her nose. Six months ago, this sensation had crippled her the first time she’d felt it. Six months ago, she hadn’t known what it meant. Now, she understood the warning all too well. After half a year of tracking Chaos cultists through the bitter wilds of this Throne-cursed planet, her hunt was almost over.

As Aerand’s troopers rushed towards the shadow of two waiting cave mouths, the earth around them erupted into plumes of acrid smoke. Gouts of half-frozen soil and jagged stone fragments sprayed her soldiers as the drumbeat of mortars rang out from atop the ridgeline behind them.

‘Gerstahl’s breath!’ Olevier Corwyn cursed, Aerand’s company sergeant puffing with exertion as the pair sprinted to match pace with their charging platoons. ‘You’re sure you ordered Lieutenant Vyse to aim her heavy squads at the enemy, not us?’

Despite the moment, Aerand’s face split into a smile. ‘Danger close is called danger close for a reason. We hammer every egress from this place, so the heretics don’t slip our grasp again.’

Ahead, First Platoon’s lead squad rushed through the detritus, helm lumens flickering to life as they were swallowed by the cave’s gaping maw. Aerand swept in behind them. Never first in. Never last. The proper place for a commander was at the heart of her soldiers.

As she drove into the darkness, Aerand braced herself for the inevitable onslaught. She was no fool – Cadians were going to die today. A cost both she and her soldiers were willing to pay. But with every step she took down the narrow stone corridor, an even greater fear blossomed within her.

Secundus Company had been hunting this particular cultist cell for the better part of two seasons. Countless times she had stood in positions like this one, and countless times her quarry had slipped through her grasp. That fear crystallised as Aerand stepped into a small antechamber, its dripping stone walls empty and lifeless. A small collection of skulls, stained with ribbons of old, dark blood and the dirty yellow wax of tallow candles, lay scattered on the floor. To her right, First Platoon continued down the main corridor, and on her left, Second Platoon’s lumens already approached.

‘West network clear,’ Lieutenant Graves barked through her earpiece, his words garbled by the yards of bedrock between them.

‘East network clear,’ Sergeant Maltia echoed, the disappointment in her voice heavy enough to bite.

Beside her, Corwyn muttered another curse, while the drumming of mortars continued to shake the mountain. ‘Don’t know where they could have gone,’ he grumbled. ‘Vyse is turning the whole ridgeline into gravel.’

Aerand nodded, distracted, as the ringing in her ears began to swell. ‘Not gone,’ she whispered.

‘What do you mean?’ Corwyn replied. ‘This tunnel’s scarcely wide enough to hide the gut I’m growing, let alone a few hundred Chaos cultists.’

‘Not all of them are gone, at least.’

As she motioned for the sergeant to follow, Aerand stepped down a narrow corridor to her right, the ceiling low enough to scrape the top of her helm. Here, the smooth, polished walls of the main chambers disappeared, replaced by deep, unweathered grooves.

‘Fresh addition,’ Corwyn muttered. ‘And a hasty one, at that.’

Shortly, the tunnel gave way to a set of stairs, lumens flickering in the murky depths below. Cadian voices echoed up the tunnel, and Corwyn’s expression fell into a scowl as he walked ahead. ‘First Platoon,’ he called back, clearing a low archway. ‘Nbade’s squad is already here.’

Aerand followed into the small, rough-cut chamber, an oppressiveness to its darkness that seemed to resist the normally piercing light of her troopers’ lumens. Half a dozen men and women lay chained to the raw stone wall, and the lieutenant stifled the nausea rising within her as that ringing in her ears began to grow.

‘Alive, Argos?’ she asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.

Her chief medicae knelt over an emaciated young woman, her long, thin hair drifting down to cover pale, dirt-laden skin. A crude iron manacle hung around one of her horribly thin wrists, the skin beneath lacerated from her struggles against it. The remainder of her body was covered in a macabre mosaic of branded symbols, each of which stoked the fire beneath Aerand’s skin.

The medicae shook his head. ‘Not sure how long they’ve been here, sir, but long enough.’

‘Check the rest,’ Corwyn replied, an uncharacteristic edge to his voice.

One by one, Argos pronounced the prisoners dead, until he knelt over a final body. An adolescent man, the youngest of the group, and perhaps the most hale. The medicae paused, fingers resting on the youth’s neck, trying to convince himself he felt a pulse beneath.

A sudden wave of unease washed over Aerand as a sound like the sea swallowed her whole. Staggered, she took a step back, pressing her hand against the wall and closing her eyes. An image flashed through her mind, of the man on the floor erupting into a gout of searing blue flame that reached up and devoured the medicae beside him. Then, as soon as it arrived, the vision passed.

Aerand pushed herself upright and lurched towards Argos, grasping the medicae by the shoulders and dragging him to the ground. A moment later the youth’s eyes flashed open beside them and he drew a deep, ragged breath. Suddenly, a horrible blue light enveloped his hands, then burst forward to splash harmlessly against the wall.

Beside her, Corwyn took a step forward and drove the butt of his lasgun into the young man’s head. He crumpled into a heap.

‘Witch,’ the sergeant whispered, half in disbelief.

Aerand nodded slowly and rolled off Argos, pushing herself painfully to her feet. ‘Whatever he is, you do not let that man die until Colonel Yarin herself has seen him.’

Secundus Company slogged through the miserable blend of snow, mud and rain that seemed to be Ourea’s only truly unique feature. After almost a year on the planet, Aerand scarcely noticed the bitter chill in her toes or the squelching moistness that accompanied each step of her boots. She had learned the unpleasant realities of this world long ago, and come to accept that they would not change for her.

As her column filed slowly through a narrow saddle into the skeletal remains of their laconic field camp, she could not help but believe her troopers shared that same belief. Six months ago, after shattering a cultist army at the vicious battle of Apex Inruptus, the soldiers of the Cadian 900th had not thought themselves naive to hope this war might soon be over. Instead, it had simply evolved. Now, rather than conducting lightning raids against massed enemy encampments from the relative comfort of a regimental fortress, the four newly formed light companies of the 900th were scattered to the wind, operating alone in the heart of Ourea’s austere wilds, pursuing ever-elusive cells of tenacious heretics.

As Aerand marched beside her formation, she forced a grim smile onto her face. She was not blind. She knew her troopers were tired and discouraged. She knew her fledgling company was fragile and cracking. How quickly would it shatter entirely if forced to acknowledge that its commander shared her troopers’ same exhaustions and fears?

And then some. Aerand shivered slightly at the memory of her vision in the cave. Not her first premonition, but what had started as rare hunches and intuitions were becoming too frequent, and vivid, for her to ignore. That foresight might have saved Argos’ life, but she could not shake the bitter dismay such portents left on her soul. She whispered a silent prayer and forced the thought from her mind.

Behind Aerand, a vox-caster crackled to life, rousing her from her unproductive mulling. A young corporal ran through the snow, the heavy vox-pack on his back giving him an awkward, lilting gait. He arrived at her side breathless but snapped sharply to attention.

‘Kobald on the line for you, sir,’ the corporal sputtered. Behind the trooper, Sergeant Corwyn’s foot crushed a patch of frozen lichen, and he eyed Aerand with a knowing expression.

‘Thank you, Waldamne,’ she replied, flashing the corporal the brightest grin she could manage. No reason the boy should have to bear his commander’s cynicism in addition to the weight of the vox.

As Aerand grabbed the mouthpiece from the corporal’s hand, however, she spotted a quartet of spindly, mechanical silhouettes crossing over the sheer, jagged ridgeline flanking them. She handed the vox-caster back to Waldamne. ‘On second thoughts, tell Kobald I’m coming to him.’

‘Good news only,’ Aerand called, striding down the muddy, pockmarked trail that passed as the closest thing to their small camp’s road.

The lieutenant, a tall, fiery-haired man with dark, freckled skin, raised his violet eyes from his vehicle and gave her a grunt. Technically her peer in rank, Kobald snapped Aerand a quick salute regardless. Of all her platoon commanders, Kobald seemed the most comfortable being led by a fellow lieutenant, and made the least ordeal of their interactions as a result.

‘Depends on your expectations, I suppose, sir.’

Behind Kobald, the remainder of his squadron continued maintenance on their Sentinels. They had stripped nearly all of the protective armour from the tall, bipedal machines after Ourea’s brutal gravity and precipitous inclines had proven overwhelming for even their famously resilient gyro-stabilisers. But the reduction in shielding made them all the more vulnerable to the planet’s harsh elements, and both the vehicles and their pilots were showing signs of wear.

‘All due respect, sir,’ one of Kobald’s troopers called as he chopped chunks of ice and mud from his Sentinel’s footpads with a rusty, dented entrenching tool. ‘S’not all that good no matter what your expectations were.’

‘And if I expect my troopers to keep their opinions to themselves, and perhaps work harder to keep their vehicles clean?’

‘Then you’re going to be doubly disappointed, sir.’

Aerand chuckled. Famously irreverent, Kobald’s Sentinel pilots took as good as they got. She motioned to the bundled object strapped to the back of the Sentinel’s cab.

‘Show me what you’ve got, and let me be the judge of that. If there’s a crate of caff beneath those blankets, I may just give the lieutenant’s squadron to you.’

‘No such luck,’ Kobald said as the trooper removed the frayed olive-grey fabric from the back of the Sentinel and let its contents fall into the snow. The weight of the sound sent a shiver up Aerand’s spine, and by the time Kobald’s troopers began unwrapping the corpses, she was fully prepared for what she would see.

‘Tranch’s Nameless,’ Corwyn muttered as he surveyed the bodies. A young woman and a greying man, whose face reflected the woman’s as only a father’s could. ‘Just like one we found in the caves.’

‘There were others?’

Aerand nodded grimly. ‘Half a dozen, at least. Chained in a cell beneath the cultist outpost.’

Another grunt and a nod. Kobald motioned to the bruises and abraded skin ringing the corpses’ wrists. ‘Not an escape then, but a flight. Found these two frozen about nine miles from the mouth of the western tunnel. There were more footprints on the trail, but the weather had already done its work on any tracks beyond that.’

Aerand nodded. Somehow, the cultists had anticipated their raid and fled further into the mountains, bringing their captives with them – at least those they deemed strong enough to survive. That was important, then. These prisoners were important.

‘Have your pilots bring them back to Argos,’ she ordered. ‘Maybe he can read something more than just tragedy from the patterns of their bruises and bleeding. Between them and the live one, at least.’

Kobald’s violet eyes perked up at that. The first hint of hope she’d seen in any of her troopers since the night before.

Colonel Atreja Yarin was not a woman who relished surprises, so when Aerand entered her tent to find the commander of the Cadian 900th standing over her small field desk, the lieutenant’s heart immediately rose into her throat. Doubly so at the sight of the silver-haired man beside her.

General Markos Rusk needed no insignia to mark his olive-grey battle uniform – his accosting violet eyes and commanding stance announced his rank for him. Neither did he display a breastplate full of medals and ribbons. Rather, the broken, re-formed bones of his nose and left cheek, and the tangled pneumatics and wire of his augmetic right arm, conveyed the merits of his service in far more convincing detail.

‘Colonel. General,’ Aerand managed. ‘I must admit this visit is unexpected.’

‘Intentionally,’ Rusk replied gruffly. ‘Although apparently more of a surprise than the raid your company attempted this morning.’

Aerand winced at the stinging remark. She was tempted to simply withstand the rebuke, but she knew the general expected – demanded, even – that she push back against it.

‘Not entirely a loss, sir.’

‘A prisoner. We know.’ Yarin held up her hand, clearly not pleased with wasting any more time. ‘Half-dead, by the brief report your medicae gave me. The trooper deserves a medal for keeping that broken husk alive this long.’ The colonel’s voice was laden with exasperation, poorly concealed.

Aerand nodded, feeling the same anxiousness herself. ‘With respect, sirs, I stopped by my tent simply to drop off my pack. If you know of the prisoner already, why are you waiting here and not interrogating them?’

Something that might have been a look of unease crossed Rusk’s face briefly, and Aerand felt bile rise in her throat. ‘I thought it best we examine the corpses all at once.’

Outside the small command tent, a trio of bodies lay still on the cold ground. Somehow, the two corpses Kobald’s Sentinels had recovered appeared even paler and more ghastly in the waking grey light of another overcast Ourean day.

As Aerand approached the bodies, Colonel Yarin and General Rusk in her wake, an exasperated Argos stomped towards them.

‘Dead,’ the medicae spat, the word delivered with a venom that caught Aerand by surprise. Argos looked exhausted, his eyes set within deep shadows, his uniform spattered and stained with blood. ‘I leave the Throne-cursed witch alone with my patient for thirty seconds and he’s managed to undo an entire morning of effort. Nearly had the young man talking before he arrived.’

At his comment, the fifth living member of their group turned, and Aerand felt a creeping discomfort rise through her neck. From where he knelt over the third and final corpse, the psyker fixed Aerand with sunken, hollow eyes. Aerand froze, unsteadiness catching her limbs as the man’s gaze rose and fell, studying the lieutenant. Pale grey eyes set deep in a weathered brown face. Crow’s feet ringing those sunken pools of light. Beneath the shadow of the psyker’s crimson cowl, dim light flickered from rows of ageing, corroded wires weaving in and out of the man’s bald scalp like poor stitchwork.

With his attention came a stabbing pain behind Aerand’s forehead, as if a host of unseen fingers were attempting to claw their way into her mind. Aerand pushed back against them and felt their grasp retract. A brief look of surprise crossed the psyker’s face, which then settled back into its resident scowl.

‘Not dead,’ the man remarked to Argos. ‘At least, not all the pieces that count.’ He turned his gaze back to the young man on the ground and pulled his faded, threadbare cloak tighter around himself. Not a noble’s clothes, not as his rank might have earned him. No jewels or power weapons, no gold-plated staff to match the stories she’d heard of the Astra Militarum’s psyker lords. In fact, aside from his gaunt, haunted expression and the fearsome augmetics tracing the man’s skull, little marked him as anything more than a vagrant.

He raised a long, thin hand to the silver aquila brooch at his neck. ‘More importantly, had the prisoner become well enough to speak, he would not have uttered a single word worth believing.’

A terse frown appeared on General Rusk’s face. ‘I doubt Colonel Yarin’s troopers require a lecture on the duplicity of their quarry, Kellipso.’

In reply, the psyker simply shrugged, placing a hand over the young man’s frozen eyes. In his other palm he cradled three small black metal spheres. ‘Rest assured, medicae. If there are answers rooted within this mind, I will tear them out. Now leave me to my work.’

As the psyker turned his attention back towards the corpse, the fingers of his left hand began to dance, the three spheres weaving like a serpent between them. Rusk nodded curtly, and as the officers departed, Aerand felt those same sickening tendrils at her back.

‘Twenty-three miles, sir,’ Aerand remarked coldly. ‘I’ve driven them half the sector in full kit already today. Most haven’t slept more than a few hours in two days.’

‘I know,’ Colonel Yarin replied, her weathered face suddenly appearing impossibly tired. ‘And I’m certain they are exhausted. Yet General Rusk is asking you to push them further. I am asking you to push them further.’

Despite her best effort, a sigh escaped Aerand. Even as she stood here, the ebb and flow of fatigue gripped her in its unforgiving currents. ‘You told me once that you respected my candour, sir. Secundus Company is near its limit. I can push them on a hundred more marches, but my troopers can’t take any more disappointments.’

Yarin sighed. ‘You worry that this venture will be fruitless.’

A nod. ‘All on the word of a psyker General Rusk does not even trust.’

Yarin brushed a calloused hand through her short, steel-grey hair and turned to stare at the crimson-robed man across the clearing. He stood almost a hundred yards from the pair, yet Aerand could not shake the feeling that even at that distance the psyker listened to her every word.

‘Do not discount Jarrah Kellipso,’ Yarin said eventually. ‘Rusk may harbour his own resentment towards his primaris psyker, but the man is capable of much. If he says he has seen into the mind of our enemy, then I, for one, believe him.’

‘At the risk of sounding ungrateful, sir, that does not make me any more comfortable to have him at my back.’

‘Nor should it,’ Yarin replied grimly. ‘Now I believe you have a company to rouse.’

‘I have told you half a hundred times, sergeant. I see minds only in glimpses and impressions.’

Aerand trudged through the snow at the side of her column, exhausted troopers stretched out through the narrow mountain pass. On either side of Secundus Company, Lieutenant Kobald’s Sentinels stalked the forests atop untiring avian legs, providing as much of a picket as the restrictive terrain allowed.

Embedded within her command squad, Corwyn paced beside Jarrah Kellipso, seemingly untouched by the bitter exhaustion that gripped the troopers around him. His gloved hands held a half-folded map in front of the primaris psyker.

‘Yes, sir. I understand, sir,’ the sergeant continued, repeating the same line of questioning for at least the dozenth time. ‘But there’s no chance that one of those glimpses could have been of a specific location on this map? Just want to know how long I should expect to be marching.’

As an exasperated sigh escaped the psyker, Corwyn cast a sly grin Aerand’s way. She’d worried the task of minding the primaris psyker might rub on the sergeant, but it had become clear the reverse was true. For nine miles, Corwyn had hammered Kellipso with unending questions, and the psyker appeared infinitely more fatigued than even the day’s heavy march should have left him.

Kellipso’s crimson robes were mud-stained and frost-crusted, and each stride of his long, unnaturally thin legs seemed to deepen the grimace across the man’s face. Truth be told, it was a wonder he remained upright at all. Ourea’s gravity had proven harsh enough for the troopers of the 900th Regiment – Aerand could only imagine the burden on Kellipso’s gaunt frame.

In his left hand, the man cradled his trio of black spheres, each no larger than the width of a finger, and twirled them continuously in a motion that set Aerand on edge. Slowly, Kellipso looked up as she approached, fixing her with those haunted sky-grey eyes, and Aerand was reminded of Yarin’s warning.

‘Give the lord psyker some rest, Corwyn,’ she muttered, stepping in to take the sergeant’s place. From here, she saw more closely the devices in Kellipso’s hand, near enough to spot the faint blue pattern etched onto their surface, an endless, repeating fractal that made her mind spin.

‘No questions of your own, lieutenant?’ Kellipso asked gruffly, noting her gaze at the fetishes in his grasp.

‘None,’ she managed to reply. But as her gaze drifted away and fell onto the ridgeline beside them, her unease only grew. What she had previously written off as the tactical discomfort of a commander forced to traverse less than ideal terrain now raised the hackles on her back and brought the taste of metal to her tongue.

Corwyn regarded her strangely, as if she were about to faint, when a crushing sense of knowledge suddenly captured her mind. Wherever Kellipso was leading Secundus Company, they had almost arrived. Aerand tightened her grip on her lasgun and turned back towards the psyker. He showed none of her same signs of distress, but a cold chill had entered his expression. His gaze lingered on her a moment, then darted to a peak on the north side of the valley, where two Sentinels scrambled along a scree-covered slope.

Moments later, Kobald’s unsteady voice crackled through the vox. ‘Sir. I think you’ll want to see this for yourself.’

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