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Tempest – Extract

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Tempest

Nick Kyme

Titus City, Lotun, 775.M41
(the 20th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

In the year 774.M41 Slaydo’s crusade to reclaim the Sabbat Worlds from the grip of the Archenemy had reached as far as Lotun.

Little more than a dirt world, Lotun possessed sparse natural resources, provided little in the way of industrial hive production, and its tithes to the sprawling military of the Imperial were meagre.

Wracked by storms, monsoons resulting from its aberrant atmospherics, Lotun was a poor world for a war, and would probably have been overlooked but for the fact of its clandestine importance to the Archenemy.

But despite our gathered intelligence, none of us, not even great Slaydo himself, could have predicted what we would find there.

– Personal journal,
Major Vasquez Regara, ‘Royal’ Volpone 50th

There are many traits that distinguish the Volpone from the regular rank and file of the Imperial Guard. Even scions enviously regard our proud history, our discipline and lengthy honour roll.

One trait stands out above all others: breeding. Our bloodlines are pure and undiluted. Lineage and heritage are everything. Legacy endures. Are there those who come from Volpone unions who could be deemed ‘imbalanced’ as a result of their shared, pure blood? Don’t be utterly ridiculous.

– General Noches Sturm

I

Corporal Stuber struggled for his life. The strong hands clenching around his neck were trying to crush his larynx. Slowly, incrementally, the grip of those thick fingers intensified like an iron trap overcoming the inertia of a rusted spring. One snap and it would be over.

He turned his head, and came face to face with the scarred visage of his enemy. Dead eyes rimed in deep arterial red glared back. Stuber had been watching for the wrong kind of threat. Too late, he had realised the Blood Pact were not the only foes to fear in the ruins of Titus.

A gasp, little more than a whisper of breath, escaped the flailing corporal’s lips, but drew nothing back. Stuber was no medic. Had he been, he would have known his larynx and trachea were being crushed. It took strength to do that to a man, strength and the sort of determination and stamina born from the desperation of survival or some deeper mania. Stuber’s face was ice-blue from the bitter cold, but began to purple under slow and painful asphyxiation. Hypoxic blemishes had already formed around his mouth and nasal cavities. They ringed his eyes like violet-coloured kohl, intensifying his dying stare.

He kicked, and in the deluge raining down upon the two men wrestling in the mud trench, the strangler lost his grip. Fenk snarled, trying to regain his dominance as Stuber flailed, but a savage punch glanced the side of his head, dislodging his officer’s cap and cutting a shallow gash that immediately started bleeding into his right eye. Stuber was a fighter, but he was starved of oxygen and therefore weak. It only took a few seconds for Fenk to reassert his iron grip around the other man’s throat.

Stuber thrashed one more time before he grew still, and Fenk could feel the man’s lungs spasm in instinctive panic. Stuber’s eyes bulged, trying in futile impotence to convey his shock, betrayal, anger and… ultimately, fear. Then they shrank, the pupils narrowing to pinpricks and the lids drooping as if to presage some hypnagogic state.

All life left Corporal Julius Stuber, and as Fenk sank back onto his haunches, exhausted and utterly spent, he shuddered, savouring the deed, fulfilling the deep, abiding need within and staving off the monster cleaved to his psyche.

A monster, but not a daemon, though such things had possessed men of this dark millennial age. Nor was it a foul xenos parasite Fenk harboured. It was much simpler than that, much more pervasive and inescapable. It was his bloodline, his own abnormal mind. No rites of excoriation, no invasive surgeries would excise it, for how could a man cut away something that was an integral part of himself?

With the retreat, the sounds of war receded on the monsoon wind: the diminishing cracks of lascarbines, the lower, more distant and plosive sounds of mortar and heavy cannon. Defeat would have stung Second Lieutenant Fenk’s Volpone pride were it not for the exhilaration of the kill to take the edge off.

He sagged, and allowed gravity to carry him off Stuber’s body and dump him in the mire of the trench, among the dead and the damned. A vox-unit crackled, spitting out dead air and silent curses. The 66th platoon was gone. Fenk was it.

Sole survivor.

Stab-lamps intruded on the monsoonal gloom, limning the trench spikes, the bayonets and the wire in magnesium white. Bodies were rendered into frosty monochrome, bleached of what little colour remained in them.

Fenk gazed up into the light as it strafed and searched the long trench ditch. He hid his eyes behind his hand, struggling to see against the bright glare of the lamps.

Voices resolved; voices that became silhouettes; silhouettes that became uniformed men.

Royal Volpone 50th. My regiment.

Their urgency cut through Fenk’s pathological torpor.

‘This one’s alive!’

The speaker was dressed in mud-splattered Volpone grey and heavily dented gold carapace with an indigo aquila clasp to seal the armoured gorget. It was ornate, better suited to the parade ground than the battlefield, but the Volpone took great personal pride in their attire. With his high crimson collar and gilded brocade, this one was most certainly attached to the officer cadre. His eyes were hidden in the shadows of his regal helmet. Fenk barely noticed the face, fixating on the scratched paint instead. A lascarbine hung on a strap over his shoulder. Other men, above and outside the trench, were firing their weapons. Flashes lit the darkness.

‘Throne… It’s Bertram Fenk.’

A hand was thrust towards him.

‘On your feet, second lieutenant!’

Fenk took the proffered hand and felt the strong, certain grip of a career soldier. Then he was hoisted out of the ditch. Twenty-something men were strung across the high side of the trench. Two crouched by the vox; one the operator, the other an officer with the receiver cup pressed to his ear taking fresh orders.

The rest lined up with their carbines, some standing, some on one knee. A pair of troopers frantically set up a heavy cannon on a tripod. The thrum of its energy coils powering up was deeper than the carbines. Fenk flinched as a las-bolt shrieked from its barrel, tearing open a distant enemy transport.

‘Must be in shock,’ said another, stepping into Fenk’s sight line to shine a light in his eye.

The medic saw fading rapture, not shock. The second lieutenant let him draw his own conclusions. He followed the index finger as requested. He nodded when prompted with his fallen company’s name. He clasped his hands behind his back and raised his chin, just as the Volpone drill-sergeants had taught him. Stuber’s ident-tag fell into Fenk’s back pocket. He had snapped the chain when he wrenched it from the dead man’s throat.

The officer returned just as the cursory examination concluded.

‘Full retreat,’ he told what Fenk first assumed was his aide. ‘Regara’s pulling us back to the Iron Line.’

‘He’s doing what? We’re almost in.’

No, not an aide. A fellow officer.

‘I think these poor swines would beg to differ.’ The first officer gestured to the dead piled inside the trench line. ‘Conditions have changed. We’re being reinforced.’

Overhead, the muffled explosions of landed mortar shells thundered. The fire exchange that had begun sporadically grew in intensity and purpose.

The second officer ducked reflexively as a fiery bloom lit the horizon into no-man’s-land. Jagged silhouettes appeared in the flare of bright, violent light. Several brigades. Hundreds of men, and that was just on this side of the wall.

‘Reinforced?’ he asked. ‘By whom?’

The first officer licked his lips.

‘First Sons,’ he said.

‘What the–’

‘That’s right,’ the first officer interrupted. ‘Scions.’

The medic clapped Fenk on the shoulder, and the second lieutenant had to suppress the urge to strike him.

‘Looks like you’re coming with us, sir,’ said the medic. The first officer nodded his confirmation and the 50th, which had swelled to sixty men but were probably in much greater number overall, began to withdraw from the field.

‘You can give your full report to Major Regara as soon as we’re back behind the Iron Line,’ added the medic. ‘He’ll want to know what happened.’

Fenk nodded.

The rain continued unabated, hammering the Volpone as they struggled through the mud, bent-backed and battle-weary. But far from being cleansing, the deluge only smeared the dirt, begriming their armour. It failed to wash the blood from Fenk’s hands.

II

Regara paced. He was good at pacing. Part stalking feline, part parade drill officer, the major had turned pacing into a form of theatre.

He paced in silence, with only the sound of creaking boot leather and the low whine of servos from his bionic leg to disturb the peace of the landing strip. In truth, it was little more than a square patch of flattened earth. An armoured blockhouse squatted nearby: the Volpone barracks. It was one of several iron-wrought structures that had weathered the early stages of the incursion into Titus, now dubbed the ‘Iron Line’ for ease of reference.

Regara was not alone on the landing strip. Five men in Volpone grey stood nearby. They also watched the skies, but didn’t prowl as the major did.

Like the others, he wore the colours of the Volpone, only his attire was less ragged than that of his comrades. His breastplate was wrought with filigree, and shone dully in the ambient light. Clean-shaven, Regara sported an obvious scar on his right cheek. Most notable, however, was his left leg. The entire limb was a bionic, gilt and ornate like the rest of the major’s armour.

‘Here they come,’ he muttered, craning his neck as the air throbbed with engine drone. The shadow of a heavy aircraft came into view.

The Valkyrie was painted slate grey and had the clenched fist around barbed wire icon of the First Sons daubed on its flanks. Prow lamps strafed the gloom, leading the way as the gunship knifed through the driving rain. Hellstrike missiles jutted aggressively from both wings. A heavy bolter poking from the nose cone tracked the targets on the ground with slow, idle sweeps.

‘Friendly,’ remarked Lieutenant Culcis, though the sarcasm in his tone suggested he thought the First Sons were anything but. He stood to the side of the landing pad with the other four men in the major’s retinue. The man next to him was called Drado, a pug-faced corporal who was also Culcis’s aide.

‘They’re fegging taking over, is what they’re doing.’

‘Manners, Drado,’ warned Culcis, despite the fact he agreed with him. ‘Remember your breeding.’

Downwash from the Valkyrie’s descent thrusters blew dust and debris across the landing pad, the high-pitched whine from the assault craft’s twin engines drowning out any forthcoming apology from Drado.

Regara watched the Valkyrie all the way down, not moving from his chosen spot. Buffeted by the skirling katabatic draughts, he didn’t blink once or reach up to steady his cap. The major looked proud and defiant. He was determined to meet the newcomers with the proper air of imperious authority.

As soon as the landing stanchions met solid earth, the rear access hatch descended, but the sound of grinding servos was obscured by the engine turbines slowing to a stop. A single scion stepped out, his slate-grey greatcoat matching the hue of his transport and flapping in the fading engine wash. He wore a black beret, the same clenched fist icon rendered in silver and pinned to the fabric.

His armoured carapace was black too, and the high gorget that rose up around his muscular neck carried a silver chain to denote his rank. As the greatcoat parted, Regara got a look at the holstered plasma pistol and vibro-knife the scion wore on either hip.

When he met Regara, he gave a crisp salute, which the major reciprocated.

‘Ardal,’ said the scion. ‘Tempestor Prime of the First Sons.’

Though both dressed in grey, the two men were a contrast in styles, one functional and cold, the other intricate and gilded.

‘Regara, major, Volpone 50th,’ Regara replied. ‘Are you planning on taking over my command, Prime Ardal?’

Ardal smiled thinly.

‘Bold.’ He nodded and smirked. ‘I like that. Not planning, major, am.’ The engine noise died away to nothing, so the two officers could lower their voices. It did nothing to drive away the tension.

‘We have bled out here, sir,’ said Regara. ‘I’ve lost nigh-on a hundred men to this grind.’

‘Your orders were to breach the east wall of Titus,’ said Ardal genially. ‘Those orders have not changed. The difference is, we’re the ones who’ll be making the breach now. You just need to provide the opportunity.’

Regara scowled, his hands bunched into fists by his sides. He knew better than to strike a Tempestor Prime. Not because he feared disciplinary reprisals, but because he knew Ardal could probably snap his neck before Regara had thrown the first punch. The man practically sweated lethal menace.

The major turned to address his aide.

‘Corporal Speers,’ he snapped, ‘get Colonel Gilbear on the vox.’

‘Major,’ said Ardal, ‘I can have the colonel on the vox right now.’

Regara turned his angry glare back to the Prime.

Ardal continued. ‘He said you wouldn’t like it. He also sanctioned this mission and gave me assurances you would do as required.’

Gritting his teeth, it took a supreme effort for Regara to maintain his composure. Escorting scions was a death sentence. Ardal wanted a punching bag to get the enemy’s attention while his commandoes did whatever they needed to in Titus. Moreover, the major didn’t like his authority being usurped.

‘And what, sir, do you require of us?’

‘Two things,’ said Ardal flatly. ‘Engage a full-scale assault against the east wall of the city, and escort a Militarum asset into the warzone.’

At the mention of the word, the ‘asset’ walked from the Valkyrie’s hold with two scion bodyguards, one at either side of him.

The asset was male, thin-faced and clearly not a soldier. He wore a long, tan cloak and soft fatigues. He was hooded, and leaned heavily on a brass staff, adorned with an Imperial eagle as its apex.

‘This is Juba Klaye,’ Ardal informed the major.

Not bodyguards, Regara realised as soon as the man introduced as Juba Klaye removed his hood to display the sigil-warded metal collar around his neck, gaolers…

Juba Klaye was a battle-psyker.

‘Telepath,’ Ardal explained. ‘There’s a Blood Pact communications hub somewhere behind the east wall. Mister Klaye is going to help us locate precisely where. Soon as he does, you’re to hold position and let the First Sons do the rest. Simple.’

It was far from simple, but Regara had little option. He settled for spite.

‘And where are your men? Or are you going to breach the east wall with two thugs in black carapace?’

Prime Ardal leaned closer to intimidate Regara, who didn’t flinch, despite the scion’s obvious threat.

‘Already out in the field,’ he rasped, daring the major to respond.

The First Sons had witnessed the rout, and probably seen most of the 66th, 18th and Fifth platoons cut to ribbons by the entrenched Blood Pact.

‘Now,’ said Ardal, leaning back to observe Regara’s impotent rage with detached amusement, ‘show me to operational command. I think we’ve been squatting in the dirt long enough.’

Regara gave the order to Speers, who immediately escorted the Prime and his small entourage, including Juba Klaye.

‘I need a word with my lieutenant,’ Regara told Ardal, who shrugged dismissively. He didn’t care two stones. He was in charge now. Regara could do what he liked so long as he did as he was told and didn’t feg up the mission. Ardal went on without him.

Regara summoned Culcis with a curt gesture of the head.

‘Is that Fenk?’ asked the major, noticing, for the first time, the dishevelled officer wedged between Sergeant Drado and Lieutenant Coen.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He looks like hell.’

‘Sole survivor of 66th platoon, sir.’

‘Throne of Earth,’ Regara murmured. ‘Can he fight?’

‘Coen gave him a clean bill. Said he seems surprisingly cogent, all things considered.’

Regara nodded, pleased that something was going right for the 50th. ‘Good. Find him a command, then get him cleaned up and back in the field. Our officer cadre is thin on the ground, lieutenant, and if we’re going to live through what that bastard Ardal has planned, we need cool heads and discipline.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Culcis went to his duties, taking the others with him and leaving Regara alone on the landing pad with the Valkyrie.

Titus stood to the east, beyond the Iron Line. The city was a ruin, but its walls still held. The communications hub the Blood Pact was using to coordinate its efforts in the sector could be anywhere in that warren. Regara didn’t like their odds of finding where before they were all facedown and bloody in a ditch, even with a fegging psyker.

The rain intensified into a deluge, hammering Regara. It was like standing in a blockhouse ablutions cubicle. The major looked up into fathomless clouds, blinking as the rain got into his eyes.

‘Not content to merely dump these First Son bastards and their wyrd, you have to piss on us too, eh? Ave Imperator,’ he said snidely, heading off for the blockhouse.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Sabbat Crusade in Great Britain in 2014.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland.

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