be like this. Barsabbas was too young to remember the Chapter wars, but the thought of internecine conflict disturbed him in the most intrusive manner.
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CHAPTER SIX
ON THE DAY the Red Gods descended to Hauts Bassiq, the weather was angry.
A high‐pitched wind on the lower part of the south continent built up its strength. By the time it jettisoned itself across the North Territories it was a bellowing dust storm. Grit tore the bark off trees and gales uprooted even the hardy dwarf bushes from the sands. The sky darkened so hungrily that it became black at the height of noon and stayed that way for some hours.
In the central interior plains, a plains herdsman fleeing towards shelter saw several lights in the sky. They winked like stars, but they plummeted, moving too fast across the black sky to be distant astral bodies. He saw them break away from each other, like flowers caught in an updraught, and scatter across the horizon. Peering out from beneath the shuka he had drawn around his face as the sand whipped his lashes, he wondered if they were the cause of such portentous weather.
GUIDE LIGHTS WINKING, fluttering blindly in the sky, the drop‐pods became trapped in an updraught. Confined within the coffin slabs of bulk plating, Squad Besheba could only watch the topographic monitors overhead as they veered off course. Violent wind patterns shaped like an eye spiralled outwards and pushed the tiny dots of the Blood Gorgons’ drop-pods further and further away from Ur.
‘Forward venting disabled. Guiding fins are losing drift. Prepare for freefall!’ Sergeant Sica shouted above the drop‐pod’s death rattle.
Their Dreadclaw was plummeting, freefalling as the thrusters grunted with intermittent effort to slow their descent. Arrest sirens.The crash of high‐altitude wind.The stink of loose petroleum. The drop‐pod became a self‐enclosed world of blind confusion.
Barsabbas was pinned against his restraints by g‐force as the entire cabin vibrated against the atmospheric friction. In the restraint harness beside him, Sargaul was utterly impassive behind his helmet and entirely motionless. Barsabbas tried to emulate some of the veteran’s composure, but the combat stimms he had ingested were agitating him. He was grinding his teeth as the stimms elevated his heart rate. The crushed enamel tasted like wet sand in his mouth.
Barsabbas almost did not feel the crash. The drop‐pod collided with the planet’s surface at high speed and continued to bounce with a loose, jarring expulsion of force. The impact would have shattered any normal human’s skeletal structure. Rolling, tumbling, flipping head over heels, Barsabbas gripped his restraint harness as the drop‐pod swept him along.
His neck whipped violently against the arrestor cage and his shoulder popped briefly out of joint before clicking back into the socket. Blood, hot and sour, filled his mouth as his teeth sliced clean through his tongue.
‘Up! Up! Up!’ Sica shouted.
There was no time for quiet. The alarms were still so loud they beat in his eardrums.
Barsabbas shook his head to clear the concussive aftershock. His ears were ringing as the dust settled around him.
49
‘Contact!Multiple massive movement.’ Someone shouted the warning into the squad’s vox‐link but the urgency blurred the words into no more than a sharp smear. He was already up and uncaged from his restraint harness. The drop‐pod’s surveillance systems were baying with alarm. External motion sensors were detecting encroaching movement.
‘Bolters up,’ Bael‐Shura commanded. The squad uncaged their restraints and readied themselves, slamming bolter clips into their guns. A banging came from the outside, a rapid persistent hammering as if a horde were trying to breach the drop‐pod’s shell.
Barsabbas checked he had a full load in his sickle‐pattern bolter clip. His helmet HUD
powered up, its ocular targeting syncing with his bolter sights. Slabs of system reports scrolled by his peripheral vision: climate, energy readouts, atmospheric toxicity, all of which Barsabbas ignored as the alarms brayed and amber cabin lights flashed. He signalled to Bael‐Shura that he was ready.
Sica stood by with a hand over the release button. The hammering outside grew louder, almost wild.
‘Deploy!’ Sica roared, punching the release button.
The drop‐pod’s side hatches unfolded like flower petals. There was an exhalation of pressurised air. The outside rushed in towards them as if a flood gate had burst open.
Barsabbas crouched and shot on instinct. His first shot punched through a human chest.
The body had no chance to fall as others pushed in from behind. It remained upright –
jammed by the press of people. The freshly killed male seemed to writhe. Barsabbas thought he saw its arms raise, but he dismissed