‘Why?’ asked Vantanus.
‘Because it’s reliable. When the solar storms kick off, every fifteen years or so, they’re much more resilient during the radiation flares than the manifold systems.’
‘Good,’ says Ventanus.
Flaming debris bombs are still slicing overhead. None of the party has quite got over the sight of the Antrodamicus hitting the surface. Some of the aides are tearful.
The pylons are built on a platform in the middle of a rockcrete basin beside landing platform sixty. It’s a natural shelter. About two hundred port workers and cargo-men have huddled there, under the lip of the platform. It’s not much of a refuge, but it’s better than nothing. Hot ash is raining down, burning scraps. Every now and then something small but heavy, like a sheared mooring bolt or an airgate handle, hits the ground like a bullet.
The sheltering personnel move forward when they see the Space Marines. There are questions, a lot of questions, and pleas for help.
‘We don’t know anything,’ Ventanus tells them, putting Arbute down and raising his hands. ‘A state of emergency is now in force, obviously. I need to get that listening post operational. Maybe we’ll get some answers that way. I need vox operators.’
Several men step forward as volunteers. He chooses two.
‘Let’s move,’ Ventanus says.
He’s getting edgy. It’s been almost ten minutes since the disaster struck, and he still knows absolutely nothing.
The control rooms for the post are a trio of standard pattern module habitats mounted thirty-five metres up on the girder-work frame of the pylon array. An open switchback staircase of grilled steps leads up to them.
Ventanus picks up Arbute again, and leads the way. The vox volunteers follow, along with a couple of the seneschal’s aides, Selaton and Amant. Amant’s troops spread out to quell the agitated crowd.
They open one of the modules. There’s still power. The technicians get to work warming up the station’s main caster grid. Ventanus takes a data-slate and records the channel frequencies he wants to raise. Erud muster control. Fleet command. His own company command.
The vox operators sit down at the main caster desks facing the module’s windows. Whooping static and radiation distort sobs through the old, hefty speakers.
‘Was that gunfire?’ Selaton asks.
‘Not that I heard,’ Ventanus replies. ‘Probably more debris hits.’
He goes out onto the narrow gantry outside the module. The view is excellent, though what he can see is not. Large sections of the port facility are now ablaze. The sky over both sides of the river is blacked out with smoke. Meteoritic streaks still stripe against the darkness, like las-bolts. It’s hard to see the huge shipwreck any more, though the pall in the direction of what used to be Kalkas Fortalice is throbbing red like the mouth of hell.
There’s definitely a distant sound, a booming. It’s almost like a planetary bombardment. Ships firing from orbit.
He’s still clinging to the notion this is all an accident.
There’s a shout from far below. Three more squads of Space Marines have entered the basin at the foot of the pylons. They’re dressed in red. XVII. That’s good. Good to get a little collaboration going in this hour of dire need. Maybe the Word Bearers’ comms networks have come through the incident a little more intact.
He sees Amant’s men and the crowd of port workers moving to greet them.
Ventanus steps back into the listening station module.
‘I’m going back down,’ he tells Selaton. ‘Reinforcements just arrived and I want to find out what they know.’
He looks at the vox operators, hard at work.
‘The moment they get anything, call me back up.’
Selaton nods.
Ventanus turns. Pauses.
‘What?’ asks Selaton. ‘What’s the matter, sir?’
Ventanus isn’t sure. He opens his mouth to reply.
No warning. No damned warning. Just a nanosecond prickle, a sting of intuition, that something isn’t right.
A nanosecond. Too little, and too damned late.
Mass-reactive rounds slam into the floor and front wall of the listening station module. Mass-reactive rounds fired from below.
The floor and front wall shred. Disintegrating metal plating becomes splinters and lethal tatters. Light and flame compress upwards into the module through its ruptured shell from the blast points, driving the splinters in with it.
The air inside the module fills with expanding flame and whizzing fragments. The forced pressure of the strike blows out the window ports and annihilates the vox-caster desks. Seneschal Arbute is knocked backwards. The head and shoulders of one of her aides become red mist as a round strikes and detonates. White-hot spalling and jagged shrapnel from the floor macerates the two vox-operator volunteers. The other staff aide, a clerk, is thrown into the module’s ceiling by the upward pressure of the blasts. His broken body then falls back and drops out through a floor that is no longer intact.
Selaton sees the murdered clerk fall, cartwheeling away, dislocated and loose. His corpse disappears down through the girder work of the pylons, just one more chunk in a hailstorm of spinning debris and burning fragments.
The deck begins to break away from the front wall.
‘Back! Back!’ Ventanus orders. The entire module is already shrieking and tilting, as if it is about to shear clean off its mounting. Part of the metal cage supporting the entry staircase rips away and topples.
The unseen killers fire again. Another rain of explosive rounds brackets and punishes the module. Ventanus assesses frantically, his weapon drawn. The attack is coming from positions down below, on the pylon base.
Mass-reactive. Detonating on impact. Legiones Astartes munition. Not possible. Not possible. Unless–
‘Error,’ exclaims Selaton beside him. ‘False fire. Error. Someone has made an–’
‘I said get back!’ Ventanus screams, grabbing Selaton and pulling him towards the rear of the module.
Ventanus and Selaton start to return fire, blasting down through the hole created as the floor section collapses and peels away. There is only smoke below, no clear target, no true thermal print. They fire anyway. Discouragement.
Armour inertials don’t lie. The module is slumping backwards. It is going to separate from its mountings and fall.
Arbute is dead. There isn’t a wound on her, but Ventanus knows that the overpressure and kinetic slam of the mass-reactive strikes will have pulped her human organs. Amant has been dropped. Two, perhaps three mass-reactive rounds have taken him from below. He is lying on his back on the rapidly perishing deck. His feet are gone, and the blasts have sliced the armour and flesh from his shins and thighs, his torso and his face. He is still alive, clotting blood filling the cavities of his wounds.
A few moments to stabilise, and they could get him clear. Get him to reconstruction. Even with the front of his body skinned and scourged away, a month or two in biotech conditioning would see him fighting again.
The module doesn’t have a few moments.
They don’t have a few moments.
Ventanus sees Amant’s eyes, wide in a mask of blood and broken visor, staring in helpless disbelief. Ventanus understands what he sees there. Amant knows it’s the end, not just of his own existence, but of the galaxy as they understand it.
Ventanus kicks out the rear hatch with one savage thump of his heel. The support staircase is gone. There is nowhere to go. The module starts to fall, like a boat rolling over in a rush as the water it is taking on suddenly hits the tipping point.
‘Jump!’ yells Ventanus.