“Of course. Wouldn’t want another FTR,” he said.
She hesitated. “I never did thank you for your help that night.”
“What help? I was out of line, talking to the boy like that. You had every reason to be angry at me. Apart from that, what did I do? A bit of driving for you. That’s all I’m good for these days. The Munitorum gives me instructions, and I do some driving for them.”
“Even now? In the middle of this?”
“Even now. I am a servant of the Throne, commander. I do as I’m bid. My senior sent me to Kozkoh Administorum, with orders to collect a bunch of Munitorum record files that someone somewhere didn’t want falling into enemy hands.”
Jagdea shook her head. “Record files? Not people? You could be carrying a couple of dozen human lives to safety in this truck.”
“That had occurred to me, commander. The Munitorum has curious priorities, especially at times like this.”
She looked round at him. He was concentrating on the road ahead. She realised for the first time that he had probably been a good looking man before half his face had been melted.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“Kaminsky,” he replied. “August Kaminsky. Munitorum Transit Division, vehicle 167.”
“You were aircrew before that.”
“Combat pilot, Commonwealth Airforce. Wolfcubs and the like. Sixteen years. But that’s ancient history.”
“Look, Kaminsky,” she began. “Can you get me to the field? I know you have orders, but I really need to rejoin my command.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. From here, it would be a long slog, especially given the circumstances.”
“Then I need to evac at least. Anywhere closer?”
“Well, I’ve been told to report to an extraction centre at Mandora Point on the north shore. That’s where these damn record files are supposed to be delivered. There should be mass-barges there, maybe even lifters. Good enough?”
“Okay, that’ll do. I just need to get out. Get out and clear and then back in the game.” He smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking that for months,” he said.
They rode on for fifteen minutes without talking. Kaminsky drove hard, almost recklessly, through the shattered streets. Several times, Jagdea winced as he ran them into walls of smoke that washed across the roadway, without knowing what might be concealed by them. Twice, Kaminsky had to brake hard to avoid debris and slopes of rubble.
“Theda’s done for,” he said at last.
“Yes. I’m afraid it might be.”
“I guess these are the end times.”
“There’s still a chance,” she said.
Swinging the wheel, he laughed at her. “I don’t think so. Not now.”
“If a member of my flight spoke like that, I’d have them up on charges. There’s always a chance. While we still breathe, by the grace of the Emperor, there’s still a chance.”
“Then I count myself fortunate that I’m not a member of your flight, mamzel. Enothis is my homeworld, and I gave everything I had to protect it. There comes a time when a person has to be pragmatic.”
“I fought for my homeworld too. Now I’m here fighting for yours. Don’t talk to me about effort. Don’t talk to me about contribution. And as for being pragmatic, that’s sometimes just another word for defeatist.”
“Well, screw you too, mamzel—”
“Kaminsky! Look out!”
They’d just come through another drift of smoke. In the suddenly-revealed road ahead, a group of figures, dressed in dark red uniforms, turned to face them.
Jagdea saw leering iron masks, bowl helmets, lasrifles.
“Blood Pact!” she blurted out.
“Turn round! Turn us around!”
Kaminsky was already hauling on the wheel. He swore loudly, fighting to avoid a full skid. The truck slewed around madly, stripping tread from its fat tyres. It came side-on to the Archenemy troopers.
And stalled.
“Kaminsky! Kaminsky!” Jagdea yelled.
“Stop shouting at me!” he yelled, gunning the starter. The Blood Part drop-troops began to fire at them, running forward. Las-rounds smacked into the mack’s side and one crazed the door window.
“Kaminsky! For Throne’s sake!”
“Will you shut up, woman?” A las-round went clean through the cab in front of their faces, shattering Kaminsky’s side pane.
The truck’s engines burst back into life.
Jagdea was thrown back against the seat by the violent restart. Her left arm cracked against the door jamb and she howled in pain.
Kaminsky swung them round to the left, standing on the accelerator. The big truck side-swiped the burned-out shell of a car, and slammed it out of the way. Then the Blood Pact squad was behind them and they were barrelling away down a side street at nearly sixty.
“Are you hit?” he said.
“No.”
“You cried out.”
“I’m not hit.”
“I’m sorry I shouted at you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Looks like we’re not going that way,” Kaminsky said.
Theda Old Town, 07.43
All along the canal side, recent bombing had felled the ancient buildings and tenements, even the old Kazergat Bridge. But the templum was miraculously unscathed. Coughing in the smoke and brick dust, Viltry hurried along the canal’s bank and went down to the church door.
He paused there, and glanced up at the effigy of the God-Emperor. “Remember me?” he asked. Viltry opened the door.
It was almost disturbingly calm inside. The air was clear, though he could still smell the stink of smoke from the firebombing. The templum was empty. The rows of pews, the alabaster columns, the faint residue of camphor and incense.
He walked down the aisle, his boots dipping on the mosaic flooring. Saints and daemons passed under his heels. The Ministorum priests had long since fled.
He came to a halt in front of the votary shrine.
Three candles burned there. Just three.
“God-Emperor…” he sighed.
“Oskar?”
Oskar Viltry turned slowly.
She had been sitting at the end of a pew row, hidden behind a column. He hadn’t seen her. She was shivering in her thin coat.
He took a step towards her, almost laughing out in strange delight.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“Where else could I go?” Beqa Mayer said. “How else would you know where to find me?”
Northern Theda, 08.12
They tore out of the dying city and onto a coastal highland where the habs became infrequent and scattered. Jagdea glimpsed the sea beyond the headland.
“Kaminsky? Where are we going?” she asked.
“Not the field, that’s for sure. Or the extraction either. The bastards have the whole place locked down. I’m running on a hunch.”
“What sort of hunch?”
“The sort of hunch that will disappoint you if it doesn’t work.”
“Kaminsky?”
“I think there comes a point,” said Kaminsky, “where the act of being pragmatic and the notion there’s always still a chance become the same thing.”
They went under a road-bridge and then down a steep hill between rows of fish processing plants. Kaminsky suddenly turned right, and drove the truck down an access way into a yard behind the manufactories.
Ahead of them stood a line of flakboard sheds facing the edge of the sea cliff. The sheds were painted green. The nearest had a large, shuttered door in the side of it. It was barred and locked.
“Get out, commander,” he said.
She looked at him.
“I mean it. Get out.”
Jagdea climbed down from the cab and slammed the door.
Kaminsky reversed and then drove the truck at the shutter. Jagdea winced at the impact. Trailing a fender, the truck reversed and drove in again.
“Throne’s sake, Kaminsky!” Jagdea cried out.
A third battering run, and the shutter tore away at the sills, partially crunched out of its flakboard frame. Kaminsky got down out of his mashed truck.
“Come on,” he said.
Jagdea hurried over to him, and they bent in low to pass under the crumpled metal sheets of the door shutter.
She found herself in a damp, echoing chamber. It smelled of rotting plyboard and salt water.
“What the hell is this?” she asked.
“Shut up and follow me,” he said.
They edged through the gloom, Kaminsky leading. Jagdea saw fitter trolleys, compact bowsers, shelf-racks of tools. There was a scent of promethium jelly in the air.
Kaminsky opened another hatch and daylight spilled through. “This way,” he said.
She followed him through the hatch and out onto a metal catwalk. They had entered a deep, flakboard-built hangar. The mouth of the bay, facing the sea, was open to the air, the floor cut away right down to the lip of the cliffs. Pale light flooded in through the opening. Jagdea could hear the breakers far away and below.
Directly beneath them, in the shadows, two Commonwealth Cyclones sat on steam catapult launch racks.
“Coastal defence,” said Kaminsky, clattering down the metal staircase ahead of her. “They haven’t been used in months, but I hoped they were still here.”
“My lord,” gasped Jagdea, following him down.
Kaminsky ran to the nearest machine, opened the cockpit door, and leaned in.
“It’s got electrics, but we’ll need fuel. And a primer can.”
Jagdea came up behind him. “And then what? Fly one out of here?”
He looked at her. “Exactly.”
“We can’t…” Jagdea began.
“Of course we can. You’ll quickly get the hang of it. Simple, basic, that’s all a Cyclone is.” Kaminsky ran back along the machine’s length, and opened the tank cocks. He hefted a fuelling line from nearby bowser and connected it, fumbling slightly because of his prosthetic hand.
“I can’t fly that,” Jagdea said.
Kaminsky started the bowser’s pump motor. The fuel line wriggled and flexed as pressurised liquid surged through it.
“I know you’re not used to props, but she’s real easy to handle, I promise,” he said, and hurried to the catapult stations at the back of the bay. Kaminsky threw some switches, and got a generator firing. Then he pulled down a handle that started the catapult’s steam engines, pumping up me piston track mechanism.
“No, Kaminsky,” Jagdea said. She held up her slung arm. “Even a machine like this needs both hands. Throttle and stick. Remember that, airman? With the best will in the cosmos, I can’t do it.”
Kaminsky came to halt. “I suppose you can’t,” he admitted. He seemed deflated.
“But you could,” she said.
“Me? I’m not rated airworthy.”
“Right now, this deep in the shit, I hardly think that’s the point any more. Let’s be pragmatic, shall we? I’m a wing leader. I’ll clear you as airworthy. I have the authority.”
“I’ll need your help,” he said, uncertainly.
“Anything,” she promised.
“Keep an eye on the fuel dial.”
Jagdea peered into the cockpit. The gauge was barely registering. “Slow,” she called. “How long?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes to full tolerance. The pumps aren’t famously efficient.”
Jagdea did what all pilots have done since the beginning of aviation. She leaned over and flicked the glass dial with the fingers of her good hand. As with all pilots since the beginning of aviation, it made no difference.
The steam pressure was rising. Between them, Jagdea and Kaminsky unhooked the support hawsers and suspension straps holding the Cyclone in place.
“Can you do a cockpit check?” Kaminsky asked.
“You’re more familiar with the layout.”
“Yeah, but there’s something I need to do.”
“What?”
“The record files. I think I should burn them. Not just leave them here.”
“I’ll do it,” Jagdea said. “You finish the prep.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. How long have we got?”
Kaminsky checked his chronometer, and then looked at the fuel gauge. “Ten minutes.”
“I’ll be five,” she promised, and hurried towards the stairs.
Kaminsky checked the catapult controls. They’d reached full pressure. He locked them off and tripped the lever that switched release control to the plane itself. Then he went to the bowser. Its pump seemed to be ailing.
“Come on!” he hissed. There wasn’t time to find another and switch over.
He clambered into the tiny cockpit.
He’d done a few hundred hours on Cyclones. It was oddly familiar. He tested the electrics, the glycol levels, the radiator levers. Then he checked the trim, leaning out of the cockpit to look backwards as he pitched and turned the stick and the rudder bar, watching the ailerons and the fin respond obediently.
“Come on, Jagdea,” he hissed. He looked at the fuel gauge. It was still so very low. “And come on pump,” he added.
In the upper part of the shed, Jagdea fumbled around and filled a can with liquid promethium from one of the tank trolleys. It was hard to do, one-handed. The only light came in under the buckled shutter. Hefting the heavy can in her right hand, she ducked out into the open air.
A few papers from the truck’s load were fluttering free in the breeze. Jagdea set the sloshing can up on the tail gate and then hauled herself up after it.
She started to spill fuel onto the record boxes. It was a huge effort. She felt stupid and weak, having to set the can down so often to catch her breath.
She heard an odd, clattering noise.
She resumed the work dousing the entire pile. Then she jumped down, biting back the urge to cry out as her left arm jarred, and poured the last of the can into the truck’s cab.
That sound again. Not a clattering so much as hammering. Like steel pistons.
She checked her chronometer. She’d already been five minutes.
Then there was the matter of ignition.
Jagdea cursed herself for not thinking it through.
She hurried back into the shed, and started to search in the gloom. Tool boxes crashed over. Drawers upturned. Something. Anything.
Nothing.
Panting, she stepped back. On the flakboard wall, a distress gun hung on a hook in a glass-fronted box. She picked up a ten mil wrench and smashed the box off the wall.
The distress gun was smooth and old, and it had started to rust. She snapped its barrel open and rummaged for a shell.
That noise, again.
Clatter clatter.
Louder.