Titanicus (Sabbat Worlds #3)

by Dan Abnett

A turbo-laser on auto sounded like the death scream of a sun. The hailing, incandescent blast pattern overtook Xeres Five PDF like a surge tide as they ran for their lives down the back street. Caught in the rolling blitz, fleeing troopers ignited and evaporated almost instantly. The onslaught levelled the entire length of the thoroughfare and ripped the ground down to fused bedrock. Maki Kiner disintegrated mid-stride in a puff of ash flakes that billowed like confetti. The last thing Goland saw of Tertun was a cooked spine, skull and single shoulder blade, tumbling out of the chasing fire-wash like part of a puppet, still articulated, thrown on by the roasting fury of the attack. Goland turned, screaming, and hurled the treacherous auspex like a discus at the great engine treading down the street behind him. He didn’t live long enough to see if it had struck its mark. Mass laser discharge vaporised the flesh off his bones, and then, a millisecond later, over-pressure scattered his skeleton like twigs into the rain.

Habers led him towards a portable chart table that had been set up in the centre of the habitent. A chem lamp hung from a hook overhead, illuminating three figures poring over the charts. ‘You could use a shave, soldier,’ Habers said amiably to Varco. Varco rubbed his bristly chin. ‘I could, sir,’ he replied, ‘along with a shower, a square meal, twelve hours’ sleep, a large amasec, and a bout of restorative, uninhibited congress with an athletic girl. I’m guessing you’re not going to be able to help me with any of the above.’ Habers snorted. ‘Sorry, captain,’ he said.

The eldar beam trepanned Victrix. It cut through the outer casing, the intermediate, the internal subcutaneous, spalling white hot shards in all directions and spurting out fat globs of superheated, liquid metal. The upper arrays went, the forward scopes, exploding in sheeting sparks. Narler lost his left arm at the elbow. Gylok, the famulous, was cut in two at the waist. The rear cabin bulkheads blew out as the beam passed through them and murdered tech-priest Solium in his aft compartment. Then the rear cranial generators blew. The beam missed him, but the blast effects caught him. Shrapnel and metal chips from the rear cranials blew out like a razor storm, shattering the back of his casket, shredding the principal plug sheafs, the central MIU trunking, and bursting his amniotics.

‘I’m not a killer,’ Tarses said. The magos shrugged, sorting the bloodwork vials ready for the centrifuge. ‘You’re Zane Tarses, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you are a killer, sir.’ Tarses blinked. ‘No, you–’ The magos stared back at him coldly. ‘Do you plug into that Warlord? Do you fight? Yes? It’s in you, then. The instinct, the lust. Omnissiah help us all that we must make men like you.’ ‘The galaxy makes it so,’ Tarses replied. ‘Pity us all that this is the galaxy we are made to live in, then,’ the magos said, turning away.

Even at low stride, Faero left a trail of destruction in its wake. Its bulk brushed down walls in narrow streets, or crushed through mouldering hab blocks in the absence of clearance. In this district, many of the structures were already ramshackle and derelict. Stonework and timbers were blackened with age and pollution. The hulks of four- and five-storey structures stood unroofed, and Faero snagged on overhanging eaves and rotten support frames as it crunched forwards, demolishing moribund slum buildings that had stood for six or seven hundred years. It manoeuvred through murky nests of by-courts and back-land alleys with the effect of a mobile earthquake, accompanied by the constant rumble and slither of falling masonry, the smash of glass, the shatter of tiles. Where it passed, harsh daylight, laced with dust, fell into exposed rooms and gutted underwalks that had been dark for generations.

Cally blinked. Everything had suddenly become very real, especially her fear. She realised that the sight of the Titans had simply frozen her in mortal fascination, like prey before a predator.

Then the shields started to sing. ‘What the cog is that?’ Fairika started, unnerved. ‘The voids are scouring heavy, famulous,’ said Kalder. ‘What does that mean?’ she snapped back. During the walk out from the finishing silos, Tarses had realised that Famulous Fairika didn’t like it when the veteran crewmen used engine slang, as if she supposed she was being excluded from some engineman’s club by dint of her gender and youth. ‘It means we’re in a dry, high-static environment,’ said Tarses. ‘It charges dust on the shield auras and makes them squeal.’ The noise was indeed dismaying. It sounded as if numberless lost souls were clinging like limpets to their engine frame and bemoaning their plight, while their cold, numb fingernails furtively scratched at the hull to get in. ‘Always a bad portent when the voids sing so, isn’t that right, moderati?’ murmured Kalder ominously, winking at Tarses. ‘Stop it,’ said Tarses. Kalder grinned and shrugged. Goading Fairika was too easy a game.