[49]

290.738.M41

Vogel

08:59 Local Time

We were crammed into the Arvus, armor and weapons, ten people and all of our wargear and the tech-adepts' cumbersome equipment. Everything tied down or restrained by webbing, all of us wedged in as tight as it would go. The four of us Sisters were in the back, next to the hatch, so that we could deploy first and secure the landing site. Verity and Tara had the best spots, in the very back, with only their inside sides crushed into someone else. The two tech-adepts had the worst position, farthest from the exit ramp, packed in with the hardware. Mak'ti was wedged against my left side, then Grendel's bulky body filled the space between her and tech-adept Seg.

On the other side of the cramped aisle, Adem and Hana were pretending not to notice that they were almost in each other's laps, and then Castor was packed in tight between Adem and Ik'tar. It was too cramped to all be using data-slates, but Grendel had his out and was sharing it with Mak'ti and me, showing the view from the front of the Arvus.

The city rose up above the broad silver-blue of the river and the green of half-reforested fields. It was concentrated on our left. The more scattered buildings in the outskirts were all surrounded by young trees. Streets cut through the green like a grid stamped onto a young forest.

Then the outer city was sweeping past us and the view ahead was all rockcrete and right angles. Brambles and ivy climbed the ruins. Broken skeletal supports reached up towards the sky. There was a building like a warehouse with a copse of thin pine trees growing out of the roof. I saw something green and moving that was the right color to be an Ork, but it was probably just spring grasses stirred by wind. It was spring in Vogel. It had been fall in Velgrad, thousands of kilometers north.

Edric Esmond, the pilot, voxed: "One minute. Nothing on the auspex."

Then: "Thirty seconds. Possible energy reading. Stand by."

Then we all slammed into each other and the world lurched sideways. On my side we all were hanging from our restraints. Grendel dropped his data-slate and it flew across the interior and Castor caught it out of the air.

Esmond said, "Darklight, darklight, brace, brace, brace!"

Then we were all hanging towards the rear as Esmond put the nose up and slammed the throttle forward, reaching for altitude and safety with the enormous power of the high-atmosphere plasma rockets.

For a split second the world filled with shadow and a heavy grinding sound.

For that moment my perception mixed with memory. I was there in the Arvus, here and now. But for me it was also the Eldar war, one of the bad days almost two years ago, far out in deep space. The person to my left was another Battle Sister as well as Mak'ti. We were closing in hard on an Eldar warship, trying to get under its void shields and force our way inside, as well as here and now. All my thought collapsed to the word: Again.

"Brace, brace, brace!" Esmond said again, but Mak'ti was already dead. There was a head-sized hole behind her and through her and through the far wall just over Castor's head. We were thrown from side to side as Esmond tried to evade. Someone was screaming. There was a jolt, and then we weren't rocketing up, we were falling, pitching to the side and down.

The screaming stopped as the cabin filled with smoke.

I remember thinking, "Suit air!" but it wasn't me who said it. All my breath had been knocked away. I think Hana said it.

Another shot filled the interior with shadow and somehow missed all of us, but it punched through the munitions and equipment at the front of the passenger compartment and they caught fire. Something exploded. Something wet and solid thumped off of my helmet. There was a jarring impact, then a second later another lesser impact.

The interior of the Arvus filled with water. The Voghast river claimed us. A restraint web ripped free and equipment slammed through the compartment, driven with murderous force by the water flooding in. The punctured aircraft sank fast. Jets of silver bubbles appeared where the ship was punctured through an engine—water boiling as all the huge energy of the spacecraft's plasma system tried to keep releasing heat. I couldn't see across the Arvus. There was debris everywhere. The water was murky and black, even with low-light vision.

Taken from NovelPhoenix, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

On my right, Verity was out of her restraints, fighting against the unresponsive rear hatch.

On my left, I thought I saw Grendel reaching for help. But when I reached across Mak'ti's corpse and grabbed his arm, I felt it give unnaturally under his armor. He was already dead. Everyone not wearing sealed power-armor was already dead. Even if they had survived the explosions and the crash, the water was hot enough to cook flesh. Adem and Castor were dead.

There was a thump as we hit the bottom of the river. I felt the heat through my armor. Power-armor can keep us alive in terrible environments, but not forever.

I tried to vox, "Mayday, mayday, mayday, Arvus 1, Arvus 1." But the send indicator in my heads-up display was dead.

I fought free of my restraints. Verity and Tara had the hatch open a few centimeters. I could see dim light through the slit. I could hear them shouting through the water. There was nothing on the vox, not even static. I held Verity's backpack and lifted her, bracing my feet on something, I think one of the tech-adepts' machines. She found a way to press her feet against the hatch and her shoulders against the ceiling. She kicked, violent, hard shocks with all the strength her power-armor could give her. Each impact made the slit of light grow by a few centimeters. When the gap was big enough I shoved her through it. "Verity, out, go!" I don't think she could hear me, but she went.

Tara and I shoved Hana through. We turned back. We must have shared the same impossible thought, the same useless hope. She reached for Adem and I reached for Grendel, but they were dead. Castor was dead. The tech-adepts were dead. There wasn't much left of Mak'ti.

I saw Mak'ti's kit bag on the floor. We had all drilled on the servo-drones. The scout units would be useless if the vox was dead, but the vox relays might save us. We could send them out of whatever was jamming us. They were mindless and could only follow the simplest instructions—but they could fly straight up, trying to broadcast a message over and over, and they were fast.

The servo-skull was in there, too. A replacement after the one we used on day 233. I grabbed the bag. The inside of my armor was painfully hot.

I shoved the drone case out, shoved Tara towards the gap, and let Verity and Hana drag me through.

We stumbled away, crawled. The weight of our armor held us to the muck and grit at the bottom of the river instead of floating away. The water grew cold and my armor's temperature regulating spirit was able to cool me again. Behind us, the Arvus was a blue-orange glow of ruptured plasma engines glaring out through black water and silver bubbles. It was a spacecraft, with enough energy to reach orbit and beyond. It would burn for a long time.

The cockpit was a blackened open scar.

I thought about going back to save the bodies, but I thought the water would protect the bones, even though it would destroy the flesh. There would be something to recover later.

I tried to orient myself. The water was murky and washed out pale gray in my low-light. When I switched back to regular vision, I could see the sun, a dim pale disk through the murk many meters above. 09:00, so the sun meant East. The river went from northeast to southwest.

Eldar had shot us. Darklight weapons. We had gone right into a prepared defense. I thought about betrayal. I thought about Wessex giving up his seat on the Arvus.

Grendel was dead. It felt impossible. It felt worse than Adem and Castor and Mak'ti, though I loved them. It felt like the sun forgetting to rise. Grendel was dead.

The Eldar might look for survivors or wreckage flowing with the river. I oriented on the sun and pointed northeast. We began to trudge against the current.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

No helmet or servo-skull pictoria are available beyond 09:00. As on day 110, all the picters recorded nothing but static. Audio logs remain mostly intelligible, and I have relied on them to reconstruct this report.