Volpone Glory (Warhammer 40,000) by Nick Kyme

Author:Nick Kyme [Kyme, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2021-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

The Valkyrie flew with engines baffled, running dark and staying just above the cloud layer like a night bird gliding on the wing.

Hauptmann had rolled back the side hatch, clipping in to prevent any mishap should the aircraft need to bank or manoeuvre suddenly. But the skies were clear, the V’heduak patrolling elsewhere or having quit to some other part of the island entirely. It was a mercy, for the Archonate air cadre were ruthless and tenacious.

He closed his eyes, letting the wind buffet him and fill his senses with white noise, a voiceless thunder that smothered his thoughts and left his mind a peaceful blank slate. No screams, no smell of burning… at least for a while. His hand found the clutch of parchments in his uniform pocket and the dead returned, as if summoned by the ink on paper that told of their ending and offered hollow consolation. Old feelings of loss resurfaced, like bodies left overlong in a river, bloated with regret.

The crumpled pict wormed its way into his gloved hand without Hauptmann realising, and he thought of Chari, her hair swept back on a frontier wind, their son cradled in her tanned arms.

‘I drink…’ said a voice from the hold interior, the Tunnel-Rat, 19th Talpa. Hauptmann thought his name was Pikk or Pakk or something like that. Remarkably, he wore a lieutenant’s badges and Hauptmann wondered briefly if he had stolen the ragged jacket to which they were pinned.

‘I beg your pardon?’

The Talpa had a greasy flask in his cloth-wrapped mitts. A sloshing emanated from within, the liquid redolent of fyceline.

Hauptmann politely refused.

‘Good for forgetting,’ said the Talpa, scratching at the tattoo on his cheek, a mournful shadow passing across his dirty face.

And blindness… thought Hauptmann but kept that to himself, smiling instead.

‘Or I smoke the kappa.’ He bared liquorice-black teeth.

Neither vice sounded particularly appealing. Hauptmann spared a quick glance to Lennox, hoping for moral support, but the sniper had his feet up on a bench and was snoozing peacefully, an easy smile on his face. Oh to be young, and less burdened. He showed the Talpa his pict.

‘My family,’ he said.

The Talpa stared at the faded image for a long time, eventually nodding. ‘’Tis good,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘That you are here and they are not. No place for a family, this war.’

Hauptmann found no argument there, but it didn’t ease his grief. A grubby hand hastily wiped on grubbier fatigues came his way.

‘Pukk,’ uttered the Talpa.

‘Hauptmann,’ Hauptmann replied.

The Talpa smirked. ‘Funny name…’ and swilled back his illicit grog.

It took six more hours to find the loc-beacon, one of the First Sons poring over the signal returns on a radar unit that turned his face the colour of sweaty emerald.

‘Here!’ he said curtly, his counterpart Scion in charcoal and black sitting up and hurrying over to the dulcet screen.

Hauptmann had learned their names were Zarek and Venetor. Apart from their hair, one fair, the other dark, they could have been forged from the same mould, their ruthless edges left untrimmed.

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