Eisenhorn Omnibus

out with my mind, urging them to hurry up. There was no answer.

The plane's power cells showed about seventy-five per cent capacity. There were no alert or disfunction runes on the diagnostic panel. I went

through a final check. The craft was armed with a light las-lance, fitted discreetly under the nose in a fixed-forward mount. We'd never used it, and the instruments showed it was off-line. I entered a code to activate it, and the screen told me it was stowed for safety and non-functional.

With the fans still idling, I got back out and went round to the flier's nose, crouching down to look beneath. The lance, little more than a slender tube, was capped with a rubberised sleeve to muzzle the weapon and keep dirt out of the emitter. I fumbled with the sleeve and removed it. Pulling the safety sleeve off broke a wire clasp that allowed a small pin to be yanked out. The lance was enabled.

I climbed back into the cabin, slammed the hatch and checked the instruments. The weapon was now showing as on-line and I activated the power-up function to charge its firing cells.

I'd just about finished when I felt it.

'Sir, what's wrong?' Eleena cried out as I gasped and lurched forward.

'Gregor?' said Aemos, alarmed.

'I'm okay… it was Vance…' A quick, terrible psychic shriek from the direction of the estate. A psyker in pain.

I tried to raise him again, but there was nothing except a blurry wall of background anguish. Then I heard, for a second, his mind urging Medea, urging her to run, run and not to look back.

Again I gasped as a second jolt of agony rippled through the mental spectrum.

'God-Emperor damn it!' I cursed and threw the plane forward. The fans wailed. We were instantly surrounded by a maelstrom of leaves and dead twigs which rattled and pinged off the fuselage and windows. I nursed out just a few centimetres of lift to clear the ground, with the wing fans angled straight down, and we edged forward out of the Storm Oak's root cave on minimum thrust.

I kept one eye on the proximity scanner, which was throbbing red as it detected the structure enclosing us. As soon as it signaled that the tail boom had cleared the overhang of the root ball, I keyed in more lift and we rose, swirling the leaves of the clearing around us in a whirling eddy.

We hovered and turned slowly, once, twice, as I let the auspex's terrain tracker scan the area. Then I lined up.

'Uhm, Gregor?' Aemos said, leaning forward and pointing over my left arm at the illuminated compass ball. 'We're heading north.'

'Yes/

'It, uhm, goes without saying north is the direction we came from.'

'Yes. Sorry. We're going back/

I put the nose down, the wing jets whirred round to an aft three-quarter thrust in their socket mounts, and the craft raced off into the darkness.

I swept us through the forest at something like twenty knots, lights off. Visibility was virtually zero, so I flew using a combination of the auspex and the proximity scanner, reading the green and amber phantoms of

tree boles and branches as they loomed, steering around and under. Every now and then I cut it too fine, and the collision alert sounded as something swept across the screen in vivid red. There were plenty of near misses, but only once did I hit something – a small branch that snapped away, thankfully. Aemos and Eleena both cried out involuntar-

ily-

'Relax/ I urged them.

We'd have made better – and safer – progress above the forest canopy, but I wanted to stay concealed for as long as possible.

In vain, I reached out to find Vance's mind.

Barely avoiding a massive low branch, we came down a long slope under the trees, and the auspex showed me that we'd reached the edge of the woodland. The road was just ahead.

Through the tree-line, I could see light, pulsing white. Another flare. I cut the forward thrust, and crept forward on down-angled jets, just a drifting hover.

I could see out over the road and the fence into the paddocks and scrub south of Spaeton House we had toiled through on foot to make our escape. The whole area was bathed in a cold, grey luminosity, a wobbling flicker cast by the dying flare. Black shapes, dozens of them, scrambled fhrough the grasses and weeds, spread in a line, searching.

Medea, I willed. She couldn't answer. She was a blunt. But I prayed she could hear.

Medea, I'm close.

There was a sudden surge of activity to the north-east, around a spinney of fintle trees. The flash of las-fire. Two fresh flares banged up, making everything harsh black and white. The raiders were moving towards the spinney.

They had someone cornered, pinned down. I knew in my gut it was Medea.

With my lights still off, I gunned the flier forward, going low over the road and fence and across the paddock reaches. The downwash sliced a wake in the grasses. Figures turned as we swept over them. By the flare-light, I glimpsed carnival faces.

I hugged the ground, scattering some of the raiders, and powered towards the spinney. Las flashes were coming my way now.

My thumb flipped the safety cover off the control stick's firing stud. There was no aiming mechanism for the fixed lance except the craft itself. If the flier was pointing at something, then the lance was too.

I squeezed the stud.

The lance fired a continuous beam for as long as I held down the trigger. It had no pulse or burst option. A line of bright yellow light, pencil thin, sliced out from under the nose and ripped into the scrub by the spinney. I saw mud and plant debris spray up from the furrow it cut. The plane's nose was dipped. I was falling short. I nudged the flier's snout up and fired again.

Two raiders collapsed, sliced through by the beam. Several saplings and a mature fintle at the edge of the spinney came down in a shower of leaves. With the plane moving, it was damn hard to aim at all.

Twenty metres short of the trees, I pulled up in a shallow hover. Serious fusillades were zipping at us now. The craft wobbled as shots struck the lower hull.

I fired for a third time, holding the flier level and gently rotating her right to left as I held the trigger down. Raiders threw themselves flat to avoid the lethal beam of light passing over them. Several didn't make it. The lance simply sectioned them, clean through flesh, bone and armour. I must have hit a power pack or a grenade, because one exploded in a sheet of flame.

More shots thumped into the fuselage from the rear. I surged forward again, sweeping around the west side of the trees.

I saw Medea on the auspex. She was running clear of the spinney at the north end, breaking cover. It took me a moment to find her by eye. Just a dot in the long weeds. A bright dot. She was wearing her father's cerise jacket. I realised she must've come out into the open to give me a chance to set down and reach her. The thin trees in the spinney were far too tightly packed.

Las-bolts chased her. She turned and fired back with a handgun, still running.

You're clear! Get down1 .

I saw her turn, seeing where I was. Then she was hurled face first into the grass by a las-shot.

'Medea!' I accelerated hard, pushing us back into our seats. 'Aemos! Get ready