Though the Astra Militarum is known for grinding, attritional warfare, there’s no shortage of heroism among the common soldiers of humanity. To celebrate pre-orders for the new Astra Militarum range coming this Saturday, we laid siege to Black Library until they surrendered an excerpt of upcoming novel Longshot by Rob Young.
The city of Miracil burned.
Its red-bricked cathedrals of industry blackened and crumbled alongside broken hab-blocks, all long since abandoned by the city’s indentured classes. Manufactoria that had stood undaunted beneath Attruso’s corrosive atmosphere for millennia were felled by shells, orbital lance strikes and the grinding tracks of war machines. The Astra Militarum didn’t stop to consider the provenance of their enemy’s defences – they belonged to the enemy, so they must fall.
And fall they did, turning the air into a barely breathable haze in the perfectly gridded order of the manufactorum city, the fingerprints of the Adeptus Mechanicus clear in the obsessively ordered design of each street, plaza and thoroughfare. The empty-eyed skull emblem of the Mechanicus watched as acrid black smoke billowed out of shattered windows like blood into water, but with no breeze to carry it away it lingered in the air, drawing a false night over the western fringes of the city. Ash and dust mingled with the first flurries of filthy snow, carpeting the path of the Imperial advance with a murky grey slurry.
The Astra Militarum ground onward beneath it all, soldiers bleeding for every yard they clawed back from enemy hands. Their cries of anger and pain were lost beneath the constant barrage of artillery, drumming a staccato beat that seemed to shake the planet itself. Acts of individual heroism were so common that they went unremarked. A trooper armed with a flamer breaking cover as his fuel tank was punctured by a stray shot, saving the lives of his squadmates as he was immolated alone in the middle of the street. Another soldier diving in front of his commanding officer, taking the superheated plasma bolt that was meant for her and dying in agony as he fought to breathe through liquified lungs. A soldier dragging his oldest friend back to cover under withering enemy fire, honouring a promise not to let them die alone.
Amidst it all, a lone officer knelt in the scant cover offered by a tenement’s rubble-strewn roof, the southernmost corner of the building torn away to reveal the meagre lives once lived by its inhabitants. He held a pair of magnoculars to his eyes, straining for a better view from the building’s eastern edge.The vox-bead in his ear crackled with a nearby signal, but he ignored it. His view finally settled on what he had been waiting for – the heat haze and smoke from the east cleared for a few tense heartbeats, revealing a distant bridge over an unseen river. Human forms were on the nearest bank, springing out of improvised cover to fire at glowing blue barricades set along the bridge’s length, their defenders holding their ground with bright bursts of fire from their own weapons.
He sighed as his vox-bead crackled again and ground his teeth. Keeping low, he stashed the magnoculars inside his jacket and crawled back over to the roof’s southern edge and began to work his way down to the ground.
‘Anything, sir?’ a pale trooper asked as the officer navigated the last few feet down a rubble incline, spraying dirt and fist-sized rock fragments as he slid to a stop at the foot of the rise. The trooper was still sitting astride his dirtcycle in an alley between two hab-blocks, the engine inactive as he waited for the officer’s return.
‘Keep your voice down,’ the officer hissed as he cleared the ruin and swung his leg over his own dirtcycle, which had been leant up against the next building’s wall.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the trooper said, moving to remove the vox-bead from his ear.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ the officer grunted, checking a dull steel chronometer on his wrist. ‘Get back to headquarters, let them know that the vox-blunt is stronger in the city. It doesn’t look like Third Company have taken the Glazer’s Gate bridge yet. I’m carrying on to Saintsbridge to see how House Gyrrant are progressing, then I’ll look for First Company.’
‘Understood, sir,’ the trooper said, kicking his dirtcycle into growling life. ‘Lieutenant Eridan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Emperor be with you, sir.’
‘And with you, trooper. Now get going,’ Eridan said, making the sign of the aquila as the trooper roared off out of the alley and out of sight.
Eridan kicked his own dirtcycle back into life and took a deep breath before accelerating towards the sounds of gunfire.
He sped through the maelstrom of war without any sign of hesitation. He sloughed his battered dirtcycle through the slurry of ash and blood that caked the rockcrete, weaving between advancing troopers and fallen masonry as he fought for every ounce of grip. Where the terrain was most uneven he was forced to stand using the bike’s pegs, before dropping back into the saddle when he needed a burst of speed.
Eridan gritted his teeth with every tortured note from the engine, wringing yet more speed from his tired and battered mount. Most troopers dived out of his way as he raced through, the bike’s exhaust baffles long since disengaged, the sound warning his comrades that he was coming, which lessened the risk of being shot by a jumpy Guardsman.
‘Don’t fail me now, old friend,’ Eridan said to the bike.
A Leman Russ powered through the wall of a refectorum hall less than half a block ahead, followed closely by a ragged band of flak-armoured Cadians, the dusting of ash and powdered stone giving them the look of spectres that haunted the tank’s shadow.
Lights ignited in the building opposite the Leman Russ, blinding in their intensity, as the enemy peppered its inches-thick armour with their plasma weapons. Eridan heard the tell-tale delayed snap-crack reports a moment after he saw the shot, and clamped down on the dirtcycle’s brakes as the troopers ahead scattered for cover.
The Leman Russ reacted with arrogant slowness, slamming to a halt and slowly traversing its battle cannon to aim at the offending building.
Not this way, Eridan thought, swinging the bike around in the opposite direction as the Leman Russ fired, the shockwave violently kicking up the loose ash and dust for a hundred yards in every direction. He could hear the building collapsing behind him and the unmistakable barrage of las-fire as the troopers strafed the ruin with their weapons.
He darted down a side street half choked with the detritus of war: abandoned possessions that the city’s wayward citizens had abandoned to the coming inferno, meagre trinkets whose sentimental value had been outweighed by their owners’ desire for survival. Charred papers floated through the air, disturbed and given animus by the battle raging nearby.
The alley opened out onto a street that looked remarkably like the one he had just left. Its blackened and broken buildings were silhouetted against the sickly magenta light of the Cicatrix Maledictum, still faintly visible through the columns of smoke hazing the twilight sky. Occasional lance strikes flared down from the heavens like pillars of lightning, briefly illuminating the broken spires and shattered manufactorum halls as they cleared the way for ground troops to advance.
Clearly, the new orders hadn’t reached the fleet yet. He patted his chest pocket out of habit. The order packet was still there, and he offered up a prayer to the God-Emperor to see it safely to its destination.
Longshot will soon be coming to a bookshelf near you, so get your Astra Militarum army started with the massive new pre-orders arriving this Saturday – including the latest Codex: Astra Militarum, a brilliant tactician on a phenomenal horse, and the latest Creed to wield Cadia’s might.
If you’d like another taster of Astra Militarum action from Rob Young, check out his recent eShort Transplants, starring a trio of very different Cadian sharpshooters. Sign up to our newsletter now for the latest info as it drops.
