Legion Read Free Page A

try,’ said the specialist.
    ‘I would, you know?’
    ‘Yes, I have a feeling you might. Don’t. I’d hate to damage a friend. Let me be clear. There are things going on tonight that you must not mess with. Don’t let me down by pissing around. Don’t get involved. You’ll understand soon enough. For now, right now, hetman, take my word on this.’
    Bronzi kept his stare going. ‘I might. I might trust you, if I could see your face or know your name.’
    The specialist paused. For a moment, Bronzi thought he was actually going to pull down his shawl and show his face.
    ‘I’ll tell you my name,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘My name is Alpharius.’
    Bronzi blinked. His mouth went dry. He felt his heart pounding so fast it trembled his torso.
    ‘Liar. You liar! That’s a pile of crap!’
    A sudden, brilliant flash made the chamber blink white for a second. A deep, reverberative boom reached them.
    Bronzi ran to one of the slit windows. Outside, in the dark, he could see the flashes and light blooms of a major battle flaring behind the ridge. The percussive crump and slap of explosions rolled in. One hell of a firefight had just kicked off along the wadi rim less than ten kilometres away from the post. It was concussive, bending the air, bending sound.
    Behind Bronzi, men were rushing up, scrabbling around the windows to see out. There was chatter and agitation. Everyone wanted a look.
    ‘Peto…’ Hurtado Bronzi murmured. He turned away from the window slit and the rippling light show, pushing his way back through the mob of men to find the specialist.
    But the specialist had already vanished.
    T HE WORLD HAD come off its hinges. For the first few seconds, Peto Soneka thought his company had been caught up in some sort of freak hail-storm. Thousands of luminous projectiles were raining down out of the twilight into the basin, like spits of fire or a cloudburst of little shooting stars. Every one exploded in a searing fireball as it impacted. The overpressure was knocking men to the ground. Soneka reeled as fiery detonations went off all around him like grenades. The bang of the first few impacts had deafened him.
    He saw men thrown, burning, into the air by blooming flashes. He saw three of his company’s tanks quiver and then explode in whickering storms of shrapnel fragments as the sizzling pyrophoric deluge struck them.
    It wasn’t a freak hail-storm. Despite the Dancer’s scouts and recon, despite their auspex and modar, despite their careful deployment and marching cover, despite the omniscient monitoring of the expedition fleet in high orbit, the Nurthene had surprised them.
    The Nurthene were of a tech level several points down the scale from the Imperium. They possessed guns and tanks, but still favoured blades. They should have been easy to overrun.
    But from the opening actions of the expedition war, it had become clear that the Nurthene had something else, something the Imperium entirely lacked.
    Lord Commander Teng Namatjira had described it, in a moment of infuriation, as air magick . The name had, perhaps unfortunately, stuck. Air magick was why Nurth had held off the might of an Imperial Army expedition for eight months. Air magick was why a Titan cohort had been decimated at Tel Khortek. Air magick was why a Sixth Torrent division had disappeared into the desert sink at Gomanzi and never returned. Air magick was why nothing flew above Tel Utan, why every attempt to destroy the place with air strikes, missiles, orbital bombardments and troop drops had failed, and why they were being forced to assault the place on foot.
    It was Peto Soneka’s first direct taste of air magick. All the horror stories that had leaked back from regiment to regiment and company to company were true. The Nurthene had lore beyond the Terran range. The elements obeyed them. They were casters-in of devils.
    A shockwave threw Soneka over on his face. He had blood in his mouth and sand up his nose. He rose on his hands and