Chapter VI

Usefulness

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"Fly it like you stole it!"
-Beligarso attributed graffiti found outside the pilot's toilets, Pirotta City Aeroport

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Squadrons of Valkyries sat canopies up, their engines turning softly. They would be leaving in about twenty minutes.

Tutarc was inspecting the contents of an exterior hatch when he heard someone call, "Sir!"

He turned and saw a tall, bald-headed man wearing dark-green air-assault battle dress and body armor, trotting up to him.

The big man pulled up short and tossed an unnecessary salute.

"I'm busy here," Tutarc said, "You need something?"

"I hear you're down a gunner."

"I am. You my replacement?"

"Yes, sir."

"You graded?"

"Yes sir, grade A gunner."

"Alright, left side. You're welcome to it. But remember, I'm the pilot here, and you listen to the chief."

"Yes sir," the big, bald man nodded.

"Name?" the pilot asked.

"Sun."

Riding in a Valkyrie as an operator was not something Sun had done in many, many years. During his air-assault days much his training revolved around Valkyries. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Before clambering aboard the transport, he took a moment to check its boom-tail designator script. It informed him that this bird was Theta Eight. Theta Company had a good reputation. A solid team.

He lifted himself through the left-hatch and looked around the cargo hold. It was dark and the bench seating was empty. The grab-straps on the ceiling shook slightly from the two big engines overhead. He looked over the left-side heavy bolter. It was attached to a metal telescoping mount, and folded neatly up against the wall. Sun reached over and slid it out. The joints were well oiled and the arm unfolded smoothly. The weapon rolled easily on its neck-joint.

He pulled the action lever and checked that the ejection chamber was clear. While inspecting the chamber he noticed a gold Imperial Crown coin had been wielded into the bolt slot. That puzzled him and he going to ask the pilot what it was about, when he heard a shout, "Oy, Puke!"

Sun looked around and saw an old face pulling himself through the right-side door. The crew chief. The old man gave Sun the once over and stuck out his hand.

"Olds," he said.

Sun gladly grabbed it and shook it firmly, "I know you."

"That so?"

"Yeah. I was the front-seater of the Vulture that pulled you out of the jungle."

Olds gave Sun a closer look. "I'll be damned," he muttered. "Whatt'a you doing here?"

Sun pursed his lips for a long moment, returning Olds's look. "I was assigned here. After my bird crashed."

Olds nodded sagely, "The pilot?"

Sun deflected the question with a shrug. He asked, "What's with the left HB? I see a crown in the breech."

Olds recognized a subject change when is saw one. He grinned sheepishly and said, "Promise not to tell any cogites? They'd do me in for sure if they found out."

Sun looked confused but nodded, "Depends."

Olds grabbed the big weapon and pulled it smoothly over to him. He pointed at the breech, "See here, if you wield a solid coin onto the buffer behind the butt plate you give the bolt a shorter throw, you increase the fire of rate."

Sun scoffed, knowing that tinkering with the heavy bolter in such a manner could be considered tech-heresy. If caught, Olds would be sent to the Mechanicus and turned into a mindless servitor. Sun whistled uncertainly, but nodded all the same. He said, "I won't say a word, but if anyone asks I won't lie."

Olds nodded slowly and replied, "Fair enough. Let's get ready to go."

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The twelve Valkyries of Theta Company, along with flocks from Iota, Kappa, and Lamda companies, took off from the airbase and headed to their troop collection point. Sun had exchanged his sophisticated flight helmet of a gunners-issue headgear and wished he hadn't. Pilot's greymatter was considered significantly less valuable then gunners and the equipment quality corresponded.

His aviator's helmet had been equipped with the lasted technological advancements and ballistic protection. The door-gunners received helmets little better then the infantry - a heavy plasteel bowl with extra padding for the ears, a dropdown tinted visor to reduce glare, and an intercom hook-up at the rear.

Even the seats were less then desirable. Sun had gotten used to the highly protected, armor-plated enclosed environment of his cockpit, now his family jewels would be protected by nothing more than the canvas fold-down he was sitting on.

As the Beligarso 99th Aviation Regiment was an exception to the rule that all things that fly must be operated by the Navy, when they were created, the Sector Lord General had made certain concessions to the Sector Lord Admiral. Namely, they were not permitted to have any armed soldiers, only pilots and operational non-combatants such as flight-controllers and vox-operators. As such, all the doorgunners and crewchiefs were semi-permanent volunteers from the Beligarso 75th Air-Assault Regiment.

Sun had always respected the men in the doorway. Proud, hard men who knew their jobs and took no frak from anyone. He smiled at the memory of a one chiefcrew telling a site-seeing Lord General to sit the frak down. Under normal circumstance such talk would have gotten the enlisted man a long tour in the stockade at best, or up against the wall at worst - but once you came aboard, you answered to the crewchief. It was an unwritten rule, but everyone knew it, everyone respected it.

Sun watched the landscape rush past below at two thousand meters. He unconsciously played with his safety harness and listened to the pilots chat over the intercom. Olds kept himself quiet and alert. Twenty-two minutes passed and the craft banked down left and circled a large field. Sun saw hundreds of tents and thousands of soldiers. An Imperial army camping rough.

The intercom crackled, "Landing in three minutes. We're aiming for a quick turnaround. Get those PDF troopers on board and settled as quick as you can."

"Sir," Olds, as the aircraft's crewchief, did all the talking with the pilots. He looked at Sun and nodded. Sun nodded back and watched them circle to the ground.

Theta Eight landed lightly enough and Olds pushed the ramp button. The hold was washed with bright sunlight as the rear ramp yawed open. He pulled out his intercom cable and beckoned Sun to him. He shouted over the engines, "Get them settled in as quick as you can!"

"Aye, chief!"

They walked off the ramp and met a crowd of milling planetary defense force soldiers. They wore jungle pattern fatigues and carried autoguns. Ammo clips stuffed into canvas webbing around their chest and legs. On their heads were black helmets.

Olds waved over their sergeant and had a few words. Afterwards, the sergeant got his men moving and they clambered aboard. Sun assisted getting the men settled into their benches. As he went by each soldier, he moved their weapons so that the rifle barrels rested between their feet. Helped with lapbelts. He also pointed to the grab-straps behind their heads and gave each a thumbs-up and a light slap on the helmet before moving on.

They were a mixed lot. Some too old, most too young, their faces wore a dog-tired look and their eyes brimmed with anticipation fear. Their shoulders patches were simple things, blue rectangles with yellow tread spelling out, PC- 17dv - PDF. By the way they held their weapons and wore their kits, Sun guessed they must have been very recently recruited. Local fodder for the upcoming battle of Morgania, Sun thought cruelly. No, he corrected himself, not fodder, heroes. The Imperium had called and they had answered, willing or not, they had answered.

Once all twelve were settled he went back to his gun, plugged in, and stated to the pilot they were all loaded and ready. Olds plugged in and confirmed the same.

The engines rumbled idly for few a minutes and the pilot said, "Lift off in thirty."

Olds twirled his finger in the air and shouted down the hold, "Standby for lift off!" They took off quickly but smoothly. The PDFers were startled by the sudden movement. Many got animated and swore loudly. Two even tried to stand up in their surprise. They scattered their rifles. Olds yelled at their sergeant to control his men. The PDF NCO hurled abuse for ten minutes.

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Flight time to the landing zone was just over forty minutes and they'd be going in hot, the co-pilot told them. Sun stood up and folded out his heavy bolter. He pulled at the belt of ammo from the munitions box under the gun. He feed the first rounds into the chamber and wretched the action. "Loaded. Permission to test fire?" Sun asked.

"Granted," replied the co-pilot.

Sun aimed his heavy gun out the left hatch. He rolled his gun through the three angles of fire - Back, Side, and Front. With Front being 0 degrees and Back being 180 degree, he chose to test fire at Side-Back, or about 125 degrees. Looking along the iron sights top the barrel, he squeezed the trigger. The weapon roared and spat half a dozen glowing rounds into the jungle below. He heard Olds test fire his weapon as well.

Sun looked over his shoulder at the chief. Olds looked back as well, they exchanged thumbs-up.

The shooting made the PDF levies nervous again, though this time they only muttered amongst themselves, fearful of their sergeant's wrath. Sun saw one young soldier pick up a shell casing and slip it into his pocket, a potential good luck charm.

When they were ten minutes out from the landing zone Olds came on the intercom and said to Sun, "When we land, keep an eye on the PDFers. Make sure they all exit quickly and don't do anything untowards."

"Untowards?"

"We've heard reports that Pirotta PDF has been infiltrated by the Unfaithful. Yesterday, two of our birds came under attack from troops they were supposed to be dropping off."

"Right," Sun said and looked suspiciously down into the hold. He thought, was the third guy from the end looking unusually shifty? Or was he just going to vomit?

The landing zone had once been a large crop field and now it was an Imperial combat zone. It was awash with smoke and craters, Vulture gunships had given it and the surrounding area a fearsome pounding for the better part of an hour. Coming in hard and fast the Valkyrie vibrated fearsomely and only the blazing white tracers coming from the ground showed where the enemy was.

Olds shouted, "Go hot! Light 'em up!"

Sun angled his gun Forward-Side and pulled the trigger. He waved the weapon's lethal spray at the fast approaching tree line. That little trick with the Imperial Crown really hopped up the heavy's rate of fire. The big gun threw red-hot bolter rounds into the foliage. They disappeared into the vast greenness and it was impossible to tell what damage was done, but it was no doubt significant. Brass shell casings spat out continuously from the breech. The floor was quickly littered with hundreds of steaming hot shells.

With Sun's gun being mounted on the left side of the aircraft, and the breech being on the right-hand side of the weapon, when Sun fired in the Side-Side to Forward-Forward directions, the casing spat into the forward bulkhead which separated the pilots from the cargo hold, and ricocheted off and into the Sun. One got down his tunic top, but was it stopped by his body armor. He felt it burning the flesh at his neck. All he could do was grit his teeth, smell his burning flesh, and keep firing.

At twenty meters the rear ramp went down, timed to be completely open when they hit the ground.

At ten meters the Valkyrie flared, the nose rising up to kill the craft's forward momentum.

At three meters the gunners stopped firing.

Thump and down.

Olds waved for the PDF soldiers to get out, "Disembark!" he roared. Sun noticed he had his laspistol out and armed. Sun placed his hand on his own laspistol and watched the PDF troopers stampede off the craft. Once the last soldiers were off Olds yelled, "Clear, clear, clear!"

The engines screamed and Theta Eight rocketed forwards. The moment they began to move Sun was back on his door-gun, spraying short burst at into the jungle. Once at a thousand meters, he let go of the gun and desperately tore at the shell that had gotten into his tunic. It would leave a small rectangular burn-scar just below his left collar bone.

He made to throw it out the hatch, but thought of the young PDFer and instead tucked it into his pocket. After clearing the landing zone airspace, Olds opened the ramp and Tutarc angled Theta Eight skywards for a brief moment. Over seven hundred brass shell casing cascaded out and glittered their way to the jungle below.

They made three more trips to the PDF base camp, collecting squads of soldiers and ferrying them to the previous landing zone. By the time they made their second trip it been secured and though they stood at the guns, neither doorman fired a shot. Sun saw Vultures, both Imperial and avian, hovering on the outskirts of the landing zone, bidding their time, waiting to be called into action.

Each time they were about to land Olds would pull out his laspistol and keep his arm half raised. Sun would sit on his fold-down, laspistol in hand, safety off, eyes suspicious.

It was on their final run for of the day when something untowards happened.

As they hit the ground the soldiers started to disembark but suddenly they stopped and milled around confused, half on the ramp, half off. Their sergeant yelled at them. There was shoving. An autogun went off nearby. All the soldiers ducked their heads in unison.

"Get out!" Olds yelled at them, waving his hand, "Get out, get out!"

Several troopers tried to push their way past the PDF sergeant and back into the Valkyrie. The autogun sounded again and a few perfectly round holes appeared in the side panels.

Seeing the rushing PDF soldiers attempting to regain entry and bullets holes suddenly appearing, Sun dropped to a knee, raised his laspistol and shot into the press. Olds did the same. Complete chaos erupted in the hold.

One soldier shoved the sergeant aside and turned his autogun on the two Beligarso men. Sun hit him with two energy bolts, Olds hit him with three. Sun gripped his las with both hands and sighted down barrel, turning to the next target. The PDF sergeant lost most of his head. The rest fled as quickly as they could, las-bolts chasing them from the ramp.

The two Beligarso men did not have it all their own way. A hail of bullets ripped into the Valkyrie and they hastily threw themselves to the floor. Sun rolled and peeked out of the left-hatch. He saw a group of soldiers sheltering alongside the aircraft and he fired his las at their backs. He hit one in the neck and another in the shoulder.

They spun around and made to return fire and Sun ducked back in. Dropping his pistol, he made to grab his heavy bolter but the aircraft lurched suddenly into the air, throwing him back to the floor. The ground rushed away as the ramp snapped shut.

The pilot screamed to know what was going on.

Olds said, "I don't know. I think we were about to infiltrated!"

Sun unplugged and unclipped his safely harness and stumbled over to the bodies. There were four of them. He didn't remember seeing them all fall.

The near headless sergeant, he did remember. It was a near perfect kill-shot and he was proud to have killed a hated Foe in such a manner. He also remembered the trooper shot by both of them. The third was killed by Olds's laspistol. The last was laying face down. His back was a mess of autogun wounds. Sun rolled him over. He had a grenade in his hand.

That made Sun flinch back.

He waved Olds over. The chief took one look at the grenade and gently pulled it from the dead man's hand. He carried it over the side door and casually tossed it out.

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When they landed back at the Beligarso forward airbase they were ordered to land at the far end of the field. Beside a solid black Valkyrie was a squad of fully armed air-assault troopers from the 75th and Commissar Cave. He looked decidedly unhappy.

The troopers pulled the corpses out Theta Eight and carried them into Cave's personal matte-black commissariat Valkyrie, while he interviewed Sun and Olds and the two pilots. The commissar said almost nothing as he took careful notes. Finally, after lengthy private meetings he dismissed them back to the billets.

Sun found out later through the regiment gossip train - from a groundie who had heard it from a vox-op pal of his, who had heard if from his medic orderly friend, who had shared a smoke break with two of the assistant doctors working with the doctor who actually conducted the autopsies - that three of the troopers had chaos marks on their bodies; cruel brands, bizarre piercings, and eye-hurting tattoos.

The PDF sergeant however, was seemingly clear of any taint.

Sun swore quietly and spent most of the night talking to the regiment's chaplain.