Caves of Ice, page 20
‘That’ll have to be logged for the repair crews,’ Logash remarked conversationally, as if the place would ever be back in operation now the necrons were here, and after a moment to let the metal cool Jurgen hoisted himself through the hole and into the pipe.
I followed suit, the tech-priest bounding up ahead of me, to find myself in an echoing metal tube at least twice my own height floored with rapidly-refreezing slush where the metal had conducted the heat of the melta blast away. Stalactites of ice descended from the curved ceiling, where the uniform coating of rime had been disturbed by our blazing entry.
‘This way,’ I said, taking the lead again, and moving as rapidly up the gentle slope as I could manage on the treacherous surface. Jurgen had no trouble matching my pace, of course, having been born to conditions like these, and Logash apparently had some sort of augmetic balance enhancer, as he seemed as sure-footed as the Valhallan. Despite my tendency to slip unnervingly from time to time, and the faint curvature underfoot doing nothing to make the job any easier, I found the wide, unhindered passageway almost exhilarating after the cramped confines of the defile and set a good pace if I do say so myself.
After a while I became aware of a faint susurration in my ear, and realised that my comm-bead had come within range of the regimental vox net. We were closer to the surface than I’d realised, and a flood of relief almost knocked the breath from my lungs. If someone was still here I wasn’t too late to get a shuttle out.
Not that they’d wait if they all thought I was dead, of course, so I lost no time in contacting Kasteen and passing on the status of our mission.
‘Commissar!’ She sounded surprised and pleased in almost equal measure. ‘We were beginning to think you hadn’t made it.’
‘I nearly didn’t,’ I admitted. ‘They were waiting for us. We never got close to the damn portal.’
‘I see.’ Resignation tinged her voice. ‘How many survivors?’
‘Just me and Jurgen.’ No point in going into lengthy explanations now, so I glossed over Logash’s presence. ‘The necrons are moving through the mine. Have they broken out onto the surface yet?’
‘No.’ Her voice faded for a moment, as she presumably turned her head away from the voxcaster to talk to someone else, then returned with an edge of urgency. ‘Wait one...’ The link went dead.
Absorbed in my conversation with the colonel I’d hardly noticed that the pipe had come to an apparent dead end. As I craned my neck and shone my luminator upwards, I could see that it had made an abrupt turn to the vertical, soaring away out of sight.
‘What now?’ I asked. Logash grinned, and indicated a set of metal rungs protruding from the frost, slick with a coating of ice. ‘You have got to be kidding.’
He wasn’t, of course. He just grabbed a bar and started climbing, sure-footed as a Catachan up a tree, and after a moment I shrugged and went after him. Jurgen followed, as always.
‘Why are these here?’ he asked.
‘The maintenance servitors use them when the pipes shut down,’ Logash explained. ‘There should be an access panel up here somewhere...’
Concentrating only on maintaining my grip on the treacherous, ice-slick rungs I was startled by the sound of Kasteen’s voice suddenly in my ear again. I almost slipped, hanging on purely by the Emperor’s grace and the strength of my augmetic fingers.
‘We’ve lost contact with two of the pickets in the middle levels,’ she said. ‘We’re reinforcing...’
‘No!’ I cut in, a little too loudly. ‘Pull everyone back out of the tunnels! It’s the only chance they have!’ Bottled up in a confined space, unable to concentrate their fire, they’d be picked off easily. I’d seen that all too clearly before. ‘Cover the entrances with everything you’ve got, and engage them as they emerge.’ It probably wouldn’t do us any good in the long run, but at least that way they’d be the ones held up by the bottleneck. I tried not to think about their ability to teleport, or move through walls...
‘Acknowledged,’ Kasteen said, clearly willing to defer to my greater experience with these hideous foes, and cut the link. I considered what she’d just told me, not liking the conclusions I was drawing. It was obvious the necrons were moving through the mines in considerable force if they’d been able to take out two of our squads before they even managed to get a vox message off. Maybe the ones in stasis were beginning to revive, and join the new arrivals...
‘Found it,’ Logash said above me, unnaturally cheerful under the circumstances, and began scraping the covering of frost from the wall, sprinkling me with a light dusting of powdered ice as he did so. He evidently knew what he was doing though, extending a thin metal probe from one of his fingers, and prodding hopefully at an indentation in the side of the pipe. ‘Ah. That should do it...’
A section of the wall next to his hand withdrew suddenly, with a loud hum that set my teeth on edge, letting a blast of light and warm air into our frigid enclosure. The tech-priest vanished from sight, and after a moment of scrambling upwards I followed gratefully, heaving myself out onto a metal mesh floor illuminated by a dim electrosconce in the nearest wall. Despite its feebleness the yellow glow seemed incredibly welcoming as I turned to reach down and haul Jurgen up after me.
The chamber we stood in was small, barely large enough for the three of us, and glancing around I realised that it was merely a landing on a vast metal staircase which rose dizzyingly above us as well as descending to a vertiginous depth below. Logash glanced at some runes stencilled on the outside of the access panel we’d exited the pipe by, and nodded in satisfaction.
‘Good,’ he said.
‘What is?’ I asked suspiciously. Given his level of mental stability that could have meant just about anything by this stage. The young tech-priest indicated our surroundings with a casual wave.
‘We’re in one of the primary maintenance shafts. We should be able to get into the main control shrine a few levels up.’
‘Best news I’ve had all day,’ I said. ‘Lead on.’
It was more than a few levels, of course, we must have been climbing for almost half an hour before Logash stopped at another access panel in the plain metal wall, and I’d lost count of how many flights of stairs we’d climbed. My knees hadn’t though, and ached abominably, but it’s surprising how motivated you can be with an army of murderous automata at your heels and I kept going. Jurgen, of course, showed no sign of strain or discomfort, even lugging the heavy weapon.
‘This should be it.’ Logash hesitated, and I noticed the door was larger and more elaborate than any of the ones we’d passed on the way up, decorated with the cogwheel symbol of the priesthood.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then let’s get out of here.’
‘I’m not sure I should open it,’ the tech-priest said slowly, eyeing Jurgen and myself with a speculative expression on his face. ‘This is a holy place. Only ordained and sanctified personnel are permitted beyond this point...’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘We’re on a mission for the Emperor. Can’t get much holier than that, right?’ Logash looked confused.
‘That would be an ecumenical matter,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’m qualified to judge...’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I am. Now are you going to open the frakking door or will Brother Jurgen do it?’ My aide stepped forward, raising the melta, and Logash hit the activation rune with almost indecent haste.
I’m not sure what I expected to find inside, but my first impression was one of overwhelming technological sophistication. Unlike the necron tomb below us, though, whose incomprehensible sorceries pulsed with palpable malevolence, this was a shrine suffused with the benevolence of the machine spirit, harnessed for the good of humanity and blessed by the tech-priests who normally worked here. I made an automatic gesture of obeisance to the large stained glass window depicting the Emperor (in His aspect of the Omnissiah, of course, but the Emperor still for all that) which spilled patches of colour across the serried ranks of dark wood and polished brass lecterns, each one inlaid with a pict screen displaying some aspect of the plant’s function.
‘Try not to touch anything,’ Logash warned, brushing past Jurgen, who was making the sign of the aquila, his jaw even slacker than usual. No fear of that, I thought, shying away from the nearest lectern, when my eye was caught by the image on the pict screen. It showed a blurry, flickering image of what looked like one of the mine galleries, and to my horror the unmistakable shadow of a necron warrior passing swiftly out of sight. A moment later another of the metal monstrosities appeared, then a third.
‘Logash,’ I called. The tech-priest left off genuflecting to the alter in the corner with every sign of annoyance and ambled over to join me. I indicated the pict. ‘Where’s this?’
‘Sector five, level fourteen,’ he said after a moment spent consulting some runes on the lectern. He adjusted the controls, and the picture changed, showing another gallery. After a moment the leading necron appeared there. ‘Moving towards sector three.’
‘Can you see the whole mine from here?’ I asked. He nodded.
‘The rituals of focusing are very similar to those of your hololith. You may use this lectern if it will help.’ After a few moments of instruction, the lighting of an incense stick, and muttering a few prayers over me he left me to it with an air of evident relief.
The picture I started to build up was grim, to say the least. It didn’t take me long to establish that the lower levels were crawling with necrons, hundreds at least, and that they were systematically combing the tunnels, moving ever higher as they went. I voxed Kasteen.
‘By my estimate we’ve got about half an hour before they reach the surface,’ I said. ‘If we’re lucky.’ At least the few troopers I’d found were already in the upper levels and pulling back, so she’d heeded my earlier advice. An external pictcaster had shown me the landing pad, already crowded with hundreds of our men and women, not to mention vehicles, waiting patiently for their turn to board one of the shuttles. With a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach I began to realise that the vast majority of them would still be there when the necrons emerged.
‘We’ll be ready,’ Kasteen promised, but I already knew how hollow that promise was. They’d be massacred, no doubt about it, and more to the point I’d never make it to the safety of the starship either. There had to be something we could do to hold them off, if only I could think of it...
‘Logash,’ I called, but this time he ignored me, intent on some task at one of the other lecterns. I walked over and seized his arm. ‘Logash, this is important.’
‘So is this,’ he said, a trace of irritation in his voice. ‘The stabilisation rituals for the storage tanks have to be performed every six hours, and are already overdue. You must realise how volatile refined promethium is...’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, an idea so audacious I could hardly credit it myself beginning to form. I glanced past the glowing glass Emperor to the complex outside, where the huge storage tanks squatted, bulky as hab blocks. ‘How much is in the tanks at the moment?’
‘Roughly eight million litres,’ he said. ‘Since the tankers can’t land with the orks about it’s built up rather. But still within acceptable safety parameters, I can assure you.’
‘I was rather hoping it was unsafe,’ I said, and if he had any eyebrows I’m sure he would have raised them at that point. I pointed to the tangle of pipe work around the storage tanks. ‘Do any of those pipes connect directly to the mine?’
‘Not directly, no.’ He looked at me quizzically. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because if we could dump all that liquid down the shaft it should really give the necrons something to worry about,’ I said. A slow smile began to spread across the tech-priest’s face.
‘It would mean overriding a number of safety rituals,’ he said, considering the idea. ‘But it can be done.’
‘Excellent,’ I said, feeling a flare of optimism returning at last. ‘Then you’d better get to it.’
‘Indeed.’ He huddled over the lectern, muttering gibberish, and what sounded suspiciously like an occasional high-pitched giggle, as he manipulated the controls. The chance to strike back at the creatures who had massacred his friends was obviously stirring up a lot of emotion, and I began to wonder if his fragile sanity would hold for long enough to implement our plan. Still, there was nothing to do but watch in silence while the minutes dragged by, and the automata in the pict screen moved ominously closer to the surface.
‘Tanna tea, sir?’ Jurgen materialised at my shoulder, proffering the flask he’d brought as a transparent excuse to join the expedition, and I took the fragrant liquid gratefully, suddenly aware of how tired and hungry I was. He still couldn’t find the sandwich he’d stowed somewhere, to my barely-concealed relief, so we contented ourselves with the standard ration bars which tasted reassuringly of nothing particularly identifiable.
‘Ready!’ Logash said at last, another giggle rising to the surface. His face was preternaturally flushed, and his fingers trembled over the controls of the lectern, the first time I had ever seen augmetics do so. I nodded.
‘In the name of the Emperor,’ I said solemnly.
‘In nominae Ernulph!’ The tech-priest squeaked vindictively, and flicked a switch.
For a moment nothing seemed to happen, then I became aware of a low rumbling sound which seemed to suffuse the complex. Runes on several of the lecterns began to glow red, and a powdering of snow dislodged itself from the rim of the window outside. Then, for interminable moments, nothing seemed to happen at all.
‘Look, sir!’ Jurgen pointed to the pict screen, which I’d left tuned to one of the upper levels. A torrent of liquid became momentarily visible, filling the width of the gallery, sweeping all before it, tearing chunks of ice the size of Baneblades from the walls as it came and tumbling them casually ahead of itself. Then the pictcaster was ripped from its mounting, and the screen went dark. I switched to another just in time to see a party of necron warriors, far closer to the surface than I would have thought possible, trapped by the onrushing tsunami, picked up and thrown around like so many rag dolls. If I believed them capable of emotion I might have thought they stood dumbstruck before it before turning to flee, but it engulfed them all the same. I wondered if they’d fade away, smashed to pieces by that irresistible tide of pure promethium. Much good would it do them if they did; their tomb was at the lowest point of the tunnel complex and would surely flood in time, even though Logash had calculated that it would take the torrent around twenty minutes to seep down that far. Not that they needed to breathe, of course, but at the very least it should stop them using the portal until they found some way to pump the chamber out, by which time with any luck the Navy would be here to sterilise the planet.
All in all, I felt, a rather satisfying result.
I was still feeling pretty pleased with myself as I joined Kasteen and Broklaw on the landing pad a short while later, so buoyed with euphoria that for once I didn’t even mind the bone-biting cold. The plain of ice was swarming with activity, Chimera engines rumbling as the engineseers marshalled them for embarkation and commenced the services of mothballing, and platoons marshalled by squads ready to take their place on the outgoing shuttles. A blur of motion in the corner of my eye resolved itself into a Sentinel, trotting eagerly round our flank, keeping an eye out for hostiles.
‘Well done, commissar.’ Broklaw shook me firmly by the hand. ‘I don’t think anyone else could have come close to achieving what you did today.’
‘Well the next time we run across a necron tomb you’re welcome to try,’ I told him. He grinned, taking the remark for a joke, but any reply he made was drowned by the scream of a shuttle engine as one of the utility vessels from the Pure of Heart rose into the sullen air. Kasteen gestured at it as it howled over our heads and began to diminish into the leaden sky above.
‘That was the fifth one,’ she told me, raising her voice slightly over the ringing in our ears. ‘Two full companies embarked already.’ Which still left well over half our number, around six hundred troopers, stranded on the ground. Another half dozen flights still needed. I estimated the time that would take, and didn’t like the answer. Even if the necrons had been dealt with, there were still plenty of orks around...
‘What’s the situation with the orks?’ I asked Broklaw, but before he could respond a titanic explosion detonated among the refinery buildings, reducing the main Administratum block to rubble in an instant. Debris pattered down around us, mixed with chunks of ice and what looked uncomfortably like fragments of human tissue.
For a moment I was at a loss, my ears still ringing, and cast around for some sign of damage to the storage tanks, convinced that something must have touched off the leaking promethium. Then I saw it, tall as the building it had just destroyed, lurching forward through the rubble. Its hull was seared and breached in a dozen places, its main gun gone, but at least one of the secondaries was evidently still capable of wreaking havoc. Despite being delayed by the necrons, the gargant had arrived at last.
SIXTEEN
So horrifying was the sight of that gigantic war machine, battered, scarred, but still lurching forward almost unstoppably, that for a moment none of us noticed the ant-like scurryings around its feet. Only as the ear-splitting cry of ‘WAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!’ forced itself through the echoes of the explosion still fuzzing up the inside of my skull did I become aware of the horde of greenskins racing across the frozen ground ahead of it. They were afoot mostly, with just a handful of bikes and trucks bouncing forwards to pull clear of the main pack, and I was pleased to see our Sentinels peeling off to engage the light vehicles. Their lascannons cracked repeatedly, punching holes in the crudely welded armour, and a gratifying number of the ramshackle vehicles slewed to a halt leaking smoke.
