Hero of the Imperium, page 25
‘He says he’s picking up life forms ahead, in large quantities,’ Gorok said quietly, translating the flickering finger signs. The tau all had voxcasters and Emperor knew what else built into their helmets, but their kroot allies had no such aids to communication, and, I was beginning to suspect, would have spurned them if they’d been offered anyway. So they used this peculiar semaphore to pass orders and information silently, in much the same way that Guard units did when the troopers didn’t have individual combeads, or the enemy was so close they might have overheard a verbal transmission.
‘How large?’ Amberley whispered, taking a final look at the screen of the auspex, which, for once, actually seemed to be displaying some life signs that weren’t ours or the six troopers with us. The answer seemed to perturb her slightly, as I could see far fewer blips than the number Gorok translated, but then that worried me too as it seemed to confirm our worst fears.
‘We’re going to have to confirm this visually, aren’t we?’ I asked, not because I expected an answer, but because asking the question gave me the comforting illusion of some measure of control over my destiny. Which, at that point, I thought was all too likely to be short, bloody, and messily terminated. Amberley nodded, looking grimmer than I would have thought possible, and it suddenly struck me that even an inquisitor could feel fear under the right circumstances (and if ever the circumstances were right to be terrified, these were the ones).
‘I’m afraid so,’ she said, sounding as though she actually meant it.
I’ve often wondered since if things would have worked out any differently if we’d warned the troopers in advance what we were getting into. After all, they were all veterans, and had fought a tyranid invasion to a standstill, so they weren’t likely to have flown into a panic at the news. But on the other hand, I didn’t trust them, and that was the plain, honest truth. For all I knew, if I told them what we’d surmised, they’d simply desert, killing Amberley to cover their tracks as Sorel had suggested. And me too, of course, which was the really important issue so far as I was concerned.
So, rightly or wrongly, I kept my mouth shut, and let them go on thinking we were simply after an insurrectionist cell; and if that left their blood on my hands I can live with it. It’s not like I haven’t done far worse, to far less-deserving people over the years, and I haven’t lost any sleep over them either.49
After a few more moments of consultation, which Amberley and Gorok helpfully translated, we moved on, more cautious than before. A few metres ahead, the corridor seemed to open out into a wider chamber, as we’d seen several times already on our journey through the undercity, and I expected this one to be little different – like the one we’d discovered the checkpoint in, or the larger one where the tau had slaughtered the outer guards. So as I reached the opening, and peered cautiously round it, my breath left my body in an involuntary gasp.
The chamber was huge, vaulted tens of metres over our heads, like the schola chapel where I’d spent many dull and draughty hours as a juvie listening to old Chaplain Desones droning on about duty and loyalty to the Emperor, and furtively swapping salacious holopicts with the other cadets. The atmosphere here was about as far from musty piety as it was possible to get; however, palpable danger seeped from every corner.
We’d come out on a mezzanine gallery some twenty metres above the floor, and, Emperor be praised, there was a waist-high balustrade around it which afforded us a measure of concealment. We crouched behind it, humans and aliens alike, equally appalled at the sight which met our eyes.
The space below us was vast, receding into the distance like a forgeworld manufactoria. I’d seen a Titan maintenance bay once, where Warhounds were rearmed and readied for battle, and the huge echoing space had bustled with the same sense of martial purpose. Instead of towering metal giants, however, this space held only people, scurrying to and fro in their hundreds, tending to vast machines of great antiquity whose purpose I could only guess at.50 Of rather more immediate interest to me, though, were the ones carrying, drilling with, and maintaining with a meticulousness which would have done credit to a member of the Imperial Guard, more small arms than I was happy to see in the hands of anyone other than His Majesty’s most loyal servants.
‘Emperor’s bones!’ Trebek muttered. ‘There’s an entire army of them down here!’ A few short, sibilant exclamations from among the tau were enough to confirm that they were as unpleasantly surprised as we were.
‘It’s worse than that,’ Kelp muttered. Amberley and I exchanged concerned glances, already aware of what he’d noticed, but then we’d been expecting it, and had known what to look for.
‘How do you mean?’ Holenbi whispered, his habitual frown of puzzlement back on his face.
‘They’re mutants,’ Sorel told him, scanning the chamber through the magnifying optics of his sniper scope. ‘Some of them, anyway.’ A ripple of unease stirred the troopers, an atavistic loathing of the unclean rising to the surface despite their training and discipline. Now that someone had pointed it out, the contamination was obvious: though many of the cultists below us were human, or could pass for it, others were unmistakably something else. In some cases, it was as subtle as a wrongness of posture, a peculiar hunching of the back, or an elongation of the face, but in others it was far more pronounced. In these individuals the taint of the alien was obvious, their skin hardened almost to armour, their jaws wide and filled with fangs; a few sprouted extra limbs, tipped with razor-sharp claws.
‘No they’re not,’ Jurgen chipped in helpfully, blissfully unaware of my frantic ‘shut up!’ hand gestures as he shaded his eyes for a closer look. ‘They’re genestealer hybrids. We saw plenty just like them on Keffia, and...’ His voice trailed off lamely as he finally turned his head in my direction, and saw the expression on my face.
‘And we wiped them all out,’ I finished, trying to sound decisive and confident. Kelp’s jaw clenched.
‘You knew.’ It was a flat statement, an accusation, and the others all hung on his words. ‘You knew what was waiting down here all along, and you led us right into it to get slaughtered!’
‘No one’s getting slaughtered unless I do it,’ I snapped back, realising that if I lost the initiative now I’d never regain it, and that would mean the end of everything – the mission, me, Amberley, and probably Gravalax too, although the welfare of the planet wasn’t exactly at the top of my priority list. ‘This is a recon mission, nothing more. Our objective was to identify the enemy, which we’ve done, and get back to report that information. We’re pulling back to the surface now, to call in reinforcements, and we’ll only engage in self-defence. Satisfied?’
He nodded, slowly, but the truculence remained on his face.
‘Works for me,’ Sorel said. Velade, Trebek, and Holenbi nodded, following his lead.
‘Not for me.’ Kelp raised his hellgun, aiming squarely at Amberley. Sibilant whispers of consternation rippled through the tau, but the shas’ui gestured the ones who’d begun to raise their weapons to stand down, and to my relief, they complied. The last thing we needed now was to start killing each other; there were plenty of ‘stealers around to do that job, and attracting their attention was right up there with challenging an ork to an arm-wrestling contest so far as really bad ideas went. ‘I’m out of here. And I’ll kill her if you try to stop me.’ I reached for my pistol, but she shook her head.
‘No, commissar. He’s not going to shoot, are you, Tobias?’ She tilted her head towards the bustling throng of half-human monsters below. ‘The noise would bring them all running, and you wouldn’t get a hundred metres before they ripped you to pieces.’
The same thing would apply to my sidearm, I realised, as I let it slip back securely into its holster.
‘You’ll never get away with this,’ I said levelly, absurdly conscious of sounding like a character in a holodrama. A sneer of derision crossed his face.
‘Like I’ve never heard that before.’
‘Get out of here.’ Amberley’s voice was stiff with contempt. ‘I’ve no use for cowards. You had a second chance, and you pissed it away.’ For the first time, a flicker of unease moved across his face, and he took a step backwards.
‘You’d better hope the ‘stealers find you first,’ I added, with all the bravado which comes from issuing an empty threat you know you’ll never have to back up. ‘Because if I ever catch up with you, you’re in for a world of hurt.’
‘Dream on, commissar. I’ve taken my last order from you.’ He looked at the others, hoping for some show of support, but they just stared back, their faces set. I was surprised, I don’t mind admitting it, but when you came down to it, they were still soldiers of the Emperor before anything else. After a moment, Kelp stepped back into the shadows and turned, and we heard the sound of running feet receding down the tunnel.
‘I reckon I’ve still got a shot,’ Sorel offered, raising the long-las and sighting carefully in the direction of the sound. ‘And this thing’s silenced.’ I shook my head.
‘Let him go,’ I said. ‘At least he’s still good for drawing their fire.’ The sniper nodded, and lowered his weapon.
‘Your call,’ he said.
Amberley was still engaged in earnest conversation with the tau, though how she was hoping to retain their confidence after this was beyond me, so I did my best to rally the troops with a few quiet words of praise for their loyalty.
‘The shas’ui is saying it would be most prudent to divide our forces again,’ Gorok translated helpfully. Big surprise there, I thought. If I was the shas’ui and I’d just seen one of our allies pull a gun on his commander, I’d be having second thoughts about our little arrangement now too.
‘We both need to report this to our own forces,’ Amberley said, breaking off just long enough to meet my eye, then returning to her sibilant dialogue.
‘No question of that,’ I agreed. ‘So what’s taking so long?’
‘The tau were unaware of this ability of the creatures you call genestealers,’ Gorok said. ‘They knew them only as a warrior form of the tyranid overmind. Your inquisitor is attempting to enlighten them as to their true nature.’
‘They’re infiltrators,’ I explained. ‘They worm their way into a planet’s society, and weaken it from within before the hive fleets arrive. Wherever they go they sow disorder and anarchy.’
‘Then they are indeed a potent threat,’ the kroot agreed.
‘Sir,’ Velade whispered urgently, trying to attract my attention. I turned towards her, and she gestured down towards the chamber floor. ‘Something’s happening down there.’
‘Time to leave,’ I said, tapping Amberley on the shoulder. She glanced up at me and nodded.
‘I think you’re right.’ One of the hybrids, an ugly fellow who might have passed for human in a bad light if it wasn’t for a complexion which looked as though he’d recently showered in acid, was running into the chamber. He was carrying something under his arm, and after a moment I realised it was the head of the kroot Sorel had shot.
‘Oh frak,’ I said. They were on to us now, and no mistake. As he moved further into the cavern, more and more of the cultists stopped what they were doing and crowded around him. The most eerie thing about it was that none of them said anything, just clustered together in silence and stared at the grisly trophy.
‘What are they doing?’ Trebek asked quietly.
‘Communicating,’ Amberley responded, turning to lead us back up the corridor we’d entered by.
‘They’ve all got this hive mind thing, remember?’ Velade was tense but determined. ‘You just have to shoot the big ones.’
‘It’s not like the tyranid overmind,’ Amberley said. ‘They’re all individuals. They’re just linked to each other telepathically, at least up close.’
‘Like psykers,’ Jurgen added helpfully.
‘I hope so,’ Amberley said, though what she meant by that I still didn’t know at the time.
‘Pull back slowly,’ I ordered. ‘They haven’t noticed us yet. We’ve still got time to make it back to the surface before they realise where we are.’ And we probably would have done too, if it hadn’t been for the bloody kroot.
‘They taint the flesh,’ Gorok said. ‘And they must not taste ours.’ Before I had a chance to react, or even realise what the hell he was on about, he shouted something in his own tongue to his compatriots.
My bowels froze. As that avian screech echoed round the chamber, every head turned in our direction as though tugged by the same string. I was uncomfortably reminded of a Hydra battery coming to bear. Uncounted eyes stared at us for a moment, then they broke and ran, as Gorok and the other kroot aimed their long-barrelled weapons at the centre of the group and opened fire.
‘What the hell do they think they’re doing?’ Holenbi asked.
‘Who cares? Run!’ I ordered. Looking back I could see they’d felled the hybrid carrying the kroot head, and another volley pulped the trophy to mush.
I’m still not sure why that was so important to them. All I can assume is that they’d grasped some of what Amberley had been saying about the genestealers’ peculiar ability to overwrite the genetic code of their victims and had thought possession of the severed head would have let them infect other kroot in some way. Palpable nonsense of course. Genestealers need live victims to infect so that when they have children of their own, they unwittingly spread the taint, but I suppose it got mixed up in some way with their religion, or whatever else it is that makes them go around chewing lumps out of corpses. At the end of the day a xeno’s a xeno, and who knows why they do anything?51
One thing I was sure about, though, was that the tau were as surprised as we were. The shas’ui was shouting something I could make a pretty good guess at the gist of without an interpreter, but the kroot weren’t listening, and he gave up in favour of trying to organise his own squad. Not a moment too soon either, because the amount of noise from the corridor we’d entered by told me we were about to have company.
A volley of plasma fire from the tau guns ripped down the corridor, almost blinding me with its brightness, and I turned away. We wouldn’t get back out the way we’d come in, that was for sure, and our only hope was to move off along the gallery and hope to find a clear route through one of the other tunnel mouths.
Incredibly, the enemy kept coming, although I half expected that after my adventures on Keffia, where they’d just kept leapfrogging the pile of their own dead in their eagerness to close. A ragged volley of las-bolts and autogun fire thundered in reply, and one of the tau went down, his armour shredded by multiple impacts.
‘Tell them to pull back before they’re slaughtered,’ I said to Amberley, and she nodded before shouting something in tau. Not that I cared, of course, but the longer the xenos kept firing the further away we’d get. I hoped.
‘There’s another tunnel up ahead,’ Velade called excitedly, then turned back to face us, raising her hellgun. I flinched, anticipating treachery after all, but the high-powered las-bolt went wide of us, impacting on the thorax of the first of the enemy to emerge from the tunnel behind us.
‘Emperor’s bowels!’ Trebek said, following suit. My heart froze with terror. I’d seen too many, on Keffia, and as part of the screeching mass of a tyranid army, to mistake it for anything else.
A purestrain genestealer. One of the deadliest creatures in creation. And it wasn’t alone.
FOURTEEN
‘Never take a gamble you’re not prepared to lose.’
– Abdul Goldberg, rogue trader.
My order to pull back had bought us a little time, at least. The horde of mutant crossbreeds vomited out of the tunnel between us and the tau, forcing the two parties apart, taking punishing casualties, but still laying down a withering volley of fire as they came. I recognised the tactic from the cleansing of Keffia, and Jurgen evidently, did too, as he raised the melta before falling back. The blast of superheated air roared against my face, vaporising the oncoming stealer and chewing a chunk out of the front few ranks.
The firing continued, with las-bolts and bullets chewing up the masonry around us, and I felt a sudden blow against my chest. I glanced down; a las-bolt had impacted against the borrowed armour beneath my greatcoat, and I blessed the foresight that had impelled me to requisition it. We were all shooting continuously now, the troopers retreating in good order by fire and movement, much to my relief. Amberley had produced a bolt pistol from the depths of her cloak, and wielded it with a skill no less greater than my own, bringing down two more of the bounding monstrosities with carefully placed shots. The explosive bolts detonated inside their chitinous shells, blowing their thoraxes to bloody mist.
‘Keep your distance!’ I shouted. The hybrids were hoping to pin us, allowing the purestrains to close, and if that happened it would all be over. They bounded forward eagerly, claws scything, and if you think that’s not intimidating to a man with a gun, then all I can say is count yourself lucky you’ve never been close to one. I was there when the Reclaimers boarded the Spawn of Damnation,52 and saw the purestrains which infested it tearing open their Terminator armour as though it were cardboard to get at the Astartes within. After that you can be sure I never wanted to be within arm’s length of those killing machines again. And since they have four of the damn things, that can be harder than it sounds.
‘You don’t have to tell me twice!’ Trebek placed a couple of accurate shots, downing a purestrain and a hybrid with a flamer. Thank the Emperor she’d spotted that, I thought, or it would have been the end of us for sure. Sorel followed up, putting a round through the promethium tank, and the width of the gallery erupted in flame.
