The Emperor's Finest, page 27
Jurgen nodded. 'Saw it too,' he confirmed, before another bolt detonated uncomfortably close behind us; the phenomenal resilience of the orks was already allowing at least some of them to recover from the explosion.
We both turned, directing another hail of unaimed las-bolts back in their general direction, with the vague hope of putting them even more off their aim than usual, and for a second the air in my lungs seemed to freeze solid. Most of the las-bolts were impacting on the thorax of another genestealer, which had just entered the corridor from the cargo hold. It was moving sluggishly, rather than with the blinding speed and agility I usually associated with the creatures, and went down without even an attempt at seeking cover, but I knew we wouldn't be so lucky again. Even over the sounds of combat, and the ringing of our bootheels on the deck plates, I was beginning to hear a rustling, faint at first, like the wind in a forest, gradually rising to a muted roar, which reminded me uncomfortably of the tidal bore which had almost swept me to my death on Rikenbach. (And taken the feet out from under the heretic Dreadnought I'd been running away from at the time, luckily for me; I'd eventually washed up half-drowned on a sandspit, while our Hydra battery chewed it to pieces before it managed to get up again 5 .)
'The whole nest's reviving 6 !' I shouted, finding I could run a little faster after all. The distinctive click-scratch of talons on metal echoed all around us, and I risked a quick glance back, regretting it at once. The pursuing 'stealers weren't just racing along the floor of the passageway, they were moving just as fast along the ceiling and the walls, their claws ripping purchase even from apparently smooth surfaces. The resulting fast-moving constriction in the dimensions of the corridor, beyond which more purestrains and a few implanted orks could be intermittently glimpsed, made it looked uncannily as though Jurgen and I were being swallowed - an impression I found about as comforting as you might expect. The creatures were still moving a little more sluggishly than usual, true, but they were gaining nevertheless, and I found myself trying to estimate just how long it was going to be before I felt claws in the back of my neck. The only result I could come up with was not nearly long enough, which was hardly helpful. The side passages we passed were choked with debris, and attempting to find refuge in any of them would be futile, simply slowing us down enough for the horrors in pursuit to catch up even more quickly.
As the breath began to rasp in my throat, made even worse by the dust our headlong dash was raising from the metal mesh at our feet, I sent a few las-bolts into the darkness at our backs entirely at random. The chances of an effective hit were minimal, true, but I was almost bound to strike something among so dense a concentration of xenos flesh, and even a token effort to fend them off fostered the comforting illusion that there might still be some action I could take to avoid a fate which now seemed inevitable.
Then, just as everything seemed lost, I felt a sudden flare of hope rise within me, as the beam of Jurgen's luminator picked out the rust-pitted surface of the bulkhead we'd so laboriously levered open, no more than a couple of hundred metres ahead of us. If we could only buy ourselves a few more precious seconds to reach it, before the onrushing horde reached us instead...
I risked another glance behind, to find that the swarm had closed the distance more rapidly than even my most pessimistic estimate; the recently roused genestealers were clearly feeling rather more chipper now, probably at the prospect of breakfast. We'd never even make it as far as the barrier at this rate, let alone manage to wriggle through the narrow gap beneath it, before we were overwhelmed.
The recently kindled flame of hope guttered and subsided, but I refused to let it be extinguished entirely. 'Jurgen!' I bellowed, over the rising noise behind us, and for a brief, hallucinatory moment, tasted seawater again. 'Any grenades left?'
'A couple, sir,' Jurgen said, rummaging through his collection of pouches. 'Frag or krak?'
'Frag!' I shouted, hoping he wouldn't take it for stress-induced profanity.
'Right you are, sir,' my aide responded, imperturbable as ever, and produced one with the air of having performed a successful conjuring trick. In a single deft movement, he primed and lobbed it over his shoulder, not bothering to look or care where it landed. In truth, neither did I. I heard the casing clatter resonantly against the metal mesh of the deck, felt my shoulder muscles tense instinctively for the shock of detonation, and hoped to the Throne that we'd be out of its area of effect by the time the hail of shrapnel was released. A second or two later I was punched hard in the back by a large, hot fist, and risked a glance behind us, being rewarded with a confused impression of thrashing limbs and tails receding further with each footstep I took. There was no time to see more, as we'd reached the bulkhead at last, and, praise the Emperor, it was still precariously raised by our makeshift lever.
Hearing the renewed skitter of fast-approaching claws, I lost no time in scrabbling under the thick metal slab, while Jurgen did his best to discourage the swarm with a final burst of his lasgun through the firing slit the gap created.
'Through you come, sir,' he said encouragingly, grabbing my forearm and yanking me the rest of the way, like a recalcitrant cork from a bottle. I half-slid into the utility conduit, where we'd removed the covering mesh, before recovering my balance, barking my shin painfully on the edge of the next section of deck plating as I did so.
'Thank you, Jurgen,' I said, turning to swipe the blade of my chainsword at the excessively clawed arm groping through the gap after me. The limb parted and fell into the channel beneath the deck plates, but if I knew 'stealers that wasn't going to be enough to discourage its owner from following, let alone its brood mates, so I turned, and severed the length of pipe holding the bulkhead up with a single stroke of the whirling blade. The thick slab of metal fell with gratifying speed, and a thud which made the deck plates shudder beneath our feet, crushing the first purestrains which were trying to follow us in the process. A couple of heads, an assortment of limbs and a generous dollop of mashed torso slithered down into the gully in the wake of the arm I'd cut off, making an unholy mess of my boots as they did so.
'That ought to hold 'em,' Jurgen said, an unmistakable note of satisfaction suffusing his voice, and I nodded, drawing deep draughts of the foetid air into my lungs to slow my hammering heart. The narrowness of our escape finally sank in, and I sat on the pile of scrap we'd used as a counterweight a little more heavily than I'd intended, heedless of the damage it was doing to my greatcoat. Right now I could hardly look much more dishevelled than I already did in any case.
'For a while,' I agreed, as a faint rasping began behind the bulkhead, and I belatedly realised that creatures capable of ripping Terminator armour apart weren't likely to be held back for very long by a mere few centimetres of steel. I regained my feet, having got enough of my breath back to start running again if I had to. 'Come on.' I started to lead the way down the tunnel.
'Won't that take us straight back to the orks?' Jurgen asked, falling in at my shoulder, and I nodded.
'I hope so,' I told him, ignoring the familiar expression of puzzlement falling across his features like a waning moon. 'Right now, they look like the best chance we've got.'
TWENTY-TWO
THOUGH WE WERE retracing our steps exactly, it seemed to take far less time to get back to the enclave of the orks than it had done to cover the same distance in the opposite direction. Partly, I suppose, that must have been due to our familiarity with the terrain; heading away from it we'd been checking for unexpected hazards the whole way, whereas now we were able to place our feet with confidence, certain we weren't about to be pitched through some weakened section of flooring to the deck below, like the damaged CAT we'd got into this mess in the first place by attempting to recover. Mainly, however, I think it was due to us knowing all too well what we were heading towards.
As we passed the tunnel mouths I'd considered going back to in search of an alternative route when we'd first found our way blocked by the bulkhead, I had to exert all the willpower I possessed not to turn aside in the hope of being able to bypass the genestealer nest and attempt to reach the hangar again. The only thing that stopped me was the realisation that it would be impossible to evade the creatures now. The brood mind had become aware of our presence, and I was certain that the malignant mass of the creatures we'd stumbled across would be diffusing itself though every corridor, duct and passageway by this time, effectively isolating us from our goal, while hunting us down deck by deck. Our only chance, slender as it was, would be to give it something else to think about - which is where the orks came in.
Seeing the implanted ones among the swarm had pretty much confirmed the deduction I'd made about the brood mind's reasons for leaving the great mass of them in ignorance of the presence of genestealers aboard the Spawn of Damnation. The first few it had taken would have left it in no doubt of the single-minded viciousness of the species, and that any attempt to confront so many of them directly would have left the 'stealers in poor shape to continue spreading their blight through the galaxy, if any had survived at all. Far better to continue lurking in the shadows, picking off a few of the interlopers here and there, until the greenskins' warhost was thoroughly infiltrated and its ability to fight off the swarm had been critically compromised. In the meantime, it would get to invade Serendipita by proxy, through implanted and hybridised orks, who would spread the genestealer taint wherever they went, no doubt taking as many of the purestrains as they could along for the ride. And while they got on with that, the ork horde would be giving the defenders of the system more than enough to think about, allowing the 'stealers to start polluting the gene pool of Serendipita's human inhabitants unnoticed and unopposed.
The only way I could see to prevent that, and, more importantly, save my own skin, was to turn the brood mind's own tactics against it. Something easier said than done, of course, but my instinctive affinity for enclosed spaces and remaining orientated within them had given me the germ of an idea. A fairly nebulous one, it's true, the only part I was certain about being a great deal of running, but it was better than nothing. Thus it was, far too soon for comfort, I found myself skulking through the lit corridors of the section the orks had colonised again, hoping we were in the right area and that we wouldn't come across too many of the inhabitants before we were ready.
However, it seemed that the Emperor was with us once more, the creatures' habitual bellicosity and flatulence combining to produce more than enough audible warning of their presence for Jurgen and I to find concealment in time to escape notice. Before too long we found ourselves looking out for the second time over the vast metal cavern which their relentless energy and destructiveness had wrenched from the fabric of the space hulk.
Fortunately, my sense of direction hadn't let me down, and we'd arrived more or less where I'd hoped we would, overlooking the smoke-shrouded section where the mekboyz toiled, creating weapons and ammunition to lay waste to Serendipita. Even at this distance I could feel the heat from the roaring forges, and hear the clank of tools from the decks below us where gangs of gretchin riggers were scavenging fresh raw material for the furnaces. Between the murk and the heat haze it was hard to make out much detail, but the little I could was more than enough.
Almost immediately below us was an area devoted to the construction of battlewagons: mobile weapon platforms bristling with weapons, which I recognised from Perlia. No two were alike, of course, but I'd faced them often enough to know how hard they could be to knock out without armour support, and hoped Torven and Kregeen would be able to scrape up a fair number of tanks between them. There were plenty of smaller trucks about as well, armed too, of course, but for the moment at least being used to shift supplies about from one end of the cavern to the other. (And for all I knew, the orkish mindset being what it was, back again, just for the fun of charging around at life-threatening speeds.) In the middle distance was a latticework of scaffolding, where the minuscule figures of innumerable gretchin were swarming over a vast pile of scrap, which looked alarmingly like a half-completed gargant; but that, at least, would be a problem for later, and preferably somebody else.
'Those look like promethium tanks,' I said, nudging Jurgen and pointing to a cluster of domed cylinders on the periphery of the vehicle assembly area. 'Can you read the glyphs?'
My aide nodded and squinted a little, trying to bring the crudely daubed symbols on the sides of the tank into focus through the smoke-stained air. 'Looks like a warning,' he said at last. 'Fire, or burn, and zog off 1 .'
'Excellent,' I said, my guess confirmed. 'Do you think you can hit it from here?'
'I reckon so,' Jurgen said, peering through the sights of his lasgun. 'It's a long shot, but at least there's no windage to worry about.'
He steadied his breathing, lining the shot up carefully, and fired once. I strained my eyes, but the distance and the obscuring murk were too great, and I could see no sign of the impact. 'Bit to the left.' He repeated the process, to no apparent effect, then tried a third time. I was just on the point of giving up and trying to find an alternative target, when my aide grunted with satisfaction. 'That ought to do it.'
'Did you hit the tank?' I asked, still waiting for some kind of visible effect with a sense of vague disappointment. I suppose I was hoping for something like the inferno which had engulfed the refuelling station in Prosperity Wells 2 , although that had been sparked by a krak round from a rocket launcher rather than the feeble punch of a lasgun fired from far beyond its normal effective range.
Jurgen shook his head. 'The tank?' he echoed, looking puzzled, although that was nothing new. 'I was shooting at the outlet valve.' Squinting in the direction of the blocky cylinders, I was just able to make out some minute protmsions where a cluster of pipes joined the assembly. It may have been my imagination, but the haze seemed a little thicker there, and I thought I could make out the shimmer of liquid gushing from the nearest one, to form an evergrowing pool.
'That would work much better,' I assured him, marvelling, not for the first time, at his standard of marksmanship. To hit so small a target at this range would have involved a fair degree of luck as well, of course, but I wasn't going to turn up my nose at that either. 'Well done.'
'You're welcome, sir,' Jurgen said, allowing a faint air of satisfaction to enter his voice, then nodded judiciously. 'Just give it another moment to let the fumes build.' He sighted down the lasgun again. 'Only needs a little spark...'
He squeezed the trigger, and I stared at the fuel dump, hopeful anticipation narrowing my eyes. Where the shot hit, I had no idea, but the las-bolt must have struck metal, producing the spark Jurgen had wished for. For the briefest of instants nothing seemed to happen, then a bright orange flare blossomed from nowhere, racing through the air as it expanded, to engulf the entire complex.
'Good shot!' I started to say, then everything was drowned out by a thunderclap which left my ears ringing, the sound rebounding and redoubling in the confined space. A lake of liquid fire poured through the assembly area, washing over the newly completed battlewagons, immolating orks and gretchin by the hundred in the process. A couple of trucks on the fringes of the mekboyz' compound turned and raced away, trying to outrun the spreading flames; one made it to safety, while the other was overtaken and engulfed, its own fuel combusting in a miniature echo of the main fireball, all but lost in the general conflagration.
'That went well,' Jurgen said, sounding distinctly pleased with himself, over the rolling boom of a succession of secondary explosions, as the ammunition aboard the burning battlewagons began to cook off. I found myself wondering where the main munitions dumps were, and whether we'd perhaps overdone it a little. I'd been hoping to get the orks' attention, not wipe them out entirely.
Well, that wasn't going to happen, of course. Despite the vista of destruction spreading out beneath our feet, the greater part of the greenskins' colony had been left untouched. Tearing my eyes from the inferno we'd unleashed, I was gratified to see them charging around in even greater disarray than usual, while bellowing nobz 3 attempted to restore order with about as much success as you might expect. The warboss we'd seen before was forging his way through the milling throng, cracking heads and roaring at anything unfortunate enough to cross his path, and I gave Jurgen a nudge. This was too good an opportunity to miss. 'Isn't that the one you wanted to take a crack at the last time?' I asked.
'Looks like it,' Jurgen agreed, taking the hint and lining up another shot. It was too much to hope that he'd be able to drop the leader of the host from here (although given the devastation he'd already managed to wreak with just a few las-rounds I wouldn't have been all that surprised if he took the brute cleanly between the eyes), but I had another objective in mind in any case. 'Frak. Just winged him.'
The warboss looked up, snarling, as Jurgen's las-bolt impacted on the left shoulder plate of his armour, adding another barely visible dent to the impressive collection already decorating it, to glare furious hatred in our direction. Which was precisely what I'd hoped for. I stepped to the very brink of the vertiginous drop at the end of the abbreviated corridor, heedless of the suffocating heat rising from the inferno below, and flourished my chainsword, locking gazes over the intervening distance. It was a gesture I knew no greenskin would be able to interpret in any manner other than a challenge, and I was right; with a bellow of rage, inaudible over the roaring of the flames, and the cacophonous collapse of the partially completed gargant as the supporting scaffold softened in the furnace heat, he began running in our direction, skirting the inferno as closely as he could. His bodyguard came with him, of course, and, true to the mob mentality which seemed to govern all these creatures' actions, every other ork in the vicinity trailed along behind. Even from this distance, and over the deafening clamour of the destruction we'd unleashed, I could hear the rising communal shout of ''WAAAAAAGGHHHHHH!'' which betokened their unleashed bloodlust.
