Hero of the Imperium, page 42
That’s not a thought you want your troopers to start brooding on. It makes them jumpy and sloppy, and the next thing you know they’re so concerned with preserving their own skins they’re losing focus on the important stuff: fulfilling the mission objectives, and preserving mine.
I made a big show of consulting Logash where everyone could hear me.
‘Are we likely to run into any more of these creatures?’ I asked. He frowned uncertainly.
‘Possibly,’ he said at last. ‘But I doubt it. We seem to have a breeding pair and their offspring here, and given the average size of a family group...’
‘I’ll take that as a no,’ I said firmly, cutting him off before he could bog us all down in extraneous detail. ‘Which means we can safely divide our forces.’ As I’d expected, a flicker of interest passed around the faces surrounding me, except of course for Drere and the medic, who were too busy bleeding to take much notice. And Jurgen, who rarely showed much sign of interest in anything apart from porno slates.
‘Divide how?’ Grifen asked. I indicated the wounded, and Vorhees hovering anxiously over his recumbent girlfriend.
‘Second team’s down to three effectives, and it’ll take two of those to carry Drere,’ I said. Vorhees’s head came up like a hound hearing a ration pack being opened, a spark of hope kindling in his eyes. ‘That’ll leave one to take point, and pick off any of the creatures we might have missed.’ Grifen nodded, understanding and relief mingled in the gesture.
‘You’re sending them back,’ she said, a statement rather than a question. I nodded.
‘The sooner the better,’ I added, before turning to Karta. ‘Better get moving, corporal. We’re counting on you.’ Not that I gave a frak, you understand, but it sounded good, and it passed the buck nicely; if anyone died before making it to the medicae at least it was out of my hands now. Karta saluted.
‘We’ll make it,’ he asserted, and peeled off to organise his people.
‘Am I to understand we’re moving on at half strength?’ Logash asked, clearly wondering what in the warp I thought I was playing at. I indicated the skull he’d dug up.
‘First team, Jurgen and I are,’ I said. ‘There’s obviously a way down here from behind the ork lines, even if the greenskins haven’t noticed it yet, and we’re not going back until we’ve found it and plugged the hole in our defences.’ Needless to say I wasn’t expecting to actually encounter any of the brutes, or run into anything else down here capable of harming us now that we’d slaughtered the ambulls, or I’d never have dreamed of doing such a thing. At the time, though, I was just trying to find a reasonable excuse to linger down here for a while and avoid the gargant.
‘I see.’ Logash considered it carefully, taking on that half-lost look again. ‘Then I assume I should continue to accompany you.’
I hadn’t actually considered it, to be honest. I’d have welcomed the chance to get rid of him if the thought had occurred to me, but on reflection he would only slow the wounded down if he tagged along with them, and I supposed his auspex might come in handy. All in all it was marginally preferable to keep him with us, I decided.
‘I suppose so,’ I said, leaving Jurgen to keep an eye on him, and turning back to watch the wounded depart. I had a final word with Karta, making sure Kasteen would hear about the ork skull we’d found and reinforce the mine entrance until we got back. Then we wished them the Emperor’s speed and watched the bobbing lights from their luminators recede up the tunnel.
‘Well,’ Grifen said after a while, summing up what we all felt. ‘Best get to it then. No point waiting around, is there?’
Despite my confidence that we were alone down here, we moved out in full combat order. Hail was on point, her lasgun held with the casual readiness of the veteran, and I found the sight reassuring. Simla followed her. The two of them worked well together, sharing an intuitive understanding which probably meant they had a personal association going as well; only to be expected in a mixed unit, of course. Behind him was Lunt, the squad heavy weapon specialist, who carried a flamer. That was something else I was pleased to find ahead of me rather than behind, although he had shown enough restraint to refrain from using it during the fight in the ambull den, relying instead on the laspistol he wore holstered at his belt.32 (Just as well, really, as he’d probably have barbecued his squad mates as easily as the animals.) Tall and heavy-set, he carried the weight of his twin promethium tanks with ease, the liquid within them sloshing quietly as he walked.
I came next, along with Logash, Jurgen and Grifen, who kept a little behind us and as far from my aide as possible, while Trooper Magot, a small redheaded woman with disturbingly hard eyes, took up the rear. Out of the entire squad she was the only one to address Grifen as ‘sarge’ instead of ‘sergeant,’ and moved with the easy grace of an experienced soldier. (I learned later that they’d served together for some time, and she’d requested a transfer to Grifen’s squad when her friend was promoted; beyond that I felt it prudent not to enquire.)
Despite everyone’s unspoken apprehension we encountered no more of the ambulls, which came as an immense relief believe you me, and the only footfalls we heard were our own. Like everyone else, I kept my ears open for the harsh guttural sounds of ork voices and the crunch of iron-shod boots in the rime ahead of us, but the only noises to be heard were the almost subliminal creaks and pops of the slowly-shifting ice. We must have been moving for some time, I recall, as the vox messages from second team had faded to inaudibility by this point, when Logash stopped to examine the walls of the tunnel.
‘How very curious,’ he said.
‘What is?’ I asked, caution taking precedence over the surge of irritation I felt when his metallic elbow jabbed into my ribs as I stumbled into him. By way of reply he scraped a handful of ice from the wall. It crumbled, to reveal the dark grey surface of some kind of rock behind it, still grooved with the marks of the ambull’s claws.
‘We’re below the ice layer. Actually down into the bedrock of the planet. Quite fascinating.’
‘I’m glad you’re finding the trip so entertaining,’ I said, but the tech-priest was almost as impervious to sarcasm as Jurgen, and nodded in response.
‘Not quite the word I’d choose, but it certainly beats recalibrating the interociters,’ he said cheerfully. I had no idea what he meant, of course, so I smiled and suggested we get moving again. Unfortunately getting his legs going didn’t slow down his mouth, and he prattled on about the underlying geology of the mountain range at inordinate length.
‘Mountains are just there, aren’t they?’ Jurgen asked after some time had passed, blinking in befuddlement. Logash shook his head.
‘To our limited perception of time, yes. But on a geological timescale, which is to say on the order of millions of years, a planet’s crust is as fluid as a pan full of stew on the stove.’ Well he understood which metaphors would appeal to Jurgen, I had to give him that. ‘The lower strata rise to the surface, and are gradually worn down again by the processes of erosion.’
‘So what you’re saying,’ Jurgen said slowly, ‘is that these mountains are like a very large carrot?’ I kept my face straight with an effort, although a strangulated snort escaped from Magot who was behind me.
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Logash was clearly unsure whether Jurgen was taking the frak or not. ‘Floating on the surface of the pot. A few million years ago this whole area would have been an open plain, or the bottom of an ocean.’
‘How can you have an ocean when everything’s frozen?’ Jurgen asked, all innocence. But Logash nodded as though pleased with a promising student.
‘A good question.’ He went on after a moment’s thought, ignoring my aide’s expression of pleased surprise. ‘In its early history this would have been a far more hospitable world. But it’s just too far from the sun, and it cooled down gradually. Where we are now is on a continental shelf, which is why we’ve penetrated as far as the bedrock. The ice goes down for tens of kilometres just out from the mountain range, which would have been an island chain in those days. Or perhaps this was a coastal plain which flooded as the oceans froze and increased in volume.’33
‘There’s something up ahead,’ Hail reported a moment later, and I hurried forward to join her, grateful for the excuse to get away from the endless babbling. That may sound harsh, but believe me, after several hours of non-stop logorrhoea you’d have felt the same. As I did so I felt the palms of my hands begin to tingle.
‘What is it?’ I asked, joining her. She was halted next to the entrance to a side tunnel and peering round it. The luminator taped to the barrel of her lasgun skipped its cone of light around the walls and floor.
That was when it hit me. Unlike the irregular ambull tunnels we’d been following, this corridor was squared off, composed of regular lines and angles beneath its coating of ice. There was no telling who might have built it, of course, or anything else for that matter, as the frozen epidermis effectively obscured every detail.
‘Lunt,’ I ordered after a moment’s thought. ‘Get up here.’ The hulking trooper ambled across to us, and aimed his flamer down the mysterious passageway, seeking a target. It stretched into the distance, swallowing our luminator beams as though they were the most tenuous of candle flames. After a moment he triggered the weapon, sending a gout of burning promethium down the corridor ahead of us, blasting the shadows from the corners and replacing them with flickering orange spectres. Steam hissed and water dripped from the walls as the pool of burning accelerant roared away on the floor, melting the ice around it.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose. It’s an odd sensation, and one I’ve seldom felt. Grim memories from years before came flooding back as I recognised the obsidian architecture surrounding us, finely polished stone of absolute blackness seeming somehow to suck the light into itself, all the darker and more forbidding for the faint reflective sheen which coated it.
‘Omnissiah preserve us,’ Logash breathed at my elbow, and for a moment I thought he’d recognised it too. But the words that followed betrayed an ignorance that was almost blissful. ‘We must make a full record of this at once. We had no idea that the planet was once inhabited...’
‘Everyone out,’ I commanded. ‘Break out the demo charges and prepare to seal this now.’
‘Commissar?’ Grifen looked a little confused. I suppose she might have been forgiven for wondering if I’d gone a bit siggy34, but by that point the last thing on my mind was how I appeared to the other ranks. ‘Those are supposed to be used to seal the tunnels off from the orks.’
‘There are worse things than greenskins,’ I said. Grifen looked a little sceptical at this, what with the orks being the Valhallans’ ancient blood enemy and all that (don’t get me wrong, they’d happily pile into any of the Emperor’s enemies who happened along, but give them a choice and they’d kill greenies every time), but took my word for it.
‘Are you mad?’ Logash raised his voice, clearly determined to challenge me. ‘The knowledge contained in there could be priceless. We don’t know why this structure was built, or by whom...’
‘I do,’ I said and pointed to one of the walls, where a curious arrangement of lines and circles was partially visible through a curtain of half-melted ice. It was illuminated by the dying flames of the promethium pool. ‘The necrons built it.’
The name didn’t mean anything to most of them, of course. Only Jurgen had encountered them before aside from myself, and that far less up close and personal than the terrors I’d escaped from on Interitus Prime. But the troopers seemed willing to take my word for it, at least. If only I could say the same for the tech-priest.
‘But you can’t just blow up a discovery of this magnitude!’ Logash was practically beside himself. ‘Think of the archeotech that must be down there! Destroying it would be a crime against the Omnissiah!’
‘Frak the Omnissiah,’ I said, finally shutting him up. ‘I swore an oath to serve the Emperor, not a bucket of bolts, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Have you any idea what would happen if there are dormant necrons down there and we did something to disturb them?’
‘I’m sure your soldiers could deal with them whatever they are,’ Logash replied stiffly.
‘Well I’m not,’ I said without thinking. Then I remembered who else was there and carried on as though I’d meant to say more all along. ‘I’d back this regiment against everything from eldar to daemons, but even the best soldiers in the Guard couldn’t stand long against a full-scale necron incursion. These things aren’t even alive as we understand the term. They can’t be reasoned with, they can’t be intimidated, and if they have the numbers on their side they simply can’t be stopped. They’ll just keep coming until every living thing on this planet is dead!’ I was uncomfortably aware as I finished that my voice had risen in pitch. I fought it back to a semblance of calm.
‘You’re not being rational about this,’ Logash said. ‘If there were active necrons down here they would have killed the ambulls, surely?’
‘Just for starters,’ I said. My old nightmare of orks pouring through these narrow passageways bent on plunder and destruction seemed positively comforting now. I fought down memories of those blank metallic faces, fashioned in the semblance of skulls, advancing through a hail of hellgun fire as though it were a refreshing spring rain, and shuddered in horror. Logash might have a point, I supposed, the temple or whatever it was might well be abandoned, but then we’d thought that on Interitus Prime as well. And look how that had turned out. Entering so unhallowed a place was simply too dangerous to contemplate, and if Logash and his pals were that keen to take such an insane risk they could damn well do it once the orks were taken care of and we were long gone.
Not that I intended waiting around on this iceball until we’d got rid of the greenskins. Finding a necron artifact changed everything, and our best course of action was simply to evacuate our forces back to the Pure of Heart, turn the whole matter over to the Inquisition, and have done with it. I might even get to renew my acquaintance with Amberley, which would at least be one blessing in the affair – assuming she didn’t drag me off on another suicidal escapade in the name of the Ordo Xenos of course.
Grifen didn’t need telling twice, and was already breaking out the demo charges. Once again my undeserved reputation was working to my advantage, and she no doubt thought that anything bad enough to leave a hero of the Imperium in need of clean undergarments was something she didn’t want to meet.
‘You can’t do this! I simply won’t let you!’ Logash practically screamed like a petulant child as Simla and Hail placed the charges. He stepped forward as if to interfere. Jurgen barred his way with the melta, and shook his head.
‘Best to keep out of the way, sir,’ he said. Logash raised a hand to the barrel, as though about to slap it out of the way. I was suddenly uneasily aware of how much strength he might have in his augmetic limbs, and Emperor alone knew what other little alterations the baggy robe might conceal. I stepped forward, ostentatiously loosening the laspistol in the holster at my belt.
‘Might I remind you,’ I said levelly, ‘that this world is currently under martial law. That means you’re as subject to my authority as any member of the Guard, and I’m fully within my rights to deal summarily with any attempt to interfere with the protection of this installation.’ He took my meaning at once, but with ill grace, and subsided. He glared at me with an expression of malevolent disgust completely at odds with the demeanor of cheerful idiocy I’d come to expect. I suppose I might have found it intimidating if I hadn’t been glared at by experts in my time (and trust me, until you’ve hacked off a daemon you’ve got no idea of what a real glare is), so I returned his gaze levelly until he broke eye contact.
‘Typical meatbag35 behaviour,’ he sneered, failing miserably to regain any dignity. ‘Just trample on anything you don’t understand. You’re no better than the orks.’ Considering he was surrounded by heavily armed Valhallans it wasn’t exactly the most tactful thing he might have said, but to their credit the troopers continued working with undiminished efficiency, merely breaking off for a second to stare sullenly at him. He must have realised he’d overstepped the mark, though, because he was quiet after that, apart from occasional barely audible mutterings about meatbag barbarians.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ I reassured him, ‘we’re not destroying anything.’ Not from choice, mind, but if the necron architecture I’d come across before was anything to go by the strange black stone would simply be too resilient to be seriously damaged by the meagre quantities of explosive we had at our disposal. ‘We’re merely sealing it off as a precaution. Once the refinery’s safe you can grub around down here to your heart’s content.’ Just so long as I was at least a sector away by that point. Logash still looked sulky, but slightly mollified.
‘Fire in the hole!’ Magot bellowed, with rather too much relish for my liking, and we retreated to what I hoped would be a safe distance before she hit the detonator.
The explosion was satisfactorily loud, bringing down a chunk of the corridor ceiling, which proved to be composed of cubical blocks of the strange black stone roughly the length of my forearm. They tumbled down in disarray, followed by chunks of ice and bedrock that formed a solid-looking seal over the mouth of the corridor, reducing the ambull run we’d been following, to half its original width for a dozen paces or so.
‘Shady!’ Magot said, with evident satisfaction. ‘I’d like to see anything get past that.’
‘No you wouldn’t,’ I said. Solid as the blockage seemed, if there really were necrons beyond it they wouldn’t take long to dig their way out. Those metal bodies were tireless and implacable, their weapons and equipment so powerful they made the most sophisticated toys of the Adeptus Mechanicus look like sharpened sticks. I forced the image of ancient horrors out of my mind again.
