Choose Your Enemies, page 7
‘Understood,’ Grifen acknowledged. ‘Pull back as soon as you can. We’ll vox a request to be met by a medicae team as soon as we get topside again, to be on the safe side.’
‘Good call,’ I said, somewhat comforted by the fact that if whatever was causing the smell didn’t turn out to be immediately lethal, and whoever or whatever was lurking down here didn’t finish the job for it the moment they got the chance, the odds of me escaping any lingering ill effects had just substantially increased. Not to mention adding incrementally to the illusion that I cared about the troopers watching my back. Encouraged, I returned my attention to the matter at hand. ‘Can you hear that?’ I asked Jurgen.
He nodded. ‘Sounds like voices. Can’t make out what they’re saying, though.’
‘Me neither,’ I admitted, keeping my own as low as I could. A faint murmuration was echoing through the tunnels, still muted, but undeniably growing in volume. When it first started I couldn’t have said, distracted by my conversation with Grifen, the sense-dulling effects of whatever was lingering in the atmosphere down here – or, probably, both. But it was definitely there.
I remained still, listening intently, all my old underhiver’s instincts rushing to the fore. The echoes were overlapping, distorted by the tunnel walls, but there were clearly a number of voices – how many I couldn’t discern. More than me and Jurgen, though, that was for sure. Probably more than the command squad too, if only because, in my experience, when things decide to go wrong they never do so by halves.
‘At least a dozen,’ I concluded after a moment, resolving to err a little on the pessimistic side, as any subsequent surprises were more likely to be relatively encouraging. It was hard to be sure, though, as the sound was curiously uniform, rather than the choppy gabble of overlapping conversations you normally get when a large number of people have been herded together in a confined space. Perhaps because of the way the peculiar scent and the muted glow surrounding us were dulling my senses, it sounded almost soothing, like the gentle wash of waves on a beach.
‘We’re pressing on,’ I voxed Grifen after a moment. I could see no good reason to linger here any longer, and the sooner we found out what we were facing the sooner Jurgen and I could make our way back to the surface, citing the need to report back to Kasteen, while her platoon took care of whatever little surprises the eldar had waiting down here.
Which would have been fine, except that the surprise, when it came, was to change the entire situation, pitching us into a battle more desperate than I could have imagined.
SIX
The light suffusing the tunnels intensified by almost imperceptible increments as we went on, which I found a mixed blessing to say the least. On the one hand we could see where we were going, and were able to make better time, but on the other we’d be easier to spot if our shadowy enemies had left any sentries behind. Moreover, the more I could see of our surroundings, the more uneasy I became. Though the cleft we followed was undeniably a natural formation, the floor and walls too rough to be artificial, the sharp, jagged edges I would have expected to see were missing, every undulation smooth and rounded beneath the soles of my boots, or brushing smoothly against the sleeve of my greatcoat. That simply wasn’t natural, but whether the effect had been achieved by tools and long labour, or by more sinister means like warpcraft, I couldn’t imagine. From time to time the path we followed skirted deep clefts in the earth, clinging to narrow ledges, from which carelessly dislodged pebbles clattered into measureless depths. Every time this happened I tensed, expecting the faint shadow of whoever or whatever we pursued to pause, notice our presence and retaliate in some fashion, but they never did, simply hurrying on ahead completely oblivious to our presence.
Perhaps any noise we made was simply masked by the sound in the distance, which continued to grow in intensity, rising and falling, insinuating itself gradually into my brain as though the rock itself were infused with it. Intricate harmonies intertwined with one another, and it gradually began to dawn on me that it wasn’t speech I was listening to at all, but some kind of choral music.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Jurgen took my arm as I stumbled, light-headed from the intoxicating scent and on the verge of getting lost in the complexities of the melody, almost pitching myself headlong into the abyss. As he did so the sound changed abruptly. Suddenly it seemed sinister, greedy, the melodic runs twining around one another like a nest of hissing serpents. I shook my head, clearing it, inhaling the unusually welcome odour of his seldom-changed socks as though it were pure oxygen.
‘That singing was starting to get to me,’ I admitted. There was definitely something hypnotic about it, almost predatory, and my sense of unease grew exponentially.
My aide nodded, with a grimace of distaste. ‘Sounds like ice weasels on heat,’ he said, something I was quite willing to take his word for.[51] The way my perceptions had so suddenly changed could have only one explanation: the sound which had so beguiled me was somehow linked to the warp, and I was now close enough to Jurgen to be reaping the benefits of his protective aura. That thought shivered its way down my spine like liquid ice, and I tapped the comm-bead in my ear again, on the verge of transmitting a warning to everyone else down here.
Then I hesitated. How could I warn Grifen and the others we were facing some warp-spawned horror without exposing Jurgen’s peculiar gift – something Amberley would take a very dim view of. Things got sticky enough if I was a bit late for a dinner engagement,[52] so her reaction to having her most valuable and secret asset exposed was something I really didn’t want to contemplate. If my suspicions were true, the only way I could plausibly claim to know about it was if I’d witnessed some piece of warpcraft at first hand.
Not a comforting thought, but it made the necessity of finding out exactly what we were up against even more urgent.
I took a deep breath, almost regretting it given how close I was still standing to my aide, and slowed my hammering heart. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s find out who’s strangling the cats.’
Jurgen nodded, looking faintly bemused, but at least didn’t ask which cats and which tunnel they were lurking down, as I’d half suspected he would the moment I’d voiced the metaphor.
‘At least they’ll shut up if we shoot them,’ he said, pragmatic as always, and I found myself nodding in agreement. Right now, with that infernal dirge gnawing at my synapses, the suggestion seemed to have a lot going for it. Of course chanting and warpcraft tended to go together like salt grox and a bap, so the sooner we found out what was going on and disrupted it – or, better still, sent a couple of squads of Grifen’s people in to disrupt it while I called out encouraging platitudes from a safe distance – the better.
‘Right,’ I said, pausing only to check my chainsword once again, being reassured to find it still loose enough in the scabbard for a fast draw and the speed selector already flicked over to maximum revs. ‘Let’s go and put a stop to this.’
A few hundred metres further on, we rounded another gentle curve in the rock wall to find ourselves facing the entrance to a cavern. Clearly once a natural cleft in the side of the tunnel – which continued on into the distance towards Emperor knew what – it had been enlarged and elaborated into an organic-seeming orifice, decorated with carvings which positively oozed sensual decadence.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to bristle. I’d seen its like on Adumbria, and in a few other secret corners of the galaxy where the decadent minions of the Great Enemy gathered to worship their god of excess and depravity. All at once I remembered where I’d smelled that cloying scent before, in the temples of Slaanesh I’d had an invariably reluctant hand in cleansing. We walked illuminated by the flickering pastel light that spilled from the cleft ahead of us.
Which undoubtedly explained why the shade of Emeli had begun to slither into my dreams again of late, although up until then I’d been putting it down to Kasteen’s remark about our time on Adumbria during the briefing a few days before. With a shrine to her patron power pulsing beneath our feet like a malignant tumour in the bowels of the mine, it was hardly surprising that its psychic influence would seep out, looking for some way to manifest itself.[53]
I tapped the comm-bead in my ear, heedless of my earlier scruples. This was evidence of heresy no one could have missed; moreover, it was an immediate threat which had to be contained. In my experience, chanting in temples full of heretics never ended well, particularly for the chanters – which only went to show how barmy they were to begin with.
‘Cain to all squads,’ I voxed, keeping the tremor of bowel-clenching terror out of my voice with a little more effort than usual, ‘home in on my signal. Contact with heretics, repeat, heretics, invoking warpcraft. I need backup and a priest ASAP. Respond.’
I listened hopefully, but heard nothing beyond the dispiriting hiss of static. It seemed the twisting tunnels had put too much rock between us and the command squad’s vox-relay for my signal to get through, although the absence of an answer didn’t necessarily mean that no one else had heard it – a faint hope I clung to even in the face of reason assuring me it was absurd. Grifen was good at what she did, though, and was bound to send someone to find out what had happened to us after a while. I just had to hope Jurgen and I would still be in one piece when they turned up.
‘No answer?’ Jurgen asked after a moment, although if there had been he would have heard it in his own earpiece[54] at the same time as me.
I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Looks like we’re on our own.’
‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Jurgen said, truthfully enough, with a phlegmatic shrug. ‘Probably won’t be the last one, either.’ Which, given the way our lives had been so far, was a sucker bet if ever I’d heard one.
Taking heart from his obvious assumption that we’d survive this little setback, as we had done so many others, I drew my chainsword and pressed the activator, the sound of the weapon powering up masked by the chanting. Though every instinct I possessed was urging me to turn and flee, my rational mind was prevailing – at least for the nonce, although I must own in all honesty that it was a close-run thing. There was simply no telling what the heretics were up to, which meant at least getting a good look before making a run for it.
‘You’re not wrong there,’ I agreed, peering cautiously round the edge of the cleft. The cavern was a large one, I could tell as much by the way the voices echoed, but beyond that I couldn’t discern a thing. The pale light distorted everything, sight and sound, shining through an obscenely shaped hole at the end of a short connecting tunnel, the walls of which had been embellished by carvings I was careful not to look at too closely. I beckoned for Jurgen to follow me. ‘Stay close.’ The closer the better, if I was to receive the second-hand benefit of his gift. ‘And keep the melta handy.’
‘Already am, sir,’ he assured me, moving up to take point, the clumsy heavy weapon aimed down the passageway ahead of us. I followed on, the whining of my chainsword echoing back from the walls surrounding us like insects on a summer afternoon.
For a moment everything beyond Jurgen was occulted by his shoulders, then he moved aside as he reached the end of the tunnel, and I was able to see the whole cavern for myself. Even prepared as I thought I was, it came as a shock.
It was indeed a temple to the god of excess, and a long-established one too, if I was any judge. Easily the size of a scrumball pitch, the stalagmites and stalactites had been carved into representations of acts of debauchery which would have turned the stomach of a libertine, the depicted revellers presided over for the most part by a curious androgynous figure.[55] It was hard to be sure, though, as my eyes glanced from it like a las-bolt from the skull of an ork.[56] Several other tunnel mouths were visible around the walls, all of them embellished in the manner of the one we’d just entered by. Towards the middle of the roughly circular space, richly ornamented rugs and carpets had been spread, their colours dulled by the dust and detritus of the mine. On them were scattered pillows and cushions, chaises and beds, all occupied by people in various stages of undress. Those most fully clothed were generally wearing the kind of utility garments I’d seen most often on the mine workers I’d come across, although others were partially clad in the manner of Administratum adepts, household servants, minor members of the local nobility and, inevitably, a few representatives of the local defence force. No wonder they’d been so frakking useless. I rapidly lost count of their numbers, and for all I knew there were at least as many again lurking in the more dimly lit shadows of the cavern.
Strangely, whatever debauched practices they were indulging in, every single one of them was chanting as they did it, producing the sound which had brought Jurgen and I there in the first place – though how they found the breath to spare was beyond me.
The light we’d followed came from a glowing ball of energy, rotating slowly above the magister of the coven, who seemed to be directing the chant; now and then a tendril of it would flicker down, stroking lazily across the bodies of the orgiasts below, apparently drawing fresh sustenance from the contact. I felt an instinctive surge of revulsion at the sight, which reminded me of nothing so much as a jellyfish whose dangling tendrils provided it with food.
‘That’s not right,’ Jurgen said, reacting to the sight in his usual straightforward manner. He braced the melta. ‘Want me to take a crack at it?’
I hesitated. There was no telling what effect the ravening blast of thermal energy might have on the strange, pulsating sphere, but doing nothing was hardly an option either. Even as I watched, the air seemed to ripple around it – then an arm appeared, somehow managing to seem shapely and sensual despite ending in a claw a crab would envy. A shoulder followed it, then a head and torso, curiously feminine despite the chitinous exoskeleton partially covering it. A chorus of welcome and delight swept across the summoners, while their leader abased himself before the abomination taking form in front of him.
I must admit, the surge of horrified disgust I felt at the sight of the thing was partially eclipsed by one of relief: whatever this warp-spawned monstrosity was, it wasn’t Emeli, whose daemonic form was far too deeply etched on my memory not to have been recognised at once.
‘Fire!’ I instructed, squeezing off a few shots with my laspistol at the heart of the vortex as I spoke, and closing my eyes as I did so. It didn’t do a whole lot for my accuracy, of course, but did prevent me from being dazzled by the flash of actinic light from the melta as Jurgen obeyed the instruction with enthusiasm. The thing shrieked, the cultists stopped whatever it was they were doing, and a ululating howl of anger replaced the intricate roundelay of their chanting. ‘Again!’
Our only chance, as I knew from previous encounters with denizens of the warp, was to prevent the thing from gaining a proper foothold in the material world, and the best way to do that was to inflict as much damage as we could on it before it managed to materialise completely.
‘Sorry, sir.’ My aide dropped the heavy weapon, reaching for his lasgun even before it hit the floor. ‘It’s frakked. Lucky to have got even one shot off before it shorted.’ And, indeed, sparks were still dancing around the rent the eldar Guardian’s chainsword had gouged in the melta’s casing.
‘Jurgen.’ I became abruptly aware that while our attention was on the daemon the cultists had begun to react to our presence, and not with glad cries of welcome either. ‘Pull back.’ A small tidal wave of degenerate humanity was surging towards us, brandishing what makeshift weapons they could find,[57] and a small preliminary volley of thrown rocks pattered around our feet.
‘Very good, sir.’ My aide glanced around us. ‘Pull back to where, exactly?’
Outlying elements of the crowd were already appearing behind us, confirming my guess that there had been others elsewhere in the cavern when we arrived, although given the spectacle in the middle of it we can hardly be blamed for having failed to notice them at the time.
‘Good question,’ I conceded, feeling more than a little foolish. ‘Back to the tunnel we came in by. We’ll have to clear the way first, though.’
‘Clearing the way now,’ Jurgen said, unleashing a hail of las-bolts into the tide of howling insanity closing in around us. ‘But it’s not helping much.’
‘Indeed,’ I agreed, backing into the short corridor he’d managed to open in the surrounding bodies. It was already closing up around us like a healing wound, fresh fanatics hurling themselves into the gap made by their fallen fellow acolytes, leaving us almost as far from the tunnel we’d entered by as before. I swung the chainsword through a standard defensive pattern, feeling the teeth bite as the front rank closed to striking distance, reaping a gruesome harvest of viscera and blood – but still they came on. I squeezed the trigger of my laspistol, and a screaming face, so distorted with bloodlust that the gender of its owner was indeterminate, exploded like an offal-packed balloon.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Jurgen said, flicking the selector of his lasgun to full auto. He swung it in a short, las-bolt-spitting arc, felling a swathe of our attackers as they surged forwards, but as before there were always more to replace them; it was like punching holes in a river.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ I agreed, feeling our backs touch, our instinctive rapport in situations like this taking over without conscious thought by either of us. I risked a glance at the claw-handed, bird-footed daemon, which by now had come fully through into the real world, but which for the moment seemed happy enough dismembering a few of the cultists who had rushed to embrace it. Too busy with trying to fend off its acolytes to get a good shot at it, I nevertheless found myself unable to resist the horror-induced impulse to send a couple of las-bolts in its direction.
