Caves of Ice, page 7
I was more at ease down here than any of my companions with the possible exception of Jurgen, who simply accepted the situation as he did everything else, with taciturn stoicism. These tunnels were different from the ones I was used to, however. They turned and meandered apparently at random, with innumerable branching corridors which came to a dead end or turned back on themselves to rejoin the one we’d just left, or split into further radial passageways. I had several occasions to thank the Emperor for my sense of direction, without it I’d have been disorientated within moments, but the subconscious instinct which lets me know roughly where I am and how far I’ve come in an underground environment proved as reliable as ever.
‘It’s a frakking maze down here,’ one of the troopers, Drere I think, muttered under her breath. Grifen silenced her with a few well-chosen words, in the manner of sergeants the length and breadth of the galaxy. Logash was travelling in the middle of the group next to me, as I hoped to keep a respectable number of heavily-armed troopers between me and the creature whichever direction it approached from. Logash agreed, heedless of the sergeant’s admonishment.
‘Surprisingly extensive for so recent an excavation,’ he added. Just then the palms of my hands started tingling, in the way they do when my subconscious warns me of something my forebrain has yet to grasp.
‘How recent?’ I asked. Logash pointed out something on the screen of the auspex, which I couldn’t see clearly.
‘A few weeks,’ he said. ‘A couple of months at the most.’ In other words, about the same time the orks turned up, and that was just too much of a coincidence. Not that I believed for a moment it was some kind of squig[24] we were after. The chances of that were extremely remote, as anything the greenskins had brought with them would have arrived at the same co-ordinates. But the space hulk which had brought them to the system (and, to my intense relief, dropped back into the warp again within hours) could have carried any number of other horrors in its bowels, and if that were so it wasn’t unlikely that something else had seized the opportunity to make planetfall at the same time.
I made a mental note to ask Quintus to look through the sensor logs of the refinery’s orbital traffic control system when we got back. The chances were the blaze of warp energy emitted by the hulk’s emergence, a thousand times stronger than that of a starship, would have swamped them, but there might be a clue there we could disentangle given time.
Any further opportunity I might have had to muse on the matter was abruptly curtailed as I felt a faint tremor through the soles of my boots. My palms tingled again, foreboding flooding through me. The narrow passageway seemed even more claustrophobic than before, although that’s not a sensation I’m normally familiar with either. The faint tremor intensified, and I stopped trying to identify it. I felt a yielding impact against my shoulder blades as Grifen walked into me, and halted in her turn.
‘Commissar? What is it?’ she asked.
‘Quiet!’ I looked back and forth down the tunnel, craning my neck to see as best I could past the troopers on either side of me. The light from our luminators receded in both directions, still striking dazzling highlights from the deep blue surface of the ice around us. ‘Something’s coming!’
‘Nothing here,’ Vorhees said, his voice crackling over the comm-net from a hundred metres or so up the tunnel.
‘Nothing back here either,’ Private Hail chipped in, her voice tense. I can’t say I blame her for that, the rearguard is the second most vulnerable position in the column. Everyone stared at me, probably wondering whether the commissar had gone bonkers. Except for Jurgen of course, who had doubtlessly made up his mind on that score years before. But all my hiver’s instincts insisted I was right, something was coming, even if we hadn’t seen it yet...
Sudden understanding punched me in the gut. The creature we were hunting was a burrower! It didn’t need to come at us along an existing passageway. No doubt it had detected our presence in some way, probably picking up the vibrations of our footfalls, and was heading straight towards us by the most direct route.
‘Jurgen,’ I shouted. ‘Give us some elbow room!’ Divining my intentions the troopers nearest to us scattered back along the passageway. Logash was hauled away protesting by Grifen, who couldn’t be bothered trying to explain. His voice was drowned out abruptly by the hiss of the melta as Jurgen fired at the wall, instantly flashing a dozen cubic metres of ice into steam, which condensed almost instantly in the subzero temperatures, filling the narrow passageway with mist.
He was just in time, too. An instant later the newly frozen wall burst in on us in a hail of glittering ice shards, and the living nightmare I’d encountered before was among us.
By sheer foul luck I was the closest to it, and I barely had time to draw a weapon before it was upon me. This close up a gun would have been all but useless, so I drew my chainsword almost without thinking, and made a block with the instinctive lack of thought that comes from assiduous practice. It was lucky I had. An impossibly long arm, tipped with the talons I’d glimpsed before, swung at me as I thumbed the selector to maximum speed. It would probably have disembowelled me if I hadn’t deflected the blow. The blade whined, cutting deep through plates of chitin which wouldn’t have seemed out of place on a tyranid, and the thing howled with rage and pain.
I was vaguely aware of Jurgen standing aside to make room for some of the other troopers, whose barrel-mounted luminators spot-lit the confrontation. They were hoping they could get in a shot which wouldn’t vaporise me along with the monster I fought, but the hope was a vain one. We were locked in too close, and circling too fast, for anyone to have a hope of getting a clear line of fire.
(It’s moments like this, incidentally, which point up the wisdom of fostering the illusion that I cared about the common troopers. I have no doubt at all that, were I the type of commissar who relies on intimidation rather than respect to get the job done, and there are all too many of those around, most of the grunts would have taken the shot anyway and cheerfully reported that the creature got me first. It’s a lesson I try to pass on to my cadets, in the hope that the less bone-headed among them might actually get to enjoy a reasonably lengthy career, but it’s probably a wasted effort.)
I drove in under the thing’s barrel chest, which barely came up to my chin, and tried to avoid the huge mandibles which snapped at my face as I ducked. Bizarrely the thing’s unnaturally long arms were jointed about two-thirds of the way up its length, so the closer in to it I remained the harder it would be for it to reach me. Well that suited me fine. I swung the humming blade at its thorax, feeling the teeth bite home, and was rewarded with a spray of ichor and foul-smelling viscera. It screamed again, opening the mandibles impossibly widely, and bringing its head down to snap at me.
That was precisely what I’d been hoping for. The tactic worked well on some of the larger tyranid bio-forms, so I was ready and waiting, thrusting the tip of my trusty chainsword up through the open maw to chew its way contentedly through what passed for the creature’s brain. I snatched my hand away quickly, fearing the reflex closing of those terrible jaws, and opening up a wide gash which split the side of its head open from the inside. A jet of blood and cerebral fluid sprayed the wall, which hardened to ice within seconds.
That was enough; the creature fell, making me scramble backwards in an undignified fashion to get out of the way, crashing into the ice at my feet. Thin flakes of powdered ice, condensed from the steam, rose into the air, and fluoresced like miniature galaxies in the light from our luminators.
‘That was amazing,’ Grifen said, clearly torn between protocol and the urge to pat me on the back. The murmur of voices among the troopers told me that she wasn’t the only one to be impressed. Only Logash was looking at the creature rather than me, his face an almost comical mask of confusion.
‘There’s your specimen,’ I told him, returning my trusty chainsword to its scabbard. ‘Do you think you can identify it?’
‘It’s an ambull’ he said, shaking his head in bafflement. ‘But it can’t be. They’re native to Luther Macintyre IX...’
‘Never heard of it,’ I said. ‘But it wouldn’t be the first time a species jumped planets.’
‘That’s not the point. Ambull colonies are already known on dozens of worlds.’ The young tech-priest looked completely bewildered. ‘But they’re all desert-dwellers, like their native stock. This creature shouldn’t be on an iceworld at all.’
‘Maybe it got lost,’ one of the troopers suggested. His comment was accompanied by derisive laughter from his squad mates. I didn’t join in. Something was badly wrong here, that much was evident, even without my tingling palms to underline the fact. And as I looked at the creature I’d slain, I noticed something else that wasn’t quite right.
‘Where are the lasgun wounds?’ Jurgen asked, putting my thought into words an instant before I could. ‘I definitely saw you hit it the last time...’
‘It’s a different one,’ I said, looking to Logash for confirmation. ‘That means there must be another one of these things down here with us.’
‘More likely several,’ he confirmed eagerly. ‘Ambulls tend to form extended social groups.’
Better and better, I thought sourly. But if only I’d known, there was far worse still to come.
EDITORIAL NOTE:
Thanks to the obsessive record-keeping of the Administratum it’s possible to extricate practically any piece of information you may desire, however trivial, from the depths of the Imperial archives. That is, if you can actually find what you’re looking for among the impenetrable thickets of worthless verbiage surrounding it. Suffice it to say that locating the minutes of the meeting between Kasteen and the officials in charge of the refinery complex was frustrating, to say the least, but on balance it was probably worth the effort, especially as the transcript provides some vital background information without which Cain’s account of later events can seem a little confusing.
The minutes were taken by Scrivener Quintus, whose somewhat idiosyncratic recording style leads me to suspect that he never expected anyone to actually read them.
Minutes of the meeting of the Committee for the Defence and Preservation of Simia Orichalcae From the Orkish Incursion (by the Grace of His Majesty), convened this day 648.932 M41 (just too early for a decent breakfast.)
Those Present:
Colonel Regina Kasteen of the 597th Valhallan, a fair and gallant warrior, acting military governor of the Simia Orichalcae system.
Major Ruput Broklaw, her second in command, equally gallant but not remotely as fair.
Artur Morel, professional hole-grubber.
Magos Vinkel Ernulph, senior tech-priest, with too much metal where his brain should be.
Codicier Marum Pryke, the Emperor’s gift to the Administratum, at least in her own mind.
Me.
Assorted sycophants and hangers-on.
Order of Business:
Defence of the refinery (actually the only thing we discussed.)
Proceedings:
Colonel Kasteen called the meeting to order. Then she called it to order again. Major Broklaw fired his bolt pistol into the ceiling, and the meeting came to order.
Colonel Kasteen put forward a plan for disabling the gargant, and hopefully eliminating a significant number of the besieging orks into the bargain. This relied on the fact that the mining tunnels extended some way beyond the perimeter of the refinery proper; given the immense weight of the thing it should be possible to collapse the galleries underneath it with sufficient quantities of explosive.
Magos Ernulph wanted to know just how close to the refinery the explosion would be, pointing out that the promethium tanks were almost full, and that if things went wrong the entire refinery could be reduced to a smoking crater.
Major Broklaw pointed out helpfully that in that case none of us would be around to complain about it.
Codicier Pryke raised the point that a significant credit value was attached to this installation, and that its destruction would result in a 0.017 per cent fluctuation in the mean commerce averages of the sector. She went on to suggest that an alternative strategy should be found. Colonel Kasteen said she was welcome to go outside and ask the orks to go away if she thought that would help.
Morel offered the assistance of his miners in determining the optimum placement of the explosive charges, citing their expertise with the local geology, which the colonel appreciated (she has a very nice smile.)
As no one had any other suggestions for disabling the gargant, Ernulph conceded that we might as well blow the place up ourselves before the orks do it.
I raised the matter of Commissar Cain and his scouting party, asking how they were likely to fare if they were still underground when the mine was blown up. Kasteen and Broklaw evinced a degree of concern on this point, admitting that their chances of survival under those circumstances would be slim. Broklaw added that he was sure they’d be back by then, as the commissar had something of a knack for avoiding such difficulties. I suggested voxing them with a warning, but apparently they were too deep underground now to get a message through.
No doubt wherever he was, though, he’d be having a better time of it than we are.
SIX
I’m sure I wasn’t alone in brooding over Logash’s off-hand announcement as we penetrated deeper into the maze of passages that made up the ambull den. The thought that we shared these tunnels with an indeterminate number of heavily-armoured predators wasn’t exactly comforting, and we pressed on with renewed caution. The labyrinth was remarkably extensive, as the tech-priest had noted; if we’d had to walk every metre of it we’d still have been down there when the Emperor stepped off the throne[25], but fortunately that wasn’t going to be necessary. Between my hiver’s instincts, Logash’s knowledge of xenology, and the readings of his auspex we were beginning to get a pretty good idea of the layout of the place.
‘Any idea how many more of those things there are down here?’ I asked him, once I was sure we were out of earshot of any of the troopers (except Jurgen, of course, whose discretion I knew I could rely on absolutely). No point in spooking them any further if the answer was as bad as I feared. Logash looked pensive for a moment, as though communing with some inner voice. (Which he may well have been, I’ve known plenty of tech-priests with augmetic data stores plugged into what’s left of their brains. But he may just have had indigestion.)
‘Judging by the extent of the tunnel system, and assuming that your guess they arrived on the same space hulk as the orks is correct...’ he began. (Which it wasn’t, as we were shortly to find out, but the timing was the same so it didn’t make any practical difference in the end.) He was interrupted by a fusillade of lasgun fire further down the tunnel, and a babble of shouting voices that overlapped into nothing but multitudinous echoes in the confined and twisting tunnels. I activated my comm-bead.
‘Grifen. What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Contact. Another creature.’ Her voice was crisp and steady, so the situation seemed under control. I hurried forward, not wanting to be too far from the bulk of our firepower if any more of the beasts were attracted to the sounds of combat.
‘No more than half a dozen,’ Logash finished, panting in my wake. No doubt he felt the same urge, only stronger than I did, as he was the only member of our party who was completely unarmed. Whether he still had enough meat on him to actually interest an ambull was a moot point, of course, but I declined to consider it at the time. ‘Probably fewer by now,’ he added, as the firing stopped.
Well, that was a relief. These creatures weren’t all that tough, compared to some of the things I’d faced, and the news that we weren’t likely to run into too many more of them was undeniably welcome.
The carcass of our latest victim was lying a few metres further on in a wider tunnel that opened out from the one we followed. It was surrounded by chattering troopers and riddled with the cauterised craters of las-bolt impacts. Vorhees was breathing heavily, trembling from the reaction, and shrugging off the attentions of the squad medic. The front of his flak armour was deeply scored, visible through the rents in his greatcoat. I gathered from the conversations around me that the ambull had just managed to get within arms’ reach of him before he finally succeeded in dropping it.
‘Well done,’ I said, clapping him on the back; it never hurt to show the troopers I cared – even if I didn’t. He grinned weakly at me.
‘Persistent little frakkers, aren’t they sir?’ I nodded.
‘Take a bit of putting down,’ I agreed. Which of course indirectly reminded everyone I’d taken mine down hand-to-hand. I glanced at the carcass, wondering if it was the one I’d shot before, but Vorhees had made such a mess of it blazing away on full auto that there wasn’t really enough left intact to tell.
‘Fast, too,’ Vorhees agreed. It seemed that the thing had come at him along the main tunnel almost as soon as he’d entered it. He’d just been able to bring his weapon up before it was on him.
‘Interesting,’ Logash said. He was looking at the walls of the tunnel, and messing around with his auspex again. After a moment he turned back to me. ‘I think we’ve found one of the main runs.’ Well it certainly seemed a lot wider than the tunnels we’d been following before.
‘Which means?’ I asked. The tech-priest shrugged, his white robe beginning to look distinctly grubby now, I noticed. Hardly the most practical garment for tunnel fighting, but evidently it hadn’t occurred to him to get changed before setting out. Either that or he didn’t have anything else to wear in any case.
‘The main chamber should be at one end of this passageway.’ He glanced uncertainly up and down it. I considered his words carefully.
‘Main chamber meaning...?’ I asked. Logash responded with the eagerness of the enthusiast.
