Caves of Ice, page 8
‘The central nesting site, or den. Ambulls are social creatures, with strong familial instincts, and tend to congregate when not out hunting or...’
‘Vorhees,’ I said. ‘Which direction did the creature come from?’ Logash looked a little hurt at being abruptly cut off (just as he felt he was getting to the interesting bit no doubt). The trooper jerked a thumb past the rapidly cooling chunk of meat, which was now surrounded by a garnet-coloured nimbus of frozen blood.
‘That way,’ he indicated. My sense of direction kicked in, and I absently noted that it was almost directly towards the ork siege lines. A sense of grim foreboding settled across my shoulders.
‘If it was returning to the lair it would have been carrying prey of some kind to share with the others,’ Logash chipped in helpfully.
The pool of light from our luminators revealed nothing apart from the dismembered ambull. There was the answer. We weren’t going to be able to complete our reconnaissance mission without passing through a cavern full of these monstrosities. Wonderful. But bowel-clenching as the prospect appeared, I liked the idea of a horde of orks pouring through these tunnels to slaughter the lot of us even less.
‘Close up,’ I ordered. ‘Be ready to concentrate your firepower.’ Grifen nodded, and went to shout at Hail and Simla, who were blunting their combat knives by trying to hack the ambull’s head off. Up to that point I thought she’d been kidding about taking a trophy back with us, but it seemed at least two of her troopers had taken her literally.
‘Move out,’ she ordered. ‘By teams, covering the commissar and the cogboy[26].’ Logash showed considerably more common sense than hitherto by pretending he hadn’t heard her. I must confess to feeling a little better, though, knowing everyone else would be watching my back. (In case you were wondering why Grifen should care about my welfare, and Logash’s – I was deemed to be the best judge of the value of any intelligence we might gather, and Logash... well, let’s just say Kasteen didn’t want to have any more dealings with the Adeptus Mechanicus than she already did.)
So we moved out cautiously, heading towards the centre of the maze, our senses alert for any sign of movement in the darkness. We’d debated dousing a few of our luminators in the hope that we’d make ourselves less obvious, but according to Logash it wouldn’t make any difference as the creatures could see in the dark anyway. He started to explain how[27], but it made no sense to me and I soon stopped listening.
Second team still had the lead position. Grifen was already showing a veteran commander’s common sense when it came to hanging back enough to keep an objective eye on the whole squad, although Karta (the ASL[28] and corporal in charge of the fireteam) had rotated Vorhees back to where the medic could keep an eye on him, and had put Drere on point. It made a kind of sense, I suppose, as Vorhees was still pretty twitchy after his close encounter with the ambull, but I’d have been inclined to leave him where he was; if he was going to be trigger happy I’d rather have him where there was nothing but targets in front. I was behind him in any case though, so it was all one to me.
Jurgen, Logash and I trotted along in the middle, keeping a cautious distance between the leading team and the one covering our backs, because if either made contact I wanted to be well out of harm’s way. Of course I was still uneasily aware of the ambulls’ ability to carve their way straight through the ice to get at us, but I kept my ears open and my paranoia cranked up to maximum, and so far I hadn’t noticed any of the telltale vibrations which might betray the approach of another of the beasts.
‘So what do they taste like?’ Jurgen asked. I stopped tuning out Logash’s prattling to gather that his monologue on the subject of the ambulls’ life cycle, social structure, and habitat had finally yielded some useful information. Apparently there had been a number of attempts to domesticate the things as a handy source of meat on desert worlds[29].
‘Rather like grox, I’m told.’ Logash looked a little uncomfortable, and I clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘We’ll send a scavenging party back to recover the carcasses once we’ve cleaned out the nest.’ All the refinery had to offer in the way of cuisine was a dozen different varieties of soylens viridians, which had already begun to pall, despite being fresh from their own vats. Of course, we’d brought our own supplies along, but a nice fresh steak would lift my spirits nicely, I thought. Besides, the creatures had been eating the miners, so it seemed fair enough to return the compliment.
‘Good idea, sir,’ Jurgen said with relish. Logash looked a little green for someone so heavily augmented. Maybe he was a vegetarian, if he still bothered eating at all.
‘I can hear movement,’ Drere said, her voice slightly flattened by the comm-bead in my ear.
‘Close up. Prepare for contact.’ Grifen issued the order with calm authority, and I found myself at the centre of a small knot of troopers as first team caught up with us. We picked up our pace, fell in with them, and began closing on the lights from the luminators of second team.
‘There’s a cavern here.’ Drere’s voice tightened a little, the tension she must have felt transmitting itself through the gently hissing comm-bead in my ear.
‘Hold position,’ Karta said, his own voice calm, but with audible effort. ‘Wait for the rest of us.’
‘Confirm that,’ Drere said, a faint edge of relief entering her voice. The dancing lights ahead of us were closer together now, I thought, refracting more brightly through the crystal shards which rimed the irregular walls of the tunnel. ‘I’m not about to stick my... Emperor’s guts!’
A lasgun opened up, bright muzzle flashes strobing down the reflective tunnel, and the luminators ahead of us bobbed more wildly than before as their bearers broke into a run. We followed suit, our boot soles crunching on the ice crystals underfoot. Logash slipped from time to time as he lost traction. The Valhallans, of course, had no such difficulties, and I’d picked up enough expertise in running on ice from them over the years to avoid my own feet slithering out from under me. I drew my laspistol.
‘Janny!’ Vorhees shouted, and a second weapon opened up in support. A moment later there was a shriek which echoed through the tunnels, raising the hairs on my arms, and a howl of feedback through the comm-bead which made my teeth ache.
‘Medic! Trooper down!’ Karta yelled, and by that time the rest of us had reached the scene of the carnage. The tunnel had indeed opened out into a large central chamber, about thirty metres across, and with a handful of other passageways visibly piercing the walls at irregular intervals. Drere was down, steaming blood starting to freeze in a slick hard plate over a gaping wound in her torso. Her face was pinched and white from the shock. Vorhees stood over her, pouring lasfire into the monstrosity which had evidently inflicted the damage, driving it back, screaming in rage and frustration[30].
The cavern was a positive maelstrom of whirling bodies and wild firing. Luminator beams and las-bolts strobed as the troopers swung the muzzles of their weapons to meet the nearest perceived threat. It was no place for me, I decided, standing aside to let Grifen’s team join the mêlée. I held an arm across Logash’s chest as though I intended to keep him from harm. (In actual fact, of course, if one of the beasts had come anywhere near us it could have had him and been welcome; and if I’d known just how much trouble he was shortly to cause us I’d probably have thrown him to the closest and bidden it bon appetit.)
The reinforcements pitched in with a will, targeting the seething mass of enraged monstrosities which were boiling out of the shadows at us. There were too many to count, or at least that’s how it seemed at the time. When the ice chips finally settled it transpired that Logash’s estimate hadn’t been all that far out, with a mere five of the creatures stretched out on the floor. But if you had asked me to take a stab at the numbers amid all that confusion I’d probably have said dozens.
‘Pick your targets! Fire for effect!’ Grifen yelled, her actions matching her words. She squeezed the trigger methodically, placing single shots on the head of the nearest ambull with commendable accuracy, aiming for the eyes and maw. A las bolt burst against the roof of the thing’s mouth, blowing a large chunk of brain matter backwards which clung to the frozen wall, solidifying like an obscene outgrowth as the creature toppled backwards. It hit the floor with a concussion which I was certain I could hear even over the cacophony of combat.
‘Omnissiah protect us!’ Logash was shivering in shock, which surprised me with all that metal in him. Evidently looking at holos of exotic species in the comfort of his chambers was rather more fun than having the blood-soaked reality trying to tear his face off.
‘Over there. Eight o’clock.’ Jurgen swung his hand in a familiar gesture, lobbing a frag grenade over the heads of the nearest monsters to burst among the ones clustered at the back. (Juveniles just out of the nest, according to Logash when he had a chance to examine them, but they looked dangerous enough to me, pushing forward as maddened by bloodlust as any of the others we’d encountered.)
A scream to my right snapped my head round just in time to see a pair of hideous mandibles close around the arm of the medic with a loud crunching sound which spoke of broken bones or worse. As the creature lifted him off the ground I turned, chainsword shrieking, and leapt forward to lop through the distended jaw. He fell heavily, clutching his wounded arm, and scrabbled for a self-injector from his pouch with his uninjured hand. That should have been enough to establish my participation in the battle and allow me to go back to babysitting Logash, but of course the thing came at me. I swung the weapon again, cursing myself for my stupidity. Jurgen hefted the melta uncertainly, unable to get a shot without killing as many of us as the creatures, and I had a moment to wonder if I’d ever get the chance to suggest he settle for something a little more manageable like a hellgun or a flamer next time. Then a line of bloody craters stitched themselves across the ambull’s chest.
‘Thanks!’ I called to Karta, and administered the coup de grace to my staggering foe, lopping the head from its shoulders as it fell to its knees. (Probably unnecessarily, but it was a suitably theatrical gesture for a hero of the Imperium to make, and the surrounding troopers seemed to appreciate it.)
Abruptly I became aware of the sudden silence around us, was broken only by the ticking of the re-freezing ice and the groans of the wounded.
‘Casualties?’ I asked, playing up to my caring image. Grifen made a rapid assessment.
‘Two serious. A few cuts and bruises among the rest, but they’ll live.’ She turned her attention to the medic, who was treating Drere as best he could with his one good hand. He was assisted by a grim-faced Vorhees.
‘How is she?’ I asked, walking over to them.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Vorhees said flatly, clearly in no mood to accept any other outcome; the memory of him calling her given name as the fight started came back to me, and I smelled trouble. The nature of their relationship, clearly more than purely professional, was pretty obvious. And if she died he’d no doubt blame himself for not having been on point instead of her. Or Karta for switching their positions. Either way, it was clear his mind was no longer on the mission objectives. ‘Won’t she, doc?’[31]
‘Sure she will,’ the medic said, the doubt in his voice obvious to everyone but Vorhees. ‘Stick in an augmetic lung and a new liver, she’ll be good as new.’
Provided we got her back in time. I hesitated. Our mission was far from over, but we’d seen no sign of any ork presence in these tunnels, and the greenskins weren’t exactly subtle. Come to that, they wouldn’t have left any ambulls alive down here either. Chances were the tunnel system was fully secure, and there was nothing more to be gained by completing the sweep.
On the other hand, I haven’t made it through to my second century by being complacent. We needed to be certain the orks didn’t know the tunnels were here, and even the slightest doubt could fatally undermine our plans for the defence of the refinery. But that certainty could only be bought with time; time Drere clearly didn’t have if we were going to get her back in time to save her life.
I hate choices like that. There are no good outcomes, all you can do is pick what seems to be the least bad, and so I dithered. The certainty of safety, or the potential loss of my carefully nurtured image as a leader who cared about the troopers he serves with? The illusion that I was one of them had saved my life many times as they repaid the loyalty they believed I held for them.
It was Jurgen who broke the deadlock in my vacillating mind. As instructed, he’d stuck close to Logash, who, predictably, was ignoring the carnage around him. He was now pottering around the chamber waving his auspex about and digging chunks of ice out of the walls with his augmetic fingers for reasons entirely beyond me.
‘Commissar. You’d better take a look at this.’ As usual my aide’s voice betrayed no excitement, but I knew him well enough to recognise the undercurrent of urgency in his tone. I walked over to the corner where the tech-priest was crouched, grubbing in the ice like a holidaying infant in the coastal sand.
‘What have you found?’ I asked, then got a good look over Logash’s shoulder and wished I hadn’t.
‘It appears to be a midden,’ he said, his voice curiously like a juve comparing scrumball statistics. He picked up a fragment of bone, which looked uncomfortably human in origin.
‘A what?’ Jurgen asked, his brow furrowing.
‘A spoil heap,’ Logash explained. ‘Ambulls are quite organised, disposing of their waste in a specific part of the den...’ I took a step backwards as it occurred to me just what the discolorations in the ice that he was so blithely digging through consisted of. The tech-priest prattled on. ‘With proper analysis we should be able to determine what they were eating...’
‘We know what they were eating. The miners.’ Grifen came over to join us, and lowered her voice. ‘Drere’s in a bad way, commissar. Do we go on, or go back?’ It was clear which alternative she preferred.
‘I doubt that would have represented a sufficient food source,’ Logash said, still digging, absently responding to the only part of her remark which interested him. He began to work something large out of the ice. ‘What have we here?’
‘It’s a skull,’ Jurgen responded helpfully, unable to identify a rhetorical question if one sat up and bit him. I glanced at it, idly wondering which of the luckless miners this was, then froze as something about the shape triggered warning bells in my mind. The cranium was low browed and heavy, the jaw prothogonous, and as Logash brushed the obscuring ice away jutting tusks became visible protruding from the lower mandible.
‘From an ork,’ I added unnecessarily.
So I had my answer. Whether or not the greenskins were aware of it, there was a way down into this labyrinth somewhere beyond their lines, and any other choice I might have made was now moot. I turned back to Grifen.
‘We go on,’ I said.
SEVEN
The next decision I had to make was the all-important one of how best to maintain morale. I didn’t think any of the troopers would actively defy a commissar, even Vorhees, whose concern for Drere looked like outweighing pretty much every other consideration, but simply abandoning our wounded wasn’t going to be an option. It would leave everyone demoralised, wondering if they’d be the next to be left to die.
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.
