by Rob Sanders
Occam allowed himself a moment as the carnage settled. Coiling up his power scourge and recovering his battered plasma gun, the strike master picked his way through the bodies. Drawing his bolt pistol, he thudded Stalker rounds into any body still quivering. As he did so, Occam saw that he was being watched by the Word Bearer.
‘We have come for you, brother,’ Occam told him.
‘You really haven’t,’ the Word Bearer told him, rasping through the ruin of his face.
Occam looked down at his plate and cloak. Perhaps it was his accent. Perhaps it was the meaningless sigils that were part of his disguise or the surface patches of scaled plate that had been torn up by the chainblade and were betraying the true colours of his Legion. Occam turned the bolt pistol on the Word Bearer.
‘What do you care?’ the strike master said. ‘You’re getting rescued.’
Scooping up the prisoner’s chains he threw them up to Phex and Malik, who unceremoniously hauled the Word Bearer up through the hatch. Holstering the pistol, Occam leapt up for the hatch and Malik’s offered gauntlet, the legionnaire helping to pull his strike master up onto the roof.
‘Sergeant,’ Occam said, changing his suit’s vox-channel. ‘The prisoner is in our possession. Status report?’
At that moment the ice shaft began to echo with the bleat of a distant alarm. When Hasdrubal finally returned the communication, his voice was all but drowned out by gunfire.
‘We’ve run into a few problems, strike master…’
κ
Slither
By the time the elevator car reached the operations level, all hell had broken loose. Klaxons carried through the thin air. The corridor floor was a rapids of fast-moving meltwater and fallen armoured bodies. Notaries and bonded servants splashed this way and that across junctions, while Battle Sisters in white plate created gauntlets and bottlenecks, filling the corridor with gouts of fiery brilliance from their flamers.
From around the corner, Occam saw Beta, Zeta and Theta appear. Blazing towards the elevator on their repulsors, they were clearly trying to escape gunfire. Zeta was aflame. Then came the sergeant and Quoda. While the sorcerer held his plasma gun in one hand, he supported Hasdrubal in the other, guiding him around the corner and pushing him on towards the rising elevator car. As the sergeant got closer it became clear that the faceplate of his helm had been smashed. His optics were cracked and his grille an ugly mess. The helm was sparking, as though it had been hit by a glancing bolt round or swipe of a chainblade. From the way Quoda was guiding him, the sergeant had clearly been blinded.
As the two made their desperate way up the corridor, they were followed by streams of flame licking their backs and bolt blasts sending up fountains in the meltwater deluge. Occam and Malik returned fire, sending a storm of plasma blasts back up the corridor that skimmed the wall. These and furious balls of energy unleashed by Autolicon Phex’s heavy weapon drove the Battle Sisters back behind the cover of corners.
Several were suddenly blasted off their feet and into the junction, falling faceplate first into the shallow waters. As orbs of plasma blazed in the backs of the fallen Sisters, Arkan Reznor appeared behind them. He was holding his own plasma gun in one gauntlet and Ephron Hasdrubal’s in the other. Pumping plasma blasts back the way he had come, he turned and ran with powered steps towards the elevator. The corridor behind him became an inferno of flame as the Battle Sisters chasing him down closed with their quarry. Meltwater rained from the ceiling and streamed down the walls. For a moment, the warpsmith was lost in a haze of black steam until suddenly he appeared. Sliding through the meltwater torrent, Reznor was down on his side – the ice and water carrying the weight of his suit along until finally he entered the elevator car and hit the back wall with the soles of his armoured boots.
Quoda hit the crank, sending the car back up towards the entrance chamber.
‘Grenades and spare canisters,’ the strike master ordered, prompting Phex to start pulling melta bombs and plasma gun hydrogen flasks from his belt and hand them to Malik and Occam.
The strike master nodded and the three of them began priming melta bombs and hurling them up at the fast-approaching doorway to the cavern. They followed these with the hydrogen canisters.
‘Down,’ Occam ordered, lowering his head and prompting the legionnaires to drop through the ruined hatch and into the car with the others. As he dropped down himself, the detonations began. The walls of the shaft shook and fractured, while the freight car trembled, swinging on its cable and banging against the ice.
The legionnaires of the Redacted knelt down on the floor of the car with Reznor and the Word Bearer. Knowing what was coming, Reznor tried to shield the prisoner the best he could. Explosions and an intense wave of heat passed over the top of the car, followed by the flame of the exploding hydrogen canisters. The legionnaires felt the heat wash across their heads and their backs.
As the explosions died away, the warpsmith lifted his head to check the Word Bearer.
‘Are you hurt, brother?’ Reznor asked.
‘He knows,’ Occam informed the warpsmith across the vox, prompting Reznor to abandon the charade, pull his bolt pistol from his holster and put the muzzle under the Word Bearer’s chin.
‘I’ve got the prisoner,’ Occam said, scooping up his chains and standing up. ‘Quoda?’
The sorcerer looked down at the wretched Word Bearer and reached into the foetid recesses of the traitor’s mind.
‘Hatred,’ the sorcerer told Occam, reading the prisoner’s muddled thoughts. ‘Confusion. Pain – a lot of pain, both physical and spiritual.’
‘Not surprising,’ Reznor said, using the bolt pistol under the Word Bearer’s chin to get him up off the ground.
‘Well, that will be nothing compared to what we’ll do to him if he interferes with our objectives,’ Hasdrubal said, his gauntlet on the hilt of his multi-blade dagger.
‘I don’t think he’s in much of a condition to do that,’ the sorcerer Quoda said as the car shuddered up the shaft towards the open doorway.
‘Sergeant?’ Occam asked. ‘What about you?’
‘Can’t see anything,’ Hasdrubal admitted.
‘Don’t worry,’ the strike master told him. ‘You’re not missing much. Reznor, have your automata guide the sergeant. Phex, blast us a path. Malik, point. Warpsmith, you have the rear. Be ready for anything. Don’t stop until we’ve cleared the facility.’
As the car rocked by the melted doorway, Phex blasted away with his heavy plasma gun, lighting up the steam-shrouded stacks of the cavern.
‘Go!’ Occam commanded, sending his legionnaires out into the decimation. The Redacted slipped and slid down into the craters left behind by the melta bomb detonations. The hydrogen canisters had caused further destruction by knocking down stacks and setting fire to stasis-containers. As their shapes were detected in the black mist, the Battle Sisters holding the cavern opened fire.
Bolt blasts and fire streams erupted from all directions as Sisters fired upon the renegades from strategic hold points and as they exited elevator freight cars further around the cavern wall.
Taking cover in the craters and stepping through the flame-swathed and half-melted bodies of bonded servants and notaries, Malik led the way. He took the Redacted from cover to cover. Melted depressions. Half-demolished stacks. Large containers. While Malik dropped advancing Sisters with his expert aim and rocketing orbs of plasma, Phex moved up behind, blasted stacks apart to reveal Sisters in white, waiting in ambush.
Dragging the stumbling Word Bearer along on a short chain, Occam pulled the prisoner down close to the ground to avoid ricocheting bolt rounds and streams of blessed flame. Pumping balls of plasma between Malik and Phex, the strike master blasted fallen Sisters getting to their feet back into the floor of ice.
As Malik led them swiftly on, pushing through the havoc and confusion of the cavern-repository, Occam could hear the screams of dying Inquisitorial staff above the klaxons. He could also make out the rabid
calls of their ordo masters, intent on destroying the Word Bearers who they believed had mounted an assault on their temporary base of operations and were attempting to free their prisoner.
Out of the bank of black steam, Occam saw a white shape accompanied by the sound of thrashing metal teeth. Swinging a chainsword above her head, a Battle Sister charged towards him. Occam hauled the Word Bearer around and went to point his plasma gun, but Carcinus Quoda got there first. Swinging his force sceptre, he smacked the thrashing chainblade aside before sweeping the heavy, glowing crystal back. Charged with psychic power, the weapon smashed the broken Battle Sister off her feet and back through the mist.
Another came at the strike master and his prisoner from the other side, running around a large stack of crates. Some kind of officer, she carried a short power blade that hummed its vicious intent. Pulling the Word Bearer back around the other side, Occam blasted the oncoming Sister. As plasma balls blazed into her breastplate, she was knocked back and her lifeless armoured corpse came to a skidding, steaming halt before the strike master.
Looking behind, Occam saw that the scorched shape of Theta hovered before Hasdrubal, leading the way, while Beta and Zeta – their mechatendrils wrapped under his arms – guided the Alpha Legion sergeant through the wreckage, bodies and gunfire. Bringing up the rear was Arkan Reznor. He carried one plasma gun slung over his shoulder and held another empty weapon in his hand. Drawing his bolt pistol, he sent silenced Stalker rounds back at pursuing Battle Sisters. Pointing the weapon down at collapsed stacks of containment crates, the warpsmith shot at their stasis-field generators. Ruptured crates spilled their heretical contents, forcing Battle Sisters to retreat from the corruptive influence of such dangerous artefacts. Where unstable stasis fields crackled, merged and spread across the carnage, Battle Sisters were caught. Frozen in the struggling stasis fields, Reznor sent bolts their way. Frozen also, the rounds hovered before the Sisters, ready to end their lives as the fields collapsed.
Ducking beneath columns of flame, the Alpha Legionnaires changed their hydrogen canisters and pushed on through the havoc. Putting Sisters down with close-range energy blasts and stabbing slashes of his power dagger, Malik led them towards the cavern blast doors. As Phex blazed the pair of Sisters guarding the exit back into the scorched metal of the giant door, Occam knelt down.
‘Reznor,’ the strike master called, drawing the warpsmith up from behind. ‘Bypass the controls.’
As the warpsmith went to work on the blast door, the Alpha Legionnaires laid down a merciless hail of plasma, forcing the Battle Sisters back behind tracked transports undergoing maintenance.
‘Now, Reznor,’ Occam called to the struggling warpsmith, as bolt rounds sparked spectacularly off the blast door.
‘It’s encoded,’ Reznor called.
‘Now, warpsmith,’ Occam roared, pulling the Word Bearer behind him and emptying his plasma gun at the Battle Sisters.
‘Got it,’ Reznor said finally as the blast doors began rumbling aside.
‘Go!’ Occam called, pushing his prisoner out into the freezing storm. As one by one the legionnaires struck out across the ice, they became aware of lamps bleeding through the storm.
‘Vehicle,’ Malik called, prompting Phex to throw him a melta bomb. Priming the grenade, Occam slid it across the ice and under the oncoming armoured transport. With a flash, the front of the vehicle was turned to dribbling slag. As screaming Sisters opened the side door and fell out of the vehicle, the legionnaires trudged past without mercy and became one with the black storm.
‘Where is it?’
‘Port-side aft,’ Arkan Reznor reported from one of the Dreadclaw’s runescreens. ‘Coming up fast.’
The image displaying an exterior pict-feed showed the receding dark ball of 54-Thermia and the advancing shape of a sleek, Inquisitorial corvette. It had taken several hours of evasive manoeuvres and doubling back through the storm to avoid the tracked transports of the Battle Sisters hunting them through the deep freeze. When they had finally reached the Serpent’s Egg and achieved lift-off, they found that the Ordo Hereticus corvette they had observed earlier had been brought out of hiding to mount an orbital patrol. The Dreadclaw benefitted from a head start but couldn’t hope to outrun the corvette.
While the rest of the Redacted were locked in their cradles alongside the chained Word Bearer, Occam drifted about the interior compartment in the zero-gravity.
‘Where is the Iota-Æternus?’ Quoda asked.
‘On station, where she was instructed to await out return,’ the blind Hasdrubal said, sure that Naga-Khan would follow his orders.
‘Warpsmith?’ the strike master said.
‘Torpedo away,’ Reznor called out.
‘On target?’
‘On target,’ Reznor confirmed.
‘Evasive?’
‘Not a chance,’ the warpsmith said.
Occam waited precious seconds. With each passing moment the corvette’s righteous torpedo was streaking towards the Dreadclaw.
‘Escape isn’t enough,’ Occam decided, announcing his intention to the compartment. ‘We’re going to have to turn this around on our pursuers. Warpsmith, what do we have that can take down a torpedo?’
‘Nothing offensive has range,’ Reznor answered.
‘What about non-offensive?’ Occam asked. ‘Can it be neutralised?’
‘Perhaps…’ the warpsmith said, unlocking himself from his cradle and swimming through the zero-gravity to the compartment floor.
‘Talk to me,’ Occam called.
‘Electromagnetic pulse,’ Reznor said, snatching the cog blade of his Omnissian power axe and tearing up the flooring and silver insulation. ‘I’m going to rig the piezoelectric crystals in the engine and pod systems for overload.’
‘And this electromagnetic pulse can nullify the torpedo’s own systems?’ Occam said.
‘In theory.’
‘Our plate?’
‘Will recover,’ Reznor said. ‘The machine-spirits will activate auxiliary systems.’
‘What about the Dreadclaw?’ the sorcerer Quoda said. ‘Like the torpedo, we’ll lose control also.’
‘One crisis at a time,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal warned.
‘Iota-Æternus,’ the strike master called across the vox-channel, ‘encoding.’
‘Iota-Æternus, receiving,’ Naga-Khan responded.
‘Shipmaster, listen carefully – we are shortly going to lose vox-communications and power,’ Occam said.
‘Receiving, Lord Occam,’ the shipmaster said.
‘We are being pursued,’ the strike master said. ‘I want you to plot an intercept course and prime your weaponry. We’ll lead them straight to you.’
‘On our way,’ Naga-Khan told him across the channel.
Looking down, Occam saw that the warpsmith was hard at work, tearing out cabling and making his heretical modifications.
‘Quoda,’ the strike master said. ‘We are going to lose life support. Get the insulation and wrap up our prisoner.’
‘And you thought it was cold down on the planet,’ the blind Hasdrubal said to the Word Bearer, leaning across from his cradle.
‘How close?’ Reznor called up from the mess of floating cables.
Occam pulled himself through the weightlessness of the Dreadclaw compartment, down to Reznor’s runescreens.
‘Close,’ the strike master warned, watching the torpedo streak through the void towards them.
‘I’m going to need a countdown,’ the warpsmith said, tearing out more cabling and holding two sparking interfacia in his gauntlets. ‘I need to set off the pulse about one to two hundred metres out.’
‘That is going to be close,’ Quoda said.
‘Ready?’ Occam asked. The warpsmith didn’t look it.
‘Standing by.’
‘Three…’ the strike master called, not taking his optics off the exterior pict-feed. ‘Two… one. Now.’
When Reznor struck the interfacia, the cables sparked spe
ctacularly. As the flash filled the compartment, the flooring about the warpsmith exploded as though the Dreadclaw’s cells had overloaded. Reznor was blasted back and hit the wall, letting out a roar of pain. Everything happened so fast that it was difficult for Occam to follow. Runebanks set in the Dreadclaw’s wall sections sparked furiously. Screens blazed white and then shattered. A sequence of smaller ruptures made their way through the engine compartment before one final overload killed the light of every lamp and system in the drop pod.
Occam’s auto-senses briefly cut off and his optics blinked to blackness. The strike master felt the struggle in the darkness about him – his plate’s belligerent machine-spirit fighting for its continued existence. With a flicker, the optics returned, followed by auto-senses, hydraulics and servo-automotives.
Almost immediately Occam felt the impact of the torpedo. Instead of detonating in a brief, oxygen-fuelled explosion, both torpedo and Dreadclaw simply collided. The electromagnetic pulse had burned out the torpedo’s priming mechanisms and instead turned the weapon into the equivalent of a giant, bullet-shaped slug.
The high-speed impact smashed into the drop pod’s armour plating with a thunderous clang that could be felt through wall, cradle and plate. Occam bounced off the wall and was thrown through the weightlessness of the compartment. He could feel the Dreadclaw tumbling off course through the void. As he steadied himself, he could see that the sickening motion was being made worse by a hull breach in a crumpled wall about the site of the impact. The Serpent’s Egg was bleeding atmosphere into the void, propelling the Dreadclaw on in its dizzying tumble. He felt the pull of the expulsion and considered attempting to block the breach. The strike master decided against it. Nothing would stop them losing atmosphere now: air, warmth and pressure.
The strike master looked about the darkened compartment, his suit lamps cutting through the gloom. He saw Reznor’s unconscious body floating in his plate and being drawn to the narrow hull breach. Smoke drizzled from one blackened gauntlet where the torrent of power from the Dreadclaw’s battery cells had flowed back through the warpsmith. Beta, Zeta and Theta had fared little better, the servo-automata clanking about the compartment in zero-gravity – their workings burned out by the electromagnetic pulse.