Mortensen and Meeks were the first to act, reaching for the unfortunate driver, one under each arm. They tore him out of the seat and into the rear compartment. The Shadow Brigade soldier was thrashing and squirming like a man who was being held under a pillow.
Chemical soup was gushing through the opening now, pressing its advantage and shattering the viewport. Garbarsky’s seat warped and creaked as a growing pool of foaming death began sloshing around the compartment floorspace. Hauser and the thuggish Thule began to retreat, crawling their way up the compartment walls like cats.
‘Sal!’ Rask yelled across the foggy compartment, calling forth the Second Platoon’s field medic, Salome DuBois. Dark-skinned and close-cropped like her sergeant, DuBois pushed forward with her kit.
Meeks and the major dumped the mutilated driver in her lap, where she already had a surgical kris at the ready. In one well-practiced manoeuvre she passed the blade across Garbarsky’s throat, spraying Hauser with hot blood, opening a new mouth in his neck through which the driver took his first desperate, slurping breath. The emergency tracheotomy had given the Guardsman the vital oxygen he needed and DuBois went to work slotting a length of plastic tubing from her kit into the neat slit.
Meeks threw himself towards the gaping viewport but Mortensen grabbed him by the hood of his trench coat and wrenched him back.
‘Sergeant,’ he bawled, slipping out of his flak jacket. ‘See to your man.’ Using the back of his carapace as a shield, the major reversed on the breach, forcing back the stream. Finally he had the armour flush to the hull and slammed his back against the port to hold the blockage in place. Steaming liquid foamed about the edges of his carapace plates, cracking and hissing its way, feeling for a weakness, a way in.
‘Drive!’ he barked at an astounded Eszcobar, who did his best to straddle the compartment floor and manipulate the gears at arm’s reach. Kataphract bucked and groaned. She was dying and she knew it. The tracks and transaxles had barely coped with the turn Garbarsky had imposed upon them to negotiate the river bend. A harsh angle compounded by the bank’s incline had all but done for the fire support vehicle.
‘Get us up on that bank, trooper,’ the major rumbled.
The deathworlder grimaced, fighting for control of the Centaur: ‘Trying, sir…’ he snarled through clenched teeth.
Sergeant Meeks crossed to the other side of the crowded vehicle and reached for the swinging vox receiver. ‘Mayday, mayday. Gundozer are you receiving?’
‘I’m losing him!’ Sal called across the chaos of the compartment as Garbarsky thrashed in her arms, shock finally setting in. Similarly the Centaur was giving its last, the damage now spreading to the engine column. Crippling cold had eventually found its way into the power plant and was playing havoc with the heat exchangers. The tracks pulverised the shale of the river bed, dragging the carrier towards the surface in starts and spasms.
‘C’mon, you piece of junk,’ Mortensen urged affectionately.
Eszcobar went after the final few metres of their watery grave with renewed vigour on the stick-throttle, but the steaming slosh rolling about the floorspace had done its worst. With a splintered snap the lever came away in his hand, prompting a moment of ghastly realisation that swept through the compartment.
‘You’ve got to be…’ Hauser blurted, not believing his eyes.
As if on cue the engine died, allowing the deep freeze precious seconds to take hold, in turn extinguishing the remnants of combustive life from the vehicle and hope in the compartment.
Nobody moved as minds wrestled with the reality that they were now seriously screwed. Even Garbarsky remained still, although it was unclear as to whether this was due to sedation or cessation. They sat there for what seemed like an age, wired and wary: looking anxiously at the major for some kind of miracle. All Mortensen could hear in his head was Rosenkrantz and her earlier accusations of rashness and irresponsibility.
The silence was finally smashed by a grunt of raw frustration that erupted from Thule, who slammed his fist at the compartment wall.
‘No!’ Rask roared, reaching for the brute’s wrist, afraid that the hiver might put his knuckles straight through the frost-weakened hull.
Mortensen silenced them all with a single ‘Wait!’ before putting his ear carefully to the glistening rime on the frozen metal wall and tapping against the armour with the knuckle of his middle finger.
A grin of pure relief broke across the major’s brassy features. Tearing his shoulders from frozen carapace, as well as the top layer of skin from his back flesh, Mortensen moved away from the shattered opening. A moment of alarm and caution filled the vehicle as he pulled away from the opening, but the cries were silenced by the whisper of warm air that coursed in through the breach instead of the expected gallons of chemical fleshstripper.
This was accompanied by the sound of a Guard boot on the hull outside. Peering through the opening Mortensen could make out the robust lines of Gundozer further up the bank and the silhouettes of his storm-troopers securing the shoreline.
Kataphract’s viewport and a section of roof above the driver’s seat had just made the glassy surface of the deathworld river. Conklin was standing outside, straddling the deadly waters between the rooftops of the two Centaurs; attaching a hastily adapted tow cable to a suitable pinion.
‘Hold onto something,’ the master sergeant called in through the port before hop, skip and jumping back across his own vehicle to the shore. Gundozer grumbled up the bank, dragging her creaking sister Centaur along behind.
When both carriers were clear of the channel, Thule fired the lock seals on the back doors and kicked them wide open, liberating the trapped liquid and clearing the noxious air inside.
Mortensen was last to leave, walking along the scarred and smoking shell of the fire support vehicle and wondering just how close they had really come to a truly awful death. Gone was the brash swagger and cocky grin. As he stood on the shale, tree lined bank surrounded by his corpsmen, the major’s face assumed a bleak sobriety.
‘Report,’ he charged them gravely, wandering casually around the group, turning to each of the Guardsmen in turn.
‘Both Centaurs are out of action, Boss,’ Conklin informed him. ‘Salvaging equipment and ammunition as we speak.’ Behind them some of Gundozer’s men were stripping the vehicles of anything remotely useful.
‘Mostly burns and frostbite,’ DuBois told him, struggling to keep her voice free of accusation, ‘but Garbarsky needs nothing less than a surgical bay. Also, I need to examine your back.’
‘No time for that.’
‘You probably have chemical burns…’
‘Later,’ Mortensen insisted.
Eszcobar padded up behind them, crunching softly across the silicon, his swift reconnaissance completed.
‘Trooper?’
‘Tree line thins up ahead,’ the Autegan confirmed, gesturing to the huge shadows blacking out the sky beyond the crystalline canopy. ‘Coordinates identify our target as an abhuman camp, designated “Fort Skagg” by the Spetzghastian Mercantile Militia recruitment parties: a settlement on stilts and elevated walkways with huts all made of local materials. The greenskin rok sits just beyond.’
‘Great,’ Hauser mumbled to himself.
‘It’s subsiding on the flood plain,’ the deathworlder continued, ‘which is why it looked so much like a natural feature. Looks like they recruited extra muscle from the ogryn villages to erect a scaffold of props and braces to prevent it from sinking further and flooding.’ Mention of the supercooled flood plain only served to further unsettle the Volscians, who bridled visibly.
‘Well, that’s it then,’ Hauser announced. ‘The recruitment party must be dead: the ogryns are party to the enemy. Why not just hold up and evacuate when the bird is ready?’
‘Qvist could be alive,’ Rask inserted, his tone heavy with caution and guilt. ‘G
reenskins sometimes take prisoners and equipment.’
‘Unlikely,’ Mortensen replied slowly. He didn’t like disagreeing with Rask, but his judgement was clouded with responsibility. ‘But that’s not our problem. Now we’ve got eyeball confirmation that it’s a rok, we can’t ignore the threat. That thing could open fire on Deliverance or one of the warships.’
‘We’re not equipped for that,’ Hauser pointed out with increasing desperation.
‘Hauser,’ Meeks warned.
‘Let’s call in some backup,’ the Volscian continued.
‘No,’ Sass put him straight. ‘If the enemy has Qvist’s men or their equipment they could be monitoring channels. Fearing an attack they would most likely hit first, before our ships had time to manoeuvre.’
Mortensen regarded the gathering evenly: his storm-troopers were used to vox-silence on such missions, but the Shadow Brigade soldiers and even Rask were having difficulty with the grim reality of the situation.
‘All we’ve got is the element of surprise,’ the major told them. ‘I suggest we use it. Captain?’
‘We can’t mount a direct assault on an ork rok,’ Rask confirmed finally. ‘That would be plain suicide.’
‘Looks like the blood and guts routine to me, sir,’ Conklin suggested with relish. ‘Spring any targets, sabotage the rok, quiet like.’
The major nodded. ‘Agreed. And the fewer there are to go in, the fewer there are to get caught…’
‘Finally something I can agree with,’ said Hauser with resignation.
‘Which means, I go in alone.’
Even Hauser’s nodding head suddenly lost its enthusiasm.
‘Alone, sir?’ Meeks put to him. ‘Take me and a couple of my boys: we’ll make the workload a bit lighter.’ Mortensen shook his head appreciatively.
‘That wise, boss?’ Conklin finally pitched in.
‘Wise, no. Necessary, yes. As soon as we’re rumbled, the entire mob will come down on us.’
‘The major knows what he’s doing,’ Hauser blustered.
‘Glad you feel that way, Guardsman,’ Mortensen replied, once again cupping him behind his shaved skull, ‘because in order to get into that rok, I’m going to need one hell of a diversion.’
Hauser’s gusto evaporated.
‘We’re going to need Uncle,’ Mortesen told Vedette, who peeled off to fetch him.
‘What have you got in mind?’ Eszcobar enquired.
Mortensen playfully unslipped the double-barrel grenade launcher from the deathworlder’s shoulder and popped open the weapon at the breech. He grinned down the gaping barrels at the Autegan.
‘Something big.’
III
‘Work fast,’ Rosenkrantz instructed as the three of them reached Vertigo’s roof. Only seconds before one of the forest’s furious electrical lightstorms had faded, opening their slim window of opportunity. Clambering off the hull ladder and over the starboard quad, the pilot slipped the flamer’s fuel cylinder from her back. Chief Nauls and Osric, one of her door gunners, fell to work straight away on the intakes. While Rosenkrantz bathed the quad shell with flame, blasting away the rime and warming life into the frozen thrusters, the unsmiling crew chief thrust his arm deep into one of the vents, extracting fistfuls of ice-resistant slime. Meanwhile Osric fiddled with roof valves and calibrators Rosenkrantz hadn’t even known existed.
The Jopallian was barely a boy, but Nauls had selected him because he originally hailed from indentured maintenance stock. His slender fingers moved with natural certainty across the unfamiliar machinery, his lips mumbling half-remembered incantations and blessings.
As Rosenkrantz moved to the second of the roof-mounted quad engines the aircraft became lost in deep shadow. Something wet and rubbery unexpectedly caressed the back of her neck and the pilot bolted round, sending a stream of promethium over the helmeted head of the chief.
Rosenkrantz brought the weapon under control and Nauls came out from behind the filter mount, his face furrowed with surprise and anger. The lines faded as he saw what the flight lieutenant was staring at. The shadow belonged to the bloated, ochre behemoth that Vertigo had torn through in the skies above. The collision had gashed an opening in the side of the beast’s sky sack and the creature had spent the best part of an hour drifting slowly to the ground.
The tip of one webbed tentacle drifted past Rosenkrantz and slapped the hull of the aircraft before following the gently tumbling monster into its canopy-shattering crash-landing. The giant octopoid just lay there amongst the destruction, cut to pieces by the tree-top crystal foliage, one huge, sad ocular appendage flickering around the forest in uncomprehending confusion and fright. Rosenkrantz couldn’t help but feel responsible for the alien creature’s demise, but had her own survival in this terrible place to consider and went back to work with the flamer.
That was until Chief Nauls, finished with the first intake, stood up next to the Jopallian and nudged her with his elbow.
‘Flight lieutenant,’ he murmured, nodding into the silicon forest. Shutting off the flame and dropping the flamer next to its fuel canister she followed his gesture. Hefty humanoid shapes were moving through the smashed tree line: huge, brawny savages who decorated their slabs of gross muscle with crystal trinkets and the thick blood that oozed from myriad nicks and slices that covered their scarred bodies. Wearing only simple skirts made of hundreds of thin copper rods hanging from their thick belts, they made eerie windchime-like chords as they crept through the crystal foliage.
‘I’ve got targets!’ an alarmed Spreckels hissed across the helmet vox.
‘Hold your fire,’ Nauls growled back. Rosenkrantz found herself nodding silently as both she and the chief began to fall slowly into a rooftop crouch in an effort not to be seen: this was of course ludicrous, since they could hardly hide the aircraft also.
Ogryns. It made sense, Rosenkrantz considered. They were, after all, the only variety of human robust enough to exist on Ishtar. The ogryns fell upon the downed sky-squid with primitive bronze flensing blades and began stripping flesh from the beast as it breathed its final mighty breaths.
‘No…’ the leatherneck crew chief snarled beside her. Turning around she saw more of the abhuman primitives closing in slowly on the Spectre. Their progress was slow but steady across the treacherous forest floor and their intentions obvious. Rosenkrantz made up her mind.
‘Let them have it,’ she ordered across the vox. The flight lieutenant wanted to keep the brutes as far away from the aircraft as possible: if they actually got their hands on the Spectre they’d crush it like a tin can. Doors rolled aside and bolter fire chattered from both sides of the aircraft, reducing the tree line to a crystal frag storm. The ogryns were incredibly fast, however, tearing away at an explosive pace; their gargantuan strides clearing broiling rivulets of chemical ooze and blasting across the nightmare landscape, their black manes trailing after them.
Heavy bolt rounds plucked at their flesh, mashing up muscle and bone, but the ogryns soaked up the punishment like rockcrete, roaring through their discomfort. It was only when streams of fire crossed and doubled their stopping power did individual brutes finally succumb.
Osric was suddenly on his feet, charms and catechisms suddenly failing him among the vision of oncoming ogryns and gunfire. He’d left his side arm down in the troop bay but Rosenkrantz and Nauls both had their Navy pistols out of their holsters as a last resort.
Staring along the nose of the Spectre Rosenkrantz suddenly became aware of two monstrous savages surging across the open ground towards them. Aiming their pistols over the young gunner’s shoulder the two Jopallians plugged round after round into the barbarians. The ogryns barely flinched as the gunfire washed over them.
‘Benedict, a little assistance please,’ Rosenkrantz called down the helmet vox as her pistol went dry. As Nauls reloaded, Vertigo’s nose-mounted autocannon boomed
from below. Impossibly the first ogryn ran up through the merciless firepower, each direct hit punching bloody holes in his reinforced ribcage. As the monster’s head disappeared in a spray of blood and brains, his snaggle-toothed companion swung past, catching several blasts in the abdomen himself. Hauling himself up on the shoulder of his falling comrade, the ogryn bounded incredibly for the aircraft’s nosecone, his huge steps carrying him up past the annoyance of the autocannon and thundering up the Spectre’s canopy.
It was all sickeningly swift. Before Rosenkrantz knew it the ogryn was upon them, swinging his unwieldy flensing blade like a Shadebarren trunkcutter. Osric was simply cleaved in two. There was no scream or struggle: the unfortunate gunner’s body just spun furiously off the roof in two different directions.
The chief managed to slam a fresh clip home and turned his pistol on the unstoppable creature. He’d buried four or five slugs in the ogryn’s thick neck and barrel chest before the flat of the flensing blade came down brutally on Nauls’s helmet. The flight helmet and everything inside it was instantly pulverised, disappearing inside the crew chief’s trunk.
Rosenkrantz fell. She could have slipped but it was more likely some kind of primitive instinct: an unmistakable signal of her complete submission in the face of superior physical prowess. Her hand smacked the recently cleared filter and her Navy pistol bounced out of her smashed grip and skittered down the aircraft hull and out of reach.
The heels of her boots squealed on the slick roof as she attempted to get back to her feet, but this was cut short by an off-balance, opportunistic swing of the flensing blade. Arching her back and throwing her face skyward, the pilot felt the bronze blade sweep past, splashing her frantic wide eyes with the weapon’s searing slipstream. There would be no second chances. She could feel that this unthinking brute wanted to kill her; wanted to chop her up and paint the fuselage with her thick, warm blood.
It was the only weapon left to hand. Scrambling for the flamer, her heart thumping in time with every moment the beast took to bring its heavy blade to bear, Rosenkrantz unleashed the full fury of the weapon on the creature’s meaty legs. Flame roared around its knees and ankles, funnelling up the copper rod skirt and razing whatever hung beneath.
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 49