Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

by Warhammer 40K

  Krieg’s lip curled. ‘This doesn’t concern you, commander. This is the Emperor’s work. Don’t be a fool.’

  ‘Sir!’ Sergeant Endo called. The Spetzghastian wanted nothing to do with what was happening between Krieg and Mortensen and urged his young officer to follow suit. Qvist flicked his eyes from Krieg to Mortensen to the sergeant and then back again. Words abandoned him.

  ‘I appreciate the sentiment commander, but Commissar Krieg here is right about one thing – at least – this is my problem,’ Mortensen told the Departmento Munitorum officer through gritted teeth. ‘Let me deal with it.’

  It happened so quickly.

  Mortensen hovered, eager for an advantage. Qvist’s finger slipped across the trigger of his laspistol, although it was anyone’s guess as to whether or not he actually intended discharging the weapon. This was not a chance the commissar had been trained to take. Krieg’s thumb snapped across the autopistol, priming the heavy-weight side arm. Suddenly the cell chamber was filled with excruciating noise. Commander Qvist had been thrown backwards across the room as Krieg put a round through the commander’s gut. Sergeant Endo vaulted across the chamber, skidding down on his knees to the officer’s side.

  Mortensen went to move, but Krieg shook the autopistol at him, keeping the major pinned to the spot.

  ‘Well?’ Mortensen barked across the room. The sergeant rapidly fell to checking the young officer’s vitals. His belly was already sodden with gore as the stomach wound steadily leaked the commander’s lifeblood. The wound was clean, however, as Krieg had intended it.

  ‘He’s alive,’ the sergeant confirmed stoically.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mortensen?’ Krieg put to the major. ‘Worried about your reputation?’

  ‘Bloody idiot,’ the Gomorrian erupted at the prone, glaze-eyed Qvist.

  ‘Get him out of here,’ Krieg ordered. ‘Now!’

  Endo took the softly groaning commander over one shoulder, then holding the major’s gaze for a second, disappeared through the bulkhead in pursuit of his men.

  Mortensen sagged and then stared down at his boots.

  ‘Major Mortensen, you have been found wanting,’ Krieg informed him. ‘Prepare to receive the Emperor’s judgement.’

  Mortensen’s eyes came up to meet Krieg’s own. ‘Do it…’ he instructed with soft resignation. It wasn’t a dare.

  Krieg tensed his finger; the trigger was reassuringly heavy. The pistol willed itself to fire.

  Koulick Krieg…+

  Krieg blinked. Something was inside his head: it felt like an arachnid nesting in his brain, giving birth to a thousand tiny but irresistible thoughts, crawling around his mind.

  ‘Do it!’ Mortensen snarled, almost indignant at the delay.

  Krieg tried to comply. He thought of his backbreaking Legionnaire’s servitude on a hundred different worlds, his years of pious service to the Ordo Hereticus – and Canoness Santhonax standing over him, her eyes alight with passion and her thin lips curled in righteous dissatisfaction. Every second of his service to the God-Emperor had led him to this moment – yet he struggled to act. He felt the trigger meet the resistance of the pistol’s firing mechanism.

  Koulick Krieg…+

  A stream of bright, thick blood fell from his nostril and splattered his arm. Krieg looked down for the briefest moment, moving his fingers from the splatter to his nose. He was going to be sick.

  His stomach flipped, launching everything inside skyward. Vomit hit the wall and floor of the cell beside the cadet-commissar and just kept coming. His eyes were closed and his torso heaved but his arm was pumped like some tormented serpent, ready to strike at the slightest sensation that the major was advancing.

  When he came back up for air, with some of the stringy gruel still clinging to his chin, Krieg found to his surprise that Mortensen hadn’t moved.

  ‘Krieg?’ Mortensen asked, but the commissar stopped him by smacking the grip of the pistol repeatedly against his temple and roaring in aggravation and anguish. He turned the weapon on the major once again, but the desire simply wasn’t there.

  ‘I…’ the cadet-commissar began.

  ‘Save it,’ Mortensen growled. Both men turned to find their charade had been played out in front of a small audience. Endo and Commander Qvist were being manhandled through the bulkhead and the chamber had become a gallery of green faces, beady eyes and gun barrels.

  ‘You had your chance,’ the Redemption Corps major told Krieg. ‘You still want my blood, you’re going to have to get in line.’

  V

  He’d visualised a hive of mayhem: a barbarian force in preparation for war. Mortensen was sorely disappointed. There was no fighting, no tusk baring, no shooting. As the major was dragged up through the rocky levels he was witness to the rank and file thug-soldiers of the rok going about their outlandishly orderly business. It went against the grain of every microbe of knowledge and experience the major had gathered over the many years he’d spent fighting the damn things.

  Fully manned orbital gun emplacements swarmed with greenskins and runts and aircraft bays brimmed with squadrons of heavily armed patrol aircraft: if the major and his men hadn’t risked their treacherous up-river infiltration, it was unlikely that they would ever have got near the ork rok. Between the deathworld swamps and the greenskin guests, Ishtar was turning out to be a pretty inimical place to be.

  The four soldiers were taken to a cavernous chamber right at the top of the rok: Mortensen could tell this because there was a massive hole in the roof, allowing the dim, deathworld twilight to flood in. There was a similarly sized opening in the floor of the cave, leading back down into the heart of the riddled asteroid, illumination from which waxed and waned with the rhythmic roar of mighty machineries below. A ramshackle concentric structure of girders, pylons and suspension wires ran up out of the hole, up through the chamber and out of the top of the rok, reaching for the sky like some great antennae to the stars. The mysterious structure hummed unnaturally and crackled with a sallow energy.

  Here the brute squad put them on their knees with savage blows to the calves and left them. Mortensen cast a look up around the rims of his eyelids, catching the impression of a walkway and sentry posts, each manned by a begoggled, gun-toting, greenskin thug. Something thundered up steadily behind them across the hollow grille flooring. Something big.

  Mortensen went to turn his head but was dissuaded by a fat green hand that enveloped his head like a scrapyard claw-winch and snapped it back front and centre.

  The floor suddenly jolted as a brutal clockwork mechanism went to work on one wall. The grille platform juddered upwards, bringing it in line with some kind of command centre carved into the cavern wall. It was crowded with levers, wheels and simple gauges and dripped with sparking cables and steam lines.

  The barbaric instrumentation was crawling with greenskin runts: monitoring, adjusting and trying to keep out of the way of their larger brethren. At the heart of this chaos lay a battered captain’s throne – Imperial in design – probably ripped out of some unfortunate vessel that became lost in the warp and fell foul of this rocky behemoth. Prowling around the throne on knotted chains were a pack of walking jaws – man-eating pets that greenskins traditionally kept close. Upon seeing the four of them rise before the throne on the rumbling gantry, the dagger-fangs went insane, tearing at their rusty leashes and yapping a horrible chorus of throaty gnarls. On the throne sat a mournful looking creature in thick, gaudily painted armour, a crocodilian cloak and a tooth-inlaid headdress – giving him the appearance of being swallowed by some horrific alien creature. The greenskin was clearly very old, its mauled face-flesh cracked and dark with age and its protracted skull and tusks sagging with overgrowth.

  There was something eerie about the entire atmosphere, the major noted. Mortensen couldn’t quite place it at first and then he realised, it was the sound. There wasn’t any
. Orks, by their nature, were loud and bombastic creatures, their huge barrel chests and cavernous mouths equipping them to terrify their enemies with a cacophony of savage blood hunger. The mock bridge of the ork rok was as silent as a cathedral, however, each monster communicating effortlessly with one another through what seemed to be the silence of passive fang-baring and narrowed eyes. With the slightest of gestures the enemy commander engaged the attention of a junior officer – an obscene individual in a parody uniform and cap, complete with trailing tassels and jumbo medals.

  It wheeled an unfamiliar looking object across the bridge on a tracked trolley and positioned it in front of his warlord. It looked like one of those clunky, old-fashioned diving helmets Mortensen had seen some of the more desperate archeohunters use in the submerged caves of the Haephastus undersump. Instead of an air hose, the box trailed a pipe and rubber facemask that the officer affixed to his boss’s long face. On two sides of the device were crude speakers and upon the front, a faceplate that the greenskin aide slid aside with a fingerclaw.

  Inside sloshed a sickly yellow liquid and in the suspension sat a large ragged head. The head was shot through with fat, dirty needles and had clearly been separated from its torso for a reasonable amount of time: despite that, Mortensen could make out an abhuman face and one that had seen service in the ranks of the Imperial Guard, if the primitive forehead tattoos were anything to go by. Then it clicked. Mortensen shuffled on his knees. He was staring at Sergeant Lompock – the ogryn bonehead that had been guiding Qvist’s Mercantile Militia platoon to the villages.

  The major felt a shiver run down his spine as the contraption came appallingly to life. As the warboss spat his guttural greenspeak down the pipe the ogryn’s eyeless head twitched and spoke, the bass gargle reverberating around the control centre.

  ‘Have-fought-the-weak-bastard-spawn-of-the-Carcass-Emperor-my-whole-life. Your-rags-and-regalia-have-meaning,’ the boss accused, pointing a crooked, gauntleted finger at Mortensenand Krieg.

  ‘This-much-I-know. Tell-my-shootas-send-plenty-lead-the-way-of-such-markings.’ The ogryn coughed a kind of macabre chuckle.

  ‘Your shootas can’t be very good then, can they?’ Mortensen spat smugly. ‘I appear to still be here.’

  ‘Not-for-long,’ the long tusk told him. ‘Your-little-assault. Inventive-or-suicidal-cannot-tell-which. Matters-not. Simply-sent-ten-thousand-of-my-battle-kindred-to-the-world-you-call-Tancred-day-ahead-of-schedule.’

  ‘You’re greenskin savages,’ Krieg seethed. ‘You don’t keep schedules.’

  ‘Schedules-yes-battleplans-yes. How-you-think-forces-coordinated?’

  The major laughed. ‘Didn’t think they were.’

  The ork warboss thrust his elongated jaw at the Gomorrian. ‘Mine-are…’ he assured them with conviction. ‘And-I-have-the-Imperial-pig-citizens-of-Tancred’s-World-under-my-knife-to-prove-it.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Mortensen shot back, his forced merriment evaporated. ‘We’d know.’

  ‘Like-knew-about-your-factory-world?’

  ‘Cult spree killings preceded invasions on both worlds,’ Krieg informed the major. ‘Algernon, too.’

  ‘Algernon-belong-my-masters-already.’

  ‘What are you?’ hissed Mortensen, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe that he was talking to an ork. Mortensen had fought all kinds of greenskin filth on a score of different worlds. He’d never come across anything that spoke like this thing. Its words were laced with more than the usual animal cunning he’d come to expect from greenskin barbarians: and that was dangerous enough. There was something distinctly alien about this alien, if that were possible.

  The ancient warlord seemed to consider his question seriously. ‘Am-evolving. Am-enlightened.’ The greenskin slumped – back to business. ‘Like-I-know-things-you-know-things. Things-I-must-know. Quickly. System-reinforcement. Fleet-deployment,’ the boss gestured at the open sky. ‘Usually-get-my-sawbonez-to-sew-your-puny-flesh-as-one,’ the ancient warlord told them, nodding at the monstrosity that stood behind them. Again, Mortensen attempted to snatch a glance at the greenskin surgeon, but the beast’s mechanised, mantrap jaws snapped in cold and close, causing the storm-trooper to swallow, wrinkle his nose and turn back towards the warboss. ‘Have-you-share-one-set-of-organs-till-one-spillz-gutz-at-my-feet,’ the ork warlord continued. ‘Sadly-no-time. Quick-demonstration-needed. Make-intention-clear.’

  The surgery-happy hulk behind them stirred. He snatched Sergeant Endo from his knees and dragged him across the platform, towards the metal structure at the centre of the cavern.

  The soldiers watched as the stoop-backed monstrosity effortlessly trailed the militiaman behind him. Its head was a metal nightmare: serrated, hydraulic maw, metal dome skull and two telescopic eyes that protruded like insect antennae. Despite its spine being buckled by years of supporting the overgrown cranial adaptations, the greenskin’s back was still a head taller than any of the Imperials. Clomping boots, a butcher’s belt and a blood-splashed leather apron completed the picture.

  ‘What’s it doing?’ the major hissed.

  ‘Teleporter,’ Krieg informed him. ‘Some tribes reputedly have a good grasp of the technology. Explains how they’ve infiltrated so successfully. There are probably roks like this dotted all over the Spetzghastian system: waystations for transporting hardware and troops from one moon to the next. That’s how an entire invasion force just seemed to appear on Illium.’

  Mortensen recalled the strange empty hole burned out of existence below decks in the Mortis Maximus: how the greenskins must have gained entry with similar technologies, bypassing the god-machine’s armour and shields.

  The warboss left his throne, trailing its ghoulish translator, and crossed the cluttered bridge, throwing heavy levers, tapping gauges and spinning wheels as he did. As it yanked a handle on the wall something heavy was released from the ceiling and Mortensen, Krieg and even the dazed and bleeding Qvist all hit the deck in the belief that they were going to be flattened. Metres from the platform the object was snapped unceremoniously to a halt by the heavy-duty chains that supported it and swung to one side. As Mortensen dared to stare upwards he found himself looking at a burnished metal disc: something not unlike the magnetic attachments used on some derricks to unload vessels in cargo bays.

  ‘Teleporter. Yes,’ the warlord confirmed. It simply glanced at the barbaric surgeon who took the writhing sergeant in both crushing fists and pitched Endo off the rampart. The Spetzghastian, who had been so calm and sober up to this point, let rip a single scream before falling through the girders of the pylon and disappearing in the stream of imperceptible teleporter energy streaming up out of the rok.

  Mortensen and Krieg turned back to the aged greenskin. They found it closer than ever – manipulating further control knobs and fat switches. As the greenskin casually spun an important looking calibrator, Mortensen went to rise once again, his ill-restrained fury spilling over like stew in a cauldron. Krieg grabbed his shoulder and tore him back down. The disc above their heads suddenly washed them with an unnatural heat. A kind of charge built across the surface of the metal with sparks skittering around the outside and falling in towards a power vortex gathering in the centre.

  The major closed his eyes as the air about them blanched. When he opened them again everything was blurred, but as the seconds followed and realisation dawned he found that everything was in fact very clear: it was Endo that was blurred.

  The sergeant had been rematerialised in front of them, but the warboss had intentionally warped the insane genius of the device with his ham-fisted alterations. Endo quivered and steamed: the teleporter had shredded his body, molecule by molecule and then reassembled him as a botched and bloody flesh sculpture. With gut-punching horror Mortensen realised that some structures had achieved true replication. One barely comprehending, milky eyeball thrashed its pupil at them in agony and somewhere deep inside the pulp of mang
led bone and organs a mouth squealed incessantly.

  Mortensen broke free of the commissar’s grip and surged for the ork warlord: he didn’t get far. The brute surgeon was behind him, grabbing the storm-trooper by the skull and forcing him back down on the grille. The boss came closer still – confident in its experimenter’s ability to restrain the puny human. Sergeant Lompock’s drowning commentary echoed around the cavernous chamber.

  ‘If-you-don’t-wish-to-see-the-inside-of-your-own-body-tell-me-now-all-you-know. Promise-I-kill-you-quick. A-soldier’s-death.’

  Mortensen’s eyes flashed from the spasming mess that was Endo to the uncompromising, alien orbs of the ork warboss. ‘Don’t-worry-about-your-friend. He-won’t-suffer-long.’ The greenskin turned his back on Mortensen and clicked his claws, signalling one of the gretchin runts attending his throne to unslip the warboss’s dagger-fanged pets. The pack of monsters bounded across the control centre, their chains flashing after them, and set upon the malformed mound of human flesh, tearing the unfortunate Spetzghastian to shreds.

  Mortensen took his chance. With the greenskins enjoying the wretched spectacle, the major threw back his head and pushed away from the floor with a powerful thrust. Putting his left hand on his right fist he threw his arm backwards with all the might he could manage. The elbow buried itself in the greenskin surgeon’s midriff and would have broken an ordinary man in two. The alien monster simply gave a muffled grunt from beneath its trapjaw maw.

  Then, something completely unexpected happened. Instead of reacquiring the major, who was now loose and backing away from the greenskin, the creature instead reached for its stomach. Mortensen fantasised that he’d actually hurt the brute: perhaps broken something inside its alien body. Suddenly something dropped to the floor from below the surgeon’s bloodstained leather apron. A belt of sandbags had hit the deck, one splitting open and spilling deathworld sand through the grille. Human and alien stared on in shock and confusion. The moment was broken with sudden action – this time from the greenskin surgeon, who bounded forward like some prehistoric reptile, closing with its slowly comprehending superior.