‘Take the kid,’ the major ordered, passing the rag-doll body up to the struggling commissar. Krieg wasn’t squat and powerful in the way the major was and Qvist presented a serious impediment to his efforts. A frost-bitten foot hardly helped matters.
‘I’m the target?’ Mortensen confirmed, steely-eyed.
Krieg nodded gravely.
‘Then she’ll follow her target,’ the major reasoned, slipping through between the girders and launching himself across the space between two adjoining sides of the pylon interior. He felt the phantasmal shock-wave sensation of the fat teleporter beam wash across his eyeballs as his vault carried him close by. It was hard to believe that the unstoppable greenskin machinery was still operating beneath tons of liquid: a testament to alien technology, indeed.
Hanging off struts on the other side, Mortensen shot Krieg a meaningful glance. The cadet was still staring at him: an understanding passed between the two men, culminating in a silent nod from the commissar. Mortensen then watched Krieg surge purposefully for the ceiling before disappearing up through the roof. The assassin had predictably changed her course, moving rapidly across the wall of the cavern like an insect, bringing herself parallel with the major before negotiating the craggy, concave ceiling of the chamber.
Mortensen put on a final spurt – his teeth gritted, arms on fire – bringing him in line with the assassin. At that moment she blasted through the sheet of chemical death cascading in from above. She’d swung from the roof, freefalling at the pylon. She passed Mortensen, slamming onto the side of the structure with two sure feet and a firm, if frostbitten, handhold.
The assassin was like some unstoppable machine. There would be no outclimbing her. Instead of scrabbling skyward, the major let go. Using his boots to guide him along the girder he was scaling, he slid down the pylon, crushing the frozen fingers on the assassin’s remaining hand under his heel. The predatory killer fell backwards some distance before becoming tangled in a set of support struts further down.
This was his chance. Mortensen blasted up the network of bars and supports after Krieg, committing everything he had left to scaling the antenna array and putting as much distance as possible between himself and his executioner.
As he breached the roof opening Mortensen’s heart sank as he realised just how far above the rok surface the telescopic transmitter extended. What was even more worrying was the fact that he could not see the silhouettes of Krieg and Qvist above him. He’d expected to be able to pick them out clinging to the structure overhead, against the twilight of the deathworld sky. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The rok summit, and by extension the pylon, was shuddering metre by metre down into a broiling, white-water vortex of crashing deathworld brume. There wasn’t a sandy bank or piece of silicon foliage in sight.
Without warning the tower moved. It wasn’t the jolting plunge Mortensen had become used to. The pylon had never been pointing straight up, but it was generally aimed at the sky. Now the entire structure was careering wildly towards the furious chemicular riptide. Digging his fingers into the metal, the major rode out the inevitable bounce. The tower was collapsing and although the structure was holding on to its rigidity, the pinnacle was rolling violently around, picking up lethal momentum.
The assassin had returned. She was rocketing up one of the core beams, using the tips of both toes and working fingers. Her ruined hand was finding fresh usefulness with its deadly blade extended – the shimmering, otherworldly fluorescence agitated as she slashed through high tension wires and support cables.
Mortensen stopped climbing. There was nowhere left to go. The pylon was creaking uncomfortably and bouncing gently towards the foaming breakers below. The taller waves were crashing against the structure, causing both Mortensen and his executioner to keep moving back and forth along the length of the pinnacle in order to avoid instant petrification. The assassin was walking now, casually flicking the tip of her weapon at the struts and chains holding Mortensen’s section of the pylon out of the maelstrom below.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance we can work something out,’ the major bawled sardonically over the intense noise. The assassin began to pick up speed, bounding up the girder towards him, blade held ready for some exotic and lethal manoeuvre.
‘Had to ask,’ the major explained softly to himself, steeling his body for the inevitable path of the alien blade. Holding tight and closing his eyes, Mortensen shut out the drama of his surroundings and prepared for a swift and clean death. Surely he could trust an assassin to deliver that.
The ear-searing roar of a familiar engine rolled overhead, causing Mortensen to blink open his eyes and let the reality flood back in. Everything he needed to know was carved into the assassin’s snarling half-face. Vertigo. Turning, the major streaked up the remaining length of the pylon apex. As an angry breaker swept past and doused the structure behind him the Spectre was revealed, hovering over the chaos, turning gently. The bay ramp was down and a collection of figures were violently gesturing encouragement from inside. Among them was Commissar Koulick Krieg.
Mortensen didn’t dare look back. The aircraft’s door gunners were giving his assailant all kinds of hell with streams from their heavy bolters – but Mortensen had seen the daemonic character walk through worse than that. Blasting off the end of the teleporter array, legs kicking with wild effort, Mortensen sailed across the chemical death raging below.
It wasn’t pretty, but it was a landing. His chest had struck the end of the ramp awkwardly and he could swear that a couple of ribs had snapped inside his molested torso. He kicked at the slick hull of the aircraft and his fingers slapped the ramp frantically for a grip. A sea of gloved hands came at him, latching onto his carapace and fistfuls of raw flesh before pulling him unceremoniously inside.
‘Ramp closing,’ Eszcobar called across the bay, the deathworlder being first to the activation stud. The gaggle of corpsmen fell in a heap in the centre of the troop bay, Mortensen held like some kind of prize between them. The Navy gunners were still crashing at shadows outside and the aircraft swung uncomfortably above the whirlpool.
‘Sir, are you alright?’ Meeks asked urgently, suddenly beside him. When Mortensen didn’t initially reply the sergeant shook his shoulder, attempting to bring the major out of his daze. ‘Are you injured?’ he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer this time and simply yanked a harassed-looking DuBois and her medical kit away from Krieg and the unconscious Qvist. There were others too: Minghella was still unconscious and Sarakota incapacitated. Hauser was sitting in a pool of his own blood, growling in incessant pain at the far end of the compartment and a faceless Garbarsky trembled under a mask of bandages and pipes. Thule and two Guardsmen from the other squad cradled blasted limbs and head wounds. Even Rask had taken one in the gut.
‘Is he in?’ came Conklin’s gravelly voice over the bay vox-com.
‘In,’ Eszcobar confirmed.
Mortensen staggered away from DuBois’s healing hands and Meeks’s remonstrations. He felt like he just wanted to collapse, but there was something they had to do before returning to Deliverance.
He snatched the vox from the Autegan scout: ‘Rosenkrantz!’ the major called, fighting for breath. ‘Fly low. Give the bird’s belly a taste of the canopy.’
‘What the h–’
‘Just do it.’
After a moment’s hesitation the aircraft banked and accelerated, carrying them clear of the rising flood plain. Suddenly the Spectre bucked and everyone inside the compartment was thrown forward. Silicon shrubbery slammed the aircraft as Rosenkrantz guided Vertigo’s swollen belly down into the razor-sharp canopy. Leaves and branches shattered, immersing the hull in a relentless slipstream of crystal shards and glass splinters.
Everyone heard a body slam flush to the aircraft exterior and then the unearthly scream of a woman literally sliced to ribbons in an instant. Blood streamed in through the gunner’s port
s and ran across the inside of the compartment wall.
Mortensen sank down the side of the compartment wall – job done. The Gomorrian hadn’t underestimated the assassin and had been rewarded for his vigilance: he could hardly risk the deathstalker roaming the corridors of Deliverance.
The enormity of what had just happened was just beginning to sink in. Death was a constant companion on Redemption Corps missions but he’d almost been assassinated. Someone very powerful wanted him dead. His mind buzzed with a thousand possibilities.
As Rosenkrantz pulled the assault carrier out of the treetops, silence reigned once again in the troop bay. The mood was wretched, however, with blood, pain and hangdog faces sapping any sense of victory or the jubilation of survival.
‘Orders, boss?’ said Conklin who’d just appeared on the companionway, breaching the hush that had fallen across the corpsmen. Mortensen was lost in thought.
‘We need to get back to Deliverance and alert the fleet to the situation,’ Krieg insisted.
‘Sir?’ Conklin persevered intently as though the commissar had never spoken.
‘The fate of this system may very well depend on what we decide to do right now,’ Krieg put to Mortensen and the compartment.
Conklin took several dangerous steps towards the commissar.
‘Do what he says,’ Mortensen interceded.
‘But boss, the ogryns, the mission was–’
‘A trap,’ Captain Rask answered for him. The officer looked empty and desolate.
‘But one that might just serve to save this system from the clutches of an alien invader,’ Mortensen assured the captain. He turned to Krieg. ‘Yes?’
A moment of cool concord passed between the two men.
‘Yes,’ the cadet-commissar answered finally.
‘Speak, damn you!’ the canoness seethed, slamming her armoured palms into the table.
Mortensen’s eyes were glazed, his face – like his body – lifeless. He hadn’t spoken in what seemed an age, he just sat there watching Santhonax pace the oubliette, soaking up the battle-sister’s fury. Once or twice he caught her checking her chronometer or fidgeting with her vox-piece. It was probably already too late to get off the planet’s surface and she knew it.
Despite feeling emotionally drained and physically exhausted, Mortensen felt the irresistible pull of an utterance. He felt compelled to satisfy her demand to know his mind.
‘All those people, died…’
‘Yes,’ the canoness confirmed with unusual feeling, quick to exploit the opening. ‘But not for you or because of you. There are those amongst the fighting men of the Imperium who might trade in such untruths and poison your faith with their own heretical needs and ideals. But in Gomorrah’s death, men like you found new life. You wouldn’t have become what you are, had not adversity been your making.’
‘What, a cursed cripple?’ Mortensen lamented.
Santhonax turned his chair from the table and knelt down in her armour by his side: ‘Can’t you see? This isn’t a curse, it’s a gift.’ She stroked his battle-scarred chest with the cruel tips of her gauntlet. ‘It may not be divinely ordained, but whatever you lost in your world’s calamity, you gained the ability to achieve the impossible. You succeed where others fail. You walk tall where others have fallen. You live when you should die. Adversity gave you that.’
‘The assassin?’
Santhonax nodded slowly.
‘Krieg?’
More confirmation from the battle-sister.
‘That bounty hunter on Targretta Prime?’
‘Not one of mine,’ the canoness admitted, narrowing her eyes and coming in closer, ‘but the same principle applies.’
‘Why the pretence? Heresy? Why not just come for me?’ the major goaded.
‘There are those,’ Santhonax admitted with regret, ‘that do not share our vision.’
‘Really?’ the Gomorrian teased.
The Sister of the Immaculate Flame continued unfazed: ‘They are without the steel in their soul to do what is necessary. They do not understand and consider our ideas dangerous. In turn, we ourselves stand accused of heretical ideals. Surely you can empathise with that, Major Mortensen?’
‘Let me let you in on a little secret: I think your ideas are dangerous,’ he told her straight, ‘and since you included me in them, I’ve never been more than two decisions away from a horrible death.’
‘It’s easier to avoid your accusers if you appear to be one of them. See, adversity forced me to become stronger. My pretence was part of the adversity you are enduring right at this moment, but in time I have hopes that you will outgrow my protection.’
‘Protection!’ Mortensen guffawed angrily. ‘You’ve done nothing but try to kill me or get me killed. You talk of adversity like it’s some kind of necessary evil. You’re wrong,’ he told her sourly. ‘The end of my world gave me nothing but pain. And when it finished giving me that, well, it just gave me nothing.’
‘It gave you a role to play: a life useful to the Emperor.’
‘You may revel in adversity,’ the major went on. ‘You may believe that the Imperium is all the stronger for the enemies at and within its borders, but there’s an alien war host out there who says different; who are different – because from what I’ve seen and from what I know, I don’t think they’re going to stop.’
‘Men like you will stop them,’ the canoness assured him. ‘And you will be all the stronger, sharper and more vigilant for your victory. But if there’s no enemy, there can be no victory and no one able to stand against the future foes of mankind. Greater evils.’
Mortensen shook his head, which surprised him because formerly those muscles had been all but stupefied. He pushed on, eager that the battle-sister not detect his growing mobility.
‘You talk like you can control this.’
‘Control? No. Do not take me for a fool: I’ve fought the Imperium’s enemies all my life,’ she warned him. ‘But if you study what you hate, you come to realise that mankind’s enemies can be encouraged to be predictable. And of all the wretched alien detritus that pollute the galaxy, greenskins are amongst the most predictable.’
‘You’re out of your mind, did you know that?’
‘Centuries reducing garrisons on the Burdock Worlds. Generations spent thinning fleet deployments along the Kintessa Gauntlet. Enceladus drew millions of able-bodied fighting men out of sector – an unnecessary crusade providing a hole in the fence, as it were. Don’t misunderstand me, it had to be a very big hole, but orks can’t resist an opening like that. Studies of greenskin invasions and unintentional strategic weaknesses long taught us that.’
‘You…’
‘And those before me,’ Santhonax informed him. ‘Gomorrah was bold – even by ork standards. We’d never seen tactics like that before. That hulk was colossal and more than enough to sunder a world – but we never expected it to actually strike the planet. Genius, really. As a hive-world, Gomorrah would have supplied the lion’s share of recruits required to repel an invasion of the system. It was then we truly realised we’d chosen wisely. The warlords of the Gargasso Deeps proved on that day their suitability for this venture. We could trust their intention to unify and push coreward on a green tide of unthinking alien brutality: funnelled through the weakened inroad of worlds making up the Kintessa Gauntlet and spilling out upon an unsuspecting Segmentum Solar.’
‘You–’
‘Could have stopped it? Yes. But why should we? This will be the greatest alien incursion the galaxy has ever seen. It will galvanise generations to action, across hundreds of worlds, and make thousands more like you.’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Mortensen marvelled with sickening horror. Something about the quality of the major’s accusation stopped the fanatic in her tracks.
‘Explain,’ she finally ordered.
‘
They’re not greenskins,’ the storm-trooper spat at her. He let his words sink in. ‘You’ve damned not only yourself and me. You’ve damned us all. This alien host will sweep down on Terra and if you and your secret society have strategically crippled Kintessa as you say, then nothing is going to stop it.’
‘You’ll stop it,’ Canoness Santhonax put to him, her words laced with the fire of the faithful.
‘Why tell me this?’ Mortensen asked with rising anger. ‘I’ll expose you – inform the authorities.’
‘We are the only authority,’ the battle-sister reasoned, flashing her insane eyes at him. ‘You, as I’ve painted you, are a traitor and a heretic. But in any case, were that to come to pass, I expect I’d be long dead.’
‘And your warped superiors and associates – what of them?’
‘As I’ve tried to tell you: we’re all here to be tested.’
Mortensen bored into her with cold, furious eyes and made his play. ‘Well, my test is over. I’d rather be in someone’s crosshairs than part of some raving scheme to feign galactic destruction – especially one that’s gone as spectacularly awry as this one. I’ll sit here and die before lending credence to your sick theories of delusion and, well, I never thought I’d be the one saying this but, heresy.’
The canoness came in close, her potent eyes fixing the major with a piercing glare. Mortensen met them with his own brand of cocky truculence. A minute must have passed like this: the canoness appraising both the major and the situation, the holochron clearly twitching on her wrist. She could see he meant it. Mortensen did all he could do. He waited. Waited to see if she would grant him his wish.
Then it happened.
Santhanax folded. Her finger moved to her vox-earpiece.
‘Purity Control, this is the canoness…’ Her face creased with annoyance and confusion as the seconds went by without a response. ‘Purity Control,’ she repeated before cycling through the open channels. As she hit the fourth the creases softened and her lips pursed. Even Mortensen could hear the unmistakable crash of gunfire across the vox-waves.
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 53