He turned to Rauth. ‘We don’t have much time, Watcher. We have to get to Epsilon!’
The corridor stretched out in two directions, north and south, both curving round to the east, cutting off the view ahead at about twenty metres.
‘Which way?’ demanded the Exorcist.
Without his gift, Karras had no way of knowing. He had a hunch that the corridors would eventually merge, forming a complete circle. If he was right, it didn’t matter which direction they chose.
If he was wrong, they’d lose precious, maybe even critical time.
‘Left!’
The two Space Marines broke into a jog. Morant followed, running hard to keep up. Karras called back to him. ‘Try to stay with us, soldier. We cannot afford to slow for you. If you fall behind, keep running. I believe we will have need of your skills again very soon.’
Morant pushed thoughts of his wound aside, though every step sent fresh waves of pain surging through him. I will not falter. I will not fail!
He put on all the speed he could manage. Even so, the two giants were quickly pulling away.
Thick, windowless doors marked with t’au glyphs whipped past them. Karras and Rauth had mastered the t’au script. They read each door as they ran.
Storage, maintenance, and then a series of cells, the purpose of which could only be guessed at.
Suddenly, Karras halted. Rauth ran on a few steps, then stopped and turned. ‘What is it, Scholar?’
‘I don’t know,’ murmured Karras. ‘Something…’
He reached out with a gauntleted hand, pressing it against the door in front of him.
Nothing. The psychic suppression is too complete. So why did I stop?
Morant caught up to them, a light sweat on his brow.
‘I cannot say why, brother,’ Karras told Rauth, ‘but we have to check this room.’
Rauth shrugged. Karras’ power was a dark thing, a thing not to be trusted, but its value could not be denied. He had no idea that the gift in question was currently not a factor.
‘Morant,’ said Karras.
The trooper moved to the access panel, connected his module and began to work. On the tiny screen, thousands of t’au glyphs scrolled by at an almost unreadable speed. Suddenly the flow stopped. Morant had found what he was looking for. He reached for the keypad on the access panel and tapped in a seven-glyph code.
Seals disengaged within the door housing. Thick bolts slid aside. The door retracted upward into the frame.
Rauth looked at Karras expectantly. Karras nodded him through, then followed, bolter raised.
They found themselves in an observation room. The left and right walls were transparent, made of a tough polymer that was the t’au equivalent of glass.
What Karras saw in the chambers beyond made his breath catch in his chest.
In the room on the right, hanging by their arms from ceramic restraints attached to the ceiling, were five figures of unmistakable size and musculature.
‘Space Marines!’ snarled Karras.
‘Epsilon’s kill-team,’ added Rauth.
Karras moved closer to the window. He nodded. ‘Sabre Squad, but missing three members.’
The Space Marines of Sabre Squad were still wearing the black bodysuits that sat between skin and power armour, but of their armour itself there was no sign.
They were breathing, though each of their faces was masked with some kind of sensory-deprivation helmet. None seemed injured.
‘Another over here, my lords,’ said Morant. There was no mistaking the heaviness in his tone. ‘The xenos bastards have made a real mess of him.’
Rauth crossed the room to stand by Morant. What he saw made him bare his teeth, and a dark anger filled his heart, he who was the least emotional of all Talon Squad.
‘Vivisection,’ he breathed. ‘See those machines connected to the body? They dissected him alive, Scholar.’
Karras joined them at the window, and his heart, too, filled with righteous rage. ‘How?’ he muttered through gritted teeth. ‘What in Terra’s holy name brought them to this?’
‘The others are alive,’ said Rauth. ‘But Karras… if Epsilon and the t’au are moving out as you say, we can’t spare time for this.’
‘My lords!’ gasped Morant. ‘Surely we–’
Rauth whipped his head around to the trooper. ‘Silence! This is a Space Marine matter!’
‘No time,’ said Karras. ‘You’re right, Watcher. But we both know we cannot leave them. I will push on ahead with Morant. I charge you with releasing them and catching up to me.’
Rauth was quiet for a brief moment – just long enough to communicate his disapproval. But he knew the truth of what Karras had said. Whatever waited up ahead, neither would rest easy knowing they had left brothers imprisoned here.
‘On your order then, Alpha,’ said Rauth. ‘Now get out of here and let me work.’
As Karras and Morant left, the Exorcist was thumbing plastic explosive charges into a breaching pattern on the thick window between himself and the five Space Marines on the other side. They were already running, their feet pounding the corridor, when they heard the crack of the explosion and the crash of the window breaking into a million pieces.
But Karras couldn’t think about that now.
Up ahead, the corridor straightened for fifty metres and ended at a large door. So, thought Karras, the corridors didn’t join up after all. Let us hope I made the right choice.
The door was marked with t’au glyphs:
Main Operations
Extreme Caution Beyond This Point
Karras and Morant jogged to a halt in front of it.
Karras gestured to the door. ‘You know what to do, soldier. Crack it. Fast.’
Thirty-five
Main Operations seemed as deserted as the rest of the basement level. Karras and Morant stepped into a hallway with another large security door at the far end. On either side, smaller doors led into surgeries and observation rooms. There were banks of t’au cogitators and monitors, workstations arranged in rows, but they were all dead. Here and there, a chair lay toppled. Sheaves of crystalline printouts covered in t’au glyphs lay scattered where they had fallen. The place had all the signs of a rushed evacuation.
‘When the t’au clear out, they clear out fast. Doesn’t mean they won’t be back,’ offered Morant.
Karras spoke without turning. His eyes were on the far end of the hall. ‘Get to work on that door.’
Morant bowed and jogged over to it, steadfastly ignoring the pain of his wounded arm.
Karras began investigating the side rooms. No t’au. No sign of Epsilon. And yet, he had a strong feeling, a feeling in his gut, that she was here, that he hadn’t come too late.
The surgeries and observation rooms had been ransacked. There was nothing left to show what had been happening here. Still, there was a heavy feeling in Karras’ gut. Something familiar and foreboding. The faintest hint of a familiar scent hung in the air. For some reason, his mind called up memories of the mines under Chiaro’s surface.
Morant stood from his hacking module and disconnected it as the massive door slid upwards into the ceiling. A vast, echoing space gaped beyond.
He called out to Karras, and the Death Spectre strode over to join him.
Together, they looked through the portal at the massive chamber beyond.
It was cool in there. Cool and damp and gloomy. The ceiling was high and hewn from solid rock. There had been a natural cavern here. The original Imperial inhabitants had exploited it to make this space. Thick pillars supported the roof every ten metres or so. Blocky. Human-made. None of the smoothness or roundness so beloved of the t’au.
All along the walls stood monitoring stations and storage units. Lights shone from the fixtures halfway up the pillars, illuminating the floor but leaving the
ceiling in shadow.
That floor was a patchwork of metal and transparent polymer. Stretching out in a grid across the whole space were railing-lined walkways. Between these, sunk deep in the floor, were holding tanks of some kind. The ceiling of each tank was floor level. Were one to simply jump the railings, one might walk straight out across them.
Karras walked to the nearest of the tanks and looked down into it.
Empty, but the walls had been raked repeatedly by something sharp.
He moved on along the central walkway, bolter raised and ready. He was deeply uneasy. Angry, too, that something was suppressing his gift when he needed it most. Just what the hell was all this?
Morant fell in behind him, clutching his pistol tightly, eyes wide, alert to any movement.
When they reached the next junction on the walkway, they both looked down into the second holding tank.
‘Throne and saints!’ whispered Morant.
Karras just glared down at what he saw, his lip twisted in a snarl.
There below him, packed tight, were a dozen twisted forms of chitin and claw.
‘Tyranids,’ said Morant.
‘T’au-genestealer hybrids,’ said Karras. They were unmistakable. Where human hybrids still bore a nose, or at least nostrils, these creatures bore the olfactory facial slit of the t’au. But, no, it was more than just that – their lineage was just as clear in their lipless mouths, their flatter facial bone structure, their three-fingered hands…
Karras’ mind was on overdrive. What were the t’au doing with a tank full of abominations? What did Epsilon have to do with this?
Now he knew why his mind kept bringing him back to Chiaro, to Operation Night Harvest.
This is no coincidence.
One of the hybrids glanced up and saw him. It tossed back its head and loosed a long, throaty howl. The others looked up. When they saw the soldier and the Space Marine staring down at them, they went into a frenzy, clambering over each other to get closer and try to fulfil their genetic imperative – to kill and consume for the proliferation of their foul species.
A few leapt from the backs of others and slashed at the polymer ceiling with curving black claws, leaving white scratches. But they couldn’t break through. The t’au weren’t sloppy.
‘What were they doing with them?’ Morant wondered aloud.
For Karras, things started clicking into place. A Geller field. That’s why my power is being suppressed. To create hybrids, they’d need purestrain ’stealers. And the t’au would have to prevent those ’stealers from guiding the hive-mind here. Otherwise the whole planet…
And if that were true, it was highly likely that Epsilon herself had provided the Geller field generator.
He spun on Morant. ‘Get back to the upper levels. Get word to Copley. She has to pull everyone out. Now! Get everyone on the Stormravens and get them out of here!’
‘M’lord?’
Karras pointed at the monsters in the tank. Then he ordered Morant to follow him and marched to the next. There, he found what he knew he would – purestrain genestealers. They stood at rest, swaying slightly, armoured backs glistening in the light from the lamps on the pillars.
Karras growled. He had seen enough of them back on Chiaro – the bony, almost fleshless heads; the twisted, razor-lined mouths; the four lethal, black-taloned arms.
‘Why?’ gasped Morant.
‘Epsilon,’ said Karras. He was starting to see. ‘Epsilon must have brought some project to the t’au here. They wouldn’t know to use a Geller field to isolate their specimens otherwise. I’ll wager it was she who made this possible.’
‘Why would an ordo member work with the t’au on something like this?’
‘I’ll find that out when I ask her,’ said Karras.
‘No, Death Spectre,’ rumbled a voice like distant thunder. ‘You won’t.’
A bulky black figure emerged from behind one of the central pillars up ahead. Red visor lenses glowed. Light shimmered on silver and black ceramite. A bolter was raised, aimed straight at Karras.
‘Get behind me, now,’ Karras muttered to Morant. ‘And be ready to run for the door the moment I say go. Don’t question me. Get everyone off-site as fast as you can. This place will be a smoking crater very soon.’
‘What about you, m’lord?’
Karras didn’t answer. The figure in front of him had his full attention. Now another, similarly clad in black power armour, stepped out of cover.
The first spoke again, his voice deep, even for a Space Marine. ‘We would have you turn back, Lyandro Karras. We would not see Adeptus Astartes blood spilled. Leave with haste and put as much distance between yourself and this facility as you can.’
‘You know my name,’ said Karras. It wasn’t a question. ‘And I know yours, Khor Kabannen of the Iron Hands. And yours, Lucianos of the Scythes of the Emperor. What I do not know is why you betrayed the rest of your kill-team into xenos hands and are helping Epsilon betray the ordo and the Imperium.’
Kabannen shook his helmed head. ‘You cannot begin to comprehend what is at stake. This game is too big for you, Death Spectre. Turn around and leave it to those better informed. For your own sake and the sake of your brothers.’
‘I have orders,’ Karras shot back. ‘A duty. We are here to retrieve Epsilon. Join us in getting her back into ordo hands, or face judgement as traitors of the Imperium.’
‘He talks of duty,’ said Lucianos, his voice higher and sharper than his counterpart’s. ‘Brother, few know the meaning of duty as we do. Sacrifice. Honour. Things are not as you believe. Do not seek to judge. Go back the way you came.’
The door at the very far end of the chamber slid open and a slender, feminine figure, all in black like her bodyguards, stalked towards them. When she was level with Kabannen, she stopped and looked Karras over.
He found himself staring into the pale golden eyes of a beautiful woman, her skin almost as white as his own, her hair so black it seemed to drink the light.
She smiled.
‘So this is Talon Alpha.’ She glanced at Kabannen and Lucianos. ‘Who else could it be? Death Spectre iconography, Deathwatch-issue wargear. M’lord Omicron would, of course, command Sigma to find me. He would trust no one else.’
‘The Ordo Xenos orders you to return with me, inquisitor,’ said Karras. ‘You are officially operating beyond your remit. You must return and account for your actions, else be branded a traitor subject to excommunicatus.’
Epsilon scowled at that word. ‘Do you think I wanted to put myself in t’au hands? Think, Alpha. Would a loyal inquisitor reveal Imperial secrets to the t’au on a whim? I am so close now. I alone have come to the t’au offering a sliver of hope in their fight against the Great Devourer. Their Empire may well live or die on the success of our work together. And for that… for that, they will grant me passage to Al Rashaq.’
Karras squinted at her. Al Rashaq? It was the first time he had heard the name. In all his reading, he had not come across it. Was it a place? A thing? Why was it so important to this woman that she would deliberately put herself in enemy hands?
‘I know nothing of that,’ he boomed. ‘It would not matter if I did. My duty is simple. I have been charged with returning you. Come with me now. Do not let this turn to bloodshed and regret.’
‘You are outnumbered, Death Spectre,’ laughed Kabannen. ‘Two to one. The man with you will be of no consequence.’
‘You seem to have miscounted, Iron Hand,’ Karras shot back. Beneath his helm, he was grinning. ‘Isn’t that right, Watcher?’
Photo-reactive camouflage flickered off to reveal Darrion Rauth standing just inside the chamber door with his bolter pointed straight at Lucianos.
‘How fine it is to see in the dark,’ quoted Rauth, a line from a thirty-fourth-millennium play by Orchaeo. ‘But so much better to be the dark.’
Karras raised his bolter and pointed it straight at Kabannen. To Morant, he said, ‘Go, now! Get everyone away from here. And do not wait for us. That’s an order!’
‘Emperor watch over you, my lord,’ breathed Morant. ‘I will see it done!’
He ran.
‘Khor!’ said Lucianos, ready to gun the man down before he reached the door.
‘Let him go, brother,’ said Kabannen. ‘He matters not. Their game is utterly lost.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ Karras demanded.
At a sign from Epsilon, the two Deathwatch bodyguards began retreating towards the chamber’s far door, weapons still trained on Karras and Rauth.
Epsilon spoke over her shoulder as she walked. ‘Return to your master, Talon. Ask him to have faith in me and the patience to let this play out. I must see this through, no matter how it looks from the outside.’
When she was almost at the door, she paused. ‘There will come a time, soon, when you will understand all of this. On that day, you will be glad this moment did not descend into bloodshed. Brother should not slay brother, after all. And the prize at the end of this road is great indeed. Far greater than you can imagine. It may change everything for mankind. Everything.’
Karras walked forward, daring the inquisitor’s bodyguards to shoot. ‘Answer me this!’ he called out. ‘Is that the same damned lie you fed the rest of your kill-team before you handed them over to be vivisected by the xenos?’
Lucianos took an angry step towards Karras, finger on trigger.
‘No, brother!’ barked Kabannen.
Reluctantly, Lucianos backed down and retreated to the doorway.
‘The death of Sabre Three was unfortunate,’ said Kabannen, ‘but he woke from cryosleep before he could be properly restrained. He opted to disobey me and fight. Many t’au died before we could restrain him. We almost lost our chance at cooperation. The t’au demanded his life as a marker of the fresh accord between us. In the end, we had no choice. As she has already told you, ultimately, in retrospect, the Ordo Xenos will understand and approve of her actions.’
‘Did you see his body?’ growled Karras. ‘Did you see how they defiled it?’
Shadowbreaker Page 27