by Dan Abnett
Under the sand, a few centimetres down, the ground was tiled. Tessellated, irregular octagonal tiles, just like the ones she had found on the floor of the mine working at North Qualm. Once more, they fitted perfectly, impossibly, despite their shape.
The more of them she uncovered, the more she brushed the sand away.
'Stop it/ I said. 'For our sanity, I don't think it's worth trying to discover if they cover the entire beach/
'Can all of this… be artificial?' she asked.
'It can't be/ said Aemos. 'Perhaps the tiles and the arches are part of some old structure, long abandoned, that has since been flooded and covered with the dust… due to… to…'
He didn't sound at all convincing.
I crossed to Fischig and Betancore and stood with them gazing up at the first arch. It was wrought from that odd, unknown metal we had seen on Damask.
What do we do know?' Fischig asked.
'Well, I hate to state the obvious/ said Aemos from down the beach, 'but the last row of these we found formed a deliberate pathway that led the Essene in here. Should we assume this serves the same purpose?'
I stepped forward, through the broad, towering shape of the first arch. 'Come on/1 said.
We walked for what I estimated was perhaps twenty minutes. Estimated. All of our chronometers were dead. After the first few minutes we began to
hear a distant, repetitive boom; a low, almost sub-sonic peal like thunder that rolled out from somewhere far away over the sea. Or seemed to. It came every half minute or so. There were long intervals of silence, and just when we'd thought we'd heard the last, another boom would come. Like the crunch of our own footsteps, we could hear it through the suits, even with our vox circuits switched off.
I voxed to Maxilla. 'Can you hear that?'
There was a crackle, and no immediate reply. Then a sudden burst of transmission. Maxilla's voice:'… as you instruct, Gregor, but it's not going to be easy. Say again… what did you say about Fischig?'
'Maxilla! Repeat!' I began, but his voice continued over the top, incoherent. It wasn't a reply. I was just picking up his voice. I felt my spine go cold.
More static.
Tell Alizebeth, I agree with that! Ha!'
It went dead.
I looked back at the others. Their pale faces gazed out of the tinted brown faceplates like ghosts.
"What… was that?' I murmured.
'An echo?' Aemos whispered. 'Some kind of transmission anomaly caused by the atmosphere and the-'
'It's not a conversation I've ever had.'
Another boom of thunder rolled across the dry, softly lit shore.
After my estimated twenty minutes, we passed through what was suddenly the last arch. We all stopped. Ahead of us, the land rose more steeply, into hills and low ridges. The terrain there was darker, inhospitable. The overall radiance had dulled, and the sky was a deep green, oozing into blackness over the hills. There… there were more in the row!' Fischig exclaimed. 'More arches!' He was right. The octagonal colonnade had disappeared as we passed through the last arch. I stepped back through, imagining perhaps that from the other side the arches might reappear. They didn't. The booming continued. We set off towards the hills. Bursts of static hissed through our vox units. Transmissions/ said Lowink. He fiddled with his vox-channels. 'I can't tune them in, but they're chatter. Military. Back and forth.' Our quarry, perhaps.
'Look!' said Betancore, pointing behind us. Beyond the shore and the retreating line of arches, three ominous dark shapes hung under the clouds, out over the sea. Two Imperial frigates and an old, non-standard merchantman, floating at grav-anchor. 'How did we not see them when we passed?' 'I don't know, Midas. I'm not sure of anything anymore.' When I turned back to the rest of the group, I saw Aemos unclasping his helmet.
Aemos!'
'Calm yourself,' he said, uncovering his wizened old head. With the wide locking collar of the suit around him, he looked like a tortoise, pushing its gnarled head from its shell. He raised his left arm and showed me the atmosphere reader. The lights were green.
'Human-perfect atmosphere/ he said. A little cold and sterile, but human-perfect/
We all unclasped our helmets and pulled them off. The chilly air bit my face, but it was good to be free of the suits. There was no scent to the air, none at all. Not salt or ammonia or dust.
We helped each other fasten our helmets to our shoulder packs. The booming was duller and more distant now it didn't have our hollow helmets to resonate through. We could hear each other's footsteps, each other's breathing, the suck and lap of the ocean. I could suddenly smell Bequin's perfume. It was reassuring.
I led the group on, and we climbed slowly into the rising land. Now free of the helmet, I understood our ponderous progress was a result of more than our heavy suits. It was somehow difficult to gauge distance and depth. We stumbled every now and then. The whole place was profoundly wrong.
We came upon them very suddenly. The sudden resumption of the vox-traffic was our only warning. Our speakers burst into life simultaneously.
'Run! Move up! Segment two!'
Where are you? Where are you?'
'Cover to the left! That's an order! Cover to the left!'
They're behind me! They're behind me and I c-'
A fierce hiss of static.
Ahead, coming down the ridges and slopes of the dark rise, we saw soldiers. Imperial Guard, wearing red and gold combat armour. Gudrunite riflemen.
'Cover!' I ordered, and we dropped down into the shelter of the rising dunes, readying weapons.
There were sixty or more of them, hurrying down the upper slopes towards us in a wide straggle, running. There was no order to it. They were fleeing. An officer in their midst was waving his arms and shouting, but they were ignoring him. Many had lost helmets or rifles.
A second later, their pursuers came over the rise and fell upon them from behind. Three black, armoured speeders in the livery of navy security, and a following line of thirty troopers in their distinctive black armour, ordered, disciplined, marching in a spaced line, firing their hell-guns into the backs of the fleeing conscripts. The landspeeders swept in low, drizzling the slopes with cannon fire. The shots threw up plumes of dust, and the mangled bodies of men. A second later and all three land-speeders passed over us at what seemed like head-height, overshooting across the ammonia sea and banking round to follow in on another pass.
Some of the Gudrunites were firing back, and I saw one trooper topple and fall. But there was no co-ordination, no control.
What the hell! Do we stay hidden?' gasped Bequin.
They'll see us soon enough/ said Fischig, sliding open the feed slit of his heavy stubber's box magazine.
The odds were terrible, and ever since the incident on the Essene, I'd had a morbid loathing of the black-clad troopers.
But still…
I pulled out my heavy autopistol and tossed it to Aemos, freeing my las-carbine from the fastener lugs on my pack. Bequin drew her own weapons, a pair of laspistols. Lowink and Midas had their firearms – a las-carbine and a Glavian needle-rifle respectively – already braced in their hands.
'Look to the troops,' I told Fischig, Lowink and Bequin. 'Do what you can, Aemos. Midas – the fliers are down to us.'
We bellied forward through the dunes, and then came up firing. Fis-chig's big gun smashed into the lip of the high ridge, kicking up dust, before he found range and demolished three of the stalking troopers.
Lowink's carbine cracked out, and Aemos fired the autopistol hesitantly.
Bequin was amazing. She'd used her time well during the thirty-week passage, and Midas had clearly instructed her carefully. A laspistol in each hand, she whooped out a battle-cry of sorts and placed careful shots that dropped two more of the troopers.
The troopers balked in their ruthless advance, realising the situation had suddenly changed. The scattering Gudrunites also wavered, and some of them, the officer included, turned and began to confront the killer
s. I had been counting on this. We couldn't take them alone. I had trusted that our sudden intervention might galvanise the guardsmen.
Still, many ran.
A fierce firelight erupted along the ridge between the halted troopers and those Gudrunites below who were turning to fight. Lowink. Fischig, Aemos and Bequin moved forward in support.
The landspeeders swept back, hammering the shore with shells.
Betancore dropped to one knee, raised his exotic weapon and fired. The long barrel pulsed and made a sound like a whispered shriek. Explosive splinters tore through the nearest speeder as it crossed down over us and it blew apart in the air.
Burning wreckage scattered across the sand.
I chased a second with my carbine. It was turning to present on us, and the turn made it slow. My shots missed or deflected from the armour. As its heavy cannon began to fire, pulverising the sand in a stitching row towards me, I shot the pilot through the face plate.
Still firing, it plunged suddenly and hit the beach fifty metres behind me. It bounced, shredding apart, struck again and crashed into the breakers in a spray of debris that threw up thousands of mis-matched splashes.
The third speeder turned in and made another pass, killing six more of the fleeing Gudrunites, who presented easy targets on the sand. Midas had
his weapon trained on it and fired as it passed over, missing. He fired again, striking its rear end as it burned away.
It kept going. Over the beach. Out to sea. I have no idea what he hit –the crew, the control systems – but it just kept going, on and on, until it disappeared from sight.
We pressed up the slope, in among the Gudrunites now. They were dirty and dishevelled to a man, none older than twenty-five. Seeing us and the damage we had wrought, they cheered, perhaps imagining we were part of some greater rescue force.
On the upper ridge, the last few troopers were crumpling. Fischig charged them, his stubber wailing, and a dozen Gudrunites went with him, eager to turn on their tormentors.
The ridge fight lasted another two minutes. Fischig lost two of the Gudrunites with him, but made certain none of the troopers survived. Law enforcement, I remember thinking, had robbed the military of a fine soldier in Chastener Fischig.
I sought out the Gudrunite officer as his men collapsed, weary with exhaustion and relief. Some were weeping. All of them looked scared. Smoke from the battle drifted down the ridge in the windless air.
The officer, a sergeant, was no older than his men. He had attempted to grow a beard, but his facial hair wasn't really up to it. He saluted me even before I had shown him my badge of office. Then he fell on his knees.
'Get up.'
He did.
'Inquisitor Eisenhorn. And you are…?'
'Sergeant Enil Jeruss, second battalion, 50th Gudrunite Rifles. Sir, is the fleet here? Have they found us?'
I held up my hand to quieten him down.
Appraise me, quickly and briefly'
*We wanted no part of it. We were mustered to the frigate Exalted, waiting to ship out. When we ran from Gudran high anchor, the captain told us all Gudran had fallen and we were relocating.'
'The captain?'
'Captain Estrum, sir.'
'And then?'
Thirty weeks in transit to get here. The moment we arrived, we knew something was wrong. We protested, demanded to know what was happening. They called it dereliction and sent dozens to the firing squads. We were given a chance to follow orders or die/
'Not much of a chance/
He shook his head. 'No, sir. That's why I tried to get the men out. We broke and ran, once we'd got in there, once they were busy. They came after us to hunt us down/
'In where?'
He gestured back over the ridge. The darkness/
Tell me what you saw/ I said.
NINETEEN
Jeruss makes his report.
At the plateau.
The true matter.
'I don't even know what world we're on,' Sergeant Jeruss said. They never told us. The ride in was rough, though.'
'It has no name, as far as I know. Go on/
They deployed us from the ships along this beach as an escort detail for the main party.'
'How many men?'
'Over a hundred naval security troopers, and three hundred or so of us guard.'
Vehicles?'
'Speeders like you saw, and a pair of heavier personnel carriers for some crates of cargo and the main party/
"What do you know of them?'
Jeruss shrugged. 'Of the cargo, nothing. In the main party was the captain, and Lord Glaw of Gudrun. He's a worthy nobleman from my homeworld/
'I know him. Who else?'
'Some others too: a merchant, an ecclesiarch, and a great and terrible warrior that they tried to keep away from us regular troops/
Mandragore, no doubt. And Dazzo and Locke. The core of Oberon Glaw's cabal.
Then what?'
Jeruss pointed up the slopes in the dark, forbidding uplands. 'We advanced into that. It seemed to me they knew where they were going. Things changed as we went further in. It got darker and warmer. And it was hard to negotiate the way, as if-'
As if what?'
'We couldn't judge distances. Sometimes it was like wading through hot wax, sometimes we could barely slow ourselves down. Some of the men panicked. We found polygons, like these on the beach/
It was his word for the hoop-like arches.
There were rows of them, aisles, marching away into the uplands. They were so irregular they disturbed the mind. They seemed to vary, to change/
What do you mean "irregular"?'
'I went to no officer school, sir, but I am educated. I understand simple geometry. The angles of the polygons did not add up, yet they were there/
Chilled, I recalled Maxilla's mention of the 'unwholesome' angles, and thought too of the marking on the tile I had taken from Damask.
"We followed some of these rows, passing through polygons on occasions. The ecclesiarch and the merchant seemed to be leading us. And there was another man, a tech-priest type/
'Slim build? Blue eyes?'
Yes/
'His name is Malahite. He played a part in choosing your path?'
Yes, they deferred to him on several occasions. Finally, we came to a plateau. A great raised, wide space, overlooked by jagged peaks of rock. The plateau was artificial. Tiled with smooth stones that-'
He tried to make a shape with his index fingers and thumbs but . shrugged and gave up.
'More impossible polygons?'
He laughed nervously. 'Yes. The plateau was vast. We waited there, the men grouped around the outside of the space, the main party and the vehicles in the centre/
'And then?'
*We waited what seemed like hours, but it was impossible to tell because our chronometers had all stopped. Then there was some kind of dispute. Lord Glaw was arguing with some of the others. I saw this as a chance. I got the men ready. Nearly ninety of us, ready and eager to trust to chance and flee. All eyes were on the shouting match. The big warrior – God-Emperor save me! – he was shouting by then. I think the sound of his voice was what decided us. We slipped away in twos and threes, from the back of the ranks, down the sides of the plateau, and ran back the way we'd come/
And they discovered your escape?'
'Eventually. And came hunting for us. The rest you know/
I waited a few moments for him to collect himself, and gathered the men around. There were about thirty riflemen left, all of them scared, and another three or four wounded. Aemos did what he could for them.
I rose and addressed them all. 'In defying your officers and leaders, you have served the Emperor. The men who brought you here are Imperial heretics, and their enterprise is criminal. My purpose here is to stop them. I intend to press on at once on that mission. I cannot vouch for the safety of any who follow me, but I count it as a mark of honour to the Emperor himself that you will. He needs our service here, now.
If you take seriously the oaths you made to the Imperium when you became guardsmen, then you will not hesitate. There is no more vital battle in which you might give your lives/
Wild, frightened faces stared back at me. There was a murmur of agreement, but these were young inexperienced men, some no more than boys, who had been thrown into the deep waters of madness.
'Steel yourselves, and know that the Emperor is with you and for you in this. I don't exaggerate when I say the future rests in our hands.'
More voluble assent now. These men weren't cowards. They just needed a purpose and a sense that they were fighting for a worthy cause.
I whispered briefly to Fischig and he immediately stepped up and raised his voice to the Imperial creed, and the song of allegiance, hymns that every child in the Imperium knew. The Gudrunites joined in lustily. It centred and focused their determination.
Still, the booming came along the shore.
With Betancore's help, I stripped arms and equipment from the fallen. There were enough weapons to make sure every man had a lasrifle or a hell-gun. We also managed to assemble three intact naval trooper uniforms, mixing and matching from the dead.
I stripped off my bulky vacuum suit and began to put on the polished black combat armour of a naval security trooper. Midas attempted to do the same, but his build was too slim for the heavy rig. The troopers were, to a man, large brutes.
We dressed Fischig in the armour instead, and then, so as not to waste the third set, chose a heavy-set Gudrunite from Jeruss's group, a corporal named Twane.
"What's the Gudrunite command channel?' I asked Jeruss as I adjusted the helmet vox set.
'Beta-phi-beta.'
'And of the men you left in there at the plateau, how many others might side with us?'
'All the Gudrunites, I would say. Sergeant Creddon's unit, certainly'
"Your job will be to rally them to us when we get inside. I'll give the word.'
He nodded.
We left the wounded on the shore, as comfortable as we could make them, and advanced into the dark uplands.
As Jeruss had told me, it quickly became darker and warmer. The sleek black body armour I was now wearing had an integral cooling system, but