Krieg nodded and reholstered his hellpistol. Walking for the elevator he was joined by Mortensen and his men at the doors. Golliant was already holding them open with his brawny arms, allowing the commissar and the storm-troopers to walk in underneath. As the doors closed and the car began its descent, an awkward silence prevailed.
‘You realise this is suicide?’ Krieg eventually piped up.
The major grunted.
‘You know,’ he told the cadet-commissar, ‘I like to think that anything is possible.’
‘Yes,’ Krieg returned. ‘I’ve heard that about you.’
II
Vertigo was a wreck.
The Spectre was smashed up and running like a junker after her deathworld encounter, but Rosenkrantz would be damned before being relegated to an Arvus or humpshuttle.
Clearly the major felt much the same way, stamping up the ramp with his men, all with hastily donned carapace and hellpacks. Mortensen had given Rask the unenviable duty of coordinating the mass ground retrieval from one of the available Valkyries. Other aircraft laden with naval security contingents and the 364th’s Second Platoon were lifting off the deck. Despite Meeks’s men being cut to shreds, the sergeant had no qualms about kitting up and heading straight back out on the coat tails of Mortensen and the Redemption Corps. Mortensen shouldn’t have been surprised. Vertigo was to carry Mortensen and his storm-troopers, leaving the rest of the hold empty in expectation of the recovered flagship’s senior officer corps.
Somehow Captain Waldemar had negotiated the swarm of roks and hulks closing in on the unsuspecting Spetzghast and held precarious station in a low orbit above the Purgatorio’s last known trajectory, but below the descending asteroid storm front. He’d met Commissar Krieg’s well-advertised deadline of two hours but what worried Rosenkrantz more was the length of time he’d be able to hold that position.
With Sigma Scorpii throwing the bronze glow of a new half-day over the horizon, Vertigo plunged through the cobalt clouds. Gunships, carriers and shuttles plummeted before them like a flock of birds evading a predator, banking and swirling into a vortex that spiralled for the surface. A squadron of Marauders thundered overhead, ghosting the rescue operation. Mortensen had insisted on bringing along Wharmby’s bomber group for extra muscle, despite Waldemar’s objections, just in case the greenskin hulk still needed softening up from the ground.
The major came up behind the co-pilot’s station expecting to see Benedict. Rosenkrantz had been sorry to see him go, especially after saving her life down on the deathworld, but the servitor had to be taken off to wherever such things were taken when damaged or injured. The Jopallian shuddered to think: medicae-hall or repair shop, Rosenkrantz couldn’t tell. Instead an unusually grave Leland Hoyt sat in the chair, transferred from White Thunder. Hoyt, normally a fount of bright optimism, had returned from Illium a changed man. Gone was that boyish smile and playful good humour. Now the co-pilot looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Rosenkrantz sighed. Perhaps it was the view. Staring up through the cockpit plas she could spot the sinister silhouettes of the first mighty ork roks to kiss upper atmosphere.
‘Major,’ Hoyt said quietly, offering Mortensen a headset. ‘Crow Road – Captain Rask.’
Mortensen slipped on the set. ‘Well?’
Rosenkrantz could hear the captain’s craggy voice across her own vox-set: ‘Zane, it’s a hell of a mess down here. Looks like both vessels went down grappling but the impact was shallow: the crash site must stretch a good ten or twelve kilometres. Equatorial desert, so little in the way of local casualties – thank the Emperor.’
A brief respite, Rosenkrantz pondered, considering the hailstorm of colossal asteroids heading their way. Vertigo cut through the lower cloud layers, getting a glimpse of dawn reaching across the red barren wastes for the first time.
‘Major,’ Rosenkrantz called, drawing Mortensen’s attention to the canopy.
‘Yes, I can see it,’ Mortensen declared. The Purgatorio’s plasma drive and the hulk’s sheer mass had propelled the two vessels in a dance of death towards the planet much faster than the stately pace of the converging ork roks. The crash site itself was now clear but for kilometres around a tsunami of dust and sand obscured surface detail.
Angular outcrops of rock and toxic metals had torn up both vessels badly, smashing up the Purgatorio and leaving flaming sections of the Dictator-class the length of the crash landing. The space hulk, robust as it was, had also suffered, breaking up on planetary impact: individual pieces of rock and scavenged alien craft, tumbling and scoring a wide tract of depth and destruction into the Spetzghastian surface.
‘The command decks and bridge separated from the main body of the vessel in the crash,’ Rask told them. ‘They came down with a section of the hulk just off the main landing site. Transmitting the coordinates, now.’
Hoyt scanned his rune screens for the new information.
‘Point two-five. Roll thirty degrees port-yaw.’
Rosenkrantz responded.
‘I had Prayerstalker do a fly-by,’ the captain continued. ‘Not much left. St. Scimitar picked up a small group of survivors from the dunes nearby. Among them is the Purgatorio’s third lieutenant. He says the command decks were the site of an overwhelming boarding action – even before the crash. Says he couldn’t see much because of the smoke, but what he did witness was all hand-to-hand, with prisoners snatched and taken back to the hulk section close by.’
‘Taken back?’ Rosenkrantz questioned. ‘That’s a lot of self-control for orks.’
‘Nothing about these green-skinned bastards surprises me anymore,’ Mortensen enlightened her. ‘They’re a breed apart.’
‘Major, the bombers,’ she reminded him, the thought only just occurring to her.
‘Tyberius, call off Wharmby’s Marauder group. With friendlies being transported across the open space between sections we can’t afford bombing runs. Send them back to Deliverance immediately.’
‘Confirmed.’
‘Okay, listen and listen good,’ Mortensen said, pushing the vox-receiver close to his strained lips. ‘Commit all aircraft to make one touchdown – as soon as is humanly possible. Order them to fill their holds and everywhere else for that matter, with as many crash survivors as they can. Then, back to the carrier. One trip only. Make sure they understand.’
‘What about you?’ Rask sent back.
‘We’ll raid the hulk section for the captured officer corps.’
‘There’s no time for that,’ the officer insisted tightly.
‘Make sure they understand, captain,’ the major repeated, ‘One trip and then back to the ship. Commander Waldemar will then get his trip to Aurelius. Vertigo out.’
Rosenkrantz craned her flight helmet around to see the storm-trooper. He gave her his grim, determined eyes.
‘Take us to hell.’
The pilot complied.
III
Mortensen had Vertigo close with the shattered hulk section. Even as just a piece of detached wreckage its dimensions were impressive. Rosenkrantz had found a gargantuan rent where the cratered rock face met time-burnished alloy and the crash had done its worst. Dropping the Spectre expertly in through the opening she was descending as fast as she dared, searching for a landing zone somewhere in the alien darkness.
The major stood helmetless on the tip of the aircraft’s lowered ramp, hellgun humming.
‘Ready?’ he called casually over his shoulder.
Corporal Vedette and a hangdog Conklin joined him on the ramp, a gaggle of corpsmen huddled behind, going through final weapons prep. The doom-laden gloom of their surroundings did little to dampen the Mordian’s spirits.
‘I’m surprised you still ask, sir.’
Vertigo’s ghostly hull lamps slipped down the cavernous wall of the enormous chamber they were traversing,
passing across spectacular mineral deposits in the dull and dusty rock before glinting off rust-eaten hull and finally something distinctly biological.
‘By all the saints and their bastard children,’ Preed cursed. ‘Where the hell are we?’
Mortensen turned. The barrel-bellied priest stood beside Krieg and his Volscian shadow, dwarfing both the cadet-commissar and even his aide with his immense girth. Golliant had snatched a snub-nosed Volscian-pattern autocannon from Deliverance’s armoury and cradled the monster protectively above his charge’s gleaming cap.
‘Expect anything…’ Mortensen told them. He scowled as he realised the only weapon Krieg was packing was his trusty hellpistol.
‘I see a platform,’ Vedette announced, peering off the edge of the ramp into the pit below. She hooked the tip of her boot under a coil of rope and kicked it over the side. Greco limped up the other side and did the same with his good foot.
Mortensen thumbed the troop bay vox. ‘Vertigo, hold position. Squad disembarking.’
Shouldering his hellgun and snapping his harness and descender to the line, Mortensen kicked off the aircraft and rappelled the deep, dark, distance between the Spectre and the platform. The soles of the major’s boots touched down on the unnatural metal of the platform, his steps echoing eerily around the chasmal chamber. These became a hammer of footfalls as the storm-troopers gathered, establishing a holdpoint around the dangling ropes of their escape route.
Sarakota and a second almond-faced sniper crossed in front of Mortensen. They moved either side of him before going down on one knee and sweeping the inky murk of the hulk with the long, chunky barrels of their anti-materiel rifles. The snipers had detached their scopes, which would be all but useless in the cavernous confines of the spacecraft, but retained their Hellshots, more out of sentimentality than practicality.
‘Should we fan out, sir?’ Vedette checked. Mortensen’s nose wrinkled. He didn’t like the idea of splitting his firepower in here, but time wasn’t on his side. He needed to locate the Imperial officers fast.
‘Best guess?’ Mortensen asked after giving the snipers a few moments to orient themselves. The tribesmen had grown up in a maze of cavern-systems and had the most finely-tuned senses of the squad.
‘Between all the crotch scratching and boot shuffling it’s a wonder we can hear anything,’ the hot-headed Opech complained. He was fresh out of the infirmary and the pain of his wounds had made him cranky enough even to gripe at the major.
‘Just give me the short version, corpsman,’ Mortensen bit back.
‘Difficult,’ Sarakota murmured, embarrassed at his kinsman’s hasty words. The Khongkotan tribesman had also been in the infirmary, but Mortensen hadn’t heard anything other than a rib-fractured wince out of the sniper in complaint. ‘The different materials and custom structure of the vessel make the vibrations hard to read.’
‘Kota,’ the major hushed. ‘Where are my targets?’
The sniper turned his head this way and that and then sighed, settling. Taking the weight of his heavy rifle he got up off his knee, turned and headed off behind them. Mortensen stared after the disappearing Sarakota and then back to the remaining sniper. ‘You?’
Opech similarly lifted his weapon and nodded. ‘The walls still throb with recent activity to the north-east. Large numbers, moving fast.’
Mortensen looked at Conklin, Vedette and then Krieg.
The commissar shrugged, ‘What are we waiting for?’
The Redemption Corps swept through the black cavities and passages of the hulk, hugging the walls and throwing the barrels of their weapons around lopsided corners. Conduits, hangars, vents, gangways: all alien and ancient. And upside down. From what the major could make out, and he was no expert, craft after bizarre craft had been melded together into some kind of amorphous whole: some without care for orientation or natural gravity.
‘Incredible,’ Preed mumbled every so often, soaking up the foreign grandeur of the place. Greco was less enthused, hobbling up unnatural inclines and maintaining an almost constant stream of reasons why they should probably be heading back: the officers were probably dead, the hulk was so massive they could easily miss them, I think we’re being watched. He began a cautionary tale about the time he broke into the Sultana Babooshka’s tower villa, but Mortensen stopped him, telling him to stick to what he was actually good at, which was shutting the vrek up.
Every so often the progenium runaway and arch-larcenist would be called upon to run a bypass on a security bulkhead or some other fused and ancient egress, and when that didn’t work Uncle had to create an artificial opening with his cordite charges and melta bombs.
Sarakota and Opech pushed on ahead with their hefty anti-materiel Hellshots primed, swinging the heavy rifles crisply around dark corners like they had done this kind of thing before. Eszcobar fiddled with the regulator on his flame unit, the Autegan favouring the incinerator over his trusty grenade launcher in the confines of the hulk. Krieg was strangely quiet, hellpistol in one hand and a chunky arc lamp in the other, aiming both experimentally up a narrow, twisted stairwell: expecting trouble. In the tight corridors and labyrinthine shafts of the massive hulk, the commissar clearly favoured the side arm/lamp combo, more so that he didn’t fall to his death down some hidden duct or pipe.
Mortensen merely stabbed at the shadows with the muzzle of his hellgun, ready to blast to oblivion anything stupid enough to stick its ugly face out of the darkness at him. He was getting impatient, their distance from the bird growing at the same time the minutes were ticking away in the back of his skull. Despite the immediate threat of his surroundings he couldn’t quite get the vision of thousands of heavily-armed asteroids falling out of the Spetzghastian sky out of his mind. He wanted those officers, though. Organised Imperial resistance in the system might depend on them being alive and Mortensen sure as hell didn’t want to end up as ranking officer on the precipice of an opening greenskin warzone.
Climbing through a warped, open bulkhead, the major was hit by the powerful stench of fumes from the chamber beyond. Flashing his rifle lamp around he found his boots smeared with a brown oily substance that seemed to cover the entire floor of the chamber. Sass’s occasional chant of ‘Commodore van den Groot’, ‘Brigadier Voskov’ or ‘Lord Commissar Verhoeven’ boomed in the new chamber. It seemed to stretch for hundreds of metres.
‘Sir, I think you should look at this,’ Sarakota called gently. Krieg and the adjutant had pushed on. Loping up behind them, the group gathered around. They had found the commodore. Greco jerked back, hand over his mouth like he had been physically struck. The others just looked blankly at the pile of entrails and the bloodied naval cloak that had once been the fleet commander. Vedette plucked the commodore’s ridiculously flamboyant hat from the mess, shaking the gore from the feathers and wiping clean the leather around the emblazoned aquila. She handed it to the major. It was definitely van den Groot.
‘Greenskins did this?’ asked Preed.
‘Maybe,’ Mortensen replied.
‘Come on,’ Greco broke in, ‘the fat bastard’s been turned inside out.’ The trooper was seriously starting to lose his cool. Mortensen grunted. He’d fought greenskins across the galaxy. They did not kill like this.
‘Movement…’ Sarakota called, strangely without a hint of panic. The effect on the others was instantaneous: weapons came up and lamp beams were thrown around the darkness. The sniper knelt down, sinking his knee into the oily brown residue and touching the deck with his fingertips.
It all happened fast. Kynt spun around, simultaneously bringing up his hellgun. As the twitchy comms-officer fired, Mortensen kicked the barrel aside, sending the blasts thudding harmlessly into the blackness. In the illumination of Eszcobar’s lamp, Brigadier Voskov of the Volscian Shadow Brigade stumbled forward holding a broken arm. He looked like a cadaver in the harsh light. His immaculate if dour uniform was gore splashed and t
orn and his gun-metal grey crew-cut matted with blood from a gash on his head. His craggy face was etched with more than just years and the expression of martial fanaticism that never usually left his face had gone. Only a blankness remained.
He fell against Krieg, who half caught him. Holstering his weapon, he cradled the spireborn to the deck. The brigadier looked like he had been to hell and back. He tried to say something but choked and descended into a coughing fit. Sergeant Minghella knelt in and gave him a sip of water from his canteen. Voskov’s eyes rolled over and bulged. Once again he tried to say something.
‘Easy,’ the medic told him.
‘Redemption Corps,’ he managed to the major, through an agonised smile. Mortensen didn’t think he’d ever seen the Volscian commander smile before.
‘Don’t try and talk, Gil. We’ll get you and your officers out of here,’ Mortensen pledged solemnly.
‘Rescue…’ the brigadier croaked, before seeming to relax for a moment. A throttled chuckle escaped his torn lips. His throat was swollen and his neck violently bruised. ‘No…’ he hissed.
‘Rhen?’ Mortensen prompted his medic.
‘Head wound,’ Minghella found in the Volscian’s wiry hair. The sergeant would know: he sported a fresh one himself from their crash on Ishtar. ‘Looks like he’s been out for a while. Severe trauma to the neck and throat: beyond that superficial cuts and bruises, most likely from the crash. We need to get him out of here and on some oxygen.’
Voskov shook his head violently, froth bubbling up around the edges of his mouth. He said something but Mortensen couldn’t make it out and leaned in closer.
‘Sir, what is it?’
Again, a rasping emptiness.
‘Gil?’
‘Leave here!’ the Volscian managed finally.
Suddenly the deck was lit up by a las blast. Voskov’s head fell back and his hand clattered to the floor. In it Krieg found his own hellpistol, slipped out of his holster. While the storm-troopers had fussed over their commanding officer, he’d taken the weapon from Krieg’s person and got the muzzle to his temple.
Honour Imperialis - Braden Campbell & Aaron Dembski-Bowden & Chris Dows & Steve Lyons & Rob Sanders Page 55