09 - Dead Men Walking

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  Then a woman’s voice shouted for help, and Gunthar realised that somebody was down. The woman was over by the rubble heap, and Gunthar’s heart sank as he saw a thatch of black hair and recognised Weber’s body beside her.

  He ran to his newfound friend’s side, although he didn’t know what he could do for him. Weber was still breathing, but raggedly, and there was a sucking wound in his chest. His face was caked with sweat, and his pupils had contracted as if he was staring at something a world away. “Can’t anyone help him?” Gunthar cried. “Didn’t anyone take a… a medi-kit or something from the soldiers?”

  “Just… winded, that’s all,” wheezed Weber, and with a supreme effort he lifted his arm and took Gunthar’s hand in one of his own larger, rougher ones. “Need a moment to… catch my breath…” It was plain in Weber’s face that he didn’t believe his own words. He was holding on to Gunthar’s hand with a bone-crushing ferocity, as if hoping to cling to life through muscle power alone, and there was a desperate appeal in his eyes, one that Gunthar didn’t know how to answer.

  He felt he should say something, offer some reassurance, but only one thought bubbled to the surface of his mind, and this was his last chance to ask about it. “This woman,” he said, “the one your friend saw, how did he know…?”

  Weber appeared consternated at first, then glad to have something other than his own fate to think about. “You mean,” he said, “the… the Governor’s daughter?”

  “His niece,” said Gunthar. “The Governor’s niece. Was it definitely her?”

  “The fellow, he… said he remembered her from a newsreel, during the food riots. I don’t know, it could be he was… maybe he was imagining things.”

  “Did he say what she looked like? Weber, did he say—?”

  “I don’t know. Young. Nice clothes. But he was probably mistaken. What would… what would someone like that be doing so far from her ivory tower?”

  Weber closed his eyes, then, and Gunthar felt his hold weakening as his breathing became shallower. He had no more words, so he just squeezed Weber’s hand as hard as he could, to remind him that he wasn’t alone, until at last, with one final, wracking breath, he was gone, and his fingers went limp in Gunthar’s grip.

  “What do we do now?” asked a hollow voice behind him, and Gunthar realised that the other refugees were ranged about him, looking to him to guide them. The woman who had lost her arm was on her feet with the rest of them, weeping softly to herself.

  “I don’t know,” said Gunthar. “I… I don’t know.”

  “Do we go on,” somebody else asked, “maybe try for another gate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if the mutants come back? What if they bring reinforcements?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”

  This last was shouted, and the effort of forcing out the words broke a dam in Gunthar’s throat, and allowed tears to rise to his eyes. He fought them back, swallowing hard, breathing in deeply. “I think,” he said at last, when he had composed himself, “I think Weber was right. There’s no way out of the city for us. I think we should… We should have stayed where we were. We should go back to the upper floors, where it’s safe… safer, I mean. We should wait, wait for the governor to… well, to do something. Trust in the Emperor, and He… He will provide.”

  Even as he spoke those words, Gunthar knew that he and the others would be parting company soon.

  He hadn’t thought about Arex all day. Too busy thinking about himself. Now, it seemed that when the lights had gone out she hadn’t been at home. Instead, she had been on the 204th floor, facing an attack by metal insects—Weber may not have been sure of this, but Gunthar was, because he knew one thing that Weber hadn’t.

  He knew that the 204th-floor skyway was the route any autocab would take from the High Spire to his own modest hab on the 223rd floor.

  Arex had come looking for him—and in his fear, in his selfishness, Gunthar had turned his back on her. Nor would she have told her uncle where she was going, so she would have no prospect of being rescued by him despite Weber’s insinuations. She was probably alone, possibly hurt, almost certainly sheltering in Gunthar’s hab, wondering where he was, needing him.

  He had to get back there. He had to find her.

  He let go of Weber’s hand, laying it across the storekeeper’s chest. Then he reached across the body and he picked up Weber’s lasgun. It was surprisingly light.

  The Emperor, it seemed, wanted Gunthar Soreson to fight, so he had given him something—something more than his own life—to fight for. And that was okay, he told himself, because he could fight now, he had just proved that to himself.

  Gunthar couldn’t be a hero, he accepted that, but he could be a soldier. And he would be, he told himself—if only because he had no choice in the matter.

  Chapter Ten

  The tremors reached as far as Hieronymous Port.

  Costellin felt the first as he stood by his office window, looking down onto the space port ramp. PDF drill instructors were marshalling an army of new, raw recruits out there, recruits who were struggling to march in step despite their most earnest efforts. The first tremor bowled a handful of them over, and the commissar smiled wryly to himself at the commotion thus sparked.

  To the tremor itself, he gave little thought, assuming it to have been caused by a demolition charge. He had been hearing the distant crumps of such charges from the city all morning, though the intervals between them had lengthened.

  Then the second, more powerful and longer-lasting quake hit, and he had to hold on to the windowsill to maintain his footing. Now, he had cause for concern.

  Costellin wasn’t the first to reach Colonel 186’s door. Governor-General Hanrik beat him to it. The colonel’s aides were busy at the vox-caster, requesting reports from his men on the front line and his counterparts in the other three Krieg regiments. “It’s confirmed, sir,” said a masked lieutenant, hefting a pile of data-slates. “According to our triangulations, the epicentre of both earthquakes was right here—” He pointed to a slate with a stencil. “—in the heart of Hieronymous City itself.”

  The colonel nodded as if he had expected nothing else. Turning to Hanrik, he asked, “Does this region have a history of geological instability?”

  Hanrik shook his head. “Not at all. There hasn’t been so much as a tremor here in my lifetime. Even if there had been, the timing of this—”

  “Then we may assume,” the colonel interrupted him, “that the necrons are responsible. Lieutenant, I will need fresh scans of the affected area.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll contact the troop ship, sir.”

  There was no more to be said until those scans arrived, so Costellin asked to be informed when they did and then left. He had a bad feeling about this, but he kept his thoughts to himself until there was more information. The colonel, he knew, would entertain no groundless speculation. Hanrik followed him out, but Costellin noted that he posted a PDF sentry in the corridor between their offices, presumably to alert him should a meeting be convened without him.

  Forty minutes later, the Governor took the further precaution of paying the commissar a visit. Costellin waited patiently as Hanrik talked in concerned tones about the situation in general and the possible causes of the earthquakes in particular, before working his way around to his point.

  “We’ve been combing the city, of course,” he said, “but our lasguns are no match for those necron ghouls. We’ve already lost two squads this morning, and the flyers they were in. I just need… We’re still adding to the list of the missing. I’m talking about important people: captains of industry, philanthropists, lords even. The irony is that, with the lifters out, it was those on the upper floors who had the least chance of escape, but I hear… I’ve been reading the reports, and it seems the Krieg—”

  “You’re asking for our help,” said Costellin.

  “You have resources, weapons, that we just—”

  �
�You want Krieg soldiers to fly with your men on their rescue missions. I can see how that would be a boon to them. I can guess what the colonel’s response will be, though. He has the final say on troop allocations, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “The colonel. Yes.” Hanrik cleared his throat. “He and I didn’t exactly get off on the best foot. I thought my cause might find more favour were it to—”

  “You’re asking me to intercede with the colonel on your behalf.” It was a common enough request, and not an unreasonable one.

  “I understand, of course, if he can’t spare the manpower. I thought, if we could just lay our hands on those melta guns…”

  “I’d say the colonel is more likely to let you have the men,” said Costellin dryly. “The weapons are more valuable, and harder to come by. But there’s more to this appeal than you’re telling me, I think. A more personal stake than simply concern for your world’s great and good?”

  Hanrik’s hands had been fidgeting in his lap, betraying his apprehension. Now he stiffened, met Costellin’s steady gaze for a moment, then sighed and nodded. He reached into his tunic pocket and produced a device that looked like a vox-handset.

  “My niece,” he said. “Her name is Arex. She went missing before the power cut, but she wears an amecyte necklace with… I had a machine that could find her. We lost it. I thought that was it, I know there’s… I know there’s only a small chance that she is still… but I spoke to an enginseer and he built this replacement machine for me. He says it will work like the other, he just has to find Arex’s signal, but to do that he has to get closer to her.”

  “I understand,” said Costellin.

  “We know where she was last night. We can send a team to that location, then the machine can lead them to her. They’d be straight in and out of the city.”

  “I will put your request to the colonel,” said Costellin. “I will do all I can.”

  Hanrik nodded gratefully, then glanced impatiently at his chrono. “How much longer, do you think? How long does it normally take for one of these scans…?”

  “Oh, I should think the scan is completed by now. The Krieg generals on the troop ship will be analysing it as we speak.”

  “Then what are we waiting for? The colonel promised to consult us—”

  “He promised to keep us informed,” said Costellin. “That isn’t the same thing at all. Oh, he will observe the niceties, let you have your say, he might even relay your thoughts to the generals if he finds them insightful enough—but, by the time we speak with Colonel 186 again, he will already know what his orders are.”

  Another half-hour later, they were seated before the colonel’s desk, inspecting a tactical hololith, and Hanrik asked, “What exactly am I looking at here?”

  “I presume,” said the colonel, “you do not recognise that construct. It did not show up on our previous scans.”

  “Recognise it?” echoed Hanrik. “I… I’ve never seen anything like it. The towers… That area would have been packed with towers. It’s right at the heart of the city. What has happened to them all? They can’t have just… They can’t…”

  “It’s a pyramid,” said Costellin. “A black stone pyramid. It must be about…” He thumbed up some figures on the display, and performed a quick calculation. “It’s at least two hundred storeys high, and almost a kilometre along each side of the base.”

  “But there hasn’t been time,” protested Hanrik, “to build something like… Where in the Emperor’s name did it come from?”

  “Underground,” said Costellin gravely. “It came from underground. My guess would be that this construct is the source of all our problems: the necron tomb itself.”

  “Then those tremors we felt…”

  “The emergence of that tomb,” confirmed Costellin.

  “We believe it erupted from the ground,” said the colonel, “with enough force to uproot the towers still standing above it, and to pulverise them.”

  “And what… what is this?” Hanrik indicated a green splotch on the hololith.

  “That is not yet known,” said the colonel.

  “An energy source,” murmured Costellin, leaning in closer and studying the runes that flickered beside the irregular shape, “emanating from the apex of the pyramid, pulsing green in the visible spectrum but also… is this right? These figures seem to indicate that much of the energy is bleeding off into… into realms unknown.”

  “Like a beacon,” said Hanrik. “Like the necrons are… Do you think they could be sending out a distress signal? Calling for help?”

  “Let us pray that is so,” said the colonel. “It would mean that, by their own analysis, they lack the resources to defend themselves against us.”

  “Until their reinforcements arrive,” added Costellin quietly.

  “We have put our tech-priests to work on this data,” said the colonel, “and they are attempting to block that transmission. Colonel 81 also advises that he has a grenadier platoon in the city. He has sent them to examine the pyramid close up.”

  “What about the Inquisition?” asked Costellin. “We need all the information they’re prepared to give us, details of past necron encounters, their observed weaknesses if indeed they have any. I know it’s unlikely to amount to very much, but—”

  “A communiqué has been sent,” said the colonel. “In the meantime, we know as much as we need to know. The necrons have provided us with a target, at last.”

  “You’re sending your men in?” asked Hanrik.

  “Not exactly,” said the colonel. “Our primary objective is still containment. We have created a ring of steel around the enemy. Now, we will close it. We are going to force the necrons back into that construct of theirs, and we are going to ensure that they don’t emerge again. Hieronymous City will be their new tomb.”

  Hanrik blanched visibly at this, doubtless understanding what this plan meant for his capital. He had learned better than to argue the point, though. He sat quietly, fidgeting with his hands, as Costellin and the colonel briefly discussed the finer points of artillery placements and supply lines. Then Hanrik excused himself and left, with a meaningful glance in the commissar’s direction.

  True to his word, Costellin put the Governor’s request to the colonel as soon as he found an appropriate moment to do so. He received the expected answer.

  “You might wish to reconsider,” he pushed gently. “Hanrik has charge of the Planetary Defence Force, and a great deal of clout with the citizenry of this world whether you acknowledge his position or not. That means he commands a substantial amount of resources, not least a number of flyers, for which I should think a use could present itself. This mission to find one lost girl may not seem worth the time or the risk to you, but it is of the utmost importance to him, and a favour for Hanrik now ought to earn a favour from him in the future.”

  He knew what the colonel was thinking. He was thinking that no man should need a bribe to do what the Emperor wished of him. Still, his predecessor had learned to trust the commissar’s judgement in such matters, and it seemed that this new colonel was at least willing to consider his words too.

  “As yet,” said Costellin, “no enemy has been sighted at the walls. We have grenadiers and death riders sat twiddling their thumbs, with no target for their weapons. I’m sure a few of them would be glad to see a little action.”

  “One squad,” the colonel relented. “I will turn one squad over to General Hanrik’s command, for no longer than eight hours.” Costellin thanked him for his understanding, and left to deliver the good news to Hanrik. He tried not to think about what the colonel might ask of the Governor in return, and of his people.

  Potentially, Costellin had just thrown a great many innocents to the wolves in exchange for the life of just one, but that was something to fret about later.

  That afternoon, he made a tour of the troop emplacements, more by habit than anything. In his previous assignments, a sighting of an officer on the front lines had always been good fo
r the morale of a regiment, but of course the Guardsmen of the Death Korps were rather less appreciative of such gestures.

  Their morale was probably higher than his own, Costellin reflected, as his half-track sped along the approach road to the city. They didn’t know what they were facing, and they didn’t much care. They trusted in their generals to make their decisions for them, to give them the chance to make their lives count for the Emperor.

  They were certainly making their presence felt. The roars of their guns drowned out the sound of the half-track’s engine long before it reached its destination. The heavy artillery of the Krieg 186th was arrayed before the western wall of the city, what remained of it after an hour’s solid bombardment. The Medusas, with their limited range but enormous destructive power, were up front doing most of the work, each ensconced in its own shallow dugout, each spitting out heavy shell after heavy shell in a deafening barrage. Behind them, the Earthshakers squatted on their static platforms, waiting in pregnant silence for a more enticing target.

  Major Gamma emerged to greet the commissar from the tent that served as his Company HQ. If he spoke at all, however, between the noise and the major’s mouth-concealing mask, Costellin couldn’t tell. He signalled to the Krieg officer to carry on as he was, and moved on. As he drew closer to the wall, a dust cloud billowed up around him, tearing at his throat and his tear ducts. Not for the first time in such circumstances, Costellin felt he would have been glad of a Krieg facemask himself.

  Delta Company’s section of wall was already down, as were several of the buildings and the skyways behind it. It was the turn of the foot soldiers now to move in and to start to haul the debris away, to clear a path for their engines to advance. They were constructing fresh dugouts for the Medusas, only fifty metres ahead of their old positions. At this rate, the demolition of Hieronymous City would be a painfully slow process, but one thing was for sure: it would be an exceedingly thorough one.

  Costellin wondered how much longer the necrons would wait, how much closer they would allow their attackers to come, before they responded in some way.