The Greater Good

by Sandy Mitchell

  But before I could make my first attack, the slab of metal bulged as something struck it hard from the other side, jarring it free of its runners. Jurgen and I exchanged an uneasy glance, and then stepped back, raising our weapons. My free hand fell to the laspistol holstered at my side, but before I could draw it, another blow shivered the door, and a quartet of incredibly sharp talons punctured their way through. As I watched, momentarily paralysed in disbelieving horror, the hand behind them clenched into a fist, ripping a hole the size of my head in the thick steel plate.

  Jurgen opened fire at once, directing a burst of las-bolts through the aperture, and the creature beyond recoiled for a moment before pressing its attack. Then a second set of talons punctured the metal as though it were cardboard, slashing down to open a jagged rent, while the first ripped a diagonal tear across to join it. I drew my laspistol as a second pair of hands, tipped with smaller claws and bearing an extra finger apiece, took a firm hold of the ragged barrier, before yanking it free of the runners and tossing it aside.

  From the moment the first set of talons had burst through the door I’d had a queasy feeling that I knew what manner of beast was on the other side, and now I knew I was right. I just had the merest fraction of a second to register the fact, before Jurgen’s and my fingers tightened on our triggers, and a purestrain genestealer, its jaws agape, charged straight down the barrels of our guns.

  ELEVEN

  Our first volley checked the hideous creature’s rush and it faltered, staggering under the multiple impacts of Jurgen’s burst of automatic fire, to which my brief flurry of additional las-bolts added very little if I’m honest. Cauterised craters exploded across its thorax, raising a fine spray of ichor and pulverised chitin, which we were close enough to see wafting around its body like mist rising from an early morning swamp. It recovered fast though, jaws snapping, and leapt forwards again leaking rancid fluids through its cracked carapace, but Jurgen and I were no longer there, having jumped aside in opposite directions. It turned to follow me, both of the arms on its left side reaching out, in the apparent hope of snaring me in its lower hand while it dissected me with the scalpel-sharp talons of the upper.

  I was ready for it, however, having faced genestealers before, and ducked under the grabbing hand, slashing upwards with the chainsword. Its teeth whined for a moment as they bit into the creature’s tough outer shell, then came free, lopping off the extended limb like a diseased tree branch before slicing through its underbelly. A gush of offal erupted from it, making a ghastly mess of my greatcoat, and splattered on the floor at our feet. Tough and tenacious as the creature was, it couldn’t last long in that condition, and it lunged forwards, apparently intent on making one last attack on Jurgen as a final act of revenge. Before it could reach him it slipped in its own entrails and crashed into the table, denting it and sending several of the hideously uncomfortable chairs surrounding it flying with a clatter which resonated loudly in the metal-lined room. Incredibly, despite the battering it had taken, the monstrosity still stirred feebly, trying to rise, and I swung my chainsword, decapitating it though if I was any judge, it had expired altogether an instant before the blade actually hit.

  ‘Well, that got the door open,’ Jurgen said, determined to look on the bright side, and I nodded grimly.

  ‘We know what all the fuss is about, too,’ I agreed, raising my voice above the blaring of the alarms, which echoed twice as loudly now they were no longer muffled by the intervening door. ‘The ’nids have arrived.’ I tapped the comm-bead in my ear, hoping for a tactical update, but I could hear nothing on any of the Imperial Guard channels; none of the vox-units in the vicinity were tuned to them, and all I could raise was incomprehensible gibberish. We’d just have to hope that it was an isolated incursion, rather than the full-scale invasion my panicked imagination persisted in picturing. ‘Come on. We need to find out what the hell’s going on.’

  Which turned out to be blind panic, so far as I could see, the corridor outside choked with red-robed acolytes scurrying in every direction, warbling at one another in their incomprehensible dialect. The sight of Jurgen and me, armed and spattered with chunks of diced genestealer, didn’t exactly help their equanimity, and I soon gave up trying to stop one and ask for information. Most just gibbered for a moment, pointing back the way they’d come, and scuttled off again, as fast as their legs (or in some cases wheels, grav plates, or springs) would carry them. As they seemed to be passing down the corridor in both directions, I couldn’t even follow my instinctive response at times like this, and get as far away from wherever the greatest danger seemed to be as quickly as possible.

  ‘Back to the hangar, sir?’ Jurgen asked, as the crowd cleared a little, and I nodded. I didn’t have a clue where anything else was in this labyrinth, and if we struck out at random we could wander around it indefinitely, or at least until the tyranids caught up with us. We might be able to commandeer a shuttle there, or at least find a parked one with a vox I could use to get back in touch with Zyvan and find out just how much trouble we were in.

  ‘Seems like our best option,’ I agreed, turning to lead the way, but before I could take more than a handful of steps in that direction, a flurry of motion at the end of the corridor checked my stride. Three more ’stealers had loped into view, slashing and tearing at any tech-priests still laggardly enough to be in the way. A welter of blood and lubricants marked their progress, sullying the floor beneath their talons and bespattering the walls in their wake. Few of their victims moved after they passed by, although a couple continued to twitch in a flurry of electrical sparks, their internal power cells earthing through the metallic surface they were sprawled across.

  There was no need to verbalise my sudden change of plan, Jurgen and I had fought side by side far too long and often for that. Pausing only to unleash a flurry of las-bolts in the vain hope of slowing them a little, we turned and ran, hoping desperately that something would present itself in the handful of seconds we had before the creatures caught up with us.

  ‘Knew I should have brought the melta,’ Jurgen grumbled, as the sinister rattle of talon on metal became audible even over the shrilling of the alarm. If they were close enough to hear in spite of all that racket they must have been more or less on top of us already, and I didn’t dare to look back. Turning to glance over my shoulder would cost only a fraction of a second’s lead, but even that was liable to prove fatal. Besides, I didn’t want the last thing I saw to be a genestealer’s gullet.

  ‘Would have been handy,’ I agreed, although he could hardly be blamed for having left his favourite toy behind. The bulky weapon wasn’t exactly ideal for lugging around the corridors of a starship, and we’d had no warning of the tyranid attack, so there’d been no reason to think we’d need it. Then another thought struck me. ‘Got any grenades?’ He generally kept a couple about his person, even when we were some distance from the front, a habit I’d been grateful for on several occasions in the past.

  ‘Can’t use ’em,’ he said regretfully. ‘Too many civilians about.’ There were indeed a number of tech-priests still cluttering up the corridor, although their fondness for augmetics had enabled the majority to open up an impressive lead, and, judging by the noises behind me, the ones who hadn’t were getting fewer by the second.

  ‘Krak then,’ I said, rather less concerned about collateral damage to cogboys than the realisation that a frag charge going off close enough to incommode the ’stealers would probably shred Jurgen and I into the bargain.

  ‘Got one of those,’ my aide confirmed, rummaging in one of his collection of equipment pouches, and priming the grenade he produced deftly with his teeth. He lobbed it back over his shoulder without breaking stride. ‘Can’t see what good it’ll do, though.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ I admitted, ‘but it can hardly hurt now.’ The floor shook as the anti-armour charge went off, and something small, sharp and metallic pinged off the wall next to my ear. We must have damaged an electrical circuit somewh
ere, because the shrieking siren suddenly went quiet, leaving my ears ringing with the absence of noise. The scuttling behind us seemed to have diminished too, and I decided to risk a glance back after all.

  The desperate stratagem seemed to have bought us a little time, at least. The high-explosive charge had blown a hole in the metal floor, exposing a tangle of pipework and cabling from which some kind of vapour was rising in a cloud. The ‘stealers seemed dazed by the explosion, but I couldn’t count on that happy circumstance continuing for long.

  ‘That gave ’em something to think about,’ Jurgen said, sending another hail of las-bolts down the corridor as he spoke. Given the choice I’d simply have put as much distance between the hideous creatures and myself as possible, but we did have an audience of cowed tech-priests to think about, most of whom looked even more dazed than the genestealers. They were milling around and chirruping to one another, as if they couldn’t believe the mess we’d just made of their nice clean corridor, but under the circumstances felt it best not to object and I had no doubt that at least a few of them had pictcorders built into their augmetic eyes. The last thing I needed was images of Cain the Hero acting like the poltroon I actually am making the rounds, especially if I needed my undeserved reputation to help me make a run for it later. So I cracked off a couple of shots myself and flourished the chainsword, taking up a defensive stance as if I meant to protect the survivors from a renewed charge.

  ‘Get to safety,’ I told them, with the best show of concern I could feign, glancing back over my shoulder. I was about to add a couple of rote platitudes, in the interests of hurrying them up, when the vapour cloud ignited, engulfing the ’stealers in a fireball and sending a pressure wave down the passageway which knocked me sprawling to the chill metal floor.

  I staggered back to my feet, still trying to grasp this unexpected turn of events. Clearly, whatever was in the pipe had been flammable, although whether it had been ignited by one of our las-rounds or a spark from the damaged wiring was impossible to guess. I had little time to ponder the matter, however, as at that point a blazing genestealer burst from the inferno and plunged blindly towards me, although whether it was impelled by the brood mind, or simply crazed with agony, I couldn’t tell. I fired at it by reflex, leaping aside at the last possible minute and getting a lucky strike in with the chainsword, which severed the ligaments in its legs. Crippled, it crashed to the floor, where it rolled around, flailing and giving me an anxious few moments avoiding its teeth and claws, before finally accepting the fact that it was dead.

  ‘The other two have had it as well,’ Jurgen told me, trotting back from a quick trip to check. ‘Lucky that pipe exploded, or it could have been nasty.’

  ‘It could indeed,’ I said, giving up trying to count the number of slaughtered tech-priests in the corridor beyond the pall of smoke. Throne knows I had little enough in common with cogboys, and even less patience on occasion, but I still found the sight depressing, probably because it could so easily have been me lying there with my innards on display.

  ‘The Omnissiah truly processes your data,’ an awestruck tech-priest of indeterminate gender[80] told me, making the sign of the cogwheel.

  ‘Jolly decent of Him,’ I said, not quite sure how to respond to that. I was still getting nothing intelligible though my comm-bead, but maybe my interlocutor had access to other sources of information. ‘Any idea how many more of those things are loose around here?’ Genestealer broods were usually a lot bigger than the quartet we’d already seen and accounted for.

  The cowled head shook, the fire behind us reflecting in the metal face, making it flicker disturbingly in the depths of the robe.

  ‘Any other infiltrating organisms? Lictors, maybe?’ I don’t mind admitting I quailed inwardly at the prospect, although I kept my feelings from showing on my face with the ease of long practice. Genestealers were bad enough, but the idea of hunting, or, more likely, being hunted by, organisms perfectly adapted to stealth and ambush was far more disturbing.

  ‘I regret I have no current information,’ metal-face said, making the cogwheel gesture again for no reason that I could see, presumably because they didn’t know what else to do with their fingers. ‘Xenobiological queries should be directed to Magos Kildhar.’

  Of course. ‘And do you have any idea where she is?’ I asked, already sure I knew the answer I was going to get.

  ‘I have no current information in that regard either,’ the tech-priest said, sounding genuinely regretful. ‘Her analyticum is located on level twenty-eight, section three, however. Should you wish to consult her, that would be the most likely place to effect an encounter.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but my duty now is to report to the Magos Senioris and the Lord General.’ Who ought to know what the hell was going on, if anyone did.

  ‘The Magos Senioris is due to arrive imminently,’ the tech-priest said, clearly determined to be as helpful as possible. ‘Indeed, he may already have landed.’

  ‘Then we need to get back to the hangar as quickly as possible,’ I said, seizing the opportunity the Emperor had just dropped in my lap. ‘His protection must be our highest priority.’ And that would be best achieved by getting him back on the shuttle and away from here as quickly as possible, preferably accompanied by me. I glanced back at the fire behind us, still blocking the corridor. ‘If you could suggest an alternative route?’

  ‘Down that way, first right, second left…’ the tech-priest began, reeling off a list of directions that threatened to go on almost indefinitely. After the first few, I realised that we’d be heading back the way we’d come, or at least close enough to it to rely on my knack of remaining orientated in places like this, and cut them off in full flow.

  ‘We’ll find it,’ I said confidently, and began double-timing it, Jurgen and his lasgun a reassuring presence at my heels. Now the wretched alarm wasn’t drowning everything else out, I was able to use my ears as well as my eyes. The clatter of our boot soles on the metal floor raised distracting echoes, compounded by the ones created by the number of confused and frightened cogboys scattering out of the way as we ran, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t hear the sinister scrabbling of genestealer claws anywhere behind us. Nevertheless, I kept a sharp look out, darting quick, apprehensive glances into every nook and crevice we passed, paying particular attention to the pipework and ducting depending from the ceiling; the cursed creatures could cling to the sheerest of surfaces, and I’d seen too many of the Reclaimers brought down by ambush from above on our ill-fated foray aboard the Spawn of Damnation not to be paranoid about the possibility of falling victim to a similar attack.

  ‘I thought there were supposed to be skitarii stationed here,’ Jurgen said sourly, hurdling a stray CAT[81] as he did so. ‘What’s keeping them?’

  ‘I think they’re busy,’ I told him, disentangling the distinctive heavy crack of hellgun fire from the overlapping echoes that pursued us. It seemed to be coming from more than one direction, although more than that I couldn’t distinguish, nor, if I’m honest, was I concerned enough to make the effort of doing so. The firing was all sufficiently distant for me to be confident that we weren’t about to stumble into the middle of a skirmish, and that was all I cared about at the moment.

  We pelted round the last of the corners on the tech-priest’s itinerary, dodging a servitor still plodding about whatever errand it had last been sent on, oblivious to the commotion surrounding it, and I found myself in a corridor I recognised at last.

  ‘This way,’ I told Jurgen, my spirits rising, only to have them dashed a moment later. The sound of gunfire was up ahead too, echoing from the direction of the hangar.

  TWELVE

  I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t hesitate at that moment, but in truth I had no option but to charge ahead regardless. There were too many cogboys cluttering up the corridor for any sign of faltering resolve on my part to go unnoticed and, to compound the issue, I’d said in so many words that I meant to protect Dysen f
rom the genestealers. Whether or not the tech-priest had recorded or transmitted the conversation, it was out there among them, no doubt being passed from one to another in excited snatches. So yet again I was committed to a course of action that ran directly counter to all my instincts, as a glib excuse intended to keep me out of trouble rebounded to bite me on the arse. Besides, getting to the hangar, and through it to safety, meant facing whatever awaited us ahead whether I liked it or not, and at least it sounded as though I’d have some skitarii to hide behind this time, instead of playing ’nid bait on my own.

  The wide, high doorway to the hangar was open, and once again my nostrils were assaulted by the sulphurous reek of the outer air, so strong that it even overpowered Jurgen’s distinctive odour. That meant Dysen’s shuttle must already have arrived, descending on the lift from the landing pad and admitting a tranche of the all but unbreathable outer air along with it.

  We’d almost reached the gaping entranceway when a crimson-uniformed skitarii cannoned through it, propelled by the genestealer which was trying to gnaw his face off. Blood and less identifiable fluids were seeping through wide gashes in his body armour from wounds which would have felled a normal man, but he was still fighting fiercely, his heavily augmented body soaking up the kind of punishment only a Space Marine could normally have withstood. The pair of them rebounded from the opposite wall, leaving a dent in the polished metal surface, and waltzed towards Jurgen and I, so engrossed in their private struggle that they were probably equally oblivious to our presence.

  Reacting instinctively, my duellist’s reflexes cutting in without conscious thought, I pivoted to avoid the intertwined antagonists and struck at the genestealer’s back with my chainsword. The whirling blade cut deep, spraying the damaged wall with fragments of chitin and viscera. Taken completely by surprise, the abominable creature turned and snapped at me, its razor-edged fangs clashing together close enough to have taken my arm off, if I hadn’t stepped back to open the distance a little. The beleaguered skitarii rallied, taking advantage of the ’stealer’s moment of distraction to smash his forearm into the side of its head, laying it open with the serrated blade inlaid along its length. Partially stunned, the hideous creature loosened its grip on him, raising its neck to strike with its fangs, like a serpent. Seeing my chance I stepped in again, severing its spinal column with a precise horizontal swipe.