At which point something snagged my ankle and tugged hard, only the robust construction of my Guard-issue boot protecting the flesh beneath from serious injury. It seemed the spore had learned to keep its tentacles hidden beneath the surface[145], and was making a last-ditch attempt to take its revenge. I slashed down with the chainsword, but only managed to raise a fountain of sand, the snaring tentacle armoured from retaliation by the depth of the dune. Another tug, and my leg disappeared to the knee, with a wrench which almost dislocated it.
‘Hold on, sir!’ Jurgen called again, leaping from his saddle and slithering down the dune in a spray of fine powder. Without thought or hesitation he grabbed my free hand, and leaned back, pulling with all his might. ‘I’ve got you!’
‘So’s the bloody spore!’ I snarled, as, between them, both leg and arm felt ready to detach from their sockets. Brute force was never going to overcome the hideous thing, although my aide’s painful and well-intentioned intervention might have bought me a few more seconds, the pair of us were never going to break its grip on my foot. If I was to avoid the fate of my ill-starred steed, there was only one option left open to me. I took a deep breath, and angled the chainsword for what I hoped was going to be a swift, clean cut. ‘Have you still got the medipack?’
‘Of course.’ Jurgen nodded, not really understanding the question.
‘Good.’ I took a deep breath, wondering if I could really go through with this, then decided I most definitely could, given the alternative. I already had a couple of augmetic fingers, after all; a new leg shouldn’t be that hard to get used to. ‘I’d be obliged if you could get it out ready.’
‘Of course, sir,’ he responded, the coin dropping, and letting go of my arm to start rummaging in his collection of pouches. ‘Would you like a local analgesic?’
Very much, as it happened, but I shook my head. ‘No time,’ I told him, and raised the spinning blade.
TWENTY
Before I could bring the blade down, though, the ground shook beneath me, staying my hand. I’d like to say I hesitated because I had no wish to botch the cut, making the chirurgeon’s job any more difficult than it needed to be, but in truth it was simply because I was taken completely by surprise. A fast-moving shadow suddenly swept across us, trailed by the banshee keening of powerful turbines, and I glanced up to see the silhouette of a Space Marine Land Speeder stark against the sky. Before I could make out any more than the distinctive yellow and white livery favoured by the Reclaimers, however, the wind of its passage struck, shrouding Jurgen, his horse and I in a small but very determined sandstorm.
By the time our vision cleared, its pilot had banked round, impossibly fast and tight, in a turn which would have rendered a normal man unconscious or worse, and was howling in again on a second attack run. This time I saw a flurry of warheads streak from the missile pod bolted to its side[146], to impact squarely on the looming bulk of the spore, the armour of which was already shattered from the explosion I’d felt reverberating through the ground. At the same time, the gunner kept up a steady stream of fire from his heavy bolter, chewing up the exposed flesh within, an astonishing display of accuracy given the speed at which they were moving.
Suddenly, the obscene pile of engineered flesh collapsed in on itself like a fire-gutted building, and, at the same time, I felt the vice-like grip around my ankle slacken its hold. Dropping the chainsword, I took hold of my calf in both hands, and pulled, as hard as I could. To my relief, my foot came free, with an abruptness which dumped me suddenly on the burning hot sand[147].
‘That was lucky,’ Jurgen remarked, in his usual phlegmatic manner, extending a hand to help me to my feet as he spoke.
‘It was,’ I agreed, for want of anything else to say, and bent to retrieve my fallen weapon. There seemed little doubt that the spore was finally dead after a mauling like that, but I’d had enough unpleasant surprises for one day, and had no intention of taking any more chances. My aide clearly felt the same, because he kept his melta cradled ready for use, and his lasgun slung where he could take hold of that instead if he needed it in a hurry. Then the obvious question occurred to me. ‘But what are they doing here?’
‘Looking for us?’ Jurgen suggested, unable, as ever, to recognise a rhetorical question when he heard one, and endeavouring to answer it to the best of his ability.
‘That hardly seems likely,’ I said, fiddling with the comm-bead in my ear, and scanning rapidly through the frequencies in an attempt to find out. The Adeptus Astartes were the finest warriors the Imperium possessed, and, irrespective of any residual goodwill I might have retained from our previous association, were hardly likely to be frittering their time away supporting a search and rescue operation which the Guard already had well in hand. Which, in turn, reminded me… ‘We’d better go and find out if there are any of the Death Korps left.’
Which there were, Tyrie greeting us with a somewhat weary wave as we hobbled over the crest of the dune concealing them from view; between the ravages of the tentacle and the saddle I could barely walk at all. The ridemaster and his squad seemed as chipper as possible under the circumstances, going about the business of tending to their wounds and recapturing their mounts with brisk efficiency, although I counted fewer heads than I remembered, and even fewer of the horses, but then his regiment wasn’t exactly renowned for excessive displays of emotion. ‘Thought we’d lost you,’ he said.
‘So did I,’ I replied, determined to seem equally stoic. ‘And you would have done, if it hadn’t been for them.’ I gestured up at the Land Speeder, which was still circling dementedly above us like a raptor on stimms, albeit at a far more sedate pace than hitherto. Then I broke off, as I finally heard a voice in the comm-bead, as deep and resonant as only a Space Marine could be.
‘Two more survivors joining the others now. One of them looks like a commissar.’
‘Could it be Cain?’ a new voice cut in, taking me completely by surprise. It was unusual enough to hear a normal human on an Adeptus Astartes commnet at all, let alone a woman.
‘It could,’ I said, joining the conversation. ‘I’m sorry to be a little late for our meeting, magos, but I was unexpectedly detained.’ In truth, the voice might have belonged to anyone, but I knew the Reclaimers only had male Chapter serfs[148], and there couldn’t be many among their Mechanicus hosts the Space Marines had taken that far into their confidence. Given how closely Sholer and Kildhar had been collaborating on their research, it hadn’t been all that hard to guess precisely who I’d been listening to.
‘Commissar,’ Kildhar replied, failing dismally to prevent her astonishment from colouring her voice, however hard she was trying to keep it free of any emotional overtones. ‘I must confess we’d feared the worst. The Lord General will be gratified. He remained confident of your survival, even though I assured him the odds were considerably weighted against it.’
‘Probably because he knows more about me than the odds do,’ I said. Then, conscious that I had a reputation for understated modesty to maintain, I belatedly added, ‘but it was a narrow enough squeak, I have to say.’ I looked around at the handful of death riders, and the inadequate supply of mounts they now seemed to have brought under control. ‘I’m afraid it looks as though I still won’t be joining you for quite a while yet.’ If anything, it seemed, the rest of our journey was going to be even more arduous than it had been up to this point.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kildhar assured me. ‘We’ll pick you up on our way back.’
‘Way back from where?’ I asked, feeling the familiar premonitory tingling in the palms of my hands. I could think of only one place in this hideous wilderness liable to tempt the magos biologis out of the comfortable fastness of Regio Quinquaginta Unus, and that would certainly require an escort of Space Marines to venture near, but surely even Kildhar couldn’t be as imbecilic as all that.
‘The bioship crash site, of course,’ she said, at once confirming that she could. ‘We recovered some excellent specimens. Apothecary
Sholer and I are eager to examine them as soon as we return.’
‘Good luck with that,’ I said, beginning to think sharing the back end of a horse with Jurgen for the next day or two might not be so bad after all.
‘I’m sure the Omnissiah will guide our understanding,’ she replied, as immune to sarcasm as most of her kind. Finding nothing else to say, I trotted out a few of the rote-learned platitudes that had come in handy so often in my line of work, and prepared to break contact. ‘Stay where you are,’ she added, just before I did so. ‘The Land Speeder can see you clearly, and will guide us in.’ Easy for her to say, of course, she’d probably appreciate the view of the now definitely deceased spore, but I must confess I found the idea of remaining so close to something which had almost killed me to be rather less appealing.
On the other hand, having a pair of heavily armed Adeptus Astartes keeping an eye on me from an altitude sufficient to spot an approaching threat from at least ten kilometres away was distinctly appealing, so, ‘I’ll be waiting,’ I assured her, only realising that I should have asked for an ETA a second or two after I’d broken contact.
In the event, I had less time to wait than I’d expected. Barely an hour had gone by, during which Jurgen and I endured the foul air as briefly as possible to fortify ourselves with another ration bar and a swallow or two of water apiece, before I once again felt a faint tremor in the sand, and saw a few loose grains begin to slip down the steepest slopes. After my encounters with the tentacles, and the buried lictor, this hardly seemed encouraging, and my hands fell automatically to the weapons at my belt. Jurgen, too, seemed a little nervous, and reached for his lasgun, eschewing the greater firepower of the melta for now. I didn’t draw my pistol or chainsword this time, however; the Land Speeder would surely have spotted any obvious threat, and the hive fleet didn’t seem to have dispatched any burrowing organisms in the first wave[149] which they might have missed.
Gradually, the vibration increased, the sandfalls growing both in number and intensity, while the horses shifted and pawed the ground uneasily. Tyrie and his death riders seemed unconcerned, their resolve being both bone deep and pharmacologically enhanced, but I noticed they kept their weapons to hand all the same. After a few moments I began to hear a new sound, the growl of a powerful engine and the creak and rattle of vehicle tracks, and my spirits rose. Despite the problems the Guard had found getting Chimeras to work in this unforgiving terrain, the Fecundians had doubtless found ways to resolve them, the locally built vehicles being a lot more reliable. So thinking, I envisaged something like an APC or a Trojan cargo hauler, perhaps with broader treads for better traction on the shifting sand, but essentially something akin to the transports I was familiar with.
The sound, however, continued to build, the horses becoming ever more spooked, and, I must confess, I could hardly blame them. I could feel the vibration in my bones now, and the noise of the engine was getting so loud that I had to raise my voice to converse with Jurgen. If it increased much more, I’d have to rely on the comm-bead instead.
‘That must be it,’ he said, pointing towards a dark mass which had appeared above the dunes, growing steadily larger as it approached us almost head on.
I nodded. ‘Seems roomy enough,’ I said. Its upper hull had the familiar blocky silhouette I generally associated with Imperial vehicles, although something about its proportions seemed wrong, in a manner I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then it struck me. A vehicle large enough to be visible above the dune should be tilting by now, as it climbed the far slope, but it was still rumbling inexorably towards us, straight and level. ‘Just how big is that thing?’ I voxed.
‘Big enough,’ Kildhar assured me, a faint trace of amusement entering her voice in spite of her best efforts. ‘We adapted one of the dust harvesters[150], to make sure we had enough room for an adequate cross section of samples.’
‘You certainly seem to have that,’ I agreed, as the scale of the gargantuan vehicle gradually became clearer. It wasn’t anything like the size of a Titan, but it certainly seemed that way, looming over us like a hab block on multiple tracks which, as I’d surmised, were broad enough to spread its colossal weight enough to prevent it from sinking deep into the sand. I was reminded of the snowliner I’d travelled on, and taken refuge beneath, on Nusquam Fundumentibus, although this leviathan dwarfed even that, eclipsing the sun overhead as it rolled to a stop beside us. Somewhere far overhead a cargo hatch popped open, extruding a derrick, and a working party dressed from head to foot in environmental suits appeared from somewhere to begin hoisting whatever bits they could find of the spore which had almost killed us up to the open port.
‘We made the best of what we had,’ Kildhar agreed, her voice taking on a curious echoing quality, as the real thing caught up with the facsimile in my comm-bead after taking the scenic route through the intervening air. She was standing in a doorway above one of the tread units, about four metres from the ground, from which a boarding ramp was descending towards us.
‘Can we drop you somewhere?’ I asked Tyrie, feeling it was the least we could do after all the trouble we’d caused him, and the ridemaster shook his head.
‘We’d rather ride,’ he said, which didn’t surprise me. He swung into the saddle and led his men over the crest of the dunes without another word. Just before disappearing, he turned and raised a hand in farewell, then the desert swallowed him, as though he’d never been. Only the tracks of the horses remained to attest to his presence, and they were already being smoothed by the wind. A few more minutes, and even those last tenuous traces would be gone.
‘Odd fellow,’ Kildhar said, strolling down the ramp to join us. ‘But evidently blessed by the Machine God nonetheless.’ After a moment’s puzzlement, I realised her augmented vision must have revealed the network of chemical injectors and other subcutaneous alterations common to a member of the Death Korps.
‘The Emperor certainly sent him our way in the nick of time,’ Jurgen agreed. ‘And those Adeptus Astartes.’ He bestowed a baleful look on the thoroughly macerated spore, which by now was dangling from a heavy duty cargo sling, preparatory to being swung aboard. ‘That thing would have killed the commissar if they hadn’t bombed it.’
I didn’t want to think too hard about that, so I smiled at Kildhar, not that much of an effort, given the circumstances of her arrival. ‘I’m surprised you want it,’ I said, flippantly. ‘I’d expect you to be after a live one.’
‘We’ve already got one of those,’ she said, completely serious so far as I could tell, and, once again, I found myself questioning her sanity. ‘But this specimen will be more convenient for chemical rendering.’
‘If you say so,’ I agreed, feeling it best to humour her, at least until I’d had a decent meal and a bath. My uniform was probably beyond salvage, but I could always get one sent down from my quarters aboard the flagship, and one for my aide while I was about it, although it would take more than a change of attire to improve Jurgen’s appearance to any noticeable degree. ‘I take it your examination of the crash site was fruitful?’
‘Very,’ Kildhar assured me, turning to lead the way aboard the huge crawler. The feel of hard metal underfoot, after slogging through shifting sand for so long, was an immense relief, although my thigh and calf muscles burned as we climbed the ramp, beginning to match the discomfort higher up. ‘We obtained a great many tissue samples from the remains of the bioship, and a respectable number of motile specimens too.’
I had no need to ask what she meant by motile specimens, as that became obvious the moment we came aboard. Almost the entire lower deck of the growling leviathan had been converted into stout cages, high and wide enough to have confined a carnifex if anyone had been foolish enough to try, and a pack of hormagaunts flung themselves at the bars the moment we appeared. Remembering how easily they’d torn open the Aquila’s cockpit to get at the pilot, I flinched and reached for my weapons, but they fell back at once, amid a crackle of energetic discharge.
‘Are you sure that’s enough to keep them confined?’ I asked, and Kildhar nodded, in the slightly stiff fashion of most tech-priests making the effort to resurrect half-remembered body language.
‘It should be,’ she assured me. ‘If they were being directed by the hive mind they’d keep attacking the barrier until they’d made a breach in it, but alone they’re driven by instinct, not reason. Their self-preservation cuts in, and they break off.’
‘What about the deck?’ I asked. ‘You can’t keep that electrified. They’d just fry.’ Which, come to think of it, sounded fine to me.
‘Precisely what we are doing,’ Kildhar said. ‘The cages have a false floor, made of non-conductive material. If they break through that, they get a jolt from the charged one underneath. The ceiling carries a current too, although I don’t see how they could reach it.’
‘Very thorough,’ I said, wishing I found that thoroughness reassuring. The digestion pools of the hive fleets were full of people who’d been equally confident of their precautions against the tyranids, and I had no wish to join them. But, for the moment at least, the creatures seemed confined, so I’d just have to suppress my misgivings as best I could. ‘Is Sholer aboard too?’
‘No.’ Kildhar shook her head, with a little more confidence this time. ‘Our research is at a crucial stage, and he felt it best to remain in the analyticum with the offworld specimens.’
‘At least those aren’t trying to bite anyone’s face off,’ I said, following her up an echoing metal staircase at the end of the chamber. Once on the upper decks, to my unspoken relief, she turned towards the crew quarters, instead of suggesting we take a look at the still living spore she’d alluded to, as I half feared she might.
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