Greater Good

by Sandy Mitchell

  ‘They don’t look very hungry,’ Jurgen said with a faint note of surprise, which I could hardly blame him for. In our experience hormagaunts were little more than voracious appetites on legs, and I expected them to begin gorging themselves on the cadavers of the fallen at once. The half-dozen or so survivors of the short and vicious melee in the holding pens seemed to have other ideas, however, ignoring the bounty of carrion their efforts had won in favour of flinging themselves against the wall opposite the partially-retracted barrier which had separated them from their recently-thawed adversaries.

  ‘They don’t,’ I agreed, as they began attacking the wall, as single-mindedly and fruitlessly as before, so far as I could tell. ‘Now what are they up to?’ Something about the location they’d chosen made me uneasy, although I couldn’t have said why. So far as I could see it was a blank panel, no different from those on any of the other walls, but something had attracted them straight to it.

  ‘They’re trying to get the access tunnel open,’ Kildhar said, sounding completely bewildered. ‘But they should be acting purely on instinct, not showing signs of reasoning ability!’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know that,’ I said, dryly. Then a more alarming thought struck me. ‘The panel will hold, won’t it?’

  ‘Of course,’ she assured me, with complete confidence. ‘The locks can only be opened from up here.’ She gestured towards the lectern, bearing the scar of Sholer’s gauntlet, from which a thin wisp of smoke was still rising. Her expression wavered. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Brother-Sergeant Yail, meet me in the cryogenitorium,’ Sholer rapped out, assessing the situation at once, and already on his way to the door. I glanced downwards, my worst fears realised: even as we spoke the gaunts had managed to get the sliding panel partially open, and a ridged and sinuous tail disappeared through the gap as I watched. ‘Commissar, will you join us?’

  ‘Right behind you,’ I said, unable to think of an excuse to refuse on the spur of the moment that wouldn’t have sounded feeble, even to me. I hurried out after him, Jurgen a reassuring presence at my heels, leaving Kildhar staring dumbly down at the mess below, clearly still wondering what could possibly have gone wrong.

  The cavern beneath the shrine was just as cold as I remembered it, and the surfaces underfoot just as treacherous. Fortunately, the route Sholer took to get us there terminated on the surface of the ice, instead of forcing us to take our lives in our hands at the top of the narrow and slippery bridge, bringing us out through the structure from which he’d emerged the first time we’d spoken on this world.

  ‘Over there,’ Jurgen said, pulling ahead of us on the frozen surface, as sure-footed as only a Valhallan could be in sub-zero temperatures. The gaggle of gaunts were clustered together a hundred metres or so away, flailing at the ice with their scything claws. ‘Looks like they’re digging.’

  ‘Trying to revive something,’ I said, remembering the gaunts we’d seen on Nusquam Fundumentibus doing precisely the same thing. On that occasion they’d released a particularly large and unpleasant bioform, which had tried to make a meal of me, the squad I was with and our transport vehicle, and would almost certainly have done so but for the intervention of a passing Valkyrie pilot with a warhead or two to spare. The thought was not a pleasant one.

  ‘Or kill it,’ Sholer said, putting on a burst of speed to keep up with Jurgen, something his power armour made look ridiculously easy. I floundered in their wake, not entirely unhappy to have a Space Marine standing between me and the murderous beasts, but reluctant to fall too far behind in case we were flanked. If I got cut off from the others I’d become easy meat, torn apart before my companions had a chance to intervene.

  Not that the hideous creatures looked about to charge, still utterly intent on using their grotesquely elongated forelimbs as pickaxes, but it never paid to be complacent about ’nids, as I’d already had occasion to reflect. I drew my weapons, both fully recharged and ready for use, feeling a good deal more comfortable as soon as I felt their familiar weight in my hands. Jurgen had the melta on aim, and let fly at the nearest. The shot went wide, which was hardly surprising given that he was firing on the run, but it caught one of the others a glancing blow, raising a cloud of steam as the ice around it flashed into vapour. The mist hung for a moment, blanketing everything, reducing the brood to an inchoate mass of barely-seen movement.

  ‘Here they come!’ Sholer warned, drawing his bolt pistol in a single smooth motion, and planting a couple of explosive-tipped rounds in the middle of the thorax of the first gaunt to burst from the shrouding fog. Jurgen dropped to one knee, steadying his bulky weapon, and took down another, renewing the fog in a fresh burst of steam as he did so.

  ‘Use the lasgun!’ I told him, cracking off a couple of shots of my own at the nearest dimly-seen shadow, which had no effect at all that I could see. ‘The melta’s giving them too much cover!’ Not to mention the risk of a near miss thawing out even more of the hideous creatures. Having caught up with my companions, I stood back to back with Sholer’s reassuringly impregnable-seeming bulk, swinging the chainsword in a defensive pattern designed to protect me from anything rushing suddenly out of the murk.

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ Jurgen agreed, imperturbable as ever, dropping the melta as he spoke. The emitter hissed as it touched the ice, creating another, small patch of mist, which began to disperse quickly. I just had to hope the cover he’d inadvertently created for our assailants would do the same before they could take full advantage of it. A moment later the crackle of his Guard-issue small-arm, firing short, precise bursts, echoed across the artificial ice field.

  As the mist lifted, we began to see our targets more clearly. Unfortunately, that meant they could see us equally well, which was far less encouraging. The whole pack of them began to bound forwards, thick drool slithering from their gaping jaws, flecks of it freezing around their muzzles alongside the blood and viscera deposited there during their brief scrimmage in the holding pens.

  I braced myself to meet the charge, hoping my duellist’s reflexes would be enough to prevent my head from being lopped off by a swipe from the first gaunt to get within reach, but the bone-chilling cold was getting to me in earnest now, stabbing through my torn and tattered greatcoat and slowing my movements as it leached the warmth from my blood. I cracked off a couple of shots from my laspistol, more in the hope of making them flinch than of actually dropping one, although in my experience once a gaunt got the scent of prey in its nostrils it would take a lot more than a las-bolt flicking past its ear to distract it. Jurgen managed to down one of the scuttling horrors with a sustained burst from his lasgun, which must have drained the powerpack faster than he liked, as he let it fall to the ice and snapped in a fresh one in a single fluid movement, never taking his eyes from the rich selection of targets bearing down on us as he did so. Sholer’s bolt pistol barked again, and an elongated head exploded, the body it was attached to continuing to bound forwards a couple of paces before crashing to the ice in a spray of dislodged crystals and rapidly-congealing ichor.

  ‘There are too many of them!’ I gasped out, raising my chainsword to parry a slash from the leading gaunt. They’d split up as they charged, sweeping round to flank us, just as I’d feared a few moments before, but now all three of us were encircled, not just me. Somehow, being about to die in the company of friends didn’t seem much of an improvement, although I supposed it would afford me the chance for a few last words. Not that anyone would survive to remember them, and the best I seemed able to come up with at the moment was a heartfelt ‘Frak off!’ at the one trying to close its jaws in my throat as I ran it through with the whirling blade, ripping the weapon free in a spray of viscera as I spun to meet the next attack. Just as I feared, my reflexes seemed painfully slow, and I’d have been an instant too late, losing my head for my pains, if I hadn’t slipped on the frozen surface and stumbled at the last possible minute. The scything claw I’d meant to parry passed over my head instead, and I made to rise, striking
up into the gaunt’s momentarily-exposed underbelly.

  ‘Stay down!’ a new voice called, boosted by a helmet-mounted amplivox, and I did as it suggested, getting a mouthful of ice crystals as I tried to present as low a profile as possible. The distinctive hisss-crack of bolters being discharged, overlapping in short bursts, assaulted my eardrums, and I rolled clear as the shredded remains of the gaunt I’d been about to strike at dropped to the ice right on the spot I’d been a second before.

  I rolled to my feet, to find Yail and a couple of his brother Adeptus Astartes double-timing it towards us, the muzzles of their bolters still smoking from the barrage which had taken down the whole pack, missing my companions and I by what would have seemed a miracle to anyone less familiar than I with the phenomenal standard of their marksmanship. Jurgen was getting back up too, brushing the ice crystals from his uniform, and bending to retrieve his precious melta, which I could hardly fault him for, as it was far more effective against the ’nids than his lasgun. (Anywhere it wasn’t going to help them hide from us, anyway.)

  ‘Sergeant Yail,’ I said. ‘Pleased to see you.’ Which barely began to cover it, of course, but I had a reputation for sangfroid to maintain, and now the danger was past there seemed little point in being overly effusive.

  ‘As am I,’ Sholer said. ‘I expected your response to be a little less tardy.’

  ‘My apology for any inconvenience, Apothecary,’ Yail said, his tone devoid of any trace of sarcasm which I could detect. ‘It took us a moment to get through the security systems.’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to have complete access?’ I said, surprised, and Yail nodded.

  ‘We are. However, Magos Kildhar ordered a complete lockdown of the lower levels, and that impeded our progress.’

  ‘Well, I can’t fault her caution,’ I said, ‘although her timing leaves a lot to be desired.’ Something started nagging at me as I spoke. Given her recklessness in bringing the gaunts into the shrine in the first place, not to mention the genestealers she’d been breeding, this sudden rush of common sense to the head seemed uncharacteristic to say the least. But perhaps the shock of what had happened had made her sit up and smell the recaff (a mug of which I could really have done with about then).

  ‘Any idea what the gaunts were trying to dig up?’ Jurgen asked, passing me a flask from which steam rose invitingly into the frigid air. If I hadn’t been aware of his remarkable psi-damping abilities, I’d sometimes swear the man was a mind-reader.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, edging cautiously towards the cracked and pitted ice they’d been attacking so single-mindedly. They hadn’t had time to get very deep, thank the Throne, barely scratching the surface in fact, but it was pretty clear what they’d been after. I tilted my neck to get a clearer look. ‘Throne on Earth, it’s the bioship fragment!’

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘What did they want with that?’ Jurgen asked, furrowing his brow in puzzlement.

  ‘To kill it, I would imagine,’ I said. ‘You saw what they did to the gaunts from the other swarm.’

  ‘But how did they know it was there?’ my aide persisted.

  ‘A good question,’ Sholer said. Jurgen looked faintly surprised, then pleased with himself, praise from a Space Marine being rare enough at the best of times, let alone aimed in his direction. ‘But it seems the hive fleet must be aware of its existence somehow, even though dormant[162].’

  ‘Then the gaunts were still operating on instinct when they swarmed in here after all,’ I said, happy to at least be able to discount the presence of a lurking synapse creature somewhere on the premises.

  Sholer nodded. ‘It appears so,’ he said, turning to lead the way back to the exit. ‘But the implications are disturbing.’

  ‘Most definitely,’ I agreed, my mind rather more focused on regaining the warmth of the upper levels than the implications of what we’d discovered. Time enough to discuss those once we’d thawed out, if you asked me. I reached for the handle of the thick metal door, and tugged at it. It refused to budge.

  ‘Allow me,’ Sholer said, with a hint of amusement. He reached out a hand, and slapped the plate of the genecode reader. Instead of registering his presence, however, the machine spirit remained obdurate, and the door securely locked. ‘Override,’ he said, ‘in the name of Sholer, Apothecary to the Reclaimers.’

  ‘Lockdown in progress,’ the machine spirit responded, in a vox-coder drone uncannily like Dysen’s[163]. ‘Voiceprint recognition suspended. Genecode recognition suspended.’

  ‘How did you get through?’ I asked Yail, and he shrugged, quite a sight for a Space Marine in full armour.

  ‘Forced it,’ he said, to my complete lack of surprise. ‘But it was easier from the other side.’

  ‘It would be,’ I agreed. Pushing, he and his comrades would have been able to put their whole weight behind it, whereas on this side the handle provided the only point of purchase. Only one of the Adeptus Astartes would be able to pull at a time, and with his superhuman musculature, supplemented by the power of his armour, the chances were he’d only succeed in yanking the thing clean off.

  ‘I can get it open,’ Jurgen offered, steadying his melta, and Sholer nodded his approval.

  ‘Quicker than taking the bolters to it,’ he agreed.

  ‘Won’t that give the specimens the run of the shrine if any revive?’ I asked.

  Sholer inclined his head again. ‘In theory,’ he agreed. ‘But they can’t thaw out while the refrigeration plant remains operative. And doors can always be replaced.’

  ‘True,’ I said, my desire to be out of the bone-numbing cold as quickly as possible overwhelming any other objections I might have had. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Jurgen.’ I closed my eyes against the anticipated flash, which punched through my eyelids as brightly as it always did when he fired his favourite weapon this close to where I was standing, and felt the backwash of heat flow over me, restoring a semblance of feeling to my numb extremities at last.

  ‘That’s got it,’ he said, which was hardly surprising given that he’d hit it from point-blank range, and I blinked my vision clear of the dancing after-images. The thick metal slab was half-melted, slumping against its hinges, and without another word[164] the two Reclaimers accompanying Yail stepped forwards. Ceramite gauntlets reached out to grasp it, their fingers sinking into the softened metal, and with a groan like something alive and suffering the door gave way at last.

  ‘Where to?’ I asked, jogging gratefully through the gap into the relative warmth of the corridor beyond, doing my best to keep up with the superhumanly long strides of the Space Marines.

  ‘To the power plant control chapel,’ Sholer said, scattering red-robed tech-priests ahead of him like autumn leaves in a squall as he made his way through the maze of passageways on the lower levels. ‘Sub-level three.’ Which confirmed my tunnel rat’s instinct that we were still a fair distance below the surface. As I trotted along in the wake of the Adeptus Astartes I filled Zyvan in on what was going on, somewhat breathlessly I must admit, as I had less wind than usual left for talking.

  ‘You were right, they are insane,’ the Lord General commented. ‘The sooner you’re back up here the better.’

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ I agreed, trying not to pant too audibly. By this time we were approaching the control chapel, and I picked up my pace a little more, reluctant to fall too far behind the reassuring bulk of the Space Marines. The heads of the acolytes manning the genetorium snapped round in our direction as we burst through the door in a flurry of weapons and armour, visibly shocked by our sudden unmannerly intrusion into so sacred a space. Like many of their shrines, it was long on polished steel and blinking lights, with innumerable dials and switches set into lecterns and wall displays. Pict screens were flashing up icons and images which meant nothing to me, which was probably just as well for my peace of mind.

  ‘Thank the circuits you’re here,’ Kildhar said, looking up as we shuffled around, trying to find somewhere to stand
. The chapel was large enough, as such places go, but a quartet of Space Marines take up a lot of room, particularly when they’re waving bolters around, and Jurgen’s melta wasn’t exactly compact either. ‘This corruptfile imbecile won’t vent the reactors into the cryogenitorium.’

  ‘Good for him,’ I said curtly. ‘Considering we were locked in there.’

  ‘Were you?’ Kildhar looked confused for a moment, and then returned to her argument with the senior tech-priest present, which our arrival seemed to have interrupted. ‘Well, you’re not now, so let’s get the static things vaporised before they eat us all.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a turnaround,’ I muttered to Jurgen. The palms of my hands were itching again, a sign I’d learned to trust. Something really wasn’t right about this. ‘She’s the one who was hell-bent on preserving them.’ Sholer was looking puzzled too, in so far as I could read his expression at all.

  ‘With respect to your exalted position, magos,’ the tech-priest buzzed, the insect-like harmonics added to his voice by a loose wire somewhere in his vox-coder growing increasingly irritating with every syllable, ‘our understanding is that the reactor is to be vented only if the specimens currently in cryogenic storage present a clear and present danger to the shrine.’ Had he a jaw still capable of movement, doubtless he would have set it at this point. When a mid-ranking functionary begins any sentence with ‘with respect’, you know he’d rather take a swim in an open sewer than budge a millimetre from his stated position.

  ‘It’s my opinion that they do,’ Kildhar said. ‘And if you haven’t the throughput to get the job done, I have.’ Shouldering past the incredulous tech-priest, she stabbed at a bank of switches with the tips of her fingers. At once, a row of lights turned red, and a warning klaxon began to sound somewhere in the depths of the building.