Wrath of Iron

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Lord clan commander,’ he said.

  His voice was throaty and machine-filtered. His vowels were flat and the consonants tinny, as if the mortal vocal cords within had been stretched out and lodged within a mechanical audio-augmetic.

  ‘Telach,’ replied Clan Commander Arven Rauth, and his voice, though possibly a shade more resonant, possibly deeper, sounded almost the same. ‘Translation was efficient?’

  ‘It was.’

  Rauth nodded again, satisfied, and turned away from the flyer. His escort parted to allow him to pass. Telach walked alongside Rauth, and the two giants crunched heavily towards the waiting shelter of the Iron Hands’ command complex.

  ‘How stands it?’ asked Telach.

  ‘Satisfactory,’ replied Rauth.

  The two warriors spoke in Tergiza, the Medusan dialect used by all of Clan Raukaan. Little emotion was conveyed by that language, which, by human standards, used exceptionally rigid grammar and vocabulary.

  ‘From orbit, deployment looks complete,’ said Telach.

  ‘It is not. I have been promised Titans. More troops need landing. We have labour ahead of us.’

  Heavy blast doors ground open before the two of them, and the warriors passed out of the swirling wind and into the sterile interior of the command complex. Orange strip-lumens glowed softly from metal walls, picking out the austere mesh of the construction material and highlighting its utilitarian finish. The Iron Hands’ boots clanked against the floor as they walked.

  ‘The last time I consulted you,’ said Telach, ‘doubt existed over the pattern of the attack.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Rauth, dismissively. ‘Never any doubt. The mortal commander objected. His objection was considered and rejected.’

  Telach’s blue helm-mask turned slightly in Rauth’s direction. It was the only expression of surprise he gave away.

  ‘The mortal commander objected?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He is a brave man. What was his case?’

  Something like a vox-distorted grunt escaped Rauth’s helm.

  ‘A brave man?’ he said. The two of them reached the end of the corridor and turned left. The environment become several degrees colder as they went, and the orange light grew deeper. All around them, the faint whirr of machinery hung in the air. ‘He ought to be. He was still wrong.’

  Rauth paused before a set of heavily built doors. He raised his helm-mask towards a skull-shaped roundel in their centre and a beam of red light briefly flickered across his lenses. Something clunked from within the doors’ housing, and they slid back to reveal a hexagonal chamber beyond.

  ‘Come,’ said Rauth. ‘There are things you should know.’

  The two of them entered the chamber, leaving their escort behind them on the other side of the doors.

  The room was large, with enough space to accommodate fifty inhabitants with similar dimensions to Rauth. The ceiling arced upwards, braced by steel struts. Each of the six walls was blank and undecorated, made of the same dark metal as everything else in the complex, and there was no furniture of any description. In the centre of the chamber was a low pillar, also hexagonal. A metal skull, highly polished, lay on it. Rauth and Telach stood on either side of the pillar, facing one another.

  ‘You came in from Orentas,’ said Rauth.

  ‘I did,’ said Telach.

  ‘That world is now pacified.’

  ‘It is. I judged that my presence was now required here.’

  ‘If you had not come, I would have summoned you.’

  ‘Then our thoughts are aligned.’

  ‘They are.’

  The two of them spoke quickly, tightly, efficiently. Combined with the bizarre timbre of their vox-output, the effect was rather like two cogitators locked in a closed loop with one another. For such massive figures, the sound was strangely fleeting and insubstantial.

  ‘We control seventy-two per cent of the Contqual subsector,’ said Rauth. ‘The enemy is withdrawing across all active zones.’

  ‘Except this one.’

  ‘Including this one. Planetfall was achieved cleanly. They can no longer project force beyond the hive limits.’

  Neither figure moved while they spoke. They stood rigidly, shoulders back, feet braced. The ambient orange light seemed to sink into the matt surface of their armour and disappear.

  ‘You should be pleased,’ said Telach.

  ‘You asked about the mortal,’ said Rauth.

  ‘Raji Nethata. I studied our data on him.’

  ‘He objects to the pace of the assault. He advocated alternative tactics, vocally, in our strategic briefings.’

  ‘What does he want?’ asked Telach.

  ‘Shardenus is a world of hives,’ said Rauth. ‘These here, the Prime cluster, constitute the governing centre of the planet. Many others exist across the northern continent. They process the planet’s food and weapon stockpiles. He wanted to attack them first, to starve Shardenus Prime of supplies and wait for it to weaken.’

  ‘They would be softer targets.’

  ‘Yes. They would be destroyed in a month.’

  ‘Then why reject it?’

  ‘Time. I cannot wait for the principal hives to grow hungry.’

  Rauth gestured, fractionally, with a single finger. A three-dimensional schematic of the Shardenus Prime hive cluster emerged over the skull, picked out in lines of bright orange. It rotated gently. As it did so, deployment runes and attack routes were overlaid, one by one.

  ‘The hives can be taken by direct assault,’ he said. ‘We attack – here – and maintain a constantly moving front – here. The central hive will fall once the outer spires have been compromised.’

  Telach looked at the schematic. Behind the black mask of his hood, it was impossible to read his expression.

  ‘We have the weapons, the numbers, for this?’ he asked.

  ‘We do.’

  Telach hesitated before replying.

  ‘I see why Nethata objects,’ he said. ‘His forces will be ravaged.’

  ‘Some will suffer. We will suffer. All suffer who uphold the will of the Emperor.’

  ‘Why the requirement for speed? What is in those spires?’

  ‘I do not know,’ replied Rauth. His voice was as flat as ever, deadened by the blunt syllables of Tergiza. ‘But I can guess.’

  ‘And you cannot discuss this guess with mortals.’

  ‘No. That is why I need you.’

  Telach looked down at the rotating schematic, and said nothing. The wire-frame outlines of the hive spires reflected in his red helm-lenses.

  ‘You have changed the least, out of all of us,’ said Rauth. ‘I do not pretend to like what you do, but I am not fool enough to discard it. The forces we have encountered thus far are deluded but not mutated. As we progress, that will change. Within the central spires, only we will be able to fight the defenders. In the very centre, where the corruption started, perhaps only you will.’

  Telach bowed.

  ‘I am your servant,’ he said.

  Rauth inclined his head a fraction.

  ‘A comm-signal from Khatir,’ he announced. ‘Nethata is here.’

  ‘He will not like your plans any more than he did before.’

  A faint noise escaped Rauth’s heavy helm-mask, perhaps a vestigial expression of amusement from lips no longer accustomed to expressing much at all.

  ‘He is mortal,’ said Rauth. ‘He does not have to like my orders; he only has to follow them.’

  Chapter Two

  Valien crouched low and sniffed the air. It tasted the same as hive-air on any other world – caustic, recycled, thick with the stink of close-packed humanity.

  He pressed himself against the sloping wall of the tunnel, blending into the darkness. The lumen-strips running along the
length of the ceiling were defective and flickered badly. From somewhere far below came the sound of machinery working, and the hum of it made the tunnel walls vibrate to the touch.

  Valien pulled the synthskin clear of his inner wrist, exposing his locator. Schematics of the Capitolis hive complex spun into hololithic detail in front of him, glowing softly in the dim light. He got his bearings quickly.

  Level 54, Sector Aleph, Melamar Secundus spire. Seven routes back to safe-point.

  The air stirred ahead of him. Valien extinguished the hololith and slipped the fabric of his black boiler-suit over his forearm. He pushed himself clear of the tunnel wall and let his toned body fall into a slouch. His keen eyes sank down into a hollow look of boredom and his supple cheeks slackened.

  Three figures entered the tunnel from an access hatch at the far end. Two of them carried standard-issue sidearms. The third, a woman, wore the uniform of a junior arbitrator and looked bulky in her armour.

  ‘You,’ she said through a helmet filter, sweeping a torch beam across him. ‘Function and tasking.’

  Valien saluted clumsily, forcing his highly attuned physique to mimic poor conditioning.

  ‘Talex volenta,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she asked, pointing her laspistol in his direction. ‘Say ag–’

  Valien flicked his arm out, revealing the palm-sized needle gun. He shot the woman cleanly through the joint between her helmet and neck-guard. Her visor sprayed with blood and she went down messily, choking and gasping. Before her escorts had time to react he fired again, sending needles into their unprotected faces. They toppled on top of one another, leaking blood in thin streams from tiny puncture wounds.

  Valien stowed the needle gun. The tunnel fell silent. For a few moments Valien remained perfectly still, watching for further interruptions. One of the defective lumens flickered, but otherwise nothing moved.

  He relaxed and let his eyes run over the pile of bodies in front of him. Blood ran in trickles from the woman’s neck and onto the mesh-metal of the tunnel floor. As soon as he saw it, a pang of desire ran through him. He crouched down low, sniffing. A familiar aroma of sweat and copper filled his nostrils. His heartbeat picked up and his nostrils dilated.

  It had been too long. Even given all his training, all his discipline, it had been far too long. He battled against his instincts for a little longer, knowing that to indulge himself would only make the withdrawal symptoms worse in the days to come.

  He gave in. Like an animal, he lowered his head towards the trickles of blood and extended his tongue. The taste sent shivers of pleasure through his body. He forgot the filth around him and allowed himself to enjoy the moment. He licked again, sucking the hot liquid to the back of his throat and savouring the thick texture as it slipped down. He closed his eyes, and smiled.

  ‘You.’

  The voice startled him. He snapped his eyes open, instantly coiled for attack.

  Careless!

  ‘Talex volenta,’ he snapped, whipping the needle gun into position.

  Four figures had entered the tunnel from the same access hatch and stood about five metres away from him. They wore transparent visors, and Valien could see expressions of horror on their faces.

  ‘Relex amantis,’ said one of them, and Valien instantly relaxed.

  He stood up, wiping a stray line of blood from his lips. The tiny muzzles of his needle gun slipped back into his gauntlet.

  ‘Respond quicker next time,’ he said. ‘I almost killed you.’

  The man who’d given the code-phrase pulled his helmet from his head. He had dirty, sandy-coloured hair.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he asked, staring at the bodies on the floor.

  ‘Give me your name,’ said Valien, sharply.

  The man finally dragged his eyes away from the corpses and looked Valien in the face.

  ‘Lieutenant Alend Marivo,’ he said. ‘9th Platoon, 3rd Company, 23rd Shardenus Imperial Guard. These are men from my unit. We have more waiting, spread out through the lower levels. All we need are orders.’

  ‘Good,’ said Valien, giving him a cold smile. He was aware of what effect his unusual features had on ordinary men, and he liked it. ‘Take me somewhere secure, and you shall have them.’

  The hab-unit was as dirty and foetid as every other hab-unit in the lower Melamar Secundus sector. Shula Khadi had no idea when it had been built. She had no idea when the hives themselves had been built – as far as she was concerned, they might have stood forever.

  She sat on her hard bunk and ran her fingers through short, dark hair. Khadi felt grimy and unwashed. A thin film of dirt caked her cheeks, the kind of soot-coloured dirt that every machinist on Shardenus wore perpetually on their skin. She didn’t have a scheduled slot in the hygiene station for another two days, and even then she knew she wouldn’t be able to scrub it all off – it would take more than five minutes of standing under a lukewarm trickle of recycled water with a handful of foamy dermacleanse to scour the filth of the hive from her flesh.

  Occasionally she dreamed of being clean. She dreamed of a hypothetical state in which her clothes were free of lice, her skin was free of sores and her hair was glossy from cleanliness rather than shiny with grease. She knew that such a state was possible from the holovids on the communal picts, in which manicured speakers from the information departments delivered exhortations to the workers to improve faltering production rates. The speakers in those picts had tight, clean faces and crease-free uniforms. Khadi guessed that they lived somewhere at the top of the Capitolis, up in one of the domes that she had only ever seen from a distance through the hazy murk of the planet’s atmosphere.

  No one Khadi knew had skin like they did. All other workers in the Roll Yard manufactorium were as dishevelled and pallid as she was, and many were worse. That didn’t stop her dreaming, though, and nor did it stop her making the most of the precious hygiene slots when they came. Then she scrubbed and scraped and rubbed until her fingers were raw.

  It was important to have standards, even on a hellhole like Shardenus. That was how you kept it together, kept your chin up and your eyes clear and didn’t end up in the forced labour asylums where the ranting crazies were shipped, never to come back.

  A sharp hiss broke her train of thought as the door to her hab-unit slid open. She pushed herself from her bunk, irritated at the interruption. Private time was scarce in a hive, and despite the lack of working locks on almost all of the unit doors, most people respected the sanctity of it.

  Marivo walked in. He had a strange, half-sick look in his eyes. The lieutenant was still in uniform – the slate-grey tunic and breeches of the Shardenus regiments – but he’d taken his helmet off. He looked at her distractedly, as if he’d done something terrible or dangerous and couldn’t quite get it out of his mind. His blond hair had been pressed down from helmet-wear, and looked greasy.

  ‘What?’ Khadi asked, putting her hands on her hips.

  She didn’t like Marivo. It wasn’t so much what he did as what he was. In normal circumstances a Guard officer wouldn’t have given a machinist a second glance, and for all that he pretended such things didn’t matter now, they still did.

  ‘I made contact, Shula,’ said Marivo. ‘He was where he said he’d be. We’re getting our tasking, and I need you with me.’

  Khadi felt her stomach twist with worry. So this was it.

  ‘You did?’ she said. ‘What’s he like?’

  Marivo shot her a wry smile.

  ‘He’s… he’s odd. I don’t know. We’re assembled in the refectory – you can see for yourself.’

  He didn’t move. Marivo looked nervous, which was unsettling. Khadi had never seen him look nervous before – for all his faults, the man wasn’t a coward.

  ‘This is what you wanted,’ she reminded him, not inclined to make him feel any better. ‘This was your decision.’
r />   Marivo pressed a button on the panel beside him and the door hissed closed. The two of them stood in the tiny chamber, between them taking up most of the available room between bunk and door. His hard face looked almost haggard under the brutal strip-lumen.

  ‘You picked up the transmissions too,’ he said, accusingly. ‘You heard the same things I did. This is our duty.’

  ‘I know we need to get more organised,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know what they intend to do once it gets in here. I’m as scared of them as I am of everything else.’

  She ran her hands through her hair, and saw that they were shaking.

  ‘I know what you think,’ she said. ‘You think the Guard will get in, put things to rights and recognise those who helped them do it. I hope you’re right, I really do, but I’m not like you. I prefer to keep my head down so it doesn’t get shot off, and it doesn’t matter much who’s holding the gun.’

  Marivo shook his head disapprovingly.

  ‘Careful,’ he warned. ‘That’s–’

  ‘–dangerous talk. So it is.’

  She slumped back against her bunk. Debating with Marivo exhausted her.

  ‘But there’s no point in discussing it,’ she said. ‘You’ve made contact with them, so that’s that. What do they want us to do?’

  ‘Like I said – we’re being briefed in the refectory. And I need you there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why.’ Marivo smiled grimly. ‘I need someone who understands the underhive, someone who can talk to the others. I have trouble… sinking to your level.’

  It was meant as a joke, but it fell flat and Khadi felt a spike of anger kindle inside her.

  ‘Get out,’ she said.

  Marivo’s face fell.

  ‘Look, I’m–’

  ‘Just get out,’ said Khadi. ‘I’ll come when I’m ready.’

  She turned away from him, her cheeks flushed.

  ‘If I’m that important to all this,’ she said, ‘then I’m sure he’ll wait.’

  Marivo strode down the corridor from Khadi’s hab-unit to the refectory, and his fists clenched. She made him angry. He’d tried everything to get along with her, from flattery, to indifference, to banter, to the kind of commanding tone he’d used with his platoon, and none of it had any effect.