by Mark Clapham
A crude barricade had been erected across the corridor, and whoever was behind it opened fire as Rotaka and his squad ran towards it. The las-fire shots were poorly aimed, and Rotaka drove at the barrier with his shoulders down, crashing through in one movement and crushing the mortals under their own defences.
‘You’re turning into me,’ said Verbin over the vox, coming up behind Rotaka and kicking a mortal to death with one blow as he tried to get up.
Rotaka didn’t answer, but kept moving. The corridor was built for mortals and the Red Corsairs could only run two abreast. Verbin ploughed ahead, smashing another barricade and the men behind it as if they were mere tinder. Rotaka ran through after him, followed by Malinko, Wuhrsk and Hulpin.
Then they burst through into the central dome of the Hellward Gate, and found the battle for the Pit was fully under way.
The Pit was the doorway to a whole world, a shaft through the very crust of Laghast that led from the exterior surface to the habitable inside. Capped by the huge dome, the Pit was circled with machinery, great rigs and elevators that carried troops and cargo up and down the shaft, strong enough to negotiate the change in gravitational forces. The Pit itself was huge, large enough for the Corsairs to manoeuvre their tanks and galleons down, though not large enough for flyers.
As Rotaka and his squad entered the huge chamber, the last dozen or so mortals surrounding the Pit were on the verge of defeat. Red Corsairs were approaching from all sides, having landed around the complex and pushed their way in as Rotaka had done, firing on the atmosphere-suited mortals. The defenders were stubbornly entrenched behind a barrier of heavy loading equipment.
The airlocks had closed behind the Corsairs, and so when Huron Blackheart entered the dome everyone present, Corsairs and mortals alike, heard it.
It was no word that Lord Huron shouted, but a feral bellow of rage. He entered the dome via a high gantry, running off the edge and leaping towards the cover where the remaining mortals were firing from. As he dropped to the ground he let out his war-cry, and Rotaka could only imagine the effect it had on the mortals.
Huron landed next to the huge loading vehicle that made up the main part of the mortals’ cover. He swung around the Tyrant’s Claw and dug into the metallic side of the loader with the blades, a high screech echoing around the dome as metal tore into metal. Then he pulled the loader aside and tossed it away, throwing it like a toy. The Red Corsairs dodged as the loader tumbled towards them, cast aside by their lord with no thought for his followers.
Cover removed, Huron tore the last human defenders to pieces, shrugging off las-fire and tossing mortals aside with his claw. As the last mortal made a futile run at Huron Blackheart, lasgun raised, the Tyrant kicked the weapon out of his hands, reached forwards and broke his neck with a single twist of his hand.
Towering over the crumpled bodies, Huron Blackheart turned to his men. The scarred red of his armour was splashed with blood, and his artificial eye glowed from his ruined face.
‘Into the Pit!’ he bellowed, immediately turning back and leaping over the edge.
None of them hesitated, jumping into the Pit, falling down a shaft so deep that even a Space Marine might die when he hit the bottom – not that there was any bottom to this pit, as halfway down they would hit the gravitational anomaly that marked the transition to Laghast’s interior.
Rotaka was amongst them, falling. He dived as gracefully as he could in power armour, keeping his arms by his side so he cut through the air.
The metallic sides of the Pit shot past, the ridges and gantries clinging to the wall blurred into thin streaks. As his speed increased, even with the enhanced senses of a Space Marine, Rotaka couldn’t make out his surroundings. His fellow Red Corsairs were the only things in his line of sight moving at the same speed. Ahead of him flew Blackheart himself, moving his entire body subtly to redirect his fall.
As they fell, the air streaked with light and fire – mortals on gantries presumably firing blindly as the Red Corsairs streaked past in their descent. These efforts were not entirely futile – one of Rotaka’s fellow Corsairs jerked backwards in an explosive burst, a lucky shot hitting him and halting his momentum.
The unfortunate Corsair was out of Rotaka’s line of sight within less than a second, left far behind. He had no way of knowing if his descent was still true, or whether a glancing shot was enough to throw one of the falling Space Marines off course. At their speed an impact with a wall or gantry would be enough to dash the power armour right off them, the friction alone setting their bodies ablaze.
Ahead of Rotaka, Huron curved his body around, as if bracing himself for impact. Rotaka could not see whatever Huron perceived ahead – and he knew that his master perceived things that Rotaka would never, could never, see – but tried to do the same nonetheless, bending his armoured body so that he was falling feet first.
Rotaka hadn’t quite managed to achieve this when he found himself slowing. There was no impact or friction, just a sudden draining of momentum. There was a feeling of sinking, of being dragged down rather than falling, and then a very familiar sensation.
Weightlessness, the absence of gravity. Rotaka was no longer falling; he was floating.
‘Attack,’ shouted Huron Blackheart, and Rotaka saw that the Corsairs were not alone. The Lastrati had prepared for them, banks of weaponry mounted on gantries around the circular wall of the shaft.
This pocket of zero gravity in the central stretch of the Pit, the transition point between one gravitational field and another, had been made into a kill zone that the Corsairs had fallen straight into.
A mortar narrowly missed Rotaka, exploding as it hit the gravity barrier behind him. The pressure from the explosion threw him forwards, towards the ledge where the Lastrati manning the mortar were sheltered behind a plasteel barrier. Rotaka opened fire with his bolter, but failed to breach their shield.
He activated his jump pack, boosting him across the space between him and the heavy weapon. The mortar fired another shot, but it sailed over Rotaka’s head.
He hit the wall a slight distance away from the shield, his boots locking to the surface of the wall. Not bothering to draw his bolter, Rotaka ran across the wall, jumped over the barrier and kicked the man behind it in the face. The man was anchored in zero G by a flexible cable attached to a rail running up the wall, so as he flew backwards he rebounded, bouncing back towards Rotaka, bloodied and bruised. Rotaka, now firmly standing on the wall, slammed his palm beneath the man’s chin, snapping his neck. He drew his knife and cut through the safety cable with a single slash, allowing the corpse to drift off.
The mortar was locked to the wall, but it was little effort for him to rip out the fittings and lift the weapon. He looked up, to see a similar mortar placement on the opposite side of the pit firing upon Malinko and Wuhrsk, who looked to be drifting aimlessly.
Rotaka aimed the mortar across the vastness of the Pit. The mortar shell spiralled across the shaft, blowing the mortar crew opposite to pieces.
‘Get on the wall,’ Rotaka snapped into the vox, abandoning the mortar and running up the wall. ‘Target the heavy weapons. Keep them too busy to fire on anyone else.’
‘Insanity!’ cheered Malinko. ‘I like it.’
Ahead, a heavy lascannon was firing on the Red Corsairs floating through the Pit. Rotaka raised his bolter and fired at it, killing the Lastrati controlling its operators.
All around he could see mortal weapons being hijacked or destroyed by the Red Corsairs, who were mostly now running up the wall of the Pit. A few had been killed by the Lastrati weapons, but most of Huron’s force were alive. The Tyrant himself was floating through the centre of the Pit, propelled by some unseen force, keeping ahead of the rest of the Corsairs.
Rotaka wasn’t sure whether Huron had seen the mines, or whether the Tyrant’s mystical gift for circumventing physics would allow him to dodge them with
out any aid. All he saw was the release of large, spiny metallic spheres from launchers in the walls of the Pit, the mines spreading across the space in the centre, and Huron drifting towards them. Rotaka didn’t think but acted, jumping off the wall, using his jump pack to boost himself towards his lord.
Huron looked around, enraged to see Rotaka hurtling towards him, that rage not subsiding as the captain slammed into his master, knocking him out of the way of a mine. Rotaka ricocheted out in a different direction, but clipped the mine as he did so, spiralling away from it and only escaping a short distance before catching the blast.
He spun head over heels, warning runes flashing in his helmet display, his jump pack not responding, unsure whether he was about to crash into the wall or be shot out of the air by a Lastrati weapon.
Just as the runes on his display settled down, indicating no permanent damage to his power armour from the blast, Rotaka felt a tug as some form of gravity began to reassert itself. They had reached the second transition point, where the gravitational field of Laghast’s interior took hold. Rotaka had only seconds in the nebulous swirl of gravitational forces between the zero gravity section of the shaft and the next to act: if he drifted too far forwards the gravity would force him backwards into zero G; he would be trapped until he found sufficient momentum to break out again.
Rotaka used his jump pack and the unstable gravitational currents swirling around him to launch himself towards the wall of the shaft. As he drifted he felt competing forces pulling at him, but reach the wall he did. He took a handhold and began to climb up – for the shaft ahead was now definitely ‘up’, rising away from the exterior of the planet – his fingers finding grooves, pipes and ridges to grasp on to, his boots magnetically locking to the wall.
Around Rotaka, other Red Corsairs were doing the same. While nothing could have prepared them for the gravitational anomalies of the shaft, they adapted quickly.
‘The gods are with you today, Rotaka,’ said Hulpin, climbing up beside him, his chainfists digging into the wall of the shaft like picks. ‘They guided you to safety.’
‘I’m glad they have my back better than my squad do,’ said Rotaka, biting back the desire to tell Hulpin that he saved himself, no gods required.
‘I didn’t want to interrupt,’ interjected Malinko over the vox. Rotaka couldn’t see him nearby – presumably he was on the other side of the Pit. ‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself.’
‘Targets ahead,’ said Wuhrsk, also out of sight. ‘If any of you are still interested.’
The Lastrati were now at a brief disadvantage, having to fire over the lip of the platforms and elevators they were standing on to target the climbing Red Corsairs, who were nestled tightly against the wall, often in the protective shadow of the platforms. Rotaka looked up to see the smoking bodies of two mortals falling off a platform directly above his and Hulpin’s position.
‘Got them,’ voxed Wuhrsk.
Rotaka glanced across the Pit to see Wuhrsk holding on to the wall one handed, bolter raised.
Above Wuhrsk’s position, Rotaka saw Huron, using the Tyrant’s Claw to grasp a section of wall, throw himself upwards and then grab the wall again before gravity pulled him back down. It was an extraordinary display of agility and raw power, and Huron left a shower of metal scrap and shattered rock tumbling behind him with every leap.
His lord was climbing in the space between two tracks that ran the length of the shaft allowing elevators to carry cargo and passengers back and forth, the platform rotating as required to match the gravitational alignment. Someone above Huron had clearly noted his presence, as an elevator platform began to drop towards him, a wide metal platform heavy enough to crush even the leader of the Red Corsairs.
‘Lord Huron, above you,’ Rotaka shouted over the open vox-channel.
Huron looked up, and Rotaka heard him laugh over the vox as the elevator dropped towards him.
Just as the elevator was about to hit him the Tyrant sprang away from the wall, arcing out of its way. The elevator cut through the air where, half a second before, Huron had been, and as it passed him, he reached out and grabbed the lip of the platform with his claw. He swung up onto the elevator to face a dozen armed Lastrati. The elevator stopped automatically before it could reach the transition to zero G, and the climbing Corsairs looked down as their master faced the defenders.
They were nothing to the Tyrant, whose claw slashed through the nearest four in one smooth motion. The two hit by the claw first were slashed into pieces, bodies falling to the platform in bloody chunks, while the other two were scooped up and batted off the edge of the elevator. Their screams echoed up as they fell.
The other Lastrati had barely raised their weapons when Huron lifted the Tyrant’s Claw once more and spat fire from its palm, setting half a dozen of them ablaze. More Lastrati went over the edge, thrown or forced over by Huron’s blows, some already dead and others still dying, and the jeers of the Corsairs rang out as they fell in a trail of smoke.
The last two Lastrati standing both fired at Huron, but couldn’t stop him. He backhanded one, smashing her into the wall so hard she slid down, a shattered mess, then impaled the other on a single blade of the claw, raising his corpse up so that the Corsairs could see.
The Tyrant of Badab had destroyed a dozen fighting men and women within a minute, and bellowed his bloodlust to his Corsairs, who roared their approval.
Rotaka, precariously hanging from the wall, cheered as loudly as any of them.
‘My Corsairs,’ bellowed Huron, his voice amplified into every ear by the vox-network. ‘Take the elevators, and then we’ll take this world.’
Then, looking straight across the Pit, Huron spoke to Rotaka on a private vox-channel.
‘You have done well, Rotaka,’ said Huron, nodding towards his subordinate.
‘My lord,’ said Rotaka, and then Huron’s attention was back on the battle, and the vox-channel closed.
Although the compliment filled him with pride, Rotaka also felt a chill of trepidation – to be singled out by the Tyrant was not always an honour.
Some of the Corsairs closest to Huron’s elevator threw grapples, pulling themselves up to join him. Rotaka was too far away to be one of them, and instead he kept climbing towards the platform immediately above him.
When Rotaka reached the elevator platform, he found nothing but the bodies of Lastrati shot by Wuhrsk. He voxed the rest of his squad to demand to know what was keeping them.
‘Nothing,’ said Wuhrsk, climbing alongside the elevator and dropping onto the platform. ‘If you had eyes for anyone other than Lord Huron, you would have noticed.’
Rotaka didn’t respond to that as Hulpin swung across from a maintenance platform, rolling to a halt nearby.
‘The gods are with us in this battle,’ said Hulpin enthusiastically. Lastrati corpses were raining down the centre of the shaft, evidence of Huron’s progress above.
‘Gods,’ said Wuhrsk, shaking his head. ‘Can’t we take a little credit for ourselves? We abandoned one oppressive deity, why so quick to adopt another?’
‘Blasphemer!’ barked Hulpin, marching towards Wuhrsk.
It was a familiar conflict between the believer and the cynic. Rotaka stepped between them, lashing out with his gauntleted fists to smack both of them in the chestplate. Wuhrsk backed off with a low chuckle while Hulpin stood and seethed.
‘The gods guide Huron,’ snapped Rotaka. ‘And we follow him. That’s all that matters.’
‘Of course,’ said Wuhrsk. ‘Of course.’
Hulpin said nothing, but nodded.
Malinko and Verbin had joined them during the conflict, as had another squad of Corsairs and a couple of strays separated from their comrades in the battle.
‘Where do we go from here?’ said the other captain. Red Corsairs deferred to each other rarely, but being first to capture a ship or area g
ave precedence.
A chunk of flaming metalwork fell past them, a screaming mortal dragged behind it by burning cables. Rotaka looked past it to see a deserted maintenance elevator within climbing distance. He pointed at it.
‘We do as our lord commands,’ he said. ‘Let’s take the elevator. We go up.’
Six
Commissioner Krayk had risen within the ranks of the Jandarme to take charge of the whole operation of the Hellward Gate, both on the outer surface of Laghast and within the interior. The Inner Dock, the part of the Hellward Gate that emerged within Laghast’s inner, inhabitable surface, was based on an island in the centre of an ocean. It was in many ways a more hospitable mirror of the Hellward Gate on the outside of the planet, a complex of port facilities based around a central dome, underneath which lay the Pit.
Krayk knew every part of the operation under his command, both on the outer surface and on the island, and appreciated more than anyone else the extent to which the Lastrati’s use of the gate was crudely overlaid on ancient systems none of them understood. Whatever purpose the architects of the Hollow Worlds had for having the Pit open on a small island, it wasn’t the same as humanity’s. The island was far too small for a complex operation like the Inner Dock, and loading spaces were clustered upon generators and other industrial equipment. Only through strict discipline could everyone work together in such a crowded space, and one random element could grind everything to a halt.
The disruption that was spreading through all internal communications was already fully occupying Krayk’s attention, but such problems were not unexpected.
The first evacuees to emerge from the Pit, carrying a message from Lieutenant Kardon in person, were another matter. They were civilians, with one message on their lips, spoken to anyone they encountered: We are under attack, enemies unknown but powerful.