by Toby Frost
A servo-skull dropped down from the rafters and ran a scanner-lantern over Nork’s face. The ogryn snarled, and it rose to safety.
Greiss said, ‘They were badly served. So was I. The field intelligence underestimated Killzkar’s ability to counter our attack.’ He sighed. He knew what he wanted to say. Don’t tell me you’ve not heard it happen before. Some scribe forgets to add a zero, some servitor gets a screw tightened too tight, and suddenly a billion new troops are being raised from Valhalla instead of Vostroya – you know what happens. But even an army commander had to speak within certain limits. ‘It’s just bad luck,’ he finished, as if he were trying to excuse himself.
Osh’Preen, from the look of him, thought the same thing. For the first time the smugness was gone. There was a little sweat on his pale, high forehead. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Indeed. I know what you’re talking about.’ The High Praetor took a deep breath. He looked around the room as if to remember it should he never see it again. ‘You’ll get your men, General Greiss. Twenty standard days and we’ll be ready to leave. I’ll have a full mobilisation – tanks, artillery, whatever you need. But one condition, general.’
‘Go on.’
‘This is my army. I’m the named commander. We ride out in my name, you understand?’
Greiss wanted to recoil, as if from a slap. Anger shot through him, the same anger he’d known from the old days, when he’d led his fellow Catachans in the field. Then he remembered the soldiers trapped on Dulma’lin, those still alive and fighting, and knew that loyalty to his old home world meant helping the living as well as remembering the dead.
He swallowed. ‘As you wish,’ he said, and he held out his hand to shake.
Straken felt almost nostalgic to be back in the power station. It now contained more civilians than Catachans. Mining trucks stood in a row outside, waiting to be checked and overhauled. A unit of Dulma’lin’s citizens, motley but dangerous, crept through the fungal trees under the supervision of a few Guardsmen left behind to train them. The militia would never be anywhere near as good as the Catachans, but they were turning into respectable fighters. There was something about the way they held their weapons now, about their willingness to look the Catachans in the face. The cringing and the fear were going, replaced by aggression and pride.
Even Guildmaster Tarricus didn’t look petrified any more. He came to find Straken with a fresh heap of maps, some of them hand drawn. He still wore his overalls, still smoked continuously, but there was a neat cap on his balding head and a freshly-polished autopistol at his side.
‘Colonel,’ he said, as Straken flicked through the maps, ‘I’ve been thinking. This ork warlord you’ve mentioned…’
‘Killzkar.’
‘Right. He must have ships, yes? Spacecraft.’
Straken looked up from a diagram of industrial output. ‘So?’
‘So did you see any on your way in? What I mean is, where are they?’
For a moment, Straken said nothing. Then he lowered the papers. ‘We didn’t see anything. One of the other cities, maybe?’
‘There’s a maglev line running out of the industrial quarter,’ Tarricus said. ‘It takes gear out from the manufactoria to the other settlements. Maybe it leads to him.’
‘Maybe.’ Straken was interested now.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ the little man said again. ‘Our guild trucks are pretty solid. We’ve got one or two that could go outside the city. We could scout around.’
‘I thought it was the storm season.’
‘Oh, it is. You go out there without the right protection, and the wind won’t just knock you flying – it’ll rip the skin off you as well. But some of our trucks have sealed, reinforced cabs. The wind wouldn’t be able to get inside.’
‘I see. How long is the wind going to last?’
Tarricus chuckled. ‘Last? At the very least, another month. Probably more than that. It’s storm season, colonel. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been so cut off in the past. Once the winds are up, you’d be hard pushed to land anything smaller than a spacecraft. Hell, it’s the main reason why we thought Dulma’lin was safe. If the orks had landed three months later, they’d have been dead long before they ever got in here.’
Straken frowned. Killzkar’s ships would be able to take off whenever the warlord chose; ork spacecraft might be patched together, but they would at least be storm-proof. But anything smaller, including light tanks, would not stand a chance once the winds were up. Whatever battles were to be fought now, they would be fought underground. Other than the maglev line, Excelsis City was cut off.
Sometimes, he thought, controlling where the battle is fought goes a long way towards winning it.
Straken continued his tour of the base. Militiamen saluted as he approached, and non-combatants stood a little straighter in his presence.
Straken passed an infirmary and glanced in. Two Catachan soldiers lay on a row of beds. One was unconscious; the other raised a hand and saluted, gritting his teeth. His chest was heavily bandaged.
Straken recognised him. He was one of the lads from the raid on Father Sarr’s temple, shot as they fell back in the truck that had come to rescue them. The orks had given chase, but it would have been better for them had they hung back – they had slammed into Catachan reinforcements, and suffered badly for it. Straken nodded to the injured man and went on his way.
He met the medic in the corridor. She was called Strauss, a short, broad woman with a single bionic eye. She reminded him of the medicae personnel back on the Radix Malorum. No matter the rank of the officer in her midst, the infirmary was her territory, and she was not afraid to make it clear. Straken respected that.
‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good as it can be,’ she replied. ‘We’re bringing in more pallets. Figure we might need them soon enough.’
‘And how’re the patients?’
‘You’ve just seen them. Or do you mean the commissar?’
Straken nodded.
‘He’s moving about – slowly. He’s in a lot of pain – that’s an ugly wound he’s got there. But yes, he’s doing all right. He’s surprisingly polite,’ she added. ‘Not much of a talker, though.’
‘Don’t talk to him if you can help it. Nothing about your work.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, colonel.’
‘Has anyone come looking for him?’
‘No. And I’ve been watching, like you said. So have all my staff.’
‘Thanks.’
She saw that he was about to go. ‘Don’t you want to talk to him?’
Straken looked at her for a moment. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think that would do either of us much good.’
The industrial caverns were connected to the hab-zones by road and rail. Most of the mine workers owned no vehicles, Tarricus explained – instead they had been shuttled to work either by small, makeshift-looking trams or on trucks laid on by the guild. The maglev was purely industrial, and connected the Excelsis forge-works with the few other outposts of Dulma’lin. As well as being by far the largest city in terms of population, Excelsis was the centre of industry. If anything was to be made on Dulma’lin in large amounts, it would be in the manufactoria of Excelsis City.
‘Damn it, which lunatic designed this place?’ Tanner said as they pored over plans in the enforcer building.
‘Shame the tram isn’t linked to the maglev,’ Lavant said. ‘Then we could load it with mining explosives and a few melta bombs, and shoot the damn thing straight down the line.’
Straken sipped the Barabo tea in front of him. He’d had it warmed up – although it didn’t improve the taste, the local habit of taking it cold disgusted him. Cold, the stuff tasted as clammy as condensation on the cave walls. ‘There’s two ways into the industrial caverns,’ he said. ‘First, we have the main road and tramway – the front door. It’s a lot like the tunnel between the power station and the guild headquarters, except that it’s much longer a
nd wider. And probably full of orks. And even an ork can shoot straight down a tunnel.’
Tanner said, ‘But…’
‘There’s a second way in. The access route. We can’t get a large force into the cavern that way, at least not without being noticed, but we can get enough men through to hit whatever’s guarding the tunnel from behind. And once the tunnel’s open, we can get the heavy stuff through and clean the place out. But first, I want to recce the area so we know what to hit. Lavant, you’re the demo man, so you’re coming with me. I want Halda and Mayne as well. We may as well take Marbo too – he may be half crazy, but the boy knows how to kill orks. We’ll also need a local guide, someone with experience in the industrial caves. Tarricus, do you think you can arrange that?’
‘I’ll go,’ the guildmaster said.
‘Are you sure? It’ll be dangerous.’
The little man didn’t look sure. He licked his lips. ‘Yeah. I’ll do it. I know how to go quietly – I spend enough time avoiding cave-ins down in the mines. Besides, what kind of a guildsman am I if I send someone else to do it?’
‘The sensible kind, I’d have thought,’ Tanner said. He reached out and clapped Tarricus on the back, nearly knocking him over. The Catachan was hulking and massive beside him, confident and heavily muscled. He looked like a different species. ‘I think,’ Tanner said, ‘our new recruit here has definitely earned himself a shot of amasec. After all, nobody rides out with the Catachan Second who doesn’t have guts, right?’
Straken glanced at Lavant. The captain rolled his eyes. ‘Fine,’ Straken said. ‘Just make sure you can all stand tomorrow.’
Lavant was having the dream again. Part of his mind knew that it wasn’t real, but he couldn’t make it end. He felt as if he were tied to the front of some vehicle, rolling forwards towards disaster, unable to stop but certain of the collision ahead.
He was back on Miral, moving down the slope towards the bridge. It was broad and high, spanning the gorge that split the jungle like an open wound. He looked it over as he approached, from the dirt surface of the bridge, burned and flattened by tyres and eldar grav-tanks, down to the massive struts of local wood that held it upright, lashed together with creeper-rope. He ran his eyes over the workmanship like an expert appraising a piece of art, looking for weaknesses. He wanted to look away.
Lavant felt the prickling of sweat on his neck and the weight of the det-charge in his hand. He heard his boots crunch softly on the vegetation, felt the spring of moss under his soles. He chose the place to put the charge – or rather, his body chose the place. His mind was locked in, forced to watch.
He heard voices behind him. ‘…the blast shoots upwards,’ an older man was saying. ‘Hits their tanks from underneath. Only way to get a grav-tank…’
Reaching the bridge, Lavant ducked down and slipped between the struts, to the point he wanted. Insects whined around him. A small, six-legged creature watched him from under the bridge, staring with round, nocturnal eyes.
The explosive looked old. The Munitorum stamp on the top of the bundle was faded; chemicals had discoloured the packaging. What a lump of junk, part of Lavant’s mind thought. Well, you work with what you’ve got. That’s the first rule of sabotage.
But another piece of his mind, the part that was condemned to watch, struggled to get free.
He tied the bomb on nice and tight. Then he unrolled the det-cord, spooling it out. Lavant pushed the det-cord into the remote receiver and stuck it to the side of the bridge, a neat little box. Then he crept back.
He climbed into the bushes, where the presence of men watching the road had flattened the grass into a sort of nest. ‘Signal’s not getting through,’ a voice said beside him. He wanted to look round, but he could not. Besides, he knew the man’s face already – knew what it had been like. ‘I’ll go and check,’ Guardsman Serradus said, getting up, and he started back towards the bridge. ‘You wait here.’
Wait, Lavant tried to say. For the Emperor’s sake, I’ll go. The gear’s old – it might not be stable. I’ll do it. Let me do it! I laid the damn bomb, didn’t I? I should be the one, not you!
Yet no words came out. Serradus looked back and smiled: a cheerful, healthy-looking lad, with a wide forehead and very clean teeth, and Lavant tried to scream as the man turned to the bridge again.
Then came the flash, the blast of noise and light, and Serradus fell over and was lost among the grass. And in his place stood a ghost, a dark shape. It looked at Lavant, accusing him, and he saw that its ruin of a face was a skull, the flesh blasted away.
He jolted awake. A hand shook his shoulder. ‘Hey,’ a voice said. ‘Hey! Are you all right?’
Lavant blinked. He sat in the enforcer station in a leather chair, his feet up on the desk before him. Tarricus stepped back from the desk, his tired face full of concern. ‘You were talking. I thought you were having a nightmare.’
Lavant got up slowly, grimacing as if hung over. ‘Really? I… don’t remember.’ He forced his mouth into a smile. ‘Well, there you go. Even Catachans can have bad dreams. Most of the time, we’re other people’s nightmares, but once in a while…’
‘You sure you’re all right? There’s a shrine downstairs. Maybe you should ask for a blessing or something.’
‘Maybe.’ Lavant moved towards the door. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, but he knew that it would take more than a few minutes’ prayer to wash the guilt away.
15.
The road leading into the industrial caves was six lanes wide. Above it, the great arch of the tunnel gaped like the mouth of a beast.
Straken crouched as near to the edge of the tunnel as he could safely allow. The orks had never been great shots, but some of their gretchin were surprisingly skilled, and the sheer volume of gunfire the aliens could put out still made them dangerous at range. He switched his bionic eye to image-enhance and willed the amplification up as far as it would go. He gritted his teeth as the eye zoomed in; the pain in his head had become sharper. Like all their equipment, his bionics were starting to show the strain.
Vehicles lay on their sides in a dog-tooth pattern, to slow anyone entering and expose them to enfilading fire. At the far end of the tunnel, the orks had built a wall of scrap, topped with small towers. A hulking figure lumbered across the barricade, a huge pair of night-vision goggles strapped over its tiny eyes. Behind it, the head of a gretchin orderly bobbed above the parapet, following the ork like a child imitating a parent.
You had to hand it to them, Straken thought. They’d got the tunnel pretty well sewn up.
The others waited a little way back, in an alleyway behind the hab-blocks. Marbo stood aside, ignoring the others as he checked his equipment. Halda leaned against the wall, watching him suspiciously. The old sergeant’s beard made him look like a wild man, some sort of berserker pressed into service. That wasn’t far wrong. By contrast, Mayne looked like a lad playing with a toy as he fine-tuned the vox gear. Tarricus, tiny compared to the others, sucked on a lho-stick as though he’d die without it.
As Straken came into view, only Lavant saluted. The captain was even neater than usual. Although his face had been carefully striped with paint, his hands were scrupulously clean.
‘Ready when you are, colonel,’ he said.
‘Then let’s go. And for the Emperor’s sake,’ Straken added, lowering his voice a little, ‘ease down.’
‘I am eased down, sir.’
‘Then I’d hate to see you tense. Let’s go, Guardsmen! All of you, stick behind me.’
They started off, picking their way between the hab-blocks, keeping out of sight of the tunnel entrance. Straken had fought in jungles countless times, and in a way this was no different. He was made for close-ranged, hard-fought war, where individual ferocity was vital and a knife was often more useful than an autocannon. And from the looks of the route they would be taking, they would be needing their fieldcraft. He heard someone cough behind, and guessed that it was Tarricus even before the miner whispered an apolo
gy.
The first port of call was a squat box of a building, formerly owned by the Dulma’lin senate’s Departmento Lux. Two soldiers waited outside: where another Guard regiment would have posted them standing by the door, the Catachans had taken point in cover nine metres away, guns covering the entrance. The watchers nodded Straken’s team through.
They entered the little building. The left side of the room was a jumble of wires and switchboards. A deactivated servitor drooped over the machinery, arms at its sides. It looked defeated and miserable, powerless.
At the rear of the room there was a hatch. Straken slid the bolts and lifted it. Steps ran down into a dark corridor.
Tarricus unhitched a lantern from his belt, broke a light-stick and put it inside. Sickly yellow light surrounded them. Seen from the front, I’ll look like a silhouette, Straken thought. Great.
He hurried down the steps and the others followed. There was dust on the floor; a prayer scroll hung on the wall, mounted behind dirty glass. He wondered when someone had last been down here – hopefully, a long time ago.
Thirty metres on, the corridor turned right. Straken followed it round. Arches had been cut into the stone, and behind them machinery stretched away. He had no idea what it did, but it was obvious that the stuff wasn’t working. In a way, that was encouraging: had the orks bothered to come down here, they would probably have stripped it for components. The pickings had been richer, and easier, in the city above them.
A statue of Saint Helena stood in a little alcove. The light halted as Tarricus stopped, fished a coin out of his pocket and placed it between the saint’s boots. ‘Old custom,’ he whispered. ‘It never hurts to favour the saints, right?’
Halda snorted derisively.
‘Keep going,’ Straken said. ‘We can’t be far off.’
The corridor sloped upwards now. The place made Straken think of tombs. They walked on in silence – thirty metres more, then fifty. Dead control panels lined the walls.