Vaults of Terra- The Hollow Mountain - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘With respect, I cannot. The Magister must be informed of these things in person. I have the passcodes relevant to my investigations, should you wish to see them.’

  The guardian remained unmoved. ‘Those are of no use here. Return to your work.’

  ‘I have come a long way for this. It is of the highest importance.’

  ‘Return to your work.’ The staff angled forward a fraction, and the vanes sparked into life. ‘Or I shall send you there myself.’

  Crowl’s next movement was far faster than the real Calavine would have been able to achieve. It was prompted by a glanded spurt of motovine and came with a cost – a sharp bite of spinal agony – but was nonetheless sufficient to send three tranq-bolts into the second guardian’s stomach before he could react, hurling him back against the bronze pillar and spidering his robes with three pinpoint bursts of blood.

  The first guardian lunged at him, then froze almost as quickly, his staff crackling with undischarged energy.

  ‘Wise,’ said Crowl, dropping the pretence at Calavine’s voice and holstering his laspistol. Just visible behind the guardian’s helm was Gorgias, who had crept up silently and extended a needle into the back of the man’s neck. ‘Now say nothing,’ said Crowl. ‘Listen with utmost care. My skull here is delivering a substance into your bloodstream that will shortly render you both immobile and insensible. Prior to that, you will find yourself becoming amenable to suggestion. I suggest you do not fight it.’

  The guardian snarled, and tried to raise the staff. Gorgias pumped a little extra in, and the gesture petered out. Slowly, the man’s body relaxed. The sparks on the electro-vanes gusted out, his arms went limp.

  ‘I require entry, nothing more,’ Crowl told him calmly. ‘No blame can be attached to you for that, and no harm need come to your master, should he cooperate.’

  ‘No… blame,’ repeated the guardian, slurrily.

  ‘Open the door, let us pass,’ said Crowl, taking the staff from slack fingers as Gorgias extracted the needle. ‘Then seal us in, and allow no communication to disturb us. This is the work of the Throne, and by aiding me you are aiding His will.’

  ‘His… will,’ echoed the guardian, turning shakily to a panel set into the wall behind him. He extended a gauntlet into a recess, and something heavy clunked within the mechanism. The door hissed, snapped, then began to grind open, sending fresh squalls of green haze spilling across the milky floor. The aroma of chemicals became almost overwhelming, a tart cocktail that made the nostrils sting. A wave of wet heat came in its wake, humid and strangely alien.

  ‘Good,’ said Crowl, watching him carefully the whole time. It was important to be sure – the drugs in his bloodstream were potent but not infallible. If all worked as it should, both guardians should soon be safely unconscious for several hours. ‘Now remember – no communication while we are inside. Once we are gone, all shall be as it was, and none shall know we were ever here.’

  ‘Ever… here,’ slurred the guardian, activating more dials and levers, before standing aside to allow them entry.

  Crowl allowed himself to take a deep breath. It was dark under the lintel, almost pitch-black, and strange noises were coming from the aperture.

  Gorgias floated up beside him, spinning anxiously. ‘Incoming transmissio,’ he hissed. ‘Signal tenuis – just a little longer – iterum…’

  Crowl shook his head. ‘It can wait,’ he said, stepping over the threshold. ‘This cannot.’

  Khazad woke again, this time into a state of full alertness.

  She blinked. She tensed her muscles. She pushed her blanket down and swung her legs over the edge of the cot.

  She was not in the chirurgeon’s care. She was in a chamber on her own, one that had presumably been assigned to her a while ago. She stretched her arms out in front of her, flexing the fingers. Aside from a little muscle tenderness, everything seemed to be as it should be.

  A single lumen fixed to the ceiling above her gave out a hard, unforgiving light. Her skin looked paler than it had done, making the tattoos on her forearms stand out vividly. A canister of water stood on a table next to her cot’s headboard – she took it and drank it down.

  Then she got up and cocked her head to one side, listening. From outside, she could hear the sound of boots thudding against the floor. There were noises both above and below her, more than she remembered from the last time.

  In the corner of the chamber was a washstand, and next to that were her clothes laid out neatly – boots, a bodyglove, mesh under-armour, and the suit she had worn in Phaelias’ service. It all looked to have been reconditioned and repaired, although the cameleo plates were still inoperative. Next to it hung her power sword. She took it up, depressed the activation rune and watched with approval as the energy field snarled into life along the blade’s edge.

  The noises outside the chamber grew louder. She dressed quickly, snapping her armour-pieces into place and fixing the interlock hooks. It felt better. Someone had clearly done a lot of work on it. A part of her was irritated at that – all this had been done without her consent, while she was still in recovery. Still, once completed, the intact shell made her feel much like her old self again. A little rustiness, a slight headache – that could all be fixed.

  She took up the blade – a Shoba gladius-length sword with the tribal death-name Okira. They had been together for a very long time, the two of them – it would have felt wrong had she not been there, by her side.

  Now the noises were very close – shouted orders, the jangle of armed personnel running. She went to the door and activated the lock-panel. It slid open, revealing a small antechamber. More food had been left there in a cold-cabinet, a few pieces of legal-looking parchment and two inactive data-slates. She walked through the antechamber and opened the outer door.

  A group ran past the entrance – three adepts in dark robes, two soldiers. She let them go, and they ignored her. Overhead, a lumen was blinking red. The sound of engines revving rose up from underfoot.

  She slipped out, not knowing exactly where to go, but sure that she couldn’t stay where she was. She made her way past more jogging personnel until she reached a muster-chamber at the intersection of six corridors. A sergeant from Revus’ detachment was giving orders to a group of storm troopers. They were all checking their hellguns over and making final adjustments to their armour and combat webbing.

  ‘I seek Captain Revus,’ she said, walking up to him.

  He seemed to recognise her. That was something of a surprise – she didn’t know who he was.

  ‘Planning on throwing me to the floor again?’ he asked. It took her a moment to realise he was joking.

  ‘No,’ she said, truthfully.

  He grinned, and gestured upward with his thumb. ‘Command unit, three levels up,’ he said. ‘I’ll vox him that you’re coming – he’ll be pleased.’

  She followed the direction. Three wrong turns later, and she had to ask again before landing on the right stairwell. The building seemed to have been designed to madden – half the corridors ended abruptly in dead ends, the rest snaked back and forth without signage or reason. As she moved, she realised just how out of condition she had become – it would take much training to get back to even a semblance of battle-readiness.

  Eventually she made her way to what the sergeant had referred to as the command unit – a chamber much like the rest of them, all dark metal and gloomy recesses. A circular table dominated the centre of the space, around which a number of officials were gathered. A hololith of a tower – the place she found herself in – rose up from its surface, flashing with translucent runes. Revus was there at the heart of it, gesturing at the schematic and consulting with those about him, most of whom were in storm trooper uniforms too.

  ‘Captain,’ she announced.

  He looked up. ‘Carry on, sergeant,’ he said to the woman next to him, then came up
to Khazad. ‘Glad to see you’re back to yourself, assassin. How do you feel?’

  ‘I am fine.’

  ‘Planning on another wrist-lock?’

  ‘No. Why I am being asked these things?’

  ‘Forget it. Come with me.’

  They passed through the command chamber, entering another room beyond. This one had maps on the walls, etched in steel and marked with various Gothic labels, all looking like sides of meat cut open and marked for butchery. For the first time, she glimpsed something of Courvain’s full internal complexity.

  ‘Combat-ready yet?’ Revus asked her.

  ‘No,’ she said. Then, as he raised an eyebrow, ‘By my standards.’

  ‘I’d like to have you on station.’

  ‘Something is occurred?’

  ‘Our location has been given away. As you said yourself, assassin – they will come for us.’

  ‘Gloch,’ she said, making the word sound like an expletive.

  ‘Possibly. There are webs of loyalty out there.’

  Khazad stared at the diagrams carefully. ‘Hard to seal off, this place.’

  Revus nodded. ‘The lower levels, yes. But there are failsafes, and we have had time to prepare.’ He moved over to the nearest schematic. ‘The upper reaches are virtually impregnable from the outside. Any intruders would have to break in lower down, and move up. That is not straightforward, but we must guard carefully against infiltration.’

  ‘I can hunt.’

  Revus smiled. She had not seen him smile before, and had never gained the impression it was a common event. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘For now, these are just precautions. The Lord Crowl will be returning shortly, as will Interrogator Spinoza.’

  As he spoke, though, there was a sudden crash, one so violent that the floor shook underfoot. All across the schematic, red lights blinked on.

  ‘This is Crowl?’ Khazad asked, doubtfully.

  Another boom, and the lumens flickered above them. Then more – heavy impacts, all coming from outside. Revus’ gorget lit up with incoming comm-signals.

  He grabbed his helm and twisted it on, hastening back the way he had come.

  ‘No, it is not,’ he said, his voice made cold and distorted by his helm’s vox-filter. ‘It seems you woke up at just the right time, assassin. Someone has come knocking.’

  Chapter Ten

  It was everywhere. It was growing, burgeoning, swelling, spilling from the high portals of the spires and out into the already congested courtyards and transitways. The air was crackling with it, the towers were sparking with it.

  Fervour. Fear. Fury.

  Spinoza drove the gunship as hard as she could, sweeping along the narrow urban chasms and skirting the very edges of the overhanging terraces. The sky ahead was a bruised mix of grey and black, scored by ranks of lightning that played across a tormented horizon. It had become hot, far more so than usual, even with the gunship’s rudimentary atmospheric compensators working at full tilt.

  Ahead of them, a big Ministorum gun-float was languishing, listing badly, its turbines whining. Bodies were dropping from its sides as it foundered, and if it could not right itself soon, it would collide with the hab-units drawing steadily closer. Across the other side of the canyon, a commercial vox-emitter bank had gone haywire and had started blaring nonsense from its groundcar-sized speakers. There was no sign of an Arbites presence amid all the disturbance, which was unusual – perhaps suppression units had been recalled to the Hall of Judgement.

  ‘Do you have a loc-reading for the Lord Crowl yet?’ Spinoza asked.

  ‘I do not,’ Hegain replied. ‘But I also do not have a loc-reading for anyone else. I am struggling, in the truth of it, with all comms.’

  Spinoza swore under her breath. Maintaining reliable feeds on a teeming, crumbling world like Terra was always a challenge, and now the skies themselves seemed to be intervening unhelpfully. ‘Courvain?’ she asked.

  ‘Intermittent,’ he said. ‘But they know we are coming.’

  She glanced at the flight console, and noted the citadel’s marker-rune drifting into the forward scanner. ‘Throne, this is congested,’ she muttered.

  There was never a time when Terra’s skies were not scarred and piled with fleets of intermingling vehicles, all flocking and darting and lumbering among themselves and between their thousands of receiving hangars, but something did seem to be shifting in greater numbers now, like some great blind and panicked migration, converging from a number of separate compass-points and piling into the choked airspace.

  ‘Almost there now,’ Hegain offered.

  ‘Ever seen a storm like this, sergeant?’ Spinoza asked, maintaining her high speed despite the narrowing volume of space.

  ‘I have not, lord,’ he said.

  ‘Any idea what could have caused it?’

  ‘None at all, lord.’

  Spinoza grunted, pulling hard to starboard to avoid colliding with a big personnel carrier decked out in the livery of an urban-sector contagion controller. The sodium-glare of hab-lumens smeared past them, long streaks in a mess of angry crimson. She found herself recognising some of the spire profiles as those of central Salvator, and realised just how habituated she had become to her new home.

  ‘Damn it all,’ she swore, ducking under the heavy linked containers of a cargo-lifter. A bulky adamantium ore-casket swept overhead, nearly snagging on the gunship’s rear tail-fin, then she had to pull hard to swing them round before tumbling into the oncoming air-intake of a worker transport.

  Hegain made no comment, but quietly gripped the cockpit’s moulded doorframe.

  ‘More up ahead,’ Spinoza grunted, tilting the Brawler to angle it between a phalanx of private grav-cars.

  Hegain leaned forward, studying the scanners. ‘They look…’ he started, then ran his fingers over the augur controls.

  Courvain finally appeared up ahead, its wizened, crow-dark flanks overlooked by the titanic spires clustered around it. For a moment, framed by the mountainous architecture and illuminated by the bloody electrical storm, it all looked horribly vulnerable, lit up by lightning flashes, bright-white against the dark stone.

  ‘But that is not lightning,’ said Hegain, taking up the bolter controls again.

  It was las-fire, a whole storm of it, flickering and smacking from the muzzles of dozens of aircraft, all spiralling and ducking around Courvain’s spiked summit like flies drawn to a sucrose-stick.

  ‘Damn,’ Spinoza swore again, dragging the Brawler out wide to avoid colliding with a drifting procession of commodity-transports. ‘Any insignia on those ships?’

  ‘None that I can see,’ Hegain reported, training his sights on the closest of them. They were still too far out for a shot, too blocked by the flabby shoals of lesser craft. ‘I do not, I surmise, even recog­nise the profiles.’

  Spinoza squinted, dropping the gunship lower then shooting clear around a static-crackling comm-relay tower. ‘Neither do I. Some of ours are up there, though.’

  The augurs picked up friendlies, and overlaid them on the tactical screen. A few Shades were fighting hard, outnumbered and burning, and some Nighthawks were also still airborne, firing back in a tiered series of corkscrewing dogfights. These were horribly outnumbered, and as the Brawler closed in, Spinoza saw one blown apart by a volley of hard-round hits, its rear engines detonating in a shower of sparks.

  ‘I shall attempt to break through,’ Spinoza said, swerving clear of the final dregs of traffic and boosting straight at Courvain’s embattled turrets. ‘Though I do not like these numbers.’

  Even in the confusion of the darkness, the ceaseless movement, the backdrop of crowded skies, it was clear the enemy vessels far outnumbered those scrambled by Courvain’s hangars. These aircraft were mainline battle fighters – bigger than the citadel’s gunships, sleeker, liveried in a nondescript dark grey. Their sho
rt, swung-forward wings were designed for aerial manoeuvrability, and they appeared to be decked out with high-power las weaponry. At least one of Courvain’s hangar entrances was burning and semi-blocked with wreckage, and more shots were landing. At ground level, where dozens of transitways intersected with entrance gates across many vertical levels, palls of smoke rose, bitter with the stench of spilled promethium.

  Hegain pinned one of the enemy craft with the Brawler’s attack augur, marking it on the scanners with a crimson skull-rune. Spinoza adjusted her angle to give him as clear a shot as possible, and they hurtled into range. Hegain opened fire, raking it with bolts that pinged and exploded across heavy armour plate.

  The vessel immediately ducked out of contact, tilting heavily and dropping like a stone. Spinoza went after it, throwing the Brawler into a dive. Hegain fired again, smacking three shots into the rear of the fighter, impacting on the afterburning thruster and triggering the first explosion. It tumbled over and over, igniting more blasts, before careening straight into a transitway. The wreckage blew apart, throwing ground vehicles off the main reservation and cracking the asphalt open.

  Three more fighters immediately swerved from the main attack, breaking away from their assault on the citadel to intercept.

  ‘That got their attention,’ Spinoza said, yanking the Brawler round hard. Hegain switched to control of the starboard cannon and sent a volley of projectiles spraying at the incoming fighters, none of which appeared to trouble their armour much.

  Lasfire soon streaked in, spiking in disciplined bursts. Spinoza banked, waggling the Brawler’s stocky wings to generate unpredictable flight, but several bolts hit home, slicing cleanly through the gunship’s ventral plating.

  Hegain switched back to the main bolter, punching a burst of shots across the diving noses of the incoming fighters. One was struck directly, its cockpit exploding in a rain of armourglass, but the other two angled away expertly, maintaining their own counter-barrage of las-fire.