‘No!’ he roared out loud, firing again, right into the monster’s cortex-folds. Blood spurted from the wound, black as oil, adding to the slicks of fluids spurting and caking everything.
It slapped down on him heavily, its sagging flesh smothering, its drapery of strands winding rapidly around his limbs. Something burst along its haunches, flooding more thick liquid across the already swimming floor.
Crowl struggled to breathe. Its weight was alarming, and only out of the tank did its true size become apparent – despite the withering of its birth-limbs, its residual body must have been pumped with stimms while hanging in that broth, its brain and facial tissue swelling beyond all reason.
He pushed back, his arm-muscles shrieking with pain, and managed to shove it to one side. He gulped a breath, scrambling to get out from under it. As he did so, its secondary pair of eyes glared at him from within the folds and humps of mottled skin, bloodshot and furious. Crowl somehow kept hold of Sanguine, and tried to haul it out of the gaggle of dripping limbs and cables. One of the strands whipped around his throat, tightening up with appalling speed.
Crowl grabbed at the garrotte with his free hand, yanking it clear from his neck, then tried to get another shot away. The smell was overpowering, a wet stink of putrified muscle and chemicals. The Magister was abhorrently strong, but also palpably weakening. The gill-flaps along its chest were trembling, trying to drag in the liquid that was no longer there.
More cables snapped at him, whistling around his neck, his chest, his arms, locking him down. The bulbous head loomed higher, a twisted, intermingled mess of twin faces, one massive, one dwarfed. The primary twin’s expression was contorted, its eyes glazed and unfocused. The secondary twin’s mangled features were still more coherent, albeit sharpened into fury.
The throat-cables tightened. Crowl began to feel his vision blackening, and ripped harder at the coils. He managed to wrest Sanguine out of the creature’s grasp, and fired again at point-blank range. The bullet punched wetly into the Magister’s hide, folded up into the sucking mass of fat and muscle, and that slowed the creature down. Several of the strands went limp, including the one around his neck.
Gasping in deeper breaths, Crowl fought back, kicking out against the whirling mass of cables. He could feel his strength waning, just as the creature’s was – this had to be decided quickly.
Finally, Gorgias returned to the fray, his oculus fizzing with static but his needle-gun evidently intact. The skull flew at the Magister’s primary face, spraying him with darts. The tumescent structure shrunk back, its tethered limbs spasming, and Crowl seized his chance. He thrust Sanguine into what passed for the lesser twin’s throat – a wattle of slack skin and nodules – and held it there.
‘That’s enough,’ he snarled, twisting the muzzle into the press of loose flesh.
The secondary eyes narrowed. The creature shivered, its gill-flaps sucking emptily, its twisted chest cavity heaving.
Crowl hauled cables from his shoulders and pulled himself free of the creature’s embrace, all the while keeping the revolver pressed against the throat. Gorgias spun around, jerking and bumping, sending a final volley of needles into the thing’s twisted spine-ridge.
The Magister shuddered. Its feeble lungs spasmed, once, twice. Its limbs flapped wetly on the draining floor.
‘What purpose can you have now… for keeping this secret?’ Crowl panted, throwing the last of the cables off, pushing himself free of the clutching flesh. ‘Even now, it is not too late. You could be restored. Tell me what I need to know. A medicae team can be here within moments.’
The Magister twitched, coughing out bloody-flecked liquid. After a moment, Crowl realised that was as close as it could get to a laugh. He glanced up at the picter lens above him, wondering if the link was still intact.
Why do you think
The runes ran across the lens slowly now, tracking under the cracked glass as if being typed by a child.
having seen this, having seen all this,
Suddenly Crowl knew what it was going to say. He knew why the creature had goaded him, denying him information, making him angry.
that we would wish to live?
Then it shuddered, its foul body going limp, its eyes staring, its tentacles falling slack.
‘Miserabilis,’ spat Gorgias contemptuously, drifting lower to hover over its ruined features.
Crowl slumped a little. All this effort, all this risk, for nothing. Slowly, he pushed the last of the slackened cabling from his limbs, untangling himself from the matrix of overlapping tresses.
He stood, shakily, feeling the effects of the fight bear down on him. He needed to get back, now. He needed help from Erunion.
‘Iterum,’ Gorgias said, bobbing up higher again.
‘I think not,’ said Crowl, wearily holstering Sanguine. ‘It is ended.’
‘Stupidus!’ the skull blurted, agitated again. ‘Other one! Hurry, momento – alterum geminae.’
Of course. The conjoined twin, the one that had been turned into a biological data processor, its waking mind long gone. Crowl scrabbled to reach it, stretching out across the corpse and hauling it over, turning it so that the swollen cranium rolled clumsily into view.
The primary set of eyes was still open, blinking in confusion. Its gill-flaps were still wobbling, trying futilely to suck.
Crowl knelt over it.
‘You had the harder path,’ he said softly. ‘If there is anything left within you, any residual memory of duty, you can still redeem it all.’
The eyes looked up at him in bewilderment, almost lost under the knots and crags of its grotesque skull. How long had it taken to turn a mortal man, albeit of a unique kind, into this tortured landslip of agony?
‘The transmissions came here,’ Crowl said, patiently. ‘You processed them. You know who conceived this plan, and who will try it again. Tell me. Tell me now, and I can end your pain forever.’
Another blink. Now there was fluid pooling under the lids. The gills stopped trembling.
Crowl dared to look up at the first set of lenses, the ones it had used to speak through. Nothing new appeared.
‘Anything that you can,’ he said, watching in hope. ‘Any data, of whatever kind, before the end.’
It quivered, then thrashed out, as if suddenly consumed by fear. Then it fell still.
Slowly, Crowl bowed his head, balling his fists in frustration. He remained like that for a few moments. Then he straightened, reached out, and closed the creature’s grey lids. He stood up, sluicing down the worst of the sticky fluids from his uniform.
‘So, that’s that,’ he said, grimly.
But then, overhead, the picter lens flickered again. Perhaps caught by some delay-loop, or maybe the last glimmer of dying neural ganglia, words appeared.
There was a sea of glass.
Crowl looked up at it. Gorgias swooped down to get a view.
The same text repeated.
There was a sea of glass.
Crowl frowned. Gorgias spun around, irritated.
‘Nonsense,’ the skull opined. ‘Ineptias.’
‘Its life, I suppose, as it saw it,’ Crowl said, eyes narrowing. He looked back at the shattered screen, the only thing it had known for such a very long time. ‘Its whole world.’
A final line, terminated abruptly.
There was a sea o
The picter’s cursor blinked, on, off, though no further characters emerged.
Gorgias lost interest.
‘Have to get out,’ the skull said, swinging back to face the way they had come. ‘Now now, celero, celero.’
Crowl knew the truth of it. Somewhere, in one of the Nexus’ many hundred cells, someone would surely have noticed by now that the Magister Calculo Horarium IX’s output had terminated, and be requesting a service team to investigate.
&nbs
p; His uniform coat was filthy. The guardians at the gates would be reviving at some point. The journey back to the transport would be as long as the inward passage, but with less effective cover and more reason to be stopped.
He began to reload Sanguine, though even that familiar gesture made his fingers ache. As the last of the nutrient-fluid drained into the culverts, he turned away from the stinking scene of carnage.
‘Home again,’ he said to Gorgias, working to summon the energy that would be needed. ‘With nothing much to show save destruction. We must hope that Spinoza has done better.’
Spinoza pivoted around, dropping to her knee and aiming her hand cannon. The pursuing troops rounded the corner, and she shot into them, blasting two against the far wall before the rest scrambled to retreat.
Hegain, crouching at her shoulder, reloaded his autopistol. ‘Recognise them?’ he asked, slamming the magazine home.
By then Spinoza was retreating again, running back down into Courvain’s heart. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Was hoping you might.’
Hegain kept up with her, breathing heavily. Since breaking into the hangar, it had been non-stop fire-fights against the gangs of invaders, who seemed to have penetrated multiple levels of the citadel and were converging with speed on the main access routes. They were like an army of blanks – voiceless, demand-less, without identity or badge. They fought professionally but recklessly, throwing bodies at problems. That approach might have been wasteful, but it was effective – the corridors rang with alarms and there were the sounds of distant explosions everywhere, but Revus’ long-prepared defences seemed to have been brutally smashed aside, at least in the sectors they were running through.
They reached a wider, better-lit passage. Armoury-lockers ran along one wall, though all were empty now – the contents taken, Throne willing, by defenders who were now using them elsewhere. A long series of black burn-marks ran along the opposite wall, and the remnants of broken carapace armour littered the floor. The lumens at the far end had begun to flicker, and sparking cables hung like vines from shattered panels in the ceiling.
‘Strongpoint up ahead,’ said Hegain, clumping along in his cumbersome enforcer gear.
‘If it’s still manned,’ Spinoza muttered.
They sped through the locker-corridor and across an empty arming chamber. Bodies littered the floor here, both grey-armoured and those in Courvain’s night-dark livery. The doors at the far end had been smashed open, and there were more corpses slumped over broken blast-panels.
Spinoza kicked through them, and saw a narrow, high-ceilinged transit artery running straight ahead. Its lumens were blown completely, and the floor-sunk servitor-rail deck was humped with more bodies, most of which had puncture wounds and las-scorches on their armour. At the far end of the corridor – a space perhaps four metres across – was a makeshift barricade, over which a bristling hedge of lasgun-muzzles protruded.
‘Stay!’ Spinoza shouted, holding her weapon aloft and breaking her rosette out.
Hegain advanced warily alongside her, looking over his shoulder – the sounds of pursuit had started up again, and it felt like there were more bootfalls than before.
Spinoza reached the barricade, rosette still held high. It was a staggered wall of dropped-in rockcrete sections, manned along its width by storm troopers. Their commander – a sergeant Tallis, by his unit badge – made the aquila.
‘Lord Interrogator,’ he said, looking somewhat doubtfully at her Arbites armour. ‘Good to have you back.’
‘Where is the Lord Crowl?’ Spinoza demanded, taking her place behind the barricade. A trooper handed her a fully-charged hellgun, which she took up. Hegain also replaced his weapon, hunkering down next to his comrades and nestling the muzzle on the chipped surface.
‘Unknown, lord.’
‘Status, then.’
‘Multiple hostile units attacked at chronomark zero-four-fifty, coordinated and moving fast. They have taken the lower levels, all air-access hangars and groundcar depots. We are cut off from the exits, and have lost the primary elevator columns at base station.’
‘Captain Revus?’
‘Holding the central convening chambers at level twenty-eight.’
The barricade was manned by fewer than thirty storm troopers, plus a scattering of Courvain’s adept personnel in ill-fitting flak-armour. From the echoing clangs behind her, it sounded like a great deal more than that were coming down the corridor after them.
‘Your orders, sergeant?’ Spinoza asked.
‘Delay them here until full personnel withdrawal to Corvus Ring complete.’
The Corvus Ring was the final layer of defence near Courvain’s summit – a failsafe of military-grade blast-doors and bulwarks, capable of being defended by less than a third of Revus’ full complement of troopers. The citadel was not operable for any length of time beyond that zone – its main power generators, core supply reserves and operational chambers were all located below that level – but it had been put in place as a strictly temporary measure, a response to catastrophic levels of infiltration that could only last until fresh reinforcements were called in from other ordo fortresses. The fact it was even being considered in an environment in which any reinforcement from outside was unlikely to be available showed how desperate things had already become.
‘Signals incoming,’ reported a trooper, crouched down behind the barricade, his helm-visor glowing from the battlefield augur-units clustered in front of him.
‘Inform the captain of my location,’ Spinoza ordered. ‘Tell him I will rendezvous with him when I can.’
Then they arrived.
The advance was heralded by a brace of smoke-canisters thrown down the artery, tumbling and exploding in a wave of blue-tinged smog. The storm troopers opened fire immediately, piercing the wall of smoke with dozens of las-lines. Blurry shapes emerged from the far end, moving at speed.
‘Frags,’ ordered Spinoza, and storm troopers heaved two grenades into the murk. They exploded about fifteen metres along, shredding the clouds with their shrapnel, throwing at least one dark silhouette hard against the right-hand wall.
Lasfire burst back, punching out of the smoke and fizzing into the rockcrete wall. Storm troopers on the barricade ducked down, pausing for the barrage to subside before bobbing up again and returning fire. The ground between the forces erupted into a cat’s-cradle of burning and sizzling.
The first of the enemy emerged into clarity, carrying heavy flak-shields and running straight at the barrier. Spinoza snapped a blast at the lead warrior, catching his shield and yanking it backwards. Another trooper got the next shot in, upending the shieldbearer in a splatter of blood.
Behind that one, though, came three more, all running hard and firing one-handed past their shields. The storm troopers opened up at them, blasting two to the rail-deck, but the third ducked around and gained the barricade. He was cut down there, his helm fried by a close-range las-blast even as a bayonet-thrust jabbed into his torso, but all that did was clear the way for more warriors to leap up out of the smoke.
Hegain fired incessantly, picking targets at speed. An enemy’s las-bolt hit the storm trooper hunched at his side, burning between carapace plates and driving deep into the mesh-layer beneath. Spinoza shot back, but a second shieldbearer reached the barricades, crunching a defender aside and pulling a grenade out.
Spinoza saw the danger and pounced, smashing him into the rockcrete and crunching his arm under her boot. She stamped down, once, twice, as Hegain shuffled forward to cover her. She kicked the unprimed grenade away, then jammed her hellgun into his neck and fired once, searing a tunnel through the armour-seal and stilling his thrashing.
The intensity of las-fire picked up, snapping in at close quarters and making the air simmer. The enemy troops were rushing in numbers now, ignoring their dead and leaping for the barricades. The first rank of storm troopers reached for c
ombat blades.
Hegain pushed forward, slashing his knife into the throat of a vaulting warrior. Another one breached the defences, and Spinoza shot him in the chest. He shrugged off the wound, kicking aside a storm trooper and going straight for her. Spinoza swivelled on her heel, striking out with her clenched gauntlet, catching him full in the face even as he went for a shot. Then she hit him again, and again, cracking his helm open and sending him reeling. She went after the toppling body, grabbing it by the neck-joint and hurling it around, throwing him back into the oncoming figure of yet another invader.
‘Get back!’ she roared, opening fire again as both bodies crashed to the ground, striding right into the breach, uncaring of the las-beams crackling past her. ‘This is our home!’
She might have been back on Forfoda, charging into close-contact alongside the Imperial Fists, except that then she had been the weak link amid a strike force of demigods and now she was the linchpin of this defence. It would have been good to have Argent in her clenched fist then, to sweep it round in a welter of disruptor energies and cut through this chaff, but she only had her cumbersome armour, her heavy gauntlets and her standard issue firearm.
Hegain came with her, roaring defiance, somehow both firing accurately and slashing out with his combat knife. Tallis, on the far side of the barricade, led a more measured assault, retaking the barricade where it had been swarmed across.
The enemy fell back, with more bodies dropping as the storm troopers’ disciplined volleys caught them. For a moment, Spinoza was tempted to go after them, to hound them back to the hangars and retake the initiative. The interlopers did not know the way of the corridors like they did, the nooks and zigzags that could be used to pin an enemy down.
She resisted the temptation. She emptied the dregs of her hellgun’s powerpack, then dropped back into the barricade’s cover. The invaders stumbled away through the drifting snags of smoke, ducking and scampering to evade the last of the las-beams.
The bootfalls died out, the last of the smog sunk into smuts. The corridor ahead of them was heaped with bodies, most still and blotched with blood, some still moving.
Vaults of Terra- The Hollow Mountain - Chris Wraight Page 15