Hegain drew alongside her. There was blood on his forearm, and he was panting hard.
‘Our home,’ he said, approvingly. ‘Those were good words, lord.’
She had, indeed, spoken them. Not that she knew where they had come from.
Medics rushed to tend to the wounded. Tallis’ signals operative ducked down to consult the augurs.
‘Multiple signals again.’ He looked up at Tallis. ‘We have more incoming.’
Spinoza went over and took a look at the schematics. They were already quite high up Courvain’s main structure, though still several levels below the Corvus Ring approaches. They could be cut off easily, if the enemy penetrated the service tunnels above them.
She reached for another powerpack.
‘You’ve done all you can here, sergeant,’ she said to Tallis. ‘We fall back to Captain Revus’ position now – get your troops together.’
Tallis nodded smartly and turned to the others, calling out orders.
Hegain looked up at her. He’d seen the signals too. ‘Too many, I do believe,’ he said, grimly. ‘Even at the Corvus.’
‘For shame, sergeant,’ said Spinoza, reloading. ‘Trust in Him – there will be a way.’
Chapter Thirteen
Crowl walked as an inspector would walk – not too fast, not too slow, head held high, daring anyone else to look at him.
It had not been possible to do more than a cursory clean of his uniform. He was painfully aware of what a shabby spectacle he must have looked then, with the last strands of the Magister’s nutrient slime still glistening on his epaulettes. He could see the shocked stares from the bustling adepts, hastily averted. One of them, sooner or later, would start making enquiries.
He did not take the same route back as he had done coming in. Those paths were too exposed, too open to the many scrutiny lenses that floated like hummingbirds up in the globe-lit vaults. The research he had commissioned from Huk paid off now, and he was able to take a circuitous path up to different landing stages, passing through less exalted chambers – refectories, boiler-rooms, communal recreation spaces where section superintendents read out Ministorum-approved moral texts from high pulpits.
Gorgias seemed more or less recovered, though the crustaceous mass of sensors across his cranium had been disarranged, and some fault in them now made him more repetitious than ever.
‘Rapido rapido rapido,’ he hissed, at least having the sense to keep his chirping to a barely audible level. ‘Must get out must get out must get out.’
Crowl barely looked around him as they travelled, projecting the air of an official calmly going about his business. Out of the corner of his eye, though, it was evident that something had unsettled the adepts, and it wasn’t just him. Several chambers were stuffed with technicians, all poring over their bulky cogitator terminals. He heard expressions of disbelief, followed by the patter of feet as menials ran to report whatever disturbing findings were coming in.
‘You said you had an incoming transmission,’ Crowl said under his breath as they passed along a semi-deserted corridor with only a few cowled adepts clustered at the far end.
‘Lost lost lost,’ Gorgias blurted. Clearly something had gone wrong with his processing units. Crowl’s own comm-bead had picked up damage during the struggle with the Magister, and now coursed with white noise when accessed. The lack of contact with the outside world made him uneasy. The Nexus was vast and heavily protected – it would be all too easy to be buried here.
They reached a elevator station and took an unoccupied cage up as far as it would go. As the levels slatted by, flickering and jerking, the background hubbub of disquiet only grew. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Mercatura troops running, and half-reached for Sanguine, only to see them tearing down a long slope heading elsewhere.
He began to dare to hope. They were making good progress, and the entire citadel was strangely distracted, suddenly focused on some other infiltration or system fault. A series of more populated chambers followed, each clustered with cranial-plugged servitors and sensorium adepts with high-crested helms. Astropathic relay crystals hung from the ceiling, swimming with pulsing light. The interpreter lenses were crammed with text, as if suddenly half the worlds of the Imperium were all sending in transmissions at the same time. Here, too, the milling staff were far too busy to pay attention to him, no matter how outlandish his appearance, and he made it up to the departure level for the main transport berths.
‘Almost there,’ he murmured.
Perhaps that over-confidence did it. Perhaps that sentiment offended whichever machine-spirits governed the operation of this place. He and Gorgias slipped into a narrow walkway running up from the main concourse and into the feeder lines for the shuttles. The place initially appeared deserted, and the same blue light filtered out from wall-set lumens. As they reached the end of the tunnel, though, five figures stepped out of the circular access portal to greet them. Four were Mercatura troopers carrying laspistols. The fifth was Bajan, looking bilious in the unnatural lighting.
‘That’s far enough, I think,’ the adept said, barring passage through the portal.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Crowl demanded, adopting Calavine’s demeanour once again.
‘Just what it looks like, inspector.’ Bajan smiled. ‘Did you get anything out of the Magister? I’d be impressed if you did. No one else can. I wonder if the two things might be connected.’
As Bajan spoke, Crowl assessed the preparedness of the guards around him. They looked competent and alert, which was an irritant. He was still in considerable pain from the earlier encounter – taking four of them on, plus anything Bajan could muster, might well be asking too much. He had no idea what Gorgias was capable of adding the situation.
‘That doesn’t concern you,’ Crowl said, staying just on the right side of surliness. ‘You’d have been better to have taken my advice, and got off-world. When this comes out, it–’
‘It won’t be coming out anywhere, though, will it?’ Bajan said. ‘I’ve done some digging of my own, and I don’t quite believe you are who you say you are. I also don’t quite believe your business here is as sanctioned as it should be, and that worries me a very great deal.’
‘This is a foolish game, Bajan. Stand aside.’
‘Something’s going on,’ Bajan said. ‘The whole Nexus is unsettled, and I can’t but think that it has something to do with you. Surrender your weapon and call off your skull – I think it’s time we spoke again.’
Crowl began to isolate the options. He could potentially take out the two troopers closest to him, but Gorgias in his current state might struggle to tie up the other two. It would have to be done soon, though the prospect of it, and the likely outcome, made his heart sink. He let a little dose slip into his bloodstream, giving him the boost he needed.
Just as he tensed to move, though, another figure ducked clumsily through the portal – a scatty-looking woman with green-tinged hair dressed in an off-white secretarial tabard. She was bearing a pile of data-slates.
‘My lord,’ she said, bowing clumsily at Bajan. ‘Brought straight to you, as you requested.’
The adept shot a glance at her, scowling in irritation. ‘Not now,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll look at them back in the–’
Then his eyes went wide, his hand flew to his throat, and he choked up a glut of blood.
The data-slates fell from the woman’s fingers, clattering on the floor to reveal the tiny spike-pistol nestled in her palm.
Crowl moved instantly, barging one trooper into the wall with an elbow-thrust to his throat. He snapped Sanguine out with the next breath, hitting the second in the stomach. The woman fired again to knock out the third, and Gorgias, demonstrating he still had command of at least some of his senses, accounted for the fourth with a flurry of needles that smashed through his helm visor.
It was all over in a se
cond. Crowl made sure the first one wouldn’t be getting up again with a sharp stamp to the throat, then glanced over at Bajan’s immobile body. ‘Impeccable timing as ever, Aneela,’ he said.
‘A pleasure, lord,’ Aneela replied, pulling the wig from her scalp and shaking her head to clear the flecks of green. ‘The transport has been cleared to depart and is ready to detach, though we may need to use our initiative a little – this place is in some disarray.’
‘I’d noticed,’ said Crowl, stepping through the portal doors and hurrying up the ramp. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Unsure, lord,’ said Aneela, following him. ‘But it seems widespread – we’ve had transmissions from Courvain too. Did you receive them?’
Something about the way she said that made his stomach turn.
‘No, I was sealed away,’ he said, reaching for the airlock release valve. ‘Tell me swiftly – I fear we may have been away too long.’
Revus marched down the long central hall, flanked by the remains of his command group. They would be the last ones up before the Corvus Ring was sealed. The very fact he had been forced to enact the order so soon troubled him intently.
The invasion had been so sudden, then prosecuted so rapidly, that there had been little time to do anything other than fight, but that didn’t erase the nagging voice in his head, reminding him in every snatch of rare down-time, that he had brought this on the citadel. He, who had been charged with defending it, in the full knowledge that any slip would attract the attention of those with the power to snuff them out, had smuggled in the tripwire corpse, rigged to betray involvement and send out a signal to those listening.
The device must have been extremely sophisticated, both to have evaded detection by the routine quarantine scans and to have pushed its comm-burst past Courvain’s scaffold of transmission protectors. It may be that no one could have reasonably foreseen the eventuality, given that bodies were routinely brought in and out of the citadel in pursuit of various investigations. It may be that it was not, in any sense, his fault.
That did not make him feel better. Every soldier who had died under his command during the grubby engagement stabbed at his conscience. He had fought harder than any of them, staying longer at the barricades and taking his fury out on those who had violated the portals, but that did not assuage his guilt for long, for they were still losing so very badly.
Khazad was at his side now, just as she had been since the start. His opinion of her martial prowess had, if anything, grown. He had watched her single-handedly plough into an enemy squad, at close-range as always, cleaving them apart with her gold-flecked blade. If he had somehow been able to call on fifty such fighters, this thing might still be salvageable. As it was, the outcome was remorselessly zeroing down to the one scenario he had been dreading from the start.
Up ahead, at the top of a steep flight of coal-black stairs, stood the last of the unsealed Corvus Ring portals. It was blunt and solid – a monolith of moulded adamantium, surmounted by the Inquisitorial skull and banded with force-repelling struts. On either side of the great doors were anti-personnel bolter turrets, each one linked to great magazines of ammunition. Once shut, those doors were formidable obstacles.
The final members of his command trudged wearily up the steps, backing up with their faces turned towards the hall, weapons still trained just in case the enemy made it here too soon.
Khazad looked over at him, her helm banded with blood.
‘We go in now?’ she asked.
No doubt she’d prefer to stay outside, where she could engage the enemy face-to-face, but even she’d stopped protesting the strategy a while back, aware of the risk of losing everything.
Revus waited. ‘Almost,’ he said.
Even as he spoke the words, Spinoza emerged from the gloom of the hall’s entrance lobby, striding at the head of Tallis’ detachment, still dressed in her Arbites garb and looking as ravaged as all the rest of them.
To her credit, the interrogator didn’t ask him what had happened. She didn’t fulminate or demand answers then and there, but merely acknowledged him with a weary nod.
‘Any more to come?’ she asked.
‘No, lord. You’re the last.’
‘Then we go in.’
‘By your command.’
They trooped up the stairs. As they went, the first sounds of pursuit welled up from the chambers below – booby-traps going off, blowing the tight net of corridors into rubble, hopefully keeping the pursuers bogged down for a while yet.
Revus ushered Spinoza over the threshold before stepping after her and issuing the command to seal. Huge blast-doors rolled closed, grinding inward from their sockets to slam closed across the breach. Long adamantium bolts hissed tight, and the edges crackled with the telltale gauze of molecular shielding.
The chamber beyond was considerably smaller than the one they’d just passed through, and already congested with bodies and equipment. Wounded storm troopers and security personnel limped off to be tended to, while those still combat-capable took up positions well back from the doors.
Spinoza removed her helm, revealing the depth of her shock at what had taken place.
‘So what now, captain?’ she demanded.
Revus said nothing, but led her, Hegain, Tallis and Khazad into an anteroom, itself guarded by heavy doors. The walls were reinforced metal, lined with banks of pict-screens and cogitator consoles. A single control column fashioned from glossy alabaster rose up from the centre of the floor. More Inquisition skulls surmounted it, ringing a single steel plunger.
‘The Lord Crowl made no signal,’ Revus reported. ‘I do not know if he ever received my transmission. Soon after the assault all our comms were jammed, so there is no way of knowing if he will return.’
Khazad sunk down to her haunches. She looked spent.
‘Then we must hold out here long enough for him to organise a relief force,’ said Spinoza.
Revus didn’t quite know what to say to that. Crowl was a powerful man in some ways, but that did not extend to being able to summon armies on demand. In any case, one glimpse outside the walls showed that the entire urban sector seemed to be suffering from riots and looting – this was just a small part of some greater upheaval, and the authorities, if indeed they had any significant presence in the locale, were likely already busy with more pressing concerns.
Before he could formulate a reply, though, the doors behind him opened again, and two of his troops entered, dragging the body of an enemy warrior between them. Erunion shuffled along in their wake, looking paler than ever. The chirurgeon normally cast a fussy, confident profile in his own domains. Now, for reasons that no doubt echoed Revus’ own, he appeared very much diminished.
The captured soldier was helmless, and a long, livid weal ran down the right-hand side of his face. His eyes were vague, and his head lolled heavily on his shoulders. He had a black web of augmetics along one temple, and his skin was an almost pigmentless white.
The storm troopers dumped him in a metal chair, then lashed his wrists and ankles to the frame.
‘Who are you?’ Spinoza demanded.
The man looked up at her. He was scared. His gauntlets gripped the edge of the chair.
‘Operative four-five-seven,’ he replied. ‘Squad thirty-four.’
Spinoza drew closer to him. ‘No – who sent you?’
The man looked briefly confused. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Spinoza struck him on the cheek, and his head snapped painfully to one side. ‘Who sent you?’ she asked again.
The man winced, and struggled to answer. For a second, his lips formed up, but then his gaze went blank. He looked up at her again, now properly scared. ‘I… don’t know,’ he said.
Spinoza clenched her fist, ready to strike again, but Erunion laid a restraining hand on her forearm.
‘Selective mind-wipe,�
� he said. ‘Good work, too. You could beat him to a pulp and he couldn’t tell you anything.’
Spinoza glared at the man in fury, looking as if she would like to test the hypothesis.
Revus walked up to the captive and began to study his armour. It was high-quality carapace plate, well-fitted, though of no design he had ever encountered.
‘What is your mission?’ he asked.
The man swallowed. ‘Take the citadel. Recover its master alive, if possible. If not, destroy it.’
‘Where are you planning on taking him?’ Revus pressed.
The man looked panicked again.
‘He doesn’t know that either,’ said Erunion. ‘All he’s able to do is repeat the mission parameters. I doubt his commanders are even present in the battlefield. Yet.’
Spinoza turned on the chirurgeon. ‘There must be something you can do. A mind-wipe can be unpicked.’
Erunion shrugged. ‘Some can. We have other subjects in the lab right now, being worked on. But it takes time.’
Revus shook his head. ‘We don’t have that time.’
‘Then we must make time,’ said Spinoza, impatiently. ‘We are behind the bastion, we still have a fighting force to hold them. This is not over yet.’
Hegain looked at Revus. Tallis looked at the floor.
Revus drew in a long breath. ‘We have a breathing space,’ he said. ‘The citadel’s heaviest defences were on the outer walls and the main gates – if they breached those so rapidly, we must assume they can breach these too. And in any case, they have control of much of the citadel already. If they decide that their true quarry is not to be found here, or it becomes too much trouble to break us open, there will be ways for them to destroy the entire place.’
Khazad looked up, a fierce light in her eyes. ‘Then we rest, just a moment, and get back into fight,’ she hissed. ‘Better to die on feet than like cats in trap.’
Throne, she was admirable. ‘That is one option,’ Revus admitted.
Spinoza clenched her fists, in what seemed like a reflexive movement. ‘In that case, captain, just what is the point of this exercise?’ she asked testily. ‘We fall back, only to have them come after us. We hole up in here, to find that they can chisel us out. Are you merely finding us slower ways to die, or is there some purpose to this constant withdrawal you have yet to share?’
Vaults of Terra- The Hollow Mountain - Chris Wraight Page 16