Hammer and Bolter 4

by Christian Dunn

  He began to ease himself into cover, moving one limb at a time, blood hammering in his ears. Could they hear his heart beating, he wondered? He lifted his foot to step forward, and a stone shifted with a small noise; he froze. Another shape bounded onto a rise of rubble ten paces away. Thaddeus felt a drop of sweat run down his face. The hunter bounded towards him. Behind it the others snarled and followed. Thaddeus drew his laspistol and fired. The hunter jinked aside with unnatural speed and the bolt of energy fizzed into the air. He fired again, the shot kicking up a hot splash of melted dust where it hit the ground. He turned and ran, knowing that he could not escape. Even if he killed some of the hunters there were others and they had his scent.

  The pool was in front of him, its surface black and still, its chemical stench thick in his throat. The hunters were blind and if his scent vanished so did he. He dived in and felt the liquid darkness swallow him. It was silent under the surface of the pool, and he kept his mouth and eyes closed. He felt the acid burning his skin and pain began to spread from his chest. For a second he thought of letting the liquid wrap him in its corrosive embrace forever. He would not be losing much; he could remember almost nothing but a handful of hours filled with death and fear. There would be nothing in the future but more fear, more blood and the breath of enemies at his back. An image came to him of a world burning around him, and he knew he had seen it happen, had been there as the forces of ruin had destroyed something very dear to him. The loss and anger was like a raw wound in his soul from which snatches of memory poured: a hand on his shoulder, a bronze aquila ring, a face with red eyes. He was a warrior that walked amongst the enemy, it was his purpose; he was a servant of the Imperium.

  Thaddeus kicked for the surface, bursting into the air with a suppressed gasp. He trod water, eyes sweeping the darkness, ears straining for any sound. There was no sign of the hunters. He swam to the pool’s edge and pulled himself out, chemical sludge dripping from his body. The smell would hide his scent from the enemies, or so he hoped. He lay on his back for a moment, breathing hard, his eyes looking up towards where the Fallen Spire glinted against the dull black sky. With a grunt of effort he got to his feet and scrambled through the dark, pushing himself until he was in the shadow of the Fallen Spire but could go no further. Exhausted, he found the entrance of a wide pipe and dragged himself inside. Curled and shivering in the dark he fell into a sleep disturbed by dreams filled with burning worlds and a wide face with red eyes.

  The Valkyrie swept across the darkened plain towards the Fallen Spire. Its hunched fuselage and wings were a matt charcoal grey broken by a night camouflage pattern of black lines sprayed in an irregular grid. Its cockpit and crew compartment were dark, all readouts and displays disabled, its pilot flying by night-vision and instinct. From its open side door Colonel Tarl watched the ground below, his own night-vision visor showing a rushing expanse of luminous green. From the crew compartment behind him Tarl could hear the low noises of the squad of storm troopers checking equipment and eating rations. Each would be wearing night-vision visors and passing the time with mundane routines to keep their minds focussed. Even for men such as these, who were hardened by years of war, the time before an action was a battle against boredom and fear.

  ‘Hungry, colonel?’ came a voice from behind Tarl. It was Kulg, the squad sergeant, a smiling slab of a man who was one of Tarl’s best.

  Tarl turned and leaned back into the crew compartment, his night vision showing his storm troopers sitting on the flight benches, their black armour making them look like statues carved of obsidian. Each had a hellgun strapped tight across his chest and a bulky grav-chute on his back. Kulg was holding out a foil-wrapped bar in a gloved hand.

  ‘Field rations?’ Tarl took the bar and bit into it. The sergeant grinned. ‘Thanks,’ said Tarl making a face; the rations tasted vile. ‘So kind of you to spare some for me.’ The sergeant chuckled, his teeth gleaming in the green tint of the night-vision. Tarl grinned back. Kulg and his squad were cold killers to ordinary men, but Tarl had that combination of competence and good humour that made these men like and trust him. ‘Now, if you happen to have a flask of hot caffeine, I might just forget about the taste of this.’

  ‘Here, sir.’ The sergeant smiled and handed Tarl a small metal flask.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tarl sipping the hot liquid. Now was a good time to tell them, he thought. ‘Listen up,’ he said, raising his voice over the drone of the Valkyrie’s engines. ‘You know the brief: we drop using grav-chutes, form a perimeter, secure the target, and the Valkyrie pulls us out.’ He waited for assenting nods. ‘The target will look like one of the enemy, a renegade in every detail.’ Tarl paused ‘Securing him is of absolute importance.’

  ‘We’re clear on the plan, sir,’ said Kulg.

  ‘Don’t forget that the Alpha Legion has used witches, flesh-changers, even turncoats before.’ There was a scattering of nods; all of them had seen the tricks and lies used by of the servants the Dark Gods. ‘Until we are sure it is him, assume nothing. Be ready to respond if it is a trap, and wait for my authentication of the target’s identity.’ He looked around at each of them. ‘Understand?’ Each gave a clipped ‘Sir’ in reply. Tarl nodded and turned back to looking out of the side hatch; the sky had begun to lighten. The pilot and weapons officer already had their special orders and would be ready if he needed them. He took a sip from the flask and thought of the man out there in the dark, running to him bearing the greatest of secrets.

  Thaddeus woke to the sound of whispers. He could not see the speakers and so lay still, and listened. Grey light seeped into the pipe mouth where he shivered in the dawn chill. His vision was restricted to a circular scoop of mud grey sky cut by the looming silhouette of the Fallen Spire. The whispering voices were coming closer; he could hear the soft brush of fabric against webbing, and the low clink of weapons. Whoever they were, they were moving with deliberate slowness: searching, hunting. He prayed that they would not check the pipe that hid him.

  A boot crunched a pace away. Adrenaline began to seep into his cold muscles, the instincts of the cornered animal making his mouth dry and his gut twist. Keeping his breath slow, he began to move his hand towards his knife. Memories flicked through his awareness: a smiling face, a bright white room, a world dying around him. Then something else rose from the depths of his mind like a grinning skull pulled from a slaughter pit. Anger overwhelmed his thoughts; he was not prey to be run to ground and gutted; he was the predator. His hand closed around the handle of his knife, and a red cloud unfolded in his mind like blood pouring into water.

  A figure blocked out the light at the pipe opening, a slouch-shouldered silhouette, the barrel of its lasgun pointed into the darkness. A cyclone of rage boiled through Thaddeus’s mind and body, its surface alive with flashes of pain and black coils of hatred. He wanted blood; he wanted to feel the warm wash of it on his hands, and to see the life leave his kill’s eyes. The figure was three paces away, its wide eyes blind to the death that waited in the darkness. Thaddeus’s muscles coiled ready to spring forward in a killing leap.

  There was a blurt of static from out of sight, and a muffled voice speaking clipped Imperial Gothic into a voxcaster. The figure in front of Thaddeus twitched at the sound, took a pace back into the light, and Thaddeus saw the glint of the grubby bronze aquila on the figure’s helmet. He remembered a bronze aquila ring, and red eyes staring at him. The tide of anger receded leaving him shaking silently in the darkness. He was a servant of the Imperium, not a beast, but for a moment he had been someone else, someone monstrous. To infiltrate the renegades he had become one of them, and something of that other self remained inside him. He thought he could hear it whispering to him, telling him secrets. The damned still walk in me, he thought.

  ‘Throne, no!’ came a voice, loud enough for Thaddeus to hear.

  ‘What is it, sarge?’ asked the man Thaddeus could see. He looked young, his green fatigues smeared with ash, eyes shot red with days of fatigue and fear
. This was a sweeping patrol, a small unit that probed deep into the Murder Wastes with nothing but their nerves and a lasgun to keep them alive.

  Thaddeus thought of stepping out of his hiding place; he was a servant of the Imperium, so were they: they would help. But then what would they see step from the shadows? A man clad in barbed armour and dark cloth, dried blood on his hands, and a face twisted with evil runes. They would see an enemy, a predator like those that took their comrades and stalked their nightmares. They would see a renegade, and how could he persuade them that he was not?

  ‘We pull out now,’ said an unseen voice, its tone harsh. As it spoke, the ground began to shake.

  ‘Wait, what…’ asked another voice out of sight, trailing off as a sound like the beating of great drums became louder and louder.

  ‘Run!’ Thaddeus could hear more than fear now, he could hear terror. The air shook with a roar like rolling thunder. The man at the pipe mouth stared at the sky and fled. Thaddeus, scrambling to the end of the pipe, looked up and knew why. A wave of flames surged towards him, and above it the sky burned.

  The Valkyrie shuddered as black pillars of smoke rose into the air around it. Looking down from the side door of the assault carrier, Tarl could see a tide of fire roll across the Murder Wastes towards the Fallen Spire. There was a stink of burning oil on the furnace-hot air and the ground seemed to ripple under the impact of the artillery fire. The renegades had artillery buried underground that they hoisted up to hidden firing points along the edge of the Murder Wastes. There were hundreds of guns and they were all firing: a rhythmic chorus of war wiping the wastes clean of life. The Chaos forces were burning the land to kill one fleeing traitor. That, or they were driving their quarry into the jaws of the hunter, thought Tarl.

  ‘Bring us in over the spire’s tip,’ shouted Tarl. The Fallen Spire loomed through a haze of dust and smoke. As tall as a Titan, it was a blackened spit of metal jutting out of the ground at an angle. At its tip there was a flattened point no more than twenty paces across. It had once been the peak of a now dead-hive that had fallen as it burned, embedding itself upright in the ruin below. It thrust above the vast tangle of wreckage like the tip of a sword from a dead man’s back. It was the location the infiltrator, Thaddeus, had transmitted, the place from which the inquisitor had sent Tarl to collect him.

  Tarl stood, gripping the rail that ran down the centre of the Valkyrie’s crew compartment. He wore the red storm trooper carapace, a respirator mask hanging unfastened at his cheek. The squad were on their feet, their faces hidden by bug-eyed faceplates, their black armour glistening. A caress of static ran over Tarl’s skin as he powered up his grav pack.

  ‘Extraction point in twenty kilometres,’ said the pilot. Tarl nodded to Sergeant Kulg.

  ‘Form up,’ shouted Kulg, and the storm troopers formed two lines facing the closed rear hatch, their shoulders touching, left hands gripping cleats in the ceiling. The sergeant gave Tarl a thumbs-up.

  ‘Open rear hatch, and ready for drop,’ said Tarl into his throat mic. The pilot gave a curt reply and the rear hatch split with the hiss of pistons, opening to show the land and sky racing to a vanishing point behind the Valkyrie.

  ‘Jump on my command,’ said Tarl, and fastened his respirator.

  ‘Death and honour’ shouted Kulg, and the squad echoed the words.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ said Tarl, but his words were lost in the roar of the wind.

  The firestorm surged towards him and Thaddeus fled before it. White-hot sparks drifted down around him and sweat poured down his soot-smeared face. He did not know where the guardsmen were, his only instinct was to run, to reach safety. The fire tide surged on in a blazing wall that flowed over the rises and gulleys of rubble with a roar as it sucked in air. It was fifty paces behind him and he could feel the heat sear across his exposed skin. Above him the black speartip of the Fallen Spire thrust into the sky. It was so close that he could see the bent girders that jutted from its sides. Safety was so close, but the fire tide was at his heels.

  He heard howls rise over the roar of the fire as the long, lean shapes of the hunters appeared out of the smoke-filled air, their pale bodies black against the fire, oblivious to the danger now that they had found their prey. There were dozens of them, their skin scorched and blistered but their fanged mouths wide with glee. He could not turn, could not fight, he could only run. His lungs felt as if they were on fire, his legs shot with pain. Then he was over the crest of an ash dune and the side of the Fallen Spire was in front of him. He gripped a jutting girder, swung up and began to climb without thinking, feet and hands scrabbling for purchase.

  He was ten feet off the ground when the hunters crested the dune behind him. The first bounded to the base of the spire’s side and leapt, springing up the tangle of projecting girders. With a snarl of triumph it was on him, talons raking his leg. Thaddeus screamed as pain ran up his body, but inside he felt a part of him bellow for blood. He kicked down with his other leg and felt bone crunch beneath his boot. The mutant fell, its limbs thrashing, its mouth snapping at the air. More were climbing, pulling themselves up with long arms, their claws screeching on the metal. He looked up at the spire’s summit and took another grip. With a shriek of super-heated air the fire tide crested the dune and crashed into the base of the Fallen Spire. The hunters that had only just begun to climb were vapourised, others higher up screamed as the heat cooked their flesh and they fell into the inferno. Those above the tide of flame came up faster, their arms reaching for Thaddeus, tongues flicking at the blood dribbling from his leg.

  With a grunt of pain Thaddeus gripped the girder above him with one hand and drew his laspistol with the other. Twisting to look down, he thumbed the safety off and pulled the trigger. Glowing bolts of energy plunged onto the hunters, burning through flesh and bone. Thaddeus kept the trigger squeezed until the clip was empty and the pistol was hot in his hand. He dropped the spent pistol and climbed, shutting out the numbness spreading from his shredded leg and the scrabbling noise of the surviving hunters climbing after him.

  The Valkyrie turned hard, dropping in a controlled spiral towards the Fallen Spire. In the crew compartment the high pitched whine of grav-chutes cut through the bass rumble of the engines. A view of the spire’s blunt summit, set above a surging ocean of flame, filled the open hatch.

  ‘Jump!’ shouted Tarl and the storm troopers leapt into the smoke-darkened air.

  Thaddeus heaved himself onto the flat summit of the Fallen Spire. It was no more than twenty paces across, a sheer drop all around and the burning plateau below. He could hear shouted orders and see blurred images out of the corner of his eyes. Storm troopers in black armour were landing around him, tucking into tight rolls as they landed with the lightness of windblown seeds. They fanned out with mechanical precision and speed, scanning for targets. He tried to stand but his savaged leg gave way and he sprawled onto the rough metal, blood dripping from him in thick runnels. He rolled onto his stomach, the storm troopers ringing him; they had come for him, he had reached the extraction location, and the secrets he held would reach his master.

  A tall man, the only one in red plate, crouched down by Thaddeus, his face hidden by a respirator, a bolt pistol held loose in his hand.

  ‘Who are you?’ said the red-armoured man.

  ‘I am a servant of the Imperium. I am Thaddeus,’ he said. The man leaned closer, unclipping the respirator to show a smooth, handsome face.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ his voice was low. Thaddeus felt something whisper inside his head as a feeling like the pricking of needles ran over his skin. He could feel the red cloud of his other self within him thrashing as though it sensed and saw something he did not.

  ‘Colonel Tarl, the Valkyrie’s inbound. Is the target cleared for extraction?’ shouted one of the storm troopers, and in that instant Thaddeus knew. Tarl. The name echoed in his mind. Colonel Tarl. Names, faces, details flickered past an inner eye, as secrets unlocked inside his skull. He knew t
his man, knew what monster lay beneath his unscarred skin. He saw the bolt pistol held casually at the man’s side, a finger on the trigger, and the unscarred face. It was the face of an Alpha Legion infiltrator, an enemy of the Imperium. Tarl’s eyes met his.

  Tarl saw the recognition in Thaddeus’s eyes and brought the bolt pistol up to fire. Thaddeus rammed his fist into Tarl’s face with bone-splintering force. Teeth and blood arced up as Tarl’s head snapped back. Thaddeus pushed away from the floor, raw anger blotting out pain and exhaustion.

  ‘It’s a trick,’ shouted Tarl, through blood and ruined teeth.

  Hellgun blasts sliced the air where Thaddeus had been. Inside his mind he could hear the beast within howling at the gates of his will, laughing; he was going to die at the hands of his own side because of a traitor. He spun looking for safety, but there was none, only death waiting in the hellguns’ muzzles.

  There was a howl and mutants were leaping onto the summit, their bare skin blistered from the fires below, and their mouths wide as they tore into the ring of storm troopers, clawing and biting. In an instant everything was confusion and bloodletting. A storm trooper fell to the ground, a mutant on top of him, its jaws fastened upon his neck. Glowing energy from a hellgun punched through a mutant in mid-leap, burning through its chest. The storm trooper that had fired shifted target and fired again, his shot hissing wide, and then a mutant had him in its clawed grasp. Gore sprayed across the platform. Thaddeus had his knife in his hand as a mutant came at him, its claws raking over his arms and face, the anticipation of the kill in its rank breath. He brought the tip of the blade up under its ribs and felt it die with a surge of delight.