Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  As if to test the veracity of Flint’s statement, the gate boomed as something heavy impacted against the other side. The gate was constructed of twenty-centimetre thick armaplas and reinforced with heavy crossbars, but it bowed inwards under the pressure nonetheless.

  ‘What the khekk…’ Bukin mouthed.

  ‘Present!’ Flint bellowed, waving the nearest of the troops into a firing line before the massive gate. There was a pause during which more warriors rushed to join their fellows, and soon almost three-dozen lasguns were levelled on the gate.

  Then the impact sounded again and a mist of fine rockcrete powder drifted down from above. The metal of the gate buckled and a muffled roar went up from the other side. It sounded like an entire army of rebels was gathering on the far side of the armoured hatch and something even bigger than the monstrosity Flint had slain was throwing itself against the gate.

  ‘Mutants,’ Corporal Bukin sneered, his nose wrinkled in disgust. Flint had smelt it too, but in truth the taint was now so prevalent it permeated the entire place.

  ‘Gruss,’ Flint demanded as the Claviger-Primaris waved his wardens to join the firing line. ‘Tell me what that is,’ Flint demanded. ‘I faced something big outside, but that must be twice its size.’

  Gruss turned his blank-faced visor towards the hatchway at the exact moment a third impact caused it to buckle even further. The troops on the firing line cast nervous, sidelong glances at one another, several swallowing hard.

  ‘Gruss?’ Flint pressed.

  ‘I don’t know, commissar,’ the Claviger-Primaris snapped.

  ‘I think you do.’ said Flint.

  ‘What?’ he growled.

  ‘That thing I fought out there,’ said Flint. ‘That was no inmate, no Guardsman serving out a penal sentence. That was something else and I don’t believe it could exist right under your nose without you having some idea of its presence.’

  The hatchway boomed again, the loud report echoing through the sluice chamber. The troops in the firing line shuffled nervously, their eyes darting between the violently shaking gate and the confrontation developing between the commissar and the Claviger-Primaris.

  Gruss squared off against Flint and several of his wardens broke off from their places in the firing line. ‘Are you accusing me of something, commissar?’ said Gruss, his voice low but carrying across the platform even over the howls and roars coming from the other side of the portal.

  ‘I’m asking you a question, Claviger-Primaris,’ Flint snarled back. ‘What the hell are they, and how did they come into being?’

  ‘Sir?’ Flint heard Bukin mutter from behind him. ‘I think…’

  ‘Not now,’ Flint replied. ‘Gruss?’ he pressed.

  ‘Sir,’ said the chief provost insistently. ‘I really think…’

  Flint risked a quick glance towards the armoured portal. ‘Mercy…’ he muttered. A fracture had appeared in the slab-like armaplas and movement was visible beyond.

  ‘Prepare to address!’ Flint shouted, then lowered his voice and said to the Claviger-Primaris, ‘We’re not done, Gruss.’

  If Gruss heard Flint he didn’t respond, instead joining his fellow wardens, his plasma pistol levelled two-handed at the compromised hatchway.

  Even as the sound of rising liquid swelled from the sluice channel behind, the sound of another massive impact striking the portal boomed forth. The force steeled itself to face whatever was trying to hammer its way through.

  Kohlz’s hands closed around the corroded rung set into the crumbling, run-off-streaked rockcrete, the rising chemical river swelling below him. He hauled with every ounce of his strength, his weight feeling like it was doubled by the water soaked into his battle-dress and the heavy Number Four strapped to his back.

  ‘Get a move on, will you!’ Rotten called from below, the glowing waters now at his waist. A deep, resounding rumble sounded from back across the channel and a wave crashed into Rotten, almost knocking him over. Kohlz knew he had to get himself higher up the ladder to allow the trooper to get clear of the rising flood.

  He pulled even harder, his muscles burning, and the rung slipped suddenly with a pattering of loose rockcrete chips, but it held despite its sudden instability. The torrent increased in volume and Kohlz grasped for the next rung, hauling himself hand over hand until the lower rungs were clear. Finally, Rotten had the space to climb up.

  With Solomon leading the way the three men climbed upwards, the channel filling to overflowing with the chemical filth dredged up from the stygian sumps beneath Alpha Penitentia. The smell was awful, the flood accompanied by gales of sharp smelling gas. The waters were oily and black, and lumpen forms were carried along by the relentless, swirling currents. Many of the forms were clearly corpses, some fresh, no doubt convicts slain in the uprising in the last few weeks. Others were shrunken and pale as if preserved in formaldehyde for countless centuries, washed up from the depths by the rising torrent and held together by little more than ropey sinew.

  As the tsunami reached its climax all further thoughts were drowned out by the deafening crescendo. Kohlz concentrated on placing one hand before the other and hauling himself upwards blindly, his eyes screwed tight against the stinging spray. Several times he felt his feet engulfed in crashing waves and knocked by debris washed along and he prayed that Rotten was able to hold on for he must have been submerged as the flood waters crashed down the sluice channel.

  Then the waters had receded and Kohlz opened his eyes. Rotten was still clinging to the rungs, his battledress sodden and his rebreather torn away by the force of the flood. The Asgardian had only managed to hold onto his lascarbine by looping its sling around his elbow while he held onto the rung for dear life. One side of his face was bruised livid purple where the weapon had been battered against his face by the torrent.

  Rotten looked surprised that he was still alive and Kohlz was shocked how high the three men had climbed in their bid to escape the torrent. A wave of vertigo washed over him and his vision swam for they’d somehow climbed almost fifty metres. The bottom of the channel was returning to its former state, a sea of glowing, reeking sludge settling on the rockcrete, coils of noxious vapour creeping upwards from the bubbling mass.

  Redoubling his grip on the corroded rung, Kohlz forced himself to look upwards and he was immediately dazzled by the white glare blazing through the open roof. Forcing himself to look into the nigh-blinding light he saw that Solomon had managed to cling on too, then sought to judge how much further the three had to climb. He cursed as he realised they had climbed less than a quarter of the way. The view overhead was a dizzying shaft of slab-sided rockcrete chimney, the circle of sky like a blazing singularity at its summit.

  ‘Solomon?’ Kohlz called up to the Jopalli. ‘You okay? We need to get moving!’

  At first, Solomon’s only reply was low, petulant muttering, but then the Jopalli said, ‘What?’

  ‘Get moving!’ Kohlz snapped, rapidly losing his patience. ‘You’re on point and we’re going nowhere ‘til you get your arse shifted!’

  ‘Why me…’ Solomon muttered. ‘Why is it always me…’

  Flint shielded his eyes against the glare as he stared up at the three tiny figures working their way painfully slowly up the ladder towards the distant, open roof of the sluice chamber. Another impact sounded on the portal and the scream of tortured metal tore his attention back to more pressing concerns. The gash in the buckled plate had widened and now a pair of massively oversized, gnarled hands gripped on its jagged edges as if to tear them further apart.

  ‘Front rank!’ Bukin bellowed at a nod from Flint. ‘Three rounds, fire!’

  The dozen or so kneeling warriors of the front rank opened fire as one, the air filling with the flash of las-fire, smoke and the stink of ozone. The bolts lanced into the gash and the massive hands disappeared in a burst of sparks and smoke. A bellowing howl of rage sounded from the other side and something at least as large as an ogryn plunged its entire arm through the tear,
right up to the shoulder and groped for something, anything, to grab hold of and haul back through the gap.

  The firing line opened up with a second fusillade, a dozen las-bolts slamming into the hugely muscled arm and sending up a puff of greasy, flesh-stinking smoke. But the limb was huge, its sinews as strong as corded iron and its stone-hard flesh seemingly able to absorb even multiple direct hits.

  The kneeling troops fired their third fusillade and this time several of the fingers, each as thick as a man’s forearm, were severed. The thing howled and the arm pulled back, though Flint saw more movement through the dark wound in the armoured portal.

  ‘I have seen mutants, killed mutants,’ Bukin muttered to himself. ‘But what the hell was that?’

  Though he knew the question was largely rhetorical, Flint answered the chief provost nonetheless. ‘It’s not just a random mutant,’ he said. ‘It’s something bred, hybridised and enhanced with some form of heretech. It’s been deliberately created down in the lowest depths of the geotherm sinks. And it looks like it’ll get through before help does.’

  ‘A hybrid?’ Bukin looked far from convinced. ‘In a penal facility, sir? No one breeds such things in a khekking prison…’

  Flint glared pointedly at Claviger-Primaris Gruss, who was barking orders to his wardens. ‘They do if no one stops them, Bukin,’ he said.

  ‘Wouldn’t he stop it, sir?’

  ‘He might if he were in charge.’

  ‘But he is not, sir?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it, does it. I’ve seen enough of this hellhole to guess something of what’s been going on,’ said Flint, his gaze fixed on the back of the Claviger-Primaris’ helmet. The roaring of the horde beyond the armoured gate resounded through the sluice chamber and made it unlikely Gruss would overhear anything. ‘It looks to me like Lord Governor Kherhart isn’t in charge at all, and neither is Gruss. It looks to me like this Colonel Strannik is the real leader around here and that he’s been running this place like his own personal kingdom for years.’

  ‘Makes sense, sir, I suppose,’ Bukin replied, raising his voice over the crash and boom of another impact against the portal. The metal buckled still further as a massive shoulder rammed into it, accompanied by the jubilant howl of the rebels amassing to swarm through the instant the gateway ruptured.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, glancing upwards at the distant climbers. ‘With that thing leading the assault, we both know there’s no way help’s getting here before that door gives out.’

  Bukin nodded grimly, evidently having reached a similar conclusion. ‘Your orders, sir?’ he said.

  Flint thought on it a moment longer, considering and rejecting a dozen options in an instant. ‘We have to hold them here as long as possible,’ he said, considering the length of the sluice channel and the distance to the secret infiltration tunnel. ‘There’s no way we’d get the whole force back down in the time between the floods.’

  Bukin nodded. ‘Unless we went in small groups, sir.’

  Flint raised his eyebrows in question, and the provost continued, ‘Break them down into smaller sections, sir, say, five, ten troopers. Move fast, get down the chute before the flood comes.’

  Flint considered Bukin’s suggestion but he instantly saw a flaw. ‘By the time there’s just one section left the gateway will be all but broken down. They’d have to face the horde alone. It would be suicide.’

  ‘That might not be such a bad thing, commissar,’ Bukin growled, looking pointedly towards Claviger-Primaris Gruss. ‘Depending on who the last section was, if you see what I mean, sir.’

  Once again, Flint felt justified in having selected Bukin as his chief provost, and grateful they were on the same side. But as devious as Bukin’s suggestion was, Flint knew it wasn’t workable. ‘I appreciate the sentiment,’ Flint grinned as he replied, ‘But I don’t see how Gruss would go for that.’

  ‘No,’ he continued. ‘We have no choice but to make our stand here. Hold out as long as we can.’ His gaze settling on the many and varied items of flotsam lodged in the upper section of the weir a plan came to mind. ‘Get a detail together. If we’re staying put we’d better make ourselves at home.’

  By the time Kohlz and his companions reached the halfway point in their climb all three were so fatigued they had long given up on bemoaning their fate. Their every effort was focused on the simple act of placing one hand on the next rung and hauling their aching bodies ever upwards. As they climbed higher Kohlz realised the folly of looking down the way they had come, vertigo threatening to make his hands clamp around the metal rung so tightly they might never be prized off.

  Taking a deep, rasping breath, Kohlz pulled his right foot up and set it on the rung, the act made all the harder by the weight of the water sloshing around his boots. He grunted as he set his weight on the rung and pushed upwards, grabbing hold of another with his free hand. A deep rumble sounded below and he thought for a moment that another flood was about to come raging along the sluice channel. Then he realised another wasn’t due for several more minutes.

  The rumble sounded again and the sound of voices raised in anger drifted upwards from the platform at the top of the weir where the rest of the force was mustered. He’d heard firing ten minutes earlier but hadn’t seen any sign of the gates being compromised. Now, it sounded like they had been flung wide open and the rebel horde was pressing in.

  Kohlz wished he hadn’t looked, his vision swimming before he could locate the platform. He felt his grip on the rung slipping. He screwed his eyes tight shut and hooked his free arm around the next rung, catching himself before he could slip.

  His blood thundering in his ears and his last ration pack threatening to come back up the way it had gone down, Kohlz concentrated on the climb, his eyes screwed shut as he got back underway once more. Though slowed by the need to grope blindly for each and every rung, he found after a while that his progress got back underway and the sounds from below receded. When the next flood powered down the channel he was able to keep going, ignoring the spray lashing his face.

  As the last of the flood roared away down the channel, something grabbed hold of Kohlz’s wrist. He cursed and pulled back as he opened his eyes, a shadowed figure with a bright light behind it looming over him. He panicked and lashed out at the shadow with one hand and almost lost his grip entirely. Then the grasping hands took hold of him again and pulled him bodily forward.

  ‘Kohlz!’ someone shouted. ‘It’s me, calm the pash down!’

  Kohlz found himself spread-eagled on a flat rockcrete ledge, bright light filling his vision and cold air stinging his face. After the interior of Alpha Penitens the light seemed so bright it threatened to blind him and he struggled to throw a forearm over his face as he fought to work out what had just happened.

  ‘Saint Katherine’s arse…’ another voice exclaimed. ‘If anyone ever asks me to do anything like that again,’ it continued, ‘Just shoot me…’

  His senses returning, Kohlz sat up, his head swimming as he took in the sheer scale of his surroundings. Solomon appeared over him again, leaning down to offer a helping hand standing up. ‘Thanks,’ Kohlz said as he and Solomon clasped forearms and he was pulled to his feet.

  The sight before Kohlz’s eyes was almost enough to send him screaming back down the ladder to the relative comfort of the interior of the penal generatorium. Though Kohlz was foundry-born, raised in the cathedral-size manufactoria of Vostroya, he had never stood on such a vantage point as this. The three men had emerged onto the flat, open rim of the chimney-like structure of the cooling tower, which itself was but a small spire on the side of the vast form that was Carceri Resurecti. They were hundreds of metres up and the surface of Furia Penitens formed a cyclopean panorama all around.

  The wastes stretched southwards for kilometre after kilometre, hundreds of ancient craters appearing like minor pockmarks from so high up. In the far distance, made hazy by the effect of aerial perspective, the distant mountains rose upwards over the horizon,
their white-capped peaks jagged and cruel.

  A cold wind made Kohlz squint and brought tears to his eyes. His skin stung, his system having grown used to the chemical humidity of the interior. Turning east, he saw that the distant mountains rose to sweep in over the horizon, spilling across the surface towards the complex. The rearing, blocky forms of other carceri chambers were clustered all about, and Kohlz felt something of the true scale of the penal generatorium as he considered how large the interior of each chamber truly was.

  Turning north, Kohlz was confronted with the slab-like flank of the central spire towering so far above that its very top was lost to the seething clouds that guttered and pulsed with their weird inner light far overhead. In that instant, Kohlz felt utterly insignificant, small and weak. Another gust of wind caused him to stagger backwards a few steps and Solomon caught him before he got dangerously close to the open roof and the huge drop to the sluice channel below.

  ‘Come on,’ Solomon shouted over the howl of the wind. ‘We’ve got a job to do!’

  Kohlz nodded several times as he looked around for a place to set his Number Four. He shrugged the heavy vox-set off his back and prayed to the immortal God-Emperor of Man that it hadn’t been damaged on the climb up.

  While Kohlz set about his task, Solomon and Stank went about providing him with cover. Rotten unslung his carbine and took position over the ladder, squinting into the shadows below as he tried to work out what might be transpiring in the depths around the portal. Solomon stalked out onto the circular, guard-less space around the chimney and knelt as he looked out across the roof of the carceri chamber from which the chimney projected. The roof was largely flat, though strewn with a multitude of smaller, ancillary vents and spear-like antennae that must have been the jamming nodes that blocked the signal from within the complex. Some looked like extensions of the massive, unidentifiable machinery that so dominated the interior of the complex while others were most likely geotherm ventilation shafts.