The Last Ditch

by Sandy Mitchell

  ‘Sure you’ve brought enough demo charges?’ I asked Jurgen light-heartedly, and he hitched himself up in the driver’s seat to peer at me over the armour plate separating us with a frown of consternation.

  ‘We can get some more if it’s not enough,’ he said, taking the pleasantry as literally as he took most other remarks.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I assured him. ‘You’ve got enough here to bring down a gargant.’

  ‘If the orks had one, and the ’nids hadn’t eaten ’em all,’ he agreed, nodding sagely, then resumed his seat and gunned the engine. Years of familiarity with his robust approach to driving had prepared me for what followed, and I grabbed the pintle mount reflexively as we jerked into rapid motion, keeping my feet with relative ease.

  The governor’s palace was halfway up the wall of the largest of the upper caverns, where the good citizens who lived in the streets below could get a good look at it towering over their heads128, and as we passed the wrought iron gates enclosing the formal gardens which fronted it, I was able to appreciate the full scale of Primadelving for the first and last time; rattling about in a Chimera was hardly the best way to sightsee. Tiers of streets, houses and emporia fell away before us, in a vista as spacious as any fair sized town on the surface of more Emperor-favoured worlds, and it was an effort to remind myself that there were more than a score of similar bubbles in the rock, all painstakingly excavated over countless generations, of a similar size to this one. The thought was sobering, to say the least; if everything went well with my errand, all that hope and effort would come to naught, obliterated in an instant by a cataclysm so vast it was all but impossible to imagine.

  As we descended towards the cavern floor at Jurgen’s usual breakneck pace, I found the quiet, deserted streets uncomfortably eerie, imagining movement in every alley mouth and behind every shuttered window. All nonsense, of course, although that didn’t stop me from checking that the heavy bolter on the pintle mount was loaded and ready to fire at a moment’s notice; if the tyranids had sent a lictor or two to scout out the terrain ahead of their advance, I’d have no warning of an attack other than a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye.

  Jurgen, of course, positively relished the emptiness of the streets, and opened the throttle to its fullest extent, sending the little vehicle howling down the boulevards as though all the daemons of Chaos were after us, which was fine by me; if anything was going to come bounding out of the shadows waving its scything claws it would have to be moving even faster than we were to have a hope of making an effective strike.

  Now and again we caught sight of a Nusquan unit, or a squad or two of the PDF, pulling back from the lower levels on their way to the shuttle pads, although, disinclined as always to share the road with anything which might slow him down, Jurgen generally directed us along parallel carriageways to the retreating troopers. They were pulling back in good order, so far as I could see, although they’d clearly been in a hard fight, the weary trudge of those on foot, and the horizon-piercing stares of all, proclaiming their psychological as well as physical exhaustion.

  ‘We’re just leaving the palace district,’ I voxed Forres, as we bulleted into one of the tunnels connecting it to the next cavern in the downward chain; although it was so wide and high that it hardly felt like a tunnel at all, with side roads and hab blocks surrounding the main highway on all sides (including the roof).

  ‘Don’t take too long,’ she replied, the sound of gunfire audible over the vox-link. ‘We’re being pressed hard down here.’

  ‘Hold as long as you can,’ I said, trying to sound calm. With the bulk of the Nusquan forces withdrawing, the ’nids were advancing on all sides, and the geothermal power plant had become the tip of an increasingly precarious salient; into which I was now heading as fast as Jurgen could take me, which was very fast indeed. Positively the last place anyone with the remotest vestige of common sense would want to be, under the circumstances.

  But there was no turning back now; practically every trooper on Nusquam Fundumentibus would know I was on my way, and believe me eager to enter the fray on their behalf. For many, the prospect of fighting alongside the hero I was popularly supposed to be, in the confident expectation that I would somehow be able to turn the tide, was undoubtedly the only thing keeping them in the fight, beset as they were on all sides by bloodcurdling horrors. If I let them down, morale would collapse, our orderly withdrawal would become a bloody rout, and the ’nids would be all over us like Jurgen’s psoriasis. My chances of making it to a shuttle in one piece would be slender at best, and as soon as it started to get round that the celebrated Hero of the Imperium had cut and run like a panicked gretchin, I wouldn’t be able to count on anyone to watch my back from now on.

  ‘We’re coming up on the Spiral,’ my aide informed me a moment later, as we flashed through an intersection, and began descending fast enough to pop my ears. I swallowed, gaining some relief, and glanced around at the caverns we passed through129. The deeper we went the more the vista changed, from affluent residential areas to poorer ones; then the manufactoria took over, huddled in the lowest levels, where the inexhaustible supply of geothermal power could keep them running indefinitely. On the opposite carriageway the Nusquans were retreating in a steady stream, many of the Chimeras carrying additional troopers clinging to their upper surfaces, unable to hitch a ride inside; seeing us, they waved and cheered, each ‘Huzzah!’ another coffin nail in my steadily dwindling hopes of just being able to offload the demo charges we were carrying and make a run for the surface ourselves, while Forres and her troopers got on with the job of planting them. By now everyone was probably expecting me to lead a charge down the burrower tunnels to butcher the bioship with my chainsword.

  So musing, I gradually became aware of the sounds of combat: the rattling of lasguns, the harsher bark of autocannon, and the occasional dull thud of explosive detonation making themselves heard above the roar of the Salamander’s engine. ‘Looks like trouble ahead,’ Jurgen remarked laconically, and with his habitual understatement.

  Trouble just barely began to cover it, I thought, as we roared into a wide plaza, surrounded on all sides by the towering walls of fabrication mills and the loading bays from which whatever was produced here would be dispatched by lorry to the far corners of the city130. Guard troopers in Nusquan uniforms were taking what cover they could, while firing grimly at a solid wall of tyranids, advancing inexorably on their positions. Wave after wave of the ghastly creatures fell to the withering fire, but still they advanced undaunted, as indifferent to the deaths of hundreds of their kind as we would be to the expenditure of an equal number of las-bolts. Among them larger forms loomed, lumbering pyrovores gorging on the fallen, tyranid and human alike, while the weapon symbiotes embedded in their backs vomited plumes of fire at the beleaguered defenders. A couple of the Chimeras were replying in kind, their forward-mounted flamers incinerating the scuttling mass of smaller creatures in front of them, while the multi-lasers in their turrets swept the ranks behind.

  ‘Can you get us through?’ I asked, ducking below the armour plate protecting the passenger compartment while fleshborer and devourer rounds rattled and splattered against it. The barrage abruptly ceased as Jurgen triggered our own flamers, and I popped back up again, grabbing the pintle-mounted heavy bolter and cracking off a few rounds myself just to show willing. I might just as well have been lobbing pebbles for all the difference it made to the horde charging down on us, but it looked suitably heroic, and it wouldn’t hurt to boost the troopers’ morale a bit. So far as I could see, the route deeper into the cavern city was about as comprehensively blocked as it was possible to be, but it never hurt to sound fully committed to the mission; you never knew who might be listening on the vox-net.

  ‘Not till we get the road clear,’ Jurgen told me, as though that was simply a matter of time, although looking at the wave of chitin flowing into the square, I must confess to feeling considerably less optimistic than he evide
ntly did.

  As I scythed down a brood of ’gaunts which were balancing on a nearby rooftop, poised to pounce on an oblivious heavy weapon squad, one of the tracked cycles I’d noticed up on the surface came roaring towards us, apparently just as much at home on the paved surfaces of the city as among the snowfields above. Instead of the garish colours of the civilian machines I’d seen before, it had been painted in the arctic camo scheme the Chimeras were sporting, and a pennant waving from the vox antenna behind the driver carried a Nusquan unit patch. Evidently they had rough riders131 somewhere in their SO&E132, although no one had thought to mention the fact to me.

  The cycle pulled alongside us, its rider tapping his comm-bead as he scanned the frequencies to synchronise with mine; before he could manage it, one of the smaller serpentine forms burst from the ground almost in front of him, slashing the air with its scything claws, which no doubt proved something of a distraction. He responded instantly, however, rearing the bike up on its tracks to put the bulk of the machine between himself and the barrage of spinefist needles spitting from the creature’s thorax; the deadly slivers struck the roaring engine and the spinning treads, before the rapidly-moving vehicle collided heavily with the startled ravener, moving in swiftly beneath the reach of its flailing claws. The rider hit the carriageway hard, and rolled, unslinging his lasgun as he rose: but before he could fire I squeezed the trigger of the bolter, and reduced the slithering nightmare to a pile of shredded offal.

  ‘Thanks,’ the man said, jogging towards us as Jurgen coasted to a halt, and to my surprise I recognised the NCO who’d accompanied Forres into the agricave complex.

  ‘Sergeant Lanks,’ I said, returning his salute. ‘An unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘It’s lieutenant, now,’ he replied, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘First man in the regiment to get a commission. Good to see you again too, sir.’

  ‘Shame it wasn’t under quieter conditions,’ I said, ducking as one of the lumbering pyrovores belched flame in our direction and set fire to a warehouse a score or so metres away. The mass of the tyranid swarm was closing in around us, and the Nusquans were losing ground, despite their best efforts. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘They’ve cut off the commissar,’ he said, baffling me for a moment, until I realised he meant Forres. ‘Her group’s still holding out at the power station, but we can’t get through to reinforce or extract them.’

  ‘We’ll get through,’ Jurgen said, with rather more determination than practicality, revving the engine as if eager to start. Forewarned, I grabbed the pintle mount for support as he spun us in place, triggered the flamer again, and barbecued another brood of hormagaunts.

  ‘If there was a way, we’d have found it,’ Lanks said, with vehemence, as though my aide’s words implied criticism of the resolve of the troopers fighting and dying all around us.

  ‘I don’t doubt that for a second,’ I said, with a surge of relief. If we couldn’t get through an entire army of tyranids it was hardly our fault; we’d done our best, but we’d been beaten back by the sheer mass of the swarm facing us. Now I could withdraw with the Nusquans, get aboard the next available shuttle, and wait for the task force and the Space Marines to arrive, bemoaning our bad luck the whole way. A few appropriately sober words about Forres’s noble sacrifice, and I’d be in the clear.

  ‘We were keeping them back well enough until about twenty minutes ago,’ Lanks told us. ‘Then suddenly the whole swarm went on the attack, perfectly coordinated, right along our defensive line.’

  ‘That’s why,’ I said, seeing movement through the smoke still wreathing the blazing warehouse. Another monstrous form was coming into view, towering over the smaller creatures around it, brandishing boneswords and a venom cannon, and at the sight of it, I don’t mind admitting my mouth went dry. ‘The hive tyrant took control. If you take it down, the whole swarm will be thrown into confusion.’ Although why I should offer any advice liable to put me back in the firing line, I have no idea.

  ‘We’re targeting it, of course,’ Lanks said, ‘every chance we get. But the ones around it are just soaking up the incoming fire.’ As if to confirm his words, a salvo of las and autocannon rounds ripped into the towering monstrosity; but before the majority of them could strike, the squat bulk of the creatures immediately surrounding it moved to put themselves between the incoming fire and the tyrant it had been aimed at. Barrages which would have obliterated a lesser creature rebounded harmlessly from these living shields, and a couple of nearby scavengers lumbered closer, gobbling up the ’gaunts felled by the ricochets.

  ‘This is Commissar Cain,’ I voxed on an open channel, as inspiration suddenly struck. ‘Disregard the tyrant, and target the pyrovores.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ Jurgen asked, as I grabbed the heavy bolter again, and began adding what little I could to the blizzard of incoming fire which suddenly began sleeting around the lumbering scavengers. Both staggered, the leading one dropping heavily to its knees, where it continued single-mindedly to search for fresh carrion, the slow oscillation of its head looking for all the world like dazed incomprehension. ‘You know what happens if the guts get ruptured.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, peering hopefully through the sights of the bolter. ‘The flammable gas it spits out meets the air, and...’ I couldn’t be sure if I felt the shock of detonation, the suspension of the Salamander being somewhat basic, and transmitting an inordinate number of jolts to my long-suffering sacrum at the best of times, but there was no denying the evidence of my eyes. ‘That happens,’ I concluded, a trifle smugly if I’m honest. Bits of charred viscera pattered around me, then the carrion storm redoubled as the second wounded fire-beast went up like its fellow, their thick chitinous carapaces converted in an instant to withering shrapnel which tore through the ’nids surrounding them.

  The tyrant bellowed, staggering, wreathed in flames from the thick, combustible gel which had spattered it from the exploding incendiary beasts. Flailing blindly with its boneswords, it ripped the guts from another of the flame-spitting scavengers, which promptly went up in turn, the wounded giant at the very centre of the firestorm this time. All around us the tyranids began milling uncertainly, scuttling for shadows or charging blindly down the guns of the nearest units, according to whatever instincts ruled them in the absence of direction from the hive mind.

  ‘Bring it down!’ Lanks commanded, in awestruck tones, which I could hardly blame him for; the strategem I’d come up with more or less on the fly had succeeded beyond my wildest hopes, which had, if I’m honest, extended no further than confusing the tyrant a bit and loosening its hold on the swarm enough to aid a fighting retreat. But now it looked as if we were in with a chance of taking it down entirely.

  Another hailstorm of heavy weapons fire, supplemented by a generous helping of lasgun rounds, tore into the towering creature, which by now seemed to be baking in its shell, like a crustacean in an expensive restaurant. Its formidable armour had been fatally weakened by the inferno, and even its kamikaze guardians were unable to save it this time; too busy with being broiled alive themselves to absorb much of the incoming fire, they were smashed aside like an ineffectual tackle on the scrumball pitch. As round after round of heavy ordnance tore the guts out of it, pulverising armour made brittle by the heat, the tyrant staggered, went down, and ultimately expired, with one last reflexive kick which brought the facade of an anonymous fabrication block crashing down on its scorched and battered entourage.

  A cheer went up from the Nusquans, and, I must admit, I felt like giving voice myself; with the tyrant out of the way, and its control over the swarm shattered, it looked as though we’d be able to seize the initiative again. A mood of euphoria which lasted mere seconds, I may add, before Forres’s voice in my comm-bead brought me back to the reality of my situation with a thud.

  ‘What’s keeping you?’ she asked, and I suddenly realised that pulling back to the surface with the Nusquans wasn’t going to be an option any more. The unexpected su
ccess of my gamble had given us the chance to punch through the suddenly directionless swarm, before the buried hive node could dispatch another tyrant to retake control.

  ‘Tyranid rush hour,’ I said, as Jurgen gunned the engine, and began accelerating towards the tunnel mouth he’d indicated before. ‘Just asking them nicely to move over.’

  ‘Don’t take too long,’ Forres cautioned, ‘or we won’t be here to meet you.’

  ‘On our way,’ I said. As I spoke, a demi-score of cyclists formed up around us, Nusquan pennants fluttering in the breeze of their passage, Lanks waving them on from the head of the troop. ‘With an escort,’ I added, agreeably surprised.

  ‘We’ll be waiting,’ Forres said.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I have to admit that these unexpected reinforcements raised my spirits considerably, as I’ve never been averse to a few extra bodies to hide behind, and although we’d left the main battle behind us, there were still plenty of tyranid organisms standing between us and our objective. The cycles surrounding us had forward-facing lasguns built into the front fairings, which soon proved their worth, allowing us to punch through the bioforms which tried to impede our progress with surprisingly little difficulty. The vast majority of these were termagants or the larger warrior forms, which were hopelessly outmatched by our speed and the superior range of our weaponry; by the time the survivors had recovered from us getting the first shot off, we were past and away, beyond the effective reach of their fleshborers and devourers, with little in the way of retaliatory fire to worry about. Since the pintle-mounted bolter was higher than the cycles, and able to swivel in any direction, I could swing it round to pick off anything left kicking in our wake after adding its firepower to the initial punch of our charge, which further protected us against any belated return fire.