The Last Ditch

by Sandy Mitchell

  Jurgen had less opportunity to use the forward-mounted flamer, as the barrier of blazing promethium it would have laid in front of us would certainly have stopped the rough riders, even if the Salamander had been able to carry on through it without suffering too much harm. He did manage to get off a few shots from his beloved melta, however, bracing it against the rim of the driver’s compartment and raising himself somewhat precariously to peer over the armour plate as he fired. Since this involved him taking his hand off the throttle I might have found the whole business somewhat alarming, had I not known that the accelerator would have been jammed fully open from the moment he fired up the engine in any case.

  ‘Look out,’ I admonished him at one point, and we swerved alarmingly, a warrior form disappearing under our tracks with a faint crunch, audible even over the roaring of our engines.

  ‘Sorry sir, nearly missed the frakker,’ Jurgen said cheerfully, and, to my unspoken relief, returned his attention to the controls, his desire to emulate the rough riders, all of whom were supplementing the built-in firepower of their bikes with laspistols, apparently quenched for now. Nothing else could have kept up with us, my aide cheerfully pushing the highly-tuned engine to its limits as he always did, but the cycles remained locked in formation, the riders grinning like orks, apparently relishing the sensation of breakneck speed just as much as he did.

  ‘Good of you to tag along,’ I voxed to Lanks, having matched frequencies at last, and the lieutenant waved in response, before picking off a lurking genestealer crouched on a balcony ahead of us with a shot from his laspistol.

  ‘Least I could do after you saved our necks in the agricave,’ he told me. ‘Besides, I promised the commissar we’d keep the road open for her.’

  ‘I’m sure she appreciates the sentiment,’ I told him.

  ‘She does,’ Forres cut in. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Close enough to hear gunfire,’ I told her. ‘I take it that’s you?’

  ‘You take it correctly,’ she said grimly.

  The power plant was under siege when we reached it, a mass of chitin lapping against the great bronze doors emblazoned with the cogwheel sigil of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which had been torn from their hinges and lay at a drunken angle against the supporting buttresses. Forres and a handful of troopers were defending the breach gallantly, crouched for cover in the lee of a battered-looking Chimera, which had been parked at an angle in the archway to form a crude but effective barricade. Its power plant seemed still to be working, as the multi-laser in its turret continued to reap a rich harvest from among the scuttling abominations which threw themselves forward with the relentless determination of their kind, although the promethium tank which fed the flamer had apparently long been exhausted.

  ‘About time you got here,’ the young commissar voxed, and I bristled involuntarily for a moment before I realised she was joking. ‘We’ve almost run out of ’nids.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her, as we opened fire in unison, tearing a huge hole in the rear of the siege lines. ‘There’ll always be more along in a minute.’ This was undoubtedly true; faced with a fresh target, many of the foul creatures turned, unleashing a barrage of fleshborer and devourer fire against us. I ducked behind the armour plate, but a couple of the riders with us weren’t so lucky, and went down hard, falling from their machines as the deadly parasite ammunition began eating them alive from the inside out; the only mercy seemed to be that the high speed impact with the floor of the cavern had left them in no condition to notice.

  Able to use the flamer at last, as our escort fanned out, Jurgen triggered it with gusto, incinerating the bulk of the brood facing us, slewing the Salamander from left to right as we slowed, in order to spread the gout of burning promethium as widely as possible.

  ‘Get inside,’ Lanks urged, as the riders wheeled and turned, crisscrossing the plaza fronting the Mechanicus shrine. It was hard to be sure, but some kind of devotional mosaic appeared to have been laid there, its design obscured by scorch marks, lasgun pocks, and an inordinate quantity of dead and dying ’nids, most of which were leaking foul-smelling ichor in great profusion. ‘We’ll hold the tunnel mouth.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ I agreed, as Jurgen slewed us to a halt next to the parked Chimera. I broke open the crate, and extricated a couple of the demo charges. ‘This ought to do it.’ I shrugged one of the bulky satchels into place across my shoulder, and handed the other to Jurgen.

  ‘We’ll continue to hold here,’ Forres said. ‘With the riders securing the tunnel mouth, we’ll have a clear field of fire across the whole cavern.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I agreed, with a quick glance at the layout. The tunnel mouth was almost directly opposite the entrance to the shrine, and looked worryingly short of cover. ‘Take the Salamander over there too: you can set up a crossfire with the bolter, and it’ll be something solid to stand behind if the ’nids pull back any of their forces from the main cavern.’ Which they probably would, once the hive mind registered that most of the creatures down here had been killed.

  Forres nodded. ‘Good idea,’ she said, and detailed a couple of nearby troopers to move the sturdy little vehicle.

  Jurgen glowered, as one of them lowered herself into the driving seat. ‘Take care of it,’ he instructed brusquely, as though he’d ever shown a moment’s consideration for the machine-spirits of anything he’d driven.

  I nodded. ‘We’ll be needing it later,’ I said, hoping I was right.

  When Izembard had briefed us, I’d formed a mental picture of something similar to the power station we’d investigated so memorably in the Leeward Barrens, albeit on a slightly larger scale; but the reality of the shrine now we’d got to it was almost overwhelming. Huge galleries had been excavated into the rock below the city, spanned by catwalks the width of highways, which carried us over humming turbine halls full of arcane mechanisms the size of small buildings. Fortunately I’d thought to bring a map-slate, which, together with my knack for remaining orientated in tunnel systems like this, was enough to keep Jurgen and I moving purposefully towards our destination.

  ‘There’s that smell again,’ Jurgen said, sniffing the air with a grimace of distaste, and, detecting the whiff of sulphur myself, I nodded.

  ‘We must be on the right track,’ I agreed, loosening my chain-sword in its scabbard, and unfastening the holster of my laspistol. I hadn’t forgotten the way the ’nids had infiltrated the power station in the Leeward Barrens, and intended to take no chances. (Neither had Forres, I’d been pleased to note; she’d placed sentries inside the shrine to avoid being flanked in this fashion, but so far nothing had emerged from the depths of the installation. Which, for someone as paranoid as I am, provided only limited reassurance.)

  Since the map confirmed our guess, we followed our noses, emerging at last into a long gallery lined with pipes and control lecterns. Jurgen looked around, and shrugged. ‘Suppose this is it,’ he said, completely unmoved by the grandeur of the spectacle.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I agreed, retuning my comm-bead as I spoke. Some of the controls looked vaguely familiar, although I hadn’t spent much time taking in our surroundings during our pell-mell retreat from the power station in the Barrens. Something I certainly did remember, though, was the dry heat permeating everything, which was definitely present now, and the noxious smell which went with it, which by this time had grown to such an extent that I was forced to rely on my eyes and my ears to locate my aide. ‘Magos, can you hear me?’

  ‘I can,’ Izembard buzzed in my ear.

  ‘We’ve arrived,’ I said. ‘Where should we place the charges?’

  Following his instructions didn’t take as long as I’d feared, being simply a matter of setting the charges around a few of the pipes, linking them with det cord, and poking a few of the controls to maximise the build-up of pressure in the system before we blew the whole thing. After much debate over the relative merits of using a timer (which the ’nids could easily interfere with if the hi
ve mind realised what was going on) as opposed to detonating the charges remotely by vox (which relied on the network of communication relays built into the city infrastructure to continue functioning despite the damage being inflicted by the fighting) we’d settled on both to be on the safe side; now, as I came to set the timer, I hesitated.

  ‘Will two hours be enough, colonel?’ I asked, knowing Kasteen would be monitoring the channel, and, sure enough, she replied at once.

  ‘That should be fine,’ she assured me. ‘Your group will be the last out, apart from the units keeping the pads clear, so if you get back sooner than that we can detonate by vox from the air.’

  ‘If the governor lets you,’ I said, trying to sound as though I was joking, but not entirely sure I was. ‘She seems pretty determined to keep the city intact.’

  ‘I am the governor,’ Kasteen said. ‘At least if you meant what you said last time about backing me up if I declared martial law.’

  ‘You have my full approval,’ I said, for the record, knowing all our communications would be archived for later tactical analysis. If I didn’t make it out of here after all, I might as well make things as easy as possible for her posthumously. ‘I take it our plan didn’t go down too well with her Excellency?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Kasteen said, a wry tone entering her voice. ‘Even when I pointed out that the city was lost whatever we did, and that sacrificing it now could save the planet.’

  ‘But you won the argument,’ I said, knowing her too well to ever assume otherwise.

  ‘My gun did,’ Kasteen replied laconically.

  ‘Throne on Earth, you didn’t actually shoot her, did you?’ I asked, in some surprise.

  ‘No, just drew it to make the point,’ Kasteen said, to my quiet relief. Technically she would have been perfectly entitled to shoot the governor if she’d refused to step aside, but that would have involved an unholy amount of paperwork. ‘Then I told Magot to make sure she got on the next shuttle.’

  A conversation anyone in the vicinity of the boarding ramp would no doubt have found highly entertaining, I thought, then returned my attention to the job at hand. ‘Two hours, Jurgen,’ I confirmed, and we busied ourselves ensuring that the charges would explode on schedule.

  ‘I’m done,’ he said after a moment, and I nodded, watching the numbers tumble hypnotically in my own timer. 1:59:57... 1:59:56... 1:59:55...

  Wrenching my attention away, I turned towards the exit. ‘Me too,’ I added.

  ‘Better step it up,’ Forres advised. ‘There’s a fresh wave of ’nids incoming. I don’t know how long we can hold them for.’

  ‘On our way,’ I confirmed, and Jurgen and I ran for the entrance to the shrine as if an entire brood of genestealers had oozed from clefts in the rock, and were now hard on our heels.

  Though Jurgen and I ran as hard as we could through the stark metal-lined corridors, over bridges and through caverns stuffed with technotheological marvels, I couldn’t shake the grim premonition that we were going to be too late. ‘Situation, commissar?’ I voxed, as the crackle of lasgun fire began to echo down the passageway towards us.

  ‘Grim,’ Forres reported. ‘We’re being pushed back across the square. If you don’t hurry, we won’t be able to cover your withdrawal.’

  ‘We’re hurrying,’ I assured her, my breath beginning to rasp in my throat. The great bronze doors were in sight at last, gaping vacantly, an inchoate flurry of movement visible beyond them. A moment later the full implication of that struck home; the Chimera which had been blocking the entrance had gone, Emperor knew where, leaving the way clear for the entire tyranid horde to come flooding inside if it so wished. ‘Where’s the bloody Chimera?’

  ‘We needed it,’ Forres said. ‘You’ll see.’

  As we pelted through the doorway, out into the plaza, I could see precisely what she meant. The fresh cadaver of a carnifex was lying in the middle of the square, felled by the Chimera’s multi-laser, which was continuing to fire at a second one. The AFV was backing up, trying to keep the range open, and I could hardly blame the driver for that; if the towering creature’s snapping claws managed to get a purchase, it would rip the armour apart like tissue paper. The Salamander’s bolter was joining in too, the trooper manning it firing with great gusto, the rain of explosive projectiles gouging ugly, ichorous craters in the hulking creature’s carapace.

  ‘I can get a shot,’ Jurgen said, raising his melta, but before he could pull the trigger the combined fire of the two vehicles took effect, and the monster went down. Lanks’s rough riders were still roaring around, picking off the smaller creatures which infested the greater part of the plaza, but there were fewer of the rapidly-moving troopers than I remembered, and several machines lay riderless on the cavern floor.

  ‘Concentrated fire,’ Forres voxed, spotting us from the top turret of the Chimera. ‘Clear the way for the commissar.’

  A hail of las-bolts swept the open space, taking down any tyranid foolish enough to venture out of cover, and Jurgen and I ran for it. It could only have been a hundred metres or so to safety, but it stretched out ahead of us like a landscape in a dream, where however hard you run, you seem to remain where you are.

  I suppose we must have been about halfway there when the cavern floor began to vibrate beneath my feet and I staggered a little; for a moment I fancied that the explosives we’d set must have gone off prematurely for some reason, and braced myself for the pressure wave, then comprehension suddenly struck, memories of playing tag with the giant serpent among the refugee convoy flooding into my forebrain.

  ‘Get back,’ I voxed wildly, gesticulating with my arms, and glancing all around for some sign of where the hideous thing might be about to surface. ‘Burrower incoming!’

  The Chimera began to back up, its turret traversing in search of a target, and the Salamander followed. The cyclists turned and bolted for the tunnel too, leaving Jurgen and I painfully exposed in the middle of the plaza.

  Abruptly, tiles, dead ’nids and pulverised rock exploded upwards, as a huge serpentine shape surrounded by a nimbus of crackling energy erupted into the cavern.

  ‘Over there,’ Jurgen said matter-of-factly, as though I might have failed to notice it, and cracked off a shot with the melta. A deep channel appeared, scored into the chitinous plates which armoured it, but the subterranean behemoth barely seemed to notice, surging towards the retreating vehicles. A dazzling arc of lightning shot from it, hitting the Salamander head-on, and frying the crew; then the demo charges we’d left in the rear compartment detonated, along, I imagine, with the remaining promethium in the flamer tank.

  A sound, so loud that I felt rather than heard it, slammed into me, throwing me flat, and I skidded along the ichor-slick mosaic, before being brought to an unpleasant halt against the body of one of the fleshborer casualties. As I raised my head, dazed, I saw the tunnel collapse, the trygon crushed along with the wreckage of the Salamander by kilotonnes of plummeting granite. The long body spasmed for a moment, its head buried by a pile of boulders, from which ichor was trickling in a fashion which made my gorge rise.

  ‘Ironic, that,’ Jurgen said. ‘With it being a worm, and all.’

  ‘Quite,’ I agreed, coughing in the cloud of dust raised by the catastrophe, and gradually becoming aware of a voice in my ear.

  ‘Commissar,’ Forres asked, her voice quite gratifyingly strained under the circumstances, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘We’re alive, anyway,’ I reassured her, taking a tight grip on my weapons, as the crackle and rustle of chitin echoed all around us. There was no doubt about it, we were sealed in, without hope of escape, and surrounded by tyranids. ‘For the moment, at least.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘We can’t get to you,’ Forres said, as I cast around desperately for cover. The scuttling sound was intensifying, echoing from the tunnel the trygon had left, dispelling any doubts I might have had that tyranid reinforcements were indeed on the way. Fortunately, the last of the warri
or forms in the cavern with us seemed to have been pulped by the collapsing tunnel, leaving the surviving termagants running for cover, but I was absolutely certain that the hive mind would lose no time in dispatching more of the larger creatures to restore control, and as soon as they arrived our brief respite would be well and truly over. ‘Our weapons are having no effect on the rubble.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. It would be like trying to knock down a hab block with small arms fire. ‘But thanks for trying. We’ll just have to think of something for ourselves.’

  ‘Emperor be with you,’ Forres said, more in hope than expectation judging by the tone of her voice.

  ‘Can we get out through the power station?’ Jurgen asked, trotting across to join me, his face and uniform streaked with grime, and far less savoury substances from the dead tyranids he’d evidently landed among.

  ‘That won’t be possible,’ Izembard replied over the vox, consigning us to our doom in his usual dispassionate tone. ‘The maintenance shafts have been sealed to prevent the tyranids from using them to gain access to the upper city.’

  Then there was no time left for further debate. A trio of tyranid warriors emerged from the tunnel the dead burrower had left, their heads scanning from side to side as they absorbed the tactical situation. The termagants around us began to emerge from the shadows, bringing their weapons to bear, and so far as I could see, Jurgen and I had no more than a few seconds left to live.

  I cracked off a couple of laspistol shots at the nearest of the warriors and had the satisfaction of seeing it stagger, ichorous craters appearing in its carapace; but then it recovered, retaliating with a blast from its devourer, which missed me by a handsbreadth as I dived for cover behind the downed cycle lying close to the dead trooper who’d cushioned my fall after the explosion. As the payload of acid-secreting maggots splattered against the metal, an idea struck me: an insanely risky one, but hardly less so than taking a header through a necron warp portal, and I’d emerged from that more or less intact133, albeit thanks to the fortuitous presence of a Space Marine boarding party on the vessel at the other end. I didn’t suppose for one moment that the Emperor would be quite so accommodating this time, but even the slenderest chance would be better than none.