The Last Ditch

by Sandy Mitchell

  A dazzling flash and the smell of charred flesh told me that Jurgen had picked off the warrior which had just fired at me, so I stood, heaving the cycle upright, and swung myself into the saddle. It had been some time since I’d ridden a contraption like this, but fortunately the controls were all where I remembered, and I fired up the engine with a quick stab of the finger.

  ‘Jurgen!’ I called. ‘Mount up!’ and triggered the lasguns in the fairing. I took one of the surviving warriors square in the thorax, thereby attracting the attention not only of the one remaining, but all the termagants it was now directing.

  Jurgen sprinted across to another of the abandoned bikes and clambered aboard, slinging his melta as he did so; it clanked against his lasgun, but fortunately both weapons were sufficiently rugged to withstand such minor abuse, and I had no doubt that they’d prove as effective as they always did if we needed them. ‘Where are we going, sir?’ he asked, as his engine roared into life.

  ‘Throne alone knows,’ I said, kicking my own steed into gear, and accelerating at a pace which would have done credit to my aide. As I did so, a volley of fleshborer and devourer rounds smeared the space I’d just left, the ’nids thrown off aim by the sudden rapid movement. It wouldn’t take them long to get their eye back in, though, so I opened the throttle as wide as it would go, and roared straight for the only exit left; the trygon tunnel.

  Fortunately the huge worm had emerged at an angle, leaving a steep ramp down which I plunged, Jurgen close behind. As I flicked on the headlight the smooth, rounded walls of the tunnel became visible, our destination shrouded in darkness far beyond the range of the beam.

  ‘They’re following,’ Jurgen voxed, then a couple of sharp explosions echoed around us, audible even over the roaring of our engines. ‘No, they’re not.’

  ‘Frag grenades?’ I asked, recognising the sounds of their detonation in a confined space.

  ‘I had a couple with me,’ my aide confirmed. ‘They seem to have done the trick.’

  ‘Let’s hope the rest are as easy,’ I said, without much conviction.

  As ideas go, I’ll admit, venturing into the network of tunnels dug by the tyranids wasn’t one of the brightest I’d ever had, but it certainly beat the alternative. Even the discovery that we were now out of vox contact with our comrades couldn’t take the shine off the fact that we were still alive, although, looked at dispassionately, the odds on our remaining so were hardly favourable. My instinctive affinity for underground warrens kept me more or less orientated with respect to the city we were leaving further behind with every minute that passed, but could do little else; the passages we followed twisted and turned, apparently at random, branching off in every direction, and I had no clue either to our eventual destination or to where the others might lead. The best I could do was to follow whichever path seemed to lead upwards, although all too often we found ourselves descending again before taking yet another fork which seemed more promising.

  My greatest fear, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances, was that we’d run straight into another burrower, which, in the narrow confines of the tunnel, we’d never be able to avoid; but luck appeared to be with us in that regard. Though we encountered more than our fair share of ’gaunts and warriors, the larger beasts all seemed to be committed to the assault on Primadelving, much to my relief. Our forward-facing lasguns cut down most of the creatures we encountered easily enough, supplemented on occasion by a blast from Jurgen’s melta, which he’d rested across the handlebars, and a couple of times I administered the coup de grace with my chainsword, striking out at one of the more resilient organisms as we hurtled past, our tracks crushing the fallen to pulp as we jolted over them.

  ‘How long’s it been, sir?’ Jurgen asked, and reminded of the passage of time I glanced at my chronograph.

  ‘Too long,’ I said succinctly. The timers we’d set were still counting inexorably down, and by my estimation Forres and her forlorn hope would have made it to the shuttles by now, if any of them had managed to reach the surface at all. ‘We’ve got about twenty minutes before the charges go off.’

  No sooner had I spoken than a dull rumble made the rocks quiver around us, and I cursed under my breath. The last of the shuttles must have left the pad, and, unwilling to wait or trust to the timers, Kasteen had given the order to detonate by vox. Which I could hardly blame her for under the circumstances, as in her position I’d certainly consider us dead by now. A rising wind began to chase us down the tunnel, and I rammed the already fully open throttle hard against its stop, desperate to squeeze a little more speed out of the hurtling cycle.

  ‘That’ll give ’em something to think about,’ Jurgen said, with every sign of satisfaction.

  ‘Us too,’ I said, able to picture the devastation behind us all too easily. No longer confined, the magma would burst up, and out, scouring its way through the caverns to the surface; but the noxious gases, and perhaps even the lava flow, would exploit every other conduit too, including this one. By my reckoning we had only seconds before the white-hot pressure wave tore us apart, reducing us to ashes in the process.

  Then, just as I’d almost given up hope, the headlights appeared to brighten, reflecting back from blue, crystalline walls, instead of the dull bedrock we’d travelled through for so long.

  ‘Ice!’ Jurgen said, putting the thought into words, as we continued to hurtle upwards, the rumbling behind us swelling in volume with every heartbeat. ‘We must be near the surface!’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s near enough,’ I said, an instant before my cycle plunged into a wall of snow which blocked the passage completely. Stunned and blinded, I clung on to the handlebars for dear life, somehow retaining enough presence of mind to trigger the lasguns; they fired with a muffled crack!, audible even through the snow clogging my ears, although whether it made a difference or not I couldn’t truly say. An instant later I’d burst through into daylight and the familiar bone-freezing cold, parting company with my machine as we performed a far from elegant parabola through the air, which terminated in another snowbank. (Quite fortuitously, it occurred to me later, as if I’d hit one of the outcrops of ice I’d have suffered considerably more than the bruises and headcold which actually ensued.)

  As I rolled to my feet, looking about us for enemies, Jurgen followed; although I’m bound to say he remained seated, landing with a jolt which did the bike’s suspension no favours, before curving back to see how I was. On the other hand, I suppose, I’d cleared most of the snow out of his way with my head, so his egress was considerably easier.

  An instant later, a plume of ash, dust, and incandescent embers burst from the tunnel mouth, knocking me flat again, the heat beating against my face and flashing the surrounding snow to steam. Unaccustomed as I was to feeling warm on the surface of Nusquam Fundumentibus, I still felt a shiver at the thought of how close we’d come to being seared to death.

  ‘Looks like we got out just in time,’ Jurgen said, his back to the plume beside us, which, following the direction of his gaze, I could well understand. A few kilometres distant, the whole sky appeared to be boiling, a vast column of smoke and ash rising almost to the stratosphere, flattening and spreading outwards as though against an invisible roof. Dull rumblings emerged from the centre of the cloud, which was riven by flashes of lightning, and I spat a thick gobbet of dust from my mouth. I couldn’t be certain at this distance, but something huge appeared to be caught in the middle of the maelstrom, trying to rise for a moment, before sinking back, burning and desiccated.

  ‘Looks like we did,’ I agreed, plodding off to retrieve my cycle, which was looking more than a little battered by this time. Here and there, in the distance, other plumes marked breaches in the network of tunnels, and I resolved to give them as wide a berth as I could. It was hard to imagine any tyranids surviving the inferno sweeping through them, but Jurgen and I had escaped, and I knew all too well that it was fatal to underestimate their resilience. ‘Any idea how far it is to Underic
e?’

  Jurgen shook his head dubiously. ‘It’ll take at least a day on these things. Maybe two.’

  ‘Then we’d better get going,’ I said, inspecting my machine for signs of damage before giving up and mounting it anyway. The way it looked now, I’d save a lot of time just looking for anything that didn’t seem broken. Then I stopped, shading my eyes, and gazing into the distance. A bright dot, reflecting the sunshine, was circling the ash plume, and my heart leapt with sudden hope. ‘Maybe we won’t have to.’

  ‘Looks like a shuttle,’ Jurgen agreed, producing an amplivisor from somewhere in the recesses of his greatcoat. ‘Too far away to make out the type though.’

  ‘Who cares?’ I said, and activated my comm-bead. ‘Unidentified shuttle, this is Commissar Ciaphas Cain, requesting extraction. You may home on this signal.’

  ‘We were informed of your demise,’ an unfamiliar voice said. It was, however, unusually deep and resonant, even through the tiny earpiece, and I was sure I’d heard the like before. ‘I will inform your regiment of the error.’

  ‘It’s a Thunderhawk,’ Jurgen confirmed, as the distant dropship turned and began moving in our direction. ‘The Space Marines have arrived.’

  I shrugged. ‘Better late than never, I suppose,’ I said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  If being plucked from the snows by Space Marines had been a surprise, our reception when we boarded the Thunderhawk was positively astonishing. My time with the Reclaimers had accustomed me to the superhuman stature of the Adeptus Astartes, so that had come as no surprise, but the magenta-armoured giant waiting at the foot of the boarding ramp had presented arms as Jurgen and I approached, as though we were honoured guests.

  I’d been even more taken aback once we’d boarded; instead of taking us to the Imperial Guard staging post at Underice, the dropship had lifted its nose, climbing smoothly and rapidly into space. As the sky darkened around us, and I was able to look down and see the hideous scar smeared across the face of the blue-white planet below, I tried questioning our hosts; but, though polite, they were not exactly forthcoming.

  ‘Your presence has been requested,’ the squad leader told me, easy to pick out from among his comrades by virtue of the power sword he wore, even though the iconography of this particular Chapter meant nothing to me. Beyond that he said nothing, although the mystery was swiftly solved; as we rounded the vast bulk of the orbital docks, I was able to make out a pair of vessels orbiting nearby, in close formation. One was a Space Marine strike cruiser, differing in a few details from the Revenant, aboard which I’d spent an eventful cruise with the Reclaimers in search of a space hulk better left alone, but similar enough to be instantly recognisable for what it was. The other ship was considerably smaller, sleek and deadly, elegant as a jewelled dagger, and this too I recognised at once.

  ‘The Externus Exterminatus,’ Jurgen remarked, as though the sight of Amberley’s private yacht was merely an everyday occurrence.

  ‘You’re absolutely certain?’ Amberley asked, over a more than welcome meal in her private quarters, after an even more welcome bath and change of clothes.

  I shrugged, articulating as best I could round a mouthful of ambull steak. ‘You’d have to ask the magos. But he seems pretty convinced.’ I swallowed, washing it down with a sip of the remarkably pleasant vintage she’d chosen to accompany it. ‘But I don’t see why it matters when the ’nids got there. Most of them went up with the hive node, and the rest should be easy enough to pick off.’

  ‘Because the first recorded contact with the tyranids was just two hundred years ago,’ Amberley said, speaking slowly and distinctly, like my old schola tutors used to do when I was missing a point they thought was obvious, ‘and according to your friend Izembard these have been there for millennia.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve been around longer than anyone thought,’ I suggested. ‘Could you check the records?’ If anyone was likely to have evidence to support that assumption, it would be the Ordo Xenos, the branch of the Inquisition she worked for.

  ‘No need,’ she said. ‘Without wanting to bore you with the details,’ which was a polite way of saying I didn’t have the clearance to know, ‘there have been a few incidents which might possibly be earlier incursions. But the earliest of those was in M35.’

  ‘The ones we found had been on Nusquam Fundumentibus a lot longer than that,’ I said. ‘So what were they doing there?’

  Amberley chewed her lower lip thoughtfully, in a manner I’d always found fetching. ‘Advance scouts, perhaps. But the thing that really worries me is how many more dormant broods there might be scattered around the Imperium.’

  ‘Who cares?’ I said. ‘So long as they remain dormant.’

  ‘This one didn’t,’ Amberley said. ‘If another hive fleet attacks, and they’ve got assets in place behind our lines, it could get even messier than last time.’

  I shrugged. ‘What are the chances of that?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Another hive fleet the size of Behemoth? Pretty remote, I’d have thought.’ Which just goes to prove what a lousy prophet I’d make.

  ‘Maybe.’ Amberley shrugged too, apparently dismissing the matter. ‘Do you think your regiment wants you back right away?’

  ‘I’m sure they can do without me for a while,’ I said. Our orders had been to remain until the planet was secure, which would take months, or even years if I was lucky134. It had been some time since we’d last been able to enjoy one another’s company, and I was certainly in no rush to part again.

  ‘Good,’ Amberley said, favouring me with a smile I knew all too well. ‘Then perhaps you and Jurgen could help me with another little matter while they get on with things here.’

  [At which point the narrative abruptly concludes, with a few unflattering remarks I see no reason to repeat.]

  About the Author

  Sandy Mitchell is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been writing successfully under both names since the mid 1980s. As Sandy, he’s best known for his work for the Black Library, particularly the Ciaphas Cain series. He’s recently completed an MA in Screenwriting at the London College of Communication, which left far less time than usual for having fun in the 41st Millennium, and is looking forward to spending more time in the Emperor’s service now that it has concluded.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

  Cover illustration by Clint Langley

  © Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

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  ISBN 978-0-85787-388-1

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