Shroud of Night

by Andy Clark

  Seizing his chance, Phalk’ir lunged in from behind.

  The Intercessor spun, fast as lightning, and blocked Phalk’ir’s descending blade with his bolt rifle. The humming sword hacked the gun in half. The Intercessor clubbed Phalk’ir with the ruined halves, before delivering a furious head-butt to his faceplate. Phalk’ir staggered, but as he did Kyphas drove one of his envenomed knives through a blasted rent in the Imperial Fist’s armour.

  The Intercessor arched his back and stumbled. Phalk’ir, rallying, spun on his heel, blade whipping around in a glowing arc, and lopped the loyalist’s head from his shoulders.

  Kassar let out a breath, and leant back against the barricade.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘was harder than it should have been.’

  The Unsung gathered on their leader. Several of them nursed fresh wounds from the fight.

  ‘Skarle will live,’ said A’khassor. ‘His back carapace is cracked, and there’s organ damage, but nothing he can’t recover from. It’ll just hurt, and slow him down for a while.’

  ‘Pain is how we know we live,’ sang Skarle.

  ‘Are you mocking me?’ hissed Phalk’ir, but Skarle wasn’t done.

  ‘Pain is how we know we live, what they inflict I’ll thrice-back-give.’

  ‘Simpleton,’ said Phalk’ir.

  ‘We have to assume they got a message away,’ said D’sakh, blood still drying in a rent in his side. ‘They had the time.’

  ‘Direct hits didn’t drop the bastards,’ said Haltheus. ‘I mean, nothing gets up again when Thelgh shoots it.’

  ‘Apparently, Primaris Space Marines do,’ said Kassar. ‘There will be more of them ahead, no doubt. If nothing else, we’ll better understand their capabilities now. But we must assume that we’re compromised. We make straight for the maglev hub, and get clear of this area before Imperial reinforcements reach us.’

  ‘We should check over the corpses first,’ said Kyphas. ‘Gather more intelligence on these warriors. Scavenge what we can.’

  ‘Thirty seconds,’ said Kassar.

  The Unsung fell upon the bodies like vultures. Grenades were seized. Haltheus tore off two helms and clamped them, one after the other, to his belt. Thelgh hefted a bolt rifle experimentally, testing its weight. He nodded to himself, mag-locking the weapon across the base of his backpack and gathering up clips.

  Phaek’or stood guard as they worked, still and silent as a statue. Syxx hovered near him, pistols in hand.

  ‘Kassar,’ said Haltheus. ‘You need to see this.’

  Kassar joined Haltheus where he knelt beside one of the fallen Intercessors, inspecting a small, flashing device at the warrior’s belt.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Kassar.

  ‘Some kind of short-range choral transponder, with a servitor-brain component,’ said Haltheus, turning the runic box over in his hands. ‘It’s emitting a signal of some sort. Not a message, though. And not a homing beacon. The signal is… intermittent… like it’s hailing something else and getting no response.’

  He ran an auspex wand over the device, Kassar watching intently.

  ‘A bomb?’ he asked. ‘Do we need to get clear?’

  ‘No, it’s not attached to any sort of explosive,’ said Haltheus, the frown audible in his voice. ‘Unless… Oh, warp curse it! Yes, we need to get clear. Back down the tunnel to the last fork, now!’

  ‘Unsung–’

  Kassar got no further. The device flashed again, then went dark. Above, dug into the tunnel’s ceiling, its twins followed suit. Each was attached to a heavy demolition charge and, having ascertained beyond reasonable doubt that the Intercessors’ life signs had all dropped to zero, the device in Haltheus’ hand sent them a command.

  Detonate.

  A triple roar shook the tunnel. Searing firelight hurled back the shadows, extinguished the next moment by thundering darkness. Ferrocrete rained down, and a flood of icy water came with it.

  Syxx cried out, cowering beneath the fury of the blasts. A chunk of masonry slammed down beside him, peppering him with stone shrapnel.

  Water jetted from above, pressurised by the immense depth. Kassar and Haltheus were knocked from their feet by one gushing spume. Thelgh dived clear of another. The water flooded across the tunnel floor with shocking speed, white froth boiling on its surface.

  ‘Shutters!’ yelled D’sakh.

  Alarms were howling along the tunnel. Warning lumen were pulsing. And in both directions, adamantium shutters were lumbering down from the tunnel ceiling to seal off the compromised section.

  Kassar gauged the distance in a heartbeat.

  ‘Onward,’ he barked. ‘Thelgh, grab Syxx. Get past that shutter!’

  They ran, as water sluiced around their greaves in buffeting waves. It was pouring in at a furious rate, a triple waterfall whose sheer pressure was cracking the tunnel roof.

  ‘That whole section is going to rupture,’ said Haltheus as they ran. ‘I give it less than a minute.’

  Kassar powered through the rising waters, riding out each wave that slammed into his back. Water was pouring around them, spilling past and under the lowering shutter. The roar was constant, deafening.

  The distance readout in Kassar’s retinal display dropped by the second.

  Three hundred yards.

  Two fifty.

  The shutter rumbled lower. It was maybe fifteen feet from the floor of the tunnel now.

  A chunk of masonry buffeted Kassar from behind, nearly throwing him forward into what was now waist-high water. He regained his footing and pressed on.

  One hundred and fifty yards.

  The shutter was barely ten feet from the ground, the water rising swiftly to meet it.

  A glance showed his brothers also forging towards the exit. There was Thelgh, Syxx thrown over one shoulder. Kassar noted that Skarle and D’sakh were both falling behind, their wounds slowing them.

  ‘Move with a purpose, brothers,’ he voxed. ‘I haven’t kept you alive this long just to see you drown.’

  ‘Trying,’ gasped D’sakh.

  The shutter was forty yards away now. Thirty. Twenty. It was below the surface, though, still shuddering downwards.

  ‘Krowl, brace it!’ shouted Kassar. Krowl splashed forward through the chest-high water, disappearing under the surface as he grappled to find the shutter’s underside. Kassar dived, immersing himself in time to see Krowl get a grip on the shutter’s underside barely a foot from the ground.

  Kassar kicked forward, intending to help his brother, but it was no use. Krowl might as well have tried to pick up a Land Raider. The shutter ground down and Krowl, doggedly following orders, let it crush both hands into the floor as he strove to fight its motion.

  ‘Krowl,’ voxed Kassar, righting himself. His helm barely broke the surface now, and the water was swirling furiously around him as it crashed against the shutter. ‘Get clear of there.’

  Obediently, his brother surfaced, dark gore drizzling from the mangled stumps where his hands should have been.

  ‘What now?’ asked Phalk’ir. ‘The shutters are down. This place will soon flood. The baggage will drown and at this depth even our multilungs won’t keep us alive forever.’

  ‘Blast our way through?’ suggested D’sakh, treading water.

  ‘No time,’ said Haltheus. ‘Besides, I’ve got nothing strong enough.’

  The water pounded into the tunnel, more of the roof giving way by the second. A great tumble of masonry pummelled down and the ocean followed with redoubled force. Cold, dark water rose around them at alarming speed.

  ‘Maintenance tunnels,’ said Kassar. ‘Is there one in this section?’

  Kicking to stay afloat, Thelgh raised his rifle out of the water and sighted along its scope. After a moment, he pipped his vox once in the affirmative.

  ‘Back,’ said Kassar. �
�Everyone back, make for the maintenance hatch.’

  They turned and swam through the rising water. Power armour was heavy, and far from buoyant, but Legiones Astartes strength was enough to drive them along regardless.

  A many-legged sea-creature tumbled past Kassar, its fragile body split open by the sudden pressure change. Rubble drifted and thudded below him. The barricade passed underneath, the corpses of the Intercessors jerking in the savage current as though back from the dead.

  Overhead, the water neared the ceiling. Thelgh stayed on the surface, keeping Syxx from submerging. The rest of them powered on quicker, kicking for the maintenance hatch. Power armour had its own oxygen supply that could last for days, but most of the Unsung had taken battle damage during the fights on the rig and now here, in this tunnel. Air leaked in bubbling streams from cracks and rents.

  Kassar knew that he and his brothers could breathe and filter oxygen from water for a time, but Syxx had no such luxury. Besides, at this depth the pressure was likely to crush even their power-armoured forms within a matter of minutes.

  And then the tunnel was flooded entirely. As of now, Kassar knew, Syxx would either drown or be crushed to death.

  Ahead, the maintenance hatch swam into view through the murk. Set into the tunnel’s ceiling. A now-redundant ladder led up to it, and a small platform allowed access. Ignoring the warning runes on his armour, and the feeling of water sluicing cold against his skin, Kassar mag-locked his boots to the platform. The Unsung slammed down around him, Thelgh still trailing Syxx’s body.

  ‘Haltheus, get it open,’ voxed Kassar.

  Haltheus took slow-motion steps to stand below the runic control panel, each footfall locking to the platform with a muffled clang. He reached up and stabbed at the controls, then again more insistently. Red lights flashed, and he swore vociferously.

  ‘Locked out,’ he said. ‘Must be a failsafe if the tunnel floods.’

  ‘Krowl?’ asked D’sakh, but even submerged in the dark, they could see that their brother’s hands were still nothing but bloody stumps.

  Kassar could feel the pressure increasing on his armour, hear little groans from its stressed plating. Within his helm, the water was up to his chin.

  ‘We can’t open the hatch with the controls, and we can’t tear it from its hinges. And even if we could, that would risk flooding the maintenance tunnel,’ he said. ‘Ideas?’

  ‘Profane the controls?’ asked Kyphas.

  ‘The tools I’d need to achieve that aren’t waterproof,’ said Haltheus. ‘All I’d do is wreck the panel.’

  ‘Is there another route?’ asked Makhor. No one answered him. Air drizzled from their groaning armour.

  ‘How does it know?’ asked D’sakh. ‘How does the door’s machine-

  spirit know that the tunnel is flooded?’

  ‘If we’re unlucky, it’s all in chorus with the shutter controls,’ said Haltheus. ‘But if not then some kind of augur, probably external… senses the breach… the pressure change. There!’

  Above the hatch and to one side, they saw an aquila-stamped panel with several augury-blisters standing proud of its surface.

  ‘If you can get us out of this,’ said Kassar, ‘do it quickly. The cultist has been submerged for too long already.’

  ‘I know,’ said Haltheus angrily. ‘But I need some way to… ah! I really hope they didn’t innovate too much with these things.’

  He unlocked one of the Primaris helms from his belt and, barging past his brothers, clamped it over the sensor. Haltheus grasped one of the rebreather feeds in the grille of his faceplate and tore it loose. Oxygen bubbled from its end. Water surged into his helm.

  Moving fast, he peeled away a section of armour on the Primaris helm and revealed its own rebreather feed. Deftly, one-handed, Haltheus worked the component out and then leaned in and held his oxygen feed firmly against the other helm’s hollow socket.

  Kassar watched as water currents moved around the Primaris helm. He saw what his brother was doing, and urged it to work. He was breathing ice-cold water now, his armour compromised, his body feeling the groaning stress of the deep ocean pressing down on it.

  With a mute click, the control panel’s runes turned green as sufficient oxygen passed over the augurs to fool them. Kassar lunged, punching the rune to open the hatch. Locking bolts disengaged, the hatch slid back, and the tunnel above was revealed.

  Kneeling beside the dark pool of the open hatch, Skaryth and Skarle gripped Krowl’s shoulder guards and hauled him up into the tunnel. He was the last.

  Kassar slumped against the wall, water drizzling from his armour. He wrenched off his helm and let out a long, slow breath. A wave of dizziness struck him as oxygen bubbles formed in his blood from the sudden pressure change, but it passed as his Adeptus Astartes physiology asserted itself.

  Electro-sconces flickered to life with stuttering pings, their light marching away down a metal corridor that stretched into the distance. Pipes ran along its walls, interspersed with occasional clusters of machinery.

  ‘Report,’ he gasped, receiving confirmations from all his brothers. Everyone present, and alive.

  ‘Except the baggage,’ said A’khassor grimly, crouching over Syxx’s bedraggled body. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Curses,’ spat Kassar. ‘We should have got air into him the same way Haltheus did with that lock.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have helped,’ said A’khassor. ‘We couldn’t have made a seal for him to breathe inside the helm, and forcing air down his throat would just have ruptured his lungs. Besides, none of it would have helped the pressure. His bones, his organs, they’re surely all crushed.’

  ‘Then all this was a waste of time and lives,’ said Makhor, glancing at the Apothecary. ‘We’re mission fail, and we haven’t even reached the hive.’

  ‘Warp damn it,’ said Haltheus. ‘Damned fragile mortal. It’s my fault, Kassar, I missed that bomb.’

  ‘What now?’ asked D’sakh, looking to Kassar.

  ‘We do what we ought to have done to begin with,’ said Phalk’ir. ‘We fight our way to a transport. We get off this drowned rock and leave these fools to fight amongst themselves. Let them waste their lives, not ours.’

  ‘And then what, Phalk’ir?’ asked Makhor. ‘Assuming we manage to acquire a transport capable of breaking atmosphere. And assuming we get clear without being shot down. Where then do we go, without warp capabilities, in a galaxy we no longer understand?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ spat Phalk’ir. ‘Stow away on a warship. Steal something at gunpoint.’

  ‘There’s twelve of us,’ said Kassar. ‘We wouldn’t have the strength to capture a warship. Not even close.’

  ‘But we could,’ said Phalk’ir. ‘If you would stop forcing this curse upon us. If we claimed what was rightfully ours!’

  ‘No,’ said Kassar. ‘Not this, again. We do not enslave ourselves to the Dark Gods, Phalk’ir.’

  ‘What slavery?’ cried Phalk’ir, slamming his fist against the wall in frustration. ‘I look at the chosen of the gods and I see power! Power we have earned a thousand times over, if we would just open ourselves to their worship. You all know I’m right.’

  Uncomfortable silence reigned.

  It was broken by a sudden, whooping gasp.

  Syxx rolled onto his side and retched a great spume of water and bile. He coughed desperately, more water bubbling between his lips, then slumped, gasping, in his own fluids.

  ‘No…’ said Haltheus in amazement. A’khassor crouched by Syxx, hastily running the instruments of his narthecium over the cultist’s head and chest.

  ‘He lives,’ he said simply. ‘Some pressure trauma, but…’ A’khassor shrugged and stood, letting Syxx slump back into a heap. The cultist dragged in great draughts of air, spitting and gagging to clear the last of the water from his lungs.

  ‘You see, Phalk’ir,�
�� said Kassar. ‘We don’t need the gifts of the gods to succeed here. If this mere mortal can endure that which Tsadrekha throws at him, how can we not?’

  ‘For all we know, Kassar, that was the aid of the gods,’ said Phalk’ir, but his heart wasn’t in it. He could clearly sense the Harrow’s mood turning against him again.

  Kassar crouched by Syxx. He gripped the cultist’s dripping chin in his gauntlet and raised his face. Syxx stared up at him with bloodshot eyes, the skin that Kassar could see spider-webbed with burst blood vessels.

  ‘Can you walk?’ Kassar asked. Syxx blinked and nodded. Kassar noted blood trickling from the cultist’s nose.

  ‘I… think so, lord…’

  ‘Good,’ said Kassar. ‘Then we move.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Kyphas.

  ‘The only way we can, for now,’ said Kassar, gesturing down the passage. ‘Until we can find something that will bring us back towards our original objective. Skaryth and Haltheus take point, eyes peeled for anything that will help us get back on mission. The rest of you, two by two, fifth cypher. With luck, any Imperial reinforcements will believe we drowned back there, but in case they think to sweep this passage, be ready for a firefight. Krowl, guard the cultist. Keep him in the middle of the Harrow with you.’

  So ordered, the Unsung moved off, water still dripping from armour and weapons.

  They moved at a brisk march, fast enough to eat up the distance but slow enough to be wary of sudden threats. Krowl carried Syxx, cradled like a newborn in limbs that were still regenerating.

  Haltheus kept a weather eye on the instrument panels they passed. His broken helm was clamped to his belt, along with the two Intercessor helmets. Until he had time to repair it, the Techmarine would go bare-headed.

  Near the column’s rear, A’khassor fell in with Kassar, speaking to him on a private vox-channel.

  ‘You know what I’m going to say, Kassar,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ said Kassar. ‘There’s no way he could have survived that.’

  ‘None,’ said A’khassor. ‘The mortal drowned. And he was ruptured. Inside. Eardrums burst. Eyes full of blood. Tissues ruined. That much pressure, we might as well have cycled him through an airlock.’