They blew through two doors before reaching the section that led to the enemy. Grampa sent out their last recon drone. It flittered around the corner and spotted a couple rebel Marines standing behind a porta-shield, fifteen meters ahead. A moment later, something vaporized the drone and went on to blow a hole through at least one bulkhead. It looked like a grav beam, but bigger and nastier than anything the deserters had in their inventory.
“The fuck was that?” Gonzo asked.
“No clue.” Nothing in the Marines’ TOE fired large-bore beams of pure white energy. It’d flashed so brightly Russell’s anti-glare systems had nearly overloaded. Whatever that was, it was bad news.
“You’re up, Grampa.”
The old-timer rounded the corner, area shield ready, with Russell and Gonzo behind him. Two energy blasts hit the force field; Russell saw the counter go from a hundred to forty-seven in the time it took him to level his flamer and let them have it. The yellow glare of plasma filled the hallway. He let it pump for three seconds, just to be safe.
Return fire drained their shield to fifteen percent. What the fuck?
“Back around the corner!” Russell yelled. The fireteam made it back just as their area force field was knocked down. The two traitors were still up and shooting after eating a double dose of plasma. And according to Russell’s sensors, they were moving forward. Wasn’t possible, but it was happening anyway.
“Grenades,” he told the grunts from Second. Two of them pulled out hand grenades – one frag and one plasma – and rolled them down the hallway. One of them almost lost a hand when one of the rebs took a shot at him with those massive beams.
Grenades had micro-cameras mounted on them. The Marines took a gander during the three seconds between arming and detonation. Nobody liked what they saw.
Both enemy Marines had been deep-fried by the plasma burst. The two figures walking towards them were little more than half-melted suits of armor. One was missing one arm; the other its head. Their weapons were gone, and they couldn’t possibly be alive, let alone walking forward. One of them looked at one of the grenades, and a multicolor light flashed in front of it. The grenade blew up instantly.
“They don’t have guns,” Grampa said in a calm voice that didn’t match his vital signs. “But they are shooting energy beams at us. Out of where?”
“Out of their ass. Who gives a fuck? Fall back,” Russell told them. “Grampa, set up by the door behind us and reload the gennie; we’re gonna need it.”
While the rest of the assault element pulled back, Russell and Gonzo filled the junction with more plasma. Without a shield to protect them, they felt the heat and drained their personal force fields a bit, but hopefully that second helping of hellfire would take care of the undead traitors. They didn’t wait to find out, though.
They were running towards the fallback position while a single enemy blip made it to the corner. They hit the ground when they saw their side leveling Iwos at the zombie behind them. Four Marines fired long bursts of 4mm, punctuated with several grenade blasts. Russell crawled forward while bullets and energy crackled overhead, expecting to get killed at any second, but he and Gonzo reached the safety of the portable shield. He finally glanced back and saw that the walking corpse had finally dropped. Very little remained of what once had been an armored grunt.
“The fuck was that?” Gonzo asked again.
“I think it was a zombie.”
“Again?”
Russell looked at the scattered remains of the critter. It’d walked through a squad’s worth of firepower and almost gotten them.
“Worst zombie yet.”
* * *
Fromm watched his Marines do battle with enemies that wouldn’t die. Enemies that created warp micro-apertures that released impossibly-powerful energy discharges. The renegade humans had become something else. Bad memories from the expedition at Redoubt-Five went through his mind as he looked over the tactical situation. The transformed rebels were concentrated around the bridge, protecting the leading mutineers. The area Charlie Company had been assigned, in other words.
All he had left in reserve was the assault section from Charlie-Three. It was time to play the last cards in his hand.
“With me,” he told the nine assaultmen. They shouldered their missile launchers and followed him towards the fighting. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
With a minimum arming range of twenty meters, LML-10s weren’t very practical for shipboard operations, but they’d brought the weapons along to handle strongpoints, and the enemy’s warp-based energy attacks had punched massive holes on doors and bulkheads, conveniently providing the missile teams with useful lanes of fire. The only problem was living long enough to deploy and shoot the weapons.
The portable force fields the boarding party had brought along were proving to be insufficient against the possessed crewmembers’ energy beams. Marine casualties were mounting up, and the other forces tasked with taking the Odin were heavily engaged elsewhere. If Fromm’s men could take the bridge, they could help everyone else overrun the ship with minimal additional casualties. They would just have to be a little unorthodox to get the job done.
The missile team reached a passageway junction, waited until a force field was set in place, and stepped into the line of fire. Blasts of blindly white energy struck the shields, but they held – just barely – long enough to fire one volley. The assaultmen rushed back into cover the moment the self-guided projectiles left the launching tubes. One of them didn’t make it before the area field failed; the man – PFC Corrigan screamed briefly and died.
Fromm looked at the mutilated remains, barely noticing the ship shaking beneath his feet as the thermobaric missiles filled the enemy compartment with explosive gas and ignited it. He only looked up when a cloud of flames filled the junction and was barely held at bay by the second set of force fields protecting his section. The enemy icons disappeared all the way to the ship’s bridge; several icons there also vanished.
“Charlie-Actual to all Charlie elements: advance towards the bridge.”
He led the way.
* * *
Lisbeth Zhang felt Atu’s presence nearby.
“We are good to go, Christopher Robin.”
She smiled at the Flayer’s human mask. “No deal, asshole.”
The Warpling’s human form disappeared, and she found herself confronting the Flayer in its true form, or as close as her mortal perceptions could make of it. It was large and fractal, and extended into multiple dimensions, including time. On some level, this encounter would play on forever, Lisbeth realized with a thrill of terror. Win or lose, a part of her mind would relive this moment for all of eternity, and that terrible knowledge almost caused her to give up right then and there.
She didn’t, of course.
The three parts of her soul – human, Pathfinder and Marauder – struck as one, and even something as great and powerful as the Flayer could not withstand that assault with impunity. The vast ever-shifting construct recoiled in surprised agony. For one brief moment Lisbeth thought she might win this fight without help. The next moment, pure burning agony paralyzed her; Vlad went into psychic convulsions and even Atu screamed in torment. The ant had bitten the toddler, but the toddler had crushed the ant.
Hungry.
There were no further attempts to communicate. The Warpling cast aside all its masks, including the pretense of sapience, and behind them there were only wants and desires. Reason and thinking were simple tools to satisfy its cravings, no longer necessary now that Lisbeth had declined to be used and was available for consumption. In the end, that was all it was. Hungry. As she felt herself being dragged towards the Flayer’s ravening maw, she understood this, too, would last forever.
NO.
This mental voice was louder and deeper than anything she’d heard before. It made the Flayer sound like a petulant child whining about a spilled ice-cream cone. Lisbeth became aware of a new presence, also reaching through
multiple dimensions. Unlike the Flayer, she saw something so beautiful it hurt to look at it for more than an instant. Her pain and terror were washed away and she found herself reliving every good moment of her life in one continuous rush.
“So that’s what an angel looks like,” she said. Maintaining her staunch atheism was getting to be a pain in the ass. “Okay, super-powerful benign aliens,” she told her skeptic self. “So there.”
Whatever the new entity was, the Flayer wanted no part of it. The toddler had met an adult. It tried to run away, its fear washing over her like a wave of freezing water. Unfortunately for the monster, its attempt to consume Lisbeth had created a link between them, a link that she turned into an anchor of sorts, preventing it from escape. By rights, her little ol’ self should have no chance to slow down the Warpling, let alone stop it, but impossible things were par for the course, here on the Starless Path. She held on like grim death, and felt the creature’s terror intensifying. Fear was the most human-like emotion she’d sensed from the Flayer. She found it very satisfying.
“Gotcha, fucker,” she said as the Archangel moved closer.
Nestled within Michael’s multidimensional wings was a human presence. Lisbeth recognized Deborah Genovisi. Grinner had led the Archangel to the right ‘place’ in warp space, using her connection to Lisbeth as a guide. Doing so had come with a heavy price, Lisbeth realized with a sinking feeling. Deborah wasn’t going to come back from this trip.
“Grinner!” Lisbeth called out to her fellow pilot.
“Take care, Zhang. Tell Russell I’m going to a better place. No bullshit.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“He will. I’ll make sure of it.”
And with that, Grinner was gone. Angel and demon – or Great Warpling and Greater Warpling – grappled with each other, and although there was no doubt as to who was stronger, or what the outcome would be, the contest would be long and brutal, and it was no place for mere mortals to watch. Lisbeth beat a hasty retreat. She dimly sensed the presence of the other two Corpse-Ships, frozen in time. She woke them up and ordered the remnants of her squadron to return to real space.
Their mission was over.
* * *
Kerensky struggled to his feet as the CIC and the bridge crew burned around him,
Smoke was everywhere, along with the stench of burning plastic and flesh. His implant informed him he’d been mildly poisoned by toxic fumes, had several broken ribs, and was suffering from second-degree burns on his face and both hands. His personal force field had exhausted its power pack; the imp helpfully suggested he insert a new one as soon as possible.
Moments before a massive explosion had torn into the bridge, the Prophet had collapsed, kicked his legs in an almost comical motion, and died. The same psychic shock had struck the Warplings who’d possessed dozens of his people. Everyone else aboard the Black ships had been stunned or killed outright. Kerensky had been on the verge of losing consciousness when he saw a massive wave of fire wash over the compartment shields and bust them open. He’d survived, by virtue of the second set of force fields protecting the commanders’ chair. That only meant he’d lived long enough to regret everything.
It was over. He’d sold his soul, murdered billions, and killed other humans, all without achieving his final objective. The Imperium was battered but still stood. A decade or a century from now, some other fanatic would rise to power and demand the extinction of humanity.
Maybe by then humans will be too strong to attack. It was a weak reed to hold on to, but he had no others.
He coughed, feeling shards of pain in his chest as he did, and leaned on his command chair for support. A couple of his people were still alive, but he was the only one able to stand. Automatic firefighting systems kicked in and managed to drench the worst of the flames, but that was of little comfort for the dead or dying. He could hear the minds of his remaining spacers. Most of them were dying or falling into comatose states. Whatever had struck down all their Warpling allies had been nearly as bad for the psychically sensitive.
Faceless armor-clad figures emerged from the smoke, weapons at the ready, led by someone Kerensky’s IFF sensor revealed as a mere captain. Warp Marines.
Kerensky didn’t know if they had orders to take him alive, but he was in no mood to be taken prisoner. Ignoring the agony of his charred hand and the barked warnings of the Marines, he reached for his sidearm. The Marine captain did the honors himself, leveling his assault rifle before the disgraced admiral had completed his draw.
I’m sorry, babushka, he had time to think before a burst of gunfire put an end to things.
Eighteen
“All resistance has ceased, Admiral.”
Sondra Givens nodded. Her Marine contingent had been savaged – at least another battalion’s equivalent in casualties in addition to the twelve hundred lost Marines in the destroyed Black Ships. Third Fleet had also suffered: nine ships destroyed outright, with every other vessel heavily damaged. The human formation would have to rely on the Imperium’s charity to get all her hulls ready for the return trip.
She looked at the screen where three blue-green worlds continued to teem with life. Her ships had earned everything the Gimps could do for them.
“Any prisoners?”
“About two hundred all told, ma’am. Most of them either committed suicide or just died from no apparent cause. The survivors are mostly in catatonic or comatose states.”
Something had happened inside that massive warp aperture, now thankfully closed. Only four Corpse-Ships had emerged from it, which was four more than Sondra had ever expected to see again. The miracle workers had done it again, she suspected. Unfortunately, the missing gunship had belonged to Commander Genovisi.
Whatever had happened on the other side of that gate, the effect on the remaining Black Ships had been decisive. The fighting had been over in a matter of minutes after the aperture snapped shut and released some sort of psychic blast. The t-wave emission had stunned many of the sensitives among her crews, although the re-attuned force fields had protected them from the worst effects. Most of the mutineers had keeled over dead, or been rendered incapable of offering even token resistance. She suspected the Marines hadn’t been in any mood to take prisoners, which accounted for the low number of survivors. She would make sure nobody suffered because of those heat-of-battle decisions. Nobody who hadn’t been in their shoes would understand.
“Admiral Kerensky is among the confirmed KIAs, ma’am.”
“I expected as much,” she said coldly, hiding the pang of anguish she felt at the news. Nicholas had turned into a monster, but she still remembered the good man he had been, and his loss still hurt.
“To all Third Fleet personnel: well done,” she sent on the all-hands, all-ships command channel. “We have prevailed. The mutineers have been dealt with, and their ships have been captured or destroyed.”
Everybody not currently doing something too important to stop cheered at the news.
“This battle concludes all hostilities. We have agreed on an armistice between the United Stars and all belligerents, pending further negotiations.”
It was too early to say the war was over. There would be some wrangling and posturing, although she thought the Imperium would be unlikely to do either for very long. Not after standing on the edge of the abyss. At least, she hoped so. Humans had brought the known galaxy to the brink of disaster, but had also stopped it. Maybe the message would get through: push us into a corner, and you won’t like what happens next. Nobody will. There were always slow learners, but the lesson should have sunk in.
Meanwhile, she could say this much:
“We are going home.”
* * *
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Colonel Zhang looked like she wanted to say something else, but whatever she saw in Russell’s face stopped her. “That is all, Corporal. Dismissed.”
He saluted, left the compartment, and made it all the way through two pas
sageways before it got to him. His fist hit the bulkhead two, three, four times, reinforced knuckles breaking under the impacts. A bubblehead heading the other way looked at him but wisely kept his mouth shut and rushed off.
Shoulda known better.
Russell wasn’t an idiot. He knew good times never lasted. He’d just lost his mind for a while. Things had stopped making sense since the night he and Gonzo had taken a drive to see some witch they’d thought was a whore on the side. Okay, getting laid had been business as usual, but afterwards he’d turned into a moron. Going back for seconds. Writing her. Falling for her. Stupid. All he’d gotten out of the deal was feeling like shit. And worse of all, he didn’t think he would have changed anything he’d done, even if now that he knew how it was going to end.
Fucking stupid.
He looked at his broken hand. His nano-meds were already on the job, but he was going to have to go to sick bay, or his own imp would tattle on him. Fucking shit.
Don’t be a complete idiot, Russell.
The voice in his sounded just like her. Like Deborah. The witch. The dead witch.
Dead, sure. But warp space is full of dead people, isn’t it?
Russell didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t care. She was a witch, after all. A warp witch. Next time they made transit, she might be there, waiting for him. And if she still had time for him, he’d make time for her. He waited to see if she had anything else to say, but that was it. Maybe he was just hearing things. Maybe he’d finally lost his damn mind. Truth to tell, he didn’t give a shit.
Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5) Page 26