by Nick Kyme
Auris stepped forwards. ‘Running topographical scan now…’ he reported. ‘It will take a few seconds.’
Whilst Largo kept his gaze and his bolter trained on the darkness within the cave, Garrik faced north towards the battlefield they had left behind.
‘When we were hit,’ he said as Scipio approached, ‘Chronus was not only outmanoeuvred, he was outgunned.’
Garrik had removed his helmet. It was sitting in the crook of his arm, his other hand just then lowering the scopes. He was scarred, a jagged line of pink flesh running from his chin to alongside his right eye. It was an old wound, received long ago. The hair on that side of his face was patchy too, the black fading to grey. Fortunately, his eyesight was unaffected or that would have been the end of his role as a heavy weapons specialist. Either that, or take a bionic.
He and Scipio had fought together a long time.
‘You think Chronus has fallen?’ asked the sergeant.
‘No,’ Garrik replied, ‘he seems too stubborn for that. But I wonder what else waits under the ice of this world.’ He turned to face Scipio. ‘How many necrons are on Damnos, brother-sergeant? How many is too many?’
‘We’ll know that when we’re back aboard the Valin’s Revenge or lying dead on an icy battlefield, brother.’
‘I don’t fear death, sergeant.’
‘Of course you don’t, none of us do, but something has unsettled you.’
‘It’s Damnos,’ Garrik confessed frankly. ‘Ever since we arrived on this world and engaged the necrons, I’ve felt as if something was aware of us. I didn’t understand it at first, but after the siege I spoke to Largo and some of the others. Something is buried deep, and it’s not human, not remotely. I’m not referring to whatever legions are slumbering below the ice. This is a singular mind. During meditation, I have dreamed about it.’
‘A beating heart at the world’s core,’ said Scipio. ‘It’s no delusion, Garrik, but we can only face what is in front of us, and not the enemies in our thoughts. Only Master Tigurius can do that.’
Garrik handed back the scopes, having said what he needed to on the matter. ‘No sign of the battle tanks. I couldn’t even find the Thunderstorm.’
‘Vandar’s back at Kellenport by now,’ Scipio replied, locking the magnoculars back onto his armour, ‘dealing with whatever flew by us before the attack.’ He clapped his hand on Garrik’s armoured shoulder. ‘We are, all of us, being sorely tested in this campaign. But I believe we will not yield to this pressure, brother. We are sons of Ultramar and do not bend easily.’
Garrik nodded. ‘Courage and honour, sergeant.’
Scipio smiled back, and felt some of the humanity he had thought lost on Damnos start to return. ‘Courage and honour. It’s what separates us from the necrons.’
Auris approached them, having completed the scan.
‘Cave leads out to a plateau higher up the range. We should be clear of interference there.’
‘Weapons ready, brothers,’ Scipio told them both, facing the cave mouth. ‘Be prepared for anything.’
Just before they entered the cave, Scipio opened the short-range vox to the warriors they had been forced to leave behind. The signal was patchy, but localised, so he got through almost unimpeded.
Brakkius answered.
‘All’s quiet down here, sergeant,’ he said. ‘Assuming you’re not counting our Techmarine’s labours. If there are any necrons slumbering beneath us, they’ll soon be awake and upon us.’
‘Keep your eyes open, brother. Soon as we get word to Kellenport or Commander Chronus, we will return. How go the repairs?’
‘Difficult to judge. Vantor and I have yet to exchange words on the subject. I hope well, for I doubt I’ll be walking back to the city.’
Brakkius’s black humour was encouraging, as was his thinly veiled annoyance at being trapped with the Techmarine.
‘Guard my ship for me, brother. Keep Vantor on course, if you can.’
‘Aye, sergeant. I’ll watch him too.’
‘He’s one of us, Brakkius,’ Scipio reminded him.
‘No he isn’t, sergeant. He is not one of the Thunderbolts, and I have not fought with him before.’ He paused, then asked, ‘May I speak freely?’
‘Proceed, but whatever it is be quick. We are about to embark.’
‘Something is fundamentally wrong with this world, Scipio. There is a… presence here.’
Scipio was instantly reminded of his previous conversation with Garrik but a moment ago.
‘And I believe we have all felt it,’ Brakkius went on. ‘Perhaps some of us more deeply than others, the Techmarine amongst them.’
‘The Martian creed is an esoteric and clandestine one, but Vantor still wears a white Ultima on a blue field on his shoulder, Brakkius. You’d do well to keep that in mind.’
‘I will watch his back, as you would, sergeant.’
‘Just make sure the Gladius is ready upon our return. Eyes open, as I said, brother.’
‘Eyes open, sergeant,’ Brakkius confirmed, ‘and good hunting.’
Scipio cut the vox-link, and waved Largo forwards. He was acting scout, and the first to snap on his helmet’s luminators. A sharp magnesium glow filled the outer threshold of the cave, but revealed only further rock and ice.
Eyes open, thought Scipio and went in after Largo.
During his service as an Ultramarine, Brakkius had stood sentry many times. The fact he was technically sitting this duty made it no different to all those others. Scanning the immediate surroundings revealed no threats on his retinal lens display. An icon showed the position of the Techmarine relative to Brakkius, but his bio-reading was green and all was apparently well. He had no line of sight to Vantor and periodically checked in over the vox to keep apprised on the progress of repairs. Brakkius felt no regret at the loss of his legs. He would either walk again naturally or bionics would be grafted in place of his ruined limbs. As long as he was able to serve, he remained unconcerned. It did leave him feeling vulnerable, however, and the constant reports with the Techmarine helped to assuage that feeling and served to make up the shortfall in vigilance he knew was a reality of his current condition.
Both his legs had been crushed during the crash. They lay mangled in their greaves in front of him, utterly useless. Had Vantor not pinned him through the shoulder, it might be him and Kastus comatose in the hold. As it was, though, Brakkius felt of little service to the Techmarine.
‘All clear on this side,’ he voxed.
Vantor’s few seconds’ delay was infuriating, and Brakkius was about to repeat his message when the Techmarine answered.
‘Is there something you need, brother? I am currently quite preoccupied with the repairs to the Gladius.’
‘Just your status report, Techmarine.’
‘Work would proceed faster without interruption,’ Vantor replied.
Brakkius was cursing his misfortune to be stranded with this of all Ultramarines and about to give a terse reply, when he noticed the slightest seismic tremor register on his lens display.
‘Brother Brakkius?’ prompted Vantor when the expected rejoinder was not forthcoming.
‘Wait…’ Brakkius replied. The tremor returned, stronger than before… and again, stronger still and with greater frequency. ‘Something is happening.’
‘You’ll need to be more specific.’
Brakkius raised his bolter at a spot on the ground that had begun to shake. As he looked down the targeter, he saw small fissures beginning to form and a mound rising from the ice.
‘Get around here now.’
Vantor cut the link.
‘Damn it!’ Brakkius swore. The mound was rising, developing into a large inverted funnel. Something burst through at its apex, the size of a gauntleted fist, insectoid and obviously metallic.
Whilst on Damnos, Brakkius had seen a swarm of necron scarabs reduce a speeder to scrap. He tried not to imagine what one would do to a prone Space Marine slumped against the side of a downed
gunship.
He fired two rounds into the side of the funnel that exploded upon impact. Machine parts, insect limbs, broken mandibles and chunks of carapace fountained outwards in a plume of wreckage. In their wake came more of the creatures, scurrying over the metal carcasses of the others, pincers clacking.
To the left of Brakkius a second funnel speared up from the ice, followed by a wave of high-pitched chittering.
Switching to burst fire, he broke apart the second funnel before quickly turning his attention to the surviving scarabs of the first. Alternating from one to the other, he conserved ammunition but kept up a steady rate of fire. Slowly, the diminutive constructs were broken apart, their emergence funnels collapsed and destroyed. But, miraculously, two scarabs from the first funnel made it through the shell storm and leapt at the injured Ultramarine. Brakkius caught the first, having switched to a one-handed grip. The bolter’s recoil violently jolted his shoulder and the pain came back anew, but he gritted his teeth and smashed the scarab against the gunship’s flank. The second latched onto his face and immediately he could hear its tiny mandibles chewing through ceramite. He head-butted the Gladius, destroying the construct before it could do any real damage.
Three more funnels spiralled up from the ground.
Brakkius’s ammo gauge was flashing, warning him to slot in a fresh clip. That would take precious seconds and the scarabs were already spilling out onto the ice. Firing off the last three rounds, sharing them evenly between the funnels, Brakkius cast his bolter aside and drew his combat blade. He had mag-locked it to his chest, knowing that drawing it from his thigh would be a needless hindrance in his current position.
Even so, it would not stop the twenty or so constructs scuttling towards him.
‘Come on then,’ he growled, determined that if he was going to fall he would do so fighting.
A sheet of flame swept over the swarm, setting them ablaze and turning the scarabs to fire-blackened metal.
Brakkius turned and saw Vantor, a flame-unit attached to his servo harness, releasing a constant plume of super-heated promethium that washed over the constructs and turned their emergence funnels into slurries of melted snow.
Only once all of the scarabs had been utterly destroyed did the Techmarine relent.
‘I thought you’d abandoned me,’ Brakkius told him, sheathing his combat blade so he could pick up his bolter again and rearm.
‘Because I am part machine?’ asked Vantor, coming over to inspect what was left of the constructs.
‘Yes.’
‘I will always be more son of Ultramar than of Mars, Brakkius.’
‘I am beginning to appreciate that.’
Vantor turned his head, regarding the other Ultramarine through his cold retinal lenses.
‘Evidently, saving your life during the crash was not proof enough.’
‘Forgive me, brother.’
Vantor gestured to the fused remains of the scarabs.
‘They are feeder constructs, consuming matter and turning it into energy, designed to maintain the horde. Protect it during dormancy.’
‘How can you know that?’ asked Brakkius, still unable to shake his disgust at Vantor’s seeming admiration for the necrons.
‘Since we have been here, I have watched them, studied them and the effects of their weapons on our own. Only by building a repository of knowledge can we truly fight the necrons effectively. A better question though, brother, might be: why might such creatures be needed here in this remote region?’
Realisation came quickly and starkly to Brakkius.
‘There are necrons right here beneath us.’
‘I would estimate in their hundreds, but that’s not all the presence of the scarabs tells us.’
‘What else?’ asked Brakkius.
‘That they are waking up.’
‘Vox-comms are down,’ shouted Largo, scouting at the front of the squad.
Scipio called them to a halt.
Garrik checked Largo’s findings to make sure it was not just his brother’s vox that was malfunctioning.
‘Mine too, brother-sergeant,’ he reported, tapping the ear-bead embedded inside his helmet, but unable to provoke the unit into function.
‘Brother Auris?’ Scipio asked the Ultramarine consulting the auspex.
‘It must be the cave walls, some mineral interference. We’ll be free of it once we’re on the other side.’
‘What kind of scanner returns are you getting?’
‘Weak, brother-sergeant,’ said Auris. ‘But there’s a larger chamber up ahead. It’s possible we could receive an improved signal in there.’
‘This entire complex is large,’ said Garrik. ‘I have never seen anything like it, save for the old arcologies on Calth. It makes me question what it’s for.’
Scipio regarded him. ‘What it’s for? You don’t believe these caves are natural, brother?’
Garrik shone his luminators, casting the interior rock faces in pellucid white.
‘Look at the walls. They’re smooth, as if bored. No cave system is this vast, not all the way through. Where is the variation, the natural beauty? I see none of that here.’
Scipio saw that Garrik was right. So focused was he on getting a signal to Chronus or Agrippen back in Kellenport, he had neglected to pay attention to what was in front of his face.
The tunnels were – he hesitated, knowing the word he sought was not ‘man-made’ – machine-made, carved from the bedrock of Damnos. From what little he knew of the Vogenhoff region, it was extremely remote and had no mining operations. There were no cities, subterranean or otherwise, no settlements of any kind. It was far enough north of Kellenport to be uninhabited and yet these caves had seen the passage of one life form or another.
For a moment, Scipio considered what exactly the ice and rock of Damnos encrusted. Before the coming of the Emperor’s illuminance and the Great Crusade, some ten thousand years ago, the galaxy had been a lightless place. And it was old, so Imperial scholars and the alien eldar believed. Races far more ancient than man once ruled the stars. It was only logical to assume that some of them had lived on the worlds mankind had colonised. Perhaps some, those able to withstand the entropy of time and the elements, had never left.
The chrono counting down on Scipio’s retinal display was at twenty-eight minutes. They had used up over half of Vantor’s time getting this far.
‘Keep moving,’ he ordered. ‘And, scout,’ he added to Largo, who was leading them out, ‘stay close until we can restore vox.’
It took another six minutes to reach the cavern Auris had specified.
It was vast. Immense, in fact. Ice floes trickled down ribbed walls that rose up into a vaulted ceiling prickled with distant stalactites. Swathes of frost crunched underfoot, becoming bulwarks of ice where the floor met the walls.
An entire hangar of gunships would have no difficulty fitting inside the massive chamber, Scipio realised. But like the others, it was not the cavern’s sheer size that caught his attention, it was the strange vents in the floor.
There were hundreds, arranged in perfect symmetry, their wide necks tapering to a much narrower aperture at the end. Languid vapour was oozing from the mouths of these bizarre, unnatural formations. Encrusted with hoarfrost, a casual observer might have mistaken them for some genus of subterranean flora, but they were not remotely anything like that.
Scipio realised almost at once that the vents were metallic and distinctly alien in origin. The vapour spilling from their mouths was doing so downwards, carpeting the floor around them in a pale mist. He suspected this too was unnaturally produced, likely heavy in nitrogen or fluorine.
‘Tell me what you see, brother,’ he said to Largo, who had reached the strange crop of vents and was knelt down examining one of them.
Auris joined him, scanning with the auspex.
‘Definitely inorganic…’ Auris muttered.
‘There are tracks here, too,’ added Largo, leaving his brother to his analysi
s and moving further into the chamber.
With Garrik on overwatch, Scipio went after Largo to see what he had discovered.
‘Two kinds,’ Largo continued, throwing the light of his luminator over a deep impression of what could only be a booted imprint made by power armour. ‘And here,’ he added, highlighting a second example. The latter were also recognisable.
‘Tank tracks,’ Scipio whispered, trying to put together what he was seeing into some form of logical order. ‘We are not the first Ultramarines to reconnoitre this cave system.’
‘Sergeant Egnatius’s tank company scouted into the Vogenhoff region,’ said Largo.
‘I heard of no reports of this cavern. Why would a veteran officer like Votan Egnatius not make mention of it?’ Scipio looked around. They were surrounded by a veritable field of vents. He and Largo were standing near the edge, but Auris was deep in amongst them conducting further scans. There were several others, colonising the entire chamber in perfectly rectangular areas.
‘Brother Auris…’ Scipio began, instinctively reaching for his bolt pistol.
‘Something is happening…’ Auris replied, intent on his analysis.
‘Brother,’ said Largo.
Scipio caught Garrik’s attention and signalled him to hold position.
Auris was peering down into the mouth of one of the vents. ‘The gaseous vapour is abating. I can see something inside it…’ He checked the auspex, before looking back. ‘Retinal analysis is inconclu–’
A dark mass was suddenly expectorated from the vent. It spattered against Auris’s faceplate, forcing him to drop the auspex and recoil.
Garrik was about to advance, but Scipio’s raised hand stopped him.
All of the vents had stopped fuming. Something was trickling down their fluted sides. No, not trickling… crawling.
‘It’s all right,’ said Auris, signalling the all clear. ‘Must have been some kind of blockage, probably from–’ He stopped with an abrupt jerk. A swarm of tiny insect-like creatures had penetrated his vox-grille, bored through the hairline gaps between his helmet and its retinal lenses. They had bypassed his gorget and were, even now, infiltrating his body through his mouth, ears and nose.