Hidden Depths

by Sandy Mitchell

  A whole swarm of the deadly sump-dwelling creatures, each as big as a cyber-mastiff, was skittering towards them, attracted by the presence of prey. Far too many to fight off in the open.

  ‘Suddenly this looks like the safer option,’ Yanbel said, hurrying along the narrow ledge behind her. The vanguard of the swarm was beginning to appear over the cliff edge behind them, and Amberley sent a shot hissing through the intervening air in their general direction. Though it had been unaimed, her instincts were good, and the leading spider popped like an offal-filled balloon. A few stopped to take advantage of the unexpected meal but the rest scuttled on, like an approaching tidal bore of snapping mandibles.

  ‘Depends on your definition of safe,’ Amberley said, recovering her balance in the nick of time as the lip of the ledge crumbled beneath her foot. It was narrowing by the moment, already forcing her to move along it sideways, and she began to wonder if she’d just herded them into a trap.

  ‘Secure, harmless, a vault...’ Mott began automatically, hurrying as best he could under the circumstances, which wasn’t much; as well as keeping his footing, he was attempting to support Rakel, who trotted ahead of him with her usual unfocused expression. Zemelda and Pelton brought up the rear, sniping with their laspistols, but for every spider they downed another four poured up and over the cliff edge.

  ‘They’re beneath us!’ Pelton called, but Amberley had already seen the danger. As sure-footed on a vertical surface as on the level, the bulk of the swarm were spreading out beneath them like blood from a severed artery, flowing ahead to cut off whatever lay at the end of the ledge. The first arachnoid to straddle the narrow path turned to face them, its mandibles clacking like the teeth of a man in a snowstorm, and Amberley gunned it down, gaining a second or two of grace.

  ‘We’re cut off,’ Amberley told everyone, glancing back, but there was no returning the way they’d come either. The spiders were above and below the path now, as well as blocking it entirely. None of the weapons they had with them could hope to make much of an impression on a swarm of that size.

  ‘Keep going,’ Rakel said calmly, her lucidity all the more startling for being dropped into the frenzy of combat. ‘Look for the crack in the world.’ Which, if hardly less cryptic than most of her utterances, at least sounded purposeful. And it was for these moments of insight that Amberley kept her around.

  ‘Right.’ Amberley cleared the ledge and its immediate surroundings with a volley of rapid fire. The clip of bolts in her pistol was now empty, but under the circumstances there was no point trying to conserve ammunition. She hurried forward, snapping a fresh load in as she moved, her heels slipping for a heart-stopping moment in the spilled spider blood. Then the breath caught in her throat. A few metres away, light was spilling from a cleft in the rock, dim and flickering.

  Without stopping to think, she ducked her head and wriggled through.

  For a moment Amberley wondered if she’d simply swapped one form of death for another, slithering head first down a narrow, steeply-inclined cleft in the rock to a hard and messy landing. She couldn’t see much with her arms raised to protect her head, but the glow seemed to be brighter at the far end, and she flinched, anticipating a plunge into some chemically-fluorescent pool of effluent. Someone was whooping behind her, probably Zemelda, but the echoes in the confined space made it hard to tell if it was from exhilaration or fear. Probably both, knowing her most recent recruit...

  Abruptly the cleft spat her out, and Amberley found herself falling heavily onto a thick mat of foul-smelling moss, which at least broke her fall without breaking anything else. She rolled aside, just in time to be missed by Yanbel’s boots, and the ensuing cascade of her entourage.

  ‘Rank,’ Zemelda said, grimacing at the residue of mush the relatively soft landing had left on her jacket.

  ‘You’d rather have landed on the rocks?’ Pelton asked, and the young woman shrugged.

  ‘No chance. I was right behind you.’

  ‘Concentrate!’ Amberley said, recalling everyone to business. A small amount of banter was inevitable in the first rush of relief at not being dead after all, and she intended to make sure they all stayed that way. ‘Mott, Yanbel, best guesses. Where the frak are we?’

  ‘A forgotten cavern,’ Yanbel said, taking in their surroundings properly for the first time. The dim, diffuse light made it hard to be sure, but Amberley estimated the far wall to be at least a couple of kilometres away. ‘Cut off by a hivequake, maybe.’

  ‘Entirely plausible,’ Mott agreed. ‘Or perhaps opened up by one. It would have been considerably below the original surface of Ironfound, and probably escaped the notice of the original colonists entirely.’

  ‘If it’s not a stupid question,’ Zemelda asked, ‘how come we can see?’

  ‘Not stupid at all,’ Amberley said, turning back to the tech-priest and the savant. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Bioluminescence of some kind,’ Yanbel said. He gestured towards a cluster of softly-glowing columns in the distance, which looked to Amberley like the boles of tall, elegant trees. All appeared to be bare of leaves, or even branches, but it was hard to be entirely sure, as their lower halves were thickly entwined with sickly vegetation.

  ‘A creditable hypothesis,’ Mott agreed, ‘but not the only one. Those columns appear more regularly spaced than seems entirely consistent with random growth.’

  ‘You mean somebody planted them?’ Amberley said, trying to ignore a prickle of apprehension on the back of her neck.

  ‘Or constructed them,’ Mott added. ‘Until we examine them, we cannot be certain that they’re organisms at all.’

  ‘The hole’s still open,’ Rakel said suddenly, staring off into the distance.

  ‘She’s right,’ Pelton said, glancing up at the cleft in the rock through which they’d so precipitously descended, some three or four metres above their heads. ‘And someone’s been using it.’

  A rope ladder was dangling from the lip, still swaying gently from the turbulence of their passage, and Amberley breathed a sigh of relief as she realised how close they must all have come to the iron staple from which it hung. At the speed they’d descended, it would have cracked an impacting skull like an overripe ploin.

  ‘The Dog Eaters?’ Zemelda asked, reaching the obvious conclusion an instant after the Inquisitor herself.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Amberley said, with a rising sense of foreboding. ‘Far more likely they found the Tears of Isha here than in the main hive.’

  This raised a whole raft of further uncomfortable questions. The only place the Dog Eaters could have taken a soul stone from was a dead eldar, though what the enigmatic xenos might be doing in the depths of an Imperial hive was anybody’s guess. Let alone what might have killed them.

  Well, there’d be time enough to worry about that if they found some. In the meantime her duty was clear. She gestured at the cleft in the rock. ‘We need to seal that when we leave. I don’t want any more xenos artefacts getting into the hive before the Deathwatch can cleanse the place properly.’ Though how they were going to close the tunnel was a problem. ‘If we had some explosives...’

  ‘I’ve got some fyceline charges,’ Yanbel said, pulling a bulky package from a pocket of his robe, ‘and a couple of timers.’ He watched, puzzled, as his companions edged away a little.

  ‘And you carry those around all the time?’ Amberley asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

  ‘Never know when they might come in handy,’ the tech-priest explained, and the inquisitor bit down on the impulse to ask what else he might keep tucked away on that basis. Some questions were better left unanswered.

  ‘Good.’ She indicated the swaying ladder. ‘Shin up there and set the charges. We’ll blow them as soon as we’re back through.’ Climbing the narrow shaft would be uncomfortable, but no more than that; if the Dog Eaters came here frequently enough to have installed a ladder, the route couldn’t be that difficult. Which rather begged the question of what else they’d found
down here, to make the effort of repeated visits worthwhile.

  There was no time to consider the matter any further, however, as the unmistakable sound of gunfire suddenly echoed between the eerily glowing columns.

  For a moment Amberley hesitated. The protection of Ironfound and its billions of inhabitants had to be their highest priority. But you can’t fight your enemies until you know who they are. She turned to Pelton. ‘Flicker, with me.’ Her gaze swept across the rest of the party. ‘Everyone else stay put, and get those charges set.’

  ‘I’m on it, ma’am,’ Zemelda assured her, checking the charge in her laspistol.

  ‘Good.’ More shots rang out, and Amberley ran towards them, Pelton at her side.

  They lost sight of the cleft through which they’d come within moments, weaving through the forest of glowing columns and their overlay of parasitic vegetation at a rapid, energy-conserving jog. The moss still felt springy beneath Amberley’s bootsoles, but was thinner here, with patches of bare rock appearing sporadically through it.

  She slowed a little as they skirted one of the columns, less overgrown than most, and tried to take in as much detail as she could; whatever it was made of was smooth, like alabaster, a gentle radiance emanating from deep within its heart. Faint patterns seemed to be visible on its surface, and she hesitated, on the brink of stopping to investigate, only to pick up her pace again as soon as another fusillade of shots echoed from somewhere up ahead.

  ‘Those plants have been eaten,’ Pelton said, raising his laspistol as he ran, and scanning the shrubs between the glowing columns with even greater caution than before. Amberley nodded. Where there were herbivores, carnivores usually followed, a point almost immediately underlined by a sudden thrashing and squealing in the undergrowth, abruptly cut off.

  The going underfoot seemed to be getting easier, and after a moment Amberley realised why: they were following a pathway between the columns, an occasional patch of brightly-coloured tiling appearing through the encroaching moss. Another unpleasant surprise; paths tended to lead somewhere, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that in this case it was directly to trouble. The scavvies would probably have followed it on their first visit and found at least one dead eldar at the other end, or even, judging by the sounds of combat, a live one, and gunned down the original possessor of the soul stone they’d taken back to the underhive.

  ‘Emperor’s blood!’ Amberley swore under her breath, as she considered the implications of that. Live eldar infesting the roots of Ironfound was a prospect almost too terrible to contemplate. Why they would be there, and how they’d arrived, were still beyond her, although a dark and terrible suspicion was beginning to nag at the corners of her mind.

  ‘Looks like buildings up ahead,’ Pelton warned, and Amberley checked the action of her bolt pistol. The all-pervasive glow was growing brighter, with more of the substance the columns were made of rearing up into strange, smooth-sided outcrops, spreading out in both directions. Pelton could well be right, she thought – the openings in their sides looked remarkably like windows and doors, while rib-like buttresses fluted out from the largest structures.

  Acting instantly on the thought, Amberley stepped off the path, squirming between the shrubs. If she’d been fortifying the ruins she’d have posted a sharpshooter to watch the most obvious entry point, and, in her experience, walking across the gun sights of an ambusher seldom ended well.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Pelton asked quietly, floundering in her wake. There were rustlings in the undergrowth around them, and sudden flickers of movement.

  ‘No.’ Something broke cover and darted away, and she caught sight of a small, quadrupedal saurian barrelling through the brush. Thick armour plates covered its back, and its tail ended in a spike-encrusted club any ork would be proud to own. ‘I’m just making it up as I go along.’

  Pelton shrugged. ‘That’s always worked till now,’ he said, thumbing his palm.

  Amberley pretended not to have seen the good luck gesture. ‘Come on. We can get through here.’

  They broke through the screening vegetation, and found themselves surrounded by softly glowing walls, ribbed and mounded like a vast coral reef. Brushing against one, Amberley was surprised to find it cool to the touch, the light flaring momentarily where her skin touched the smooth surface. The effect was almost hypnotic – so much so that she almost missed the flicker of movement in the vegetation behind her.

  Almost, but not quite. With a guttural roar, a bipedal saurian half as tall as she was erupted from the bushes, toothed mouth agape, talons extended to eviscerate its prey. A charred crater suddenly appeared, seared deep into the hide of its powerful shoulder muscles, as Pelton snapped off a shot, but the creature barely slowed. Pelton’s intervention did buy her enough time to pivot out of the path of the creature’s initial rush, though, and she fired her bolt pistol as it turned to snap at her. The explosive bolt detonated inside the saurian’s mouth, reducing brain and skull to puree, but the huge lizard took almost a minute to realise it was dead, running almost a hundred metres past the two humans before crashing to the ground.

  ‘No point trying to be stealthy after that,’ Amberley said, and followed it out into the open.

  She found herself in a wide, oval plaza, surrounded by the strange, glowing buildings; in the centre of it a decorative archway stood, of plain stone, incised with the elegant flowing lines of eldar script. The moss was less widespread here, revealing more of the intricate design worked into the paving, which the Inquisitor was far from surprised to find appearing as a labyrinth of quite stunning complexity.

  The silence was abruptly broken by a fusillade of shots, and the sound of running feet; a scavvy appeared from between the buildings, firing wildly behind him, a panicked attempt at suppression rather than a concerted attempt to hit something. Seeing Amberley and Pelton, he changed direction towards them, gesturing frantically. ‘Get back!’ he yelled. They’re right behind–’

  Then his head exploded into mist, and he collapsed, the cadaver sliding a few metres under its own momentum. Needing no further urging, Amberley and Pelton melted back into the shadows.

  No sooner had they reached concealment than an eldar appeared, his flickering outline blurred by a cameleonic cape, his long-barrelled weapon still pointing at the fallen scavvy. Apparently satisfied with the kill, he strolled over to it, and began searching the body with a fluid economy of motion no human could have matched. A moment later a second warrior joined him, and stood, watching expectantly; the first raised his head and addressed her in the liquid cadences of their own tongue.

  ‘The mon’keigh does not possess it.’

  ‘One of its companions, then.’

  ‘All are slain. Kallander’s soul remains lost.’

  The second eldar seemed to consider the matter.

  ‘Then it has passed into the dwellings of the mon’keigh. We will follow.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ Amberley interjected, walking out into the open. She held up the leather pouch. ‘I have come far to return this. It seems I have found its true place.’

  ‘You find death,’ the first eldar said, raising his rifle again with inhuman speed and dexterity. Amberley dived aside as he pulled the trigger, knowing as she did so that it was far too late. The spinning monomolecular discs hissed through the air towards her, seconds away from shredding her torso.

  Then, with a crack of imploding air, her displacer field cut in, and she found herself falling to the ground a hundred metres away, tucking instinctively into a roll which brought her back to her feet. The eldar who’d fired at her was still looking round in bemusement when Pelton shot him, two laspistol bolts slamming into his back in the approved Arbitrator’s double tap. As he fell, coughing blood, his companion raised her own weapon, returning fire just as Pelton ducked back into cover.

  ‘Only fools and orks fight without cause,’ Amberley said, shooting her in the leg and running forward. The limb exploded in blood and offal as the miniature
bolt detonated, and the eldar fell, crying out in pain and surprise. Her rifle fell to the ground, and Amberley kicked it out of reach in the nick of time. ‘I would ask which you are, but your face isn’t green.’

  ‘Mock while you can, mon’keigh girl,’ the eldar snarled. ‘Death walks at your heels from this day on.’

  Pelton hurried across to join her, glancing down at the stricken eldar. ‘I’m guessing whatever they’re saying, it isn’t thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You guess right,’ Amberley told him. She took the spirit stone from the pouch, and dropped it in the lap of the eldar Pelton had shot. Both xenos stared at the flickering jewel in astonishment. ‘If you recover, choose your enemies more carefully,’ she counselled.

  ‘This world is ours,’ the female replied, glaring hate as she patched her wounded leg. ‘We nurtured it and prepared it, and we have seen what you have made of it. We will return, and take our revenge.’

  ‘Then you leave me no choice,’ Amberley said, with a trace of regret, and raised her bolt pistol again, preparing to execute the pair of them. The billions of oblivious Ironfounders above their heads would never be safe if these two succeeded in summoning their brethren. But before she could fire, another eldar ghosted into the plaza, raising its rifle as it came. She switched aim, and fired, sending it diving for cover, then took advantage of the momentary respite to do the same thing herself. As soon as she was out of the xenos’ sightline, she sprinted for the bushes.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ Pelton asked, picking up his pace to match hers. One of the first things an Inquisitorial acolyte learned is that when the inquisitor starts running, it’s best to keep up.

  ‘Far from it,’ Amberley said.

  She raised her bolt pistol, and snapped off a shot at a blur of motion between the trees. Nothing showed clearly, but the cameoline cloaks of the eldar rangers would render them almost invisible in the dense brush, only the faintest flicker of movement revealing their presence. The bolt exploded harmlessly in a blizzard of wood chippings, but the whisper of movement stilled, in a rustle of branches. She must have come close enough to at least alarm the lurking eldar.