by Ian Woodhead
The alien charged at Danny and managed to grab him despite Danny dropping to the ground. “They have defiled the Battle Sister,” he said after pulling Trooper Cole close to his face. “They have treated you like a worm. They deserve to die.”
He could now hear them pulling their huge bodies through the thick mud. They were coming straight for them. Danny managed to gaze down the alien’s thick body, his gaze stopping at the Gizanti’s side arm. He doubted that even that would be able to stop these dead things. How can you even kill something that’s already dead?
“Help them because I am asking you! They can’t help what they are, just like those things behind us can’t help what they are!”
“I cannot, Danny. Most of my species are now gone. I can no longer hear their voices. We number just a handful. Only the wanderers and the expelled insane remain. Let me die as I choose.”
Trooper Cole lifted the heavy knife and placed the cutting edge against his own throat. “I do know some elements of your culture, Cladinus. If I die in your charge, No God will accept you, not even the Ninth.” He pressed the blade deeper, feeling the razor edge break skin. Strange how he felt no discomfort.
Their shadows separated from the edge of the forest. In another couple of moments, it wouldn’t matter about not worrying how deep he would have to push in this blade without seeking medical help. Cladinus leaned towards him then gently gripped the blade with his mandibles and pulled it away from his flesh.
“You confuse me so much,” he said, after releasing the knife. The alien dropped the human before pulling out his blaster. “Perhaps one day, I might hear your voice, Danny.” Cladinus pulled out his blaster and shot the closest figure, its armour-plating literally exploded, covering the trees behind it with shards of smouldering shell and lumps of boiling putrefying meat.
In the distance, Danny heard gunshots. He’d recognise Imperial weapons fire anywhere, and he knew that none of the guns those marines carried were nowhere as powerful as whatever the fuck Cladinus had just used. He looked past the burning stump and saw the floor were packed with those things. He couldn’t even count how many there were, all heading towards them. “Cladinus, can you take them all out?”
The alien nodded. “Yes…”
“Then do it, before they all die.”
“If you insist.”
The Gizanti’s hand pressed in a small wet lump located on the top of the weapon, raised his hand then fired again. Danny slammed his hand over his face when the world turned an intense white. He only took his hand away when he felt the ground beneath him rumble. The alien grabbed his arm.
“We must hurry. The ground holds the ancestors from thousands of years past and our bodies do not break down as quickly as a human corpse.”
His weapon had cleared a wide path all the way through the forest, melting both dead Gizanti and the trees. The energy stream had even turned the material in the wet floor, fused it into glass. Even as he watched, the undamaged aliens were starting to make their way towards their route to the structure.
Cladinus was already running along the fused pathway. Danny raced after him, acutely aware that he’d pressed that blade a little too hard against his neck. He had swapped the pain from the weave-cut to feeling as though his head was about to fall off his shoulders.
They were almost through the forest when one of the dead Gizanti threw itself directly in front of Danny. “Shoot it!” he cried. “Please melt the bastard.” He stumbled back as the huge armour-plated killing machine scuttled straight for him. He held the knife tight, seriously considering to finish the job he had first started as it sure wasn’t going to help him out of this. Danny shifted to the left and screamed when another Gizanti’s thick grey arm snaked out from behind an undamaged tree and almost grabbed him.
He dropped onto the glass floor and rolled to the side before he scrambled to his feet and ran towards Cladinus only to find the dead Gizanti was now about to attack his alias friend, and yet he still wasn’t raising the weapon. What was wrong with him? Did he still want to die?
Danny leapt onto its back and desperately tried to find something that didn’t feel like it was made of thick steel. He held on with his feet and fingers while dodging the dead thing’s arms.
“Count three plates down from the top of her head,” shouted the Gizanti while he dodged the dead alien’s snapping mandibles.
He did as instructed, trying not to look at the amount of blood he was dripping onto the creature’s armoured back. Danny found the tight join between the plates and slammed the knife deep, crying out in shock and pain when the dead Gizanti’s movements suddenly stopped. He slipped off and crashed onto the baked hard ground, only to see three more dead things reaching for his splayed body. Cladinus scooped him up and ran towards the structure while holding Danny under his arm.
He set Trooper Cole down as soon as they reached the narrow doorway.
“I can’t believe I left my knife stuck in that dead thing,” he muttered, while peering into inside the building. He ran his hand down the surface. It looked like ordinary stone, and yet it was warm to the touch and felt very similar to the dead thing’s carapace. Danny shuddered, deciding not to pursue that line of inquiry. There was enough light to see that the first chamber was empty.
Danny looked for anything else that he’d be able to use to defend himself and settled for a hand-sized rock close to his feet. It felt ridiculous walking into an area of extreme danger armed with something so primitive, but he had no other choice. After watching the big alien, it was obvious that his gun would be of no further use.
The Gizanti pushed him inside before he followed Danny in. “Cladinus, why didn’t you fire? You could have turned that thing into a puddle of goo with one trigger squeeze.”
“I regret that I could not, human. You did not allow me time to finish speaking.” The alien moved out of the way. “They will not follow us in here.”
The huge dead aliens were congregating outside the structure. They skittered between the alien trees and joined their companions on the path of grey glass. Further out, Trooper Cole groaned at the sight of more of them pushing their huge bodies out of the wet mud. “We’re not going to get out of here.”
The alien gently pulled him away from the doorway. “We should find the other humans. That is why we are here.”
Danny pulled away from Cladinus. He ran back over to the doorway. “No, not yet,” he said, trying to keep his emotions from boiling over. “Not until you tell me why those dead things will not come in here or why you refused to shoot that one.” He spun around. “Tell me what the hell is going on here, because you do know. I’m not that stupid.” Trooper Cole wanted Mr. Smith now more than anything else. His voice of reason would have known exactly what was going on here. Maybe he should have done exactly what the alien had told him to do in the first place. He had no loyalty to their unit, and despite the Chaplain’s insistence that he was valuable cargo, Danny didn’t think any of those black-clad idiots would risk their neck to rescue him.
“Because I was told,” he replied, before turning around and shuffling towards another open doorway on the other side of the dim chamber.
“I’m so glad we had this conversation,” he muttered, looking at his rock. “I feel so much better knowing all the answers.” Danny had no other choice but to follow the large alien and hope that the reason the dead Gizanti stayed out there was not because of a larger, more deadly menace lurking in here.
Danny reached the other doorway. Cladinus had already entered so there was little point in being stealthy. Still, he kept his back against the wall and peered around the edge of the door just to be sure.
“This is unbelievable!” Millions of glowing icons covered every inch of the four walls. Danny ignored any potential danger and practically glided into the middle of the room, utterly engrossed by the alien symbols surrounding his body. A low hum reverberated from every icon. The uniform noise then separated into separate voices. He wanted to close his eyes knowin
g that without the distraction of the icons, those voices would become clear, yet Danny dare not separate himself from this reality. He would not be able to find his way back. He was vaguely aware of the Gizanti and another figure close by, but none of that mattered. All he wanted to do was to listen to the voices of the angels.
Another voice, with a deeper tone, started to take away the angels one by one. They retreated, slipping out of the choir inside his head. He mourned their loss, urging them to return, to stop merging with the symbols, but none took heed. Danny found himself kneeling on the stone floor, weeping into his hands while that one voice remained, telling Trooper Cole to stand up and face the first demon.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted back, but the voice obviously had no intention of listening to his order. Instead, it increased in volume, turning from coaxing into orders of its own, each one growing more urgent.
Trooper Cole slowly removed his hands away from his face when another sense kicked it. This one would not be silenced by his voice. The stink of dead meat now filled his nose. He felt something pawing at the tattered clothing on his back accompanied with harsh groaning and what sounded like the snapping of jaws.
“Move away from it now, human!”
Danny viciously kicked out, feeling the sole of his boot connect with something soft before he scrambled forward, not stopping until he reached a wall. The fact that the symbols were no longer glowing hardly registered as his brain was too busy trying to soak in the sight of one of the marines shuffling towards him. It hadn’t occurred to the soldier that having a hole in the chest that you could push your head through meant that you should be dead.
Danny did the only thing he could. As the dead soldier lunged towards him, he stepped to the side and slammed the rock down on the man’s crown. The blow seemed to have little effect, so he hit it again and again, not even stopping when the sound of his skull splintering echoed around the chamber. Trooper Cole only ceased his activities when the alien lifted his blood-soaked wrists up and opened his fingers. Danny listened to the rock hitting the floor while watching a single gleam icon on the far wall light up for a moment before joining the others and going dark.
“You might need this,” said Cladinus, passing Danny the dead soldier’s weapon. “I would ask you to clean your hands as well, human. His body fluid does not belong on you.”
Trooper Cole crouched between the fallen rock and the twice-dead soldier and wiped the blood and mashed brain off his skin. “I’m sorry about this. You was not the most pleasant individual, but even you did not deserve a death like this.” He looked up at the alien. “Are you ready to tell me just what the fuck is going on now?”
“We were once blood-thirsty barbarians like you humans, many generations before your species reached your only moon. Our empire relied on artefacts, tools, and buildings built instead of grown.” He stepped back and traced the designs on the surface with one of his claws. “We did not construct this vile machine, but it is of Gizanti design. It is a resurrection chamber. When we invaded the worlds of our enemies, these were dropped from orbit onto their population centres. As you could imagine, the terror caused by the actions of these machines caused enough mayhem for our troops to take over and occupy a world with minimum casualties.”
Danny shuddered to think how this dirty technology would be used if the Empire ever found out about it. He then tried to imagine just how great this Empire that had turned him into the lowest of the low would have coped if these aliens were still as warlike as Cladinus suggested. They wouldn’t have stood a chance. Trooper Cole now understood the position they were really in. The Empire had come up against an alien civilisation more advanced than them. “I hope you don’t tell anybody else about these things, Cladinus.”
“We are bonded now, Danny. I have no secrets from you. Although I still wish you had gone back to the ship and allowed me to make my way to the Eight Gods.” He finally took his claws away from the symbols on the wall. “It is difficult being the only member on my species walking upon the earth of the home-world. This is also why I can no longer use this.” The Gizanti patted his sidearm. “It is our life-force which supplies the weapon’s power. Every time it is used, we all lose a few seconds of life, as I am the only one left.”
Danny nodded. “Right, it would drain you like a vampire. Wait, I thought you wanted to die?”
“The weapon does not know that.” He turned. “Come, we had better go find the others.”
He followed the alien out of this strange chamber. He tried not to think about why it had affected him like it did. Danny wasn’t too keen on working out how they would leave this place either. The marines were armed, but none of them had anything able to create so much destruction with a single blast.
Imperial weaponry was supposed to be the most advanced in the known galaxy, although after witnessing the Gizanti’s blaster, Danny was quite prepared to dispute that claim. Even so, they did possess energy weapons that would create an effect close to what he had just witnessed. Only, none of this unit had anything like that. The elite regiments always received the most advanced and up-to-date ordinance, while the rest of the regiments were issued with more basic variants.
He looked at this piece of junk. Up to now, Trooper Cole had not really studied the weapons held by this unit of marines. Until now, he had only seen the muzzle when they pointed it at his head. It was quite clear that these idiots were not as important as they made out, not if the only weapon the units carried were obsolete SS50s. These things were so old; they had even been modified for civilian use.
“The other humans are close by. Perhaps two levels below. Come. We must hurry. Time is no longer on our side.”
Having said his piece, the alien scuttled away, moving a lot faster than Danny thought possible. He had to sprint in order to catch up to the Gizanti. “Wait, how do you know where they are? I cannot hear anything.” That wasn’t quite true. Danny could hear his own hard breathing as he attempted to keep up with Cladinus. As Trooper Cole expected, the alien did not bother to expand on his words. The Gizanti was beginning to get as annoying as Mr. Smith.
They reached a flight of stone steps. The alien stepped to the side. “You must go down alone, human. I cannot continue. I will wait here until you return.”
“And you are not going to tell my why?”
“You have your gun, and the location of the other human. Do you want me to hold your hand as well?”
For the moment, Danny almost believed that his voice of reason was stood behind the big alien. “No, you stay there. I can deal with them.”
Chapter Five
He dove through the roaring flames, wincing as it licked his soft down. His blistered paws slammed against the concrete floor. Walish Din rolled into a ball, gritting his teeth as the agony of the impact burst open some of the blisters. He felt blood and pus dripping down his arms as he jumped up. There was no time to inspect the damage, Walish Din had to get out of here, from the fire and from the perpetrators which raised his home to the ground.
Five orange dragons were still within the settlement, methodically investigating every structure still standing. They were seeking out survivors, the hardy and the strong who had managed to live through their first wave of slaughter. There was no respite for any of his fellow species. The alien fiends could instinctively home in on the last of the shivering Diannin, no matter how well they hid under planks of scorched wood and rubble. Walish Din heard every single scream of utter terror in his mind, seconds before the orange dragons incinerated another member of his species.
He raced out of the burning shed, coughing and weeping. Completely aware that he was now the single remaining member of his tribe still living. Walish Din was also aware that if he didn’t find some way to avoid their internal radar, those bastards would never stop searching for him.
Walish Din ran through a field full of blade-corn. Thousands of tiny serrated barbs tore out his fur as he pushed his way through the head-high crop, but the young Diannin wa
s in too much pain to notice: agony from the cuts, burns, and blisters he had accumulated while trying to save his tribe, and the deep ache in his heart from knowing that he had failed.
Those orange dragons had even torched his beloved herd of glikgliks.
He burst through the edge of the field and ran towards Claynon Forest, hoping he would be able to lose them inside the dense tree cover. The Diannin scrambled up a steep slope, not stopping until he reached the final ledge. Only then did Walish Din turn around. The orange dragons were leaving the settlement, heading out in the opposite direction and travelling in single file. He dropped to his knees then fell into the soft grass, thanking his now deceased shepherd companions for allowing their own glikgliks to devour the brittle pods which should have covered the surface.
It took the last of his will to pull his aching body away from the seductive embrace of this lush vegetation. He needed to sleep, to rest and heal, but if he stayed here, out in the open, vulnerable and unaware, Walish Din would be walking with his tribe, elders, and spawn donors through the Plains of Gopin when he opened his eyes.
To find himself reunited with his tribe and to be free of all this terrible pain, both mental and physical, sounded like such a good idea. Walish Din would not have to worry about anything that happened on this plain ever again.
He moaned quietly and felt the waves of shame wash over him. Every plain on every level of life and death should be nurtured and loved. He was not a glikglik or a human. Wishing to live upon the next plain was sinful.
Walish Din lifted his head and cried as he saw the last of the flames devour his settlement. The orange dragons were now out of sight; no doubt another tribe was about to get a visit from those hateful fiends. His youthful spirit wanted to run to the next settlement, to warn them of their impending doom, but he now knew that it would do no good. Their elders would not listen to a shepherd from a different tribe; if anything, they would simply chase him off their territory. After all, his own elder thought he had gone insane. They had simply laughed at him. He sighed, only stopping to cough.