by Steve Lyons
It wasn’t yet time for the public luminators to come on, but a moment ago there had been lighted windows and business signs outside. Now there was nothing, no man-made light at all, and Arex was beginning to appreciate just how much earlier dusk came to the lower floors than it did to her High Spire window.
She stabbed at the door rune by her knee, once, twice, three times, to no avail. She twisted around in her seat and kicked at the door instead, putting her full weight behind each blow until the latch gave way.
The air outside the autocab was far colder than it had been above.
A moment ago, the strangers on this skyway had been moving with direction and purpose. Now, they milled uncertainly, looking at each other as if somebody else might have the answers they craved. Arex kept her head down, irrationally afraid that if she made eye contact with any of them she might be recognised.
Murmurs reached her ears, certain repeated words confirming what she had already begun to suspect: ‘…power outage… whole of the neighbourhood, maybe beyond… can’t see any lights on the upper floors…’
All of a sudden, Arex felt a long way from home.
The autocabs drew power from the skyways themselves. If there was no power in this sector, if that much was true, then there were no cabs… and no lifters. How long would it take her to climb all those floors – even assuming she could find a staircase that wasn’t barricaded from above? She could always flag down a proctor, she thought. Their vehicles had independent power sources… didn’t they? But then, she would have to explain to Uncle Hanrik what she was doing down here, and whatever lie she told him it would make him suspicious enough to start digging for the truth.
She told herself to calm down. For all she knew, the power could be restored at any moment. If the outage had affected the upper floors too, then the enginseers would certainly be working on it. In the meantime, Arex thought she could remember the layout of the surrounding towers from the autocab’s map. She could find her way to Gunthar’s hab, at least.
She wrapped her coat more tightly about herself and started walking. She knew that, statistically speaking, these floors were relatively safe, far safer than the one to which she had taken Gunthar last night. Still, the darkness unnerved her. It cast the faces around her into shadow, making it seem like everyone she passed was hiding some malevolent intent. It created inkblot shapes in the corners, in the windows, in the mouths of the alleyways, which unfailingly reminded Arex of the pink-eyed mutant.
She removed her mother’s necklace, as she had done last night, concealed it in her coat pocket. She could see Gunthar’s hab-block up ahead. She quickened her pace, thinking that in a few minutes’ time she could be safe indoors, in his arms, and these unfounded fears of hers would be a dissipating memory.
But then, a new shadow – a larger and more ominous shadow – crept over her.
A shape was collecting in the evening sky: a black cloud, but like no cloud Arex had seen before. It was too dense, too low – it was hovering between the upper floors of the towers themselves – and it was growing in size, billowing ever outwards.
Then, Arex realised what that cloud had to be.
It was a swarm. An insect swarm.
Arex stared in horrified fascination as the swarm continued to build.
There had to have been thousands, hundreds of thousands, of bodies in that great pulsating mass, and thick black streams were rising from the lower floors to further engorge it. She wondered what could have made the normally passive insects of her world behave like this, and then she realised she could hear no sound from the swarm, no buzzing. She wondered why the insects weren’t buzzing.
It was perhaps that very lack of sound that prevented Arex from seeing the danger she was in. That, and the impossibility of judging the scale and the distance of the swarm in the half-light. It wasn’t until the people around her began to see it, began to cry out and to turn and to run, to seek shelter in the surrounding hab-blocks, that Arex grasped the awful truth: that the swarm was no longer hovering, but was now moving.
It was coming directly towards her.
She started to back away, but her gaze was still fixed to the awful sight above her, her brain still trying to work out what it was she was seeing. It took her a moment to overcome this dreadful semi-paralysis, to get a grip on herself, to look for an escape route, and by then she feared it might already have been too late.
Arex ran for the nearest hab-block, finding her way obstructed by fear-frozen bystanders and also by those who had started to run but had chosen the direction of their flight at random. She forced her way through, and made it to the base of a broad flight of stone steps, but was elbowed aside before she could climb them. A skirmish broke out at the top of the steps, as those who had made it through the building’s front doors tried to close them against those still striving to follow them. There was no refuge for her in there.
She looked over her shoulder, and her heart leapt into her throat. The swarm was almost upon her, close enough now that she could make out some of its constituent components as they peeled away from its edges. The insects looked like no species native to this world. They were silver in hue, and far too large. They were the size of a large rat. No, bigger than that even. They were flying, but Arex could see no wings.
Then the insects descended upon their prey, and the screaming began in earnest.
Arex found herself at the centre of a maelstrom. The insects were everywhere, above her, around her. One of them tore at her clothing as it flew by, and scratched her skin. She had thought the swarm silent before, but now her ears were filled with the rustling of carapace upon carapace. She thrashed her arms in a vain attempt to ward the creatures away from her. She felt her balled fist making contact with a small, hard body, sending it spinning, but ten more of the insect’s kind appeared to replace it.
A woman beside her howled in agony as an insect tore the skin from her face. Arex felt something in her hair, an insect tangled up in there, and she panicked and screamed and tore at it, and escaped somehow with only a few more scratches.
She tried to keep moving, as if she might through some Emperor-sent miracle find her way to the swarm’s edge before she became a target too, but people were dying all around her, falling over each other, stumbling into her path, and she didn’t know which way was which – and, suddenly, she felt something new. A rain of debris, a half-brick glancing off her cheek, bruising her.
The swarm was attacking the towers too. A sizeable flank of it had just side-swiped the hab-block in which Arex had sought shelter. The insects had gouged a deep trench in the brickwork, causing it to contract and crumble, the windows to burst, and to her horror Arex realised that this section of the tower was collapsing in on itself.
She started to run again, but in addition to the swarm now she had to contend with an all-engulfing cloud of masonry dust. She didn’t make it ten more steps before her lungs gave up the effort, rattling and wheezing. Her eyes were streaming, her cheeks wet, although whether this was with blood or with tears Arex could not tell.
All the people, the hundreds of people, who must have been in that hab-block… not to mention the floors of the tower above that she couldn’t see from here and the skyways that were almost certainly anchored to them. It was all too much, too enormous a disaster, for her to take in. She could only think about herself for now, as hopeless a cause as that seemed to her too.
She followed a stream of people headed for the edge of the skyway, watched in hope as scores of them clambered over the ramshackle railings and jumped for their lives. It was only when she reached that precipice herself that she realised there was nowhere to jump to, no other skyway below to catch her as she had imagined there must have been. The jumpers had chosen, in their terror, to be dashed to a bloody smear on the ground thousands of metres below rather than let the bloodthirsty insects have them.
It was all Arex could do to back up, to keep herself from being pushed over the edge anyway by the press of b
odies behind her. She was half-blind, her head was spinning and she wasn’t sure how much blood she had wept from her scratches, but she wasn’t ready to die just yet. She collided with a substantial metal object, as tall as her chest, wider than she could feel, and she traced its outline with her hands, realised what it was, and it seemed that the Emperor must have interceded in her favour after all.
An autocab. The very autocab, in all probability, that Arex had abandoned here only a few minutes ago. Yes, yes it was. The latch on the door was still broken from her kick. She yanked it open and scrambled into the vehicle. She pulled the door shut behind her and, although it didn’t entirely blot out the sounds of the carnage without, they were at least now muffled enough for Arex to think, to hope. For her to wipe her eyes on her sleeve, to open them and to see that she wasn’t alone.
An insect still clung to her arm. Arex snatched at it, and it tore a chunk of her flesh away with it. She dashed the insect into a rune panel, and felt the satisfying crack of its carapace beneath her fingers, but it was still squirming in her grip, and at that moment, a fresh wave of the creatures smacked into the front of the autocab from without. Arex screamed and dropped the insect she had been holding.
The windshield was cracked, but to Arex’s relief it held. Meanwhile, the insect within had dropped into her lap, and it was glaring up at her with a single baleful green eye. It was the first time she had gotten a proper look at one of these things. It resembled a common beetle, she thought – albeit an armoured beetle, its carapace a set of interlocking silver plates. She might have thought it entirely mechanical in nature were it not for the sickly green ichor that had oozed out from between those cracked plates, and which was splattered across the rune panel and the floor of the cab.
With a shudder, she batted the insect to the floor and it landed on its back, two rows of tiny legs pedalling to right itself. Arex stamped on it until it stopped moving.
Then something huge and heavy crashed into the autocab’s roof from above, and she feared for a moment that the vehicle might just crumple around her. The cracks in the windshield crazed and spread to form a fragile web. Arex knew that, if the windshield broke, she would be helpless, trapped in here, easy prey.
Then, just like that, it was over. The swarm had passed on, and Arex was left, panting and sobbing, alone in the mangled remains of the cab. Her coat had been clawed to shreds, she had stinging cuts on the palms of her hands that she didn’t even remember sustaining and the hammering of her heart felt like it was the only sound in the whole world.
Arex thought she would stay there forever, because she couldn’t face what was waiting for her outside. When she did muster the willpower to reach for the cab door, it was jammed shut and she had to kick it open again, far harder this time.
She dragged her battered body out into a scene of desolation, choking on the dusty air. Most of the towers were mercifully intact, but a couple had fallen and the skyway was strewn with their rubble. The weight that had half-crushed the autocab was a slab of skyway from over twenty floors above Arex’s head.
Worst of all were the broken, twisted bodies that lay everywhere, most of them half-buried. Some of them were twitching, moving, trying to dig themselves free. Arex could hear weeping, and plaintive cries for help. She felt she should answer those calls, but she didn’t know who to turn to first; and besides, her head was spinning and her legs couldn’t bear her weight.
She crumpled like an old sack, first falling to her knees and then lowering herself onto a mattress of rubble. Arex’s eyes felt heavy, and she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t process everything she had just experienced, couldn’t think about the reasons or the consequences of it all. Oblivion crept over her shoulders, and she welcomed it, welcomed the chance to sink into a dreamless sleep – and, maybe, by the time she awoke, there would be somebody here to make everything clearer for her. Uncle Hanrik, maybe, or the PDF, or Gunthar…
Gunthar. The stray thought sent a bolt of adrenaline through Arex’s system, jolting her awake, setting her heartbeat pounding again.
Gunthar. This was where he lived, on one of these floors above her. In one of the hab-blocks that the insects had attacked. What if they had destroyed his hab-block? He might not even have seen them coming, never had a chance to run.
Arex couldn’t foresee a future in which she and Gunthar could be together.
But, right now, she couldn’t envisage her future without him.
She dragged herself to her feet, tried to pierce the veil of dust around her, to see past the recent devastation, to remember this skyway as it had been, to regain her bearings. She had to work out which of these buildings was his. She had to find him, to know that he was okay. She had to keep herself going, for his sake.
Chapter Five
Costellin had retired to bed early.
He felt weary to his soul. He hadn’t realised how much Dask had taken out of him until he was faced with the prospect of being catapulted straight into another theatre of war. Perhaps, he thought, Captain Rokan’s initial assessment that Governor Hanrik was worrying over nothing would prove accurate. However, if there was anything to fight on Hieronymous Theta, he suspected that the Krieg Colonel 42 would find it.
The commissar was woken by a klaxon alarm and an insistent voice, buzzing over the vox-speaker outside his quarters. It was a call to muster. All personnel to report to the drop-ships immediately. He had only closed his eyes for an hour and a half.
He tied on his armoured breastplate, checked his plasma pistol and his chainsword before he holstered them. He could already feel the deck plates ringing beneath twenty thousand pairs of boots. Sometimes, he wondered if the Death Korps of Krieg slept in their facemasks and backpacks. Sometimes, he wondered if they slept at all.
The drop-ship assigned to the 186th regiment was cycling its engines in the upper portside hangar bay. The company commanders were marshalling their troops in this vast, echoing space, and Major Alpha’s first two platoons were already marching up the access ramp into the belly of the great rusted hulk.
Colonel 186 stood up on a gantry, observing the proceedings, straight-backed and stiff even in the at-ease position. Costellin threaded his way through the streams of newly-arriving Guardsmen, and climbed a ladder to join him.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
‘We have been ordered down to the planet,’ said the colonel.
‘Yes, I rather gathered that, but for what purpose? Nobody has briefed me.’
‘Our four regiments are to deploy around the capital city and secure its perimeter from without.’
‘Secure it against what?’
‘I do not have that information. I was asked to convey the generals’ apologies to you for not keeping you informed, but they felt the situation required urgent action.’
‘Evidently,’ said Costellin. ‘Has the Departmento Munitorum even been apprised of this operation? There hardly seems to have been time for astropathic messages to have been exchanged.’
‘I do not have that information,’ said the colonel.
‘They must have told you something,’ said Costellin, ‘about this threat that has apparently emerged from nowhere in the four hours since we made orbit.’
‘I do not have–’ began the colonel.
‘Of course you don’t,’ Costellin sighed, ‘and I suppose I don’t have time to go and talk to the generals myself, unless I wish to delay our drop.’
The colonel turned his head towards the commissar as if disgusted that he would entertain such a thought, although of course his expression was unreadable behind his ever-present mask. ‘Our orders are quite clear,’ he said.
He sounded like his predecessor.
The colonel sounded, for that matter, like every other Death Korps colonel with whom Costellin had served. There had been six of them now, or was it seven?
The previous Colonel 186 had died on Dask, leading a charge against a legion of Nurgle-spawned mutants for control of a strategic hill. He
had known his was a likely suicide run – the generals had done their sums and concluded that this particular objective was worth the loss of over four hundred men – but he had chosen to lead from the front anyway, as he always had.
The old colonel had done his duty. He had surrendered his life to the furnace blast of an enemy-held flamer, but he had won the more valuable prize. He had taken that hill. The erstwhile Major Gamma had been picked to replace him by virtue of his long service with the regiment. That was how, for the most part, promotions were earned in the Death Korps of Krieg: by surviving.
‘Is there anything else?’ asked Costellin.
‘We are assigned to the western wall of the city,’ said the colonel. ‘It is close to the space port, so we can set up a Command HQ there. The 42nd regiment will be based to the north, the 81st to the east and the 103rd to the south, so our troops will be the first into position. We are then to await further instructions, unless of course a clear and present threat is presented, in which case we are to respond as appropriate.’
‘A clear and present threat,’ Costellin repeated slowly. ‘I don’t like the sound of this, colonel. I like to know what it is I’m expected to fight.’
‘The 81st and 103rd regiments will each drop a grenadier platoon behind the city walls,’ said the colonel. ‘Their mission is to locate the enemy and identify him.’
Costellin nodded quietly, but a gnawing fear was growing in his stomach. He was beginning to form his own suspicions about what might be going on in Hieronymous City. He just prayed to the God-Emperor that those suspicions were unfounded.
Hieronymous Port was packed with terrified civilians. They filled the space port buildings and had spilled out onto the main ramp despite the best efforts of the local security forces, who were simply too few in numbers to maintain control.
To Costellin’s chagrin – although not entirely unexpectedly – the appearance of a peaked cap and human features made him the new best hope for a thousand pale, imploring faces. From the moment he stepped out of the drop-ship, he was swarmed by them, each shouting its own desperate question, which the commissar brushed aside as politely but firmly as he could. ‘No, sir, I don’t know when it will be safe to return to your homes.’ ‘No, madam, I’m afraid I haven’t seen your daughter.’ ‘No, sir, these drop-ships are reserved for the use of Imperial Guard personnel.’ ‘That, madam, would be a matter for your local authorities to deal with.’