25 For 25

by Various

  Only the eyes were the same on all of them. They glowed in the dark, lime green and as bright as stars. No pupils studded those eyes, just blank screens of eerie witchlight. As the gates opened to the full, the eyes narrowed. Faces, marked with fangs and hanging jaws and long lines of clumsy sutures, contorted into a mix of hatred and joy.

  They scuttled into combat like spiders. They wanted it. What debased existence they possessed hungered for it in a way that they would hunger for nothing else ever again.

  Khamed, still in the relative safety of the corridor outside the hall, watched them come, a weary sickness in his stomach. He’d been fighting those monsters for months. Every week, he’d fallen back a little further. Every week, a few dozen more of his men hadn’t got back to the rally points in time.

  And back then he’d always known that the next time he saw them the shambling horde would have more tattered grey uniforms hanging from hunched shoulders, and there would be more remnants of faces he recognised.

  He gripped his sidearm with sweaty hands, keeping it in position, ready to go in again when the order came.

  Then the Iron Hands got to work.

  They didn’t move fast. Khamed had heard that the Emperor’s Angels could fight like daemons, hacking and whirling and tearing their foe apart in an orgy of destruction. These ones didn’t. They walked out calmly, spreading out in front of the siege gates, opening fire from their massive weapons in long, perfectly controlled torrents.

  Khamed just watched. The more he watched, the more he appreciated the truth of the legends he’d heard. For the first time in months, he dared to hope that the Spire would be saved. It was then that he realised just how strange that emotion – hope – had become to him.

  The giants’ firearms were neither las-tech nor solid ammunition. Khamed realised what they were as soon as the first volley went off. The Iron Hands used explosive charges, primed to ignite on impact. The noise of their discharge was phenomenal. They maintained a withering wall of fire, tearing apart the oncoming ranks of walking dead in an orgy of slime and fluid. The muzzle flashes lit up the hall in a riot of sharp electric light, exposing the tortured faces of their victims in brief, snatched freeze-frames.

  The heavy weapon that one giant carried two-handed thundered like nothing Khamed had heard before. Its operator, placed right in the centre of the squad formation, wielded it calmly, drawing the devastating column of destruction across the enemy in a slow, deliberate sweep.

  The enemy were not just killed. They were obliterated, blasted apart, torn into tatters of flapping skin and powdered bone. Bitter experience had taught Khamed that you couldn’t down them with a flesh wound – you had to take them out with a head-shot or knock their torsos into pulp. That wasn’t a concern for the giants. They walked into the hall, methodically firing the whole time, laying down a maelstrom of destruction, not letting a single mutant get out of the path of their awesome, silent vengeance.

  Then, suddenly, the deluge stopped. The echo of the massed volley died away. The hall sunk back into gloom. The Iron Hands remained poised to fire, their weapons held ready. They had advanced halfway across the space. Everything in front of them had been killed.

  Khamed stayed where he was for a moment, ears ringing, stunned by what he had just witnessed. Then, cursing himself, he remembered his orders.

  ‘Follow them in,’ he snapped over the comm to his men. ‘And look like you know what you’re doing.’

  He stepped over the threshold, sweeping his lasgun warily up and around. His boot nearly slipped and he looked down. The floor was covered in a thick carpet of bubbling sludge. It was moving. Some of it was bloody; some looked like sewage. An eyeball, swollen and yellow, floated past him, carried down into foaming drainage ducts by the current.

  They’d been rendered down into soup. Flesh soup.

  Ahead of him, the Iron Hands were calmly reloading. One of them took out what looked like a handheld sensor and tapped on it with a blunt armoured finger.

  ‘Raef Khamed,’ said Morvox. There was no inflexion there, nothing to indicate the extreme violence the giant had just unleashed. ‘The area is cleansed. We will progress to Nodes 34, 45, 47 and then assess. Immolate this chamber and secure it. Deployment patterns are on the tac.’

  ‘As you command, lord,’ said Khamed, his voice sounding very quiet after the wall of noise.

  The Iron Hands hadn’t waited for the acknowledgement. They pressed on, heading deeper into the dark reaches of the lower hive. Already, from far below, sounds of scratching and screaming were massing.

  Namogh’s voice crackled over the comm.

  ‘You need backup, Jen?’ he asked. His voice sounded worried. ‘We’ve got a lot of static at your position.’

  ‘No,’ said Khamed, knowing that he sounded distracted and not really caring. ‘No, maintain your position. I think we’re good. Throne, I actually think we’re good.’

  It got harder. The lower levels had been dens of disease and corruption for years, and the mutants had had time to turn it into a paradise of pustulation.

  The walls were alive with curtains of viscous slime. Growths burst out of air-con ducts, corpulent and luminous. Quasi-human mutants shambled up from the depths, heedless of their losses, jaws wide and ringed with filed-down teeth. They screamed like mockeries of children, stretching warped vocal cords beyond their tolerances. Khamed saw one grotesque long-necked mutant scream itself to a standstill, its throat overflowing with a bubbling cocktail of phlegm and clots. Morvox aimed a single shot and the creature’s head exploded in a shower of sticky, whirling gobbets, silencing the shrill chorus from its owner.

  As they descended, the layout of the tunnels changed. Ceilings closed in and walls narrowed. The slurry of excreta was ankle-deep at the best of times, knee-deep at the worst. There was no reliable light – just the sweeping lumen beams from helmets, exposing the breadth of the horror in fragmentary pools of surgical illumination.

  Every mutant coming for them had once been a human inhabitant of the hive. Every contorted face had once run the full gamut of human laughs and tears. They had been technicians, lectors, machine operators, arbitrators.

  No one knew exactly when it had started. The first signs had been small ones – increased workload at the medicae stations, reports of infection in the scholae, power-loss in the deep hive and rioting across the semi-policed hinterlands running out to the ore-plains.

  The authorities hadn’t been slow to act. Tralmo was sharp, and had never been negligent. There had been quarantines, shipments of antibiotics, blockades of crime-controlled sectors and curfews across the Ghorgonspire.

  But by the time the 1324th lostari ‘greyshirt’ Imperial Guard had been mobilised to restore order, it was already out of hand. The situation had changed from a public health problem to a fight for survival, and so it had stayed for months.

  They never got to the bottom of what had caused it. The originator was, presumably, buried far down in the depths, squatting in the dark places under Ghorgonspire that had long been lost to the contagion. The Holy Emperor alone knew what was down there, pumping bile and energy into the ruined bodies of those it had corrupted.

  Such speculation was useless. The Iron Hands moved with purpose. They punched through the ragged columns of mutants like a blade through rusty armour, tearing and burning and hacking and blasting. They never sped up, never slowed down. Step by step, metre by metre, they reclaimed lost ground, operating like silent golems of myth.

  In their wake came the mortal troops, reinvigorated by the example they had in front of them. Exhausted lostari found the will to take the fight to the mutants. Volleys of lasfire suddenly found their marks more often. Objectives were isolated, taken and consolidated. With the indomitable example of the Space Marines in front of them, the 1324th lostari of Helaj V stood up, and found they were stronger than their desperation had made them believe.

  They descended from level to level in orderly bursts of activity, clearing out connecting cham
bers of filth and pressing on into the tunnels beyond. Flamers came next, boiling off the stinking layers of slime and acid and charring the metal beneath. Obscene sigils were scored from the walls. Power was restored. The mark of the Imperium was reinstated.

  At the forefront, as ever, were the Iron Hands, the Emperor’s holy Angels of Death.

  And as they killed in those terrible, industrial quantities, never had a moniker seemed so apt.

  The eyes came out of the darkness as if swimming up from the frigid abyss. They swarmed, flocking at the invaders, locked into snarls and yells of utter mindless hatred. As they neared, limbs became visible. Limbs with hooks run through them, or stitches running down them, or iron pins shoved up under the necrotic skin and bulging like parasites.

  Khamed shrugged off his tiredness and shouldered his lasgun. He moved smoothly, aping the frictionless methods of the Iron Hands who fought ahead of him, and drew a bead on the lead mutant.

  He fired, and his las-beam cracked off, impacting between a pair of staring green eyes and cracking the skull into hemispheres.

  Another kill.

  And then he was moving again, marshalling his squad and pushing them forward. He swept his muzzle round, looking for mutants crawling across the roof or punching their way through sewer outlets.

  They were deep down and the air was hot and seamy. No light existed save for the mess of helmet lumen beams, and every trooper was now on full infrared. The chamber was just like a hundred they’d already cleansed – close, claustrophobic, stuffed with a crawling mass of suppurating terror.

  It had ceased to matter. Khamed had begun to forget his life had ever involved anything different. The undead poured towards him, snapping fangs and loping on all fours into contact. He reacted passionlessly, efficiently, optimising his shots and taking time over the targeting. He could rely on the Iron Hands to take out the mass of them – he was there to mop up the stragglers and the outriders.

  He swung round just as three skinny mutants, their bulbous heads bobbing on scrawny necks, bolted from cover and out toward the leftmost Space Marine of the Iron Hands squad. Each one was carrying heavy projectile weapons and let off a flurry of lead as they splashed through the ankle-deep lake of effluvium.

  Khamed got his aim and fired, missing the lead mutant by a finger’s width. In the time it took him to curse, wipe his eyes and re-aim, it was over.

  The Iron Hand didn’t seem to move fast. He seemed to move with the same unearthly, ponderous manner as his brothers. But, somehow, he got his weapon up and fired off a round before the mutants had taken another step. The bolt crashed through the neck of the first, tearing the muscles open and leaving the head lolling on stretched sinews like an amulet. It exploded in the chest of the second, blowing open a ravaged ribcage into splayed splinters.

  Then the sword, the mad sword with its insane rotary blades, swept round in a heavy lash, whipping out sticky fluid from previous kills. The surviving mutant tried to dart under it, aiming to get close enough to use a rusty killing blade it held in its left hand.

  The Iron Hand adjusted the weapon’s descent and the sword whirred into the mutant’s leading shoulder. It burrowed down, carving its way through diseased muscle bunches and flinging out gouts of boiling, frothing blood. The mutant screamed for a fraction of a second, locked in agony as the juddering blades ate through its bony frame and minced what was left of it into a marrow-flecked broth of body fluids.

  The Space Marine hauled the sword free, breaking the ruined body of his prey into two pieces as it was withdrawn. Then he turned, implacable as ever, and kept on fighting.

  He’d never said a word. He’d not changed a thing. No hurry, no fuss.

  Nightmare machines.

  Khamed laughed.

  The Jenummari laughed as he brought his own weapon round and splashed through the filth, looking for new targets. It was a laugh of disbelief, a laugh of wonder that killers of such intensity existed in the universe. It was a laugh of fear, and of relief that they were on his side. He had last laughed six months ago, and the noise of it was unfamiliar in his parched throat.

  ‘Keep up, you dogs!’ he snapped over the comm.

  He wasn’t scared anymore. His body pumped with adrenaline. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

  That, of course, was his first mistake.

  It was fast as well as strong. Its hide was pale brown, like old leather. It had four heavy arms, perhaps grafted on to the torso by some demented chirurgeon. Its face was long, stretched by weights nailed to its distended chin. The skin of its cheeks was ripped and weeping and its clustered eyes bled witchlight.

  As it crashed through the slurry, it howled like a dog. Its hands clenched pairs of gouges, each dripping with virulent, glistening fluid. Long, lank hair flailed around it as it came, and trails of livid saliva hung down from a bloodstained jaw.

  It veered sharply, crashing its way through a knot of its own warped kin. They were crushed underfoot as it came, trampled into the mix of blood and mucus that bubbled underfoot.

  For once, the Space Marines missed the main target. They were all occupied, pinning back the tide of raging, screaming fury that hammered against them. Their guns slammed back into their armoured fists, spitting the surge of reactive rounds that cracked and boomed into the oncoming wall of corrupted flesh.

  Khamed saw the mutant come in his direction, and the laughter died in his mouth. One of his men got a shot, and a las-beam whipped across it.

  It didn’t drop. It launched itself into the close-packed press of lostari, limbs whirling, roaring a strangled cry of ecstasy and fury.

  Khamed tried to swivel round to get an angle, but slipped. He crashed back to the ground, bracing himself with his free arm, only to see three of his men taken out by the mutant. It went for their throats, biting through the neck armour and shaking their limp corpses. Las-beams seared into it, ripping away whole strips of skin, but that didn’t slow it down much. It rampaged through the knot of men, shrugging off anything that hit it, scattering the survivors. Then it turned and saw Khamed.

  It smiled.

  The mutant leapt at him, all four arms extended. Khamed fired again, hitting it once in its massive chest. Then he was scrabbling back through the scummy fluid, desperately trying to clear some distance.

  The mutant stumbled from the las impact, then regained its feet. It lurched down and grabbed Khamed’s trailing boot. Khamed felt the vice close around his ankle and thrashed to escape, kicking wildly.

  He stood no chance. The mutant pulled him back savagely, gurgling, readying its blades for the plunge that would rip his stomach open. Khamed was wrenched back, dragged through the liquid and along the chamber floor. Frothy slime splashed across his helmet, running across the visor and clouding it in a film of brown.

  Khamed fired again, blindly, and heard the snap of the lasbeam as it shot harmlessly into the roof. Then the gun was knocked from his grasp. He tensed for the bite of the gouges, knowing that they would plunge low, right into his gut.

  Then something huge exploded above him, throwing the slime up in waves. The grip on his ankle released. Khamed pulled himself out of the grime and shook the screen of filth from his visor.

  The mutant was gone. Its lifeless body was crumpled up against the metal wall, pumping black blood solidly. In front of Khamed loomed an Iron Hand, filling his field of vision, vast, black and indomitable.

  ‘Can you fight?’ came the voice from behind the visor.

  It wasn’t Morvox. The tone wasn’t as metallic, not as heavily filtered. It almost sounded human, albeit far more daunting and resonant than any human Khamed had ever encountered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, shaking himself down and bending to retrieve his lasgun. ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘Then do so,’ replied the Space Marine, turning away from him and striding back to the main fighting. The chamber was still full of the sounds of combat. Fresh lostari were piling in to replace those felled by the mutant, but there was no sign yet of the hord
e of bloated horrors relinquishing the chamber. The clamour of bolter detonations, howls and screams just kept on going.

  Khamed watched the Iron Hand go, his heart thumping hard. He realised his hands were shaking, and clenched his fists to stop it.

  Then do so.

  He hefted his lasgun again, checking to see if the fluids had interfered with the mechanism. The simple things helped.

  ‘Very well,’ he muttered, still trembling. He braced himself and looked for a target. ‘I will.’

  The noise of the assault died away. The Iron Hands began to move on, wading their way toward a long access shaft. They maintained the same pace as before, never speeding up, never slowing down.

  The same punishing pace wasn’t possible for the mortal troops. They needed rotations, rest periods, resupply and medicae treatment. After hours of fighting, almost without respite, Khamed’s turn had finally come.

  Namogh’s force-signal flashed across his helmet display, indicating that he was moving into position to relieve him. Khamed turned to the Space Marine who had rescued him, still the closest to hand of the quintet. For some reason, it felt more natural to address that one than Morvox, who in any case had already stalked off into the dark ahead.

  ‘My deputy will provide fire support beyond this node,’ Khamed announced. His voice gave away his extreme fatigue. The adrenaline from the last encounter had drained away, leaving him feeling empty. ‘This detachment needs to rotate.’

  The Space Marine turned to face him. His facemask was streaked with blood and bile, making him look even more grotesque than normal. There was a pause, possibly due to some internal comms between the squad.

  ‘We will maintain the assault,’ the Iron Hand replied. ‘Order relief forces to follow us down when they get here.’

  The Space Marine turned to move off, then stopped. He looked Khamed up and down.