[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  In time, the discharges became less frequent, as if the lizards had learned from their mistakes and were keeping their distance. Lorenzo didn’t imagine for a second, though, that they had seen the last of them.

  That burnt smell was fading. The jungle grass was growing taller and the trees more closely together, letting less sunlight in through their branches. A pink-headed, acid-spitting plant reared up beside the Catachans without warning, but Myers blasted it to pieces before it could open its mouth.

  Lorenzo felt goose bumps on his flesh, but it was a pleasant feeling.

  He seemed to have been waiting a long time for this: to plunge into the darkest heart of the jungle. To face Rogar III on its own turf.

  They were about two hours out when Braxton reported to the nearest Jungle Fighters—Myers and Storm—that he thought they were being followed. Their only response was a pair of knowing grins, so Braxton called out to Commissar Mackenzie. “Sir! Sir, I think we’re being followed.”

  The young officer called a halt, and the squad stood silent for a minute or two. Mackenzie frowned. “Anyone hear anything?”

  “No, sir,” murmured the Catachans.

  “It was up there, sir,” said Braxton, pointing, “in the trees.”

  “You’re imagining things, Braxton,” decided Mackenzie, though his voice betrayed a doubt.

  Lorenzo caught an aside from Storm to Myers: “Looks like the commissar’s radar dish ears are just ornamental, then.”

  “Actually,” said Sergeant Greiss, with no little satisfaction, “there is someone stalking us. The rest of us have been aware of it since we left the clearing.”

  Mackenzie turned pink. “What? Then why didn’t you speak up?”

  “Because he’s on our side. In fact, we’re honoured to have him watching our backs.”

  The commissar looked none the wiser, and fumbled with his list of names. “There’s no one missing,” he said.

  “This man works alone,” said Dougan.

  Mackenzie scowled. “That is not acceptable. This offensive has been planned to the last detail, and I will not have those plans jeopardised by a maverick.” He shouted into the jungle: “You, trooper. Come here, now!”

  Dougan cleared his throat. “Should you be yelling like that, sir? If there are ork patrols or gretchin in the area—”

  The commissar ignored him. “Trooper, my name is Commissar Mackenzie, and I am in command here. I demand you show yourself immediately. You have ten seconds. If I can’t see your face by then, you will be facing court-martial!”

  The echoes of his words were soaked up by the foliage. In the distance, a bird took flight. There was no other sound.

  “Could be out of earshot by now, sir,” offered Myers.

  Mackenzie rounded on the Catachans, clenching his fists. “If anyone sees or hears a trace of that man again, I wish to be informed of it immediately, do you hear me? Immediately!”

  They moved on.

  Dougan dropped back in the marching order until he was alongside Braxton. He gave the Validian an approving nod. “Mostly, if Sly Marbo doesn’t want to be seen or heard, he isn’t—sometimes not even by those of us who know he’s around. I’m impressed.”

  An hour after that, the jungle became so dense that the Catachans had to draw their knives and cut their way through. Armstrong and Muldoon took point to begin with, Armstrong’s devil claw and Muldoon’s sleek, black night reaper hacking at stinging plants and thick purple creepers.

  All of a sudden, Muldoon let out a warning cry, and a cloud of insects blossomed from the undergrowth at his feet. Each was the length of one of Lorenzo’s fingers, with hairy black bodies and gossamer wings. Armstrong hopped out of the way of the swarm, but it latched onto Muldoon, following him with an angry, high-pitched whine as he tried to back away from it. He swung his arms furiously, flattening several insects against the nearest tree, his blade slicing through two more.

  The rest of the squad had withdrawn out of reach. Lorenzo brought up his lasgun, squinting along its sights until he knew he could fire without hitting Muldoon. His las-fire fried several insects, as did simultaneous shots from Greiss, Woods and Donovits. But there were too many of them. The cloud seemed hardly to have lessened in size.

  Myers and Storm had flung their packs to the ground, and they pulled out the constituent parts of a heavy flamer. They clicked them together, then Storm steadied the bulky weapon while Myers aimed it at the swarm. The first explosion of fire singed the ends of Muldoon’s hair, and lit up one flank of the insect cloud, sending them streaking to the ground as dying embers. Muldoon hurled himself face-first into the undergrowth, giving Myers a clearer second shot that took out the bulk of the remaining swarm.

  There were still more than a dozen insects crawling over Muldoon, but he rolled and crushed those that couldn’t take flight in time. The others rushed to stamp on the rest, or to skewer them with blades. Myers and Storm aimed one final, precautionary blast of flame at the ground from which the swarm had risen. Then the Catachans surrounded Muldoon where he lay on his back. He blinked up at them, flushed and chagrined, his face pimply with insect bites.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Muldoon?” barked Greiss without sympathy. “You know better than to disturb an insect nest. You didn’t see it?”

  “I saw it, sergeant,” said Muldoon. “I was giving it a wide berth, but the bugs came out fighting all the same.”

  “They must be sensitive to vibrations in the ground,” guessed Donovits. “Or to body heat—though that’s less likely in this climate. But why would they attack if their nest wasn’t directly threatened?”

  “Just antisocial, I guess,” said Greiss, reaching down to help Muldoon to his feet. “You feeling alright, Sharkbait?”

  “Like a walking, talking colander,” said Muldoon ruefully. “They took chunks out of me all over. I got them in my boots, under my backpack, in my collar…”

  “Show me,” rapped Greiss.

  The sergeant spent the next few minutes examining Muldoon’s bites. Lorenzo knew why. On Catachan, there was a creature known as the vein worm, which burrowed into its victim’s flesh and laid its eggs in his bloodstream. Greiss intended to make sure these alien insects had left no similar surprises in his trooper. When he’d satisfied himself on that count, he asked Muldoon to tell him how many fingers he was holding up, checking for toxins that may have begun to cloud his senses. Muldoon answered correctly, and Greiss rewarded him with a grim smile, and clapped him on the arm. “You’ll live,” he concluded. “Probably.”

  “Do you think we can get on now?” asked Mackenzie, impatiently.

  They proceeded more cautiously after that, with Woods and Donovits taking over cutting duty up front. As soon as Woods sighted a second nest in among the creepers, they all fell back, and Myers and Storm readied the flamer. “What are you waiting for?” cried Mackenzie. “Just torch the damn thing!” But the troopers turned to Greiss for confirmation of that order, and the grizzled sergeant shook his head and reached for a stick.

  He flung it at the hive, and once again a cloud of black insects darkened the air. Myers’ finger twitched on his trigger, ready to unleash a stream of fire should any man be threatened. The insects, however, didn’t seem to have detected the watching Catachans. They buzzed around for a while, finding no one upon whom to expend their wrath, and then settled resentfully back into their disturbed home.

  “What the hell was the point of that?” demanded Mackenzie. “You just wanted to provoke those things?”

  “To observe ’em.” Greiss corrected him. “Anyone else see what I saw?”

  “The red flower over there,” spoke up Donovits. “The insects were giving it a wide berth.”

  Greiss nodded. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  He followed Donovits’ pointing finger to a delicate red flower sprouting from the trunk of a tree. It had eight perfectly formed petals, and it was quite the most beautiful thing Lorenzo had seen on this world so far. That
left him in no doubt that it was dangerous.

  Greiss found another stick, and poked the head of the flower with it. Immediately, its petals snapped shut like a vice, gripping the stick so strongly that he couldn’t pull it free. He tried to uproot the flower with a yank, but its hold on the tree behind it was just as tenacious. It was crying, letting out a shrill wailing sound that, after a few seconds, bored into Lorenzo’s ears like a drill.

  Greiss whipped out his fang, and sliced the head of the flower from its stem. Immediately, the wailing ceased and the red petals flopped open. Greiss turned, and displayed the decapitated head to the others. “Doesn’t seem too dangerous on its own,” he commented, “but watch one of these things doesn’t grab your ankle. It might just hold you still long enough for something bigger to come along.”

  A flutter of wings drew everyone’s attention upwards. A shadow flitted between the trees, and was gone. A bird of prey, Lorenzo surmised, answering the flower’s alarm call, put off by the number of strangers present and by the fact that none of them were immobilised.

  “Now,” said Greiss. He flipped the flower head onto the insect nest, and withdrew to safety again. This time, there was a distressed quality to the displaced insects’ humming—and a definite direction to their flight. Within a minute, they were all gone, deeper into the jungle.

  Donovits nodded. “They didn’t like that. The flower probably preys on the insects, so they’ve learned to detect its scent and avoid it.”

  “All right,” rapped Greiss, “everyone spread out, look for more of these flowers.”

  Mackenzie’s nostrils flared. “I think you’re forgetting who’s giving the orders here, sergeant.”

  “If you’ve got a better idea, commissar.” Greiss shot back. “Now’s the time to speak up.”

  “Sergeant,” protested Hotshot Woods, “you expect us to wear flowers in our hair now?”

  “In your hair, in your lapel, down your trousers,” growled Greiss, “I don’t care what you do with ’em, Hotshot, just as long as you wind up smelling right.”

  As he joined the search, Lorenzo noticed that Muldoon was looking a bit woozy. The trooper pulled himself together when he saw he was being observed, and he smiled grimly. “Dizzy spell,” he said, apologetically. “I think those damn bugs sucked a few pints of blood out of me. I just need a minute…”

  Lorenzo kept an eye on Muldoon after that, and realised he wasn’t the only member of the squad to be doing so. He was usually more zealous than any of them, with the possible exception of Woods—always scouting ahead with a gleam in his eye, a feral smile on his face and his night reaper in his hand. Now, however, he lagged behind, finding the going tough. They all had plant tendrils grasping and tearing at their heels, of course—but Muldoon was the only man particularly troubled by them. He lost his footing a number of times, and almost fell, but Lorenzo knew better than to offer assistance where it wasn’t requested.

  Muldoon was swigging too freely from his bottle, too, the other Catachans were taking it steady, not knowing when they might find fresh water.

  “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” said a low voice beside Lorenzo. It was Braxton.

  He shrugged. “What do you think? You ever come across bugs like that before on Rogar? Seen a man bitten by one?”

  “A few times, yes. Didn’t seem to do any lasting harm. I’ve never seen a swarm attack like that, though.”

  Lorenzo nodded. “Bugs carry diseases,” he said knowledgeably. “Sharkbait might get lucky—or he might get sick. Real sick, real soon. Or real dead. That’s why Old Hardhead had us take precautions.” They had all teased sap from the stems of the red flowers, rubbed it into their faces and hands. “New world, new rules—and there’s only one way to learn what they are. Sharkbait knows that as well as the rest of us do.”

  “Why do you call him Sharkbait?”

  “Before my time,” said Lorenzo.

  Dougan fell into step beside them. “Poseidon Delta,” he grunted. “We had to cross a swamp, but there was a catch. The mother of all marsh sharks. It hunted by radar, could detect a ripple on the surface from ten kilometres. The span of its jaws was wider than you are tall. Sharkbait—he was just Trooper Muldoon then—took a Sentinel in. You saw them at the camp: armoured hunter-killer machines. Chainsaws, flamers… We use them when we don’t exactly care about being subtle. But this Sentinel got its leg jammed in the mud, came crashing right down. And the marsh shark was there, of course, peeling back the outsides of the crew compartment like a tin opener. It got Reed, swallowed him whole. But Muldoon…

  We were firing our lasguns from the bank. The shots just glanced off this monster, gave it no more than a bad case of sunburn. Muldoon was lying there, pinned by the wreckage, going under, and this shark was rearing over him, coming in for the kill. We thought he was a goner. Then, calm as you like, he just reached into its mouth, slung a whole pack of frag grenades down its throat.

  We didn’t even hear the explosion, the damn thing’s hide was so thick. But suddenly, it was thrashing and groaning like it had the worst case of bellyache in history. Then it went down. Greiss and me, we went in and pulled Muldoon out of the mud. He was lucky not to have lost an arm—or a head. If that shark had snapped its teeth shut just a fraction of a second sooner… I don’t recall a discussion. We all knew ‘Sharkbait’ Muldoon had earned his name, that day.”

  “That’s important to you people, isn’t it?” said Braxton. “Earning your name. I’ve heard Hotshot, Old Hardhead—and they call you Steel Toe, right?”

  “Another story,” said Dougan, “for another day.”

  “And ‘Sly’ Marbo?”

  “Never been quite sure about that one,” Dougan confessed, “if it’s an earned name or a given name or just something he’s picked up along the way. Seems to suit him fine, though. What’s with all the questions, son?”

  “Eagle & Bolter,” said Braxton. “Just wanted a bit of background info for my piece. Everyone knows what you Jungle Fighters do, but no one really knows all that much about you. I thought, if I could tell them what life’s like where you come from—Catachan, right?—there might be a few less, uh, misunderstandings.”

  Dougan nodded. “A word of advice, son. Not everyone likes to talk. Oh, stick around long enough and you’ll hear all the old war stories, all right—but you start probing someone like Old Hardhead about his past, and he’s liable to probe you in return. With his bayonet, in your guts.”

  Braxton fell silent for a time, after that. But it wasn’t long before he turned to Lorenzo, and asked the question the Catachan had been dreading.

  “So, what’s your earned name, Lorenzo?”

  “Don’t have one.” Lorenzo said. Not that he had anything to be ashamed of. “Not yet.”

  Armstrong was the first to hear them. He froze, listening, and the others did the same one by one.

  Footsteps, crashing through the undergrowth. A guttural grunt that could only have been formed by a larynx. There was somebody nearby. Several somebodies—and not bothering to hide their presence. Braxton turned to Lorenzo, and mouthed silently, “Marbo?” Lorenzo shook his head.

  A second later, the Catachans had melted into their background—and Lorenzo saw the confusion in Braxton’s face as he turned to find himself standing alone. Lorenzo himself had slipped behind a tree trunk and was hugging its contours. Muldoon had chosen the same hiding place, and was crouched down beside him. From close up, Lorenzo could see that Muldoon was running a fever. His bandana was soaked with sweat, and his breathing was hoarse and ragged.

  Storm lay flat on the ground nearby. He had arranged a few creepers across himself, breaking up the lines of his body so that its patterns blended perfectly with those of the foliage. From any further away, and most other angles, he would have been invisible. Indeed, to Lorenzo, the rest of the Catachans were invisible. He could make out only one other outline—that of Commissar Mackenzie, trying to conceal himself behind a blossoming nettle plant.

&n
bsp; Guardsman Braxton caught on, and ducked under cover himself.

  More footsteps, and the rustling of leaves. Whatever was out there, they were coming closer. Eight or nine of them, Lorenzo now estimated. Too small, too nimble, to be the muscular, lumbering orks. Gretchin, most likely. Genetic cousins to the orks—smaller, weaker, subservient, but far more cunning. If they realised they were outnumbered, they were likely to scatter and run, take word to their masters.

  There was no urgency to their movements. Chances were, they didn’t know they had enemies nearby. The gretchin were probably just out foraging—but they might get lucky. Thick as the jungle was, they wouldn’t see the Catachans’ trail of severed tendrils and uprooted plants unless they stumbled right onto it. It sounded to Lorenzo, though, like they were within a bloodwasp’s length of doing just that.

  Suddenly, somebody slammed into him from behind.

  Lorenzo was taken by surprise, winded. No mean feat—but then this attack had come from the last direction he’d expected. From a comrade, a man he’d entrusted with his life countless times, and who was now bearing him down into the dirt, eyes ablaze with madness, a black knife raised to strike at Lorenzo’s throat.

  Muldoon was trying his best to kill him.

  And he was screaming with incoherent fury as he did so—a sound that could hardly have failed to reach the gretchin’s ears.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Muldoon was bigger and stronger than Lorenzo, and certainly heavier. Lorenzo was pinned to the ground by his weight, the jungle grass now growing above his head, rough against his neck and his cheeks. His right arm, and his Catachan fang in its sheath, were trapped under Muldoon’s knees. All he could do was strike out with his left elbow, knocking his attacker’s knife hand aside.