[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  Woods was the first to find his voice. “Well,” he said, “that was interesting. Who’s up for seconds?”

  Mackenzie was in no mood for jokes. “What the hell just happened?” he demanded. “I’ve been on this world a year, and never seen the birds behave like that.”

  Greiss frowned. “No?” And, for a moment, their animosity was softened in the face of a shared concern.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” said Mackenzie, “they were always vicious—but after a few initial sorties, they kept their distance. They knew they were no match for us.”

  “They made no attempt to retreat,” Donovits mused, “even when it became obvious they couldn’t survive. “As if they had no choice but to fight us.”

  “Even in death,” grumbled Mackenzie.

  “Some of those birds had been dead for months,” said Donovits. “There was no tissue left holding their skeletons together. What was animating them?”

  There was silence for a long moment as everyone pondered that question. Lorenzo suppressed a shudder, and his eyes involuntarily flicked towards the crushed and splintered bones at his feet, as if they might yet somehow spring to life again, repair and rebuild themselves.

  Greiss made an attempt to diffuse the tension. “You ask me, it was sheer bloody-mindedness!” he said, as if that might explain everything. “We probably stumbled into their territory. How about it, Brains? Think they could have been protecting something down here? Eggs, maybe?”

  Mackenzie shook his head. “There was nothing here a few weeks ago. I sent a squad to reconnoitre this area, and they reported nothing like this.”

  Greiss raised an eyebrow. “This area? You sure about that, commissar?”

  “Of course I’m sure, sergeant. What are you suggesting?”

  “Well, I know the jungle can be good at covering tracks—but I’d swear that, till we turned up, there hadn’t been anyone come this way in a long time.”

  That sent the commissar scrambling for his sketch map. In the meantime, his adjutant had recovered his breath, though he still looked pale. “I guess that could have been worse, right?” said Braxton—and Lorenzo looked at him, and tried to work out what he really wanted. Some reassurance that the Catachans had everything under control? Or that things couldn’t have been worse, that he’d just survived the best this jungle had to throw at him? He couldn’t give the Validian either.

  “I mean, most of us escaped with superficial cuts. Unless—”

  “Unless?”

  Braxton’s eyes flickered towards Muldoon, and now Lorenzo understood.

  “Relax, city boy,” drawled Woods. “If the birds had poisoned us, we’d know about it by now. You feeling ill? Because I’ve never felt healthier in my whole life. Raring to go!”

  “Muldoon didn’t know,” said Braxton quietly.

  Lorenzo and Woods glanced at each other, and Lorenzo knew they were both thinking the same thought: that Muldoon had known, that he’d felt the sickness creeping up on him, even fought off the first of the hallucinations. He had known, but he had been too proud to speak up.

  “You want to worry about something,” said Woods, “you worry about those ‘superficial cuts’—because out here, there’s no such thing. Any cut can be deadly. Jungle worlds breed diseases—and not all of them are carried by insects and vermin. Most, you can’t see—but they’re around us all the same, in the air. And they’re just looking for a way into your bloodstream!”

  Woods wiggled his fingers, miming the action of a bacteria creeping its way under Braxton’s flesh. Then he closed his fist with a clap, and Braxton jumped.

  He laughed, but Lorenzo didn’t join in. Woods had seemed to enjoy tormenting Braxton—but the threat he described was real, to all of them. Maybe, he thought numbly, that had been the point of the birds’ attack all along.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mackenzie was all for setting up camp there and then, the fight knocked out of him, but Greiss insisted on moving on. “This place stinks of death,” he growled, kicking out at a fresh bird corpse that, despite having lost its wings and its head, had crawled out from a bush to make a feeble attack on his ankle. “God-Emperor knows what that might attract here tonight. Bigger birds, maybe.”

  Lorenzo knew there was one other reason. The Jungle Fighters’ mood had darkened since the attack. They were quieter now, and more apprehensive. They spoke few words as they treated their wounds with sterilising fluid and synth-skin. Even Woods, now he’d had time to reflect upon what had happened, seemed subdued. They had faced greater threats—Braxton had been right about that—but none like this. The way their attackers had fought on beyond death—that was different. The men of Catachan lived by the laws of Nature, and tonight those laws had been violated. Greiss wanted to get them away from the scene of that violation, from the broken bones, to give them something else to think about.

  “Five minutes, troopers,” he growled. “Finish up what you’re doing, then we’re getting out of here!”

  Landon’s left eye was bleeding. One of the birds must have found it with its hooked beak. Myers and Storm had sat the rookie against a tree, cleaned his face with swabs from their first aid kits, and now they were applying a field dressing to the injured area. “Look at you.” Storm tutted good-naturedly, “this is, what, your first, second, time out in the field, and you’re trying to get yourself scarred permanent-like. What, you bucking for your earned name already?”

  “Can’t be that, Wildman,” said Myers. “Even a rookie wouldn’t be stupid enough to let those birds go for his eye, knowing we got a ‘Patch’ already.”

  “Yes,” said Storm, nodding with mock gravity, “can’t have two of those.”

  Landon smiled, but the smile turned into a wince. Lorenzo felt ice in his stomach. He knew Myers and Storm were only joking, trying to keep up the youngster’s spirits—but just for a second there he’d feared Landon would get his earned name before he did. He chided himself for that thought. A comrade was hurt. Would he rather it was him sprawled in the dirt, wondering if he would see out of both eyes again?

  Armstrong sported a nasty gash on his arm, where it glistened amid the knotted tissue of old scars. He was sewing it up with a needle, biting on a stick to control the pain. When Greiss gave the word, however, he—like all the others—clambered to his feet and hoisted his pack, fresh and ready to go.

  Mackenzie didn’t question the sergeant’s decision. He knew he was right. But Lorenzo could read the commissar’s eyes. He resented the way the Catachans deferred so readily to their sergeant over him. That was going to mean trouble.

  Ninety minutes later, in a less dense part of the jungle, Greiss came to a halt and called for silence. He listened for a moment, then declared this as good a spot as any. Braxton shucked off his pack and sank to the ground with a sigh—but he scrambled guiltily to his feet and joined in as the Catachans got straight to work. They identified any flora that could be classed as dangerous and cut it down. Donovits found an acid spitter behind a tree, almost as if it had been deliberately hiding there. They thinned out the undergrowth, and Myers unearthed a jungle lizard. It sprang at his crotch, its legs propelling it higher than Lorenzo would have thought possible. Myers flashed his knife, and bisected it in midair.

  “I think we should light a fire,” said Donovits, addressing his sergeant rather than the commissar.

  Greiss nodded his approval, and Mackenzie opened his mouth to object. “Worth the risk, I’d say.” Greiss interrupted sharply. “The men fight better with a hot meal inside ’em. And it’s going to get dark around these parts pretty damn soon. Don’t know about you, but I like to be able to see what’s creeping up on me—and in the jungle, there’s a whole new menagerie of critters come out at night.”

  “Apart from anything else, sir,” said Dougan in his usual polite manner, “it’s always good to know which of those creatures are afraid of fire.”

  “And which ones aren’t,” added Greiss under his breath.

  “Where�
�s Sly Marbo?” asked Braxton. “Is he joining us?”

  Nobody answered him. The truth, Lorenzo knew, was that none of them had a clue where Marbo was now. They hadn’t glimpsed or heard him in hours. He might have been present for the bird attack, perhaps firing in from the sidelines, in the chaos, Lorenzo could have missed him. Or he might have gone scouting ahead, maybe encountered orks and found a good sniping position in which he would wait for hours or days—as long as necessary. One thing, Lorenzo did not doubt: wherever Marbo was, he could look after himself. He would be back.

  The Jungle Fighters broke into their standard rations, because they were tired and because none of them had the spirit to go hunting or gathering anything better. Anyway, their trust in what they knew about this jungle had been shaken, and no one was especially keen to sample its wares right now.

  The night brought with it the fluttering of leathern bat-wings, the soft chittering of a new type of ground-based insect, and—at one point—the footfall of something bigger and heavier, which nevertheless slipped away before it could be seen. The fire drew curious moth-like creatures—and, although they seemed non-aggressive, Armstrong pointed out their barbed fangs and the Jungle Fighters took to swatting them when they could, just in case.

  There were snakes, too. Storm found one, about a metre long, slender and black, coiled around a tree trunk, slithering its way down towards the roots. He glared into its slit eyes, challenging it, and the snake glared back. It hissed and struck, and—having ascertained that it was hostile, as if there had been much doubt—Storm caught it by its head, squeezing its mouth shut with his fingers. He yanked it from its perch, swung it over-arm and smacked its body hard into the ground like a whip. Lorenzo glimpsed a distinctive silver triangular pattern on the snake’s back. Then Storm casually tossed its lifeless body to Donovits, who would probably spend his watch teasing venom out of its glands for analysis.

  Lorenzo was loath to lie down, to close his eyes on an environment about which he still knew so little. But he had no choice, and he trusted his comrades to protect him. So, he lay down on the damp earth and slept.

  He was woken by Trooper Storm.

  He reached for his fang, and started to push himself to his feet. Storm clapped a steadying hand on his shoulder, and a bright grin broke through his now ragged-looking black beard. “Easy trooper,” he laughed. “There’s no fire. It’s time for your watch, that’s all.”

  Lorenzo nodded and relaxed. He glanced at the small patch of sky immediately above him. It had been pitch black when he’d gone to sleep, but now it was showing just the earliest signs of lightening. If Rogar III had a moon, Lorenzo hadn’t seen it yet. He threw on his jacket and his bandolier, and checked that his lasgun was locked and loaded.

  The only other light source in the Catachan-made clearing was the embers of the fire. They popped and cracked as Myers poked them with a stick, keeping them alive but torpid. There was a slight chill in the air, and Lorenzo drew closer to the glowing coals, to soak up their scant warmth.

  “Steel Toe was right, by the way,” said Storm. “The lizards really don’t like fire. Even this is enough to keep them away, though we’ve heard them hissing out there. You want steak for breakfast this morning, you’re going to have to go get one.”

  Dougan greeted Lorenzo with a nod. They were to share the last two-hour watch. Typical of Greiss, thought Lorenzo, to pair him up with a veteran, as if he still needed watching over. The rest of his squad were shadowy mounds in the darkness—though he could identify the sergeant by his quiet but distinctive snore, like a grox breaking wind. Presumably, it was Braxton who was twitching in his sleep and sometimes letting out a quiet whimper—while Muldoon, of course, was the one tied to the tree. “Keep an eye on him,” advised Storm, nodding toward their unconscious comrade. “Woods says he woke during his watch, muttered all kinds of gibberish about daemons and monsters. Hotshot had to slug him one to put him back under.”

  Lorenzo was disappointed to hear it. He’d hoped that time, or maybe one of the herbal remedies Donovits had forced down Muldoon’s throat, may have dispelled his hallucinations. For all that Greiss and Woods had said to Mackenzie, the Catachans knew they couldn’t lug Muldoon around with them indefinitely. There would come a time when they’d have to accept that he was lost.

  Myers and Storm lay down, and soon their heavy breaths joined the sleeping chorus around Lorenzo. He sat on a tree stump, left behind after Armstrong had unpacked a machete and made firewood. It was a little too small for him, and he was uncomfortable—but then comfort was hardly desirable when the lives of your comrades depended on your staying alert.

  Dougan knew that too, and he was circling the camp slowly. His soft footsteps were barely audible, but Lorenzo could tell that his artificial foot fell a little more heavily than the real one. Dougan didn’t like to sit on duty. He didn’t like to take the risk of his leg seizing up at a critical moment.

  It was about forty minutes later that Lorenzo saw the light.

  He wasn’t sure what it was at first: a faint blue glow, somewhere between the trees, lasting just an instant. He couldn’t pinpoint its location, he had no idea how far away it had been. He had been sharpening his Catachan fang, but now he froze—and Dougan, though he was somewhere behind Lorenzo on his latest circuit, picked up on his body language and did likewise.

  It could have been a trick of the approaching dawn. The sky was now a deep indigo. But no, there it was again. Too soft, too muted to be a torch, it wasn’t the kind of light you could see by. And yet too wide, too sustained to be an accidental glint off a weapon or a suit of powered armour.

  Lorenzo grabbed for a stick, and brushed it across the embers of the fire, smothering them in their own ashes.

  The blue light was clearer to him now, but still maddeningly undefined, still seeming to lurk at the edge of his vision, never quite in focus. One second, it was at ground level, the next, it glimmered through the branches at head height, and every time he moved his eyes to find it, it slipped away from him. Some sort of glowing creature, Lorenzo wondered? What was that word Brains had once used? “Bioluminescence”. He wondered if he should wake the others, but he pictured their faces if he did and they found he’d been spooked by a swarm of fireflies.

  Anyway, the light was coming no closer.

  He watched it a moment longer.

  It blinked out.

  A second ago, there had been a wisp of smoke coiling up from the ashes of the campfire. Now, it was gone. The sky was a little lighter—wasn’t it? Lorenzo frowned, and crouched by the ashes. He touched them tentatively. They were still warm, but cooler than they ought to have been. His mind was straggling to catch up with what his senses were telling him: that some minutes had passed without him knowing it. It took some time for the message to get through—but when it finally did, Lorenzo stiffened in horror.

  The light had hypnotised him, dulled his mind. Anything could have happened while he’d been distracted. Anything could have crept into the camp, and dragged his comrades away while they slept.

  There was something. A shape at his shoulder. Lorenzo whirled around, but it was only Dougan. “It’s alright, son,” the veteran assured him in a whisper. “We zoned out for a minute or two, that’s all. Everyone’s alright.”

  “Old Hardhead said something,” Lorenzo recalled, “in the mess hall yesterday.” Why was it so hard to remember?

  “Something about… about ghosts. Lights that lured Guardsmen into… ambushes, I guess. I didn’t realise… I didn’t feel it, but that thing must have got inside my head.”

  Dougan nodded gravely. “I’m going out there,” he announced.

  “But—”

  “We need to know what we’re facing. Don’t worry. We’ve seen what it does now, and we’ve shaken it off once. It won’t fool me again. It’s just a question of focus. It won’t even see me coming.”

  “You’re right.” Of course he was right. Lorenzo wished he had realised it sooner, then he could have bee
n the one to volunteer, to have gone out there alone. To have made a name for himself, perhaps. “I’ll come with you,” he offered.

  Dougan shook his head. “You need to stay here, watch the camp. Could be this light’s meant to lure us away while something worse creeps up from behind.”

  “I can wake one of the others.”

  “No need to panic them just yet. It’s best I go alone. You could be right about there being an ambush. Any trouble out there, I’ll shout a warning. Then you can wake the others, and point them in my direction. I’m counting on you, Lorenzo.”

  Lorenzo shook his head. “I’m coming with you.”

  Dougan laid a hand on his shoulder, and looked him right in the eye with an unnerving intensity. “Let me do this,” he said. “I need to do this!”

  Lorenzo was left in no doubt that he did. He nodded glumly, and Dougan smiled and clapped him companionably on the arm. Then he slipped away into the jungle, in the direction in which the blue light had last been sighted. After only a few seconds, Lorenzo could neither see nor hear him.

  Why did Dougan need to do this?

  He’d had his share of glory. Why couldn’t he have let someone else have a taste of it, this once? Why had Lorenzo accepted what he’d said? Why hadn’t he spoken up, persuaded Dougan that his need was greater?

  He had picked up a stick—and as resentment welled in his chest like a living thing, he felt the wood snapping in his clenched fist, driving a splinter into his palm. How could he ever prove his worth?

  He pulled himself together, horrified by what he had been thinking. He admired these men, trusted them more than anyone or anything else. He surveyed the sleeping bodies around him, tried to remind himself of that—but that feeling in his chest was back, and he hated them, all of them, for keeping him here. He hated Old Hardhead Greiss and Hotshot Woods, hated Steel Toe Dougan most of all.