[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  “I don’t think you’re hearing us, Mackenzie,” growled Greiss, stepping forward until he was nose to nose with the slighter man. “You may be Mr High-and-Mighty Commissar back in your comfortable quarters, surrounded by a thousand Guardsmen ready to bow and scrape and lay down their lives for you—but you’re on a deathworld now. This is our territory—that’s why we’re here! Until you start to wise up and do things our way, ‘accidents’ are going to keep on happening, you get my drift?”

  “Are you threatening me, Greiss?” demanded Mackenzie. “I have witnesses.”

  “You have Braxton.”

  “If anything happens to me, anything at all—”

  “It’ll be in his report. Yes, I worked that out. If he ever gets to make one, that is. Like I keep telling you, Mackenzie, accidents happen out here.”

  Mackenzie’s ears were still red, but the rest of his face had turned very white indeed. He’d got the message, at last.

  “He’s a good man, you know.”

  Lorenzo’s attention had been focused on the jungle. There had been more lizards stirring in the foliage, and he’d that feeling of being followed again although he could see no proof. He hadn’t noticed Braxton until he had spoken, hadn’t seen that he’d dropped back in the marching order to be at Lorenzo’s side. Briefly, he felt irritated that the Validian always seemed to come to him. Lorenzo didn’t feel like talking right now, least of all about what had happened by the river.

  But Braxton was determined. “The commissar, I mean,” he continued. “You’ll see that when you’ve worked beside him for a while.”

  Lorenzo raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  “I know he’s been tough on you all. He’s fresh out of training. Maybe he’s trying too hard to prove he can do the job.”

  “His problem,” said Lorenzo curtly. “We can’t afford to carry him. On Catachan, he’d have been dead twenty years ago.”

  “Thank you, anyway,” said Braxton.

  “For what?”

  “For stopping Muldoon. I saw you.”

  “You were too far away. You’re mistaken.”

  “You must agree with me—that the commissar doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “I agree with my comrades,” said Lorenzo, “that Old Hardhead doesn’t deserve what Mackenzie has planned for him, that Steel Toe was a good soldier, who didn’t deserve what Mackenzie said about him.”

  “There has to be a way—”

  “It’s him or Greiss.”

  “You know, if it comes down to that,” said Braxton, “I… I have to…” Lorenzo nodded. He knew. They said no more. There was nothing more to say.

  They rested in an area lush with what Muldoon and Donovits judged were water-bearing vines. They snacked on purple berries that Muldoon had picked and tested earlier. Then Lorenzo drew his Catachan fang, took a vine in his hand and scored a thin cut in its skin. The vine bled clear, and Lorenzo positioned his near-empty bottle to capture the precious drops of liquid, of which there were all too few.

  Within twenty minutes, the Jungle Fighters had drained the vines of all they had, replenishing their supplies just a little. As Lorenzo returned his bottle to his pack, he heard low voices, and realised that Greiss wasn’t with them.

  He could just make out Sergeant Greiss through the jungle. He was talking to somebody else: a man whom Lorenzo couldn’t see at all, so easily did he blend into his surroundings, but he knew it could only have been Sly Marbo. He couldn’t make out what was being said—but as Greiss turned and trudged back to the others, it was with slumped shoulders and a dark, brooding expression.

  He gathered the Jungle Fighters around—and to Lorenzo’s surprise, Mackenzie didn’t object, he just joined them and listened. Greiss told the squad what Lorenzo already knew: that there were orks ahead—and Mackenzie raised his eyebrows and frowned at his sketch map but again said nothing. “Marbo’s scouted a path for us,” said Greiss, “that’ll take us around the greenskins, but still too close for my liking. Now, the commissar here explained why we can’t blow our cover, but here’s another reason for you: Marbo figures, from the size of this camp and the number of huts, that the greenskins outnumber us about thirty to one. Even Hotshot can’t take down thirty orks on his own!”

  “Oh yeah?” grinned Woods. “Lead me to ’em, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “So the only way we’re getting through this one.” Greiss continued, “is by stealth.”

  “How far is this camp?” asked Donovits.

  “Another five kilometres,” said Greiss, “before we start running into patrols. I say we make up that ground, then break early for the night. We get some food, some shut-eye, then make our move in the small hours.”

  There was a general murmur of assent, and the Jungle Fighters were starting to get to their feet, to retrieve their packs, when Greiss stopped them. “One more thing. Any of you felt like you’re being followed? Since Lorenzo’s little outburst, I mean.”

  Nobody spoke up. A few of the Jungle Fighters exchanged uncomfortable glances. Greiss’ eyes narrowed. “I don’t hear any of you denying it.”

  Unexpectedly, it was Mackenzie who spoke up. “I thought I heard something. Footsteps, about an hour and a half ago. When I looked, there was no one there. I assumed it was Marbo.”

  “I saw something,” offered Donovits, “more recently. I didn’t speak up because… Sergeant, it was just a flicker in the corner of my eye. A trick of the light. A… a feeling, more than anything.”

  “Wildman and me, we dropped back without telling the rest of you,” said Myers, “checked out a bush where I thought I’d seen something move. It would’ve been about the time the commissar said.”

  “But there was no one there.” Storm took up the story, “and believe me, if there had been, there was nowhere he could’ve gone without us seeing him.”

  Greiss took all this in with a grim nod. “Marbo reckons there is something. He’s caught glimpses of it, like the rest of us, reckons it’s stalking us. But whenever he gets too close, it disappears. It leaves no tracks, no nothing.” With a smile, he added, “Marbo says it’s almost as good as he is.”

  “Ghosts!” said Braxton.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “That’s what the Validians have been saying. I reported on it for Eagle & Bolter, our broadsheet. The same story, from four different squads. They all had the feeling they were being followed, but there was no evidence of it. I thought it might be connected to the blue lights, the jungle playing tricks on their minds.”

  “Hallucinogens in the atmosphere?” mused Donovits. “Could be put out by one of the plants. They could even be in the berries we’ve eaten.”

  “I didn’t eat any berries,” said Myers, “at least not till after I saw that… thing.”

  “This could be serious,” grumbled Greiss. “First Sharkbait goes off the deep end, then Steel Toe and Lorenzo go wandering in the night, now this. If this jungle gets us so we can’t trust our own senses…”

  “You said Marbo saw this ‘ghost’,” said Donovits. “He saw it following us. If the jungle were affecting him, making him—making all of us—paranoid, then surely he’d have thought the ghost was following him. That makes sense, yes?”

  “Then it has to be real,” said Lorenzo.

  “We need to know for sure,” said Armstrong.

  “Maybe we should leave well enough alone,” said Braxton. “I mean, there’s no record of these ‘ghosts’ attacking anyone.”

  “Yet,” said Armstrong. “You should have learned by now, that could change in a heartbeat. I say we search.”

  Greiss nodded his agreement, and the squad separated, each man taking a sector of the jungle around them, though each was sure to stay within sight of two others at all times. They kicked and cut their way through the undergrowth, beat bushes, shook trees and even shinned up some to search their leaf-shrouded upper branches. The Jungle Fighters checked all the places where they would have hidden. Finally, they regrouped, having
covered an area some three hundred metres in radius and found nothing. No one. No sign that anyone had been here, other than the Jungle Fighters themselves.

  There was nothing they could do after that but go on. It was only a few minutes later, however, that Lorenzo had that feeling again, like a prickling on his neck.

  He wasn’t the only one. As he whipped around to inspect the foliage behind him, Storm and Braxton did the same. And this time, Lorenzo was sure of it. There was something there. He could just make out a shape between the trees. A head and shoulders. Fie drew his lasgun and stepped forward, not wanting to move too fast, not daring to blink, to take his eyes off the shape. His other senses told him that Storm and Braxton were beside him, and the rest of his squad not far behind. Lorenzo took another step. The head moved, shifting just a fraction, in a very human gesture.

  He was only a few metres away from the shape when it changed. It seemed to metamorphose—or, more accurately, to come into focus—in front of his eyes. The shape resolved itself into a cluster of thistles. Thistles that had always been there, the rest, Lorenzo had imagined. He started as Storm shot the thistles anyway, and fired into the surrounding undergrowth a few times for good measure. “In case this thing is a shape-shifter,” he explained. But he disturbed nothing more than a few black insects, which smelt the flower sap on the Jungle Fighters and buzzed away.

  The whole squad was on the alert after that, on edge. Lorenzo had to force himself not to jump at every shadow he saw, every distant sound that came to his ears. He thought about what Greiss had said, about losing trust in their own senses. The others hadn’t seemed too worried, probably didn’t believe it could happen to them, but he remembered the blue light. He remembered how real its lies had seemed.

  Landon had approached Greiss, and Lorenzo was just close enough for his keen ears to pick up their hushed conversation. “I’ve had an idea, sergeant,” said the rookie. “Why don’t I hide in a tree and let the rest of you go on a way? If we are being followed, I’ll soon find out.”

  “I don’t know,” said Greiss. “We’re talking about someone or something that’s given Sly Marbo the slip—and that isn’t easy.”

  “Maybe he knew Marbo was around. Maybe he heard us talking about him. I’m the smallest of us, sergeant, the one he’s least likely to miss if he is watching us. The rest of you could gather around, block his view for a second, and I’ll be gone. Next time our ‘ghost’ sees me, he’ll be passing right under me, and I’ll raise the alarm.”

  Greiss raised a cynical eyebrow. “That a promise? Swear on your blade? Because you’ve been pushing yourself forward today, Landon—and that’s good, don’t get me wrong, we’ll make a fine soldier of you, maybe even a sergeant one day—but this isn’t the time for grandstanding, hoping to hog some glory for yourself.”

  “Soon as I see a thing,” Landon promised, “I’ll yell my lungs out.”

  Greiss considered the proposal, and finally nodded. By the time he passed it on to the rest of the squad, however, two men at a time, in a quiet growl, he’d made a few alterations. He approached Mackenzie last—but by this time, the commissar had heard what was afoot. “If you’re asking for my permission to proceed, Greiss,” he remarked acidly, “then consider it granted.”

  A short time later, they came to a mournful-looking tree with branches that sagged almost to ground level, dripping with water-bearing vines. It was almost too perfect.

  They gathered round and set to work with their knives, teasing out what liquid they could. Lorenzo stopped Braxton from putting his thirsty lips directly to a vine, pointing out that the skin was probably poisonous.

  After a few minutes of this, Landon worked his way to the centre of the group, and was handed a lasgun by Donovits to replace the one he had lost in the river. He stepped onto Muldoon’s cupped hands and was hoisted onto the tree’s lowest branch, his camouflage uniform and dubbin-streaked face immediately lost among its leaves. Lorenzo heard the faintest of rustles above his head as the rookie climbed higher, and he resisted the urge to look up.

  “Right, men,” announced Greiss, in what was maybe a slighter louder voice than usual, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers, “time we made a move. We’ve still got lost time to make up.”

  As the squad set off again, the Jungle Fighters spread out more widely than they would normally have done, yet contrived to cross each other’s paths frequently. An observer would have been hard-pressed even to count them, let alone to work out which of them might be missing. They also moved more slowly than before—because, although nobody said anything, each of them was reluctant to leave his inexperienced comrade too far behind. Indeed, the further they strayed from Landon’s position, the slower, the more reticent, their steps became—and Lorenzo noticed a certain amount of jostling for the rearmost position, the man who would be able to respond first to the alarm call when it came. Woods, of course, came out on top.

  Lorenzo had been counting out a minute in his head. As he reached sixty, Greiss gave a nod, and Muldoon disappeared into a bush. Myers provided a distraction, this time, by yelling “jungle lizard!” and firing into the undergrowth before professing, with mock sheepishness, to have been mistaken.

  They proceeded at length, expecting Trooper Landon to reappear before too long, at which point somebody else would slip into hiding. After twenty seconds had passed, though, Lorenzo saw that Greiss was getting worried. Another five, and he came to a halt, and drew breath to give the prearranged signal that would call off the operation.

  That was when Landon yelled out, at last.

  Only this wasn’t a yell of discovery. It was a yell of fear.

  Lorenzo was running before the echoes had subsided. They had come too far, because Landon was still all the way back where they had left him, and Lorenzo was pushing his muscles as hard as he could, willing himself forward, and yet still the path to his comrade seemed to stretch a near-infinite distance. He concentrated on what he could do: pumping his legs, faster than he could think, so fast that he was sure only sheer force of will kept him from falling. There were sounds ahead—ugly sounds, full of foreboding—but they were almost drowned out by his heartbeat, by the crashing footsteps of comrades around him and of Woods in front.

  Every second counted. Every fraction of a second.

  And there weren’t enough of them.

  Landon yelled again: a terrible gurgling scream, which was cut off in mid-flow and could only have meant one thing.

  He came into sight at last, limp and no longer straggling in the grip of a figure that was humanoid in shape but a mockery of a human in its aspect.

  The monster was caked in dirt, centimetres thick, and it bristled with grass, dead leaves, living flowers and the severed roots of larger plants as if a whole section of the planet had been scooped up and wrapped around its frame. Lorenzo thought the monster was flora, at first, but he could make out patches of suntanned skin, and human fingers around Landon’s neck. Woods had already charged it, a lasgun fanfare presaging his arrival.

  Lorenzo had brought up his weapon but hadn’t fired, fearful of hitting the monster’s captive—but Woods had seen what he hadn’t, or rather accepted what he didn’t want to accept.

  It must have waited for Landon, he realised. It was right under the tree in which the Guardsman had concealed himself—but he wouldn’t have come down from there unless he was sure it was safe. The monster had discovered the Jungle Fighters’ trap, and set its own in return.

  As Woods hit the monster, it dropped Landon, and he fell to the ground, his head coming to rest at an acute angle to his body. Lorenzo was halfway to him when he realised there was no point. He changed course and leapt at the monster instead, along with Myers and Storm, whose howl of rage echoed in Lorenzo’s ears. Woods could probably have handled the monster on his own—and he would have enjoyed bragging about it later—but Lorenzo wasn’t thinking about that right now. He was thinking about Landon.

  The monster, it turned out, was stronger than they
had expected. It dislodged Woods and Myers, and sent them flying with a sweep of its arm. As the two troopers fell, however, Muldoon and Greiss appeared in their places. The monster was borne down under the combined weight of four Catachans, but showed no sign of slowing or weakening as they pounded at it with their fists. Lorenzo drew his fang, and plunged it into the monster’s heart with a snarl, but the blade came out encrusted with muck and no blood, and still the monster fought on.

  It shifted beneath his knees, and he realised with a start that it was sinking… as if the monster lay in quicksand, though the earth around it felt as hard as it ever had to the touch of Lorenzo’s foot. He was scrabbling at the monster, desperate to stop it, to hold it here, because all he could think was that it was getting away—it had killed Landon and it was getting away—but the pull of the earth was inexorable, and the monster was gone, leaving Lorenzo with only two handfuls of mud and an empty feeling in his heart.

  He staggered to his feet, and stepped back from where the monster had been, from the spot where the jungle grass still grew as if it had never been disturbed—and he looked at Greiss, with bewilderment in his eyes, as he realised that the sergeant had claimed a souvenir, wrenched it free from the monster’s mass even as it went under. He was just staring at it, the first time Lorenzo had seen him speechless, as the rest of the Jungle Fighters gathered round.

  Greiss held up his find, and one by one they realised what it was, and then they had no words either.

  It was a bionic leg.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lorenzo couldn’t sleep.

  This was highly unusual—at least when he was planetside, out in the jungle.

  They had set up camp before the sun had gone down. They were resting in preparation for their passage by the ork encampment—a trial in which the night would be their ally. Lorenzo could feel the distant sun on his face, and its red glow penetrated his eyelids—but he was used to that. He was used to making the best of sleep whenever, wherever and for however long he could grab it. It wasn’t just the sunlight that kept him awake.