[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World

by Steve Lyons - (ebook by Undead)

  He knew he should wait. He didn’t know the extent of his injuries. He didn’t feel too badly hurt, but then his head was muzzy and he could have been in shock. He could have been infected. But normally, the person to tell him that—the man who ought to have been at his bedside with his revolting herbal cures—was Brains. Lorenzo couldn’t bear to wait any longer.

  Woods had fallen silent. Lorenzo realised he was asleep.

  He peeled off his bed coverings and tested each of his limbs, trying his weight on them, before he levered himself to his feet. He swayed a little, and felt sickness rising in his throat but suppressed it. Morning air breezed in through the window, and prickled his skin like pins and needles. He crept over to Woods and put his hand to his forehead, finding it hot like a simmering pan. He located his clothes and backpack in a pile in the corner, with Muldoon’s lasgun laid out almost reverently across them.

  His jacket felt heavy and grimy against his skin, its insides caked with his own dried blood. It was only when he saw his water bottle that he realised how dry his throat was, and how cracked his lips. He gulped from the bottle greedily, and had to stop himself before he emptied it. There had to be fresh water somewhere in the camp, he reasoned. The skin around his patched-up wound had evidently been cleaned. He longed for a pool to bathe in, though a bit of dirt didn’t usually bother him.

  Finally, Lorenzo approached the door to the outside world—and thought it was locked at first, as it jammed in its frame. He put his shoulder to it, and tried to pretend that the effort hadn’t made stars explode in front of his eyes. He stumbled out into the sunlight, unsteady and blinking, and walked straight into Sergeant Greiss.

  Somewhere, there was a fire burning, and Lorenzo caught a glimpse of Myers and Storm lugging an ork corpse between them.

  Then Greiss was guiding him back into the hut, telling him to take it easy in his gentlest growl, and Lorenzo tried to throw off his hold, tried to prove he could stand unassisted, but before he knew it he was sitting on the bunk again, just grateful that the room wasn’t spinning anymore. Greiss took Lorenzo’s head in his callused hands, peered into his eyes, and nodded, satisfied. “You’ll live.”

  “We did okay—right, sergeant?”

  “Yes, Lorenzo. We did okay. We did more than okay. We’ve been tossing ork bodies on the flames all morning.” Lorenzo didn’t question that statement. He knew the Catachans didn’t burn their enemies’ corpses for the sake of their souls. Orks were renowned for their regenerative properties, it was common for one thought dead to rise from a cold battlefield in search of revenge. On Rogar III, he realised, there was even more reason to take precautions.

  “Sergeant!” Lorenzo’s fellow patient was awake again. Lorenzo found himself wondering if Woods’ voice had sounded so weak, so subdued, the last time he had spoken. Perhaps it had, and he just hadn’t noticed. “Lorenzo tell you about Sharkbait?” asked Woods. Greiss replied that he hadn’t, and Woods repeated the story as the sergeant listened patiently. This time, there were twenty orks on the battlewagon, and Muldoon had to hack his way through four more to reach it, but Lorenzo didn’t bother to correct the details. Woods’ version made a better story, and Muldoon deserved his glory.

  “We ready to move out yet, sergeant?” asked Woods, when the story was told.

  “Not yet, Hotshot,” said Sergeant Greiss. “Still cleaning up behind ourselves. We’ve taken apart all the comms we can find, but you can bet a few gretchin would’ve made a run for it when they realised they were beaten.”

  Woods grimaced. “Sooner or later, they’ll find more greenskins, and then the whole planet will know we’re here.”

  “If we’re lucky,” said Greiss, “the orks won’t put two and two together in a hurry. For all they know, this camp could’ve been our target all along.”

  “Yeah, “specially when they hear about the attacks on their other camps.”

  “But they’ll know we’re closing in on their warboss—whether they believe we know it or not—and if Big Green has half the brains Mackenzie reckoned he had, he’ll be doubling his personal guard about now. Our dear, departed commissar just made getting to our target about ten times harder than it ever was.”

  “I thought as much,” said Woods. “But, we just came through against thirty-to-one odds. Shouldn’t think there’s a whole lot can stop us now, yeah?”

  “Funny thing about that.” Greiss growled. “There aren’t half as many dead orks about these parts as there ought to be. I think we got lucky, Hotshot. I think our job was half-done before we got here.”

  “You think Rogar’s been as hard on them as it’s been on us?”

  “About the size of it, yes.”

  “Now you’re wondering what happened to the orks it killed. And how long it took the survivors to work out that any bodies they leave intact…”

  Lorenzo didn’t remember lying down, but he was staring at the ceiling. He didn’t remember discarding his backpack and jacket, but he was unencumbered by them. He had been thinking about Dougan, or rather about the mockery this deathworld had made of his memory. About the skeletal birds that had refused to lie down. And now, about a hundred, two hundred, dead orks, in varying stages of decay, clambering from the ground all over the planet…

  “Should make for an interesting few days,” murmured Greiss.

  “Nothing we can’t handle though,” said Woods, “right, sergeant?”

  Lorenzo drifted into a dreamless sleep, then, and opened his eyes only once in the next few hours to find himself on the cot again, and Greiss in the doorway of the hut. He must have been leaving, waking Lorenzo as he shouldered the sticking door out of its frame. But something had stopped him. He was looking at Woods, and with the sunlight behind him casting his face into shadow, Greiss seemed weighed down by every one of his thirty-five years, older and more tired than Lorenzo had seen him before.

  When next he woke, Greiss was there again, standing over him, shaking him, and from the quality of the light through the window he guessed it was early afternoon. “Time you dragged yourself out of that pit, trooper,” he said. “We got a lot of ground to make up if we still want a chance of catching the warboss by surprise. You up to it?”

  “Yes, sergeant,” said Lorenzo, getting to his feet, relieved when his body didn’t make a liar of him. He still felt weak, drained, and his side hurt like hell, but his senses were clearer now. Catachan men healed quickly. He donned his jacket and his backpack again, picked up the lasgun that he supposed was now his, and made for the door. He stopped when he realised Greiss wasn’t following. He was sitting on the bunk Lorenzo had vacated, staring into space, a lasgun laid across his lap. Not his own gun: that was slung under his pack as normal. Lorenzo felt a knot forming in his stomach as he was finally forced to face an unpleasant truth.

  “What about Hotshot, sergeant? Aren’t you going to wake him?”

  “In a minute,” the sergeant said.

  Lorenzo looked at Woods. His skin was whiter than ever, drenched in perspiration. His breathing was ragged, and his face twitched with emotions that Lorenzo had never seen writ there before. Every few seconds he let out a low moan, almost a whimper. He seemed to be having the mother of all nightmares. The young trooper looked surprisingly, awfully small.

  “Is he…?” Lorenzo ventured.

  “Hotshot managed to find a sniping position,” said Greiss, “up a tree. He was cutting down those greenskins like dummies on a shooting range. But one of ’em got lucky—happened to be looking the right way when an explosion went off and the light glinted off Hotshot’s lasgun. He couldn’t get down in time. The orks surrounded him, started firing up into the branches. Hotshot took a bullet in the leg, was grazed by two more, but nothing critical, he knew how to make himself small, use his backpack and the tree trunk to protect himself—and with his camouflage and all, the greenskins didn’t know where they were aiming. Hotshot was firing at ’em, dropping grenades on their heads—he must’ve taken out a dozen or more. But you know what o
rks are like. They don’t give up easy. They were swarming up that tree, and Hotshot was shooting and slashing down at ’em, but even he couldn’t stay put forever. He made a jump for it, sailed right over their heads.” There had been a touch of admiration in Old Hardhead’s voice, but now it faded, and his shoulders slumped. Lorenzo knew how fond he had always been of Woods.

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “If it hadn’t been for that damn slug in his leg…” Greiss was silent for a moment, then with pride in his voice, he continued, “He kept fighting. Even though he’d shattered his spine, he was on the ground, and the orks were piling onto him… I should’ve got there sooner.”

  “No, sergeant!” Lorenzo protested automatically.

  “Don’t give me that,” Greiss growled. “If any of us had to end his days a cripple, better it be an old warhorse with no fight left in him. Better it be someone who’s had his day, whose story’s been told.”

  Lorenzo was still digesting the full import of what Greiss was saying. “…end his days a cripple…” They were on a stealth mission, without backup, unable to vox for an airlift—and even if they could get Woods back to an Imperium facility, it would certainly have been the last thing he wanted. It was unlikely a medic could do much for him. The only person who could save him now from a fate worse than death was Greiss. Lorenzo’s gaze strayed to the spare lasgun on the sergeant’s knee.

  “He’ll be remembered,” was all he could think of to say. It seemed to cheer Greiss up a little.

  Then there was an awkward silence as Lorenzo realised there was nothing more he could say, and eventually turned to the door again.

  The last thing he saw as he left that hut, as he left another comrade behind forever, was Greiss leaning over Woods, shaking him gently awake, telling him it was time and pressing the lasgun into his hands. And Woods’ smile—not afraid, but relieved. Grateful, even.

  Just one of those things. Lorenzo had learned to accept it. He walked away from the hut, and ignored the part of him that wanted to break into a run, to get away from there before he had to hear…

  He thought about his promise: “He’ll be remembered.” He walked, and waited. And thought about his comrade, relating his last story, and he wished he’d known, wished he’d been more attentive. He thought about the dangers that still lay ahead, all his depleted squad still had to do, and he told himself they’d come through somehow.

  Lorenzo pretended not to hear the dark voice in the back of his head. The voice that said: Yes, Hotshot Woods will he remembered. Sharkbait Muldoon will be remembered. They will all be remembered.

  But for how long?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The rain came early in the evening.

  The Jungle Fighters had seen the clouds, felt the cool, fresh breeze that presaged the outburst—but the speed and ferocity with which it broke defied their expectations.

  The rain was acidic. Guardsman Braxton winced as the first drop splashed off his cheek, and Lorenzo threw a hand to his neck as the skin there began to smart. The acid, fortunately, wasn’t strong, not like that from the spitter plants—but with prolonged exposure, it could do as much damage.

  They found some shelter beneath the spreading branches of a huge tree. Lorenzo listened as the rain beat down on its roof of leaves, and he looked gloomily at the cascade of redirected liquid like a waterfall around him. He wondered how long it would be before the leaves were burnt through, and he couldn’t help but feel that even this downpour was deliberate. It was as if the planet was so determined to destroy them that it would sacrifice a part of itself.

  They debated the wisdom of turning back, of scavenging sheets of metal from the ork camp, but Greiss in particular was reluctant to lose ground. “Aside from which,” he growled, casting a wary glance back over his shoulder, “we don’t know what might be behind us.” They all knew what he meant. Ever since they had set off, they had all been aware of ghosts dogging their footsteps again.

  It had been inevitable, of course. Still, Lorenzo had hoped for at least some respite. He wasn’t the only one of the six remaining men in his squad—half their original complement—to have been injured in the previous night’s battle, nor to feel profoundly tired. Armstrong’s left arm was useless, the nerve tendons in his shoulder severed by an ork axe, and Braxton hadn’t said a word all afternoon and looked like he could drop at any moment. Their lasguns were low on energy, too, Myers wore a belt of strung-together power packs, letting the dwindling sunlight do what it could to recharge them until they could build a fire to do the job properly. But the nature of their mission—and Greiss, now firmly back in command—had required they press on, and not one of those six men was prepared to admit defeat.

  Their map had been incinerated along with Mackenzie, but Armstrong knew where they were and was sure he could remember the location of the warboss’ lair from the briefing. He could get them close, at least.

  They broke out the alkaline powders from their backpacks, rubbed them into their exposed skin and hair. As they worked, the ghosts began to gather, in the corners of their vision. This time, they had attracted more than one stalker. Many more. And these creatures, it seemed, were trying less hard to conceal their presence.

  Or maybe it was just that they were bigger and clumsier than Dougan, less able to hide. Ork corpses, as the Jungle Fighters had anticipated. This close, there was no denying the stink of death that rose from them, it had been wafting past Lorenzo’s nostrils for the past few hours, whenever the breeze was right. Some of these orks had been dead weeks or months, but now they were a part of the planet itself, cocooned in its substance and animated by its mysterious energy.

  It had taken six Jungle Fighters to send one monster into retreat. A smaller monster. Six Jungle Fighters, relatively refreshed and ready for battle.

  For now, the zombies seemed content to keep their distance, to watch. Greiss moved his squad on quickly anyway, worried that if they stayed put too long they might be surrounded. They moved through the rain at a faster-than-normal pace, with their packs over their heads, hugging the trees. Fortunately, they knew enough about Rogar now to avoid its more obvious traps—though Lorenzo remembered what Donovits had said about this world’s rapid evolution, and he eyed even the safest-looking flowers with suspicion.

  He twitched at another rustle from the foliage. It was closer than usual, to the left of the squad rather than behind them. He brought his lasgun around but didn’t dare fire lest he start something they couldn’t finish. Another ork shape was clearly outlined, watching him with unblinking eyes, one of which had slid half out of its socket on a slagheap of dried blood. As Lorenzo watched, it withdrew and sank silently into the ground.

  “They’re watching us,” he announced. “We’ve survived everything else Rogar has to throw at us, so it’s got its zombies watching us, looking for a weakness.”

  “I’d almost rather they made their move,” murmured Braxton, “and got it over with.”

  “Careful what you wish for.” Storm cautioned him grimly.

  “When you people first arrived,” said Braxton, “and you were talking about Rogar like it was a—I don’t know – a living thing, an enemy, like an ork or something, I didn’t know… I mean, I’m starting to see it now. I’m starting to feel like this planet is alive, like it’s intelligent, like it really wants us dead.” He sounded as if he wanted somebody to contradict him. No one did.

  The jungle had started to close in again. Greiss had sent Myers and Storm ahead to clear the way, and the squad’s pace had dropped to a crawl.

  And the ghosts were gathering at their backs.

  “Maybe we should send a few las-shots their way,” suggested Armstrong, worriedly, hefting his gun in his good hand as if to reassure himself he could still operate it. “Discourage them a little.”

  “Don’t know if it’d work,” murmured Greiss.

  “Hotshot fired at…” Lorenzo began, then was unable to say Dougan’s name, “…the first one. It didn’t
seem to react at all.”

  “They don’t feel pain,” said Greiss. “You remember what Brains said. We’ve got to stop thinking of these things as living creatures. They’re less than that—less than orks, even. They don’t have hearts—or if they do, they sure aren’t beating anymore. No internal organs, no nerves, no pressure points, and I doubt their brains are getting much use. They’re plants, no more than that. Part of the jungle—the planet itself—just wrapped around the remains of the dead.”

  Lorenzo stole a quick look at the collecting shadows, searching for one that was shorter and thinner than the others, hoping he wouldn’t find it. If the God-Emperor had any influence at all here, so far from his Golden Throne, he would see to it that Dougan could rest in peace.

  “Then we deal with them like we would any hostile plant,” reasoned Armstrong.

  “Can’t tear ’em up by the roots,” growled Greiss. “They’re up and walking about already.”

  “Shred ’em?” suggested Storm, his fingers twitching over his knife hilt.

  “Take too long with the knives,” said Greiss. “Way I’m thinking, those things will keep going till you get to the skeleton and can take it apart.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” said Braxton, “before they attack!”

  “Boy’s right,” said Armstrong. “We need a show of strength, give them something to think about. If they can think, that is.”

  “If they can’t,” muttered Myers, “looks like something does it for them.”

  “How much ordnance do we have left between us?” asked Lorenzo.

  “Couple of shredder mines,” offered Storm.

  “Still got my demolition charges,” said Myers.

  “Save ’em,” said Greiss, with a gleam in his eye, “for a special occasion. I got a better idea.” He and Armstrong spoke as one: “Burn “em!”

  Lorenzo and Braxton took over clearance duty as Myers and Storm assembled the flamer again. Greiss wielded it himself, straining under the weight of the device as he lugged it a few steps closer to the watching zombies. Then he pulled the trigger, and simultaneously swept the flamer around in a wide arc.