by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
‘If this is victory, I’d hate to see defeat,’ Harks murmured.
Defensive Emplacement Jensen-Primus, Hive Jensen
Jensen cradled Sasha’s torn, explosion-ravaged form to him, her blood staining his fire-blackened armour. The hab-ring burned, and orks loped through the smoke. Beatrix’s body was nearby, lost amidst the piles of dead, as were those of the rest of his wives. A stray blast from an ork gargant had ripped through the emplacement, gutting the command bunker and the hab-ring beyond. Buildings lay shattered like forgotten children’s toys, cracked open by the roiling beam of destruction which had passed over them. Jensen had only survived thanks to his armour… and Sasha. She had thrown herself between him and death, as was her duty, and his heart felt like lead in his chest as he looked down at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, stroking the ruin of her, and looking out at the ruin of his world. The hive shook like a dying animal. The orks were ripping it apart from the inside out. Their barbaric war machines trudged through the lower levels, pounding the rubble flat and shaking the ground beneath his feet. They had occupied the outer shell and were smashing through in places, using the hive’s own weapons emplacements to fire down at the centre of the hive. Comets of fire rained down, killing man and ork alike. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, more loudly. He looked down into her unseeing eyes, and bent low, until his head touched hers. Then he set her body aside and shoved himself to his feet, her power maul in his hands.
As he stood, his vox-link chirped, spitting out a coded frequency. Mazarin was making his move, and Jensen was in no position to do anything about it. Anger filled him, and brought with it strength. Orks charged towards him through the smoke and the fire, and he killed them, battering their snarling faces to pulp as he fought his way back to where the remaining defenders were regrouping. Armaments bawled, and orks died on their knees, scythed away by the last dregs of the artillery’s ammunition.
He shook off the helping hands as he reached his soldiers, and barked orders. Smoke rose from the spire of the hive, and he knew the gubernatorial palace was already under attack. One of his remaining body doubles would be there, seeing to the defence. The man would have to do for as long as the hive had left. He had other business than overseeing the immolation of all that his people had built.
Jensen borrowed a laspistol from one of his men and pushed away from them, ignoring their questions. They would hold their position until they were forced to fall back, or they would die where they stood. There was nothing else left for them, but to die and die well. But not for him. He had one last duty to fulfil. Quickly, he made his way to the closest of the level’s pneumatic lifts and hammered a button with a fist.
There was still power, thankfully, and as he rose towards the skyport, he tried to clear his mind of distractions. He turned away from the transparent wall and ignored the sounds that caused the lift to vibrate around him, as if it might judder loose from its moorings and plummet into the fires below. He shed his responsibilities and fears, letting the mantle of authority slip from his shoulders.
It was almost a relief.
He fingered the clasps of his mask, considering. Then, with a grunt, he let his hand fall. While the hive still stood, he was still the governor.
The skyport shook around him as the lift slowed and the doors slid wide. He stepped out, and breathed in smoke. The wide, open area was full of cargo that had been abandoned at the start of the fighting, and technical servitors stood awaiting orders that would never come, heedless of the destruction occurring around them. Coughing, he stumbled forward. Through blurring vision, he saw a shuttle – Mazarin’s, he knew – touch down on the landing pad, its thrusters dimming from white hot to blue.
He’d had his people keep a watch on the inquisitor’s shuttle. The damage to it was evident, but his spies had informed him that this was purely cosmetic. It clearly still functioned. It had remained docked in an upper grav-berth, and had not moved since its arrival, but he’d known that it was only a matter of time. He’d set the control-servitors of the communications tower to alert him, and him alone, if the shuttle moved.
Sooner or later, Mazarin would have made a run for it. Jensen had expected it. He’d hoped to have others with him now – Sasha, perhaps Beatrix, others. He could have saved some of them, sent them off into an uncertain future, but better that than staying here. He’d had it all planned. He intended to die with his people, and he intended for Mazarin to do the same. But some of them could have been saved. Someone would have been left alive to remember Ghul Jensen and its people. The thought was like a hammerblow in his head, pounding against the wall of his mind. He couldn’t save them, not now.
He would settle for avenging them.
Dust rolled across the landing pad, mingling with the smoke and haze of the growing inferno below. For a moment, he could see nothing. Then it cleared, and he saw his quarry, starkly outlined in the light of his home’s pyre. ‘Mazarin,’ he roared, and fired, striking the armoured hull of the craft and causing Mazarin to whirl. The old man moved fast, but not fast enough. Jensen had him dead to rights, and they both knew it.
‘Hereditary-Governor Jensen, what a delightful surprise,’ Mazarin rasped. ‘My people informed me that you were still in the palace. I take it that was one of your doubles, then?’
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Jensen snarled, ignoring the question.
‘We have accomplished what we came here to do, so we are leaving,’ Mazarin said.
‘And what was that?’ Jensen demanded.
Mazarin was silent for a moment. Then, ‘We came here to find someone. We needed as much time as possible, which meant that your world needed to survive longer than it was expected to. Now we have found them, and we are leaving.’
‘Who are they? Who did you sacrifice my world for?’
‘Your world was always going to die. I simply extended its agony.’
‘Who?’ Jensen roared. His finger twitched and Mazarin raised his hands in a placatory fashion. Jensen saw the mask he held, and knew that Mazarin wasn’t escaping unscathed.
‘No one important,’ Mazarin said. ‘Someone whose safety was desired by one who will now owe the Inquisition a debt, to be called upon at a later date, after this war is long finished and the next one begun.’
‘You weren’t interested in helping us. You were only interested in putting some poor fool far from here in your debt, just in case you needed him at a later date,’ Jensen said bitterly. ‘For that, you sacrificed my world – made me sacrifice my world – and got your companion killed.’
‘All men die, Hereditary-Governor Jensen. The reason is, frankly, immaterial. The end result is a given.’ Mazarin cocked his head. ‘Would it help if I said that it was necessary? That the death of millions here will prevent the deaths of billions elsewhere?’
‘I’m not the hereditary-governor elsewhere,’ Jensen snarled. ‘My people, my wives, all of them will die, and for what?’
‘A little girl,’ Harks piped up. The psyker leaned against the ship’s hatchway, one hand pressed to his wounded side. ‘Last scion of a noble Rogue Trader dynasty, more valuable than a hive world to the right people.’ He smiled. ‘The mother ran away, you see… Fell in love with a crewmember aboard her mother’s vessel and came here to start a new life. They’ve been looking for her for some time. That’s she’s had a brat only spices the meat, as it were. Her family will be overjoyed to get her back, snatched from the very jaws of the ork, and they’ll swear an oath of fealty to the Ordo Xenos. They’ll be just another set of tools, to be employed where required.’
‘What?’ Jensen said, momentarily off balance. He saw the child then, noticing her for the first time, huddled in Ismail’s arms.
‘Quiet, Harks,’ Mazarin said.
‘He deserves to know,’ Harks said simply. The psyker looked at Jensen. ‘We all have our uses. The question is, what happens when you’r
e no longer useful?’ He smiled bitterly. ‘What’s a governor without the governed, eh?’
Jensen shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said flatly.
‘Not nothing,’ Mazarin said. The vox-skull drew closer to Jensen, buzzing around him like a fly. ‘Harks is a fool. When a tool is no longer fit for purpose, other uses can be found by a clever man. A hammer can destroy as well as build, to stretch a metaphor. You’re a capable man, Ghul Jensen. You’ll forgive me if I don’t use your title. We are but men here, now, in this moment. Emilio and Ghul. We worked well together, Jensen. You show great promise.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Jensen longed to rub the sweat out of his eyes, but he didn’t dare lower his weapon. Ismail and Olympia were too close; a single moment of hesitation would cost him his one chance at revenge. Revenge for his wives, his people, his world.
Mazarin held up Mamluc-9’s mask. ‘I do so hate to have to replace my tools,’ he said. ‘I get attached, you see. I’m an old man, and sentimentality is a weakness of the old. I have grown fond of you, Jensen. And I am loath to waste a man of your capabilities.’
‘You want me to – no,’ Jensen said. He licked his lips. Far below, something large and important exploded, and the outer shell of Hive Jensen shuddered like the flesh of a man afflicted with ague. A solar collector tore loose with a shriek that caused his teeth to shiver in his gums, and plunged down, smashing against the edge of the platform. Jensen staggered, but didn’t fall or lower his weapon.
Thunderous explosions shook the spine of the hive, and Jensen heard the wail of alarms and the booming roar of hab-rings being isolated. Those guns still active on the inner curve of the hive shell began falling silent, one by one, and fire sprang from them, as if the hive had been engulfed in a typhoon of flame. He knew that one of those explosions likely signalled the destruction of his palace, and he felt a twinge of pain in his chest. The gardens were gone. Sasha was gone, and Beatrix and all of them. Everything was gone, wiped away, as if it had never been.
‘Then why did you come?’ Mazarin said. ‘Revenge? Or pragmatism? Your palace is gone, your people meat for the Beast, and you came here, rather than falling with them. You say you knew that my shuttle still functioned? Then why didn’t you confront us sooner? Why wait?’ The servo-skulls circled Jensen like carrion-birds, and beneath his mask, his eyes stung with sweat. ‘Because you are not a fool. You were buying time, even as we were. You are a creature of practicality.’ Mazarin lifted the mask. ‘We all have our limits. It is best we recognise them, when we reach them.’
‘I was waiting so that I could save someone,’ Jensen growled. ‘But since that is impossible, I am here now to avenge them.’
‘And thus, damning the last of these people whom you claim that you wish to save to a bad death,’ Mazarin said. ‘The servitor piloting this ship is attuned to my bio-rhythms. If I die, it will self-destruct, and take this vessel with it. But if I live, well… we all live.’
‘I don’t care,’ Jensen said, but his eyes strayed to the child again. She was a waif, there was nothing special about her that he could see. But she was one of his people.
‘Of course you do,’ Harks said. Blood from the wound in his side pooled at the psyker’s feet. He coughed. ‘If you didn’t, you’d have had this ship sabotaged, or simply blown it out of the sky when we tried to leave. But you cared enough to come up here. If we die, she dies. The last of your people die, as if they’d never been.’ Harks grinned. ‘She might still die. Her family is on Alaric Prime, after all, and that’s where we and the orks are going.’
Jensen felt something twist inside him. He stared at the girl, uncertain of what to do.
Mazarin stepped forward, and extended the mask. ‘Do your duty, hereditary-governor. Protect your people,’ he said. Jensen’s eyes flickered from the mask to the girl, to the gun in his hand.
Around them, Hive Jensen burned.
Alaric Prime
The reunion was a strained but joyful affair, Mazarin judged. The girl and her mother were welcomed with open arms by the latter’s parents as old sins and past indiscretions were forgiven in the face of looming obliteration. They clasped one another lovingly in the shadow of great war machines, making ready for the war to come. There was a certain poetic melancholy to the moment, and Mazarin recorded it for his records. He also recorded it as proof of services rendered – rogue traders were, by and large, useful people, and he would have much work for such in the coming days, he suspected.
‘It’s like something out of a holodrama,’ Harks said, and spat. He sat in the open hatch of the shuttle, nursing his side. It had begun to heal. By the time the orks arrived, Harks would be in fighting trim, Mazarin judged.
‘Perhaps,’ Mazarin said. ‘Then, I have never known a sentimental psyker.’ He turned, and looked at the man standing beside Harks, arms crossed over his chest. He wore an ornate eagle mask over his face. ‘What do you think, Mamluc-10?’ Mazarin asked.
The man didn’t reply.
Then, Mazarin hadn’t expected him to.
Storm clouds were forming around Hive Vinter, blocking the light from Sanctus. Guard Captain Holt shivered despite the oppressive heat. His scowl intensified as the first drops of acidic rain started to fall, sizzling against his mottled green carapace armour.
The larger of the two cyber-mastiffs he held by heavy chains growled as the downpour started in earnest. Wisps of steam rose from the implants visible through old fighting scars in what was left of its flesh. It had fared better than its brother, a smaller but still impressive hound almost completely covered in metal plates. The pair slunk ahead of Holt as he patrolled the defensive wall, glaring out with glowing, amber eyes. No one dared argue with Holt while his two pets were on their leash.
And when he let them go… well, you’d better start running.
All around, his men were hunkering down behind their weapons, lasguns and autocannons aimed at every possible exit of the hive. None of them complained about the stinging rain even as it raised angry welts on any patch of skin that was exposed to the elements. They wouldn’t dare. They had a job to do and their orders were clear.
They had been here two weeks now, holed up behind the defensive perimeter that had been erected around the hive. Ten-foot walls, topped with gun stations and sentry points. How many times had he walked the gantry around the cordon, gazing at the hive itself? How many days watching that strange green mould creeping from every joint, as if the building itself was decaying? Like meat gone bad.
He could almost taste the rot. Throne knew what it was doing to their lungs, breathing in that stench day after day. But here they would remain, until the job was done. Until they’d fulfilled the orders Holt had been given.
No one was getting out of that hive alive.
As if to question his resolve, a sharp crack drowned out the steady hiss of the falling rain. The cyber-mastiffs reacted with a frenzy of barks as Holt twisted around, careful not to slip on the nowslick walkway. Acrid smoke plumed from the mine that had detonated in the middle of the no-man’s-land that surrounded the base of the hive, indistinguishable shadows moving through the dense fog. Another blast followed, just metres from the first, sending more debris high into the air.
‘Runners, sir,’ the sergeant nearest Holt reported, never looking up from his rifle sights.
‘Wait for a target, Sergeant Lang,’ Holt ordered.
That was easier said than done as more and more mines blew, one after another, shrouding the hive in thick mires of choking black smoke.
‘There,’ Lang barked, his lasgun shifting as the smoke started to lift. A bloodied man floundered in the roiled earth. He was missing an arm, his clothes reduced to rags. Holt raised his laspistol and fired, putting the poor soul out of his misery. His body slapped into the mud.
‘Good shot, sir,’ the sergeant said, as the mastiffs threatened to pull Holt over in their haste t
o get to the others that were now staggering forward. These few had survived the first wave of mines, a mixture of fear and relief on their faces as they hurried towards the cordon occupied by Holt and his men. Some were crying, others were shouting, yelling for the Guardsmen to hold their fire. When he was younger, less experienced, Holt may have listened to their pleas.
But time and experience had taken their toll. Now he barely heard the cries for mercy.
‘Shoot to kill,’ Holt bellowed and his Guardsmen obeyed the order without question, lasguns shrieking louder than the citizens they were slaughtering.
There was every chance they were innocent; sheep driven across the minefield. But their loss was acceptable if it meant keeping the heretics festering inside their traitorous hive. One by one they fell before any more mines could be trampled, clearing the way for the real threat.
‘And here they are, the unholy scum,’ sneered Holt as the first shots rang out from the hive doors. Without the need for another order, his men shifted their aim away from the last hopeless stragglers to the cultists that were now streaming from the hive.
The mastiffs were desperate to be freed, to sink their metallic teeth into the wretches, but Holt kept them firmly on the leash, watching as the first fatalities tumbled to the ground. Victory for the Ninth Jensen Regiment was assured; there was no way the cultists could withstand the full force of his men’s guns. He could almost hear the praise that would be lavished upon him from his superiors. His worth would be proved once and for all, his ticket away from this insignificant siege, payback for the two weeks stuck in the mud around this accursed hive. War was coming to Ghul Jensen. Everyone knew it, even if they didn’t know exactly what threat was racing towards the hive world. Holt had his suspicions and would be there, in the thick of it, for the glory of the Emperor – and himself.
A shell slammed into the defensive wall, forcing Holt to duck. What in the name of the Eye was that? Last time the cultists had tried to run the stockade, they had been armed with simple handguns, crude rifles at best. But this?