by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
Another missile whistled through the air, taking out an entire section of the barbed wall. The screams of his own men joined the battle cries of the enemy, who were flowing onto the field now, more than Holt had expected.
The captain slapped his laspistol against his thigh, the magna-lock holding it in place as he retrieved a pair of field glasses. The grainy image zoomed in on the cultists and Holt cursed beneath his breath. On previous escape attempts, the cultists wore nothing than leathers and their savagely-tattooed hides. Not now. Now they were sporting hefty armour, twin-barrelled ripper guns spewing hot metal from their drums, and that wasn’t the worst of it. Behind this advanced guard, a trio of massive exoskeletons waded into the mud – crude yes, but intimidating all the same. They’d obviously started life as heavy-lifters for the hive’s manufactorums, designed to carry unwieldy parts on the production line, but the cultists had been busy. Armour plates were riveted across the chest cavities to protect the operators, flamers and missile launchers mounted on each pneumatic arm.
‘Man the autocannons,’ Holt screamed, shouting to be heard over the increasing barrage. ‘Fire!’
Within seconds the gun-turrets sounded, a thunder to rival the storm overhead and the last noise the cultists would ever hear. The exterminators carved through the advancing force, silencing at least some of the heretic’s weapons.
Some – but not enough.
For every armoured cultist the Guardsmen mowed down, two more were ready to take their place, each bearing arms more powerful than the last.
Holt’s mind raced. He had two options. Deactivate the rest of the minefield remotely and give the order for his men to surge forward, taking the battle to the enemy, or bring fire down on their very heads from above.
Holt’s scarred lips twisted into a smile as he barked into his vox. There was no contest.
‘Skyraptor, take them down.’
Guardsmen cheered as the sound of Skyraptor’s engines filled the air. The Vendetta gunship swung around Hive Vinter, spotlights illuminating targets on the ground for the twin-linked lascannons to send to the mud.
One of the exoskeleton-clad heretics swivelled towards the looming aircraft, its shoulder mounted missile-launcher zeroing in on the gunship’s cockpit.
Skyraptor’s pilot fired first, reducing the exoskeleton to scrap.
‘You’ve got your toys,’ Holt grinned, his laspistol kicking in his hand, ‘And I’ve got mine.’
The cultists didn’t know which way to attack. The Vendetta swooped low, blazing death, while Holt’s guards continued the barrage from behind the containment wall. The cultists were outgunned, plus they had made a fatal mistake showing their hand.
If they were manufacturing weapons such as these inside the hive, Holt thought, he may be able to persuade command to bring the entire building down. When the news of the uprising within Vinter first broke, defence forces were sent in. The battles were fierce, the cultists sacrificing themselves – and their prisoners – to defend their newly won territory. The decision had been made. Shut them in. Don’t let them pass. Let the cultists starve in the mouldering tower.
All it would take is a few well-placed missiles. Holt had made the recommendation before, only to be told it was a waste of resources.
‘Just keep the miscreants within Vinter’s walls, Holt. And remember your place for Throne’s sake.’
Better to defend the other hives. Better to keep watching the skies.
They’d been wrong and he would prove it.
The Vendetta’s engines whined as it came about for another sweep. The cultists were already breaking rank, running back for the exit. The sound of battle was incredible, almost drowning out the sergeant’s shout.
‘Sir, head’s up!’
Holt glanced up just in time to see something hurtling down from on high. Something large.
‘Incoming,’ the captain yelled, willing the Vendetta to bank out of the way. The pilot slew the gunship to the side, but not fast enough. The falling object smashed through the Vendetta’s port wing, sending the craft spiralling out of control., Skyraptor ploughed into the defensive wall, its lascannons still firing, a ball of flame blossoming into the rain.
Holt was thrown from his feet, his vox filled with the dying screams of his men.
‘What is it, sir?’ Lang asked, boggling at the steaming metal cocoon now half buried in the ground, metres away from Skyraptor’s burning wreck. As the cultist’s assault began anew, a hatch blew from the side of the pod, neatly taking out an armour-clad attacker. The sergeant’s face blanched behind his visor. ‘Could it be the Angels of Death, sir? Have they sent reinforcements?’
‘I don’t think so, sergeant,’ Holt replied, watching as another cultist rushed towards the pod, firing into its cramped quarters. The advance didn’t last long. A single shot from within downed the heretic, a haze of bone and brain matter exploding from the back of his head.
The captain was right. The figure that burst from the pod couldn’t have been more different to a Space Marine. Yes, it wore black armour, but it was as sleek as members of the Adeptus Astartes were imposing. It raced out of the pod, a heavily modified bolt pistol thundering in one hand, a power sword growling in the other – but it was the thing’s head that caused Holt to gape. It was completely encased in a bone-white death mask fashioned after a human skull, red eyes glowing above a grinning skeletal mouth.
‘Sir, what is it?’ the sergeant spluttered as the thing’s power sword neatly separated a cultist’s head from his shoulders.
‘A distraction,’ Holt replied, struggling to hold the mastiffs back, the hounds driven wild by the newcomer’s scent. They pulled on their chains, eager to get away, even as more cultists fell at the mysterious aggressor’s feet. ‘Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be here. Bring it down.’
‘But sir, the cultists–’ began Lang.
‘Bring them all down!’
Lang didn’t argue. Without another word he brought his lasrifle about and discharged a volley straight into the back of the macabre figure that was mowing down more cultists than Holt’s own men.
Not that it even seemed to notice. One of the armoured cultists lumbered forwards, swathing the skull-faced brute in promethium. The stranger disappeared beneath the flames, but still didn’t stop. It barrelled forward and slashed across the exo-skeleton’s rough chest-plates, opening the armour up in one solid strike. Whether the blade cut through the cultist’s flesh Holt couldn’t see, but even if the heretic survived the initial assault, the bolt lodged in his brain finished him once and for all.
The cultist toppled back, the weight of his exo-suit pulling him down. Even then, the death-bringer didn’t stop. It vaulted forward, planting a booted foot on the cultist’s chest, propelling itself through the air, still peppering the cultists with bolts as it leapt.
Autocannon shells were already churning the mud around its feet when it landed on the other side of the fallen exo-skeleton, a round finding its target and knocking the killer from its feet. The power sword flew from its grip, but the creature didn’t stay down. It rolled with the impact, springing back up to its feet as if it had just been stung by a wasp rather than hit with a shell that should by rights have ripped him in two. It continued running towards the open doors, not even pausing to slash at the tattooed cultist that stood in its path, opening the heretic’s inked cheek with the needle-like talons that extended from its empty hand.
So that was the real reason it was here. Not to aid the fight, but to get inside the hive. Not while Holt still had breath in his lungs.
‘Rend!’ the captain screamed at the mastiffs, finally loosening his grip on their restraints. The two hounds charged forwards, the chains flailing behind them, catching wounded cultists as they tore past. They covered the no-man’s-land in seconds, and yet incredibly – impossibly – the death-bringer seemed ready for them. Without even flinchi
ng, it turned, dispatching the first mastiff with a single clinical shot. Practiced. Fluid. Like an assassin from hell. Holt screamed in frustration as the beast’s corpse slid to a halt in the mud, the smaller of the two dogs threw itself at the assassin, ready to close servo-powered jaws around that fearsome grinning mask.
‘Rip his head off,’ Holt yelled, reaching for his magnoculars to witness the mauling – but as they focused, a strained gurgle emanated from the back of the captain’s throat.
‘No,’ he spat. ‘That’s not possible.’
The assassin was wrestling with the mastiff, holding the hound’s jaws open with its gloved hands. The claws he had seen carve open the cultist’s face were now embedded in the side of the dog’s face, the augmented animal’s body going into some kind of seizure.
With a sudden jolt, the assassin ripped the jaws apart, splitting the dog’s head open like a ripe fruit. With barely a shrug, he pushed himself free of the still twitching body and reached for his bolt pistol that had been thrown aside during the attack.
Screaming with rage, Holt charged for the nearest gun-turret, roughly shoving a guardsman out of the way to get to the controls. He swung the autocannon around, finding the assassin in the sights and fired. The rest of his men joined the assault, the Assassin struggling to get to his feet as round after round thundered home.
‘Die, won’t you?’ Holt howled as the gun-tower bucked. ‘Just di–’
As one, every remaining mine in no-man’s-land erupted, sending mud and body parts high into the air. In his fury, Holt hadn’t seen the embattled assassin press a stud set into its belt, didn’t hear the sudden shrill tone that was perfectly masked by the percussive rumble of the autocannon. He wasn’t even prepared as shrapnel peppered the containment wall, a sliver of metal slicing straight through his protective visor, carving its way into the soft jelly of his right eye.
The pain would come later. For now, he was pulling himself back up from where he had fallen, knocked back by the combined force of the blasts, blood pouring from burst ear-drums.
With his one good eye, Holt scanned the battlefield, searching for any sign of the stranger.
There was none. As the sergeant ran up to him, Holt slumped to the ground, shock finally taking hold. Whatever that thing was, it had entered the hive – and Emperor help anyone who got in its way.
High in the Spires of the hive, Governor Vinter coughed violently, blood splattering across the rich dark brown rug. He’d purchased it just months before. Genuine Carnadon pelt. The best gelts could buy. How he’d loved slipping off his boots and feeling its deep soft pile beneath his toes. So luxurious. So extravagant.
‘The lower levels would kill for a carpet like this,’ he’d joked to his aide, pouring himself another glass of amasec.
It didn’t seem so funny anymore.
The governor had forgotten what it was like to be comfortable. He had no idea how long he’d been hanging from the wall of his chambers, nailed to the frame of his own official portrait, the cult leader’s idea of a sick joke. It could have been days, maybe weeks. Time had lost all sense of meaning. The memory of the heretic’s brutish face as the nails had been rammed home was all that was clear.
‘I don’t know much about art, governor but I know what I like.’
Why wouldn’t they just let him die?
Vinter tried to glower at the cult leader, rocking back and forth in front of the makeshift shrine he’d erected on the other side of the office. It was useless. The governor couldn’t even summon the energy to glare anymore. Instead he let out a long feeble moan – the greatest act of defiance he could manage.
The traitor stopped mid-chant, looking over his abnormally large shoulder.
‘Quiet!’ the brute rumbled. ‘I’m praying!’
‘So sorry to disturb you,’ the governor murmured, amazed at how weak his voice sounded.
The cult leader turned back to the flayed skull that sat in the middle of his makeshift shrine. He reached up, caressing the heavy brow that formed a thick ridge over tiny, impossibly small eye sockets. His fingers lingered on the huge jutting jawbone, the large pointed canines. The heretic’s head dropped into a deep bow before he rose to his full height. Even after all this time, Vinter was always surprised how big the traitor was. He must have been easily seven foot tall and seemed just as wide, muscles bunching beneath his heavily-tattooed skin. The governor felt sick to his stomach just looking at the freak, his broad back a pincushion of metal studs.
Or perhaps he was still nauseous from when Big Bruvva had broken both his legs. Surely he hadn’t snapped them with his bare hands, as Vinter remembered. That was impossible wasn’t it? It had to be another of the fevered dreams that had plagued him on the rare occasions that he’d managed to sleep hanging here.
The governor couldn’t tell what was real or not anymore. Everything was a blur. The news that mutants were swarming through the underhive. The power going down. The sound of stuttering gunfire outside his office. Big Bruvva grabbing his aide by that lovely, slender neck Vinter had admired on so many occasions. The neck that cracked with the sound of splintering wood.
He hadn’t seen her body hitting the carpet that she had so admired. He was too busy reaching for his gun.
The same gun Big Bruvva had twisted from his grip and used as a bludgeon.
His mind had blanked out most of the details – except for the pain. He remembered the pain. He’d lived with it ever since.
Big Bruvva turned and sniffed loudly, the bone thrust through his flat nose twitching obscenely.
‘Should kill you for that,’ his tormentor snarled, offering Vinter a glimpse of a terrifying row of filed teeth.
Please, the governor thought, proving that just when he couldn’t disgust himself any more, there was further still to fall.
‘Know why I don’t?’ Big Bruvva asked, thudding forward to bring himself face-to-face with the broken man. When Vinter didn’t respond, the cultist roared in his face, spittle flying from his pierced lips. ‘Do you?’
‘No,’ the governor whimpered, trying to turn his head away from the brute’s fetid breath. His head lolled forwards weakly instead.
Big Bruvva gazed up to the ceiling as if his piggy eyes could see the heavens.
‘Because Gork wills it.’
The governor’s stomach clenched at the name – one he hadn’t even heard just over a month ago. He’d heard it enough since, chanted over and over again as the cult leader had daubed icons of his false god across Vinter’s walls in lurid green paint. At least, he hoped it was paint.
Gork, Gork, Gork, Gork.
Big Bruvva would whirl towards him, his eyes wide with fervour, foam flecking the sides of his mouth.
‘He’s coming for us, governor. Coming to make us whole. Coming to make us ork!’
And that was the scariest thing of all. These simpletons believed, really believed, that this ork god, if that truly was what it was, was coming for them, to transform them into their twisted idea of perfection.
Not human, but greenskins. Xenos scum.
‘Coming for us, coming for me.’
Oh, they were coming for him all right.
And then were Big Bruvva’s followers, trooping in front of him, falling over each other to prove their devotion. Each one seemed larger than the last, muscles straining beneath taut skin that bled freely where the imbeciles had carved intelligible runes into their own flesh. It couldn’t be natural. He’d seen big men before, men who’d worked hard to sculpt their bodies, but not like this. Throne knew what poisons they were pumping into their systems to swell their muscles to such unnatural proportions.
Yet the bigger the idiots were, the more damage they had lavished on their bodies, the warmer the welcome they received from their leader.
As long as they didn’t dare to be bigger than Big Bruvva himself. Then they’d suffer. Then th
ey’d be cut back down to size.
All over the governor’s rug.
How desperate had things got in the underhive that deviants such as these could take control so easily? That their influence would stretch so far.
Why hadn’t he been warned? Why weren’t the authorities prepared?
Of course, the truth of the matter was that he had been told, his advisors shuffling into his chambers, reporting the existence of a lowly mutant with an ork obsession.
‘He believes that he is a herald,’ Prefect Bodil had sneered as a hololith of the cult-leader appeared over the governor’s table, turning slowly in the air. ‘Sent to convert us to the xenos’ blasphemous faith.’ Bodil had chuckled as he’d made his report.
The ashen-faced man in the emerald robes sitting beside the prefect didn’t share the humour. This was Murkel, an astropath who had served Vinter well for many years, looking beyond the hive, feeding the governor secrets. Murkel’s sunken eyes seemed more troubled than ever. ‘There is a disturbance within the hive,’ the astropath muttered, his voice rarely louder than a whisper. ‘A presence I cannot identify.’
‘This herald?’ Vinter asked.
The astropath’s gaze dropped. ‘A devil from below.’
Bodil couldn’t hide his distain. ‘At the worst, he displays some low-level pysker abilities.’ His thin lips twisted into a superior smile. ‘Perhaps the bore is picking up on the coming troubles.’
The coming troubles. That’s how Bodil had described them. Such small words for the fleet of ork warships that were rampaging towards Ghul Jensen.
‘You think that’s what is galvanising this Big Bruvva character?’ the governor asked Murkel, and ignoring Bodil. ‘Fuelling the riots in the lower levels?’
‘We believe so, sir.’
Vinter thumped his fist sharply on the table. ‘Then it will only get worse the nearer the ork threat gets.’
The governor realised now that he should have listened, should have acted as soon as this muscled oaf had emerged from the Pit. If he’d cleaned that cesspool up years ago, when the sinkhole had first opened deep below the hive, none of this would have happened. His advisors had told him that the Pit had been a blessing in disguise, taking slums and crime-dens with it. Hundreds had died on that day, but thousands more had shed blood since. The wound in the bowels of Hive Vinter had since become an amphitheatre of sorts. The dregs of what could laughably be called society gathered on the edges, peering down into the Pit as combatants fought. Some used their fists, others caved in their rivals’ skulls with the debris that still littered the floor, the remnant of life before the sinkhole. The results were the same. The blood. The cheers. The gangs taking bets on the sidelines.