by Guy Haley
His friend, the stranger, stood over him. ‘You did well,’ he said. ‘But I am afraid they have the information they need to repair the power transmission systems of Lux Imperator’s volcano cannon.’
‘I am sorry.’ Brasslock felt for his ingrams. They were shocked and truculent, ghostly overlays of corrupt data clogging them. His intelligence core flickered and buzzed, doubling his thoughts, his mind and back-up operating out of sync, the after-effects of a brutal data rip.
‘You delayed them. The mechanic could not find the ingrams, the witch could not read them when he did. It took them several days to acquire the data, several days that will help our cause.’
‘Now, they will let me die?’ said Brasslock.
The stranger looked sorrowful. ‘Be strong, Enginseer Brasslock, be strong.’
An ork came and took him soon after. The ork took his hand and dragged him away without effort. He did not weigh much now. He had been reduced to a blackened, scarred torso, one arm attached, metallic spine all that remained of his lower body.
The ork pulled him through endless corridors and stairs, until finally they brought him into the half-light of the storm raging above the hive’s central shaft. He was in the marshalling yard before Lux Imperator, its hull defaced with blue and black zigzags, iron maw framing its cannon, jerry-rigged turrets jutting out from its track units.
Brasslock could feel the torment of the machine-spirit trapped within.
Other orks joined the one dragging him. They lifted him high. It was then that Brasslock saw the spikes, two long, thin slivers of steel on the front, to the side of the cannon’s barrel.
The defiled engine of Lux Imperator growled, and the orks cheered.
The wagon would soon be ready for war.
INTERSTITIAL
The amplification of low-grade psychic ability is a side effect of lorelei presence. Naturally occurring crystalline matrices can amplify inborn abilities to noticeable levels. All slave workers are to be checked thrice weekly for incipient witch activity. Those according to standard human phenotype are to be incarcerated and maintained in lorelei-shielded holding cells for the next Black Ship rotation. Those deviating by more than 14 points on the Godolkind Purebreed Guide
…caution must, however be exercised. In areas of naturally occurring psycho-sensitive crystalline matrices, non-psychic designated personnel may be subject to visions, poltergeist activity or outbursts of hysteria.
Extract from amendments to general orders relating to the tithing of emergent psykers on Kalidar, by order of the planetary lord, Imperial Governor Cann. M41
Chapter 22
Kalidar IV, Remains of Hive Kimeradon construction site
3344397.M41
Down and down went Bannick, sucked deeper into the choking dust. His rebreather’s cycling circuits kicked in when no further air was being drawn from outside. A beep sounded in his ear; the unit’s small carbon dioxide scrubbing facility would keep him alive for twenty minutes, no more, and then he would begin to suffocate.
A more pressing problem – he almost laughed at the irony – was the weight of the sand. The deeper he went, the tighter the squeeze of the swiftdust. He found it hard to breathe. He had to force himself not to pant, as hyperventilating would use up his air supply all the quicker.
Down he went. Another beep sounded, ten minutes left. The pressure grew on his limbs, squeezing at his head. Black spots swam in front of his eyes, and he felt consciousness slipping away from him.
Something below him gave. The pressure on his chest abruptly eased and he sucked in a great gulp of tinny, recycled air. He felt himself pick up speed, the sand rasping as it rushed past him.
He burst into an open space, carried by a torrent of sand. Flashes of murky light came and went, and he felt himself fall. He had enough time to make himself go limp before he hit a pile of sand. Over and over he rolled, down a slope, equipment banging painfully into him as he windmilled without control to a stop.
The rope attaching him to Ganlick was taut. It had acted like an anchor, preventing him from falling any further into the pit, which continued down another one hundred metres to form a shallow cone.
He stood with care. He was bruised, but unharmed. He pulled at the rope, using it to haul himself up the slope to where it disappeared into the sand. He pulled at it, but it might as well have gone into rockcrete. Frantically, he threw himself down and dug at the sand like a dog, using his hands as paddles. Sand poured into the hole he had made, endless streams of it; he dug faster, eventually hitting cloth, shoulder – Ganlick.
Diverting the flow of sand away from his comrade with his body, Bannick struggled to free him. Eventually, he had the top half of Ganlick’s body free.
Bannick cradled Ganlick’s head. He was dead. At some point his mask and hood had come free, and his nose and mouth were full of sand. His cropped hair and new beard were thick with the stuff, eyes caked with it. As best he could, Bannick brushed the second gunner’s head and face clean and closed his eyes. He bowed his head in silent prayer then laid his comrade gently down.
Not taking his eyes from the dead man’s face, he stood, unsheathed his knife and cut through the line binding them together. He thanked the Emperor. Ganlick had saved Bannick’s life through his death, anchoring him and preventing his further fall down the sand slope into the quickdust at the bottom of the shaft.
Only then did he step back from the sandfall and take account of his surroundings. He was in a deep shaft, like that found in one of the hives. It was dim, but the storm-muted sky at the top cast enough illumination for him to see. He realised then that he must somehow have come across the unfinished city Ganlick had told him of a few days before.
The builders had excavated side tunnels and the shaft before they had pulled out. How deep they had delved, Bannick did not know, for they were but black holes in the rock. The wind moaned across the shaft aperture, rising and falling, and a shower of fine dust rained down constantly, torrents of thicker sand shushing down in short bursts, but down sheltered from the wind the air was still.
Platforms and girders protruded from the walls, mountings for construction and excavation equipment or moorings for structures never built. At the top of the slope where Bannick stood, the rock of the shaft wall was visible, the double helix of the up and down roads also visible within. The roads were rough tubes bored through the soft rock. No plating or cladding had ever been installed, and each one was awash with sand and choked by rockfalls, their lower portions hidden by the sand in the pit. The sky above was darkening, going from featureless buff to grey. Night would come soon. He did not want to be left blundering about in the dark.
He made his way up the side of the pit to the edge of the road, testing the ground ahead of him with one foot every few paces. Finally he gained his objective, climbed over the road’s rough-hewn lip, and dropped down. He caught his breath, checked his equipment, and thought upon his next actions.
Not knowing what else to do, he partook of the meagre rations in his belt pouches, and fell asleep, exhausted.
Bannick awoke to bone-numbing cold. His teeth chattering, he curled as tight as he could and tried to keep warm. The persistent feeling of being watched that he’d had ever since they had come into the basin plagued him, and try as he might, he could not dismiss it from his mind. Time and again he lifted his head and looked around the dark. It was so dark he could not see. He had a small supply of flares in his belt. He needed to conserve all his supplies, he told himself, but in the end the feeling of eyes upon him became too much, and he scrabbled up to h
is knees, fumbled with shaking hands in a belt pouch, and pulled out the flare.
He struck it against the rock. It flared bright, his body shivering gratefully at its sudden warmth. He held it high and stood, peering into the dark beyond the circle of light cast by the flare. It hissed as it burned, dripping molten compounds onto the floor.
He turned round. Something moved beyond the light.
The flare guttered and died. His eyes flared with after-images.
He struck another flare. Light burst out again.
Standing in front of him, his face almost touching his own, stood Tuparillio, eyes dead, skin the blanched the white of the exsanguinated. He stared deep into Bannick’s face, his eyes boring into his soul.
‘Proud you were, and callous,’ he hissed. ‘Murderer.’
Bannick’s nerve broke. He shouted and fled, his flare casting wild, flickering shadows on the inner wall of the road as he ran upwards, round its gentle curve. He dodged past rockfalls and sandpiles, flying in the low gravity. The flare burnt out and he cast it aside, running blind, stumbling. His dishonour had followed him.
Something caught his foot, turning it and casting him to the floor.
Bannick’s insides turned to ice. Behind him, bobbing up and down, came a light.
‘Tuparillio! Tuparillio!’ he shouted. ‘Forgive me, please forgive me!’
His voice echoed round the pit. Still the light advanced, a will o’ the wisp, coming implacably for him, the ghost of the kin he murdered.
He pulled out his laspistol, the small charge light on the side providing an infernal cast to the dark. He held it level, then looked at it in horror. What good was a gun against a phantom, would he try and murder his cousin a second time? He cast it aside to clatter from the roadside wall, screwed his eye shut. ‘Oh Emperor, forgive me, I ask only to serve, forgive me. I was proud and I was arrogant. Tuparillio…’ Tears tracked their way down the dust on his face, wetting his mask under the respirator.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
‘No forgiveness, hush, hush, no need. Wake, wake, open eyes! Open eyes!’
Bannick did as he was bade. A man stood over him; a man of a kind. His kindly eyes were too widely spaced, lopsided mouth studded with twisted teeth. One arm was hulking and massive, a lantern on a staff clasped in malformed fingers, the other terminating in a hand with only four fingers, currently resting upon Bannick’s shoulder. A mutant. Any disgust Bannick felt was swamped by relief.
‘Hush hush,’ said the mutant, his voice adendoidal from the air filter plugged into his nostrils, a long rifle, a hunter or sniper’s weapon, slung over his shoulder. ‘It is the ghosts, yes? You have seen them, the ghosts of Kalidar?’ Bannick nodded mutely.
‘No worry, I here now.’ The mutant shook his sand-crusted coat. Shards of crystal stitched onto it in a complicated pattern jangled on his chest. ‘Ghosts go away.’
INTERSTITIAL
‘Fear the mutant, loathe the mutant,
destroy the mutant.’
Edict of Ecclesiarch Thanatos, Prelate-General
of the Red Redemption
Chapter 23
Kalidar IV, Remains of Hive Kimeradon construction site
3344397.M41
Bannick could not pronounce the mutant man’s name, so settled on calling him Olli. The creature did not seem to mind. ‘You big brave soldier of the Sky Emperor, you want call me Olli, you call me Olli! Is no problem! Scum-speak hard for you? Olli take you to Bruta, yes. He’ll know! But first, you take this.’
In one scabbed hand, the mutant held out a talisman.
‘You, you took that from Ganlick,’ Bannick said, the revulsion he had at the sandscum returning.
‘Yes,’ the creature’s face was innocent. ‘I have offended you? Is good talisman.’ It waved it at Bannick. ‘He no need it now. It keep ghosts away. Is good.’ It adjusted the long rifle slung over its malformed shoulder and peered at him earnestly.
Bannick looked Olli up and down: beneath his filthy robes, he caught a glimpse of Ganlick’s boots, his belt, canteen and knife…
A surge of the old Bannick rose up in him. How dare this impure creature defile the resting dead? The brave and pure that fought to keep this planet free of ork conquest? His muscles tensed.
Olli looked dismayed, and took a step backwards.
Bannick stopped himself. What was he thinking? The sandscum was only trying to survive, and although it was impure, a mutant, Olli was his best chance of living too. What else was he going to do? Walk out of the top of the hive into the quickdust fields? Ganlick would not begrudge him the talisman.
He reached out his hand. He opened his mouth, and struggled out, ‘Thank you.’
‘That good talisman.’ Olli tapped it with a too-long finger. ‘No bother you, not now.’
‘It drives them away?’
Olli laughed. ‘Oh no. It stop you seeing them, is all. They still there!’
Bannick shivered and looked around the dark outside Olli’s faint circle of lantern light.
‘Come now, we go. Is long way!’
Beckoning, the mutant set off up the road, lantern swaying, light catching the edges of rockpiles on the broad way.
Olli chattered on in its pidgin Gothic, pointing out this or that, things half hidden in the dark, covered over with sand. Much of it Bannick could not understand, but Olli did not seem to mind that either.
Half an hour later, Olli beckoned Bannick into a side tunnel, an unfinished transit tube run out from the shaft to serve the planned hive’s broader spread.
‘Come come, come come!’ said the mutant.
Bannick hesitated. The mutant peered back at him with a puzzled expression. It did not seem to mean him any harm. Lacking other options, Bannick followed.
They walked for some time. Bannick noticed the occasional sign of habitation. Scuff marks in the sand, footprints, flat rocks with black circles on them, rags, broken bits of metal and at one intersection they came to, piles of bones.
‘Orks come here, kill many sandscum, but we kill more!’ Olli laughed wetly then stopped. ‘Hmph, so sad, many hearths with no head now, who will feed the children?’ he shook his head.
‘You leave your dead?’
‘Yes, yes!’ said Olli. ‘Of course. Leave dead, sand-mites come, we catch sand-mites, for food, for oil!’ He shook his lantern. ‘We use many things from sand-mites, when bones clean, then bury in house of dead. Not before.’ The mutant searched the skeletons, turning the bones over carefully. ‘No mites here now, shame. I have dry.’ He patted his pouches. ‘We eat later. Too dangerous here.’
‘How long until we get to this Bruta?’ asked Bannick.
‘One day, maybe little more.’ Olli stuck out his lip and waggled his head from side to side. ‘We rest tonight, then we go on. We live far away now, where orks cannot find us. Is hard for us to go up.’ He pointed to the rocky ceiling, ‘to hunt sandpikes, and we hungry, but we have just enough, and they will not follow so deep.’
‘Why were you so close to the central shaft?’
‘Sky hole? Because things fall in there! Especially in the storm. Fleetlizards, sandpike, easy food. Sometimes things more interesting, like you my friend!’ he laughed. ‘Come, we go. Is not safe here. From now, you step in my steps, understand?’
‘To leave one trail?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Olli nodded approvingly.
On they went, further and further from the shaft. The tunnels carved in the abandoned attempt to construct the hive gave out, and Olli led him to a dead end.
‘Now, you wait here.’ The mutant pulled out a small lamp, a little cup with fat and a wick in it, and lit it from his lantern. Then he scuttled off back the way they had come, stepping only where they had stepped before. Moments later he returned, pulling a weighted blanket across the sand they had walked through, obscuring their footsteps.
To Bannick’s eye it looked even more obvious than their track had.
‘Olli leave meat,’ the mutant explained. ‘Further up tunnel, one, two, three places.’ It held up three crooked fingers. ‘Only small pieces, but many sand-mites come, from there, there, maybe there.’ He pointed to loose piles of debris, and small holes in the rock. ‘They leave many, many tracks. Hide us good, and their piss stink too! Orks no smell us.’
He checked over his work. Satisfied, he led Bannick behind a pile of rocks that obscured a tiny slit, a tighter squeeze than any tank hatch.
‘Through here,’ Olli said. ‘I go first.’
The mutant handed his lantern and pole over, and wriggled into the gap.
A hand reappeared a moment later and beckoned. ‘Come, come!’
Bannick looked at it doubtfully, then struggled through into another tunnel. The scrape marks of primitive tools were evident on the soft rock walls, the workmanship rough, but the tunnel ran true.
‘Now we in real sandscum land!’ said Olli proudly. ‘No one know this here, not from outside.’
‘Not even the hivers?’ asked Bannick.
Olli spat. ‘No! They hunt and kill us as often as they trade, but they no come here, they ’fraid of ghosts.’
‘So why help me?’ said Bannick.
Olli turned back and smiled. ‘You have soft face, not hurt by sand. You are tall, not short. You are not of Kalidar. You wear uniform of Sky Emperor! You kill orks?’
‘Some,’ said Bannick.
‘Then you help sandscum, so Olli help you.’
The tunnel led into a series of round tunnels that looked like they’d been melted from the rock. The work of a Kalidarian life-form, Bannick guessed. These tunnels formed a messy labyrinth that cut over and through itself, but Olli followed it unerringly ever downwards. The deeper they went, the lighter it got, bioluminescent fungus growing in ever-greater blue splotches, until in places the entire tunnel was a tube of light. Traces of other animal-life and plants became apparent. On the surface, Kalidar was a blasted wasteland, but wherever life could find a foothold, it invariably did. The tubes gave out onto a great cavern, the rock here harder than the compressed sand that covered most of Kalidar’s surface. It was hotter down here, and Bannick was not altogether surprised to find a forest of woody plant-animals that retracted into themselves as he and Olli passed, their sudden movements stirring the pools of steaming water they clustered about. Small animals scurried from them. Olli fell quiet and peered between the plant-animal stems cautiously, but whatever he feared made no appearance.