He nodded to the one who looked like their leader. A thick beard covered the lower half of his face and there were strange tattoos marking his cheeks and forehead. He wore several ragged scarves and his nose, ears and around the eyes were red with overexposure to the cold. Bandages, several layers thick, served as gloves. A tattered cloak that might once have been a storm coat fluttered on a solemn breeze.
Though Scipio towered over the man, he didn’t flinch or appear intimidated.
He looked down, extending a hand. ‘We are in your debt.’
Besides taking a firmer grip on his lascarbine, the man didn’t respond.
‘The trap wasn’t meant for you,’ said a confident voice from higher up in the crags. It was a woman, moving slowly but expertly through the rocks. She was attired like the others but Scipio noticed a ribbed bodyglove beneath her scarves and cloaks. It reminded him of some kind of environment suit, albeit non-functional. Reddish hair, dried out and rough with the cold, peeked from beneath a furred hat. A pair of goggles, their lenses tinged a pinkish hue, hung around her neck.
Piercing jade eyes appraised the Ultramarine, taking in the curves of his armour, his sheer size and power, as she approached him.
‘They’re after me.’ Stopping a few metres away from Scipio, she spread her arms wide. ‘All of us.’
Pointing to the obelisk, she added, ‘Communication tower, Emperor knows how it works. The Herald uses it to speak to us.’
Scipio frowned. ‘Herald?’ He recalled Tigurius’s traumatic connection with a creature of the same name.
‘He is their voice,’ she explained. ‘Don’t see many towers this far out. Must be expanding.’ The woman came closer, deciding she could trust the warrior, and held out her hand. ‘Jynn Evvers.’
Scipio took it out of politeness, being careful not to crush her delicate fingers, and was surprised to feel some iron there. ‘You’re hunting them.’
‘Why do you think they want to catch us? Got close too until you Angels arrived from on high.’ She turned in profile, revealing a string of the self-same tattoos down her neck as on the bearded man. They weaved like a strand of chromosomes. ‘This is my crew: Densk, Farge, Makker…’
The names were unimportant to Scipio, though this Jynn related all eighteen of them. Each man and woman nodded, smiled or returned grim indifference to the Ultramarine sergeant. Densk was the bearded one. He later discovered the man had no tongue – he’d lost it due to frostbite. He also later found out that there had once been more of them… lots more.
‘We should move,’ she concluded at the end of the introductions. ‘The metal-heads will be back soon.’
Scipio exchanged a glance with Largo – this must be the guerrilla’s term for the necrons. Out the corner of his eye, he noticed Brakkius emerging from the gorge. He was limping. Herdantes cradled a wounded arm. Between them they dragged Renatus.
Largo went to go to them when Scipio placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Find Ortus,’ he murmured.
‘Captain Evvers!’ One of the guerrillas, a woman called Sia, was watching the perimeter. Her warning was met by the priming of lascarbines and an immediate dispersal of the human forces amongst the crags.
Scipio was mildly impressed – he’d seen squads of storm troopers that were only a little better disciplined. He didn’t move, though. An auspex chime revealed the identity of the new arrivals to him.
‘Stand down,’ he said, seeing Venetores led by Cator run into view. ‘They’re with me.’
The guerrilla fighters eased off but only when Evvers gave the signal. Scipio’s opinion of them improved further. He surreptitiously battle-signed to Cator that the humans were allies. Venetores were back amongst the others in short order after that.
‘I’m sorry, brother-sergeant,’ said Cator, speaking for his combat squad. ‘Doubling back cost us a lot of time.’
Scipio waved away his contrition. ‘I should have waited, brother. And now…’ He gestured to the carnage that had hurt the Thunderbolts.
‘What happened?’
Brakkius and the rest of Retiarii joined them.
‘We were ambushed,’ said Scipio. ‘In the gorge and up here.’
Largo returned but shook his head when he met his sergeant’s gaze. Ortus was gone.
‘Venatio is back with Captain Sicarius. His legacy is lost to us,’ he said.
Scipio gritted his teeth, not liking the options. ‘We can’t get him back across the mountains.’
Largo was shaking his head again. ‘It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing left of him.’
Now Scipio made a fist. He was trying hard to rein in his anger. He turned to the woman, Evvers.
‘How close is your camp to here?’
‘Not far.’
‘Do you have medical supplies?’
‘Some.’ She looked worried, as perturbed about unfolding events as Scipio was.
‘Take us there.’
Largo put a hand on Scipio’s vambrace. His eyes counselled caution.
‘What choice do we have? What else would you have me do, Largo?’
He let it go, but wasn’t quite done. ‘What about the mission?’
‘Without a way through the mountains, there is no mission. Ortus is dead already, so too Naceon.’ Scipio looked to Brakkius and his men. ‘I won’t lose another. Not senselessly, not like this.’
Largo nodded.
‘So, your camp.’ Scipio asked Evvers. ‘Where is it?’
In the end, Jynn had no choice. She didn’t want to bring the Space Marines to the encampment, for one thing their presence would attract the metal-heads, but how could she refuse? It had been a close call whether to intervene on the Ultramarines’ behalf, and as they wended through the mountains a part of her had begun to regret that decision.
Of course, the superhuman warriors would make excellent protectors but the humans had survived so far without them and Jynn had no desire to change that, plus she couldn’t be sure that protection was the Space Marines’ primary objective. They were death incarnate and being close to such beings would only invite the very spectre of mortality into their ranks.
As they climbed higher, up the steep ice-daggered slopes and brittle crags thick with snow, she wondered about their leader. From listening in on the Space Marines’ hushed exchanges, she gathered his name was Scipio and he was a sergeant. Jynn knew about as much as most Imperial citizens did about Space Marines, which was precious little. To her, they were warriors of myth, Angels sent on wings of fire and wielding fists of thunder and lightning.
Such impressions were romanticised, of course, little more than cultural extrapolations from tapestries, statues and galleria. The truth was there before her. These were super-men, for sure, but they were fallible and could be killed; they weren’t the untouchable immortals that some claimed them to be. Jynn would have been in awe of them, she felt, if her spirit had not been so embittered by the war.
The memory of Korve, her long-dead husband, came into her mind as they crested another high and the drifts thickened. What started out as a light dappling of snow upon her shoulder and head became a deluge that swathed Jynn’s entire body. She slipped on a patch of ice and nearly fell. Reaching out, she braced herself on a rocky spur that felt smooth to the touch and realised it was Scipio.
‘Be careful, Captain Evvers,’ he warned, setting her upright again.
She nodded a curt thanks. ‘It’s Jynn,’ she said. ‘My name, I mean. It doesn’t seem right that an Angel of the Emperor should call me “captain”. It doesn’t seem right that anyone should.’
‘You carry the rank well… Jynn.’
She prodded the Ultramarine’s plastron. ‘And you are Scipio?’
Scipio looked down at her pointing finger, debating what to do about it. In the end he merely answered the question. ‘I am Brother-Sergeant Vorolanus, yes, but you m
ay call me Scipio. You very probably saved my life and that of my squad, so you’ve earned the right.’
She snorted derisively, echoing, ‘Earned the right, eh? Come on.’ She turned and moved on. ‘We’re close.’
They reached the encampment in a few more minutes. It was high up and well shielded from the necrons’ attention. The guerrillas must have had engineers and technicians amongst their group, for they’d erected bafflers to thwart the mechanoids’ sensors.
Scipio counted six more men at the camp; one was a medic, the other looked like the individual responsible for the sensor jamming array.
Largo appeared at his sergeant’s shoulder and spoke in a low voice, ‘Our comm-feed is down, should we…?’ He indicated the bafflers: slim, flanged antennae jabbed into the ground like a spear. Looking at them, Scipio realised the entire encampment, even its rough tents and boxy generators, was portable. He wondered how many times the guerrillas had been forced to move since the occupation and how long it had taken them to realise they needed to.
‘No.’ He held up his hand, flat with the palm down. ‘Leave it. The comm-feed is no use to us out here, anyway.’
They followed Jynn Evvers, the guerrillas bleeding off from the main group to talk with their comrades and help explain why cobalt-blue Angels were in their midst. Scipio ignored their awed glances. Only the medic seemed unmoved.
‘Medical tent,’ Jynn supplied as they passed it.
Scipio gestured for Brakkius and the injured to peel off and get some attention. He held Brakkius’s forearm as he was leaving and looked to Renatus. ‘How bad is he?’
‘Sus-an membrane coma. Only Venatio can bring him out of it.’
‘Get him inside and see what can be done for his wounds.’
Brakkius tried to mask his shock. ‘We’re leaving him?’
‘Better that than drag him through the mountains. He’s safer with the humans. We will come back for him, brother.’
Satisfied that Brakkius understood, Scipio let him go and caught up to Largo, who was waiting a little way ahead. Cator, Garrik and Auris had stayed behind to watch the entrance. The humans had sentries but they were not Space Marines and Scipio trusted his Thunderbolts above all others.
Defensively, the guerrilla camp left a lot to be desired, amounting to little more than a few clustered tents, some razor-wire barricades and a handful of tripod-mounted heavy stubbers. Not enough to seriously deter a necron attack but then he supposed that was why they had the bafflers. It was meant as a place of shelter, somewhere to regroup and rest, not a fortress.
‘In here,’ said Jynn, without looking back.
Scipio left Largo outside. He was alone with the female guerrilla leader in what he assumed was her operational base. There were hanging charts and maps, a simple sleeping bag in one corner and a butane lamp kit turned off in the centre of the space. Low burning lumen rods dangled from the tent’s internal guy ropes and provided the only light source. The blowing breeze that had started to pick up nudged the rods. As the shadows moved, more makeshift bomb and grenade combinations were revealed here and there. Someone had set up an improvised table and there were more maps and charts on it.
‘Found a lot of patrols on our forays inland,’ Jynn explained. She turned on the lamp kit and rubbed her hands next to the warmth. She looked over her shoulder at Scipio. ‘You generate a lot of heat, don’t you?’
The Ultramarine shrugged, as much as he could whilst wearing full power armour. He knew she was right but heat or cold was of no concern to one such as him.
‘We could have used some of your generators in the early days.’ She started to unbuckle her kit and peel off the bodyglove. ‘Certainly makes doing this a lot easier.’
Jynn had her naked back to him as she changed out of the sodden kit into something dry. ‘Good thing about having fewer mouths to feed,’ she said ruefully. ‘It means there’s plenty of extra rags to go around too.’
The tattoos on her neck went down her shoulder and across her back, all the way to the base of her spine. Despite her nakedness, Scipio didn’t avert his gaze. Jynn seemed unconcerned about it.
She called. ‘Densk!’
The bearded one from earlier came in, silent on account of his missing tongue. He stalled a little when he saw the Space Marine but moved around him to Jynn’s side.
‘Lamp’s hot,’ she said. ‘Three marks.’
There was a metal prong next to the lamp. Densk took it and proceeded to burn the three marks Jynn had requested. To her credit, she barely flinched.
When he was done, Densk dabbed some gauze with counter-septic on the wounds and left the tent just as he’d arrived.
‘Those scars,’ Scipio ventured when Densk had gone. ‘What do they represent?’
She arched her neck to look, touching one of the higher tattoos. ‘Kill-marks,’ she said. ‘One for each metal-head I’ve ganked. Everyone alive in this camp has them.’
Scipio counted at least seventeen kill-marks. He’d seen Chapter veterans do something similar on their armour.
‘Three from the ambush. Yours is the highest tally, am I right?’
Jynn taped fresh pads of gauze over the burns. She struggled to reach the lowest one. ‘Could you assist me?’
‘I’m no Apothecary,’ Scipio replied, but came forward and applied the last of the tape. He had to be careful; his gauntlets were ill-suited to delicate work, especially field medicine.
‘Thank you.’ Jynn stepped away, shrugged on a fresh bodyglove then an overcoat, and faced him. Her eyes were like shards of glass. ‘Yes, mine is the highest tally. And I’ll see it doubled, tripled until everyone one of those mechanical bastards is dead.’
Scipio recognised something in her demeanour. It was like looking into a mirror. The bitterness, the impotent anger. He wondered whom she had lost to make her this way.
‘You’ve buried many comrades-in-arms?’
‘No, but I’ve seen friends and colleagues die. And I’ve lost family too – my husband, but not to the necrons.’
‘My condolences,’ he said, even though he didn’t really feel the compassion of the words. He eyed the maps and charts, particularly the ones on the table. ‘You know these mountains?’
Jynn laughed but it was without humour. ‘We’ve been dying and surviving in these crags for over a year. Yes, we know the mountains intimately.’
Scipio walked up to the table. There was a marker to one side and Scipio used it to circle the Thanatos Hills. ‘And here,’ he added, drawing an arrow to represent the Ultramarines’ desired angle of attack on the necron artillery that would bypass their defensive cordon. ‘Do you know of an approach through to this region from this heading?’
Jynn studied the map for a minute. She smiled at Scipio. ‘Now you’ll owe me two.’
He eyed her curiously. ‘You are not like most humans I have met.’
‘Most humans haven’t seen the things I have or endured what I’ve had to.’ Sitting down on a crate, she started to field strip her weapons. ‘Do you know how many times I’ve died out here in this arctic hell. Well, almost died?’ Jynn held up four fingers. ‘Makes you think about your existence a little differently.’
Though his expression was neutral, Scipio marvelled at her confidence. There was something about this woman, something great and indefatigable. Whatever her attire or current disposition, she was much more than she appeared to be. It wasn’t disrespect, Scipio didn’t feel that. It was fearlessness and a determination that made Jynn Evvers stand out amongst the human flock. Such a thing was rare and usually reserved for generals and great war-leaders with names like Macharius, Creed and Yarrick. She was just a miner turned guerrilla fighter but her charisma and presence were undeniable.
‘Two? How so?’ Scipio asked eventually, willing to play along.
Jynn took the marker and jabbed it into the centre of the Ultramar
ine’s circle. ‘We’re the answer to your prayers, Angel.’
Chapter Ten
Though his mortal faculties had long since been surrendered, Sahtah the Enfleshed could still find prey. Other senses guided him now and though he didn’t fully understand the instincts of his machine brain, he learned to embrace them.
Ice and snow were forming on his body, masking it against the all-consuming white. Scraps of delusion impaired his emerald vision. Images from a past he no longer fully remembered flicked back and forth like visual interference. The arctic mountains became high dunes; the tundra below, a desert plain stretching for leagues. There were cities, so small they were just specks, and carrion birds wheeled in flocks framed against the hot afternoon sun.
Sahtah longed to bask, to feel the sun’s warmth against his neck and back, but his nerves were dead, his form cool and aberrant. Ever since biotransference it had been that way. Somewhere in the process, perhaps during the long sleep, his engrammic circuitry had been damaged. It was difficult to discern present from past, old from new. It hurt Sahtah’s mind and made him want to scream.
The encampment had first appeared as an enemy village with high stockade walls and a wooden gatehouse. Now he saw it for what it was: a cluster of tents and the promise of new ‘robes’.
He crouched and let the arctic storm smother him and his wretched companions. There were chunks of half-chewed flesh, the rime of dried blood around the flayed ones’ mouths where they’d gorged themselves.
‘We are ghouls…’ Sahtah told them, though they didn’t answer.
They would circle the camp and avoid the genebred warriors at first.
Sahtah wanted blood. He wanted skin.
Oh, how I hunger…
Fuge clapped his arms around his body for what must have been the fiftieth time. It was doing no good. Even the many layers of storm cloak, his padded jacket and bodyglove, couldn’t keep the cold out – it was insidious. The storm had worsened. Visibility was almost nothing. He looked at the magnoculars, sitting next to his freezing feet in the tent, and decided to ignore them. Captain Evvers was quite strict – scan the perimeter every fifteen minutes – but Fuge was too numb to move. What good would they do anyway? The Space Marines were protecting them now. He’d seen them, walking back and forth like animated statues, unperturbed by the cold. Not everyone was so hardy. Fuge didn’t see why he couldn’t just find a warmer tent and a sleeping bag to crawl into.
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