And then, overlaying everything they heard, there were the sounds of war: the thud of Basilisk shells and the hiss of multi-meltas, the shift of plasma cannons and the slide of Demolishers. Here in the earth’s depths, as Lyhan and Hacquet lay still, the sounds of the surface war were the ignored backdrop for their listening as they searched for the distinctive sounds of tunnelling: the hasp and rasp of shovel, the repeated peck of pickwork, the trolley wheel rumble and, sometimes, the tread of boot or distant voices, human but perverted into a caricature of speech by the rites and noise of the enemy.
They lay, still, unmoving, for a minute, then moved the listening tubes to the work face, pushing the metal into the raw clay. Another minute listening, the grey clay already staining their hands and faces, then the sign: clear.
Not that ‘clear’ meant no sound of enemy activity. It was there – above all, the thrash-thrum of the tunnel machines that some dark art of the enemy had created – but it was sufficiently distant for them to continue their work.
Withdrawing the listening tube with the same care that he had pushed it into the clay, Lyhan lay back against the wedge of sandbags that provided him support and purchase each time he pushed the shovel into the cut. Hacquet eased himself into position beneath Lyhan, as the kicker took up the shovel and lined the cut up at the top of the face: he worked from top to bottom, so that there would be no unsupported blocks of clay to fall from the face. The shift’s first cut was fifteen centimetres below the tunnel roof. Lyhan braced his feet on the shovel’s shoulders and looked to Hacquet. The bagger signed ready.
Lyhan cut into the clay, a spade’s depth. Hacquet eased the cut block of clay from the face and laid it down beside him on the first of the shift’s sacks.
They were still cutting when Coppet joined them, the first sack having been joined by twenty more, the tunnel face now sixty centimetres closer to target. The trammer set about moving the bags, loading them onto the rail trolley and pushing them back down the tunnel to where the bobbin, Tavish, swung in his cage.
The work continued, without break, without pause, through the first four hours of the shift. Muscles warmed, then wearied. Joints strained. And through and over everything was the weight of the earth above them and the leach of the gases around them, the first a physical presence that could be ignored but never forgotten, the second an irritation to the flesh and a drain upon the mind, for even with the rebreathers and the soak pads, small amounts of the fumes got into their systems, filling their heads with dullness and their bodies with weariness.
After four hours, Coppet signalled a break. Lyhan lay back on the wedge of sandbags, staring without seeing at the tunnel ceiling half a metre above his face. Hacquet twisted over, trying to stretch muscles that had all been bent in one direction for four hours the other way; the pain on his face, and the concomitant sharp intake of breath, drew glances from the other two members of the team.
In the silence and the still, Coppet checked the vibration trays, looking for signs of nearby tunnelling, but the liquid lay still in them. He replaced a snap-lumen, stuttering out in its sconce, with a new light, then passed Lyhan and Hacquet water to drink, sealed into airtight containers to avoid gas contamination, and a handful of food concentrates. The men held their breaths as they unlatched the rebreathers, taking a mouthful of water then putting the mask on again before swallowing, trying to wash down the dryness from their mouths. Only after a few mouthfuls of water did they take the dry concentrates, chewing manfully to try to summon some saliva and make it possible to swallow.
The break lasted less than ten minutes. But before resuming the tunnelling, Lyhan signalled to the listening tubes. Hacquet nodded acknowledgement – it was their standard practice to listen for enemy tunnelling after their short break – and picked up his tube. Behind the two lead men, without having to be asked, Coppet moved the vibration trays to other sections of the tunnel. He walked barefoot: as trammer, he was the only one of the team to move frequently along the tunnel during the shift. The sound of nailed boots carried surprisingly far through the clay; a man walking barefoot could barely be heard in the tunnel itself.
Lyhan and Hacquet inserted their listening tubes into the clay and lay there, head to toe, eyes shut, breath slowed, hearing the sounds of the battered planet.
From above, the constant backdrop that had accompanied their digging: the thrump-thud of artillery detonations as the Guard’s guns attempted to obliterate the enemy’s defences. So far below ground, even detonations big enough to vaporise a Baneblade registered as no more than distant rumours, the grumbles of the faraway surface, where men fought their battles, fleas passing fleetingly over the shell of something infinitely older, vaster and slower. The kicker and the bagger had both quickly learned to discount these and the other noises of the surface conflict: they listened for the sound of men, the scratch and the rhythm of digging or unguarded movement carrying through the clay and the flowsand.
Lyhan, his listening tube inserted into the tunnel ceiling through the gap between supports, eased the tube deeper, slowly rotating it. He lay there, still, for a full minute before he tapped Hacquet’s knee. The bagger looked up. Lyhan gestured him over.
Getting to his knees, Hacquet took the proffered listening tube and, closing his eyes, listened too. Less than a minute later, he opened his eyes, looked at Lyhan, and nodded.
The enemy was digging another counter tunnel and it was now close enough for them to hear it.
Hacquet raised his hands and signalled.
Six metres.
Lyhan nodded. He pointed, about ten degrees from directly overhead, where he judged the sound was coming from.
Hacquet signed his agreement, then pointed parallel to their own track. The bagger thought the enemy tunnel, on its current bearing, would not cross their own.
Lyhan shook his head. He was not so sure. Direction was the hardest of all things to judge by sound: the noise of tunnelling told them roughly where the enemy was, but not where he was going. What was more, in digging his counter tunnels, the enemy sometimes seemed to dig in random directions, side workings expanding out from tunnels in a confusion of growths that suggested the cancer-ridden roots of a tree rather than rational planning. As such, it was less effective than ordinary countermining, but more unpredictable.
Hacquet drew a finger across his throat then signed a question.
But Lyhan shook his head. He tapped the chronometer on his wrist. There was no time. They had to dig on, hoping that the enemy did not hear them, or cut through their tunnel by blind, chaotic chance. He signed ‘three’, and the throat slash.
Hacquet nodded. Countermine if the enemy tunnel came within three metres. Hacquet then put finger to lips: absolute silence.
Lyhan nodded, his eyes grim above the mask of the rebreather. Any sound might alert the enemy. But so long as they could hear the enemy, then he was still digging. The danger came when the rhythm of the enemy digging changed: that could mean that he was laying mines at the tunnel face, packing explosives under the ground to set the clay shaking, bringing it down in a suffocating grey mass into any tunnels close to the explosion.
The danger was greatest of all when the enemy went silent, for that meant he was getting ready to blow his mines.
Lyhan put the listening tube to his ear again. Through the tube came the distinctive cut-swish of the enemy’s half-living tunnelling machines. They were still digging.
Hacquet gestured Coppet forward and pointed to Lyhan, giving the signal for enemy tunnelling.
Coppet nodded. As trammer, he would now place a listening tube into the tunnel ceiling to monitor the enemy activity, checking their activity and distance between each trolley load he pushed back down the tunnel.
Three pairs of eyes, gas-blooded and bleared, checked that all understood what each had to do; then they went without sound about their work. There was still eighteen metres to go before target.
Lyhan cut the clay; Hacquet caught and stacked it; Coppet trammed it.
Cut, catch, push.
Cut, catch, push.
Cut, catch, push.
Cutting through the depths, a spade blade at a time, towards the enemy bastion and the trenches lining the Scar, while above them the Roane Deepers hunkered in their own shelters, awaiting the order to advance.
It was the fatigue that did it. Normally, Lyhan would have seen the slight telltale bulge in the ceiling, the clay bowing just a little downwards. But he had been kicking the shovel into the tunnel face for hours straight, his bones and muscles set into an unwavering rhythm. As such, he did not notice the bulge as he cut down the face, removing the spade depth from ceiling to floor, and he began a new cut right below the bulge. It was only as he pushed the shovel into the clay that he felt it, the sudden slip, as if all resistance was gone, but the spade movement – push, ease, withdraw – was too grooved to stop. Lyhan pulled out the shovel and flowsand spilled from the cut, running down over the clay face as if it were water and onto the upturned face of Hacquet below.
The bagger jerked aside as Lyhan, stifling the curse that leapt to his lips, lurched forward, trying to hold the flat of the shovel against the cut, like a medpac over a wound, while Hacquet, on hands and feet now with flowsand sluicing off him, pulled a rockcrete fast-pack from next to Lyhan and slapped it onto the clay cut around the shovel. Pulling spare duckboard from the floor, Hacquet slid it over the quick drying rockcrete while Lyhan got his shovel out of the way. Then the two men braced themselves, holding the batten in place, while the rockcrete set around it.
It was like trying to hold back a river. Flowsand spurted through the gaps between the batten and the clay cut like water through a pinched hose, covering their feet and rising to their ankles as they pushed against the pressure. Hacquet had his back against the batten, his feet pressing on the sandbag rest Lyhan used when digging: the kicker had his shoulder pushing it.
Slowly, the pressure eased. Coppet, returning from a spoil run and seeing what was happening, leapt forward and slapped further rockcrete patches on the gaps, closing off the flowsand jets into the tunnel.
It took an hour.
Even when they had sealed the cut, Coppet and Hacquet had to scoop the flowsand from the tunnel floor, loading it onto the trolley and carting it back down the tunnel, while Lyhan brought the tunnel line down so that it ran below the flowsand extrusion. In most places, the flowsand layer lay stable above the clay but occasionally, where a drainage fissure had opened in the clay, it would flow down, welling into cracks and breaks, ready to spill into any space. It was the worst sort of drowning. They had stopped it just in time.
‘We lost two hours, sealing the cut and clearing the flowsand from the tunnel.’ Lyhan looked up from where he was sitting, hollow-eyed, at the mess table in the deep shelter, Hacquet and Coppet beside him.
Markwell nodded. ‘How much further to target?’
‘Reckon about another nine metres.’
Markwell nodded again, then went over to the plot table, boring the line for ‘A’ tunnel further towards its destination. After a few minutes, Lyhan came to stand beside him. The kicker stared down at the plot table, then pointed.
‘D in place?’ He shifted his point. ‘And F?’
‘Loaded and primed. But we lost H and L.’
Lyhan looked up at the chief sapper, the question in his eyes.
Markwell shook his head. ‘We lost Miggs’ team in L. H got lucky – they were loading when the enemy blew.’
Lyhan nodded. He looked down again at the plot table. ‘How long?’
‘Twelve hours.’
‘They ready?’ Lyhan jerked his thumb to the low ceiling. ‘Up there?’
Markwell shook his head. ‘They set the mission seals thirty-six hours back. I’ve had no contact with the surface other than time confirmation.’
‘I can feel the bombardment, even down sixty metres below the Scar.’
Markwell nodded. ‘Maybe they won’t need us to blow all the mines. I was told the general said that the Guard has assembled more artillery for this push than anywhere else in the crusade.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Who?’
‘The general.’
Markwell shrugged. ‘They didn’t bother telling me.’
Lyhan nodded. He turned back to his team. Coppet and Hacquet were chewing with all the grim determination of men ballasting their bodies for the ordeal ahead.
‘Give us an hour. Then we’ll go back in.’
‘You sure? Wynn and his team can spell you.’
‘They ain’t so fast as us. They won’t reach target in time.’
‘Very well. Better eat something yourself, Lyhan.’
The kicker nodded. He felt too weary to even think of eating, but he knew its necessity.
As Lyhan took his place at the mess table, the row of silent men shuffling along the makeshift bench to make room for him, Coppet and Hacquet looked up, their eyes hollow with exhaustion.
‘An hour,’ said Lyhan.
They nodded. Coppet laid his head on the table and slept. Hacquet picked up a bottle of water and upended it over his head. The liquid left grey streaks on his face but cleaned most of the dirt from his eyes.
Lyhan ate. Mechanically, without tasting anything that he put in his mouth, his mind as blank as the clay face at the end of the attack tunnel they were digging.
‘Last push.’
Lyhan looked at Hacquet and Coppet as they buckled on their rebreathers. Coppet tapped Tavish’s cage, then put a twist of seed through the wire for the bobbin. From up tunnel, they saw the approaching shadows, blocking out each succeeding snap-lumen, of Wynn and his gang returning from the work face. The two teams nodded in greeting as they passed, then Wynn, with his bagger and trammer, turned down the lateral tunnel to join the tunnellers on B while Lyhan, Hacquet and Coppet, hunched over, began the approach to the work face.
They had not gone far – Lyhan had only counted off five measure markers – when Hacquet tapped his shoulder to stop. The bagger pointed to the roof. The supports had been forced slightly apart in a manner that suggested a bulge of flowsand forming above them.
Lyhan shook his head. There was no time to deal with it.
But before they could start moving again, they heard it.
All three men held still, attention focused, slowing their breathing to quiet the rasp of their rebreathers. Glow gas, pooled in livid swells on the floor of the tunnel, lit their calves, its light mixing with the faint light of the stick in its sconce.
Voices. Through the clay, beyond the supports, approaching, the speech a rasp of noise and hissing sibilants, rust mixed with blood. They had heard it, cross-talking over the vox-channels when they had fought in the trenches above: the battle-code employed by the enemy.
Now it was coming closer to them, muffled, obscured by the clay and the supports, but getting louder. Nearer.
Lyhan unsheathed his knife, slipping it from its hasp. Hacquet pushed the spiked knuckledusters he preferred for tunnel work onto his fingers. Coppet combined the two with his own-made knuckledusters, which sported serrated blades, jutting from them like the dewclaw of a dog.
They waited. Silent, as the voices drew closer. The enemy clearly did not bother with the sound discipline of the Deepers. Never mind their talking, they could even hear their footfalls, heavy boots crunching over poorly laid duckboard and ground-down clay.
Then, through the gap in the supports, catching sparks on the rockcrete, lights – winking, sparkle fast, then… passing.
The footfalls grew quieter. The voices more subdued.
Lyhan turned, looking in the direction of the sound, then without further sign the three men started moving back down the tunnel, tracking it. But as they went, the sounds grew quieter, more distant, until they faded away again to nothing.
Pushing the listening tubes into gaps in the rockcrete, they listened, faces taut with concentration. Lyhan looked to Coppet and Hacquet, checking they had heard enough, then si
gned for them to withdraw further down the tunnel.
The situation required speech.
Back at where Tavish pecked the remains of his seed they stopped, removing their rebreathers – the air circulating through the lateral tunnel allowed them to breathe without masks – and looked at each other.
‘Break in? Clear the tunnel?’ asked Coppet.
‘No time,’ said Lyhan.
‘They don’t know we’re here.’ Hacquet pointed in the direction he had heard the enemy moving. ‘That machine of theirs, it was tunnelling off line from us.’
‘There’s, what, a skin of clay between the tunnels?’ said Coppet. ‘Might collapse, then they’d see our supports.’
‘Didn’t look like they were searching much,’ said Lyhan. ‘Reckon they’re just following behind that machine.’
‘Could be gas inflow – the skin is thin enough for it,’ said Coppet. ‘Might be spark or black gas.’
‘Move Tavish up,’ said Lyhan. When Coppet looked askance at him, Lyhan added, ‘It’s close enough to the lateral to still get the airflow.’
‘And they might hear me moving the spoil,’ said Coppet.
‘Better do it quietly then,’ said Lyhan.
‘Don’t I always.’
‘And keep an ear when you’re bringing up the demo charges.’
‘What did I just say?’
‘If the skin collapses, we got to know, so keep an eye on that too.’
‘Come on!’
Lyhan grinned at his bagger and trammer. They all knew what to do, without being asked. That’s why they were the best team of tunnellers the Deepers had.
Refastening their rebreathers, they started back up the tunnel, taking Tavish in his cage.
They soon reached the narrow place where the two tunnels brushed up against each other. Even without listening equipment, they could hear the distant threshing sound of the enemy cutting machine boring through the clay, and as they listened there came the trundle of undamped cartwheels moving the spoil back up the tunnel to its head.
Lyhan shook his head. At one level, he was appalled at the lack of sound discipline being displayed by the enemy – it indicated a disregard for their own lives that was both confounding and characteristic – but at another level he was relieved to know that the enemy was not about to blow a countermine. That meant they could continue digging the attack tunnel.
SABBAT WAR Page 25