Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

by Warhammer 40K

  A shape thudded across the grille floor between the soldiers and the feasting pack. It was green, bloody and fixed in a mask of shock and confusion. As it bounced to a full stop on the gore-splattered platform Mortensen realised that it was the ork warlord’s head, snapped clean off by his surgeon-henchman’s metallic jaws.

  Tearing a clawful of stikkbombz from its belt the greenskin lobbed the grenades deep into the rok’s crowded bridge. Runt operators and the warboss’s vicious pets had the good sense to bolt for their lives but the bully-boy minders and the mock-uniformed officer couldn’t extricate themselves fast enough from the cluttered command centre and went up with the bridge in a tempest of frag and fire.

  The platform sang with the percussion of shots from above. Crouching low the major grabbed the injured Commander Qvist and pulled him to a sheltered spot in the now blasted bridge. Krieg tried to hobble to the girder-lined wall but was forced back by an unlucky confluence of fire. Crouching beside Mortensen the two men watched the ork torturer stand amongst the lead storm, his meaty shoulders hunched and his metal skull expressionless and steady.

  During a break in the fire the greenskin slipped its bloodstained hands beneath its leather apron and pulled out two chunky, automatic pistols with drum magazines and snub barrels. Turning the weapons skyward the greenskin went to work on the clumsy marksmen. Rounds tore through the gantry with precision and economy, ripping up through the legs of each shooter before the chief torturer moved on to the next target. Mortensen had never seen such dexterity and aim in a greenskin before: the day was proving, however, that there was a great deal about this particular breed of ork he’d never seen before. Bodies were crashing to the platform like meteorites and as the greenskin turned its weapons on the last of the gunners with a final, murderous arc of fire, it let out a savage bellow of rage and triumph that bounced around the walls of the cavernous chamber.

  Mortensen couldn’t take his eyes off the creature: its brute potency was entrancing. Then, as the roar continued, it began to assume a more recognisable pitch. The major watched as the alien’s brawny arms and legs rippled and spasmed – the puce-green flesh blotching ebony brown and then black. Sandbag after sandbag of disguised bulk rained from beneath the leather apron. Pieces of scavenged armour and barbaric tools of torture thumped to the ground as belts and harnesses slid off the new slender lines of the transforming torso. Bone stretched and splintered; sockets popped and dislocated limbs ripped through sickening undulating flesh and snapped back in place. The monster’s clockwork cranium slipped down the figure’s straightening back and smashed into the floor. The roar was now a scream and the pain was of a very human variety. She had a face of two halves: one side wore the distinction and solemnity of an Imperial servant; the other was a crater of hollow bone and wasted flesh.

  Finally the scream came to a resonant close and the stranger stood in the middle of the blasted platform in only a black gossamer bodyglove that seemed to cling to her torso like ink. Only at the wrists did the garment seem to expand to accommodate forearm reinforcements, helping her to support the weight of the huge greenskin pistols she was carrying.

  Mortensen turned to Krieg, who was just as mesmerised and, possibly for the first time aboard the ork rok, a little fearful.

  ‘Could today get any vrekkin’ weirder?’ the major burst and went to present himself to their new ally. Krieg grabbed him and pushed him back against the ruined command centre wall.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ the commissar said. Qvist groaned and slumped at their feet, the shock of his injuries causing him to fall regularly in and out of consciousness. Mortensen frowned.

  ‘Very possibly. She’s an infiltrator – here for the boss. She infiltrated the infiltrators,’ Mortensen told Krieg, not a little amused by his impromptu jest. ‘We’re ahead of the game, for once.’

  ‘They can’t be trusted,’ Krieg insisted. He hesitated, before committing himself: ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Trust you?’ the major guffawed. ‘She’s an Imperial assassin: the operative word here is “Imperial”. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up on current events but she single-handedly vanquished our enemies. I trust her more than I trust you: she hasn’t put a gun in my face.’

  Mortensen shrugged the cadet off and stepped out from behind the corner. The assassin was walking calmly towards them.

  Mortensen smiled. ‘Throne, am I glad to–’

  The assassin’s arms came up and unleashed a stream of rapid fire at the major. Slipping down the rock and skidding back around the corner, Mortensen turned his head to one side, feeling the rounds pepper the wall behind him and whiz past his cheek. It had all happened so fast, he was still smiling. ‘You were saying?’ he put to the commissar.

  Mortensen hated the idea of relying on the young cadet but it was increasingly evident that the man was becoming a necessary evil. Despite his turncoat sensibilities, in the face of such fast-moving events and a singularly terrifying opponent, Krieg wasn’t looking half bad as an ally.

  ‘I’ve seen this operative before. I think the boss was a bonus. You’re the target.’

  ‘Groxcrap,’ the major hissed back.

  ‘She would have killed you outright, but she would have had to blow her cover before she was ready. She waited until you were both together.’

  ‘Look, I piss very important people off on a daily basis,’ Mortensen admitted. ‘Enough even – it seems – to justify a battlefield execution, but I’ve done nothing to warrant the attention of one of the Temples.’

  ‘Apparently, they don’t agree.’

  ‘You knew about this?’

  Krieg exchanged places with Mortensen, who was more than happy to place the commissar between him and the assassin.

  ‘Think I’d waste my time being here if I did?’ the cadet put to him. Krieg ventured one eye around the rocky corner and was rewarded with a fresh eruption of gunfire. The pair edged further around the rock, dragging Qvist with them.

  ‘Doesn’t seem too hot on you either,’ Mortensen said with some satisfaction. At least while the assassin had her weaponry clearly levelled at the both of them it was unlikely the commissar would have time to follow his own interest in spilling Mortensen’s blood. In order to have any chance at all against their attacker the major reasoned that Krieg would need him as much as Mortensen needed Krieg.

  Krieg edged away from the corner. ‘The Officio Assassinorum aren’t known for their fondness for loose ends – she’ll kill us all.’

  Mortensen’s top lip wrinkled. He threw glances around the chamber with its myriad floors and mighty clockwork mechanisms. Looking down through the grille flooring he could see a thunderhead of freezing gas billowing its way out of rocky bulkheads and up through the floors below. Greenskins were fleeing: stomping and scrambling their way to freedom, away from the certainty of a supercooled, watery grave.

  A gloriously familiar sound greeted the major’s ears. The simple click of a firing mechanism with nothing to fire. Mortensen wasn’t going to hang around while the assassin reloaded her pistols. Grabbing a length of titanium piping from the abundant debris of the control centre, Mortensen pulled the commissar aside once again and sidled along the wall to the corner.

  ‘This is an Imperial Assassin: she could kill you in her sleep,’ Krieg stated flatly.

  ‘You got any better ideas?’ the Gomorrian growled dangerously.

  Krieg pulled his Legionnaire’s bayonet out from where he’d hidden it in the lining of his flak jacket.

  ‘We take her together.’

  Mortensen ground his teeth. He had no idea why he was being targeted – let alone Krieg. He made a promise to himself to find out if he made it off the deathworld alive. In order to do that he knew this was an alliance he could ill-afford to refuse.

  Mortensen gave the commissar an unreadable look before nodding slowly at him and then to himself.

  �
��On three, then…’ the major mumbled.

  Krieg flicked his eyes at the corner: the assassin was already standing there – her good eye burning into them with expectation.

  ‘Damn,’ Mortensen spat before launching himself at the dark figure. The pipe came down with all the power and precision the Gomorrian could muster, and would have cleaved an ordinary person into the ground. The assassin was a blaze of movement, however, shifting effortlessly to one side. As the pipe bounced off the grille floor, Mortensen followed through with another brutal pitch. This time the assassin weathered the blow, smoothly deflecting it off her reinforced forearms. Krieg came at her from the other side, holding his bayonet like a dagger and flashing it at the assassin with well-practiced flourishes. Time and again the pipe and blade came at the operative with increasingly desperate and inventive combinations, but to little avail. The assassin was merely toying with them.

  Finally she began to counter with her own exotic and decisive combat manoeuvres, turning Krieg’s knife aside and slamming the back of his skull into the wall with an inescapable flat-footed kick to the chin. It almost looked like the assassin had grown bored. Everything up to this point had been mere training or the frustrations that came with assuming a form that was not her own.

  Krieg’s bayonet clattered to the floor and the stunned commissar slid to the ground, his face bloody and his eyes blank. Another of the major’s vicious swings cut through the air beside the evading Imperial agent. Twisting gracefully along the length of the pipe the assassin stabbed at nerve clusters in Mortensen’s neck with the tips of her palms before acrobatically flipping and slamming the major back with the ball of one foot. She was about to conclude with an equally outlandish flykick and would have done so, if it hadn’t been for the sudden lurch experienced by the rok as the colossal craft continued its inevitable journey to the depths of the chemical flood plain.

  Krieg tumbled along the wall and Mortensen fell backwards, the floor simply not being where it had been seconds before. Only the assassin managed any kind of a landing, launching herself back off the grille with her hands, somersaulting and dropping the new distance to the ground with assurance. Mortensen was waiting for her.

  Hitting the floor first with his face and then rolling across one shoulder, the major was ready. Sweeping the bar parallel to the floor, Mortensen hamstrung the landing operative, sending her crashing to the platform. Scrambling across the floor the major buried the warped end of the pipe in the assassin’s already mangled face. The agent was sufficiently dazzled to allow two more of the Gomorrian’s sledgehammer blows to go home before formulating a counter-move.

  Reaching out with both arms the assassin released spring-triggered armaments from the reinforced forearm plates adorning each wrist. A short blade of peculiar fluorescent metal exploded from one appendage, whilst a pistol of unusual alien design shot out from the other on a lightweight carriage.

  Somehow the killer got the blade between Mortensen’s bat and her face, shearing off the tip of the titanium pipe. Like a blacksmith working metal off an anvil the major pressed on with his attack, leaning into another powerhouse pounding. This time the blade sliced the pipe in half, before flicking elegantly around to take the last of the length down to Mortensen’s feverish grip.

  The major had little time to think: the advantage was fading fast and the assassin’s otherworldly pistol was coming up. Dropping the titanium stub, Mortensen threw himself down on the assassin’s arm and grabbed for the hand holding the pistol. The operative’s arm turned and twisted like a muscular snake and it was all the Gomorrian could do to keep it straight and aim the pistol out of harm’s way. In response the assassin’s blade tore through the cool air of the cavern in a devastating curve, ready to impale the major through the head. Again Mortensen came for the assassin’s face, gripping her wrist with one hand and slamming his unfeeling elbow with bone-cracking force into the killer’s collapsed face.

  The blade-arm went down – at first in skull-splintered shock – and then with the intention of pushing the assassin up off the grille floor. Mortensen heard the scrape of another blade and darted his eyes around the chaos of limbs and frantic movement, attempting to anticipate another attack. Fortunately the blade was the bayonet and its wielder was Krieg, fresh from his close encounter with the wall. Snatching the weapon up in both hands the commissar leapt at the pair of them, slamming the blade down through the back of the assassin’s grasping palm and squeezing it inbetween the lattice of the mesh flooring.

  A wheeze of agony escaped the assassin’s lean lips. Mortensen lay still. Krieg stared at what he’d done. Suddenly the assassin bucked, sending a spasmic ripple through her shapely body, throwing Mortensen into a roll across the platform floor. The pistol was free. Krieg shuffled and kicked back towards the wall but the major wasn’t as fortunate. He broke the roll by thumping his palms into the grille but found himself staring back up the weapon’s odd length.

  Mortensen snatched his storm blade from a sheath on his armoured thigh but a metallic shimmer had reached out for him from the end of the strange weapon’s barrel, striking him in the chest before writhing across his body in divergent streams. Muscles spasmed and the storm blade clattered to the grille decking.

  The strange, silver fire coursed through Mortensen’s being, burning its way through his insensitive, deadened flesh to the live nerve-shot tissue beneath. That’s when the suffering began. Everything else went black. Only the pain mattered. His brain became nothing more than a filter for the transmission of the hell he was experiencing. He thrashed like a faulty servitor, smacking his head, knees and elbows across the mesh flooring as the ethereal agony passed through the nerve-crammed muscles of his chest and thighs. It found a new expression of pain as it hit his solar plexus, throwing his abdomen off the platform and forcing his limbs to assume the tortured formation of a crab. The white-hot sensation felt like it was burrowing out of his wracked intestines like a bullet passing through his back and out through his cramping stomach.

  Then it was gone. Mortensen collapsed, still clutching his abdomen. As he unscrewed his eyes he saw the assassin waving the pistol at the swiftly retreating commissar. It seemed the torturous side arm only had a short range and the assassin was still pinned to the deck. The pistol slid efficiently back along its carriage and disappeared as the operative fell to heaving at the bayonet, but the blade was stuck fast.

  Krieg looked at the stranded assassin and then back at the major for instruction. He slid another length of shattered pipe from a pile of debris gathered against the wall. Mortensen shook his head as he got unsteadily to his feet. He didn’t think he could experience anything like that again.

  ‘Screw that,’ he blurted, throwing a finger at the struggling killer. ‘Get Qvist.’

  Krieg yanked young Qvist to his feet and stumbled him across the platform to the pylon superstructure. The two of them went down as the floor dropped violently once again. The rok was really sinking now. Mortensen exchanged a venomous glance with the assassin before bounding for the structure himself.

  They arrived together. Mortensen’s first priority was to get Qvist back to his senses. Belly-shot or not he needed the boy to climb. Sloshing the commander across the face with the back of his hand, the major shook the Spetzghastian awake. The boy’s head lolled to one side, his eyes rolling before falling back into unconsciousness.

  ‘Plan?’ the cadet-commissar put to him.

  Mortensen grunted: ‘Simple. Climb for your life.’ Throwing the limp body of the Departmento Munitorum officer over one shoulder the major vaulted the distance between the platform floor and the girders. Krieg followed, after a tottering run up, hitting the pylon higher up, being slightly lighter of foot. The two men began their desperate scramble for the cavern ceiling.

  Thirty metres into the gruelling ascent a dull howl caused both of the soldiers to halt, chests heaving. Looking down, they saw the assassin had given up her fu
tile attempts to extricate the wedged bayonet. She had to. The rok was flooding badly – the steam from the raging deluge below was rising up through the grille flooring. Pulling the impaled palm to one side the assassin had slit the blade through one side of her hand – severing bone, tendon and gristle. What she was left with was a useless appendage that she bound quickly with a strip torn hastily from her body glove. Mortensen watched her assess the situation, her eyes moving around the cavern like a jungle cat’s.

  The mesh flooring frosted up as floodwaters bubbled up in between. There was no way she could make the pylon now. Instead the assassin made the short run to the chamber wall and bounded up the first few metres of the rock. Incredibly the professional killer intended to scale the cavern wall and ceiling, swinging across to the pylon structure at the rim of the colossal hole in the chamber roof. Impossible ordinarily – beyond the realms of all credible likelihood with only one hand.

  As the assassin shot up the wall it seemed like nothing would stop her and with Mortensen tiring under the extra weight of the Departmento Munitorum officer, he began to wonder if she had a chance. Krieg had spotted the advancing assassin also and called down to the major, who’d now completely stopped.

  ‘Wait there!’ Mortensen yelled, throwing himself up the aching distance separating them. Just before he reached the cadet a new phenomenon presented itself. Chemicular slush was streaming in from the roof. The rok was all but submerged now, the gargantuan mass of the craft forcing the groundwaters up and over the summit of the asteroid. Only the teleporter array, reaching up and out of the rok, still cleared the rising cryogenic swamplands. Curtains of deathworld precipitation splashed in over the brim of the roof hole, creating a circular waterfall that sprayed and dashed the pylon with droplets of chemical superfreeze.

  Mortensen sagged, screwing up his face. ‘Come on!’ he bawled at his rapidly deteriorating prospects. Krieg must have thought he was talking to him because he clambered the remaining metres down to him.