X Marks da Spot

by Graham McNeill

  A clanking mass of iron and rust barged its way into the corridor. Bulkily rotund, its mechanised arms snatched up Slayfell and tore his armour with enormous claws.

  The Wolfblade hacked his sword through the arm’s hissing feed-pipes and the Deff Dread released him. Its guns battered his armour with chugging blasts of gunfire that filled the corridor with choking clouds of tar-black smoke. Slayfell roared and fired back. His rounds spanked from its armour.

  Greenskins forced their way into the corridor behind the Deff Dread and Bacauda picked them off one by one. Their howling bloodlust was primal in its ferocity and they didn’t care how many of them died. If anything it only seemed to spur them to greater heights of bloodlust.

  Slayfell hacked his blade through the hissing, creaking pneumatics at the Deff Dread’s knee and the lurching machine toppled onto its side, squirting jets of reeking oil. He vaulted over it and Isotbal saw a pair of grenades wedged beneath an overlapping plate of its rusted armour. Bacauda turned and threw himself at Istobal, slamming him to the deck as the grenades detonated.

  The noise was deafening, and Istobal yelled as something sharp embedded itself in his leg. Bacauda’s weight pinned him to the deck.

  ‘Get off me, damn it!’ he yelled, but the Lifeward wasn’t moving. He squirmed out from beneath him and saw why.

  In saving Istobal’s life, Bacauda had sacrificed his own. The man’s back was a bloody mess of burns and shredded meat. Spars of sharp metal jutted from his body like grotesque spines and the white gleam of bone was clearly visible through the churned mass of ripped flesh.

  Istobal sobbed and pushed Bacauda’s corpse away. He pushed himself to his knees and fled, only to see a baying pack of greenskins coming back towards him.

  At their head was an oafish, outlandish figure that had all the appearance of an animal in a menagerie dressed in rags for the amusement of gawpers. The riot of colours in its overalls and long stormcoat would have been laughable were it not for the blood caking it and its gore-smeared warhammer. The monster’s face was a mask of metal and it wore an archaic, tricorn hat jammed down over its bestial features.

  ‘Dis one looks important,’ said the creature, and Istobal’s horror was magnified a hundredfold at the abhorrent notion of the monster possessing even rudimentary intelligence. ‘I fink we’ll keep him as a pet.’

  Istobal dropped to his knees and closed his eyes.

  ‘In the Emperor’s blessed name, protect me from–’

  A heavy fist slammed into the side of his head and the prayer was over before it had truly begun.

  *

  Reddgun let out a frustrated sigh as he stomped up and down the corridor.

  ‘I was ded sure I smelled…’ he paused and held up his hand, his brow furrowing as he stared at his fingers, ‘…two of ‘em.’

  ‘I dunno, kaptain,’ said Skrag. ‘I can only see one of da big humies. Mind you, he’s in two parts if dat helps…’

  Reddgun smacked Skrag on the side of the head.

  ‘Don’t be clevver, Skrag, it don’t suit ya.’

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  Reddgun had already pulled the teef from the dead humie in the animal skins and heavy armour. The warrior had an axe with a shiny blade, but it was too small and too fragile for Reddgun. It had broken on his first test swing at the wall. The other wolfy human was nowhere to be found, but Reddgun wanted his teef more than anything.

  A humie that could put down a Deff Dread? His teef had to be good and sharp. The skinny runty one was already in chains, snivelling and wet with his own soil. He’d make a fun plaything for a while before Reddgun got bored of him and tossed him to Skrag.

  The ship was his now, and he’d already heard from Skrullboy’s mobz that the holds were full to bursting with gold, precious-looking statues and plunder. This had been a prize ship to scalp.

  ‘A good haul, kaptain,’ said Skrag, reading his expression.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Reddgun, scraping his face with the tip of his hook hand. ‘Loads of plunder to spread around.’

  ‘Too much maybe,’ ventured Skrag.

  ‘Wot you mean?’

  ‘We don’t got no room for it all on da Revenge,’ said Skrag. ‘We’s already pretty stuffed wiv salvage and loot.’

  ‘We ain’t leaving it,’ Reddgun warned him.

  ‘No, course we ain’t!’ squealed Skrag. ‘Wot I meant was that we could, y’know, bury it somewhere.’

  ‘Bury it?’

  ‘Yeah, stick it somewhere safe and come back for it later.’

  Reddgun nodded. That made sense, but it was Skrag’s idea, so he had to claim it for his own. No sense in letting the little zogger get ideas above his station.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll bury it,’ he announced. ‘We’ll take it to the planet the ‘umies came from and bury it. Then we’ll come back and dig it up when we’ve got da room.’

  ‘Good idea, boss,’ said Skrag.

  ‘How we gonna remember where we put it?’ said Reddgun.

  Skrag thought about it for moment before his cunning little eyes lit up and he ran back down the corridor to where a shiny box had broken open. Its contents had spilled onto the blood-slick deck.

  ‘Here,’ said Skrag, holding up an old-looking piece of parchment with a lot of humie writing on it and a bright red X at the top. ‘We can make a map. X marks da spot, don’t it?