[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads
Page 30
The noise of it crashing was all the louder for the depth of the silence that had preceded it. The rumble of the Cadian machines was barely detectable in this part of the chamber.
Sennesdiar crouched down, his voluminous robe spreading out around him.
The others crouched, too.
Katz used the crashing of the massive metal plate to cover the noise of his footsteps as he moved closer to the tech-priests. It seemed to him that they had found the thing they sought. He could see a bundle of rags on the ground between them. He crept closer and closer, ever mindful of the slightest noise that might give him away.
Damn their bloody chirping and beeping, he thought. If only I could understand what they were saying.
He saw the largest one, the magos, unfurl the rags on the ground to reveal a skull attached to metal vertebrae.
It’s another one, Katz said to himself. It’s a bloody tech-priest.
He could see augmetic attachments bolted to the skull. He could see a metal collar bone. Magos Sennesdiar kept uncovering more and more. There was a structure like a rib cage, but formed of steel spars and pistons. One of the arms was missing, but the other was bulky and ended in something more claw than hand. Cables and flexible tubing trailed from the midriff like the entrails of an eviscerated man.
Katz wondered how much closer he could get without risking detection. He had to know more. The major general was relying on him.
Slowly, carefully, he moved in, keeping to the wall on his right.
So far, so good, he thought. They’re preoccupied. They don’t have a clue I’m here.
said Sennesdiar.
Xephous and Armadron saw to it. With precise and careful movements, they lifted the remains of Magos Ipharod into position. He was in a poor state. With the exception of his skull and teeth, the few biological elements left over from his human form had rotted away almost completely. His missing left arm and the absence of his legs spoke of violent damage prior to his seeking refuge here in Dar Laq. What had happened to him? If the procedure was successful, Sennesdiar would soon know.
Sennesdiar detected no fear in his adept’s tone, but he sensed an increase in secretions from his biological systems that suggested he was less than happy. Giving one’s systems over to the control of another tech-priest’s intelligence core was a dangerous and highly irregular affair. Ipharod was even older than Sennesdiar, and had enough authority to demand permanent control of the adept’s body. Officially, Sennesdiar would be unable to refuse, but he valued Xephous enough to resent the idea. He did not want to lose his adept quite yet.
No, he decided, Ipharod’s 1C module will reveal the information I seek, and then I will deactivate it for eventual return to Mars. If Ipharod wishes to live again, let it be inside another body constructed for just that purpose.
said Armadron. He lifted a small cylinder of metal, covered in traceries of gold, from a hatch in Ipharod’s grinning skull. It glowed ever so slightly in the dark, still charged with the energy needed to maintain its integrity.
said Xephous, presenting the top of his head to his fellow adept.
said Xephous.
Armadron carefully plugged the intelligence core into Xephous’ brain and closed the metal hatch.
Xephous shuddered. Green diodes on his metal face winked out. His head lolled slackly onto his shoulder.
Sennesdiar and Armadron waited. Nothing happened.
said Armadron.
A faint, tinny voice issued from Xephous’ vocaliser.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ipharod’s recall was absolute. Had his rescuers thought to bring a hololithic projector, they could have watched a perfect record of events in three dimensions as seen though his lenses. Unfortunately, not all Martian priests were equal. Ipharod was not impressed with Sennesdiar. He had come unprepared and under-equipped. He was probably no older than four centuries, and he was incompetent like all the new breed.
For all its flaws, its inherent ambiguities, Ipharod had no recourse but to employ spoken language. The first thing he shared with the other three tech-priests, however, was nothing to do with the past.
There was a moment of silence while Ipharod tried in vain to rise, but Xephous’ body would not follow his neural commands.
Sennesdiar reached forward and touched a recessed button on Xephous’ head. The metal panel whined open again to reveal the adept’s soft grey brain.
Sennesdiar yanked the tiny, lambent cylinder from its socket and closed the panel. Moments later, the diodes on Xephous’ face glimmered to life again.
The first thing the adept did was to pull his cowl up over his head.
Armadron nodded once.
Without further discussion, he crushed Ipharod’s intelligence core between his metal thumb and forefinger. The cylinder crumpled easily. Its dim glow went out. Then Sennesdiar threw the ruined core over his shoulder with a very deliberate and precise motion.
It hit something soft before it struck the ground.
It hit Jarryl Katz.
“You may come forward now, Cadian,” said Sennesdiar in Low Gothic. “We have known of your presence for quite some time.”
Katz shook his head. The game was up. He should have known better than to get too close. They were tech-priests, so of course their senses were augmented beyond his own. Had they smelled him? Or heard him? Had they sensed his body heat?
Resigned, he stepped towards them, sweat beading on his head despite the cool, dry air. “What is your name?” asked the largest of the three.
“Schweitzer,” said Katz defiantly.
“A falsehood,” said the magos. The slightest fluctuation in your heartbeat gives your deceit away. “Speak the truth.”
Katz couldn’t help but be impressed. “You can detect that?”
“From this distance, yes,” replied Sennesdiar. “That and much more. No matter who you are, you could not have followed us without our knowledge. Still, it is remarkable that you moved so quickly and quietly in this darkness. You are augmented, yes?”
The magos took a sudden pace forward, and Katz found himself looking up into a face more dead than alive. It was expressionless, unreadable, and he knew he had to get away. Whatever humanity might have once existed beneath that pallid mask of ancient skin was long gone. Despite whatever vestiges of organic matter remained, it was a machine that stared back at him through black lenses — a cold, calculating, ruthlessly efficient machine.
“The expedition force will be moving out shortly,” said Katz, working to keep his voice level. “If you’re finished here, we should all be getting back. We don’t want to get left behind, now, do we?”
Katz wondered if the tech-priests were reading his heartbeat now. It was galloping.
The magos said nothing more. Katz had just decided to turn away when something metallic whipped towards him from the bottom edge of his vision. Bright, flaring agony gripped him. His lungs felt filled with liquid fire. He looked down and saw that one of the magos’ writhing mechadendrites had punched straight through the fabric of his tunic and into the muscles of his upper abdomen. Hot blood began to pour out over his tunic and trousers.
He grunted in pain. He tried to speak, but there was no breath behind the words. He couldn’t draw any. His lungs wouldn’t work. He fumbled weakly, uselessly, for the knife at his belt.
“You will not suffer long, Cadian,” said the magos. “Your death is inconvenient, but we cannot allow you to report what you have seen. There is already enough mistrust between the expedition commanders and the Machine Cult. The relationship must not be destabilised further at this critical time.”
Katz felt a savagely painful tug inside him. The end of the blood-covered mechadendrite withdrew from his body, taking his heart with it. Blood pattered like rain on the ground. For the briefest instant, Katz saw the wet heart held up in front of him, gripped by the sharp manipulators at the steel tentacle’s tip.
Then true darkness closed over him, a darkness his augmented eyes couldn’t possibly pierce.
He didn’t feel anything when his body hit the floor.
The three tech-priests returned to the light and noise of the Cadian vehicles just as the preparations to move out were drawing to an end. The wounded had been stitched and bandaged and gathered into trucks. Those who were beyond medical help were given the painless death of lethal injection. In a brief, hurried ceremony, their souls were commended to the Emperor’s side by a hard-faced confessor from the 88th. The supplies freed up by their deaths would help the rest of the force last that little bit longer. Vehicles were refuelled and rearmed. Troops were fed and watered, and the whole expedition force awaited only the command of General deViers to leave the ruins of Dar Laq behind them and head back to the surface, to the open air and the daylight.
For the most part, the troops were eager to put this unholy place behind them.
Only Gerard Bergen prayed for a delay. His ever-faithful adjutant had not returned from his mission. When Bergen saw the three tech-priests walking towards their Chimera, he charged over to them.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
Magos Sennesdiar turned to face him.
“Recovering samples of metal,” he said, lifting a piece he had taken from one of the derelict towers. “I’m certain that a proper study of it will be of great benefit to the Imperium.”
Bergen squinted up into the shadows under the magos’ hood.
“You haven’t seen my adjutant?” he asked. “I sent him personally to bring you back. The general will be issuing the order to move out any minute now.”
The magos bowed. “I am grateful that you thought of us. You are a man of fine character, major general. Alas, we did not see your adjutant. We encountered no living soul during our explorations. Dar Laq is a dead place. There is much to study here. The Mechanicus may visit again once this planet is returned to Imperial control, but, for now, we must prepare for our egress. Excuse us.”
Bergen watched the trio of cloaked figures move off.
Had Katz simply got lost? No. That couldn’t be it. Berge
n had tried raising him on the vox, but there was no response. Damn it all, he thought, there’s no way deViers will delay leading us out of here for a single missing man. If I know the old bastard half as well as I think I do, he wouldn’t even wait for Major Gruber.
Bergen turned and marched back to Pride of Caedus, determined to plead with the general anyway. The Chimera’s engine was idling noisily, like those of the vehicles around her.
Sure enough, the general told Bergen he could not, and would not, order everyone to stand down because of one missing man. Had it been Bergen out there, deViers insisted, it would have been another matter entirely, but a mere lieutenant?
DeViers gave the order to move out. Drivers began revving their engines, filling the air with blue clouds of exhaust. Then, one by one, they began to move off through the eerie, lifeless streets, their headlights chasing off the shadows as they headed towards the tunnel on the far side of the cavern.
Bergen stood in his cupola the entire time, eyes facing out into the darkness on the north side, heart pounding in his chest, almost sick with emotion. It was far worse than grief. It felt like betrayal.
“I’m sorry, Jarryl,” he muttered beneath his rebreather. “I’m so sorry, my friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was two hours after dawn when the remnants of General deViers’ expedition force emerged from the cool darkness of the tunnel into the baking heat of the Golgothan morning. They were halfway up the east face of a mountainside, but the landscape beyond was largely shielded from view. Sharp fingers of rock thrust upwards on every side, forcing the Cadians to follow a single treacherous path, the only route wide and shallow enough to accommodate sixty-tonners like the Leman Russ tanks.
The clouds were low overhead, a churning mix of orange, red and brown. Gusting winds pulled curtains of dust across the slopes. By midday, however, the winds dropped to a hot breeze. Tall rocks and ridges still confounded the view. Privately, some of the Cadians almost regretted leaving Dar Laq. Alien or not, the temperature had been more to their liking. The air there hadn’t seared their lungs.