Mag-locking projectile weapons to their thighs, they moved into close combat with chainsword, gladius and fist. Ha’garen brought up the rear. His servo-arms smashed flanking greenskins to the ground with metronomic rhythm while he gutted enemies to the front. His burst of excitement had faded, giving way once again to an intense, cold-blooded focus. At the speed of instinct, but with the precision of meticulous calculation, he evaluated each second for maximum damage to the enemy. He slew the orks with a methodical brutality that would have made even his cautious, pre-Mars self chafe with boredom. His new incarnation was not bored. He experienced no tedium. Instead, he was engaged in the deliberate crafting of the perfect ork kill. It was, in its way, a form of art, the only kind that he could still recognise.
The Salamanders battered their way to the entrance of the cargo bay. They reached the raised gate and began to run out of orks. They turned around and mopped up. The remaining monsters did not give up. They fought as hard, and with as little fear, as they had at the beginning of the struggle. But then they were dead, and for a few moments there was silence. Or as close to it as could be experienced on an ork ship. There was no true silence in such a place. The throb of the engines made the filth-encrusted iron walls vibrate as if from the grunts of a giant beast. Snaking, creaking pipes and conduits carried the echoes of snarls, blows and screams. Some of the screams could have been the squeals of poorly slaughtered animals. Others surely were the agonised howls of breaking slaves. Still more might have been either.
The squads moved into the wide corridor outside the cargo bay. It stretched a good distance fore and aft before dropping into gloom. It was wide enough for four Space Marines to march abreast, and Ha’garen pictured it feeding vast numbers of orks to the various flank bays, whose openings were so many gaping maws along the passageway’s length. Narrower corridors, tributaries to a major river, ran off the main hallway. From what little Ha’garen could see, they twisted, angled and crossed each other in a hopelessly tangled metal labyrinth. They made a mockery of the logical, strategic function of the principle artery.
The Salamanders formed a defensive semi-circle, covering all approaches. Ba’birin and Neleus turned to Ha’garen. ‘Any ideas?’ Neleus asked.
‘We can hardly go exploring,’ Ba’birin said. His tone was cold, accusatory, as if Ha’garen had suggested just such a lunatic plan of action. Ba’birin was right, though. Slightly longer and broader than the Verdict of the Anvil, the kroozer was the size of a small city, one whose entire population of tens of thousands would have no other thought than to wipe out the Salamanders once their presence became widely known. It was no heresy or failure of will to acknowledge that they could not take on the entire ork crew. It was madness to believe otherwise.
Past Imperial encounters with ork ships was of little help. Greenskin vessels of a given class resembled each other sufficiently in their broad lines to be recognisable as being part of that class, but in the specifics, each was its own unique monster, shaped by the whim of its commander and the demented experimentation of his mekboyz. Relying on previously experienced layouts was just as likely to lead to dead ends and disaster as one’s objective. Ha’garen might have been willing to make some educated guesses based on existing data if the Salamanders’ target had been the bridge or the engine room. But they were here to find a single prisoner.
Ha’garen stepped back into the cargo bay. In the wall to the left of the gate was a large metal box. Its location was promising. So was the sound of sparks and angry hornets coming from inside. Ha’garen opened the panel. If an Imperial engineer had produced such a collection of wires, circuits and outlets, he would have been shot, had he avoided electrocution long enough to reach the firing squad. It looked like a death trap, and not a power source for the orks working on the vehicles in the bay. Sparks jumped from wires that had little or no insulation. Through his helmet’s rebreather, Ha’garen picked up a powerful smell of ozone. He accepted all of this as normal. He had long ago learned to accept that ork technology worked in defiance of common sense. His mechadendrites moved towards the electrical snake pit but he hesitated before making contact, forging a mental shield from his prayers to the Omnissiah. Though he spoke the words aloud, the principle force of the ritual was internal, a ceremony between his flesh and machine, mind and spirit, a communion in that sacred place where the self was still evolving out of the fusion between Salamander and machine.
The link he was about to attempt was dangerous. He was aware of no precedent for it, nor did he even know if it was religiously sound. He had been thinking about the act and its possible consequences since Mulcebar had first assigned him to this boarding mission, and had tried to think of an alternative means of acquiring the necessary information. There was none. He thought back to the briefing, to the look Mulcebar had given him as he had saluted, arms crossed to slap chestplate, before leaving the strategium. The captain did not have an expressive face, and his look of stoic pragmatism did not change then. But Ha’garen had thought at the time, and was convinced now, that there had been a glimmer in his eye, a hint of repressed regret. He had known. He had known the step Ha’garen would have to take, but he could not let an impulse of sympathy compromise the mission, just as he had to swallow the revulsion that came with ordering the rescue of an eldar.
Duty came before self. And the self must be used in the furtherance of duty. The principles were that simple.
Simple, too was the equation that now confronted Ha’garen. Personal risk was irrelevant. The mission was crucial to the survival of far more than a local system. The eldar witch must be found. There was only one Salamander who could find him, and there was only one way to do so. With the equation solved, the reasons to hesitate evaporated like the mirages they were. Strengthened by resolve and communion with the technical purity of the Machine-God, Ha’garen linked himself to the kroozer’s electrical system.
It was like stepping into a surging river of raw effluent. Ha’garen could imagine no machine realm more disgusting, unless it were one corrupted by Chaos itself, and into those waters he would not have waded, for the risk of contamination was so high. He would have doomed himself, his mission, and everyone and everything he had been trying to save. As it was, he strengthened his mental barriers of purity before he opened himself up to the full picture of debased circuitry that coursed through the ship.
The kroozer appeared to him as a pulsating line schematic. It was drawn by the currents flowing down cables and through circuits across the ship. Zones of heavy electrical use shone brightly, the lines thick with energy. Bridge, engine room and weapon systems shone like suns. Ha’garen was contemplating a three-dimensional grid in the shape of an ork kroozer. There was no matter to the vision, nothing but void between the lines, but the ship did not appear insubstantial. It was just as vicious in this incarnation as in its physical one. The flickering light-beast was a carnivore on a perpetual hunt, lashing out at the entire universe. It was energy sculpted into rage, and it was inarticulate. But though it would not speak, perhaps it could be read.
The eldar the Salamanders sought could be in three possible states. He could be dead, though they had the assurance of the Stormseer that he was not. Therefore, he was either engaged in the labour of a slave, in which case he could be almost anywhere on the ship, or he was in a cell. And if he was suffering under the greenskin lash, he would, sooner or later, be returned to his cell. That was the target Ha’garen had to identify. Slave pens would be allocated the bare minimum of energy resources. Orks being what they were, the simplest means of containing their captives would be used, likely little more than a large space in which they could toss the prisoners. Probably in the lower decks.
There. Minimal circuitry surrounding a void towards the bottom centre of the hull. Only the most sporadic tracery of electrical activity running in those bleak walls. No quick access to cargo hatches or weapon systems there. Anything kept in that space would count for very lit
tle. The area was very large, too. It could hold thousands. He had narrowed the search, but not enough.
Ha’garen opened himself up a bit more to the ship. His awareness closed in on that large emptiness in the grid. The faint energy demands, invisible when blotted by the incandescence of the full ship, became clearer when he looked at the low-use zone in isolation. Find one prisoner, he told himself. Read the electronic entrails and find one prisoner. He scanned the entire zone multiple times before the odd detail popped out. Towards the bottom, near the prow end of the space, there was a small but constant pulse. Someone was drawing on the grid. Not a slave, but in the slave quarters. Guards, Ha’garen surmised. A small number, and in an odd spot. The location was not quite on the perimeter, where even orks would find it logical to place security for the prison as a whole. And indeed, when he pulled back for a moment, Ha’garen saw a glow that likely was the principle guard post. The other, weaker, smaller shine was inside the pen. Extra guards. For select prisoners.
Special prisoners.
An eldar seer would be very special. Orks were extremely superstitious, and an enemy who knew what they were going to do before they did would be a prize catch. They would be nervous about what he might be capable of, but also proud to have caught him. He would be an anxiety-inducing trophy. The commander who caught him would expend greater effort in keeping him alive, confined, and helpless.
Ha’garen pulled out from the ork grid. As he left the cargo bay, he felt a fading aftertaste of his link with the kroozer. It was a stuttering, background vibration in his mind and soul, and a shedding of tainted ash. The purity of his link to the Omnissiah had been compromised, and he didn’t know if it could be cleansed.
He rejoined his squad. His consciousness had been away from the physical world for less than ten seconds, but even in that lapse of time, events had moved forwards. The noise of the kroozer was ramping up. Retaliation was on its way and closing in.
‘Well?’ Ba’birin asked.
‘I have a location for the prisoner.’ He filled them in.
‘Well done, brother,’ Neleus said.
Ba’birin was less enthusiastic. ‘Is this a certainty or a surmise?’
‘A surmise.’ Ha’garen felt no shame in stating the obvious.
Ba’birin nodded towards the iron depths of the branching corridors. ‘You will have Brother-Sergeant Neleus and myself rest the fate of our squads on a surmise that gives us little more to go on than “down,” “centre” and “fore.” Forgive me if I wish for something a little more concrete.’
‘Don’t be so churlish, brother,’ Neleus put in. ‘Techmarine Ha’garen has done well. He hasn’t just narrowed the field of our search. He has provided us with an actual destination.’
‘What of the path to it?’
‘Through the bodies of orks,’ Ha’garen said.
Neleus laughed. He clapped Ba’birin on the pauldron. ‘Spoken like a true brother, no? And so to war!’
‘And so to war,’ Ba’birin repeated. There was none of Neleus’s humour in his tone, but there was pure determination. Whatever distrust Ba’birin felt for Ha’garen, he was going to use the information he’d been given, and he would complete the mission.
Ha’garen asked for nothing more. Faintly, barely detectable at the back of his mind, like a half-heard voice that disappears in a crowd, came a tiny echo of regret. It served no purpose, so he ignored it.
Cacophony was heading for the Salamanders. It boomed around corners like an avalanche of boulders and swine. It was coming from all sides.
‘They come to repel us, brothers!’ Ba’birin thundered. ‘They believe we are a threat! Let us show the greenskins how right they are, and bring war on our terms down on their skulls! Form up!’ He led the way down the nearest side corridor. ‘At my side, Ha’garen,’ he said. ‘Point us the way, if you can.’
Ha’garen could. He had paid for this ability by acquiring a taint on his soul, but yes, he could point the way.
The Salamanders moved deeper into the ship. They were a solid mass of force incarnate travelling down the corridor, one whose advance would not be stopped by so weak an obstacle as flesh and bone. The orks threw the obstacle at them anyway. The squads hit the first wave of defenders around the third bend of the passage, just as it reached an intersection with another, larger corridor. The Salamanders did not stop. Two trains collided in cramped quarters. One was ceramite and faith, the other muscle and rage. The crunch of bodies was almost loud enough to drown the howling of the orks. The Salamanders tore into their foes with chainsword and gladius. Blades dug into meat, severing arms and heads. Motors whined with hate and organs spilled onto the floor. The passageway turned into a stygian abattoir, mired in pulp and blood. The front line of the Space Marines took the initial impact of the forces, but as the Salamanders advanced, the sheer pressure and numbers of the orks squeezed xenos warriors past the sergeants. Nocturne’s sons closed ranks more tightly. Their formation became a clenched fist. There was barely room to swing a blade, but there was plenty of killing for all, and not a bolter round needed. The combat was close, personal, tactile.
Ha’garen’s servo-arms reached over his head, striking down to crush skulls with their vice grips. He stabbed forwards with his combat blade through armour, deep into an ork’s gut. Then he cut upwards, slitting the beast open. As it fell, he snapped his fist out, driving the next greenskin’s nose into its brain. The head was dead, but the ork swung at him one more time before it fell, bouncing its axe against his shoulder. Then it was down, and Ha’garen could take another step forwards. They were wading through a green quagmire, and their progress was agonising.
The Salamanders reached the intersection. The space opened up, and there was room to swing. The bulk of the orks were storming in from the left. The path to the right was almost clear. The squads took it, mowing down the few orks in the way, grinding them to paste. ‘Move,’ Ba’birin exhorted, and the Salamanders did. They took the corridor at forced-march speed. Brother Ko’bin and Apothecary N’krumor, forming the rear guard, unleashed a punishing wave with their flamers, creating a temporary barricade with the ork dead. Smoke choked the passageway, filtered out by rebreathers but blinding and smothering the orks. The greenskin attack slowed, and the Salamanders gained ground.
Old instincts died hard. Ha’garen found that he had to remind himself that they were not retreating. They were not fleeing the orks. They were stabbing their blades deeper into the ship.
‘We have to do better,’ Ba’birin said.
He was right, Ha’garen knew. They had picked up speed, and they were moving in the right general direction, but taking corridors at random in the hope that they would lead down into the hull was not a strategy, and time was not an ally. He looked up. The ceiling was idiocy: pipes leaking steam, pipes leaking smoke, pipes dripping filth, exposed conduits, tangled cables. He accessed the memory block that held the image of the kroozer’s power grid. He traced the lines leading from the Salamanders’ current location to the target. He pointed to one of the cables. ‘We follow that one for now,’ he said. ‘Three turns, down one deck. Then there will be another.’
‘Another surmise?’ Ba’birin asked.
‘A map,’ Ha’garen answered, keeping the grid visible to his mind’s eye.
Ba’birin nodded once. Whatever he thought of Ha’garen’s loyalty or judgement, he had stopped questioning his expertise. ‘Lead us,’ he said.
Ha’garen did. The Salamanders’ drive gathered momentum. The Techmarine took the force from cable to cable. There was no hesitation. He had committed himself to a route, and it was beacon-clear to him. He did not know if the end of the path held what they sought – he thought it might – but he knew he could guide the way. He and his brothers would know the truth of his surmise, and know it soon.
Faster. The drive became a charge. The Space Marines encountered parties of orks and smashed through
them with the punch of a maglev train. They left nothing recognisable in their wake. Behind them, the pursuit howled and grew, and grew. But it was not about to catch them. As he followed the grid, reading the language of energy, Ha’garen knew his way around the ship better than the orks did themselves. The Salamanders squads changed direction constantly. They plunged down one corridor, then another. They zig-zagged in three dimensions, taking left and right without pattern or rhythm, rising up a deck in order to drop more quickly down three more. They could not be anticipated. Ha’garen knew why the sounds of the pursuit were only becoming bigger, not closer: the orks kept losing track of their movements.
The Salamanders plunged deeper and deeper into the maze of the ship, deeper and deeper into its xenos obscenity. The walls and floor were caked with grime both industrial and organic. The lighting was erratic, flickering and browning out much of the time, then suddenly glaring bright. The ship’s architecture remained a savage patchwork, metal welded to metal in slapdash fashion, as impossibly dense and solid as its creators. Some sections seemed unfinished, others damaged, while still others were simply littered with piles of scrap iron. Metal, whether waste, wreckage or caprice, reached from the walls or decks with jagged fangs. And everywhere, ork graffiti covered the walls and ceilings. Crude, snarling faces, clenched fists and bloody axe blades were the favourite images. Surrounding the art were scrawled slogans, many of them painted in blood. The orkish glyphs were unintelligible to Ha’garen. They did not torture eye, mind and soul in the manner of Chaos lithography. These were simply brute aggression transmuted into text.
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