by Toby Frost
The thing moved like a wolf pulling a carcass apart. Maybe it was a dog gone feral. Halski hoped that it was eating an ork, then wondered if greenskins were poisonous.
It scurried into a doorway. Halski saw a red, round body, two stubby legs ending in huge claws, and an enormous fanged mouth.
A squig. Disgusting xenos things.
It paused, sniffing. Halski lined the shot up and calmly blew out its brains.
The squig sat down heavily. A trickle of purple blood ran over its eyebrow, down the length of one of its canine teeth.
Halski smiled. It wasn’t an ork, technically speaking, but it was big enough to merit another kill mark on the side of his lasrifle, painted in dark green so as not to betray his position. Nothing more moved in the street.
He sighed. The orks were smart enough not to keep coming down here. They’d generally learned not to venture into range, even if their pets hadn’t. In fact, Halski was starting to wonder whether the orks had orders to keep back, hidden somewhere deep within the vault, in what had once been the administrative centre of Dulma’lin. Surely they wouldn’t be that organised, though. They must be waiting there, for the Imperial Guard to–
Something moved in the houses. It swung, gently, like a pendulum just tapped. Perhaps the squig had nudged it. Or perhaps it was coming loose. Halski could only see a vague outline, a long form hanging downwards, but it looked horribly like a man.
He thumbed the image enhancer, and stared straight at a corpse. It hung upside down, arms dangling. But he’d seen plenty of dead bodies before, and in worse states than this. What made him really afraid was the condition of its head, and the story he’d heard from his mates who’d stormed the chapel of that crazy preacher, Father Sarr.
The dead man had been scalped.
18.
In what had once been a meeting hall of the miners’ guild, thirty Catachans sparred with knives. They split into threes, taking it in turns for one man to fight off his two partners. The techniques they used were fast and tough, designed to counter a massive enemy made clumsy with rage. They were, after all, going to be fighting orks.
And they’ll need to be on top form for it, Straken thought. He stood at the rear of the hall, listening to the squeak of boots on boards and the steady thump of bodies hitting the floor. A sergeant toured the room, barking out commands. ‘Your guard’s too high! Keep those legs bent or he’ll knock you on your arse!’
Straken barely watched. He held the map that he’d been given before reaching Dulma’lin, folded over on itself. He marked roads off, noted points where buildings converged. Parks and monuments became hunting grounds and fields of fire. Two overlapping heavy bolters here, a sniper point on the temple tower eighteen metres to the east, and you’d have cover for an advance across the gap between the courthouse and the public baths. If a tank could cover the main road, then the orks would be massacred as they crossed…
Open battle, he thought. Now, at last, they could draw Killzkar to them, have a chance to flush the warlord into the open and destroy him. This was the moment of greatest danger, but also their greatest opportunity.
A man slammed into the ground a metre from his boots. Straken glanced down, and the man picked himself up and shrugged his shoulders.
Straken nodded, and the soldier grinned and rushed back into the fight.
I’m up to it, Straken thought. And so are they. He thought about Killzkar, raging over the loss of his gargant, and knew for sure that when the ork hordes came looking for war, his men would be there to give it to them.
A man entered the hall. He was middle-aged, with a hard, bony face, his hair shaved into a single strip down the middle of his skull. Straken glanced up and at once saw that there was something wrong with him: not illness but the weight of bad news. Bracing himself, Straken stepped to one side.
The trooper weaved past the fighting men, came close and said, ‘Colonel, we’ve got a problem.’
Straken suddenly felt twice as awake as before, his senses unsheathed like a knife. ‘What is it?’
‘The scalpings, sir. They’ve come back. We’ve found two men strung up. They’d gone missing from a patrol.’
Straken saw the tattoos on the man’s arm, spotted the skull and crosshairs of the marksman’s badge. ‘You a sniper?’
‘Yes. That’s how I found ’em. Strung up in a window of one of the hab-blocks, so we’d see them both.’ A light seemed to come on behind the sniper’s eyes, and for a moment there was fury as well as worry there. ‘Whoever he is, he’s making fun of us, colonel. Making us look like fools.’
Straken turned away a moment and picked up his shotgun. He nodded towards the door. ‘Let’s go. Show me the location.’ He shoved the map at the man.
They walked outside together, into the vastness of the cavern.
The sniper drew a grimy finger across the map. ‘This is the main nest. We cover an arc from here to here.’ He swept his hand across the page.
‘The main roads and upper hab-blocks, right?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out, that’s how we work.’ He paused. ‘Look, colonel, he’s got to be one hell of an operator to have done this. We don’t miss a damn thing. To have picked those men off must’ve been hard. Emperor knows it’s hard to get the drop on our people, let alone beat them in a fight, but to get them strung up so fast–’
‘He must’ve known when you’d not be watching.’ Straken stopped. The sniper stopped as well. He looked shocked. On top of the killing, there was the knowledge that he’d been outsmarted, that their enemy had worked in plain sight of the experts watching for just that kind of activity.
‘Look, colonel, it’s not as if we’ve been slacking off. We’ve got to watch all the closer now, that’s what the sergeant says.’
‘He’s right.’ Straken looked across the street. He slowly turned his head back, gazing towards the cavern roof, suddenly wondering whether he was being watched. ‘You people do a good job. Don’t blame yourself.’
This should have ended with Sarr, he thought. We thought that crazy preacher was behind it all. No, this is ork work. One hell of a smart, wily ork, one able to work silently, and even creep away when we come looking for him, instead of just running in… Orks are born killers, he thought. The difference is that this one’s learned a new way to kill.
‘Where’d you find the body?’ he demanded.
‘Here, sir, in the apartments. Do you want–’
‘Get your people ready. Cover the area. But listen, nobody is to shoot unless I say. Understand? Nobody.’
The sniper nodded. ‘Sure – yes, sir, I mean. We’ll be watching. Are you going to be joining us?’
‘No,’ Straken replied. ‘I’ll be where you found the bodies – hunting this ork down.’
The wind tore screaming across the open plain and rushed through the forest of bent trees, setting branches flexing and cracking like whips. It hit the edge of Dulma’lin, tore over the outlying domes of various filtering plants and meteorological gear – most of it long since ruined – and across the melted and blackened ground where the drop-ships had landed seasons ago. It swept over the wreckage of General Greiss’s raiding force, caught up bones, helmets and lasguns and bowled them along with it, and in a second every sign that several thousand men had died there was gone.
Corporal Gunnar Lao waited at the bottom of the slope. He was at the point where Lavant’s team had first entered the city. As a fighting-point it was useless – too cramped for a proper ambush and too hard to defend – but it was a good place to wait out of the storm.
A reinforced mining truck rolled back down the slope. The cab and rear were sealed off, and weights fitted to the underside pushed the body down low over the wheels, to stop it being overturned by the storms. Once it was out of the winds, Lao shouldered his lasgun and left his rockcrete booth. He reached the back of the truck and thumped on the metal with his fist. A door swung open.
The whole back section of the truck wa
s a single room. On the far wall, the skull of a pious miner gazed from a little shrine. Under it, an auspex had been rigged to a small cogitator unit. A Catachan sat on a pull-down bench, slowly chewing a ration bar. He looked huge in the little room.
Lao tossed a rucksack onto the floor. ‘Well, Bann,’ he said, ‘here I am. Shift’s over, you lucky sod.’
The seated man finished his ration bar, grimaced and stuffed the wrapper into his pocket. ‘Ah, stop whining, Gunny. Even you can handle four hours of sitting on your arse.’ Bann stood and began collecting his things. ‘That’s the main scanner,’ he said, pointing to the auspex. ‘Probably won’t register much while the wind’s up. The optical kit’s in the front, scopes and stuff. You’ll know how to work ’em.’
‘No problem.’
Bann tossed a dog-eared devotional pamphlet onto the seat. ‘There’s your light relief,’ he added. ‘And see this bottle? That’s the toilet.’
‘Pure luxury.’
‘Could be worse. You could be back on Catachan. See you later.’
Bann slammed the door shut behind him.
A hatch led to the cab. It swung open and a boy put his head out. He looked tiny, Lao thought, the way all these Dulma’linnies or whatever they were looked: scrawny and pale-faced like urchins. They were much of a muchness, he thought, but this one seemed vaguely familiar.
‘Lao, third platoon. Call me Gunny. Do I know you?’
‘Don’t think so, sir,’ said the lad. ‘I’m supposed to show you how the optics work.’
Lao squeezed through the hatch. He clambered into the passenger seat. The boy sat behind the steering wheel, looking absurdly small.
The boy pushed down on the pedal and the truck’s engine growled around them. The machine crawled up the slope again, towards the surface. Lao felt the vehicle level out, and at once the storm was upon them, shrieking around the edges of the truck like a pack of angry ghosts.
Lao looked over the array of scopes and image enhancers attached to the windscreen. A small console screwed to the dashboard displayed a blurry green image. It was familiar stuff, he thought. He’d seen similar rigs on Sentinels and in the backs of Chimeras. The instruments were jury-rigged, and he wondered whether moving them around would have made them break, but from the looks of it their machine-spirits were not displeased.
‘That’s the main scanner,’ the youth said. ‘It’ll pick up anything for sixteen kilometres, if there’s not too much of a storm.’
Lao pointed to the blur of dirt blasting around the cockpit. ‘What if it’s like this?’
The lad shrugged. ‘Then it could be sixteen metres.’
‘Right.’ Gunnar Lao looked down at the sensors for a moment, and then laughed. ‘Hey, I do know you. You’re that kid we found on the way in here, the one Captain Lavant captured. Still around, eh?’
‘My name’s Sark,’ said the boy. Outside, the storm raged. ‘Not really anywhere else to go, is there?’
Straken watched as four of the militia carried the bodies out of the hab-block. They worked quickly and with respect, loading the dead men into a guild truck under white sheets while a shrewd, tough-looking woman covered them with an autogun. An armband identified her as a lieutenant in the militia. Once the bodies were on board, she looked at Straken.
‘You coming with us, colonel? We’ve got room.’
‘I’ll walk.’
‘Whatever you say,’ she replied, and she climbed up onto the truck.
‘Wait,’ Straken said, and the lieutenant paused. ‘Send a patrol down here in an hour’s time. Tell them to come ready to fight.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, and the truck’s engine coughed into life.
Straken watched it roll away. He wondered how many pairs of ork eyes were watching it as well. Then he turned to the hab-block and stepped inside.
He climbed three flights of stairs and stopped on the landing. A large window, long smashed, looked out onto the city. From the shards clinging to the frame, it had been stained glass. The door to the apartment where the dead men had been found was still open. He walked in.
It was small, of course, still neat despite the killing that had been carried out. The table in the main room had been pushed against the wall: otherwise everything was much as it had been when Dulma’lin had been fully inhabited. There was no blood. Chances were, Straken thought, the victims had been killed elsewhere and brought down here by the orks because the windows were more visible. An ork could easily sling a corpse over its broad shoulders.
And here’s where he hung the bodies, Straken realised, looking up at the ceiling. This alien’s mocking us – mocking me.
He clenched his metal fist tight, then opened it and flexed the fingers. No point getting angry. That was exactly what the enemy wanted: to madden the Guardsmen, to get them running about like startled animals. No, an enemy like this needed careful stalking.
Just like back on Catachan. It’s not the biggest enemies you have to watch for, but the smartest ones.
He checked the little bedroom and the toilet. They were neither trapped not occupied. Then he pushed a chair out of the shadows, away from the window, and sat down. It creaked under his weight.
On the mantelpiece, two saints blessed him on a folding triptych. Between them was the Emperor on His throne. Straken quickly made the sign of the aquila and felt relieved when he put his hands back on his shotgun. There was no point praying. The Emperor would already know what Straken wanted, because it was the same thing as always: victory and survival.
Minutes passed. Straken watched, shotgun across his lap, the barrel pointing at the windowsill. From his position he could see the door and the window, and cover them both. He wondered which the orks would choose.
Maybe there would be a whole load of them, but he doubted it. A horde would make too much noise. Besides, if they’d seen him coming here – and somehow he knew that they had – their leader would want to fight him personally. Straken was nothing if not a worthy enemy.
A timepiece ticked slowly in the bedroom. Straken made no sound.
He felt the prickling of his skin, the strange queasiness that came from nerves, the sense in the back of his head that hostile eyes were on him. They were feelings that Colonel Straken was said not to experience, and to which he would never have admitted.
But they were there, all the same. What was the old saying? When you stopped being nervous, it was time to give up. General Greiss had told him that, back when the old man had been a colonel, before the land shark had taken Straken’s arm. He wondered where General Greiss was now, and whether he had survived the landing. Probably not–
Something moved.
It wasn’t much at all, perhaps a local animal, but it was definite: a tiny scuffing sound, like a boot might make, outside on the landing. Straken held his breath. Perhaps it was the result of some flaw in the building. Perhaps it was nothing at all.
Outside the room, the floorboards creaked.
He wanted to leap up and rush outside, to ambush the intruder. But Straken made himself sit still. Very slowly, he angled the shotgun on his lap so that the barrel faced the doorway.
Had anyone stepped into the apartment then, they would have thought that he was a metal doll, some new sort of servitor waiting to be powered up.
I know you’re out there, he thought. And you know I’m here as well. One of us is going to have to break the silence.
He felt certain that the ork would not retreat. Straken was too much of a prize for that. He looked over to the window. The ork surely wouldn’t risk rushing straight through the door. No, this one was much too cunning for that. It would climb out and try to blast him through the window, from outside.
Come on, scumbag, here I am. Window or door, I’m ready. Just show yourself.
The ceiling burst above him. Straken leaped aside as a massive, hunched figure crashed through the roof. He ran for the door. Straken felt the air part behind him as a blade lashed out at his back, but he was too quick. He re
ached the doorway, spun around and fired.
The ork flipped the table up and the shotgun blew a hole in it. The ork ducked low and ran left in a swirling column of plaster dust. Straken flicked to image enhance, pulled up his gun and pumped – fired – pumped – fired at the lumbering green form. He saw a few dots of blood on leathery skin, and then it charged at him like a ball of muscle.
One huge shoulder slammed against Straken, knocking him back, and the ork swung its knife up at Straken’s throat. He blocked, the blade clanging against his arm, but the force of the blow staggered him. He saw teeth, smelt the reek of dried blood and old meat. Light glinted on half a dozen lenses on its face, an insectoid mass of glass.
The ork punched at him, and he sidestepped and rammed his gun-butt into its jaw. It lurched aside, spitting fangs. Straken jumped back, levelled his gun and fired from the hip.
The ork screeched and whipped round like a discus thrower. Air blurred before Straken; he threw his hand up and one of the brute’s knives ricocheted off his steel wrist. His shotgun clattered to the floor.
Straken felt a burning line on his left forearm. He looked down: debris from the roof had sliced the flesh open. A trickle of blood ran down his arm, dripping onto the dust-strewn ground.
On the far side of the room, the ork chuckled.
Only now did Straken get a good view of the thing. It wore heavy boots and trousers slick with filth. The upper body was bare, dirt-smeared, ridged with scars. It had covered its arms with thin metal chains.
Thick blood ran from its right flank. Several of the lenses had been smashed, and behind them, a single red eye glared out like a sore.
Straken glanced down at his gun. The ork snarled and moved forwards.
It reached up and thumped its chest with a massive ham of a fist. ‘Snukud,’ it said.
Straken glared back. Its vile speech disgusted him almost as much as the realisation that the chains wrapped around its wrists – dozens and dozens of them – were the dog tags of Imperial Guardsmen.
