by Andy Hoare
‘You see anything, Bukin?’ Flint asked the chief provost as they marched, keeping his body low. Bukin evidently shared his concerns, his cold eyes scrutinising any position an enemy could be lurking in.
‘See something, sir?’ Bukin growled as he marched, his heavy shotgun braced across his chest ready for action. ‘No, sir. But I can smell them…’
Flint was instantly alert, though he tried not to give the fact away by reacting to Bukin’s warning. ‘Report, corporal.’
The provost’s nose wrinkled in an exaggerated display of distaste before he replied. ‘Last night, it was just a handful, sir, and they were keeping their distance. Now though, the closer we get to this place, the closer they get to us, and there’s more of them. A lot more.’
A mix of disgust and dread rising within him, Flint studied the lengthening shadows, alert for any sign of danger. But as hard as he looked he saw no sign of whatever it was Bukin claimed to be able to detect. Maybe it wasn’t his sense of smell the chief provost was using, but some previously undisclosed psychic power manifesting itself under stress, he considered, but an instant later, he detected it too.
‘You smell that, sir?’ said Bukin. ‘That is the smell of filthy, dirty mutants.’
Bukin was correct, there was no denying it. The wind had changed direction and carried on it a truly vile taint that was nothing natural or wholesome. It was a blasphemous cocktail of the chemical and the biological, like distilled pheromones held in some irradiated suspension. It was unspeakably… wrong, calling to mind images of filth-ridden things copulating in dark holes far from the eyes of sane men.
‘Everyone, stay alert,’ Flint snarled into the personal vox-net linking each of his troops. ‘Pick up visual scanning and watch your arcs.’
The remainder of the journey passed without incident, but Flint grew increasingly certain the wastes about Alpha Penitentia were not so empty as they appeared to be. Whatever was trailing the group, it was nothing human and it appeared not to be interested in engaging the small force. Perhaps it was some native creature, Flint thought, some autochthonous life form beneath the notice of the astrocartographic surveyors whose task it was to catalogue such things. In Flint’s experience, the galaxy was teeming with life of every conceivable, and numerous inconceivable varieties, only a tiny fraction of it discovered or observed. Yet somehow, Flint knew whatever was out there it wasn’t an animal of any kind. Bukin was correct in his assertion it was a mutant, Flint could feel it deep down, and the very thought utterly sickened him.
Of the rest of the infiltration group, only Karasinda appeared to share the provost’s apprehensions. The medic hadn’t needed to be warned, but had cottoned on to the fact that they weren’t alone by herself. Her drills were flawless as she led the group forward in the point position, scanning every possible hiding place for signs of an ambush and calling her companions’ attentions to potential danger spots with a series of rapid hand gestures. Clearly, this Firstborn daughter had paid attention during training, while the Firstborn sons had been found wanting.
By the time the infiltration group had reached the outer limits of Alpha Penitentia the sun had set and the blasted land was plunged into a darkness made all the more total because the starlight was all but obscured by its rearing form.
Having consulted his data-slate to get a fix on his position, Flint craned his neck to take in the sheer enormity of the complex’s outer surface. The structure was as bulky as any Munitorum ordnance silo and taller than a Ministorum cathedral. Up close, the outer surface of the carceri was largely featureless, a stark contrast to the ornamentation on the iron portals of the gate hall. Looking closer however, Flint could see that the weathered walls were studded with heavy-duty vents and access hatches that must have been sealed shut from the outside centuries ago. One such vent was nearby at ground level and guarded by a rusted grille that looked strong enough to keep a bull grox out.
‘Get to work,’ said Flint, motioning Dragoon Hannen, one of Lhor’s companions forward. The members of the logistics platoon appeared to conform to one of two types – they were either weasel-like clerks or hulking meatheads: bean counters or ammo-luggers. This individual was most certainly the latter.
Hannen grunted and unslung a canvas sack as he squared up to the grille.
‘Perimeter defence,’ ordered Flint to the remainder of the team. ‘You know the drill.’ At least, he hoped they did. Hannen went about his task as the other warriors tracked their weapons back and forth into the darkness. The Vostroyan was already assembling his portable plasma cutting rig, screwing the photonic cell into the main assembly as Flint peered into the vent through the rusted grille. The blades of the vent were visible and it was immediately apparent that they hadn’t revolved in some time, the fins visibly corroded and broken.
Flint drew his bolt pistol as Hannen ignited the plasma cutter. An incandescent tongue of violet energy lanced forth several centimetres from the nozzle and Flint looked away just in time to avoid being temporarily blinded.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Hannen, who had already lowered a photochromatic work visor. As the man got to work Flint took advantage of the sudden illumination to squint further into the vent’s innards. The conduit beyond the broken blades was visible by the flickering violet-hued light and Flint was grateful that the plasma cutter gave off next to no sound beyond that of bubbling liquid metal splashing across the dry ground. He kept his pistol trained on the darkness all the same, wary for any sign of movement.
Hannen worked fast and within another few minutes was on the last cut. With a gesture, Flint gathered the infiltration team around the opening ready to move as soon as Hannen was done. He was gratified to see two of Bukin’s men continuing to cover the darkness with their ugly Mark IIIs, moving backwards with combat shotguns raised as they prepared to pass through the vent as soon as it was accessible.
‘Almost there,’ warned Hannen as the plasma cut through the last few centimetres. Molten metal spat and hissed as it ran down the rusted grille. ‘Brace.’
Bukin motioned for two of his provosts to take hold of an edge of the grille each and just as the plasma cut through the last bar they lifted the whole structure to stop it falling noisily to the ground. Grunting, the two men shifted their weight and moved sideways, leaning the severed grille against the rockcrete wall beside the now open vent.
Flint motioned for silence and strained his ears for any sign of activity. After ten seconds he made a second sharp hand signal and Dragoon Lhor stepped forward into the opening, his heavy flamer raised. Flint lowered his night vision goggles, activating them with a turn of a brass dial. The goggles powered up with a brief, just-audible ultrasonic squeal and the scene was rendered into grainy green-grey.
No time like the present, Flint thought, making a downward chopping motion with his free hand.
Lhor was the first to move forward, the nozzle of the heavy flamer tracking left and right as he trod carefully along the tunnel. The weapon’s blue pilot flame was a ghosting will-o’-the-wisp in the blackness. The floor was strewn with gritty debris, the dried effluvium of several centuries of neglect that crunched underfoot as the team advanced. Flint was painfully aware of the sound resounding with the step of every warrior apart from Karasinda.
‘You hear that?’ slurred Corporal Bukin.
‘Shh,’ said Kohlz, earning a dirty look from the provost leader.
His aide’s warning echoing away to silence, Flint strained to listen to the ghost of a sound coming from somewhere up ahead. The tunnel made the sound indistinct and nigh impossible to pinpoint, as if it could be coming from any one of several directions. Then the sound came again and this time Flint couldn’t mistake its source. It was undoubtedly the sound of anger and pain.
‘Get ready,’ said Flint, raising his bolt pistol in one hand and loosening his power sword in its scabbard with the other. ‘Lhor, keep going, but be ready. Do nothing unless I tell you.’
As the group approached a turn a sudden crack o
f gunfire sounded from just around the bend. The report was deafeningly loud in the confines of the tunnel and it bounced around the cold walls like a ricocheting slug round. As one, the team members ducked back against the wall or hit the deck, weapons raised towards the bend.
The sharp smell of a primitive and badly mixed propellant struck Flint’s nostrils as a hazy blue cloud drifted into the tunnel from around the corner. A harsh shout followed, telling Flint that whoever had fired the crude weapon was scant metres beyond the turn. Bukin rose up with his combat shotgun raised to his shoulder but Flint waved him back.
As the sounds of combat continued, Flint listened intently. There was no more gunfire but plenty of improvised weapons clashing, crude iron striking flesh and bone, telling Flint something of the two parties fighting one another.
‘Two rival groups,’ Flint whispered to Bukin, who was knelt down next to him in the dark. ‘No coordinated or sustained fire, so the wardens aren’t one of them.’
Shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, Bukin replied, ‘Convict scum. Let them kill each other, sir?’
‘I want to know who’s fighting who, corporal,’ said Flint. ‘And why. And I want some idea what we’re up against.’
‘Then we let them kill each other, sir?’ Bukin grinned wickedly.
‘Maybe,’ said Flint, seeing Bukin’s pantomime expression of disappointment. ‘Wait a moment.’
Flint peered around the bend, first one eye and then both as he strained to make sense of the shadows. His goggles rendered the view static-shot and green-grey, the blurry images slowly resolving as the goggles registered the scene.
There was an opening into a massive chamber just ahead and the first thing Flint saw was a number of figures silhouetted against it, with more dashing to and fro in the space beyond. Two members of the dozen or so strong group were engaged in an animated argument. Flint couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could tell from their gestures and body language they were on the verge of a physical confrontation. More of the group were ducked inside the tunnel, several of them looking back towards Flint’s position as if considering fleeing.
‘Looks like an ambush,’ Flint whispered just loud enough for Bukin to hear. ‘They must have come this way and been jumped as they emerged in to the chamber.’
‘Then why don’t they head back this way, sir?’ whispered Bukin.
‘Looks like one of them’s asking just that,’ Flint replied as the two men near the entrance squared off against one another. One was a huge brute and by the ugly firearm held in one hand it was he who had fired the shot before. Scanning the other members crouching in the shadows, Flint confirmed that was the only such weapon they carried.
A shotgun thundered and pulverised rockcrete showered the two men facing off against one another. Both ducked back to opposite sides of the tunnel, shouting loudly at one another despite the danger they shared.
‘Sounded like a navy piece,’ said Bukin, edging as close to Flint as he could without exposing himself around the corner.
‘Or something looted from a warden,’ replied Flint. ‘Hang on…’
The shorter of the two arguing men stood and strode hurriedly away from the other. The larger man shouted something, but the only response he got was a crude gesture.
‘One of them’s coming this way,’ he hissed. ‘Take him, alive.’
Bukin looked hurt but the expression changed to one of nasty determination as he spun his shotgun in his grip, wielding it like a club. ‘How alive, sir?’ the provost sneered.
‘Talking alive,’ said Flint. A second later the convict rounded the corner at speed. Before he could even register the infiltration team’s presence the butt of Bukin’s shotgun slammed down on his neck and he collapsed in a crumpled heap.
‘I said “alive”.’
The convict moaned and tried to roll over but Flint restrained him with a gloved hand to the shoulder.
‘He is,’ complained Bukin. ‘And he’ll be talking too in a minute, sir.’
‘What…’ the convict spluttered as his eyes struggled to focus on Flint. Realisation dawned as the man took in Flint’s peaked cap and black leather storm coat.
‘Commissar?!’ he coughed, his voiced filled with horror. It was immediately evident to Flint that coming face to face with a commissar in the depths of a penal generatorium taken over by rebels was almost too much for the man to comprehend.
Deciding to capitalise on the man’s reaction, Flint raised his bolt pistol and racked the slide. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to explain yourself – to me or to the Emperor. Your choice.’
Bukin almost guffawed at that, but Flint’s cold expression forestalled whatever insolent quip he was about to make.
‘Five seconds,’ said Flint, lowering the bolt pistol towards the man’s temple.
‘Solomon, sir,’ the man blurted. ‘Indentee-trooper, weapons platoon, D Squadron, 71st Jopall.’ The man reeled off a hugely long code that could only have been an Officio Munitorum troop serial number. He was Imperial Guard, or had been once, and the name, rank and number response was so ingrained in him that being confronted with a commissar had caused it to come tumbling out of his mouth unbidden.
‘Time’s up,’ Bukin sneered.
The man’s eyes darted towards the provost chief, then back to Flint as if he couldn’t decide which to be more intimidated by.
‘Who are you fighting?’ growled Flint. ‘And why?’
‘The rebels, sir,’ replied Solomon. ‘We were trying to break out.’
‘Out?’ said Flint. ‘Out of where?’
Solomon looked all around him, the gesture indicating he meant the entire complex. ‘Out,’ he repeated.
Bukin chipped in before Flint could respond. ‘Getting too hot for you in here?’
‘Shh!’ Flint hissed. ‘Where did you think you were headed?’
Something resembling realisation formed in the trooper’s expression, and he looked around again, this time focusing on the warriors around the tunnel. Most had their rebreathers raised and their night vision goggles lowered, so he could see little of their faces. ‘To the Guard,’ he stammered. ‘To you?’
Bukin’s eyebrows raised with exaggerated incredulity. Lifting his bolt pistol clear of Solomon’s head, Flint said, ‘Why were you heading back this way?’
The trooper’s face darkened before he answered. ‘We were ambushed on our way to the main gate. Someone must have sold us out, so I was for finding another way round.’
‘And the other, he disagreed?’
‘Skane,’ Solomon named the larger man he had been arguing with. ‘He wanted to fight through to Vendell’s lot. They’re in the gak, and we can’t reach them.’
Flint’s mind raced as he considered the situation. If there were convicts who hadn’t rebelled against the complex’s authorities and they were fighting for their lives right now, honour demanded he aid them. But the mission parameters would be best served by him cuffing Solomon and taking him back to regimental command right away. Flint was in no doubt the man would be able to offer up potentially vital intelligence about the rebels’ strengths and dispositions, and, by the looks of him, he would do so willingly.
Then, things changed again.
‘Sir!’ Bukin hissed. ‘Company!’
Another convict turned the corner. ‘Solomon?’ the man called out before his eyes penetrated the dark and registered the presence of several large calibre weapons pointed directly at his head. ‘Solomon, what the hell…’
‘Freeze!’ ordered Flint, and the man skidded to a halt. His wide eyes focused on the bobbing blue pilot light of Lhor’s heavy flamer.
‘Solomon?’
‘Silence!’ Flint barked, his bolt pistol aimed right between the man’s eyes. ‘Solomon,’ he continued, not taking his eyes from the newcomer. ‘Stand up and join your friend here.’
Movement in the periphery of the view through his night vision goggles told Flint that Solomon was obeying his command, an
d a moment later the convict was standing alongside his companion. Another shotgun blast resounded from outside, and the two convicts shared a wary glance.
Flint’s mind was made up.
‘Bukin,’ he said. ‘Get everyone ready. We’re ending this, now.’
‘Sir, the mission…’ Bukin protested.
‘Has just changed,’ Flint spat back. ‘If there are loyalists in there, I want them on our side. We need them on our side. Get going.’
‘You two,’ Flint rounded on the two convicts ‘You are at a crossroads. I need your help and you need mine. In a moment we’ll all be rounding that corner, but you’ll be going first, understood?’
The second convict, who was shorter than the first and blessed with a staggeringly ugly face only the Emperor could love, nodded in instant understanding. ‘We’re the messengers,’ he said. ‘Just hope we don’t get shot.’
‘Let’s get on with it then,’ said Flint. ‘Move,’ he waived the two convicts off with a flick of his bolt pistol.
Rounding the corner at the same time as the convicts, Flint and Bukin strode straight forward towards the group of men and women sheltering near the tunnel mouth. The nearest convict turned, and immediately shouted a warning. The big man, who Solomon had named Skane was ducked inside the entrance reloading his bulky firearm, which he raised one-handed as he spun around in response to the shout.
‘Don’t shoot!’ shouted Solomon. ‘It’s me!’
‘I see that,’ growled Skane, his weapon trained on Solomon but his eyes squinting into the darkness behind his fellow convict. ‘Who’s with you?’ His voice was deep and powerful, but laced with suspicion. ‘You sold us out?’
‘We’ve done this already,’ Solomon replied through gritted teeth. ‘We were trying to find the Guard, right?’
‘Right,’ said Skane, clearly expecting a trick.
‘Well,’ said Solomon, ‘they found us.’
Skane’s eyes searched the shadows behind Solomon, but it was clear he could see nothing more than the suggestion of the infiltration team’s presence. The crudely made firearm swept left and right, and Flint decided to take matters into his own hands.
