by Andy Hoare
‘My question still stands,’ said Flint. ‘How are we to contact the main force?’
‘Easily enough,’ said Gruss. ‘Using the code I will provide to deactivate the local jamming nodes.’
Flint suppressed a scowl, now convinced that the chief warden’s use of a concealed sub-etheric transmitter was anything but innocent.
‘Sir?’ Corporal Bukin interrupted his chain of thought. ‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Thank you, corporal,’ said Flint as the provosts began rounding up the penal troopers, rudely kicking awake those who had taken advantage of the brief lull to catch forty winks. ‘Come on, ladies,’ Bukin drawled as he stalked away. ‘Beauty sleep’s over!’
Becka was on point, ghosting through the shadows at the base of what looked like a ten storey-high crankshaft when a blood-curdling scream made her freeze. Her experience running with the narco-gangs far below Savlar Sink Nineteen kicked in. Better to stay still, she knew, better to melt into the shadows or play dead. That way, whatever was tearing apart whoever it was doing the screaming might not notice you.
The screaming cut out abruptly and it started raining. Not just a wet mist or the fine drizzle they’d first encountered as they pushed into Carceri Resurecti, but actually raining. Becka hated rain; after all, she’d grown up in a mine and never experienced it before escaping the world of her birth. To see it raining inside a generatorium installation was something she considered totally wrong, as well as thoroughly uncomfortable. Plus, it ruined her hair.
Blinking runnels of oily, stinging liquid from her eyes, Becka squinted into the downpour. It was coming down in sheets that obscured almost everything beyond, but she caught sight of movement nonetheless. She waited, focusing on the dark patches as she felt a rumble pass through the rockcrete ground, up the metal of the crankshaft and into her hand resting gently upon its surface.
‘Witch,’ she hissed. ‘Witch’ was the term the inmates of Carceri Absolutio and several other chambers used to describe a class of walker used by the clavigers to keep the convicts in line. Based on the common Sentinel scout and anti-insurgency model used by the Imperial Guard and many planetary defence forces, the vehicle’s proper name was the Dictrix-class. Instead of a heavy weapon it was armed with a neural whip that lashed outwards from a launcher resembling a primitive harpoon gun operated by the pilot in his caged cockpit. With that simple, non-lethal and supremely painful weapon, the pilot could control dozens of convicts with just the threat of its use.
Checking behind, Becka saw that the nearest member of the assault force was creeping forward some twenty metres behind her. It was Skane. She waved him back and made a hand signal only a fellow ex-convict would recognise, pantomiming the Witch’s gait with two fingers.
As Skane waved his understanding and passed the message back down the line, Becka peered out from the crankshaft again. The downpour was clearing, as seemed to be the pattern in the weird, unnatural weather system evolving within the complex. As the last of the chemical rain splashed on the wet ground a curling mist rose up, through which the closest of the Witches stalked, each heavy step sending ripples chasing across the puddles formed on the rockcrete floor.
Its black-painted hull had been scrawled over with crude graffiti, and as its cockpit pod swivelled on its ball-joint waist a far more gristly form of decoration was revealed mounted on its sloped frontal armour. It was the former pilot, his limbs tied down with taut barbed wire. With a gasp, Becka realised that the man was still alive despite his wounds, his blood washing away as the last of the actinic rain flowed over him.
Becka’s first instinct was to sneer at the fate of the claviger, but that ignoble reaction was soon eclipsed by the unfamiliar notion of pity. Scant weeks ago she might have fantasised about inflicting such ruin upon the body of one of the hated Witch pilots, but now, seeing it before her, the only hatred she felt was for those who had perpetrated the crime.
The Witch swivelled the other way and stalked off through the creeping vapour, and another stomped forward to take its place. This one was flexing its neural whip back and forth, the rebel piloting it obviously enjoying the sparks and hisses sent up as the cruel length cracked back and forth through the damp air. Just like the first, this one had its original custodian tied down with barbed wire across the front of its cockpit, though Becka couldn’t tell if this one was still alive.
After a moment, the second Witch strode away, and a third followed after it. Only when she was certain it was safe did Becka report what she had seen to Vahn and the commissar.
Flint stooped as he ran, the mists parting before him as the shadowed bulk of an unidentifiable machine loomed up ahead. Gaining the shadow of the cover, Flint waited for Kohlz, Karasinda, Lhor and several others to catch up, then he motioned for silence. His breath was ragged, his lungs heavy with the sharp-smelling vapour building up with the crippling of the air-scrubbers. He could tell his companions were equally affected.
After a moment of quiet, he heard them. The clanking of hydroplastic-actuated mechanical legs, the grind of metallic claws on rockcrete and the background hum of a crystal battery generation unit marked the presence of the unseen walker as it stalked the mists to the left. It was hard to gauge distances, the white fog muffling sound and causing weird echoes. Many of Flint’s troops were getting spooked.
‘Lhor,’ Flint hissed to the burly dragoon. ‘You’re on point. Go.’
The group was on the move again, and as they advanced Flint could hear the tread of more of the walkers as they moved through the carceri chamber. What they were doing he could only guess, probably hunting down loose convicts not part of the rogue colonel’s uprising, or seeking out isolated claviger-wardens to brutalise and murder. Flint reminded himself that his enemy was, or had been, a trained officer of the Vostroyan Firstborn, and as such was fully capable of deploying his forces in a militarily effective manner. It was possible that Colonel Strannik had anticipated that the Guard would make an incursion into his territory, and the walkers were actively patrolling against such an attempt.
A hydraulic hiss roared close by, and Flint and his group swung around with weapons raised. A grey silhouette loomed through the drifting mist not twenty metres away, before lurching off just as suddenly as it appeared.
‘Move,’ said Flint, ‘Quietly.’
He lingered as the troopers resumed their advance towards Becka’s position, focused on the depths of the fog. ‘You too, Karasinda,’ he said to the last of the warriors. The combat medic was tracking her raised lasgun left and right, her face a mask of concentration.
‘Medic?’ said Flint.
Karasinda’s eyes darted to Flint then back towards the mist. ‘There’s another one out there, sir,’ she said.
‘I’ve no doubt there is,’ said Flint. ‘So let’s get moving.’
‘I could take it, sir,’ she said, her voice cold and flat. Coming from anyone else in the 77th Flint might have taken the statement for a ridiculous boast, but something about the medic’s bearing and tone told him she believed what she said. Furthermore, so did Flint.
‘Now’s not the time, Karasinda,’ Flint hissed, injecting a note of authority into his voice. ‘Move out, now.’
The medic got the message, though Flint could tell she was reluctant. Finally, she lowered her lasgun and moved off behind Flint. He hadn’t had the opportunity to study her service record yet, but he made a mental note to do so when the opportunity arose.
Following after Karasinda, Flint soon found the rest of the group massed behind the huge crankshaft, backs pressed against its casing as the troops took advantage of the brief rest.
‘Report,’ he ordered Becka, keeping his voice low in case the mists played tricks and revealed their presence to some unseen foe.
‘Something like a dozen Witches, sir,’ said Becka, adding, ‘the walkers,’ at Flint’s quizzical look. ‘I think they’re moving from a sub-chamber a kilometre or so ahead and patrolling the southern reaches of Resurecti.’
&nb
sp; ‘So they’ll be back this way eventually,’ Flint mused, as much to himself as to the Savlar woman. ‘How long to make the circuit?’
‘It’d take them twelve hours or so to run the complete lap, sir,’ she said. ‘But their crystal stacks have to be recharged every six hours of normal operation.’
‘Can you find the sub-chamber from here?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Becka replied. ‘It’ll be guarded though.’
‘That’s why we’re going there,’ Flint replied.
Vahn could see arc lights shining through the white mist up ahead, each as fuzzy and bright as the sun rising over the fog-wreathed moors of home. Though the thick airborne vapour diffused the white light, it was almost blindingly bright and it hurt Vahn’s eyes to look directly into it.
Halting beside a burned-out crate, Vahn sighted down the carbine’s barrel and scanned left and right. The bulk of the sub-chamber loomed in the mist, and as his eyes adjusted to the glare he saw that the arc lights were mounted along a parapet walkway. The sub-chamber occupied a point where several dozen gantries and walkways converged at various heights, the void in the centre forming an almost totally enclosed space. It was from here that Becka had guessed the Witches were patrolling, and Vahn was leading the scouting mission to check it out.
‘Anything?’ Vahn whispered to Rotten, the Asgardian only just visible in the lee of the crate at Vahn’s side.
‘If it’s where the Witches are based,’ Rotten whispered back, ‘There’s no one home now.’
‘Crew?’ said Vahn.
‘Can’t see any,’ said Rotten. ‘But my guess is yes.’
‘Agreed,’ said Vahn. ‘Wait here, Rotten,’ said Vahn, preparing to muster his penal troopers to move in on the sub-chamber. ‘I’ll be…’
A piercing scream cut through the fog, the weird acoustics making it sound like the source was mere metres away.
‘Crap!’ hissed Rotten.
‘Shhh!’ Vahn hissed, swinging his carbine around towards the source and shrinking down into the small amount of cover afforded by the wrecked crate. The scream cut out, but as Vahn concentrated on locating its source he half heard more sounds, like grunts and muffled threats.
The scream sounded again, and this time Vahn was sure of its source. Then it cut out to the sound of clinking chains, followed by a cruel laugh and the wet thud of a body hitting the rockcrete.
‘Bastards,’ Vahn growled, memories of the first days of the uprising coming unbidden to his mind. The colonel’s followers had become fiends, murdering those who wouldn’t join him with a feral glee the like of which Vahn had never before seen. The carceris, sub-chambers and vestibules had run red with spilled blood, and clearly, it hadn’t ended yet.
‘Argusti?’ said Rotten, looking at Vahn with a mixture of concern and suspicion. ‘What’s up?’
‘Where are the guys?’ said Vahn.
‘Vendell and Solomon are closing,’ said Rotten distractedly. ‘Skane and Becka are with the commissar… Why?’
‘Just wandering what the odds are, that’s all,’ said Vahn as he plotted an approach to the sub-chamber. ‘Flint wanted us to take a look, right?’
‘Right…’ said Rotten.
‘So let’s take a look.’
Not giving Rotten the chance to object, Vahn grabbed hold of the man’s webbing and shunted him towards the sub-chamber. His eyes adapting to the bright light from the arcs overhead, he saw the form the sub-chamber took. True to his suspicions, the space where the gantries intersected had been fortified to create something that looked like a tower with dozens of walkways leading from it. The base of the tower was made from blocks of piled rockcrete, steel re-bars jutting out at odd angles. Its sides were clad in chunks of metal plating suspended from the gantries.
And that wasn’t all that was suspended from them. Bodies, and somehow worse, body parts, were also strung from the gantries, thick black pools of clotted blood pooled on the rockcrete below. Vahn’s knuckles turned white as he gripped his carbine. As another grunt of pain sounded from within the sub-chamber, Vahn decided that things were very much about to turn nasty, if he had any say in the matter.
Vahn, Rotten, Vendell and Solomon moved into the full glare of the overhead arcs as the mist thinned to the extent that any sharp-eyed sentries walking the gantries overhead would surely see them. Feeling suddenly vulnerable, he picked up the pace, dashing through the hazy space towards the towering structure, the others at his heels. Reaching its base, Vahn pressed his back against the rockcrete and ushered his fellow penal troopers onwards. Rotten reached his position and moved along the base of the wall to cover one approach with his carbine; Solomon did the same from the other side, his sniper rifle raised to his shoulder as he scanned the darkness through its powerful scope.
‘We got any sort of plan?’ scowled Vendell as he came to stand beside Vahn.
‘Flint wanted this place checked out. We’re doing it.’
‘And we have to do it from close range?’ said Skane as he looked left and right along the rubble-strewn base of the sub-chamber tower.
‘Something’s going on inside,’ said Vahn. ‘You can hear it.’
‘And you want some payback, is that it?’
‘Screw you,’ Vahn snarled, just as another scream rent the air. ‘You want out anytime just say it Skane. I’ve had enough of this gak.’ Turning his back on Skane, Vahn addressed the other two troopers. ‘You guys with me?’
Rotten nodded, his disgust at whatever was happening inside the chamber clear to see. Solomon looked less certain, but nodded nonetheless.
‘So?’ Vahn said to Skane.
The Elysian didn’t reply straight off, but listened a moment to the sounds of blunt instruments slamming into bare flesh. His face set in a grim mask, he nodded. Skane’s thumb flicking his carbine to full auto was all the confirmation Vahn needed.
‘Good choice,’ he snarled, and moved off along the rubble-piled base surrounding the sub-chamber. As he edged around the uneven space towards the opening, he saw signs that Becka had been correct in her assumption that this was where the walkers were based. A power node rose from the ground near the entrance, fat couplings snaking from its terminals. Markings were stencilled onto the rockcrete, giving directions towards maintenance bays. What had once been a workshop and storage facility had been fortified by the rebels into a small bastion that could be defended from a major assault. But, Vahn grinned, he and his three companions weren’t a major assault, and they had the advantage of surprise.
The sounds grew louder as Vahn closed on the entrance to the sub-chamber. The opening was large enough for one of the walkers to pass through, the structure reinforced by the chamber’s new owners. A flickering orange light spilled out from within, and Vahn realised its source was some kind of open fire. Then the stink of burning flesh hit his nostrils, and he understood why.
‘Get ready,’ he growled to his fellows.
Pressing himself flat against the uneven wall, Vahn edged his way along the last few metres and leaned forward to peer within the sub-chamber. After the hazy white glare it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the shadowed interior, but when they did he saw clearly who was making the noise, and the smell.
A group of at least two-dozen rebel convicts were gathered around the remains of several dead clavigers. It was obvious that the rebels had been torturing the wardens, venting hate and bitterness nurtured throughout the long years of their imprisonment in Alpha Penitentia. Each gripped the instrument of his vengeance, from rusted chains to still-glowing pokers. Their fun at an end the rebels looked ready to disperse, and Vahn saw his opportunity.
Pulling back, Vahn opened a channel on his personal vox. Each of the troopers carried such a device, and with it they could communicate within the small force, though it was not powerful enough for longer ranged transmissions. So far, they had maintained vox silence, but Vahn decided now was the time to break that rule.
‘Vahn to Flint,’ he hissed into the pickup. ‘Commissar, do
you read me?’
His ear filled with hissing static for a moment, before Flint’s voice came on the channel. ‘Vahn? This had better be good…’
Getting straight to the point, Vahn replied, ‘I have multiple enemies clustered inside the sub-chamber. Send Lhor forward, commissar, I can…’
‘Denied!’ Flint’s voice hissed back. ‘We’re not here to liberate, not yet anyway. We’re here to watch, you know that.’
Frustration welling inside him, Vahn pressed on, ‘Commissar, there are at least twenty of them, and…’
‘And they’ll be a hell of a lot more if we show our hand now, Vahn,’ said Flint. ‘You’ll stand down now, trooper, or you’ll face the consequences. Resume passive reconnaissance. Flint out.’
‘Bastard!’ Vahn hissed, fighting the urge to storm into the sub-chamber and open up on full auto. But even with the element of surprise, he knew it would be suicide; there were just too many rebels for the four penal troopers to deal with.
‘Come on, boss,’ said Rotten, taking hold of Vahn’s shoulder, his expression showing he shared Vahn’s feelings. ‘Time to pull back.’
Vahn heard the rebels moving inside the sub-chamber, their cruel voices raised and he knew Rotten was right. At that moment he wasn’t quite sure who he hated more – the rebels or his own commander.
TEN
Excoriation
‘Vahn, report,’ Flint growled into his personal vox. ‘Report right now, over?’
The channel burbled and blurted a garbled response that may or may not have been Vahn’s return transmission and Flint closed the link in disgust. He resented the need to use the vox in the first place, knowing that there was an outside chance it might betray his force’s presence to the rebels, however remote that chance might be. ‘Kohlz?’ Flint said testily to his aide. ‘Keep your set open, let me know the moment you hear anything.’
