by Andy Hoare
Though his voice was barely audible over the roaring of the torrent now surging down the sluice channel those nearest him had heard. They opened fire on full auto, unleashing a fearsome salvo into the creature’s back. It staggered forward on ruined legs, crashed to its knees and toppled forwards into the now churning waters. In an instant, it had vanished beneath the raging waters.
The last Flint saw of the mutant monstrosity was a hand, rising once from the sucking waters to grasp for the edge of the platform before being pulled under by the current and swept away down the sluice channel.
A flash strobed from behind and Flint spun to face the ruined portal. The warriors at the barricade were firing at full pelt, the report of their las-weapons swallowed up by the raging flood echoing around the massive sluice chamber. Dozens of rebels were dying but dozens more were pressing forward through the gate to assault the barricade.
Drawing his bolt pistol once more, Flint rejoined his warriors. Soon, he was pumping round after round into the seemingly endless wall of screaming flesh surging towards the barricade.
‘Fifteen,’ Solomon muttered as he put a las-bolt right between the eyes of a screaming rebel. ‘Kohlz, Stank, go!’
Neither did as Solomon shouted, instead standing their ground at the chimney rim as they poured fire down into the rebels swarming across the carceri chamber roof. ‘I said…’ he started to repeat.
‘Okay!’ Stank shouted back, his voiced raised over the whip-crack of solid slugs coming in from the rebels below. The fire was poorly aimed and the weapons incredibly inaccurate but stray rounds spanged off of the corroded metal and cracked the rockcrete cladding all around them. ‘Kohlz, you first.’
‘Why me first?’ Flint’s aide yelled back as he continued to fire, his indignation clear in his voice even over the discharge of his weapon.
‘We’re only here to cover your arse!’ shouted Solomon. ‘Get moving, will you?’
Solomon lined up another shot as a group of rebel convicts dashed along a raised gantry a hundred metres below. Though the angle was poor he squeezed off a shot to keep them busy, the sniper rifle bucking hard against his shoulder. The las-bolt struck a guardrail and sent up a shower of sparks, causing the convicts to scatter for cover. Glancing over his shoulder, Solomon saw that Kohlz was hefting his bulky vox-set over his shoulders and securing his carbine for the climb down.
‘You’re next!’ Solomon shouted to Stank.
The Asgardian grinned. ‘What’s got into you, Solomon?’ he said before unleashing a three-round burst towards a group of rebels taking up position behind a ventilation funnel. ‘How come you’re so keen?’
Solomon had no time to respond and even if he had, the heavy stubber opening up on them would have drowned out his words. Where the hell the rebels had got hold of a heavy auto piece like that he had no idea but the chimney rim suddenly felt ten times more exposed than it had a moment ago as hand-cast slugs sang through the air all around.
Stank dropped and Solomon thought for a moment his fellow penal trooper had bought the farm. But a moment later the Asgardian was crawling towards the ladder that Kohlz had disappeared down a few moments before. Not a bad idea, Solomon thought as he too dropped to his stomach and brought his sniper rifle up to scan for the enemy heavy weapon crew. The instant he was down the air above his head was filled by the angry buzz of dozens of heavy stubber rounds. Guessing roughly where the weapon crew must be positioned he squinted through his scope and tracked across the rockcrete roof, the viewfinder blurred before he found his range.
‘You coming, Solomon?’ Stank shouted over the hail of incoming bullets as he lowered his legs onto the ladder’s upper rungs. ‘Or you determined to play the hero?’
Having located the flashing barrel of the heavy stubber Solomon ignored his friend. It was protruding from a mass of pipes and exposed cabling and all he could draw a bead on was the business end of the weapon. The firer was out of his field of vision somewhere inside the mass of confused cover.
‘Solomon?’ Stank repeated. ‘Come on!’
Holding his breath to steady his aim as the stubber chattered angrily away, Solomon shifted his aim, settling the cross hairs over a point above and slightly to one side of the flaming barrel. He might not be able to see the rebel manning the heavy weapon, but he could guess where he was.
A heavy round split the air near Solomon’s head, the sheer force of its passage stinging the exposed skin of his upper face. Knowing he might be dead in a heartbeat Solomon took the shot.
The rifle kicked and the pipes cracked apart in a shower of fractured metal. The heavy stubber fell silent as the barrel tipped upwards, the last of the burst it had been firing cutting through the air above.
‘Sixteen!’ Stank shouted. ‘Now can we just get the frag out of here?’
Don’t look down, Solomon told himself. Just don’t look down.
Having claimed his sixteenth tally in the effort to pay the Emperor back for the blessing imparted upon Solomon’s home world, the Jopalli had followed Kohlz and Stank back down the ladder. He was elated that Kohlz had been able to contact the regiment and that help was incoming even now, but as he fought to keep his grip on the wet, corroded rungs, reality was rapidly reasserting itself. People, he realised, had been trying to kill him…
A muffled explosion sounded from far below, the noise of battle drifting up from the gate. Solomon concentrated on the climb, muttering to himself as he went. The sound of las and shotgun fire intensified and someone was shouting. Was it the commissar? He couldn’t be sure but the tone sounded right for the Imperial Guard’s morale officers – confident, inspiring, and just daring you to ignore it so they could put a bolt shell through the back of your head.
As the descent continued Solomon realised that the steadily growing, subsonic roar of another flood was swallowing up the sound of battle. Now, he looked down.
Stank had halted ten metres below and looped his arms tightly around a rung. He was looking straight downwards but Solomon couldn’t see past him.
But before Solomon could find out what was causing the hold up, the sluice channel exploded. If the flood had been bad before, now it was cataclysmic. The outflows surged upwards and where before the waters had come in a tsunami now they came in a solid line of geysers. The luminescent waters erupted straight upward and in an instant Stank was engulfed. A nanosecond later, Solomon’s world turned cold black and his only thought was to cling as tight as he could to the iron rung. The waters surged upwards, buffeting him against the rockcrete wall and he felt the rung loosen under the incredible force, threatening to pitch him into the hundred-metre tall spout and carry him away to his doom. The roaring of a billion litres of water filled his ears, drowning out his shout of denial.
Then the waters were gone and it felt to Solomon like the force of gravity had slackened. Coughing actinic liquid from his mouth he blinked his stinging eyes and looked downwards. ‘Stank?’ he shouted over the receding roar. As he blinked his eyes clear he saw his friend’s sodden form still clung to the ladder, the churning waters a hundred metres below. ‘Stank, are you and Kohlz okay?’
The Asgardian looked up but he didn’t reply. His eyes said it all.
Flint’s aide was gone, carried away by the sheer force of the surging waters.
THIRTEEN
Deliverance
The 77th Vostroyan Firstborn Dragoon regiment was finally on the move. Dozens of armoured vehicles were advancing through the tunnels and chambers of the generatorium, months of tedious practise suddenly translating into something very real indeed.
Graf Aleksis was leading the advance in the manner of his illustrious ancestors – from the forefront, riding in his command vehicle. For years, Aleksis had served in the staff cadres of numerous different Vostroyan Firstborn regiments, always near the centre of power but never quite close enough to claim it for himself. When the previous iteration of the 77th Dragoons had been wiped out at Golan Hole, destroyed pursuing a mission dictated not by the
Departmento Munitorum chain of command, but by the Techtriarchs of Vostroya, a small part of him had rejoiced. He had seen that chance to finally claim the power he so craved, and he had called upon every shred of influence his status with the clans granted. Though the price had been steep, Aleksis had bought himself the one commission he so dearly craved – a colonelcy in a Firstborn regiment.
But Aleksis was not the power-hungry petty noble he might have seemed to the unschooled. He was a scholar too, a man well versed in the glorious histories of the Vostroyan Firstborn. Unlike many of his kin, he had some understanding of the roots of the home world’s ten millennia-old tradition of sending its firstborn male children to fight in the Imperial Guard. Once, he knew, though he dared not speak of it even to Polzdam, Vostroya had failed the Imperium, turned her face from the Emperor and refused to send troops to fight in His wars, claiming that the men were needed to meet the armaments production quotas. In the aftermath of an ancient war only known to most by way of myths, legends and dire warnings, Vostroya renewed its oath of fealty, promising that its firstborn sons would serve for all time as an act of racial contrition.
Aleksis knew these things, and he cared deeply about the ramifications they implied. His immediate forebears had showed weakness at Golan Hole, allowing their loyalties to become divided in a cruel repeat of what had happened ten thousand years ago. Weak, stupid men had led the glorious 77th to defeat, khekking on the long, glorious history of Vostroya.
No more, Aleksis growled, his gorge rising the nearer the Chimera approached to the war zone. No more dishonour, no more vainglory. The ignominy of Golan Hole will be wiped from the annals, and a new 77th will rise to replace its predecessor. His grip on the overhead rail was so tight his knuckles were turned white. The Chimera bucked violently and Aleksis redoubled that grip to remain upright, before the vehicle settled back on its suspension as it ground north-west through Vestibule 41.
‘Sorry, sir!’ the driver called over the intercom. ‘There’s debris everywhere. The forward tracks are saying its getting denser further in.’
‘Understood,’ Aleksis replied. ‘Keep your eyes to the front, please, driver.’
Huffing his impatience, Aleksis lowered the periscope and thumbed on the night sights. He silently mouthed the requisite prayer as he set his face against the rubberised surround. The Chimera jolted again as it careened over an especially large and solid piece of debris and Aleksis banged his forehead against the metal casing.
Suppressing the urge to reprimand the driver, Aleksis waited a moment before sighting through the periscope. The viewfinder was grainy and shot through with machine hash, a side effect, so he was informed, of the installation’s machine systems. The view plate showed the wide, arched tunnel of the vestibule, pale lumen strips zipping by intermittently overhead. Even in the low light conditions, Aleksis could make out graffiti scrawled across the walls. His lip curled with distaste as he caught random words as he passed – Emperor, deny, choke, resist. A dark shape loomed suddenly out of the darkness and clattered against the pintle-mount overhead. A body, Aleksis saw, reduced to little more than bones, strung from the ceiling on long, rusted chains.
The graf’s first proper taste of regimental command was not shaping up to be the glorious endeavour he had looked forward to.
‘Report,’ Aleksis said through gritted teeth, folding the periscope up into its housing.
Behind Aleksis sat Lieutenant-Colonel Karsten, his chief of operations. Aleksis knew Karsten to be a proficient officer and one of the few in the regiment to have some measure of genuine command experience. The man had served in the Vostroyan defence forces and had proved himself worthy of his commission during the badland uprisings of 932. Some regimental commanders might have seen Karsten as a rival and relegated him to some obscure post far from the glory. Much to the consternation of several others, Aleksis had resisted that temptation and ensured Karsten’s experience would be of use.
‘Reconnaissance tracks have reached junction designate X-delta-nine, sir,’ Karsten replied smartly, his eyes not leaving his glowing strategium terminal. ‘Moderate resistance, small arms, nothing they can’t handle, sir.’
‘Understood,’ Aleksis replied, scanning his own command console. The multiple screens displayed reams of data, so much that it took a conscious effort to filter out the extraneous information. That was what officers like Karsten were there for, to take the strain and allow him to command.
‘Additional,’ Karsten announced, his hand pressing his headset to his ear as he concentrated on an incoming message. ‘Signals report contact with Flint’s force. Stand by…’
Aleksis hooked his arm over the back of his seat and turned to face his operations chief. The chatter of a stubber sounded from somewhere up ahead, muffled by the Chimera’s hull and almost drowned out by the growl of its engine. Come on, Aleksis thought…
‘Confirmed,’ Karsten said. ‘We have Flint’s coordinates.’
‘And?’ Aleksis pressed. ‘Has he located the rebels’ stronghold?’
‘Unknown at this time, sir,’ Karsten replied. ‘It sounds like Flint might be in a spot of bother.’
‘Does it now,’ said Aleksis, smirking slightly despite himself. ‘So he might appreciate a little help?’
The operations chief grinned back, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘He might that, sir.’
‘Inform all sub-commands, Mister Karsten.’ Aleksis ordered. ‘Plot us a route to Flint’s location. Lead us in.’
Commissar Flint’s pistol barked and the rebel convict dragging himself up over the barricade was thrown backwards with a smoking crater punched in his chest. Even as the rebel cartwheeled backwards through the air, his arms flailing and a gory tail of displaced viscera trailing behind, he screamed such blasphemies against the Emperor that Flint was all but driven to put a second bolt into him just to silence him. Then the bolt exploded, and the remains were lost to the press of the horde. Within seconds another had taken the rebel’s place.
The next rebel to face Flint was every bit as rabid as the last, and the clotted, dirty wound across his forehead told the commissar he was one of those who had been forced to make obeisance to the colonel in the chamber high above. That recognition took but a second to implant itself upon Flint’s consciousness, and it was followed an instant later by an impression of something deeply… wrong in the rebel’s eyes. They were almost alight, though not with anything so conventional as illumination. Rather, the light of the warp shone behind the wildly staring orbs and it threatened to reach out and entrap Flint’s soul with its pernicious grasp.
‘Back!’ Flint growled, only just avoiding a blow from the rebel’s serrated meat cleaver blade that would undoubtedly have decapitated him had it struck. ‘Lost and damned! Slave to darkness! Back!’ he bellowed, recalling the words the Dictum Commissaria reserved for the most diabolic of foes.
The rebel snarled as he squatted like some feral beast upon the barricade, his crude weapon drawn back for a second blow. The fell light of the warp sparked from its eyes and it opened its mouth as wide as it would go, then opened it more. The yawning, fang-lined chasm seemed to swell before Flint’s eyes, and part of him was aware that the man must be touched by the creatures of the beyond and drawing somehow on the power of their darkling realm. The lips peeled back still further, revealing first the teeth, then the gums, then, with a hideously wet tearing sound, the glistening musculature beneath the skin of his face.
‘In the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind…’ Flint uttered, and the creature drew back, hissing, even as some weirdling illumination guttered and sparked in the wet depths of its gullet. Drawing strength from his faith and the fact that the enemy seemed weakened by the very same weapon, Flint redoubled his spiritual assault. The words of a regimental priest he had once seen face down a charge from an alien monstrosity the size of a Scout Titan sprung unbidden, though not unwelcome, to his lips.
‘Die!’ the priest had bellowed, and so too did Flint. ‘In the name
of Him on Terra, I command thee to die!’ Now those words were echoed from the distant past by Flint’s invocation of a man who had himself died seconds after uttering them. ‘Die!’ he repeated, focusing every ounce of his faith and his hatred of the Emperor’s foes into that one, single word.
The spell was broken and Flint’s bolt pistol was raised before he even realised he was wielding it. Without conscious effort, the barrel was thrust into the abomination’s gaping mouth, the creature clamping oversized fangs down around it in a vain effort to avert the inevitable.
‘Emperor!’ the words of the Litany Against the Mutant came to Flint’s lips. ‘Let your undeniable light burn on the misshapen and the twisted!’
Absently aware that several warriors nearby were joining in the recitation, Flint continued. ‘Let me see them with pure sight!’
Now still more voices joined the commissar’s as he completed the litany. ‘And purge them with righteous fire!’
When it came, the bolt pistol’s report was both deafening and spectacular. The blast dissolved the rebel’s head in a shower of biological filth that all but blinded the commissar with blood and fragments of pulped grey matter. As he blinked his eyes clear, Flint saw the body tumbling back down the barricade and into the seething mass of rebels. The energy that had carried the rebel and his fellows up the barricade seemed to ebb, and the tide recoiled, if almost imperceptibly.
The barricade was holding, but Flint knew that couldn’t last. The small force was fighting like true servants of the God-Emperor but with their backs against the waters of the upper weir there could be no retreat. The last time the channel had flooded the waters had swelled right up and over the upper level, swamping the area before the gate in stinging backflow. Even now, with the flood receded, the force was fighting in ankle deep water.
Another rebel threw himself atop the barricade but instead of maintaining the impetus of his charge he paused a moment to wave his fellows onwards. Once more, an all but imperceptible flicker appeared in the man’s eyes, the daemon-haunted warp threatening to break through into the material realm. Flint saw his opening and lashed out with his power sword, taking the man in the ankles. The blade’s seething edge parted flesh and bone with barely any effort and the man let out a scream like that of the damned. He collapsed backward to land atop a handful of his fellows and Flint’s section of the barricade was momentarily clear.
