For a second everything was silent. Skell stared at the open hatch, at the walkway beyond, and the far side of Sink Shaft One beyond that, separated by the plummeting chasm of the shaft. The cell hatches and hanging cage grates across from them were open too. Every single one, lining the dozens of levels of the circular prison, had been unlocked.
He heard the first whoops, swiftly melding together into cheering that echoed up and down the shaft. Jared, Glof, Rowlen and Piets, the occupants of the cells either side of theirs, were yelling their own delight. Nedzy and Hollis, in the cell below, were leaping with excitement.
They were free. All of them. And that realisation terrified Skell more than anything else that had happened that night.
It was chaos. Sink Shaft One housed almost a hundred thousand penal convicts. When Kail of the Fifth Claw cracked the Precinct Fortress’ locking systems and automatically opened their cells and cages, every single one saw hope for the first time in a long time. The fear and uncertainty that had settled over the prison mine like a shroud was snatched away in a few moments of stunned disbelief.
Tens of thousands of inmates made their bid for freedom. Few stopped to think about what was happening. The realisation that others were seizing the moment drove them all out of their cells and cages and onto the walkways ringing the inside of the mineshaft. For a few mad, precious minutes it looked as though the greatest penal breakout in the history of the segmentum was under way.
The killing began almost immediately. The walkways hadn’t been constructed to take the whole of Zartak’s primary prison population at the same time. Men were thrust out over the railings and into the abyss of the shaft, whether by design or simply because of the press of frenzied, grimy bodies. Their individual screams were easily lost in the uproar now reverberating from the towering sides of the great pit. Others were grabbed and flung over the edge, as gang rivalries reignited and old scores were swiftly settled.
With not a lawman in sight, the mob made for the surface. The grav lifts had all been deactivated, so they packed the stairways. Those on the highest levels, who had been first out of their hanging cages, swiftly regretted their haste. At the top of each flight they discovered a single figure waiting – a giant, armoured in lightning, as unmovable as the arbitrator statues that flanked the adamantium gatehouse of the precinct.
That was when the real killing began.
Jarq’s Eighth Claw laughed as they opened fire on the crush that filled the stair shafts. Their bolters annihilated the foremost prisoners, blasting scrawny, dust-caked bodies to steaming chunks of meat and bone. The thunderclap report of their weapons hammered down the shafts, deafening and disorientating those behind as they continued to push upwards. The Night Lords added the sounds of the recorded sufferings from past victims over their vox-grilles to the screams of those being cut down, creating a sonic assault that filled Sink Shaft One with echoes of purest terror.
Some prisoners snatched makeshift weapons, breaking open tool crates or picking up chunks of mine debris. It made no difference. Those prisoners in front tried to go back while those behind, not knowing where the sounds were coming from, tried all the harder to push forwards. Men were crushed and trampled, their bodies broken against the rockcrete walls or plasteel rungs.
The Eighth Claw – the youngest and bitterest in the whole warband – began to advance, firing as they went. In stairwell 8-19 Jaggen disobeyed orders to conserve ammunition and opened up with his flamer, cackling manically over the vox as he flooded the shaft with liquid fire. In stairwell 7-5, Corvax drew his chainswords and leapt into the fleeing prisoners with an ear-bursting roar. His revving weapons and armoured bulk tore, eviscerated and crushed everything he touched, smashing dozens of bodies back down the way they’d come.
It was a massacre, and it was just the beginning.
The sounds of slaughter reached Skell and Dolar as they reached the walkway beyond their cell hatch. Convicts were scrambling past, yelping and jeering, still unaware of what was happening further up the sink shaft. Dolar was dragging Skell by the collar of his grey overalls.
‘We got to go,’ the older inmate shouted over the tumult. When the cell hatch had first slid open, Skell had stayed rooted to his shackle bunk for what felt like hours. Eventually Dolar had hauled him to his feet.
‘You’re actin’ crazy, Skell! Let’s get out of here!’
‘Dolar, we can’t! Just trust me!’
‘Yeah we can! I ain’t staying!’
By the time the monsters made it to the bottom of the stairs and into Sink Shaft One’s prison complex, the tide had finally turned. Even the most desperate of the former prisoners had realised that something terrible was descending from above. They stampeded in the opposite direction, like a grox herd driven wild by the scent of a predator.
The only way out was down.
‘Not the stairs,’ Skell said as they were carried along by the press. He planted his hand on Dolar’s shoulder, urging strength into his command. Dolar’s eyes became glazed as he pushed and shoved at those around them.
‘They’re all dying up there,’ Skell said. ‘Into the mines, now.’
‘Skell!’ bawled a voice. It was Argrim. Skell half turned in the press to see the big smuggler gesturing at him from half a dozen yards back, ruddy face contorted with anger, his short red hair spiked with sweat and grime.
‘You little runt!’ he shouted. ‘I’m coming for you, witch!’
‘Dolar, move!’ Skell ordered, impelling him again. Dolar drove himself forwards into the flood of bodies, single-mindedly forging a path for Skell to follow. Argrim and his accomplices, the wiry kleptomaniac Relly and the one-eyed gangland enforcer Soran, were left struggling angrily against the wild, dirty tide.
‘Take a left,’ Skell ordered, hand still on his cellmate’s back. Dolar stumbled but kept going, turning through a mine subway hatch instead of carrying on towards stairwell 10-1. Abruptly the press of bodies receded. If they wanted to stay alive, they had to stay ahead.
‘Go for the ratholes,’ he told Dolar. The convict was stumbling, shaking his head. The effects of Skell’s willpower were wearing off, and he didn’t have the strength to drive another spike of determination into Dolar’s mind. His own skull was throbbing more painfully than ever, and his nose felt blocked.
‘W-why are we here?’ Dolar moaned. ‘Why are we going down?’
‘Because they’re killing everyone who’s going up,’ Skell said. ‘Just follow me.’
He took the lead. The mine sub-surface was one of the primary routes into the main works, a trio of loco rail tracks that acted as an arterial lane for the numerous mines that branched away from Sink Shaft One’s prison cell blocks, cages and oubliettes. It was broad and high, packed with sturdy girder ribs, studded with devotional seals and bright, hardwired lumen orbs. It had been built by the original colonists, a far cry from the Burrow’s shabby, dilapidated outer workings. Skell took Dolar past the dusty servitor-manned loco rail carriages and on down the tracks, their feet crunching in the gravel. The uproar reverberating through the sink shaft gradually faded, until all they could hear was the buzzing of the lumens, their footfalls and heavy, panting breaths.
Eventually the slowly curving tunnel revealed a rockcrete platform. Skell clambered onto it and helped Dolar up after him. The dust-caked yellow block letters over the entrance read SUB MINE 16.
‘Masks,’ Skell said, unhooking one of the rudimentary filtration kits from the rack next to the entrance. The microscopic adamantium dust that shrouded the lower works was deadly – ironlung killed more of the penal workers each production cycle than all the machine accidents, cave-ins and gang murders combined.
Skell buckled the respiration mask in place and took a slow, sucking breath. The stink of old rubber and someone else’s stale sweat invaded his senses. He tossed a second mask to Dolar.
‘Hurry,’ he said. He was trying
to act confident, trying to look as though he knew what he was doing. Trying to pretend his hands weren’t shaking and his body wasn’t slick with cold sweat. He felt sick. He could hardly breathe through the mask’s cloying, sucking embrace.
Dolar fitted his mask in place and followed Skell as he pushed through the plastek flaps and into the sub-mine tunnel. Here the works started to become less permanent. The cutting had a single track for hauling raw adamantium ore up to the rail line. The beams that supported the walls and ceiling were scarred plasteel, and the lumen orbs were intermittent and dim. The devotional texts and daily reminders that perforated the more established tunnels were now few and far between. Dolar slowed as their footing became less certain.
‘We have to keep going,’ Skell urged him again. ‘We don’t have much time.’ As though to underscore his words, sounds echoed down the tunnel from the way they’d come – screams, and gunfire.
Keep going, urged a thought that was not his own. He pushed Dolar on.
‘They took a left,’ Argrim shouted, shoving Soran and Relly through the mine hatch. ‘I saw the big oaf’s head above the crowd.’
The sounds of screaming and gunfire were getting closer, and suddenly sticking with the mob didn’t seem like such a good idea. Argrim had made a career from following his gut, and right now that instinct was telling him to break from the pack. Besides, when had Skell’s predictions been wrong before? Wherever he was going, that was where Argrim wanted to be.
It was quiet in the sub-surface tunnel. The convicted smuggler scanned the idle loco carriages they passed, wary of an ambush. He’d underestimated the boy yesterday, and not for the first time. He wouldn’t do so again.
‘Got a trail,’ Relly said, gesturing at the gravel between the track lines. Two sets of footprints led off down the subway tunnel, side by side. Argrim nodded.
‘Let’s go.’
Cull watched the carnage on the undamaged viewscreens, fighting the urge to descend into the sinkhole and join the unrestrained bloodshed. Around him thralls from the Last Breath were labouring hard to refit the rest of the viewing bank, attending to the snapped orders and tech-psalms being intoned by one of the ship’s hooded hereteks.
‘It is time I addressed the cattle,’ Cull said to the Dark Mechanicum priest overseeing the installation. The cowled figure nodded, its flesh-webbed mechandendrils recoiling back from the Prince of Thorns. The Night Lord held out a gauntlet, and the creature passed him a vox-horn. He raised it to his helm, and paused to take a breath.
‘Murderers of Zartak. Thieves, traitors, blasphemers, blackmailers, smugglers and recidivists. Brothers. Rejoice, one and all.’
Cull’s voice was broadcast via the Precinct Fortress’ uplinks across the automated systems of Sink Shaft One, the cutting words of the Night Lord echoing through vox-bays, over intercoms and across labour gang work channels.
‘Rejoice, for we have come for you. The Eighth Legion, the Night Lords, sons of Konrad Curze. We are the instruments of your liberation. Even now the last of the corpse-worshipping lapdogs who have suppressed and maltreated you are being slaughtered. You are free men once more, at liberty to do whatever you will.’
He paused for a moment, letting the echoes of his voice fade away through the planet’s dark underworld.
‘In return for your liberty, we ask only that you show us your abundant talents. House Cull’s twelfth harvest has begun. We seek the greatest among your ranks to join us in the Long War against the false Imperium that has enslaved you. Strength, power, riches, immortality, we offer it all, and more. Now is the chance for the true killers to step forward. Now is the time for the strong to take what is rightfully theirs. We shall be watching.’
Cull nodded and the heretek cut the link. He returned his gaze to the viewscreens. Driven back by the butchery unleashed by Eighth Claw, the hordes of escaped prisoners had turned from the stairwells and were instead pouring into the mines of the Burrow, flooding it like a sea of blind, mangy vermin. Cull felt satisfaction flare – it would soon be time for the next phase.
Shadraith’s sibilant voice interrupted his thoughts, and he grimaced.
‘I take my leave,’ said the sorcerer. ‘The boy is somewhere below, attempting to flee. I can feel it. He must be found.’
‘As you will, Flayed Father,’ Cull said, not turning from the flickering display screens. ‘Once you’ve retrieved him, bring him here.’
‘I will,’ Shadraith replied, casting a lingering glare at Cull’s back. ‘Of that you can be sure.’
Dolar wouldn’t go any further. Skell cursed him.
‘If we stop they’ll catch us,’ he snapped. His cellmate just shook his head, eyes wide above the seal of his respirator mask. He was terrified.
They’d made it as far as burrow shaft 28. The claustrophobic dirt-and-rock corridor was one of hundreds of close mining seams, a long, low space scarred by decades of lascutters and pick heads. It was the edge of the Burrow. The only thing that dug further and deeper were the ratholes, crawlspaces exploring the earth for the few remaining untapped strips of adamantium far below the planet’s surface.
Skell could hear sounds behind them, bouncing weirdly down the narrow spaces of the mine – footfalls, and voices. Voices he recognised. Argrim had followed them. Either his hatred for Skell eclipsed his desire to escape, or he simply understood that if Skell was going the opposite way from everyone else, there had to be a damn good reason why.
Skell reached out towards Dolar, who recoiled and pressed himself against one of the timber frames supporting the tunnel. Skell grimaced and pushed into him. His head ached. He was tired. He tried to marshal his thoughts.
‘We’re going,’ he said, gesturing further along burrow shaft 28.
‘N-no,’ Dolar stammered. ‘Didn’t you hear what that voice on the speakers said? They can see us. They’re watching. If we try to escape they’ll know.’
Skell snarled with frustration and punched Dolar’s chest. The blow did nothing.
‘Skell!’ The shout came ringing down the tunnel. He turned and saw silhouettes framed against the brighter lights of the sub-mine. He recognised the voice.
‘Where in Terra’s name are you going, witch?’ Argrim demanded, striding towards them. His two lackeys crowded close behind, all three stooped over in the tunnel’s confines. ‘What’s going on up there? Tell me!’
‘Stop them,’ said Skell. Dolar hesitated. Skell snatched him by the throat.
‘Stop them!’ he screamed, driving the words into Dolar’s dull mind. The convict flinched and cried out, throwing Skell back off him. Then he turned and launched himself at Argrim.
‘Deal with his pet,’ the smuggler ordered his two underlings. They lunged past Argrim and grappled with Dolar, trying to pin him up against the tunnel wall. Argrim thrust past them, eyes glaring murderously over the seal of his respirator.
Skell ran. The lighting in the burrow shaft was almost non-existent. He stumbled through the semi-darkness, the sound of Argrim’s footfalls gaining on him. He could hear Dolar grunting as he fought, and then his shouts as he realised he’d been abandoned. Skell didn’t look back.
Argrim caught him, snatching the back of Skell’s overalls and making him stumble. The smuggler’s scarred fists struck at his shoulders and dragged him back against the wall, thrusting him into the packed dirt.
‘Little mutant twist,’ Argrim spat, and smacked his fist into Skell’s stomach. The scrawny boy doubled up, the air driven from his lungs. He clutched instinctively onto Argrim’s sides as he sought to keep his feet and find his breath. The smuggler flung him back against the wall, derisive now.
‘You’ve not got much fight in you without your big bonehead, do you?’ He snatched Skell’s greasy black hair, forcing him to look back up the tunnel. Argrim’s two dregs were murdering Dolar. The simpleton was too confused and terrified to fight back. One of the attackers h
ad salvaged the metal haft of a broken pick – Dolar took a good half dozen hits before he fell. Shame and anger rose up inside Skell, choking his rattling breaths.
‘Where are your witch powers, freak?’ Argrim sneered, turning him so they were face to face. The smuggler’s blunt, scarred features contorted behind his mask.
‘Time for you to join your idiot friend,’ he said, raising his fist. With a yell of rage, Skell snatched at him. Argrim froze. Skell’s eyes flared, alive with strange, burning light. His yell became a feral snarl.
‘Your soul is mine now, Wilem Argrim.’ Skell’s grip tightened impossibly, and the bones in Argrim’s hand snapped with a wet crunch. The flood of pain coincided with a flood of nightmarish images driven into the smuggler’s mind.
Argrim started screaming and didn’t stop. Skell released him and he collapsed onto his knees, face contorted behind his mask, eyes staring into nothingness as his mind was ravaged by the horrors of a patchwork monster of dead skins. Skell left him, and began to walk back down the tunnel.
The two minions had stopped beating Dolar when their master’s terror started to echo through the tunnel. Now they simply stood and stared at Skell as he approached, rooted to the spot. Dolar lay face down at their feet, unmoving, blood from his split skull seeping out into the dirt. The witch lights playing about Skell’s eyes flared, and he shot out one hand.
Lightning ignited at the gesture, crackling from the boy’s fingers. A boom of displaced air hammered down the tunnel as the bolt earthed itself into the body of the nearest of Dolar’s killers. It struck the metal of his pick haft first, dancing up his arm and across his body. His screams joined those of his master, and then his accomplice added to them as the lightning arced between the two men, striking them both.
They stood transfixed. Their overalls ignited, then their hair. Their eyes burst from their skulls. Their skin melted from their bones. By the time the lightning released them, they were nothing but blackened, badly cooked offal. The two hunks of meat collapsed to the tunnel floor, steaming. Argrim was still screaming, his throat raw.
Carcharodons: Red Tithe Page 8
