I haven’t told him that we only came for von Strab because an inquisitor was going to declare Exterminatus on Acheron Hive – that the effect on morale of the turncoat Imperial commander’s treachery was so dangerous that Oriel was willing to kill a billion people to stop it. I hadn’t even known we were coming here, to Armageddon, just taking one long, crazy-inducing warp jump most of the way across the galaxy. That’s when my little helper, the abyssal messenger, must have slipped inside my thoughts. Looking back, the warp dreams got worse towards the end and that’s when it must have been riding my soul.
A year in the warp, that’s just not a good plan for anybody.
I also didn’t tell them about how that messenger played my worst fears and deepest lusts and most awful passions against me, taking me over in a moment of bloodthirst – one that saw me kill one of my best friends. I forgot to mention that I sided with von Strab, turned on the Colonel and the others, and was helping execute them at the moment Oahebs’ presence dulled the evil spirit’s effect just long enough for me to take full control of my body again.
‘You were willing to die to save us from von Strab,’ says Karol, swallowing hard. ‘To throw yourself into the flames to protect Acheron and Armageddon.’
‘I did,’ I reply. I had wanted it to end. That’s all I remember as I fell down that artificial chasm. All my life fighting to survive, I’d found a chance to end it properly. ‘The Colonel brought me here to save my soul, and that’s what I was able to do.’
‘But the Emperor sent it back.’ There’s wonder in his voice. ‘He spared you the flames.’
I say nothing, ignoring Karol for a moment to strain my ears and eyes for any sign of the downhive orks. This place is a mess of metal creaks and groans, not to mention the sound of our passage, but my paranoia tells me there are other sounds, something out of place. I hold my finger to my lips for quiet and signal the others to stop moving.
Tapping. An insistent rapping on pipes, echoing from somewhere to our left.
‘That’s a signal,’ I hiss, turning back to the crowd around me. ‘Run!’
Before anyone responds, the distinct snap of lasguns sounds from ahead, where the scouts are.
‘Shit. Too late.’
The panic that took hold in the sump hall returns with a vengeance. Half the people start bolting down the passageway, heading towards the fighting; the others want to run the other way but are blocked by the Colonel and his troopers. As their demands to pass become shriller, he faces the decision of letting them past or opening fire.
He allows them to go, his undersized platoon parting to let them dash back towards the orks piling in from uphive.
The las-fire ahead intensifies. I can see flashes reflected from the walls a hundred metres or so from my position, matched by the occasional darker muzzle flare and thump of an ork weapon. Fortunately, the down-runts aren’t all that good at maintaining guns or making ammo. Unfortunately, they are still good at getting a sharp edge on a blade, or driving spikey bits into scrap, and that’s where orks are their nastiest – up-close and in your face.
Which is why Nazrek is already shouldering its way forward, roaring in happy expectation. Most of its shouts seem like wordless bellows, occasionally broken by a ‘smash’, ‘blast’ or ‘krump’.
‘Form on me, get a firing line!’ I yell, heading after the ork, taking a cluster of ex-troopers with me. A glance back confirms that the Colonel is coming forward as well, leaving those fleeing to delay the orks coming at us from behind.
‘What about them?’ asks Karol, flicking a thumb towards the group carrying the virtually unconscious former prisoners.
I raise my voice as I run, trying to be heard over the swelling noise of the fearful mob.
‘If you have a gun, get to the front! If you don’t have a gun, get behind someone with a gun! If you find a gun, pick it up and get to the front!’
I can hear orkish voices among the snap of firing and the curses of my people. A woman trips in front of me and I slow to stoop and help her up. She starts to thank me but I shove her back to her companions and carry on, no time for pleasantries.
Nazrek has surged about twenty metres ahead. Its heavy pistol booms as it reaches the skirmish line, the red flare of its shot illuminating the antechamber where the scouts are holding out. Through the strobe of las-fire and sparks of ork bullets I see the enemy in a tunnel beyond, ducking and crawling through a knot of pipework, a flashing image of snarling fangs and beady red eyes.
‘Fire discipline!’ I yell, catching up with the scouts and Karol’s rough platoon. ‘Mark your targets! Weight of fire!’
We’ve had enough tangles with orks that they should know better. Nazrek calls them runts but they’re still as big as a human, maybe a bit wirier in build, but that’s all muscle and meanness. And they’re tougher than Navy biscuit, so one lasgun hit maybe gets their attention, two annoys them, and you need four or five to do any serious damage. Even then you’ve got to pour it on. Bullets are just about the same.
I take aim with my laspistol, sighting on an ork, about five metres away, dropping down from a hatch in the wall. Karol’s next to me, and we open fire at the same time, aiming high – more chance of hitting the throat, eye, open mouth…
A small fire-team grows around us as the others join in, taking out each ork in turn, closest first and then the next and the next, firing until they go down and then firing some more. Normally we’d bring in the flamers but there’s no point blocking our route ahead with burning promethium.
The chatter of the autoguns takes me back to my youth in the underhive of Olympia, but it’s the zip of a lasgun that I know best. The standard issue of the Imperial Guard, backbone of the Astra Militarum. It’s a soothing sound for me; to hear that weapon firing means I’m still here, the bastards haven’t got me yet. So many battles, so close to dying that many times, it’s stupid that it feels comforting.
‘This way too!’ comes a shout from the corridor adjoining the junction where we’ve been pushing forward.
I can’t break away, there’s a dozen more orks coming straight at us. A few start snapping off shots from crude pistols, the heavy slugs slamming into the pipework above, or tearing chunks of plascrete from the walls. A lucky shot hits a man to my left, taking out the right side of his face. He falls back with a yell, blood spraying the side of my robe.
‘Someone get his gun!’ I shout, trying to find the shooters in the gloom.
Forced to duck and dodge a renewed burst of bullets from ahead, our fire lessens and the orks make headway. Three of them reach the opening, shrugging off lasgun beams as they charge through the doorway.
Karol tries to meet them head-on, a sudden rush of blood perhaps. He should know better. A cleaver swipe takes his hand off and the second blow digs deep into his chest. The ork stands over his body trying to lever its weapon out while the other two pile forward.
‘Keep shooting!’ I back away, following my own order, putting three las-bolts into the side of the closest ork’s head. The tough bone gives way on the third, eyeball and orbit exploding.
The junction is filled with blinding blasts as we open fire, bolts flashing just a few metres and scorching green skin, bullets tearing into hardened flesh. Snarling, the orks thrash through the storm, more of them following. A knife as long as my forearm finds the throat of a woman to my right, moments before the ork slumps at her feet, the woman’s arterial spray coating its falling body.
The other ork has chains wrapped around its fists, as lethal as any hammer or axe, and batters away with them, long arms picking up deadly momentum with each swing. Two of my fighters go down, faces broken open, chests bludgeoned.
The one with the cleaver has freed its weapon and bawls at us, spit flying, fangs glinting in las-light. The shadows of more fill the corridor behind.
Nazrek arrives like a green killdozer, slamming through us with a
deafening bellow. Its self-made pistol – too big for me to carry in one hand – barks with it, high-bore rounds crafted by Grot smashing the cleaver-ork to a pulp with raw impact.
Nazrek leaps at the second, clubbing the pistol into its jaw. Bone cracks and green blood flies. A backhanded blow slams the other ork against the wall, neck snapping.
In the other hand, Nazrek carries a ‘choppa’ – eighty centimetres of sharp metal, bastard offspring that had a sword for a mother and an axe for a father. This terrible blade catches the next foe in the side of the head, taking off cheek, ear and scalp with one blow. Incredibly, the down-runt isn’t done. It leaps at Nazrek, jaws open. My bodyguard smashes it in the chest with the grip of the pistol, then discards the weapon to grab the other ork’s throat.
The choppa finishes the job it started, taking off the rest of the head, which flies over me, dribbling droplets of blood.
‘Support!’ I call out, stepping after Nazrek as the ork ploughs into the next foe, tusks driving into its throat as it literally bites its face off. For all its power and violence, even Nazrek would get surrounded and beaten down if left on its own against the massing orks.
We fire when we can, past Nazrek’s rampage. Knives, mauls and close-range pistol shots when needed. One of the runts slips past the bigger ork and comes at me, a hooked pick in one hand, the claws of the other slashing at my face.
I’ve faced enough orks now that I know the only thing that helps is to use my speed. I duck inside the swing of the pick, knowing that if I don’t take out my enemy in the next three seconds, it’ll come down again into my head or back. Claws scrabble at my shoulder but I ignore the pain, driving the point of my knife up through the bottom of the projecting jaw and through the soft tissue of the palate into the brain above. I fire my pistol, the las-bolt searing the side of my face with its proximity before hitting the ork’s eye.
The pick-blow never comes and I shrug off the spasming corpse just in time to throw myself aside from the blade of another ork that has broken past. My companions bury it with lasgun butts and blades, battering and hacking at the creature until it’s decapitated and dismembered. In its death throes it breaks Sabastin’s leg, sending him howling to the ground.
A minute later and we’ve broken through into some kind of hall, about forty metres square, perhaps a power station, its workings long since looted for other purposes. There’s no light except our lamps and gunfire, but in the sweeping beams there doesn’t seem to be many orks. The yellow gleam of a lantern pans across a high arch on the opposite side, leading to a broad corridor.
‘Hold here. Get everyone down there!’ I call to my people, directing them to ferrocrete outcrops and other cover. ‘Some of you take lights. Keep them moving!’
The crowd breaks into the hall and runs towards the exit, bobbing lamplights ushering them towards the archway. I swap out the powercell in my pistol – one more reload left, a hundred shots total – and snap off a few bolts at orks lurking around doorways and inspection pits to our left.
Nazrek arrives, covered in ork gore. Bullets smack into its armour and flesh but it pays them no heed, glaring into the darkness. Its nostrils flare as it sniffs the air loudly.
‘What is it? How many are there?’
‘Big green,’ it grunts. It turns its head. ‘Not here. Behind.’
‘Kage!’
The Colonel’s bellow brings me around in time to see him and his team bursting out of the entryway on the heels of the fleeing mob. Half of them turn and start firing back down the passage. Not a good sign. I meet him halfway back to the corridor.
‘Uphive orks, hundreds of them,’ he tells me.
‘How close?’
‘Too close. Thirty seconds behind us.’
I check on the progress of the others. About half the unarmed folks are out of the hall, the others funnelling through the archway. There’s probably two dozen of us with weapons – half as many again with the Colonel.
‘Let’s go. We can’t fight, we have to run.’
The Colonel barks an order to his troopers, who break away from their firing line and follow as we run straight after the receding crowd, barely snapping off shots at the down-runts that burst from their hiding places to come after us.
The following few minutes are a headlong race down a straight corridor about half a kilometre long, followed by an ascent up a winding metal staircase to Emperor knows where. I hear orkish shouts and crashing metal behind us. It seems the down-runts aren’t happy to see the uphive orks in their territory either. All good, as far as I’m concerned. More time for us.
Nazrek is grunting with every stride beside me. Thick green blood congeals across a score of bullet holes marking the ork’s arms and chest, another cutting a line across its forehead over the right eye. Every few steps it shakes its head and grimaces.
‘You okay?’
‘Big green hurting,’ Nazrek rumbles back. ‘Not body.’
That doesn’t sound good at all, but the better news is that we seem to be free of the down-runts. At the top of the steps the rush slows to a more orderly jog as winded lungs and tired limbs start to take over from sheer panic. Glowstrips illuminate a cluster of corridors and chambers, their pale greenish gleam almost painful after the darkness.
It’s the brightest many of the people hurrying through the rooms have ever seen, born and raised in underhive twilight. They squint and moan even as they try to shield their eyes.
‘Keep going,’ I urge them, again and again. I hear prayers being raised, my name being used like a benediction.
I don’t look back. I can feel the Colonel on my heel and hear the others. There’s no point looking back; it won’t make the orks any further away and it’ll just slow me down.
I think I can hear growling and snarling, broken through with guttural shouts. Nazrek starts to slow and look back. It’s probably not used to backing down from a fight, but I want the ork nearby if we run into anything ahead.
‘Stay with me,’ I say. Grot chirps its own encouragement, scuttling between our legs, thrusting a bony finger forward.
Darkness looms ahead, resolving into an immense open space that swallows all sound. A ruddy light bathes us, almost comforting after the harsh lumens. The floor is tiled with grey and white, cracked and stained with age. The walls seem impossibly distant, hundreds of metres away, barely lit. Holes in the floor show where machines used to be bolted down, drifts of rust moving sluggishly in eddies from the air circulators that still wheeze out puffs of artificial wind from far above.
I take all of that in at a glance, but what really pricks my senses is the rumbling behind us. A drawn-out thunder, which I realise, as my mouth goes dry and my throat tightens, is the footfalls of the orks behind us.
Four
A DEADLIER FOE
In the great scheme of things, it’s not the most scared I’ve been – that honour goes to the night spent in a Battle Sisters chapel-fort on Deliverance waiting for the tyranids, watching thousands of their spores falling from orbit. Listening to that thunder comes pretty close, though.
I’m not the only one affected. I see nervous glances back from those running across the massive space, and the veterans around me have a look in their eye I know well, a telltale tremble in the hands.
We’re too late.
I don’t say it. No need to, everyone within earshot knows it. I exchange a look with the Colonel.
‘If you run now, you can outpace these others,’ he says. ‘Perhaps get to safety. There is nothing you can do to protect them.’
It’s like he’s been taken over by the voice inside my head, bringing it out into the open. Damn him. Emperor damn his icy gaze and nonchalant temptation.
‘Still on that, are you? Think I’ll just cut and run?’
I move away before he can reply, raising my voice to those around me.
‘We have t
o protect the retreat,’ I tell them. ‘Buy time for them to get away.’
A lot of them aren’t listening, already running across the empty expanse of the chamber. A few slow down, look back, and then carry on.
‘That is your plan?’ says the Colonel. ‘To stand here and shoot until they reach you?’
‘Better an axe in the face than in the back,’ I say, though the thought of an ork axe hitting me anywhere gives me a shudder. Not clean, not quick at all. If the Emperor really watches over me, I’ll get one of those stupidly big bullets in the head, nice and simple.
‘I suggest we take up a better position over there,’ says the Colonel, pointing to an uneven section of the floor where a ramp leads down into a series of trenches and inspection pits, about two hundred metres further on.
Others have heard him and break into a run, giving me no choice but to follow. After a few strides I realise that Nazrek isn’t coming with us. It stands, shaking visibly, staring back the way we came.
‘Nazrek!’
The ork doesn’t answer. Grot weaves in and out of Nazrek’s legs in agitation, alternating between muttering and screeching. I run back to them, slamming my hand hard on the ork’s back. Slowly, as though trying to wake up, the ork turns red eyes on me, a scowl of rage furrowing its brow, arm lifting the choppa above me.
‘We’re gonna wait for them down there,’ I say, jabbing a thumb towards the dips. ‘Tactics, remember?’
There’s no comprehension for a few seconds. Maybe the green is too much, overwhelming the small bit of humanity Nazrek has taken on. I’ve been such an idiot, fooling myself into forgetting that this thing is a killer, pure and simple. For an instant I see nothing but murder in the alien’s eyes, and tremble as I expect the choppa to come down, hewing me in half.
Nazrek’s lips ripple, showing teeth. It grunts from deep in its chest, and nods.
Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Page 5
