The hop silo was warm and dry, and no longer smelt of anything. The putrid pods had quickly liquefied and then solidified to form a glassy black surface perhaps thirty centimetres deep on the floor. There was a tidemark a metre high on the walls where the original crop had been loaded to, but other than that, there was no sign that the silos had been used for anything other than their intended purpose.
Neither friend nor foe had been near the silos for the better part of three years, so they had become a useful exchange point for goods crossing no-man’s-land, and were a convenient link between hive- and agri-cells.
Logier had added rubberised slips to the spade-like feet of his augmetics, in order to gain some purchase on the glassy floor surface, and he walked across the silo to examine the cache, arranged on pallets and in makeshift containers on the far side of the room alongside a sizeable hand-barrow. Ozias had put together a fine hoard of weapons since the inception of the agri-resistance-cell, and they had plenty to spare for the right cause.
Logier stripped a las out of its canvas cover and held it to his shoulder. Then he pulled out the sight and offered it up to the rifle. He hefted the thing in his hand for a moment, and then separated the pieces and put them back in their cover. He did the same for an autopistol, and then checked a row of flamer-tanks sitting neatly side-by-side on the top of a stack of pallets. None of the weapons were complete, all were broken into their component parts, and fuel and ammunition were stored separately, as per Ozias’ instructions.
If the enemy got hold of the cache they couldn’t use the weapons against the local workforce immediately and, by the time they’d organised themselves, and assembled and loaded the weapons, their tiny minds would, very probably, be on something else, something more immediate.
However, the weapons were not ready for use by the cells, either, so, if they were caught by the enemy guards, they’d better be armed.
Mallet was sitting on his haunches, shoes and socks removed and placed neatly next to him; he always recce’d his surroundings, and he’d taken one look at the shiny black floor and decided bare feet were his best chance of staying upright on it. His back was against the curved far wall of the silo, and he was half-hidden by the pile of pallets that held the flamer tanks. He was assembling, checking and stripping weapons, one by one, working his way, methodically, from the lasguns to the autopistols and then on to the flamers, before checking out the camouflage and the skins full of stink-mash that only the enemy would see fit to drink.
As Bedlo entered by the single door in the silo, Mallet instinctively lifted the autopistol he had just finished checking, and aimed it squarely at his boss. Bedlo didn’t see Mallet for several seconds, and Mallet didn’t make himself known, enjoying the feeling of power and control. Bedlo only knew he was there when Shuey and Ailly poured through the entrance, tripping over each other and skidding on the surface that offered no grip for their boots. The boys couldn’t help laughing as they travelled several metres on their arses, totally out of control. Mallet took aim and shot a round into the glassy floor between them. It was like hitting crystal taffy with a sugar-hammer. Shards of the petrified plant-life spun through the air, collecting light, like black diamonds, on their way to falling with a tinkle back to the glass surface and into the boys’ hair and clothes.
Shuey gagged and doubled over, falling to the hard surface as the shot released the stench of the pods in their live state. Ailly, trying to evade the shot, slid across the floor, landing in a heap against the pallets, knocking several of the empty flamer-tanks onto the smooth, black floor, and beginning the process all over again.
Mallet looked up at Bedlo, the only man still standing, glaring down on him, and said, “What?”
Logier had seen all of the cell members entering the silo, only four, and had stayed for a moment or two in case there were others, but could see no likely candidates in the environs. He began to walk away when the shot was fired, and was not tempted to stay to witness whatever madness was going on within. The hive-cell had a reputation, born of a catalogue of misadventure, madness and catastrophe, often with a glamorous, devil-may-care attitude thrown in for good measure. That was why Ozias had chosen them, and that was why Logier could never see them as a threat.
Shuey was torn between laughing at Ailly trying to regain his feet, and retching at the stink that was coming off the floor shards. Then he caught sight of the stand-off between Mallet and Bedlo. He thought for a moment, and then winked and let out a resounding guffaw, copying the low belly-rumble that Ayatani Revere seemed able to muster up from nowhere at a moment’s notice. The boy stopped struggling, Bedlo turned to look in Shuey’s direction and Mallet went back to checking weapons. The spell was broken.
“Let’s load the barrow,” said Bedlo. “I want us out of here.”
Logier watched as the barrow wove through the narrow alleys of the under-slum. The hive had always had rents and wastes at the lower reaches, but, since the war and during the occupation, this place had become darker, sadder and more sinister. The people were incomplete specimens, veterans of the agri-galleries or the occupation, men without limbs or senses: the crippled, blind, deaf and damaged, who would never experience the augmetics that were available throughout the rest of the Imperium. They lived out their pitiful existences in this backwater, trading between themselves and collaborating with whomever, whenever the need arose. There was no honour among thieves or vagabonds, only survival, which, three years deep into the occupation, meant that everyone was life-limited, and everyone knew it.
The under-slum was also the favourite haunt and hunting ground of the basic-grade enemy troops, the mindless animals that did the bidding of the Archenemy. They were tough, cruel beings, without hearts or minds, any moral compasses they might once have had stripped out and trampled long ago. They were, by turns, brutal and lazy, and they took pleasure in the most vicious side of life. The deaf, blind and legless were easier to kill than the hivers or agri-workers, and no one counted the bodies.
The under-slum was where the bestial element of the enemy forces took their R&R and exercised their pleasures: hunting, torturing, brutalising, raping and taking revenge for the horrors meted out to them by their superiors. The locals didn’t fight back, but only begged for a faster death; no one was naive enough to beg to live.
Fresh enemy troops had been brought into Reredos in the usual rotation, and the outgoing guards were filling their boots in the under-slum before being shipped out. The place was teeming with hundreds of bodies, hungry and thirsty for food, drink and violent sport of all kinds, and the hive-cell was moving in to supply a share of that.
Bedlo had instructed the boys in loading the hand-barrow while Mallet checked weapons. They all discarded the arms they were carrying, except for Mallet, who trusted nothing more than the autopistol that had served him so well for so long; it didn’t stop him bagging a Guard-issue long-las, though, just for good measure. Shuey gave up his uncle’s rifle without a second glance when he saw what was on offer from the cache, and soon both of the boys were carrying their weight in arms. Mallet didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. He wanted to carry the arms they could use and stash ammunition.
He wasn’t the boss, but when he looked hard at the boys, they both cowered a little. He gestured at the weapons.
“Put them back,” he said.
The boys turned from Mallet and looked to Bedlo for a decision.
“Take one good weapon each,” he said. “The rest aren’t going anywhere.” Shuey took a lascarbine and Ailly a rifle, and they all began to fill their pockets and webbing with ammo. Mallet didn’t want to bother with flamers, either, given that it was virtually impossible to get decent fuel for them, but Bedlo had become obsessed with the weapon since he’d destroyed his brakking las, and Mallet didn’t want to go up against the boss.
Bedlo and Mallet lay flat on their bellies on the hand-barrow. It was too risky for anyone to be seen carrying a weapon, so they were all stowed on the barrow with
the two men, and the whole lot was covered in skins containing the stink-mash brewed by the agri-cell for enemy consumption. The unarmed boys yoked themselves to the handles and rolled the barrow out of the silo and into no-man’s-land. The occupation forces didn’t waste glyfs on the under-slum, and, if anybody asked, they were doing the work of the Archenemy, delivering contraband mash to the troops. No one would prevent them; these things were understood and tolerated. The enemy troops were expected to blow off steam in the under-slums, making them more reliable in their dull duties, and downing huge quantities of stink-mash was one of the ways they accomplished that. They would drive straight into the midst of drunken enemy troops at their most vulnerable and take them out, wholesale.
Dozens of the enemy animals would be packed into “The Drum”, the old playhouse in the east quarter of the under-slums. It had once listed up-and-comers and has-beens on its cheap hoarding, but now it was a kind of freak-show. Anyone could tread the worn, battered boards of the raised platform stage while the baying crowd took potshots at them, with coin or curses, often with the food in their paws, but rarely with live ammo. A beast might saunter onto the stage to strike or strangle an act that didn’t satisfy; two or three might rush the platform to tear some hapless dancing cripple limb from limb for looking at them the wrong way. The risks were high and the rewards scant, but people still came to try their luck. Troops on R&R were generally discouraged from carrying weapons as mortality rates among the basic grade had been very high in the early days of the occupation. Without enemies to fight, they made enemies of each other.
Shuey and Ailly hauled the barrow into the kitchens at the rear of The Drum, and waited. The streets had been buzzing with the enemy, two, maybe three times as many of them as usual, but The Drum was quiet. Perhaps it was too early for it to fill up.
Bedlo looked towards Mallet, under the weight of their camouflage. Mallet’s eyes were only centimetres from his, but Bedlo could read no expression in them.
“Boss?” asked Shuey, trying to see through the skins and canvas-covers to get instructions from Bedlo.
Bedlo didn’t answer, not yet, but kept looking into Mallet’s eyes, trying to appraise the situation, trying to work out why it was so quiet.
“I’ll see if I can find someone,” said Shuey to the other boy. “Keep guard.”
Keep guard, Bedlo thought, lying on his belly with his lasgun poised. He’s not armed, and he’s never done this before, and Shuey tells him to “keep guard”.
“Yo!” shouted Shuey as he disappeared through a swing door. Then nothing.
Several minutes passed. Then there was an odd, bestial roar.
Shuey pushed through the swing door that he felt sure would lead him further into The Drum. He’d expected to be stopped on the way through the under-slum. He hadn’t been with the cell for long, no one lasted long in an active cell that took risks, but he knew that nothing ever went to plan, that something always went wrong. The barrow wasn’t stopped and the four men travelled all the way to the playhouse without drawing any attention. Odd.
Shuey began to whistle, low in his throat, in an attempt to make his breathing even. He was nervous. Why was he nervous? Why was it so quiet?
Shuey found himself in a large, dark space with a low flight of steps to his left. He wanted to get a view of the room and assess where the enemy would enter from, how easy it would be to hide in the space and pick the animals off, one at a time, or mow them down with the flamers.
It was good that they were early. They’d have time to recce, to set up. They’d be in and out, safe and sound, in no time.
“Yo!” shouted Shuey, again.
He stepped out onto the boards, his knees soft, his body bent over slightly in a classic sneaking-about pose. He didn’t have a gun. He should’ve armed himself before coming through that door.
Shuey’s eyes adjusted to the light and he turned to look out into the room. He thought he spotted something, maybe ten metres away at the back of the room. Then he thought he heard something, a shuffling, grunting sound.
Shuey blinked as they came into view, five metres away, walking towards him. There were a couple of dozen of them at least. They weren’t drunk, and they weren’t partying. They hadn’t left their weapons at home to keep their hands free for slapping men, feeling up women, and grabbing at any food that passed within a metre of them.
They were tall, hard, dirty creatures with distended bellies and arched backs, wearing stained, mismatched fatigues; many of them also wore the masks. They carried blades and cudgels, and lasguns and flamers. The angular excubitor in the middle had a flamer strapped to his back that was leaking a clear, pinkish drip of promethium from the hose that was pointing at him, and a heavy brass collar around his neck, pierced for plug-ins.
Shuey tried to make himself smaller, caving his chest in and pushing his knees together as the fresh smell of his own urine assaulted his nostrils.
The creature with the flamer spat a gob of lumpy phlegm onto the floor in front of him. Shuey’s eyes moved involuntarily to inspect it; it was frothing and purple and smelled of infected lungs, bad breath and stink-pods.
“Voi leng atraga,” said the creature, and thumbed the trigger on his flamer. The brute next to him elbowed him in the side, indicating that he shouldn’t set fire to the little pute, and stepped forward, bouncing a flattened, club-shaped cudgel off his high, narrow shoulder.
Shuey saw the first swing come as if in slow motion. He wanted to duck, but didn’t, because the blow was coming at his waist height, not around his head. If he’d had his wits about him, he might have stepped back, out of range, but his wits were currently evacuating his body via his backside, so there wasn’t a hope of relying on them for anything.
The first blow winded Shuey with a faint boof! And he thought he heard a couple of his ribs breaking. His eyes were very large and his feet were still planted on the boards. Why hadn’t he fallen over?
The thought struck him that he was on the stage in The Drum. He knew what happened here. All the world crossed that stage, and plenty of it never made it to the other side.
He looked hopelessly out at the enemy troops gathered around the skirts of the stage. It didn’t matter what he did, Shuey was dead. He tried to purse his lips and blow, but no sound came out. He tried to dance, but his feet wouldn’t move. His eyes grew huge as he saw the lasgun aimed at him. The aim lowered and a shot was fired.
Shuey’s knee buckled, and he clutched at it as he went down.
“Ut dreh!” said one of the guards.
Shuey placed his hands flat on the floor of the stage and tried to take his weight, but his left hand had landed in the pool of blood and slid out from under him.
“W-what… magir?” gasped Shuey.
“Get up,” said the trooper again.
Shuey stood on his one good leg for long enough to have that shot out from under him.
He didn’t live for long once the enemy beasts were on the stage with him. No one on Reredos had died with dignity for three years, but few had perished with less than Shuey could muster on that stage.
Finally, Shuey’s broken body was tossed off the stage, and a whoop went up. Their appetites whetted, the foe wanted more, and they wanted it now.
They started to stamp their feet and jeer, and a fight or two broke out among the couple of dozen blood-hungry beasts.
Ailly stood next to the hand-barrow not at all sure of what he should do next. His face was white and his eyes huge as the whoop went up. The last thing he had heard was Shuey calling out “Yo!” as he left the kitchens, but that was minutes ago, and this was bestial, aggressive and frightening. The boy had never heard the like before. He was still standing, aghast, when Mallet handed him a weapon.
The boss had a flamer on his back and a long-las in his hand, and appeared to have stuffed several grenades into the front of his jacket as hard-looking lumps bulged there. Mallet carried his faithful autogun and the long-las was slung over his shoulder.
&
nbsp; “What about…” Ailly began, finding his voice for a moment.
“They’re through there,” said Bedlo. “It’s time.”
“But…” the boy began again. He was trembling, and he didn’t think that he could move his feet.
Mallet slapped Ailly once, hard on his back, almost propelling him forwards with the force of what was supposed to be a comradely, reassuring gesture, and handed him his rifle.
Bedlo moved to the door into The Drum proper, and held up the forefinger of his left hand: command. Then he held his flat palm out in front of him. Mallet stood beside Bedlo, ready, as always. The boy wondered if he would ever be ready.
The next moment, they were through the doors and into the darkness of the playhouse. Bedlo fired up his flamer and orange light spread before them, picking out the enemy, one at a time, lined up in front of them, in formation. They were ready, too, and there were a lot of them.
Ailly heard an odd rattling sound right next to him that made him jump. He lifted his hand slowly towards his face, the hand that should have been holding his weapon. He realised that the sound was his rifle falling to the floor. He had lost his grip on it. He had lost his grip on everything.
He could see the strange, angry men facing him, walking towards him as if through water, slowly and deliberately. He could not see their mouths moving behind the strange impassive expressions on their masks, but he could hear a long, slow moan that didn’t sound like words at all. He couldn’t hear the krak of Mallet’s las, but he could see the blast residue of individual shots issuing from its barrel.
What was happening? In the Emperor’s name… What was happening?
Mallet was the first to fire. He had fought his entire life. He had skirmished and ambushed; he had stood on the front line and been the last to retreat; he had fought at any distance, fired any weapon and indulged in hand-to-hand combat when there was no other option. He had never faced down so many of the enemy at close quarters, without hope.