Vadim drew his warknife and slit through the net, freeing Jagdea. She slithered out through the window, but the sudden motion of her release shook the bench again. Vadim swayed, and the shelf rocked.
A tin canister full of rivets dropped off the top shelf.
Varl saw it fall as if in slow motion. He closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
There was no sound. He looked again. Unterrio had caught the canister a few centimetres from the rockcrete floor. The look of heart-stopped relief on the faces of Vadim and Unterrio almost made Varl burst out laughing.
Unterrio exited next. In the light of Jagdea’s difficulties, he had the sense to take off his scrim-net and bundle it through the window ahead of him.
Vadim, crouching on the bench, looked back at Varl and beckoned him.
You go, Varl mouthed. He looked back at the door and then pressed his ear to it. The voices were right outside now. Right out fething side.
Bonin had broken the door lock to get them in, but Varl noticed a bolt, which he gingerly drew into place. He backed slowly from the door, keeping his gun aimed at it.
Vadim was through the window. He leaned back in to pull Varl up. Keeping his gun on the door, Varl sat on the bench and slowly drew his feet up. His left boot brushed the edge of the shelf.
Two litre-capacity flasks of lamp oil toppled and smashed on the storeroom floor.
Varl couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.
He could hear the voices, and saw the latch being waggled furiously.
“Come on!” Vadim hissed.
There was a hammering on the door now. Kicking. Shouting.
Then shots. The metal of the door around the latch deformed and burst under the impact of several las-rounds. The bolt still held.
Whoever was on the outside now opened fire directly at the door, punching six molten holes. Penetrating the door metal had robbed the las-rounds of most of their power, but they still had enough force to wind Varl and smash him off the bench.
“Varl!” Vadim shouted. Multiple holes now riddled the door and sparking las-shots rained into the storeroom.
“Feth!” said Varl. He was badly bruised on his shoulders and the backs of his legs from the hits. He got up, aimed his U90 at the door and opened fire, bracing against the recoil.
His weapon was loaded with a clip of standard .45 calibre rounds. Striking the metal door, they dented its surface wildly, but few penetrated. An answering storm of fire punished the door from the other side.
Varl popped the yellow-tagged drum out of his weapon, replaced it with a red, racked back the bolt, and blitzed the door with explosive armour piercing rounds. They went through the door like it was made of wet paper. The surrounding wall too. The explosive bullets blew bricks and metal shreds out into the corridor.
Varl turned, tossed the gun up to Vadim, and threw himself up through the fan-light.
An alarm was ringing. It was quickly answered by another. Larisel 1 dashed across the circulation space and towards a gulley that formed the waste-gutter for a small foundry.
“Not that way!” Bonin ordered, already spotting two guard towers on the far side of the foundry. “Down here!” Another gulley, but it was piled with precast tiles for roofing repairs.
“Good one, Boney. There’s no way through,” Banda said.
“Yes, there is,” Vadim announced and got up on the nearest pile of slabs without breaking stride. His sure-footed climbing skills exceeded theirs, but they followed, making it up to the top of a wall, and from there onto the pitched roof of a walkway cloister.
They hid under the tarpaulin covers of a barrel stack in the next workyard.
“I think we had better lie low for a while,” Bonin said.
“Yeah,” panted Varl, “and then I think we go back to that wharf.”
Meryn’s team, Larisel 2, was the first to see the face of Sagittar Slaith. Every street and plaza in Beta dome had its public address screens and pict-plates tuned to a mesmerisingly grim live feed of various Blood Pact preachers gibbering blasphemies and extolling the virtues of their daemonic faith. The broadcasts were constant and relentless, captured by a fuzzy, handheld viewer that regularly went out of focus trying to remain trained on the capering, lunging hierarchs. They were painted, pierced devils, ranting in a mix of their own warp-twisted language and bastardised Low Gothic. Some would preach for hours at a time, twitching and spasming as if they were thrashing through narcotic highs. Others would scream hysterically for a few short minutes before disappearing. The pict image would then jump and flicker as it cut to the next preacher.
The members of Larisel 2 tried to ignore the broadcasts, but they were pretty much inescapable. They echoed and rang around every street and access tunnel.
Of the team, Larkin was the most disturbed by the transmissions. On the way down through the bombed sections of the upper habs, they had ditched their jump kit and, freed of the visored helmet, Larkin had at last been able to take some of his powerful anticonvulsants. He felt better for a while, but the migraine itself merely subsided. It kept rumbling around the edges of his brain like a storm that refused to break.
Once they got into the primary sector levels, there was a pict-address plate on every other corner. Larisel 2 hugged back streets, sub-walkways and deserted yards, but there was no respite from the blaring voices and jerking pictures. Larkin felt his stress levels soaring, and the migraine began to boil up again.
The comprehensible, Low Gothic parts of the sermons were bad. The speech used, the concepts, the ideas, were all hard to take and often shocking. But the gabbled warp-words were much worse, as far as Larkin was concerned. His mind knotted as it imagined the meanings.
Worst of all, what really chilled Larkin, was the sight of Ouranberg citizens, ragged, often weeping, watching the broadcasts. They seemed to be under no duress. They simply stood at street corners, in squares and wide commercial parades, gazing at the screens, their minds gradually corroding under the poisonous bombardment of warp-lies.
Mkvenner steered them well. He had an unerring instinct for avoiding foot patrols, and swept them into cover each time a speeder went over. They stayed out of sight of crowds, and only once had to silence an individual who spotted them. A middle-aged man had simply walked out into a yard as they were sprinting across it. He had stared at them without saying a word and then just turned and wandered back into his hab.
Meryn had broken from the group and followed the man into the building. A few minutes later, he re-emerged and they moved on.
No one asked Meryn what he’d done. Everyone knew. Everyone knew it was absolutely paramount to maintain the mission’s secrecy for as long as possible. It was a necessary evil. Just like shooting the rescue crews. A necessary evil.
Larkin didn’t like it much at all. “Necessary evil” seemed to him to be one of those too-clever phrases men used to excuse wrongs. And there was quite enough unnecessary evil in the fething galaxy without deliberately adding to it.
On balance, what he really didn’t like was the fact that Meryn showed no emotion. He remained calm, unexpressive. Probably a quality Rawne, maybe even Gaunt, would admire as utterly professional devotion to duty. But Larkin thought that he might feel easier about stuff if Meryn showed just one ounce of regret or upset.
Just before dawn on the 224th, they stopped for a rest break, taking shelter on the first floor of an abandoned weaver’s. Once the day cycle started, movement would be restricted, and they needed to get some bag-rations inside them and catch some sleep. The weaver’s premises, which had been looted and then boarded up, overlooked a small municipal square full of burned-out vehicles and litters of debris. A public-address screen on the opposite side of the square boomed out the latest tirade of Slaith’s preachers. Citizens stood around oil can fires gazing at the broadcast.
They ate, then Kuren took the first watch.
He woke them all after about two hours. It was still dark outside. The lamps that should have cut in automatically a
t the start of the day cycle had been shot out. Ouranberg seemed to be locked into a permanent twilight, which Mkvenner realised would help their progress immensely.
Kuren had woken them because of the broadcasts.
The preachers had shut up, and a good fifteen minutes had gone by with nothing on the screen but white noise.
Then Sagittar Slaith had appeared.
He was utterly terrifying.
They had been shown a few blurry longshots of a being believed to be Slaith during the pre-mission briefings, vague suggestions of someone tall and heavy-set but nothing that could be called a likeness.
The face on the screen was entirely hairless: bald, shaven, lacking even eyebrows and lashes. His ears were grossly distended by the weight and number of the studs and rings that pierced them. They looked like a lizard’s frill. Slaith’s teeth were chrome triangles, like the tips of daggers. Three huge and old diagonal scars marked each cheek, ritual cuts made to seal his pact with Urlock Gaur. He wore a white fur cloak over a spiked suit of maroon power-armour. His eyes were pupil-less white slits.
His voice was the soft, muffled throb of a nightmare that had woken the sleeper in terror with no clear memory of why he was afraid.
He spoke to them. Directly to them. He used Low Gothic haltingly.
“Imperial soldiers. I know you are here. I know you are here in my city uninvited. Creeping like vermin in the shadows. I can smell you.”
“Feth!” stammered Larkin. Meryn shushed him.
“You will die,” Slaith continued. His eyes never blinked. “You will die soon. You are beginning to die already. A hundred thousand agonies will carry you to your graves. Your death-screams will shake the Golden Throne and wake that rancid old puppet you claim to serve. I will cut your flesh and make you swear the Blood Pact. I will burn your hearts on the altar of Chaos. I will send your souls to the warp where my lord, the Blood God, mighty Khorne, will remake you in his image. His alchemy will reforge your souls in the beauty of eternal darkness, where His Pain will be yours forever.”
At the mention of the forbidden name, Larkin felt his senses sway. He grew feverishly hot He saw that the others had all gone pale. Kersherin was gulping hard, trying not to vomit.
“Give up your futile mission now, and I will grant you the mercy of a quick death. You have an hour.” Slaith glanced away, as if talking to someone off-camera, and then looked back. “Slaves, dwellers in this place, hear me now. Search your habitats, your workplaces, your storehouses. Search your cellars and attics, your granaries and pantries. Find the uninvited Imperial vermin. It is your duty. Any amongst you I find to have aided them or sheltered them will suffer at my hands, and their lath and kin besides. Those that come forward to give up the Imperial vermin will be blessed in my eyes. Their rewards will be the greatest I can bestow. They will be honoured as my own blood kindred, for they will have shown true loyalty to my lord the Blood God.”
The screen view suddenly jolted and panned around, refocusing. The Ghosts caught a glimpse of a finely appointed chamber, backed by vast windows that looked out on a ruined statue. Then Slaith’s fur-wrapped back filled the screen, the viewer following him across the chamber. He moved aside. The image blurred and refocused again.
The men of Larisel 2 caught their breaths.
Three bodies lay twisted on the floor under one of the windows. Two were unmistakably wearing Tanith uniform and unmistakably dead. Vast, ruinous wounds rendered them unrecognisable. Blood soaked the carpet under them. Sprawled across them was a mutilated man, naked except for Phantine-issue combat pants. He also looked dead, but he winced and writhed as Slaith slapped him with a steel-shod fist.
It was Cardinale. His face was a torn mask of blood. His wrists and ankles were bound with razor-wire. “Sacred feth,” said Meryn.
“See how I know you are here, Imperial vermin. Your fellows are already discovered and broken. Your cause is lost.”
Slaith looked back at the screen. “One hour,” he said and the picture went dead.
The screen fuzzed and rolled for a long while. They all jumped as another preacher suddenly appeared, howling out a stream of profanities.
Larkin’s hands were shaking badly. His mouth was dry.
“They got Larisel 3,” Meryn said.
“Those bodies? Milo? Doyl?” Kuren asked quietly.
Mkvenner shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe one of them was Adare.”
“So some of team 3 might have got clear?” Kuren pressed hopefully.
“Unless there wasn’t enough left of the others to find,” said Mkvenner.
“I can’t sleep now,” said Meryn. “Not after that. Let’s just get on. Let’s find that bastard. Okay?”
Kersherin and Mkvenner nodded. “Yeah,” Kuren agreed, his head bowed.
“Larkin? Okay with you?”
Larkin looked up at Meryn. “Yes. Let’s get on with it.”
The stacks of Ouranberg’s waste gas burners lay out to the north and west of the city, built up on slender crags of rock.
Heavy pipelines carried by vast trestle frames of ironwork girders, some over four kilometres long, linked them to the main city structure. The burners themselves were fat kiln-like brick chimneys twenty metres in diameter, capped with blackened-metal ignition frames.
It was mid-morning on the 224th. The sky was a blinding bowl of topaz altostratus and the morning pollution banks welling up from the Scald were dissolving into yellowish vapours as the headwind gathered force. Ominous clouds gathered in the western distances.
Ouranberg was three kilometres away at the end of a vast span of rusty girderwork. The dry was still immense. Sunlight flared and glinted off its ribbons of windows. Thin black smoke, like smudged thumbprints, rose from the domes.
Out of breath from the last stint of climbing, he sat back on a thin ledge of rock about fifty metres from the top of the stack, one boot braced to stop the wind sweeping him off. The burner high above him hummed as the wind blew through the cavities of its burner brackets and every ten minutes or so there was a gigantic whoosh as gas ignited and blistered up into the sky. Cinders floated down like snowflakes.
His air bottle had long since been spent, and he was forced to use the helmet’s rudimentary rebreather That meant every lungful came in moist and warm, and it was impossible to breathe deeply. This was a climb that would have been hard even in clean air conditions. He’d sweated off about two kilos already. His head ached from oxygen starvation. His hands and knees and feet, despite gloves, reinforced leggings and boots, were bloody and raw.
He started to climb again, and managed about ten metres. That put him almost on a level with the bottom spars of the pipeline’s scaffold. He lifted his visor quickly to suck water from his flask, and then lowered it. The temptation to inhale the cold air outside was almost overwhelming.
He clambered to the edge of the scaffolding. It had looked slender from a distance, but now he was up close, he appreciated the titanic scale of the I-beams and girder spars. Climbing it wouldn’t be easy. The spars were far too wide apart. He would have to belly along the girders, hand over hand.
And reach Ouranberg sometime next century.
The alternative was to keep climbing and cross the bridge along the pipeline. That meant going vertically up the increasingly sheer rock stack for another forty metres or so.
He tested the tension on the rope that played out beneath him. There wasn’t much give, so he spent ten minutes hoisting the kit up to his level. Climbing with full kit on would have been out of the question. He’d been forced to lash it together and drag it up after him every rime he reached the limit of the rope. If only his jump-pack hadn’t been crippled in the drop. He keyed his micro-bead and tried another call.
“Larisel, Larisel, do you read?”
Nothing.
“Larisel, Larisel, over.”
Still nothing. He knew he was well out of range but still he couldn’t resist trying every now and then. “Larisel, larisel… this is Mkoll. Do you read? Do
you read?”
THREE
They were on the countdown for the invasion now. O-Day. Operation Thunderhead. Just over a day away.
Gaunt and Rawne joined Lord General Van Voytz and the officers of the Urdeshi and the Phantine to review the mustered ranks of the Krassian Sixth. They were a newly founded regiment, out of the recently liberated agri-world Krassia in the Rimward Marginals. Two thousand men in copper-coloured battledress and grey shakos. Their commanding officer, Colonel Dalglesh, was a PDF veteran with beetle brows and a spectacular handlebar moustache.
“A fine bunch of men, colonel,” Gaunt told him at the end of the inspection.
“Thank you, sir,” Dalglesh said, appearing to be genuinely pleased. “May I say, it is an honour to be serving with you.”
Gaunt raised an eyebrow.
“Truly, sir,” Dalglesh said. “The reputation of the Tanith First is considerable. Krassia was settled thanks to the Martyr’s crusade. Your work in her name on Hagia Shrineworld is regarded with great esteem amongst my people.”
“Thank you,” said Gaunt. “It’s always nice to be appreciated.”
“It’s always novel to be appreciated,” Rawne murmured behind him.
Gaunt’s micro-bead trilled.
“Excuse me, colonel… Gaunt, go ahead?”
“Colonel-commissar, it’s Curth. You’d better get up to the infirmary.”
Ana Curth set down the vox-mic and hurried back down the corridor to the intensive ward. She pushed her way through the crowd of orderlies, nurses and walking wounded that had gathered in the doorway.
Dorden looked round at her. “Did you reach him?”
“He’s on his way now.”
Dorden turned back into the room. “Did you find him like this?”
She shook her head. “I found his bed empty. He’d pulled the drips out. We started to search for him and Lesp found him in here.”