The first two flechette rounds hit the wall behind Feygor making deep holes haloed by hundreds of lesser micro-impacts. The third atomised Dunik’s head and shoulders in a bloody vapour.
Caffran and Feygor threw themselves flat. Leyr, cut along the hand and arm by stray barbs, yelped and stumbled.
They dragged him into cover. “Down! Stay the feth down!” Cafrran yelled, seeing Rawne and a half dozen other Ghosts rushing up the street to assist them. The loxatl’s cannon repeated its distinctive rattling cough and hailed splinters along the street wall at head height. Someone screamed.
Rawne was on his hands and knees behind an abandoned ground car and glanced up in horror at the huge, ragged holes the xenos weapon was punching in the wall above him. Each impact was actually a thousand razor barbs hitting simultaneously.
“Where the feth is it?” he yelled.
Caffran couldn’t see. “Taring us, about two floors up,” he voxed. “There’s another one gone over the top of the aqueduct. For feth’s sake, someone cover that angle!”
Fifty metres back, Kolea and Criid heard his signal and glanced at each other. The whining cough of loxatl cannons had a particular resonance for them both. Ouranberg. Criid in trouble. Kolea effectively giving up his life to save her.
As if reading her thoughts, Kolea said, “Not this time.”
They doubled back under the aqueduct, hunting for the second creature On the far side, visibility was better. The street was well lit by the amber glow of the firestorms. Guns raised, twitchy, they fanned forward, trying to hug cover. Criid and Kolea first… Jajjo… Skeen, Pozetine… Kenfeld.
Jajjo saw firelight reflecting off inhuman eyes clouded by protective han lids. He dived forward as flechette rounds shattered the cobbles around him. Several barbs sliced into his calves and shins, but he managed to land and roll, and came up firing.
Jajjo’s las-fire peppered the wall where the thing had been, but sharp dewclaws and chillingly nimble reflexes had propelled the thing ten metres up the front facade of the tenement and along under the edge of the roof.
Criid saw it go, and fired at it, Kenfeld joining in.
“Gak, it’s so fething fast!” she wailed.
“I think—” Kenfeld began and then suddenly wasn’t beside her anymore. She flinched. Her face was sticky and wet. It was Kenfeld’s blood. His mangled body had been thrown five metres backwards, as hard and fast as if a speeding truck had run into it.
Criid ducked into cover and started to recell her weapon with shaking hands. She heard las-shots, the answering cough of the blaster, and then footsteps running. Gol Kolea threw himself down beside her.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Up to the left, but moving. You okay?”
She nodded. Her earpiece was ringing with calls and alerts from the rest of the squad, trying to move up but pinned down by the mercilessly switching fire.
Kolea made ready to run out again, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“No heroics now,” she said. “We’ve only just got you back.”
“That an order?”
“Yes, and—”
“And what?”
“I want you alive when we’re done. We need to talk about… about your children.”
He looked at her strangely. “My kids died in the hive-war, Tona. My wife too. The only children we need to worry about these days are yours.”
“But—”
“Yours,” he said emphatically. “The Emperor protects, and when he’s busy, Tona Criid performs miracles for him. It’s enough to know they’re alive and loved. More than I could ever have hoped for.”
He embraced her, and held her tight for a second. Then he scooped up his weapon and ran. The cannon coughed and roared.
On the other side of the aqueduct, Rawne was running too. Three more of his platoon were messily dead now, but the loxatl had stopped shooting for a moment. He figured it had gone up over the roof of the hab.
He ran right across the street and came up against the front wall of the tenement, pressing his back to it, edging along. The street was quiet Thin wisps of smoke drifted down it. Across the road, he could see Ghosts creeping forward behind cover.
Rawne’s nostrils were suddenly assailed by a rancid stink of milk. Milk and mint.
His shoulders pressed to the wall, he tilted his head back and looked straight up. The loxatl gazed down at him. It was directly above him, about three metres up the wall, head down, snuffling its wattled snout. Its augmetic harness clicked and aimed the cannon’s barrel into his eyes.
“Well, shit,” said Rawne.
From across the street, Banda’s hot-shot hit it in the base of the tail and blew it off the wall. It crashed down beside Rawne in a shower of shattered bricks, thrashing its sinuous body in agony. Fluid leaked out of its lipless mouth. Rawne pressed the muzzle of his lasrifle into the exposed folds of its throat and fired.
“Nice decoy work, baby,” Banda said, sauntering out of cover with her long-las over her shoulder. “Ha fething ha,” said Rawne.
Chto brood leader was dead. Reghh had heard his subsonic pain-wails. Anger-hunger swamped his mind, and his gleaming skin began to pulse with grief-codes. Iridescent patterns flashed along his snaking body. He scuttled down a wall, across a stretch of pavement, and then up a side wall into the next alley. These mammals were not the target. They were delaying him and making him waste shots.
Loxatl senses were dull tools. Out of water, their vision, hearing and smell were poor. Taste and vibration were their primary skills. Reghh could feel the mammal soldiers running up along the street he’d just left, looking for him. He could feel their footsteps, their mouth noises, their heartbeats and their lung-puffs. He could taste their fear-sweat and skin-scents.
He started to scurry back down the length of the wall, moving south, when pain slammed into his torso. White-cold, brutal pain. He staggered, double-lids blinking.
The mammal wrenched his rifle back and tugged the long, silver bayonet out How had Reghh not tasted him or known he was there?
Reghh coiled round. The ground was awash with the life-fluid draining out of him. He dimly saw the mammal.
The mammal had no taste. No taste at all. As if he was somehow newborn: pure and as yet unsoured by the rank flavours accumulated in their filthy skins during their lives.
How could that be? The mammal was full grown.
Reghh tried to turn around enough to bring his harness weapon to bear. The pain in his belly was too great The mammal-with-no-taste lunged again.
Gol Kolea rammed the bayonet into the thing’s twitching body twice more to make sure it was dead. Loxatl blood dripped off the straight silver clamped to his rifle’s barrel. Dark spirals of colour flashed up and down the animal’s gleaming hide and then it went a dull white.
Breathing hard, Kolea tapped his micro-bead. “Sarge?” he said. “I got it.”
The strangest thing. In till his years of kill-hunts, he’d never had this feeling before. He was being hunted.
Skarwael shifted silently through the abandoned avenues of the Guild Slope, invisible to all. The Imperial city towers rose before him, but the neighbourhood was quiet and dead. The humans had fled, leaving ruin in their wake. Rumbling, like a sinister threat, the invading host was twenty minutes behind him.
Skarwael had preyed a few times on his approach to the hives, not because he had to but because he was thirsty for pain. Herodor was smashed. In less than a day, the hives would burn and the Magister would have his victory.
The task remained. She was elusive, this martyr. That made the hunt all the sweeter.
And this strange feeling. It made the whole enterprise rewarding. Skarwael had accepted the task on the basis of the price the Magister was offering — a fortune in territory and inner transition metals, and a tolerance treaty between his kabal and the Archon Gaur. But this thrill now was reward enough. The hunter was hunted.
He’d not felt like this since his bitter years as a
novitiate, when Lord Kaah had hunted them all in the miserable vaults of the murderdromes to hone their skills.
What could it be out there? Certainly no human. No human could ever hope to best the stealth and guile of a mandrake.
Skarwael melted into shadow, and doubled back. Like a phantom, he flowed through the shadows of a burned-out hab and came out onto the street. Darkness swam about him, unnaturally extending his flesh-cloak, bonding him to the night.
Where are you, he wondered?
The street was empty. Patchy fires burned in several buildings. The stiff corpses of Imperial soldiers decorated the ground. A wounded man, a PDF private, ran past him up the street, terrified, hoping to reach the towers before the gate hatches locked. The human didn’t even see Skarwael, even though he was standing in the middle of the thoroughfare. The oblivious human passed so close by Skarwael could have reached out with his boline and cut his throat.
Still that feeling.
Skarwael turned, became brick, became glass, became stone, shifting his visual form against the backdrop behind him. His unseen adversary was close by. He could feel it His pallid skin prickled. Behind him? No! To the left…
He passed through shadow and firelight bending light and sound around himself as he moved. His chameleon powers segued him into walls and doorways, like a spectre from the afterlife.
There! Skarwael turned and flowed back through the night. At last his peerless skills as a stalker had paid off. There was his adversary, huddled down behind a railing, trying to hide.
You were good, Skarwael conceded. A pleasure to hunt, a pleasure to test my skill against. But you are no match for a mandrake. Don’t move. I will honour you with a slow, delicious death.
Skarwael lunged with his sacred knife. The boline stabbed between the railings and speared through lifeless cloth.
Surprised, Skarwael dragged the doth through the bars and sniffed it. A cloak, an empty cloak, made of some camouflage material. He turned and saw the rifle aimed at him.
“You’re good,” said Mkoll grudgingly.
The single las-round hit the mandrake between the eyes.
THIRTEEN
THE LAST HOURS
“Nine is still one.”
—message written in Soric’s hand
Closure required the gene-print of the first officiary. Leger was frightened, and had to be talked through the procedure, but Biagi was patient.
“Are they all in? Are they?” Leger mumbled.
Cannon teams guarded the slopes of the hive gate below. Gaunt had already checked in Criid’s platoon, Rawne’s and Obel’s. “Wait,” he said.
Rolling gunfire was hitting Old Hive’s base level precincts. Waves of archenemy units, most of them motorised, stormed in towards the towers at ground level, and the air assault had redoubled.
It was close to dawn.
A string of shot-up carriers rumbled in under the gate, and thundered down the slip road into Old Hive’s vast entry halls. As soon as they stopped, they popped their hatches. Domor’s platoon scrambled out. The Beati and Milo were with them.
“Sabbat,” said Gaunt, bowing. “We were fearful for your life.”
“I’m sorry for that Ibram. But I’m here now. Your Ghosts have kept me safe.”
“Gaunt?” Biagi yelled from the walkway above “Now?”
Gaunt paused and consulted his data-slate. They were all inside Old Hive now, all the surviving Regiment Civitas, the PDF and life company. All that could be expected anyway.
On his own list, the Tanith list, one unit was missing. Sergeant Skerral’s, number nineteen, last seen in a firefight with the death brigades on Neshion Street.
“Sir?” Corbec gazed at Gaunt. “I think we have to draw the line now.”
Gaunt nodded.
“Seal the gates!” Biagi yelled. Leger placed his hand on the gene-reader plate and declared his authority. The massive blast shutters of the Old Hive gates clanged into place.
Nineteenth platoon were about five hundred metres from Old Hive’s north entrance when they saw the gates close.
Skerral stopped in his tracks, and pulled the men up. Half his unit were dead. He ejected a cell from his lasrifle and slammed in a new one.
“Come on,” he said, turning back to face down the slope at the waves of assault sweeping in. “Let’s see how many we can kill.”
The remnants of nineteenth lasted seventeen minutes from the time the gates closed. They accounted for one hundred and eighty-nine enemy casualties. No one witnessed their heroism.
Old Hive, as massive as it was, throbbed under the attack hailing at it from outside. Many upper levels were on fire. The massed forces of the Magister slammed against the outer walls again and again.
Word came through that hive tower two had been taken. Innokenti himself was there, receiving civilian sacrifices.
The main gates of Old Hive fell at mid morning. The death brigades flowed in, fighting street by street and compartment by compartment to overrun the tower.
Gaunt walked down the staircase into the Holy Balneary in the base of Old Hive. The thousands of electrocandles flickered and twinkled. Most of the notables were already assembled below at the poolside. Lugo, Biagi, Leger, Kilosh and the ayatanis, Kaldenbach, the chief astropaths, the senior ecclesiarchs.
The service had been the Beati’s idea. A final blessing for her loyal forces before the end came.
Gaunt felt resigned to it all. They were just hours from death now. Ferocious hive fighting tore through the outer levels of the tower. Parts of the external superstructure were beginning to collapse under intense bombardment.
Even so, he’d allowed just a bare minimum of Ghosts to attend. Fighting the enemy took priority over any sacred blessing. The only Ghosts who he had permitted to accompany him marched in a double file down the steps behind him. The Tanith flame troopers. They carried their tanks and hoses proudly. Biagi had personally requested their attendance He wanted to honour them, and recognise the vital role they’d played, despite the ancient Civitas laws.
Gaunt ushered them onto the poolside, and they formed up in neat ranks. Some of the city officiaries and life company officers regarded the dirty flame-troopers with disdain.
“Ignore them,” Gaunt said.
The Bead, encased in her golden armour, stood thigh deep in the pool, proclaiming the devotional of Kiodrus. Milo waited nearby, with the temple adepts, at the top of the bath steps. Sabbat’s voice echoed through the warm, damp air. She praised the forces that had drawn about her on Herodor, and mentioned the officers and unit commanders by name. Seventy per cent of the names she spoke were the names of dead men.
Gaunt, standing to attention with his troopers, started to blank out her words. The air was warm, and he was filled with a sense of mortality. This was all just fine talk. Battle awaited them, above in the hive, and it would be their last. Gaunt found his attention drifting to a pulse of bubbles that rippled the water at the far end of the balneary pool from Sabbat. Some kind of vent.
More bubbles. Bigger, more violent. “Beati—” Gaunt began, breaking rank to step forward.
Karess erupted from the balneary pool.
His hull was rank and filthy from his passage through the deep places under the Civitas. His weapon limbs swung up and started to fire. A heavy bolter cannon and a plasma gun.
Horrified panic seized the congregation in the Holy Balneary. Priests and soldiers scattered in all directions, some slipping on the wet stone. No one quite believed a Chaos dreadnought could suddenly reveal itself like this.
Karess strode forward through the swirling water of the pool, weapon-limbs firing, broadcasting obscenities. Basalt chips spattered out of the pool side. Bolter rounds slaughtered five temple adepts and three life company officers. Kilosh was incinerated by a plasma beam. Kaldenbach fell over, blood pouring from a gut-wound.
Karess advanced onto the pool steps, emerging more fully from the water. He traversed his hull to target the left side of the bathhouse. His hea
vy bolter slammed and roared and the side wall was plastered with blood and exploded tissue. First Officiary Leger and the civitas master astropath both ceased to exist in that salvo. Sabbat stumbled up the pool steps and Milo started to drag her towards the cover of one of the balneary’s massive stone columns.
Biagi ran to help him, firing his service pistol into the pool. A bolt round hit him in the chest and threw his ruptured corpse back across the chamber, knocking several people over as they tried to flee.
One of them was Lord General Lugo.
Shrieking, Lugo tore himself clear of the fallen bodies and rose. The killing machine was now nearly at the top of the pool steps, setting its first massive claw-foot on the poolside proper. Milo had got the Beati behind a pillar and just about everybody else still alive in the room was in cover. Karess’ sensor augmetics dialled and clicked as it swung its bulk around, hunting for targets.
Hunting for the target.
It saw Lugo, eyes wild in terror as he staggered backwards. Karess emitted another stream of strangled obscenity and aimed his bolter.
It didn’t fire A blow had rocked it Spitting filth, it swung its massive iron torso round to locate the source and felt another strike at its flank.
Gaunt drew back the power blade of Heironymo Sondar and struck again. The war machine was monumental and vastly powerful, but it was slow and cumbersome. It fired, but Gaunt was behind it, splashing through the shallow water at the top of the steps. He lashed out with the sword again and split a deep gash right through Karess’ rear hull casing.
Karess uttered an electronic squeal, and rocked around with a grinding dank of gears. The edge of his plasma cannon smashed into Gaunt and hurled him back into the pool.
The dreadnought turned back, screaming blasphemies, and located the pillar where the Beati was sheltering.
Clutching his terrible belly wound, Kaldenbach struggled to his knees. He was only a few metres from the killer. Gasping with pain, he pulled a stick grenade and rolled it across the flagstones. It came to rest between Karess’ massive foot-claws.