Korgy let his ladle flop loose against the side of his stew kettle. “I have no idea. Maybe being quizzed by the Commissariat? That might do it.”
“It might,” said Ludd. “You’re real jumpy for a cook. Why is that?”
Korgy looked away at someone. A passing hint, a tip-off. Ludd saw it plainly. Korgy looked back. “Look, do you want a meal or what? If you don’t, move on. There are plenty of hungry guys behind you.”
Some instinct, some part of him that he had never known, brought Ludd up to reflex. Without thinking, he drew his laspistol and aimed it at Korgy.
“Back away and raise your hands!” he said.
“What are you doing?” Ironmeadow was bleating behind him. “Put that away!”
Korgy took a step back, lifting his meaty hands away into the air and dropping his wipe-cloth. “You shit-head,” he said.
“Ludd!” Ironmeadow yelled.
Ludd glanced sideways. The other head cook, Bolsamoy, had dropped his steaming kettle and pulled a heavy auto pistol, a Hostec 5.
Bolsamoy started to fire.
Gaunt slipped back to the rear of the cook-tents, and waited until the foot traffic nearby had cleared. There was no door, so he pulled out his Tanith straight silver, and slit a line down the canvas back-vent.
Stepping through, he found himself in the meat chiller, a larder kept fresh by powerful freezer pods. Lank pieces of meat hung from hooks, or lay, turgid and slimy, in cooler-crates.
He took a step or two forward. Every ounce of him wanted his hunch to be wrong. He reached the back wall. Flakboards, tight-set, formed a heavy barrier around the rear of the mess area. He looked them over, and saw the scrape marks on the floor, the worn edges on one board that had been pulled out and replaced a number of times.
He pulled it open. It came away after a little effort. On the other side was a loading dock, and a prefab lean-to. It was quiet, a private little space in the heart of the busy camp. Gaunt caught the smell on the air.
“Oh, Throne, no…” he muttered.
He edged across the prefab hatch and opened it.
Cold vapour welled out through the door into the damp heat. Counterseptic stink. He took a glance, and all his fears were confirmed.
He almost threw up.
“You stupid bastards,” he said.
Behind him, in the mess tents, shots rang out, followed by screams and yelling.
Gaunt reached inside Ironmeadow’s jacket and drew his twin bolt pistols. He started to run back towards the mess hall.
Bolsamoy’s first burst had splintered the nearest tent support pole and killed a junior trooper who had been waiting in line, holding his mess tin. The boy simply tumbled down, his skull burst. Further shots wounded three more men in the canteen queue and caused everyone to flee in riotous panic.
Ironmeadow fell down and covered his head with his arms.
Ludd had thrown himself sideways, colliding with the canteen tables and spilling over several cauldrons.
Korgy was running, along with several other members of the cook-tent staff. Bolsamoy was firing into the tent, screaming.
Ludd rolled up, ducked under another flurry of rounds, and then trained his weapon.
“Commissariat! Drop it or drop!”
Bolsamoy fired again.
Ludd had a perfect angle. He prided himself on his marksman scores. He fired.
Bolsamoy staggered slightly. To Ludd, the world went into some kind of slow motion. The cook shuddered, so hard and so violently, Ludd was able to watch the fat of his belly and jowls quaking like jelly. A tiny black hole, venting smoke, appeared abruptly in Bolsamoy’s right cheek. His face deformed around it. His right eye bugled and popped. His head hammered back like whiplash had cracked down his frame. Nerveless, his hand spasmed around the trigger of the auto, which tilted up as he went over backwards, punching holes in the canvas roof.
Ludd rolled up onto his knees, aiming his weapon. He heard a deep, throaty whine that went past his left ear and realised that someone had just shot at him and almost hit him in the face. Korgy was close to the tent flaps, amidst the frantic mass of fleeing service crew. He had a blunt 9 in his hand and was firing backwards on full auto.
For a split-second, Ludd believed he could see one of the bullets in the air, spinning towards him. He tried to turn. The round hit him in the head with a crack like thunder and he went down, slamming his right cheek against the leg of the service trolley beside him.
Ironmeadow was screaming like a girl. The troopers in the tent were fleeing en masse, yelling and shoving.
Gaunt appeared from somewhere out in the back, bursting through the tent flaps that screened the inner kitchens. He had a gleaming chrome bolt pistol in each hand.
Korgy saw him, and blasted away with his auto-blunt, backing away now, yelling out some obscene oath.
Gaunt skidded to a halt, raised his monstrous weapons and unloaded. There was a fury of muzzle flash and Korgy came apart, shredded in an astonishing shower of blood and meat.
“Halt where you stand!” Gaunt yelled “No mercy! No choices! Run and I’ll kill you all!”
The fleeing cooks and servers stalled in their flight and fell on their knees, their hands behind their heads.
One of them turned, reaching for a hide-away pistol.
“Idiot!” Gaunt snapped and shot the man through the back of the skull. He fell over on his folded knees, bent double.
“Ludd?” Gaunt called. “Ludd?”
“I think he’s dead, sir,” Ironmeadow called back.
He wasn’t dead. The bullet had exploded his cap and put a crease of bruise along the top of his scalp.
“Are you all right?” Gaunt asked.
Ludd nodded. “Did I… Did I just shoot a man?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gaunt nodded.
Ludd threw up.
“The station commander’s in a rage,” Ironmeadow said. “What the hell was this all about?”
“Remember my apology, Ironmeadow?” Gaunt said.
“Yes?” Gaunt led the captain into the back tent and beyond. He left Ironmeadow vomiting on the verge outside.
“I’m sorry the Binars brought this curse with them,” Gaunt said. “Really, I am.”
“Shut up!” Ironmeadow growled between his retches. “Shut the hell up!”
Banx, true to form, said nothing as they drove back towards post 10. The light was fading, but they still had time. Gaunt now rode up front beside the driver, Ludd and Ironmeadow sullen and sickly in the back seats. Eszrah, as always, was silent.
“I’m sorry,” Gaunt said over his shoulder.
“You were wrong,” Ironmeadow replied. “The Fortis Binars never have—”
“I’m sorry, Ironmeadow, but they have. I was there. On Fortis Binary, food shortages got so serious that the Munitorum started to take corpses from the morgues and process the flesh for food. It was endemic in the hives at one point. A shameful secret your people put behind them.”
Ironmeadow threw up again, spattering yellow bile over the side of the cargo-4.
“I knew the smell as soon as I arrived. And once the base commander had shown me the spread on the dataslate, it was clear. The Fortis Binars are new blood, but their service staff isn’t. The cooks and canteen workers are veterans from the old war on your homeworld, Ironmeadow. They know how to make a meal go round. More particularly, they can make a killing selling fresh food-stocks on the black market, filling in the shortfall with forbidden supplies.”
“You bastard!” Ironmeadow yelled.
“Sickness and plague, Ironmeadow, you do the maths. I’m sorry this tragic piece of Fortis Binary’s history has followed you here.”
“Bastard!” Ironmeadow returned, and threw up in his mouth again. Ludd grabbed the captain as he leaned out to spit the sick away.
“All right, Ludd?” Gaunt asked.
“Peachy,” Ludd called back over the engine roar.
“You did fine, son. How’s the head?”
??
?Sore.”
“You did all right.”
“Not good,” Banx said suddenly. The cargo-4’s engine cackled and then died completely. They rolled to a halt in the shade of some black-trunked lime trees.
“Get it started,” Gaunt told the drone, climbing out of the transport. Banx hurried round to the front of the truck and lifted the hood.
“Dammit, we don’t need this,” said Ironmeadow as he wandered up to Gaunt on the roadside. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Just relax,” said Gaunt.
Ludd joined them. The sky above was still clear and pale, but the heavy shadow of the compartment wall was approaching fast as the sun sank.
“We’ll be fine,” Gaunt said. He looked back at Banx.
A thready, fretful clatter was issuing from the cargo-4 as the drone tried to restart it. Five minutes passed. Ten. Thirty. The cargo-4 coughed and sputtered and refused to live. Banx cursed it colourfully.
The close woodland around them became heavy and mauve. The shadow was close now.
“Sir?” Ludd said, touching Gaunt on the sleeve to alert him.
Eszrah had suddenly got down from the transport, his reynbow in his hands. He was alert, listening, coiled. He took one look at Gaunt, then disappeared up into the undergrowth.
“Shit,” said Gaunt. “Now we’re in trouble.”
A deep roar cut the air, a predatory howl that echoed through the damp glades.
Twilight enclosed them. In the dark thickets nearby, something massive was moving closer.
FOURTEEN
18.47 hrs, 196.776.M41
Open Country, Third Compartment
Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus
The temperature began to drop sharply as night set in. In the distance, the compartment began to echo with odd, inhuman calls, throaty and rough. Something closer by answered the calls with a whooping roar.
“Stalkers,” said Ironmeadow. “Holy Throne, stalkers! They come out after dark and—”
Gaunt took him firmly by one shoulder. “You’ve had a really bad day, captain. Keep your voice down and don’t make it any worse. Get your weapon.”
Ironmeadow nodded, and went to the transport to fetch his lascarbine.
“You too, Ludd,” said Gaunt. “Neither of you fire unless you hear me tell you to. Understood?”
yes, sir,” said Ludd, unholstering his pistol. “Where… where did Eszrah go, sir?”
“Hunting, Ludd. My guess is before long we’ll know who to feel sorry for: us, or whatever’s lurking out there.”
Gaunt went over to the truck, and took another look at Banx’s efforts. The drone’s hands were shaking so hard he could barely work.
“Calm down,” Gaunt told him. “You’ve got four armed men covering you. We need to get this heap of junk rolling, so concentrate, work hard, and get it done.”
Banx nodded and wiped sweat off his brow with his cuff.
Something moved in the undergrowth beyond the track. Ludd turned smartly, aiming his weapon. Gaunt hurried to him. He had a bolt pistol drawn now.
“See anything?”
“Something’s definitely circling us, sir.”
Somewhere a twig broke and leaves rustled. The distant calls echoed again. Like the forest wolves on Tanith, Gaunt thought, howling as they slowly circled in to pick off the stranded, the unlucky, the lost. He’d never heard them himself, of course, but Colm Corbec had liked to tell such tales by the campfire. “I like the look on the lads’ faces,” Colm had once said of those stories. “I can see how the tales are reminding them of home.” Scaring the crap out of them, more like, Gaunt had reckoned.
He realised, suddenly, that he wasn’t frightened. He was quite aware that they were in all kinds of danger, but fear refused to come. If anything, his pulse rate had dropped, and a terrible clarity had settled upon him. He tried to remember the last time he’d actually felt any fear, and realised he couldn’t. Gereon had stolen that from him, and from all the members of the mission team. Terror had been such a permanent fixture, around them at every moment, that the fear response had simply burned out. So had everything else: desire, appetite, common feeling. All they had been left with was the simple, pure will to survive. Gereon had hardened them so drastically, Gaunt wondered if any of them would ever get back those basic human traits.
Another rustle in the dark foliage. Ironmeadow’s carbine was jumping back and forth at every sound, or imagined sound at least. The cargo-4’s engine rattled into life, revved, and then died again.
In the silence that followed, Gaunt heard an odd, rapid whispering. He traced it back to Ironmeadow. The Binar captain was muttering the Litany of Faithful Providence over and over to himself.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Gaunt said, “but under your breath, if you don’t mind.”
There was a rather louder movement in the undergrowth. Boughs shook, shivering leaves. Pebbles skittered. All three men raised their weapons.
Something big suddenly moved in the treeline, crashing through bracken, splintering saplings. It sounded as if a Leman Russ were ploughing in from the outer woods. A dreadful, blubbering roar whooped out of the dark.
“Wait until you can see it!” Gaunt cried.
There was more thrashing, another roar, then a series of odd, muted barks. Something, possibly a tree, fell over with a crash in the outer darkness, and the thrashing stopped abruptly. Silence settled again.
“Oh my Emperor, there it is!” Ironmeadow shrieked.
“Idiot!” said Gaunt, and knocked the man’s aim aside.
Eszrah Night emerged from the darkness and walked calmly towards them.
“Preyathee, soule?” Gaunt said.
Eszrah raised one hand to his mouth and made a plucking motion away from the lips with his long fingers. It was a Nihtgane gesture, the equivalent of a Guardsman running a finger across his throat. The spirit of the foe has been plucked out.
“It’s dead,” Gaunt said.
“What?” said Ironmeadow.
“It’s dead. Eszrah killed it.”
“Well, that’s bloody wonderful!” Ironmeadow exclaimed. He was so relieved, he was almost in tears. “Bloody wonderful! That’s amazing! Well done, sir!” He held out his hand to the Nihtgane. Eszrah looked at it as if he was being offered a dead rat.
“Anyway, bloody good work!” Ironmeadow said, as Eszrah walked past him.
The cargo-4 made a nasty grinding sound, then roared into life. The engine sounded decidedly unhealthy, but it was running. As the engine turned, the headlamps came on, bathing Banx in bright yellow light. He slammed down the hood, and turned to them in the spotlights of the twin beams, arms spread, like a showman taking an encore.
“Slow but sure,” he called out to them, “the Munitorum gets the job done. You can all thank me later!”
For Banx, later lasted about a second. A gigantic shadow rose up behind his lamp-lit form, leaned over into the glare, and bit his head off.
Arms still wide, what remained of the driver took two shuffling steps forward, shaking and jerking, and fell over onto the track. Violently pressurised jets of blood sprayed into the air from the ghastly wound, and now blood fell like rain.
Ironmeadow lost control of his bladder and dropped onto his knees.
“Holy Throne…” gasped Ludd.
The wrought one came forward into the light, hunched low, its throat tubes baggy and loose. Its huge arms, locked at the elbow, supported the titanic bulk of its head and upper body. Its flesh was florid and pink, and a mane of tangled brown hair draped forward over the segmented metal armour of its massive skull. Tiny, fierce eyes glowed in the deep recesses of the visor slits. They could smell it, smell the rancid sweat-stink of its mass, smell the sour blood and meat rotting in its vast maw.
The stalker’s vast lower jaw thrust forward, underbiting the plated snout, and long steel teeth, as spatulate and sharp as chisels, rose up out of the gum slots and locked back into position.
“Hwerat? Hweran thys?” Eszrah murmu
red, evidently surprised. “Ayet dartes yt took haff, withen venom soor, so down dyed yt!”
“Well, somehow,” said Gaunt, “it got better.”
The creature gazed at them for a moment. Then its slack, heavy throat tubes began to swell and distend. It opened its mouth and let out a deafening, trumpeting roar, exhaling bad air and blood vapour in a mighty gust.
“Kill it. Right now,” Gaunt said. He had both of his bolt pistols out They began to boom, lighting the gloom with vivid muzzle flashes. At his side, Ludd started firing too, his laspistol slamming off at maximum rate. Eszrah raised his reynbow and thumped another iron dart deep into the meat of the thing’s shoulder.
The combined firepower would have felled most of mankind’s known humanoid enemies. Even a dread Traitor Marine might have reeled from the force of two bolt pistols at such tight range. Certainly, the monster’s flesh tore, burst, exploded. Grave wounds ripped across its upper torso and arms, and two deep dents appeared in its armoured snout.
But it didn’t seem to care. It charged them.
“Move! Move!” Gaunt yelled.
Ludd threw himself to the left. Eszrah disappeared to the right. Gaunt went after Eszrah, and then remembered Ironmeadow.
The captain was still on his knees in the thing’s path, weeping and helpless.
“Oh feth,” Gaunt snarled.
He turned back, skidded on the muddy track, almost fell, and then righted himself. Wrapping his arms around Ironmeadow, his pistols still in his fists, he yelled “Move it! Now!”
Just about all of Captain Ironmeadow’s higher functions had by then become devoted to emptying his body as quickly as possible. The frantic weeping was the most wholesome aspect of this evacuation. Gaunt felt the ground shake as the monster thundered in at them. He put all his strength into a desperate body throw.
Gaunt went over backwards, and Ironmeadow flew over him, landing on his back in the trackway mud. He slid on his shoulders for quite some distance and ended up beside the cargo-4. The massive beast thundered past, its quarry suddenly missing.
The wrought one turned heavily, grunting and snuffling. Its throat sacs puffed out and went limp, puffed out and went limp. Its vicious teeth retracted and then snapped back, bright and murderous.