The Emperor's Finest

EIGHTEEN

MY INITIAL IMPRESSION, as my boots first echoed on deck plates half as old as the Imperium[113], was, surprisingly, one of peace. The venerability and size of the cavernous hangar bay lent it something of the air of a cathedral, and although I've never had much time for the songs and pongs[114], I must admit to finding such places pleasantly tranquil on the few occasions I've had reason to enter them. The ceiling was high and devoid of the curving buttresses I'd have expected to see supporting it aboard a Navy vessel, but the bas-relief aquila on the far wall, looming over everything, was reassuring enough, even though it had been rendered in a fashion which made it look as though it was floating without sufficient support for its weight. The air was musty, of course, but no worse than one would expect to find on the lower levels of the average hive, and I found the spurious sense of familiarity which that imparted to our surroundings was also helping to put me at my ease a little - at least as much as was possible under the circumstances.

'This isn't so bad,' Jurgen said, producing a luminator from somewhere among his collection of utility pouches, and snapping it onto the bayonet lugs of his lasgun. The external lights of the Thunderhawk were still burning brightly enough to render our immediate surroundings clearly visible, but he swept the shadows in the corners methodically nevertheless, and I nodded, commending his caution.

'So far, so good,' I agreed, unfastening the flap of my holster and loosening my chainsword in its scabbard. The Terminators trotted forwards to secure our beachhead, their weapons at the ready, and I relaxed a little; nothing was going to get past them without being noticed, and raising an unholy racket in the process. To my surprise, however, instead of taking up firing positions to cover the door leading from the hangar to the Stygian gloom of the corridor beyond, the hulking figures passed straight on through it and disappeared.

'Where are they off to?' Jurgen asked, sounding about as puzzled as I felt.

'Fanning out to cover our line of advance to the cogitator banks,' Drumon said, looming over us as he approached. 'There are a number of cross corridors intersecting with our optimum route.'

'Good idea,' I agreed, remembering the tangle of ducting and passageways projected in the hololith. There were far too many opportunities for ambush for my liking, and it made sense to plug as many of them as possible with sentries before the main body of the expedition departed the hangar bay. 'Wouldn't want to find a horde of genestealers charging up your... aah, magos. Got everything you need?'

'I believe so,' Yaffel confirmed, rolling up with his servitors, and a gaggle of red-robed acolytes, in tow. Most of them were lugging more junk than Jurgen, although what purpose it served was way beyond me. The only thing I recognised for certain was the bolter Drumon was carrying, and, with a sudden thrill of apprehension, it dawned on me that, apart from the Techmarine, Jurgen and I were the only people in sight holding weapons. 'We won't know for certain until we reach the sanctum, of course, but we've been able to anticipate most contingencies.'

'Apart from having to fight your way out,' I said. 'Don't you think a few guns might be advisable?'

'The risks are negligible,' Yaffel assured me airily. 'We're still getting no sign of movement from the CATs, and in the unlikely event of a dormant genestealer or two reviving inside our perimeter, I'm certain the Terminators will be able to keep them away from our party.'

'Our party?' I echoed, masking my horror as best I could. 'I was under the impression Jurgen and I were along merely as observers.' A responsibility I'd been intending to discharge from the safety and relative comfort of the Thunderhawk's passenger compartment, well away from any genestealers that might be lurking in the vicinity.

'What better opportunity to observe, then?' Yaffel asked, as though bestowing an enormous favour. 'You can monitor the communication channels just as effectively through your comm-bead while you accompany us, and see the recovery operation at first hand while you're about it.'

'A chance not to be missed,' I agreed, masking the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach with the ease of a lifetime's dissembling. He still seemed dangerously sanguine about the chances of a genestealer attack to me, but at least we'd have a squad of Terminators to hide behind, and from what I'd seen of the ease with which they'd cleansed the nest under Fidelis they wouldn't be got past easily. I could still have refused to go, of course, but that would have meant sacrificing a measure of Drumon's regard, and with it my undeserved standing among the Reclaimers. So, as ever in that kind of situation, I resolved to simply make the best of a bad job, and be prepared to make a run for it at a moment's notice.

As it turned out, though, my fears appeared to be unfounded, at least to begin with. After leaving the docking bay we made surprisingly good time, the corridors free of clutter and detritus for the most part, although the occasional ceiling panel had fallen, and some of the deck plates were sufficiently corroded to present a trip hazard to the unwary. In one or two places there were signs of more serious obstruction, but these had been removed from our path by the vanguard of Terminators, and no serious obstacles to our progress remained.

The only other sign that our companions had come this way before us was the channel of disturbed dust along the centre of the passageway, and the occasional cyclopean footprint, picked out by Jurgen's luminator. His was the only one kindled, leaving the echoing darkness to wrap itself oppressively around us. I had no problem with this: our environment was sufficiently close to the underhives I'd grown up in for all my old instincts to have returned, the way sounds rebounded from the surfaces surrounding us and the feel of stray air currents against my face more than compensating for the lack of light, and I was perfectly happy not to be making myself an obvious target by carrying one. Drumon, I was sure, had no need of a luminator to find his way in any case, his helmet being stuffed with artificial senses to supplement his own, and no doubt the tech-priests had sufficient augmetic eyes and the like between them not to bump into things and each other too often.

We came across one of the Terminators within a few moments of setting off, his back to the corridor, facing one of the side passages, his twin-barrelled bolter aimed down it in a reassuringly steady grip. As we carried on past him, Drumon pausing to exchange a few words with his comrade, I realised for the first time just how bulky the heavy armour was; even the Techmarine looked relatively slight standing next to it. The Terminator, by contrast, filled almost the entire width of the narrow passageway, the hunched shoulders rising up behind his helmet brushing against the ceiling, and for the first time I began to wonder if perhaps we'd have been better off with a lighter, more nimble escort. If the worst came to the worst, these lumbering behemoths would block the constricted corridors like corks in a bottle. I don't mind admitting that chills of apprehension chased one another down my spine at that thought, my morbid imagination being able to picture the consequences of being unable to shoot past our guardians, or dodge round them to flee unhindered, all too well.

'Any signs of movement?' I asked, as I came abreast of his back, and the Terminator responded at once, his voice echoing slightly in my comm-bead as it overlapped with the one issuing from the external speaker of his armour.

'A few faint auspex returns, very tenuous,' he told me. 'No visual contact.' Which pretty much confirmed my earlier guess about the sensorium links in his helmet.

My palms began tingling again. 'How distant?' I asked.

'They're reading at about three hundred metres,' he told me, apparently quite unconcerned. 'If they're there at all.'

'Just auspex ghosts,' Yaffel said confidently. 'Nothing to worry about.'

'Ghosts?' Jurgen asked, sounding mildly curious, and no more perturbed than usual. 'Are the wrecks haunted?' He swung his luminator around for a moment, as if hoping to find the shade of some long-deceased crewman dripping ectoplasm on the bulkheads.

'It's a theological term,' Yaffel explained patiently, 'for a false reading, which looks like a genuine trace. Even the most conscientious of machine-spirits will sometimes be mistaken, or perhaps be moved by a sense of mischief inappropriate to the sanctity of their task.'

'Or perhaps there really is something out there,' I said, drawing my laspistol. The gesture may have been futile, but the weight of the weapon in my hand felt comforting, and I stretched my senses, listening intently for sounds of scrabbling in the dark.

'If there is, it'll just be vermin,' Yaffel assured me easily, with a faintly supercilious glance at my drawn sidearm, 'or cables moving in the air current from the recirculators.'

'Vermin that's spent countless generations exposed to the warp?' I wondered aloud. 'Emperor alone knows what that'll have evolved into.' Or what it lived on, come to that. Foraging wouldn't exactly be easy in an environment composed mainly of metal, which was why the genestealers tended to hibernate between systems. (At least according to the archives Gries had authorised my access to, and remarkably thin they'd turned out to be, considering this particular space hulk had first been reliably identified almost two thousand years ago[115].)

Yaffel subsided, looking a bit less sure of himself, although I had little enough time to enjoy my minor victory. I voxed Drumon, sure that he'd been paying at least partial attention to the conversation. 'Any change in the readings from the CATs?' I enquired.

'Still no sign of movement in their immediate vicinity,' the Techmarine responded at once, confirming my guess. 'But another one just ceased transmission.'

'In the same way as the first?' I asked, feeling a sense of vague disquiet.

'Precisely,' Drumon confirmed. His helmet swivelled towards Yaffel.

'It should be recovered for examination. So high a failure rate may point to an unforeseen environmental factor.'

'That may be the case,' the tech-priest conceded, sounding more than a little unhappy at the possibility. 'But our highest priority has to be the recovery of the cogitator core.'

I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the data-slate Yaffel had produced. A deck plan, familiar from the hololith aboard the Revenant, was displayed on the tiny screen, our position marked precisely where I'd expected us to be, and a speckling of icons around us picked out the cordon of Terminators. A wider scattering of coloured dots a little way beyond them, most of which were moving slowly and erratically, just had to be the CATs; the one nearest to us was both stationary and limned in red, indicating that it had just malfunctioned.

'That goes without saying,' I said, thinking rapidly. If Jurgen and I branched off at the next cross corridor, always assuming we could squeeze past the Terminator guarding it, we'd reach the downed mechanism in a handful of minutes. It wouldn't be hard to manhandle it back to the Thunderhawk, and we could spend the rest of the time before our departure with several centimetres of ceramite and a reassuring amount of firepower between us and the genestealers infesting this deathtrap, instead of roaming around a pitch-dark labyrinth waiting for something to pounce on us. 'But Drumon has a point too. If there is something about the hulk affecting our devices, there's no telling what could fail next.'

'That's highly unlikely,' Yaffel said, with an air of studied unconcern, no doubt reflecting that for someone as dependent on augmetics as he was I'd just raised a rather disturbing possibility. 'But I suppose it would be prudent to look into it. What do you suggest?'

'Maybe Jurgen and I could recover the CAT,' I said, as if the idea had only just occurred to me, 'while you push on to the objective. We won't be much help with the theological stuff anyway, and everyone else will be needed to salvage the cogitators.'

'That would seem to be the most efficient use of our resources,' Drumon agreed. He indicated the icon marking the Terminator guarding the next junction. 'Brother Blain can accompany you, as that shouldn't compromise our perimeter. He can resume his post once you've picked up the CAT.'

'Sounds good to me,' I agreed, passing through a doorway into a roughly square chamber, where the clawed Terminator who'd conversed with us briefly aboard the Thunderhawk was on sentry go. Like the other portals we'd passed through on the way here[116], it had been left open, presumably by the advance guard ahead of us; the door to the left as we entered was open too, the tracks on the floor of the exposed corridor confirming that it was indeed the route to our objective, while the pair directly ahead and to our right remained tightly closed.

Jurgen and I moved aside, into the far corner, clearing the way for the rest of our party to turn to the left and clatter off into the darkness, while Drumon and Blain exchanged a few words. If the Terminator was surprised or resentful of his sudden change of orders he gave no sign of it, merely beckoning to us to follow as he slapped the palm plate set into the wall next to the door opposite the one we'd entered the room by.

'This way,' he said, unnecessarily, as the thick steel plate moved smoothly aside, with none of the metallic groaning I'd become used to aboard the vessels I'd travelled on. Jurgen shone his luminator down the corridor thus revealed, picking out nothing more threatening than another identical portal closing off the end of it some ten or twelve metres away.

'After you,' I said, mindful of my earlier fears, and unwilling to find myself trapped between a jammed doorway and a lumbering ceramite giant if it all went ploin-shaped, something my well-developed paranoid streak kept insisting could only be a matter of time. Whatever the tech-priest might prefer to believe, there were definitely genestealers somewhere around, and that meant they were bound to show up sooner or later. 'Anything on the auspex?' It was also a pretty safe bet that, like the Terminator we'd passed on our way here, Blain had enough sensory gear built into his helmet to give us a useful head start if the 'stealers started moving in on our position.

'Nothing significant,' Blain said. 'I'm picking up faint signs of movement on the deck above us, but nothing on this level at all.' He led the way into the narrow passage, filling it almost completely, like a mobile wall, while Jurgen and I trotted in his wake, our weapons aimed back behind us in case of unexpected ambush. A moment later he stopped abruptly, almost provoking an undignified collision. 'It should be through here.'

Another pneumatic hiss, as air pressures equalised on either side of the opening door, and he stepped through into a wider pool of darkness. Jurgen followed, sweeping the laminator around the walls, and, reassured that there was nothing lurking in the gloom waiting to pounce, I took up the rear.

We were in another square chamber, I realised at once, the ambient echoes enough to tell me that even if the beam of my aide's luminator hadn't been bouncing off the walls, picking out another three doors, all closed. Blain was plodding towards the middle of the enclosed space, casually pushing aside a few scattered cargo containers which would have taxed a heavy-lift servitor, when he stopped and looked down. (Or, to be more accurate, his helmet tilted a few degrees from the vertical, which seemed to be about as much head movement as anyone wearing a Terminator suit was capable of.)

'It's over here,' he said, gesturing towards a tangle of twisted metal by his foot.

Jurgen and I hurried over to join him, the shattered mechanism pinned in the beam of the luminator. I activated my comm-bead, staring at the wrecked CAT in perplexity. Things had indeed taken a turn for the worse, but not quite in the manner I'd anticipated.

'Drumon,' I voxed, 'we've found it. And you were right about an environmental factor being to blame.'

'With respect, commissar,' Yaffel cut in, before the Techmarine was able to reply, 'that's hardly a determination you're qualified to make.'

'In this case I am,' I said, not too perturbed to enjoy the moment.

'Somebody's shot it. With a medium-calibre bolter, if the damage is anything to go by.'

There was a moment of stunned silence, broken only by the faint hissing of static, before Drumon replied. 'Genestealers do not use guns.'

'Hybrids do,' I said, with the unshakable authority of personal experience. 'I recommend you proceed with extreme caution.' Which was hardly necessary advice under the circumstances, but it wouldn't hurt to look as though I was taking the mission seriously.

'Noted,' Drumon replied, in the tones of a man intending to follow that advice to the letter.

I turned to Blain. 'Anything on the auspex within firing range?' I asked, suddenly conscious that what might have seemed a reasonably safe distance from a purestrain would be anything but from a hybrid with a bolter.

'Still nothing on this level,' he assured me, sounding faintly disappointed - but then he was walking around behind enough ceramite to shrug off a direct hit from anything short of a tank shell[117].

Not being similarly blessed, I was a great deal less sanguine, you may be sure.

I walked around the chewed-up mechanism, wondering how best to shift it. Up close, it seemed a lot larger, and considerably more unwieldy, than I'd anticipated. Jurgen and I should still be able to manage it between us, though, but it would mean having to stow our weapons, and for a moment I hesitated; but our journey back to the hangar bay would be protected by the cordon of Terminators, so the risk of doing that should be minimal, and the only alternative I could see was to admit defeat and catch up with the others. I'd promised Drumon I'd recover his toy, and scuttling back to the Thunderhawk without it would undermine my credibility with his Chapter, so it was either that or show willing by taking my turn as 'stealer bait. Something about the shattered CAT's position seemed subtly wrong to me, although I couldn't for the life of me see why.

'How do you think it got in here?' Jurgen asked, and I shrugged, my mind still mainly engaged with the more pressing matter of where best to get a grip on the blasted thing.

'The same way we did, I suppose,' I told him.

'Oh.' He frowned in perplexity. 'I just don't see how it got the door open, that's all.'

'It couldn't,' I said in some alarm, glancing at the open portal behind us, and the three others, all firmly closed. I brought my laspistol up and began backing away towards the door we'd come in by, trying to keep all the scattered cargo containers covered at once. Confident as always in my judgement, though Emperor knows why, Jurgen brought his lasgun up to a firing position and fell into place at my back, bringing a welcome sense of greater security and a blast of halitosis as he did so.

'Commissar?' Blain asked, sounding about as baffled as my aide usually did. 'Is something wrong?'

'The room was sealed when we arrived,' I said, chills of apprehension chasing one another down my spine. 'Whatever shot it could still be here.'

'If it was, it would have registered on the auspex before we entered,' Blain said, with what sounded suspiciously like a trace of amusement in his tone. 'And it would be dead by now.'

I should have found that reassuring, but for some reason it only increased my apprehension. I stared at the detritus surrounding the crippled CAT, and sudden horrified understanding burst in on me.

'The blips on the next level,' I asked urgently. 'How close are they?'

'A score or so metres,' Blain replied evenly.

'Out! Now!' I said, Jurgen responding instantly, as I'd known he would, while the Terminator simply took a couple of paces in our direction, no doubt wondering if I'd lost my wits. Suddenly the air current I'd assumed was coming from a grille above our heads took on far more sinister connotations, and I drew my chainsword, powering up the blade as I did so. 'Jurgen, the ceiling!'

'Commissar.' My aide complied at once, raising the luminator attached to his lasgun, and picking out a ragged hole in the roof of the chamber. The luckless CAT hadn't been sniped, as I'd first assumed, just struck by a single bolt from a whole burst, the rest of which had chewed up the floor plates around it badly enough to drop it through to the deck below. To my horror, the attenuated beam picked out something moving in the shadows beyond the gap, bounding forwards inhumanly fast, before flowing like quicksilver through the aperture above us.

'Blain!' I just had time to shout. 'Look out!' then the first of the purestrains was on him. I saw the crackle of arcane energies I'd marked before in Fidelis playing about the blades at the end of his arms, as he parried the 'stealer's first blow, matching it slash for slash. It fell, bisected, while Jurgen and I opened up with our las weapons, secure in the knowledge that we could harm only our foes. Sure enough, another of the creatures fell, in the act of leaping towards us, while a few stray las-rounds expended themselves harmlessly against the reassuring bulk of the Terminator's ceramite.

Then I felt the breath constricting in my throat. Parallel grooves had been scored deeply into the surface of the impregnable armour, where the first genestealer had struck before being dispatched, and some thick, dark fluid was seeping from it, crusting like resin to seal the damage. I hesitated, unwilling to risk felling an ally by friendly fire now his suit had been breached, but events were out of my hands by this time: as Jurgen and I began to retreat down the corridor, a third pure-strain threw itself at Blain's unprotected back. He ducked forwards, lowering his right shoulder as far as the cumbersome armour would allow, trying to dislodge it in the manner of a wrestler attacked from behind, but to no avail; powerful talons tore into the ceramite as easily as a potter's fingers into clay, finding purchase where none should exist. Blain backed into the wall, hard, and chitin cracked. The 'stealer keened, an ululation of agony which made my teeth ache and pierced the space behind my eyes like a sliver of razor-edged ice, echoing off into the darkness, but held on regardless, distending its jaws as some foul-smelling ichor issued from the cracks in its carapace.

'Turn round!' I bellowed, forgetting in the terror of the moment that Blain could hear me perfectly well over the vox. 'Let us get a shot at it!' The Terminator stumbled in our direction, abused servos in his knee and ankle joints whining in protest, but before he could comply the genestealer brought its head forwards over his own, and before my horrified eyes sank its teeth deep into the ceramite of his helmet. The deck plates shuddered as Blain fell to his knees, and the 'stealer on his back brought round a handful of wickedly curving talons, to plunge them into the joint where helmet and suit conjoined. The vox in my ear carried a small sound, somewhere between a cough and a sigh, and Blain collapsed, toppling towards Jurgen and myself, his torso clattering resonantly to the metal floor of the corridor.

The 'stealer raised its head and stared at Jurgen and I, apparently bemused, shaking its head as if it had been dazed by the impact[118]. Then it seemed to rally, fixing me with a gaze of pure malevolence. Its momentary hesitation was to prove its undoing, however, as Jurgen and I had taken advantage of the brief respite to centre it in our sights; before it could spring at us, we fired almost as one, tearing it apart in a flurry of las-bolts.

'Blain's down,' I voxed, 'dead, I think.' To my surprise, my voice sounded calm and authoritative, despite the panic rush of adrenaline hammering through my system. 'Three purestrains accounted for, but there are probably others close by.' The faint echo of scrabbling talons drifted to my ears. 'Correction, definitely others, moving this way.' One look at Blain's corpse, stretched across the threshold, was enough to dispel any hope of closing the door against the onrushing tide of talon and mandible; I could barely have moved his hand, never mind that mass of ceramite.

'His lifesigns have ceased,' Drumon confirmed[119], after what was probably no more than an instant or two, but seemed considerably longer. This came as a relief; for a moment I'd feared having to attempt some kind of rescue, despite the manifest impossibility of success, in order to maintain my reputation.

'Then we're pulling out,' I said, backing away down the narrow corridor as quickly as I dared, reluctant to take my laspistol off aim for fear of the worst. And with good reason: an instant before Jurgen and I reached the opposite end, bursting arse-first into the chamber Blain had been guarding in a manner I've no doubt anyone observing our arrival would have found comical in the extreme, the head and shoulders of another purestrain erupted into the passage, the misshapen body behind it attempting to force its way past the obstructing cadavers. Jurgen and I popped off a couple of rounds each to discourage it, scoring a lucky hit or two, but the chitinous horror proved as resilient as most of its kind, merely ducking back as our las-bolts vaporised fist-sized chunks of its exoskeleton[120]. That bought us enough time to hit the palm plate, though, and before the 'stealer or any of its companions could recover, the thick metal slab slid back into place, sealing them in.

Or us, I suppose, as they still had the run of most of the hulk; and so far as I was concerned, they were welcome to it.

'What now, sir?' Jurgen asked. 'Should we catch up with the others?'

I shook my head. 'Back to the Thunderhawk,' I said, no longer giving the proverbial flying one what anybody thought. I'd come up with some kind of excuse before Drumon and the cogboys returned, if they ever did. We might have evaded them this time, but the brood mind was now aware of our presence aboard the hulk, and would be mobilising its genestealers against us as surely and dispassionately as antibodies against an invading virus. I exhaled, releasing the tension which had wound my body tight, trembling a little from the adrenaline comedown, and tapped my comm-bead. 'We're back at the sentry point. More 'stealers in pursuit, but we've sealed the hatch, so the perimeter's secure again.'

I should have known better, of course; a genestealer brood may be only a pale reflection of the tyranid hive which originally spawned it, but its gestalt intelligence is a powerful one. The broods I'd encountered on Viridia and Keffia should have taught me that, but the individual purestrains behave so much like predatory animals that I'd fallen into the trap of believing them to be little more than mindless beasts - an error pointed out to me in the most stark and graphic manner possible, as the door slid smoothly open again, and an entire pack of the creatures boiled into the room.