The Emperor's Finest

TWENTY

AT FIRST GLANCE, which was more than enough for me, my aide's estimation of the greenskins' numbers seemed depressingly accurate. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be more of them. From our vantage point high on its sloping rim, we were able to look down into a vast hollow at the heart of the hulk, hundreds of metres across and almost as many deep, seething with activity. And everywhere my eyes fell there seemed to be more of the creatures, squabbling, hurtling around randomly in ramshackle vehicles, or busying themselves battering metal into new shapes, for purposes which eluded me. There were at least as many gretchin among the larger creatures, of course, scurrying around on errands for whichever ork offered them a measure of protection, being casually swatted out of the way by any others whose progress they impeded, or engaging in vigorous altercations of their own. A pall of smoke drifted over the section where the bustle seemed greatest, where the mekboyz[127] and their stunted servants were busying themselves with the construction of new engines of war; but strain my eyes as I might to penetrate the choking shroud, it and the distance combined to obscure any useful details about what they might be up to.

For a moment or two I found myself wondering how a space this big could exist in such a densely tangled accumulation of derelict ships. Then my eye fell on the ragged edge of the deck plates I was standing on, and the answer came to me, as I registered the unmistakable marks of crudely wielded tools: the orks had created this steel cave themselves, hacking away at the metal surrounding them with all the brute force they were capable of, scavenging the pieces to construct fresh weapons and the other necessities[128] required to support their colonisation of the hulk. Now the reason for the armada which had met us on our arrival at the orkhold became horrifyingly clear. They'd been the stragglers, too late to board the hulk with the others before it returned to the immaterium, impelled by some innate drive deep in the orkish psyche to migrate with the warp tides wherever they led3.

'Holy Throne,' I breathed, as the full implications of this horrifying new development dawned on me. Serendipita wasn't just facing the possibility of stealthy infiltration by the genestealers; as soon as the Spawn of Damnation had drifted close enough, a torrent of orkish invaders would erupt from it like pus from a boil, intent on nothing but bloodshed and destruction. Duque's cordon of SDF boats would never be able to stem such a tide, and unless I found some way to warn them, the planet's defenders would be caught completely by surprise.

I reached for the comm-bead in my ear, then let my hand fall without activating it. There was no one close enough to hear the transmission, except possibly the greenskins, and the longer they remained unaware of our presence the better. I drew back a little further into our refuge, but none of the creatures so much as glanced in our direction, those close enough to have noticed our arrival completely absorbed in the source of the gunfire which had first attracted our attention. As happens so often among orks, a quarrel seemed to have broken out between two of the innumerable factions among the horde, and they'd promptly begun to settle their differences in the usual fashion of their kind. Around a dozen were firing weapons at their rivals, with the general lack of accuracy I'd had plenty of cause to be thankful for during my encounters with them on Perlia, while almost twice as many hacked and belaboured one another with a variety of blades and cudgels, and several hundred of their fellows called out encouragement or insult[129] from the sidelines, heedless of the danger of being felled by a stray round or two.

The opposing leaders were easy enough to pick out, being bigger than any of their compatriots, and brandishing the largest and most destructive weapons in sight. Each wore crude armour, decorated with the barbarous glyphs which the greenskins employ in place of both heraldry and script, and Jurgen nodded sagely. 'Clan leaders,' he said. 'Both used to being warboss[130].'

That made sense. I'd seen on Perlia how different tribes would put aside their enmities in the pursuit of a greater conflict, but the old rivalries would remain simmering beneath the surface, leaving such alliances fragile at best. (A circumstance which had worked strongly in our favour, once I'd inadvertently killed the warboss keeping the others in line, and the whole invasion force had fallen apart as his would-be successors turned their guns on one another instead of the Imperial forces opposing them.) If I knew orks (which I did rather more than I'd have liked since Perlia), neither would be willing or able to back down, for the fear of a potential challenger scenting weakness and attempting to usurp their position, which was fine by me: the longer the battle below kept the greenskins' attention diverted, while Jurgen and I slipped away quietly, the better I liked it.

I took a last look around the echoing steel cave, gauging its extent as best I could, and felt a faint shiver of apprehension. It would take us hours to circumvent, particularly if we did our best to remain at a safe distance from it to minimise the possibility of discovery, and the chances of the Thunderhawk still waiting in the hangar bay by the time we reached it were minimal. Not for the first time I reminded myself that minimal and non-existent were far from synonymous, and that crucial distinction had made all the difference between survival and death often enough by now to ram the lesson home. (Though not nearly as thoroughly as the ensuing decades were to do, as circumstance and ill-luck forced me to apply it over and over again.)

'Pull back,' I told Jurgen, sotto voce, although the cacophony from below was still enough to drown out a marching band. If anything it was growing louder, as another ork nob[131], larger and more generally repulsive than either of the other two, and surrounded by bodyguards who at least matched them in physique, ploughed through the baying crowd, bellowing orders and threats. I would have surmised him to be the warboss of the entire Waaaaghh! from this alone, even without the distinct resemblance to the late and unlamented Korbul[132]. 'Time we were leaving.'

'Right you are, sir,' Jurgen agreed, no doubt considering that the multitude below were rather too many to take on, ancestral vendetta or no. He indicated the warboss, who was restoring order with all the tact and subtlety of a Khornate berserker with a hangover, and patted his lasgun. 'Shame I can't get a clean shot from here, though.'

'It'd make a good trophy,' I agreed, retracing our steps as quickly as I could consistent with caution, in case he was tempted to take a crack at it anyway. That would be all I needed, an army of hacked-off orks chasing after me, as well as playing dodge the genestealer. 'But I'm not sure there's room for it on the wall of your quarters.'

'Probably not,' Jurgen conceded, after a moment's reflection. Then he brightened. 'But at least we know who shot the CAT thing now.'

'I suppose we do,' I said, as we regained the welcoming gloom of the unlit tunnels at last. The indiscriminate hail of bolter fire which had blasted a hole in the deck as well as the target was certainly consistent with orkish ideas of marksmanship. But orks were looters by nature, almost as innately as they were fighters, and none of the greenskins I'd previously encountered would have abandoned a prize like that after disabling it, especially with a contingent of mekboyz around to barter for the remains once they'd dragged it home. The palms of my hands itched again, but whatever disquieting pattern my subconscious was recognising failed to elbow its way into my forebrain. Knowing better than to try forcing it, I turned my attention to a strategy for getting us back to the hangar bay; unfortunately, the best I could come up with was ''Keep moving and avoid the xenos'', which, although it seemed to have worked so far, seemed a little light on the essential details.

Jurgen nodded sagely. 'Better keep an eye out for perimeter patrols,' he cautioned, rekindling the luminator. 'Must have been one of those that got it. And the 'stealer back there.'

'More than likely,' I agreed. If my innate sense of direction was working as well as it usually did, the docking bay would be somewhere on the far side of the orks' encampment, and it was only too likely that they'd posted outer pickets there, one of whom had used the peripatetic automaton for a spot of target practice. Which meant getting to safety would mean eluding a greater concentration of greenskins from now on, as well as the roving fragments of the brood mind.

Then some of the sense of unease I'd been feeling crystallised suddenly into a hard knot of apprehension. 'If they've got sentries out,' I said slowly, 'why didn't we see any on the way in?'

Jurgen shrugged. 'Maybe the genestealers got them,' he said. 'They were quick enough to get through the hole the orks shot in the floor.'

'They were,' I agreed, the dark shadow still failing to lift from whatever my subconscious was fretting about. 'But we didn't see any of those close to the greenskin camp either.'

'Apart from the dead one,' Jurgen reminded me, pausing to put his shoulder to a corroded hatch cover blocking our progress any further. I kept the widening gap covered with my laspistol until we were reasonably certain nothing was going to leap out and attack us, then motioned him through, glancing back down the corridor for any signs of a hostile presence. Despite my obvious apprehension, I heard nothing like the scrabbling of talons or the ringing of iron-shod boots on the deck plates, although my imagination supplied movement enough in the shadows behind us.

'Shot with a bolter,' I mused aloud, and Jurgen nodded, no doubt taking the attempt to order my thoughts as a desire for confirmation.

'Looked like it to me,' he agreed. 'And at least a week ago. Could have been more. No way to tell how fast things rot in a place like this.'

'The orks have been here a lot longer than that,' I said, understanding beginning to sink in at last. 'So why hasn't the brood mind moved against them?' The genestealers had attacked us less than an hour after our arrival aboard the Spawn of Damnation. Yet the orks, who'd presumably been here for weeks on end, still seemed unaware of their presence.

'Just too many of them?' Jurgen suggested. Well, that was possible, of course, but according to Gries's datafiles a hulk as large as this one would normally have thousands of genestealers aboard it, and a battle on that scale would certainly have left far more evidence of itself than a single cadaver.

'I don't think so,' I said, with a shake of my head. The genestealers had been quick enough to react to the presence of the Reclaimers and the tech-priests, and if the orks were being left alone it had to be for a reason. Once again, I found myself forced to consider that the brood mind was a more subtle and dangerous enemy than the waves of animalistic genestealers it controlled made it appear. 'The 'stealers are up to something.'

Jurgen shrugged again. 'Of course they are, sir. They're xenos,' he pointed out reasonably. 'But if they're concentrating on the orks instead of us, good luck to 'em.'

Well, those were sentiments I could hardly argue with, so I nodded instead, but kept my weapons handy nevertheless. Both xenos breeds were utterly inimical to humankind, and they were welcome to take lumps out of each other until there were none of either left standing so far as I was concerned; but my finely tuned sense of paranoia was convincing me that whichever side won, we'd lose.

WORKING OUR WAY round the greenskins' beachhead took just as long as I'd feared, and more than once I had cause to be grateful for the tanna flask and ration bars Jurgen had secreted about his person before leaving the safe haven of the Revenant.

Though necessary, each of these pauses for rest and refreshment were anxious ones, punctuated by glances at my chronograph, until even my most optimistic estimates of how long the Thunderhawk would remain waiting for survivors to straggle back to it had been long exceeded. But there was nowhere else to go that I could think of, so the hangar bay remained our objective. Even if the entire expedition had been massacred by the pure-strains stalking it, I was pretty sure the Reclaimers and their allies in the Adeptus Mechanicus would be unwilling to leave the treasure trove of archeotech aboard the Spawn of Damnation alone for long, and it would only be a matter of time before they launched another attempt to loot the hulk. Which meant rescue would simply be a matter of waiting, and hoping we didn't succumb to starvation, the blades of the orks or the jaws of the genestealers, before they stopped dithering and got on with it. True, there was no guarantee that they'd make for the same docking bay again, but that was a possibility I didn't allow myself to dwell on for too long.

By the simple expedient of keeping the faint glow of the functioning luminators to our right, as it continued to seep through the labyrinth of passageways, ducts and conduits like the herald of dawn on some habitable world, we contrived to remain far enough from the main body of the greenskins to avoid ready detection, without deviating too far into the depths of the hulk again. On several occasions we were forced to seek refuge in some shadowy side turning, or behind some tumbled debris, by the approach of footsteps and the guttural barking of the greenskins' barbarous tongue, but orks and gretchin aren't exactly stealthy at the best of times, and Jurgen and I were able to conceal ourselves long before the risk of detection became a real possibility. Though all these parties were armed, the carrying of weapons being as natural as breathing to an ork, so far as I could see, without sticking my head out far enough to be noticed, they were being hefted in a distinctly casual manner, and I remarked as much to Jurgen, as the shrill squabbling voices of a gretchin scavenging party under the sullen supervision of an apprentice mek and a couple of bored-looking boyz[133] faded into the distance.

'I thought that too,' my aide confirmed, rekindling the luminator attached to the barrel of his lasgun once he was certain the greenskins were too far away to notice it. Although they were kind enough to let us know they were coming from scores of metres away, the genestealers were far less considerate, and neither of us felt particularly keen to be taken by surprise, the fate of Blain and his battle-brother still vivid in our memories. 'They can't expect to be running into any 'stealers this close to their camp.'

'I don't think they know about them at all,' I said, having had long enough to consider the matter to be fairly certain by now that my initial conclusion had been correct. 'They'd be moving a lot more carefully if they did.'

'Wouldn't whoever shot the one we found earlier have told them?' Jurgen asked, and I shook my head, forgetting for the moment that he couldn't have seen the gesture in the dark even if he hadn't been several paces ahead of me.

'They would if they made it back,' I said, having thought about this too, 'but I don't think they did. We only found one dead 'stealer, and they tend to hunt in packs. Look what happened to the Terminators.' If they'd been able to overwhelm such formidable warriors by sheer weight of numbers, a relatively unprotected ork would have had virtually no chance.

'Makes sense,' Jurgen agreed. 'If one or two went missing out of all that lot, no one'd notice.'

'I suppose not,' I said. If a recon patrol of Guardsmen disappeared, the entire garrison would be on alert within hours, and assiduous efforts made to either find them or determine their fate. But greenskins come and go on a whim, caring little or nothing for any of the others, and unless the genestealers' prey had been sent out on a specific errand by a nob further up the food chain[134], it was indeed probable that their absence had gone unremarked. All of which merely confirmed the disquieting conclusion I'd already come to: the brood mind had a reason to keep the invaders ignorant of its presence aboard the space hulk. Try as I might, though, I just couldn't conceive of what that might be; and when I found out, I was going to wish devoutly that I'd remained in ignorance.