The Emperor's Finest

FIVE

A QUICK GLANCE round the Chimera's hull was all it took to confirm that Mira was right: there was no way we could get back to the tunnels now without being spotted. A full squad of rebel infantry, still wearing the remains of their old PDF uniforms, embellished by some paintstick scrawl in place of the unit patches which had been ripped away from the sleeves, was deploying further up the road in skirmish order. As I watched them come, the palms of my hands started to itch. Though I couldn't quite put my finger on it yet, something wasn't right.

'There are more up there,' Mira said, swinging her lasgun in the direction of the upper floor I'd been observing the enemy from, and where I'd left the two dead sentries a few moments before. She was rewarded by a flicker of movement, as whoever it was ducked back out of sight with almost indecent haste.

'Frak!' I said, heedless of the fact that there was a lady present. We'd be dead meat if anyone started shooting at us from up there, and even though Mira had picked off one man from this distance, I didn't imagine for a moment that she'd be able to repeat the trick with las-bolts bursting around her. 'There must have been a third man up there all the time.'

I didn't see how there could have been, though, or he would have surely intervened in the firefight. But the only other explanation I could think of didn't make sense either. Neither of the sentries we'd taken out had any vox gear, so how could they have called for help?

'I'm more worried about the ones down here,' Mira said, cracking off a couple of shots before I could stop her, which took one of the troopers advancing on us down and sent the rest scurrying for cover. She grinned exultantly at me, before returning her eye to the sights. 'I got one!'

'Instead of holding your fire long enough to be sure of several, when they got a bit closer,' I said, trying not to sound too hacked off about it. I readied my own weapons, hunkering down just as a las-bolt hit the discoloured metal above us, sending a brief rain of rust particles pattering off my hat. As I'd feared, the man on the building was targeting us too, although, thank the Emperor, he seemed to be an indifferent marksman.

'I think I'm doing pretty well, actually,' Mira snapped, turning to send a couple of retaliatory las-bolts back in the direction of the upper floor. She didn't seem to hit anything this time, but successfully discouraged whoever it was from trying again for a moment or two. 'At least I'm shooting at them, instead of just criticising all the time.'

Nothing in all my years as a commissar had prepared me for a response like that, but then I'd never encountered anyone quite like Mira before either; at least, not in a parody of a military uniform, and apparently trying to live up to it. My dealings with the daughters of the aristocracy had, up until that point, been confined to the kind of soirees my fraudulent reputation had attracted invitations to, generally as part of a delegation from an Imperial Guard contingent who'd either just arrived in-system to deal with some pressing threat, or were about to depart after having done so. I knew they were reasonably good dancers, moderately dull conversationalists and tolerably pleasant company for the night, but that was about all. There was little point in frittering our last few moments away on a pointless argument, though, so I bit back my instinctive response and peered round the Chimera's dozer blade again.

'Something's definitely wrong, here,' I said. These were no panic-stricken routers, fleeing the Astartes: they were advancing swiftly and purposefully from one piece of cover to the next, half of them moving while the rest kept their comrades covered. I pulled my head back behind the thick steel plate just ahead of a blizzard of las-bolts.

'You think?' Mira levelled her lasgun to retaliate, heedless of the state of her powerpack, and I cracked off a few shots of my own in the general direction of the upper floor, certain I'd seen movement up there again. The situation was getting more desperate by the second: it could only be a matter of time before the lurkers above us managed to line up a shot, or the advancing troopers moved round our flanks.

Looking back, we'd probably have been dead, or a great deal worse, in another handful of minutes, had it not been for the surviving rebels in the artillery park. By the grace of the Emperor, they chose that moment to break and run, pelting down the avenue in an inchoate, howling mob, any pretence of military discipline completely forgotten in the desperate rush to save themselves.

'Come on!' I said, grabbing Mira by the arm and making a dash for the open manhole before she had a chance to start arguing again. 'Now's our chance!'

To her credit, she seemed to get the idea, putting on a fair turn of speed for a woman whose usual idea of exercise was probably walking down the corridor to the dining room. Timing was crucial: it would have been ironic to say the least to have been shielded from the las-bolts of our enemies by the bodies of their comrades, only to be trampled to death by the hysterical mob.

As it was, we managed to make it to the hole in the road with no more difficulty than one might expect, despite the risk of twisting an ankle on the rubble-strewn carriageway, cracking off a couple of shots at our most visible enemies as we ran; not with any hope of hitting them, of course, but in the vague hope of preventing them from gunning us down as we emerged. Seeing no point in delaying any more than I had to, I raised my laspistol and chainsword above my head, to keep them from fouling on the manhole's rim, and jumped feet first into the darkness beneath. I was no stranger to this sort of thing, having grown up in the underhive, and was already flexing my knees to absorb the impact as I hit the rockcrete about three metres below. I don't mind admitting it jarred a lot more than I remembered it doing as a juvie, but I remained on my feet, and took a couple of cautious steps to check that my ankles were still where they belonged, instead of having been driven up through my shins like they felt.

'Are you mad?' Mira asked, scrambling down the ladder, the luminator still attached to her lasgun strobing round the narrow chamber, and I shrugged.

'How would I know?' I asked, not really caring to hear her answer. I'd already met enough head cases in the course of my career to have filled an asylum, and every single one of them had thought they were perfectly sane. To my relief, however, Mira disdained to reply, having found something else to get sniffy about.

'Sergeant!' she yelled, raising echoes which chased their way down the tunnels. 'Where are you?'

'Quiet!' I said, the absence of the squad we'd left here beginning to register for the first time. 'Something's very wrong.'

'I can see that,' she said pettishly, the beam of her luminator sweeping round the tunnel at random, which was no help at all. At least there were no visible signs of recent combat, which I supposed was something. 'They should have been waiting for us.' The full seriousness of the situation still seemed not to have registered with her; it was a minor annoyance, on a par with being kept waiting by a tardy chauffeur, that was all.

'We need to get moving,' I said. Whatever had happened to our companions was a mystery which could wait until later. 'That squad will be down here after us at any moment.' As if to punctuate my words, something rattled down the rungs of the ladder, and I started to run down the passageway without further thought. 'Grenade!' I called back over my shoulder.

Fortunately, Mira was fast enough on the uptake when it mattered, and was hard on my heels when the frag charge exploded, peppering the stonework around where we'd been standing a moment before.

'You just left me there!' she squeaked indignantly, once the echoes had died away enough to hear her.

'I warned you,' I snapped back. 'What more do you want? ''Ladies first'' doesn't count on the battlefield.' And a good thing too, if you ask me, otherwise we'd both have been shredded.

Mira stared at me, her mouth working, but stunned into silence for the first time since I'd met her. While my momentary advantage still lasted, I grabbed the barrel of the lasgun[19], and doused the luminator.

'And keep that frakking thing turned off,' I added, 'if you want to get out of here alive.'

I braced myself for the argument I was certain would follow, but our adventures so far seemed to have convinced Mira that playing soldiers was a lot more dangerous than she'd bargained for, and she contented herself with muttering something that sounded like ''peasant''. All in all, I've been called a lot worse in my time, and could certainly live with that.

'Come on,' I said, taking her arm and leading her down a side passage which I could sense nearby from the altered pattern of echoes around it. I suppose it was possible that our pursuers might have given up after chucking their frag grenade down the manhole, but if I was as determined to see someone dead as they seemed to be, I certainly wouldn't be taking anything for granted at that point.

'Where to?' Mira asked, keeping her voice down at least.

'Wherever this leads,' I replied, resisting the temptation to shrug, which she couldn't have seen anyway. There was a faint current of air, which meant that it must come out in the open eventually, or at least connect to somewhere that did. Then I caught the unmistakable sound of running feet in the passageway we'd just left behind us, and tightened my grip on her bicep. 'Freeze.'

At least she had the gumption to comply with that, and we remained immobile as the slapping bootsoles got louder, accompanied by a rising glow, which seeped into our refuge - though not, fortunately, far enough to reach our position. If any of the troopers chasing us had bothered to direct a beam along the side passage they would have nailed us for sure, but luckily they seemed convinced we'd stuck to the main tunnel, and could be caught up with if they just ran fast enough. As the glow and the hurrying footsteps faded away, Mira let out a sigh of relief and sagged against me.

'Who were those people?' she asked.

'I've no idea,' I told her, happy to let her remain there for a minute or two, while I got my bearings and my breath back. Sure we'd eluded our pursuers for the moment, I pulled the slate out of my pocket and checked Orten's map, being sure to keep my back between the passageway behind us and the faint glow of the pict screen. Mira's face shimmered out of the darkness, as she leaned forwards to look at it.

A few seconds' scrutiny was enough to identify the side passage we'd taken refuge in, and my spirits began to lift, at least a little. We hadn't come far, and if we could follow the draught I still felt against my face to the surface, we would come out close enough to the Astartes to link up with them.

'We have to go back,' Mira said, a worried frown just visible on her face as she studied the pictscreen. 'This passage is heading completely the wrong way.'

'It's the right way, if it's taking us away from those troopers,' I told her shortly. 'They'll realise we've given them the slip at any moment, then they'll double back.' This clearly hadn't occurred to her.

'But what about our own people?' she asked. 'Shouldn't we try to find them?'

I shook my head, forgetting the gesture couldn't be seen in the darkness. 'There's no point,' I told her bluntly. 'Something must have happened to them, or they'd still be waiting when we got back. Best case, they spotted some rebels trying to escape along the tunnels and are still trying to chase them down.'

'And worst case, the mutineers found them first,' Mira concluded.

'Right,' I said, not wanting to think too much about that. There was too big a contradiction here, between the disciplined, coordinated troopers who were pursuing us, and the disorganised rabble who'd fortuitously got in their way just when they had us cold.

'Then let's get on with it,' she agreed. 'Can we use the luminator again?'

After a moment, I agreed, reluctantly. We'd make precious little progress without it, the governor's daughter lacking my feel for the labyrinth we'd found ourselves in, and I didn't want to still be here when the squad we'd eluded came back to check the side tunnels. 'For the moment,' I said. 'But keep listening out. The moment we hear movement behind us, I want you to douse it. Clear?'

'Pellucid,' she said, and clicked it on again. The beam revealed the same age-worn brickwork that I'd seen in the main sewer, its surface moist and slick with lichen, although the branch passage we'd entered seemed to be a storm drain rather than a cloaca, to Mira's evident relief. The trickle of water under our boots was clear, and noticeably less odiferous than the stream we'd so recently left. 'What's that?'

'Nothing good,' I said, stopping to examine the patch of lichen she'd spotlighted. It had been scraped by something, which had left parallel grooves of visible brickwork. I spread my fingers, barely able to span them. 'Are there any stories of mutants living down in the tunnels here?'

'Of course.' Mira began to laugh, before realising I wasn't joking. 'There are always stories about the undercity. I doubt there's anywhere in the Imperium which doesn't have its folk tales.'

Well, she was right about that, which didn't mean there wasn't a germ of truth in at least some of them. There was no point worrying about it though: the soldiers behind us were real enough, and anything else we might run into was only a potential threat. I gestured ahead of us, into the darkness. 'After you,' I said.

'I thought you said ''ladies first'' didn't count on the battlefield,' Mira said, moving off, with a grin in my direction.

'It does when you're carrying the light,' I told her, making sure I hung back enough to take advantage of my black coat in the darkness. A faint alteration in the pattern of echoes tickled the edge of my awareness, and I urged her on, picking up my own pace as I did so. 'Better get moving. They're coming back.'

Mira needed no further encouragement and broke into a trot, her lasgun held ready for use. I followed, my own weapons readied, hoping I wouldn't need them, but rather suspecting I would before too much longer.

The faint current of air was growing a little stronger now, and I began to hope we'd make it back to the surface before the pursuing troopers picked up our trail again, but in this I was to be disappointed.

'Kill the light,' I murmured, just before the footsteps reached the junction behind us, and, to my relief, Mira did so at once, without arguing.

'I can see daylight,' she breathed, the relief in her voice palpable, and I must confess to feeling the same. A faint grey glow was seeping into the tunnel from somewhere up ahead, and we hurried towards it, certain that our pursuers must be gaining by now. The scuffling of bootsoles behind us suddenly became more resonant, telling me plainly that they'd entered the narrower passage behind us, and my shoulderblades began tingling, anticipating a las-bolt at any moment.

The glimmer up ahead began to grow brighter, but the yellower glow of luminators began to pervade the tunnel too, and I turned, loosing off a flurry of las-bolts from my pistol. I scarcely expected to hit anyone, but I was hoping it might take the edge off their enthusiasm at the very least.

'Are you sure you should be giving them ideas?' Mira asked waspishly, but I was too busy trying to listen to the commotion behind us to pay any attention to her. The bobbing light dimmed, and the rhythm of boot against brick was abruptly disrupted. The echoes made it hard to be sure, but it sounded to me as if the leading trooper had stumbled, or even been brought down if I was really lucky, and the others were either tripping over him or breaking stride to negotiate the sudden obstacle.

'I've just bought us a few more seconds,' I snapped. 'Don't waste them!' The light up ahead was bright enough to pick out our surroundings by now - more lichenous brick - and I could see the droplets of water thrown up by our feet as they slapped down in the thin film of moisture coating the tunnel floor. The air current was stronger too, and smelling fresher; we were almost out into the open air.

Abruptly we broke free of the tunnel, into a wide chamber, from which a number of passageways similar to the one we'd entered by led. Mira stopped, almost in the centre, illuminated by a wan shaft of sunlight, which struck highlights from the garish ornamentation on her tunic and her by now rather bedraggled coiffure. 'Frakking warp!' she said feelingly.

I was so surprised by the sudden barrack-room oath in the mouth of a lady of breeding that it took me a moment to register the reason for her outburst. When I did, I'm bound to confess, I felt like heartily endorsing it. Daylight and fresh air alike were coming from a metal grille in the ceiling, at least a metre above our heads, with no obvious method of getting to it, or through it even if we could.

'Up on my shoulders!' I said, stowing my weapons to free my hands and stooping to offer Mira a boost.

She looked at me as if I was deranged.

'I'm a chatelaine, not a carnival performer!' she snapped.

'You'll be a dead one if we can't get that grille open,' I retorted. 'Would you rather lift me up to it instead?'

Any verbal response to that being entirely unnecessary, she simply slung her lasgun across her back and clambered up to perch awkwardly on my shoulders, her legs dangling either side of my neck like an overstuffed scarf. I reached up to steady her, and she slapped my fingers away, almost overbalancing in the process.

'Keep your hands to yourself!' she squealed, in tones of outrage.

'I'm sure you're convinced you're the Emperor's gift to men,' I snarled, 'but believe me, a furtive fumble is the last thing on my mind at the moment. Get the frakking grille open!' The squad pursuing us was getting uncomfortably close by now, and although it was hard to make anything out with Mira's thighs clamped to my ears, I was suddenly convinced that I could hear movement down some of the other tunnels too.

'It won't move!' she called, an edge of panic entering her voice. 'It's been welded shut!'

'Oh, nads,' I said, the coin suddenly dropping as I looked up to see how she was doing, and picked out a couple of small stubs of metal on the rim of the grille. I'd seen identical protrusions not long before, where the ladder had been removed from beneath the trapdoor we'd entered the tunnels beneath the palace by, and I was suddenly prepared to bet a year's remuneration that a similar one had stood here not long before. 'We haven't been chased here, we've been herded.'

'What are you talking about?' Mira demanded, as I handed her down, with a considerable sense of relief. All that padding might be aesthetically pleasing, but it didn't exactly make her a lightweight.

'I mean we're trapped,' I said, with as much restraint as I could muster, and drew my weapons again. There was definitely movement in several of the tunnels, but I couldn't be sure which, and how great: the echoes were overlapping too much. If I could determine one that was clear, we might still be able to make a run for it, though...

Abruptly, that hope evaporated, as the rebel squad which had attacked us on the surface trotted into the chamber, their lasguns level. They were a couple of men short, though, which gave me a certain amount of vindictive satisfaction; if I was on my way to the Golden Throne, at least I'd be taking an honour guard with me.

Mira unslung her own weapon and brought it up, but I forestalled her with a hand on the barrel.

'Stand down,' I said. 'They obviously want us alive, but I'm sure they'll change their minds if you start shooting.'

'Quite right, commissar,' someone said behind us. The voice was vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until I turned and saw the sergeant of Mira's detail emerging from another of the tunnels that everything fell into place. He was carrying his lasgun too, with an easy confidence that told me he was perfectly willing to use it the moment he felt the need. There were another three or four familiar faces standing beside him, in the same ridiculous uniform, including our vox man, his backpack transceiver still in place. All were still carrying their guns, but the satchel charges had evidently been stashed somewhere else for safe keeping. Where the rest of the squad were, I had no idea, but strongly suspected they'd paid dearly for refusing to turn their coats. The sergeant and his cronies were looking decidedly the worse for wear, their flak armour scored and dented, their faces pained. 'Milady will be a great asset when she joins us, but you, in the heart of the Imperial war machine, will be a prize beyond value.'

'Dream on,' Mira said scornfully. 'If you think I'm going to betray my world and my father, you're even more stupid than you look.'

'You'll think differently when the brood takes you in,' the sergeant assured her, and a gush of ice water seemed to sluice down my spine. There were innumerable minor wounds among the turncoat soldiers, but all had sustained identical ones below the ribcage, marked by a trickle of blood, already clotting. I'd seen wounds like those before and searched the men's faces again. As I'd expected, they looked dazed and disorientated, but followed the lead of the sergeant. He alone seemed alert and in control, his own armour unmarred - a third-generation hybrid, then, or even later, able to pass fully for human.

Despite my mounting horror, I kept my voice steady, concealing the knowledge of what I'd deduced and looking desperately round the chamber for some avenue of escape. More people, or, to be more accurate, things that looked like people, were emerging into the light, from tunnel mouth after tunnel mouth, some armed, mostly not. Many bore visible traces of their inhuman heritage: some had an extra limb or two, tipped with razor-sharp talons, while others had skin thickened to natural armour, or were betrayed by nothing more than a subtle wrongness of posture, like Kamella, the joygirl who'd tried to bite my head off on Keffia.

'What are they?' Mira asked, curiosity and revulsion mingling on her face. 'Mutants?'

'The stories don't seem so far-fetched now, do they?' I asked, unwilling to reveal to the hybrids that I knew their true nature. I didn't know quite how concealing that knowledge would aid us, but I wasn't willing to concede any potential advantage, however small, over an enemy. One tunnel seemed to be open still, and I powered up my chainsword, nudging Mira towards it. Of course that was precisely what we were meant to do - I didn't need to be able to tap into the brood mind to know that - but pretending we were fooled, even if only for a few seconds, might just tip the balance back in our favour. It was an insanely slender chance, but it was only a few weeks since I'd taken a header through a necron warp portal, and compared to that, what I was contemplating looked positively sensible.

As I'd expected, the whole damned lot of them responded at once, taking a couple of steps forwards in eerie silence, tightening the cordon around Mira and me, while moving out of the tunnels and into the open space. Including, to my carefully concealed relief, the hybrid sergeant and his newly implanted squadmates.

'Follow my lead,' I murmured, certain that if I wasn't actually overheard, enough of the abhuman monstrosities would be able to read my lips and share the knowledge of what I'd said with their brood mates. 'Back towards that tunnel behind us. If any of them look like shooting, drop them first.'

Mira nodded, once, tightly, her posture stiff with nerves. 'Count on it,' she said, her voice hardly wavering at all.

'Good girl,' I said, keeping up the charade and feeling that a bit of quiet encouragement at this juncture would look appropriately commissarial. 'If they rush us, just hose them down on full auto.'

Which would probably be about as effective as giving them a severe talking to, if the mob I'd survived on Keffia was anything to go by. The brood mind doesn't care about a few losses, any more than a tyranid army does, but it's the sort of thing that would work against a mutant horde, and I was more interested in misdirecting the alien gestalt intellect facing us than giving sensible tactical advice.

It almost worked, too. We were just edging into position for my desperate gamble, the hybrid sergeant practically within reach of my humming chainblade, when I became aware of an ominous susurration in the depths of the tunnel behind us. I turned slowly to face it, Mira following suit, the pit of my stomach knotting. I knew that sound: a chitinous exoskeleton, moving fast.

I brought up my weapons, but before I could shoot, the ghastly form of a purestrain genestealer burst from the darkened portal and flung itself upon us.