Vainglorious, p.20
Vainglorious, page 20
Jurgen watched it go, and hefted the melta. ‘Do you want me to stop it?’
‘There’s no point,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if it’s going to tell anyone what we’re doing.’
‘And what are you doing, exactly?’ Clode asked, with what seemed like genuine curiosity.
‘You just said you knew,’ Jurgen said belligerently, literally minded as always, ‘so why ask?’
‘I can infer,’ Clode said, ‘but confirmation is always welcome.’
‘Then you can infer that you’re coming with us,’ I said, ‘or that I’ll drop you where you stand. Which is it to be?’
‘Neither,’ Clode said. ‘It is highly improbable that you would kill me without gaining any information you believe I might have, and I most certainly won’t betray the Omnissiah’s divine purpose by divulging it. Which leaves only one rational option.’ His eyes misted momentarily again, and I remembered where I’d seen the same thing before: when Vorspung had communed with the machine-spirits of the Nexus. He was transmitting the entire conversation to Emperor knew where, although I’d bet a year’s tarot winnings that wherever it was, Tezler was on the other end. ‘I had hoped to experience the transcendence for myself, but will no doubt observe it from the eternal data files.’ His body spasmed and went rigid, thin tendrils of blue lightning sparking around his exposed metallic parts. A thin, teeth-aching whine began to sound from somewhere within his torso, growing in volume and intensity with each passing second. I whirled round to face Jurgen.
‘Take cover!’ I bellowed, suiting the action to the word, hurling myself to the cavern floor and rolling beneath the parked truck. No sooner had I reached the flimsy refuge than the tech-priest exploded, with a surprisingly muted splutch, showering the immediate vicinity with shrapnel and viscera.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Jurgen asked, emerging from behind the nearest crates, looking no worse for wear than usual. I rolled out from beneath the truck, which seemed to have survived with only superficial damage, its bodywork marred by a number of pockmarks from the metallic fragments of the erstwhile tech-priest, being careful to avoid the larger gobbets of the rest of him. Which, come to think of it, hadn’t done a lot for the cargo-8’s paintwork either.
‘I’ll live,’ I said, frowning at the mess in perplexity.
‘What happened to him?’ my aide asked, in tones of no more than mild curiosity.
‘Throne alone knows,’ I said, still trying to work it out. It had been self-inflicted, that much was obvious, although he couldn’t have been carrying any actual explosives – a proper frag grenade detonating that close to us would have taken Jurgen and I out along with him, cover or not. My best guess was that he’d overloaded some of his internal systems somehow, intending to deny us the answers we sought, and that any resultant harm to us would only have come as a bonus. I shrugged. ‘Maybe he ate a bad ploin or something.’
Jurgen nodded. ‘Must have been well dodgy,’ he agreed. He glanced around, keeping the melta levelled in case Clode’s messy demise had attracted any unwelcome attention, but the workforce was still burrowing away at the rock face, oblivious to everything but their own concerns. True, the ambient noise would have drowned out a far bigger explosion than that, but their single-minded diligence was beginning to seem a trifle disturbing;[124] their relentless fixity of purpose put me in mind of a tyranid swarm, or the necrons themselves, who, now I was reminded of their presence again, were still far too close for comfort. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘We take the truck,’ I said, considering the options rapidly. It was here, now, and the ore train was halfway across the cavern; getting to it would involve a lot of running, skulking and possibly violence. Besides which, if I’m honest, the prospect of repeating our loud, uncomfortable journey down here was far from welcome. The tunnel Clode had driven down must reach the surface somewhere, or at least connect to one that did – unless the sturdy little vehicle had been assembled down here, which I doubted. We were still off the map on my data-slate, but I trusted my sense of direction to get us back to terra cognita, and once we were I could plot us a route back to the open air and call for reinforcements. The lorry would afford us a welcome degree of concealment as well; Jurgen and I would stand out like orks at a cotillion on foot, but in general people only notice the presence of a vehicle, not whoever’s driving it.
I resheathed and reholstered my weapons, and clambered up to the passenger door. I was just on the verge of unlatching it when I froze, alerted by some primal instinct I couldn’t quite put into words. From my elevated perch, I glanced down the dark, forbidding passageway leading to the necron tomb, the faint charnel glow still ominously visible in the distance. And it appeared to be flickering.
A spasm of pure terror seemed to douse my body in ice water – a sensation anyone who’s spent as much time as I have serving with Valhallans, and been less than punctilious about checking the temperature of the shower before using it, will be intimately familiar with. There could only be one explanation.
‘Jurgen!’ I called, trying to keep an edge of panic from infecting my voice. ‘Movement in the tunnel.’ Something was partially blocking the sinister green refulgence, something which kept shifting its position. Lots of somethings. ‘The necrons are coming!’
TWENTY-TWO
When faced with the choice of standing my ground like a man, or running away as fast as possible squealing like a hrud, I’ve never hesitated – it’s been running and squealing every time. At least when that’s been a realistic option. All too often it hasn’t, due to the presence of witnesses in front of whom I’ve felt forced to live up to my fraudulent reputation for unshakable heroism (or at least appear to, which isn’t the same thing at all) in the interests of continuing to enjoy its benefits in the (often unlikely) event that we both survive, or the knowledge that making a run for it would only take me somewhere even worse.
On this occasion, however, there was no choice at all. Staying where we were with necrons on the move would be nothing short of suicide. Forget nobility of sacrifice, and all that other nonsense ecclesiarchs and front-parlour generals who’ve never seen a Guard uniform from the inside, let alone the myriad of unpleasant ways its contents can leak, like to pontificate about; once you’re dead you’re dead, and futile gestures which won’t even slow the enemy down are nothing short of treason in my book. Every Guard casualty is a victory for the forces ranged against us, which is why, unlike so many of my fellow commissars, I regard the essence of my job as keeping as many of them alive and healthy as possible. That way there are more of them standing between me and anything liable to spoil my day, especially one of the unfortunate friendly fire accidents so common in the premature curtailment of promising commissarial careers.
‘Get this thing moving!’ I cried, swinging into the passenger seat, while Jurgen scrambled in through the driver’s side door, swearing repetitively as the melta and his lasgun got snagged on the narrow frame.
I risked a glance down the tunnel again, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The luminators in the cavern were striking glittering highlights from the tide of metallic bodies bearing down on us, by now no more than a handful of metres from the tunnel mouth.
‘Got it!’ Jurgen slapped the toggle on the dashboard which closed the doors, immediately cocooning us in a blessed bubble of relative silence. Only as it descended did I realise the true volume of the cacophony outside – my ears were ringing slightly, and both our voices sounded unnaturally loud in the confined space, despite the hushed tones we were conversing in. He poised a grubby thumb over the activation rune.
‘Wait!’ I said, just before he could fire up the engine. The gleaming metal killers were far too close by now. If we attracted their attention, we’d both be dead in a heartbeat. ‘Stay very quiet, and very still.’
Which may seem completely counter to all good sense; we were in a vehicle, after all, and could probably outrun them easily. But we couldn’t outrun the guns they carried, and I’d seen what gauss flayers could do even to the armour of a Leman Russ; our light-bodied truck would give us about as much protection as a sheet of paper. On the other hand, as I’d observed for myself on our nerve-shredding journey through the necron tomb on Simia Orichalcae, they could be evaded, so long as you didn’t do anything stupid to draw attention to your presence, such as shooting at them. With any luck, they’d simply register the presence of the parked vehicle[125] without bothering to consider that someone might be lurking inside it.
‘What about the miners?’ Jurgen asked, his whispering somehow enhancing the effect of his halitosis. In fact, crouching as we both were below the level of the windows and the dashboard, I began to be even more aware of his presence than usual; something I initially attributed to the stress of the situation we found ourselves in, before belatedly realising that the cabin of this truck was pressurised, like the one we’d used on our eventful little jaunt to the proving grounds. Which was something, at least; it pretty much confirmed that there was a route back to the open air, or as much of it as existed on Eucopia at any rate. If we managed to survive the next few minutes, our chances of getting somewhere I could contact Morie suddenly seemed a great deal higher.
‘No way we can warn them,’ I said, with a degree of regret which surprised me. The ambient noise in the cavern was so great that any attempt to cut through it would only attract the attention of the necrons, which, by now, must be surrounding us. Of course, once the slaughter began, the danger would be pretty hard to ignore, even for tech-priests, and a few of the work crews might cotton on to what was happening and escape down the side passages before it was too late, but I wouldn’t give a lot for the chances of most of them.
I glanced up, catching sight of a pict screen in the dashboard. I’d seen similar things before, intended to give the driver a sight of the road behind when simply turning your head to take a look seemed like a bad idea, due to heavy traffic, excessive speed or incoming fire. (Or sometimes all three, when Jurgen was driving.)
‘Can you get the screen working?’ I asked, as quietly as I dared.
Jurgen nodded. ‘Piece of florn,’ he assured me, reaching up a cautious hand to flick the appropriate switch. After a moment of humming quietly to itself, and displaying a miniature snowstorm, an image appeared on the screen, and my breath stilled. The tide of living metal was already all around us.
Contrary to my expectation, however, it wasn’t surging forward into the cavern, intent on massacre. Instead of the humaniform nightmares I remembered so vividly, we were surrounded by the giant metal spiders I’d seen in my previous unwilling incursions into necron tombs. Not exactly a reassuring sight, given the number of my companions they’d ripped apart on Interitus Prime, but unlike the plodding foot soldiers, these seemed to be more like the necron equivalent of servitors than war machines in their own right.[126]
‘Why aren’t they attacking?’ Jurgen asked, a question which, I must confess, was at the forefront of my own mind too. I shrugged, and took my best guess at the answer.
‘Because they’re here for the boxes,’ I said. It was hard to make out much on the flickering pict screen, owing to the angle at which we were peering up at it, but a couple of the hideous things had moved past the imagifer, crates gripped in their mechanical mandibles like insects at a picnic making off with grains of sucrose. As I watched in horrified fascination, two of the things picked up a larger cargo container between them, and trotted off back in the direction of the tunnel.
‘But how did they know they were there?’ my aide rejoined, which was another good question, and one I very much didn’t like the obvious answer to.
‘They were expecting a delivery,’ I said, everything falling into place at last. This could be nothing other than the collection of payment, Tezler and their fellow hereteks bartering the raw materials which should have been bolstering the defence of the Imperium for techno-theological trinkets. And, possibly, the lives of their subordinates, although I’d have been surprised if that had been much of a consideration. How they could have negotiated such an arrangement was beyond me, though, the necrons not being all that big on diplomacy.
At the time, however, those particular revelations were still to come; all I could do was attempt to control the anger and astonishment that swept over me at the realisation of the full extent of Tezler’s treachery. This was clearly a long-standing arrangement, given the extent of the shortfall in Eucopia’s output, and I’d been a soldier for far too long not to realise how many lives, possibly even worlds, had been lost as a result. Vengeance for those souls would be exacted, I swore, at my own hands if possible.[127]
Jurgen nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ he agreed. ‘Must be why they were stacked over here, out of the way.’ He chewed his lower lip, thoughtfully. ‘Wonder what they want it all for?’
‘Nothing good,’ I said, the reflexive shudder which chased itself down my spine at the thought at least dispelling the anger that had threatened to cloud my brain. The only way to get out of this with my hide intact, instead of being draped around the torso of a necron,[128] was with a clear head. I tried to estimate just how much material had disappeared into the tomb, given the length of time this deception had been going on, and the amount of it I could see the spiders swarming away with, but gave up almost at once – far too much was the only answer that mattered. And, as Jurgen had rightfully raised, for what foul purpose?
I was still pondering on that when the lorry lurched, with a faint groan of stressed metalwork. Before I could utter the curse which rose unbidden to my lips, let alone make a grab for the weapons I greatly regretted having stowed such a short time before, the motion was repeated even more strongly.
‘We’re moving,’ Jurgen said, in tones of mild curiosity.
‘We are,’ I agreed, with a confirmatory glance at the pict screen, wondering if it was time to panic yet, or whether things were about to get a great deal worse. A quartet of the automated arachnids had lifted the truck bodily off the cavern floor, and between them were bearing it towards the tunnel we’d so recently emerged from. Back into the tomb.
Well, that settled it for me, panic time it most definitely was, even though there was no time to give in to the impulse; I needed a clear head even more now than I had before.
‘But why are they taking the truck?’ Jurgen certainly wasn’t panicking, his voice betraying no more than his usual bemusement at whatever was going on around him.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘Probably because it was right next to the crates. Maybe they thought it was just another unusually big one.’ Which sort of made sense. If Clode had driven off as he’d intended before our unexpected intervention, the whole stack would have been left entirely on its own. Not the kind of mistake one of the servitors would have made, but the spider things were xenos artefacts; who knew what kind of machine-spirits animated them?
On the plus side, the mechanical monstrosities clearly had no idea we were crouching in the cab, or they would have chewed their way through the metalwork to dismember us a long time ago…
‘Vehicular unit two-zero-three, confirm location.’
I jumped as a voice burst unexpectedly from a speaker grille just beneath the pict screen. Up until that point I’d assumed it had something to do with the imaging system, but it seemed the truck had some kind of vox-unit installed as well, presumably to facilitate whatever logistical requirements it was supposed to be fulfilling. And for it to be working this far underground, there had to be some kind of relay reasonably close by.
‘Throne be praised!’ I breathed, scanning the frequencies with my comm-bead, and picking up nothing but static for my pains. I was just on the verge of giving it up as a bad job when I chanced on a relatively clear channel. I assaulted it with all the override codes I had at my command: Commissariat, general staff and even a couple of Inquisitorial ones I wasn’t entirely sure Amberley realised I’d picked up in the course of being her messenger boy.[129]
Tenuous as it was, the signal was fading fast; we were inside the tunnel now, the static growing louder with every jolting pace the tomb spiders took. There was no time for subtlety, or to worry about who else might overhear the message. Quick and concise was the only way.
‘Morie!’ I called. ‘There’s a necron tomb on the lowest level of the mine. Hostiles active, repeat, active. Over.’
Not that I actually expected a reply, of course, but I’m bound to say I was hoping for one, forlorn as the hope was, and was far from surprised to be disappointed. Within seconds the static had swelled enough to swamp any potential reply, then an eerie silence descended on all the frequencies I could reach. The bedrock tunnel walls had given way to the sinister black stone I remembered so well, cutting us off from the rest of the galaxy as thoroughly as though it had never existed at all.
TWENTY-THREE
Despite a distinct disinclination to do anything of the sort, I began to rise a little from my cramped position beneath the dashboard, leaning back against the passenger seat, and lifting my head to the level of the windscreen. The image on the pict was too small to get any real sense of our surroundings now, and if we were to have any hope of escaping the tomb alive, we needed to know exactly where we were being taken. I don’t mind admitting that moving to a position where I might be visible from outside the truck took every milligram of resolution I could summon; although the arachnoid automata had remained oblivious to our presence so far, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t spot me the moment I poked my head above the dashboard.
