Vainglorious, p.21
Vainglorious, page 21
Luck was still with me, though; perhaps the sickly, gangrenous glow, and the deep shadows cast by it, worked to my advantage – or perhaps, like the servitors I was familiar with, these wind-up abominations simply weren’t programmed to notice anything outside the parameters of their assigned task. Our presence here certainly hinted at that – although I’d seen too many companions fall victim to their like over the years to take anything for granted where these hell-spawned mechanica were concerned.
Needless to say, the prospect before me looked just as unprepossessing as it had while Jurgen and I were traversing it on foot such a short time before; but this time we were being borne deep into the heart of the tomb instead of skulking round its edges, and a suffocating sense of despair began to settle across my spirits as the glow of the Imperial luminators receded into the distance. The long line of glittering spider things stretched out ahead of us, carrying their burdens at a brisk trot along a wide boulevard between towering mechanisms the size of buildings, into the very heart of the darkness surrounding us. What any of these cyclopean devices were, or were intended to do, I had no more idea of than before, but the malevolence they radiated was palpable.
‘Coffins,’ Jurgen said, indicating a towering construct down one of the side passages we passed, encrusted with innumerable sarcophagi. I nodded, immediately spotting more in the distance. I’d seen the like before, on Simia Orichalcae, crammed with uncountable thousands of dormant necron warriors, and shuddered at the memory. Something about these seemed different, however; an instant later, with a thrill of pure horror, I realised what it was.
‘Empty ones,’ I said. The warriors they’d contained were gone, already revived, and no doubt looking for something to kill.
‘Then where are they?’ Jurgen asked, not unreasonably under the circumstances. Apart from us, and the scurrying spiders, the tomb seemed deserted. Given the number of empty stasis chambers I’d spotted, there should have been some sign of activity, even in a space as vast as this one.
‘Beats me,’ I said, not liking any of the possibilities I could think of. Preparing a full-scale invasion, most likely. I glanced around, in the vague expectation of seeing some sign of movement, but there was nothing as far as the eye could see.
Which was quite some distance, the tomb easily as large as the ones I’d been in before (and left as quickly as I could). Strangely, however, I found the sense of disorientation I’d experienced on those previous occasions considerably diminished, perhaps because the solidly quotidian confines of the lorry cab insulated me from the full strangeness of our surroundings. At any event, I was reasonably certain that I knew how far we’d come, and the way back to the tunnel connecting the tomb to the mine.
How we were going to make use of that knowledge, however, was still a moot point. The only hope that I could see was that the arachnoid automata had been instructed to deposit their booty in a storage area somewhere, from which we could sneak away as soon as the coast became clear. A hope that was dashed almost as soon as the thought occurred to me.
‘Seems to be getting brighter,’ Jurgen remarked, having squirmed upwards enough to be getting the benefit of the view directly through the windows himself. He was right, too, the necrotic green glow up ahead increasing in intensity. It seemed to be pulsating, too, in a rhythmical fashion that stirred the hairs on the nape of my neck, although I couldn’t have told you exactly why – but it reminded me of something, I was certain of that.
Only as we rounded the corner of another monolithic mechanism did realisation dawn, and with it a thrill of horror that pierced me like a blade. The spiders bearing their purloined supplies weren’t stacking them neatly in some out-of-the-way corner after all; they were scuttling determinedly towards the one thing I’d known must be down here, and most dreaded the sight of.
‘It’s a warp portal,’ I said grimly, as the spiders at the head of the column scurried straight towards the swirling vortex and vanished into it, still bearing their booty. ‘And it’s active!’
‘At least we know where the rest of them went,’ Jurgen said, somewhat inaccurately, as Horus alone knew what might be waiting on the other side of that obscene rip in reality. Something we were about to discover for ourselves, though, unless we did something about it in the dwindling handful of seconds remaining to us. I’d been through a necron portal before, and been fortunate to survive;[130] not an experience I was at all inclined to repeat.
‘You’ll be able to ask them in person if we don’t get out of here right now,’ I said, rising the rest of the way and dropping abruptly into the seat, either habit or my innate survival instinct impelling me to fasten the crash restraints as I did so.
Jurgen followed suit, shoving the melta out of his way with an alacrity which might have taken my eye out if I hadn’t grabbed the clumsy weapon by reflex. ‘Oops. Sorry, sir.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I said, as he stabbed at the vehicle’s activation rune.
I held my breath for what seemed like a lifetime, but in reality could only have been for a second or so, then the engine rewarded me for my vigil (and fervent prayers to the Emperor) by roaring into life, with what sounded to me like a bellow of panic. Our wheels spun, suspended in the air between the spiders carrying us, and I cursed with all the vigour you might expect given the amount of time I’ve spent in barrack rooms and combat zones. If they were at all disconcerted by this sudden and unexpected development, the gleaming metal arachnoids gave no sign of it, simply scuttling towards the void in the air with the same mindless fixity of purpose they’d always shown.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Jurgen said again, pumping the throttle to no avail, unless you counted an excessive amount of engine noise a desirable outcome. I certainly did not, having no desire at all to attract the attention of the tomb’s guardians, which must surely have been lurking somewhere in the vicinity, even though we’d seen no sign of any yet. ‘Can’t get any traction.’
Only the sheerest desperation could have impelled me to do what I did next, but given the situation any risk seemed worth taking. We were less than a score of metres from the portal by now, its gangrenous glow flickering as it threw out evanescent tendrils of cold green light, like some hideous aquatic polyp attempting to snare a passing morsel, while infinity swirled in its depths. By contrast, the black stone of which the arch around it was composed appeared to drink in all illumination, starkly framing the swirling dimensions in what seemed to be solid darkness.
‘You will in a moment,’ I assured him, and popped the door seal, swinging it open with a strange sense of deja vu, which disconcerted me for a moment until I realised I’d been reminded of doing something similar during our recent skirmish in the desert. This time, however, I wasn’t potting ineffectually at our pursuers with my laspistol; the spider things were right outside the cab, and I still had Jurgen’s melta in my hands.
I swung it round, manoeuvring the thing through the narrow gap with some difficulty, and, despite the urgency and danger we were in, somehow found time to wonder how my aide managed to carry and use the unwieldy weapon with such apparent ease.[131] I fumbled for the trigger, aiming hopefully at the spider supporting our nearside[132] front, and pulled it, closing my eyes against the familiar retina-stabbing flash. The burst of thermal energy struck home with satisfying force, severing a couple of scurrying limbs. The spider fell, the front of our truck followed, and by great good fortune the sudden lurch broke the grip of the three carrying the other corners, ripping our conveyance free of their mandibles. The cargo-8 slammed into the floor of the tomb, bouncing on its suspension, which, fortunately, seemed as rugged as the one fitted to the lorry we’d escaped the renegade Striders in. The butt of the melta smacked me hard in the face, but the seat restraints held, and against all the odds I remained where I was supposed to be instead of being tipped out of the cab.
‘Go!’ I bellowed, quite unnecessarily under the circumstances, as our wheels were already spinning; the second they touched the floor we were moving. Backwards, fortunately, our overstressed engine howling in protest, as Jurgen had had the foresight to engage reverse – had he not done so, we would certainly have plunged into the vortex under our own power, instead of being carried through it by the spider things. As it was, though, my aide swung the wheel from side to side, his eyes fixed on the pict screen showing the view behind us, his jaw clenched with concentration, missing the handful of spiders that had joined the cavalcade behind the ones carrying us by what seemed like millimetres. Finding the barrel of the melta still protruding from the passenger door, I pulled the trigger a few times as the bloated metal bodies flashed past, but what with the speed we were going and the blinding glare every time I did so, I doubt that I did much damage.
‘Frak this,’ Jurgen said, a sentiment I heartly endorsed, ‘they’ll be on us in no time at this rate.’ And, indeed, the surviving spiders were rallying, dropping the boxes they carried and forming up in what looked uncomfortably like a battle line. They began to surge forward, two or three of them spitting bright lances of necrotic green light which sheared through one of the arcane mechanisms filling the cavern, releasing some glowing viscid goo – which promptly began eating its way through the bedrock floor. Jurgen spun the wheel, taking us into the cover of a side passage, then did something with the brake and throttle controls which sent us skidding round to face in the opposite direction. (I might have noticed what if I hadn’t been so concerned with hanging on and not losing the melta, which was bound to come in useful again before too much longer. Not to mention the fact that if I’d let his favourite toy fall out of the truck, Jurgen would have sulked for days.) ‘That’s more like it.’
As he spoke, a surge of acceleration kicked me in the spine, and I pulled the door closed with almost unseemly haste. Those beam weapons the spiders had looked powerful enough to chew through whatever meagre protection the cab offered, but while they were doing that they wouldn’t be chewing through me, and even a fraction of a second to react can make all the difference in a firefight. I glanced at the pict screen, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
‘Go right,’ I instructed, hoping my sense of direction was still reliable enough to get us out of here. Jurgen swung the wheel in response, taking us up another passageway between the looming devices, just as another burst of fire sliced through the air where we no longer were. I just had time to glance back and see a tide of malevolent metal scuttling round the corner in pursuit, then we were away, and still accelerating, out of their line of sight once more.
‘Take a left,’ I said, then, ‘right again,’ and to my inexpressible relief I caught sight of the familiar yellowish luminator glow which marked the mouth of the tunnel back to the mine. ‘Over there!’
‘I see it, sir,’ Jurgen assured me, powering us towards it at what under any other circumstances I would have considered an insane velocity in such cramped surroundings. As it was, though, knowing what was behind us, I found myself willing our screaming engine to even greater effort.
I glanced at the pict screen, seeing a glint of pursuing metal falling ever further behind, and exhaled, allowing some of the tension to drain from my body. A few of the things spat bolts of energy in our direction, but only one struck the flatbed at our backs, punching a fist-sized hole in the tailgate, the others making a mess of the mechanisms around us. Perhaps wary of inflicting any more collateral damage, the pursuing spiders ceased fire.
‘Nicely done,’ I complimented my aide, beginning to dare to hope that the worst was over; a hope in which I was to be predictably disappointed. I began to consider our next move. Using the truck to get up to the surface somehow still seemed like our best chance of survival, but as soon as we were back in the mine, and free of the signal-dampening effect of the necron tomb, I could use the vox-relay I’d tapped into before to contact Morie and update him on the situation here. With any luck, by the time we made it to the outside world we’d be met by the Thunderhawk, and a squad or two of Terminators to hide behind.
Then, of course, I saw movement up ahead. Necron warriors this time, levelling their gauss flayers. It seemed my instincts were correct – not all the ones from the empty sarcophagi had escaped through the portal to Throne knew where. Forewarned of our presence, probably by the spiders, they’d moved as calmly and methodically as they always did to cut us off.
I just had time to shout a warning before Jurgen yanked the wheel over, almost overturning the truck in the process, and shot down a narrow side passage like a rat up a sump pipe. A volley of gauss flayer beams tore through the space we’d just vacated, a couple luckier or more accurate than the rest chewing some additional holes in our much-abused conveyance. Just how close they’d come to crippling it, and moving in for the kill, I became abruptly aware of as I noticed a sudden draught around my knees – the cab door had been neatly penetrated, an area of solid metal the size of a dinner plate having evanesced into nothingness. There went any chance of escaping to the surface, I thought, but waste not, want not; I stuck the muzzle of the melta through the makeshift firing slit, and waited for a target of opportunity.
Which didn’t take long to present itself, another phalanx of the ghastly metal warriors appearing as soon as we reached the next junction. Jurgen swung the wheel again, dropping a couple of gears to keep all of our tyres on terra firma this time, and I triggered the melta, sweeping its beam across the whole formation. Not all of them were incommoded as much as I’d have liked, although at least one melted away into thin air in the disconcerting manner their casualties tend to do; we ducked as the survivors fired, just in time to keep our heads attached to our bodies as the cargo-8 cab began to more closely resemble a wreck I’d take cover behind on the battlefield rather than something I’d make a frantic escape in.
‘Persistent frakkers, aren’t they?’ my aide remarked, accelerating up through the gears again. The truck shook, and bounced over the remaining necrons before they had another chance to fire. Which wouldn’t slow them down for long; a quick glance at the pict screen was enough to show me that they were already rising smoothly to their feet, dents and scrapes along their torsos smoothing out as the living metal they were composed of flowed to repair the damage.[133]
‘They are that,’ I agreed, seeing the welcome light of the tunnel mouth ahead, and, by the grace of the Throne, nothing metallic and malevolent standing in the way of it. I jammed my cap, which was in imminent danger of being dislodged by the wind now howling through the thoroughly perforated cab, a bit more firmly on my head. Then I caught sight of a flicker of movement, yet another group of the indestructible warriors moving swiftly along the line of the cavern wall in an attempt to cut us off. ‘Drive!’
‘We’ll beat ’em to the tunnel, sir,’ my aide assured me, hunching low over the steering wheel, but the necrons were moving fast as well, running with a peculiar fluid grace, instead of the measured, relentless stride with which they usually advanced. Jurgen glanced in their direction with an air of mild curiosity. ‘Don’t often see ’em in that much of a hurry.’
‘Not often they need to be,’ I said. In my experience they tended to come on in waves, methodically eliminating everything that stood in their way, overrunning fixed positions as inexorably as the incoming tide. Fleeing survivors too quick to be shot in the back (which I have to admit has included me on more than one occasion) eventually tire and falter, while the relentless enemy doesn’t, content to catch up in their own good time and complete the work they’ve begun. The only way to be sure you’ve outrun them is to find a shuttle, board a starship, and hope it gets into the warp before any of their own vessels turn up.
As it happened, though, Jurgen’s driving skills proved equal to the challenge, and we reached the tunnel entrance just ahead of the necrons. I took another shot with the melta, downing one as we flashed past, flinched as another volley of gauss flayer fire riddled the bodywork of the truck even more comprehensively, then we were in blessed darkness, the welcoming yellow glow of the mine ahead of us.
TWENTY-FOUR
After the eldritch half-light of the necron tomb, the welcoming yellow radiance of the luminators seemed almost dazzling, and I felt a surge of elation as we broke through into the cacophonous cavern, our ears assaulted once again by the noise of heavy industry. The truck lurched, taking another volley of gauss flayer fire, and faltered, the engine adopting a distinctly unhealthy rattling in counterpoint to the overstressed wailing I’d almost become used to. The whole vehicle was vibrating now, jarring my spine uncomfortably every couple of seconds, accompanied by a rhythmical thudding and a clattering like the last couple of stubber rounds in an ammo box. I shot an apprehensive glance at the pict screen, and found the tunnel behind us packed with our pursuers.
‘Get us out of here!’ I urged, probably quite unnecessarily, as I somehow doubted my aide felt like stopping for a friendly chat with them at this point, and gestured towards the tunnel across the crowded chamber from which Clode had emerged with our faltering transport what was beginning to feel like a lifetime ago. ‘That tunnel over there!’ It still seemed like our best route back to the upper levels at least, even if escaping to the surface no longer seemed like an option. Not unless we traded in our cargo-8 for one less perforated, anyway; but perhaps if we found where it had come from in the first place, the Emperor would provide – or, failing Him, Jurgen’s propensity for acquiring things without the bother of filling out the appropriate forms in triplicate.
‘Right you are, sir,’ my aide responded, nursing the controls, and still getting a fair turn of speed out of our crippled conveyance despite, or perhaps because of, the distinctly un-tech-priest-like litany accompanying his efforts. He scowled at a couple of russet robes leaping for their lives as we passed them, and spat disdainfully through the gap where the top half of the driver’s door used to be. ‘Be a lot easier if these frakbrains would keep out of the way.’
