Hammer and Bolter: Issue Twenty-Six Read online

  Godric weighed up his options – he knew his men hadn’t seen the worst of the fighting yet, and their progress had been too slow so far.

  ‘Okay, Tarvin – take Tarek with you, and find the way.’

  The Hell’s Rejects kept themselves mainly to long-abandoned service tunnels, lifts used only by tech-servitors, and reactivated sections of derelict hab-blocks known only to the hive’s administrators. Once, these vast chambers and winding tunnels had teemed with life, but as the metropolis had grown ever upwards, entire districts had been abandoned due to poverty, disease or simple undesirability. Forgotten for generations and sealed off from gang intrusion, they now provided relatively safe passage for Godric’s men as they descended hundreds of levels to the underhive.

  Days passed in this manner, the storm troopers meeting scattered resistance along the way, before they reached level thirteen. The very air emanating from the darkness beneath them seemed stale and cloying. Tarvin told the storm troopers that there would be no more secret paths from this point on, and the way ahead would be dangerous. The Adeptus Mechanicus signal originated from a mining platform that sat above the sump on the lowest level.

  ‘So what’s on level one?’ laughed Thyrus. ‘Don’t tell me some poor sops live in the sump?’

  ‘Level one is quarantined,’ replied Tarvin, with utmost seriousness. ‘It has long been forbidden to access that level. If anything does live below it, in the foundations of the hive… well, let’s just say we don’t want it getting out.’

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ interjected Valdimar. ‘We’ve been sneaking around like sewer rats for days. I want to crack the heads of some underhive scum!’

  You’ll get your chance sooner that you think,’ interrupted McLeod. ‘Five blips heading our way – foot of the stairway.’

  The Hell’s Rejects needed no instruction. Silently, they spread out across the gantry, melding into the shadows. Valdimar, remarkably stealthy for a big man, padded down the stairs, the steel treads making barely sounds beneath his feet. Tarek peered over the rail, eying up his prey. As soon as the team heard the unmistakeable sounds of Valdimar engaging the enemy, Tarek clipped a rappel line to the metal handrail and leapt over the edge. The sounds of combat were over in seconds, and the remainder of the squad began their descent down the long flight of stairs. At the bottom, Tarvin’s men gaped in awe at the sight of Valdimar and Tarek, and the five bodies at their feet. Valdimar dragged the gangers into the shadows where they would remain undiscovered for a while, and wiped the blood from his gloves. He looked content.

  The way through the red zone was dangerous indeed. Every cavernous promenade, cramped shanty town and network of tiny engineering tunnels was awash with rebels. Underhive gangers roamed in packs, or cavorted around trash fires. The bodies of Kovosian household soldiers littered the route, and more than once the storm troopers were forced to change direction to avoid detection. Where the enemy were concentrated, there seemed to be great carnivals of heresy, orgies of violence and depravity as half-naked cultists leapt and writhed to the beat of distant drums. Shouts of ecstasy mingled with screams of terror as loyalist prisoners were tortured and roasted over hellish fires. And from the deepest shadows, Godric’s men were forced to watch, too few in number to face such rebellion head-on. They saw thousands of heretics from all walks of life, and who knew how many more danced and cavorted on the lower levels. Godric’s face was sepulchral, and he bade Tarvin to lead his men onwards, deeper into the belly of the beast.

  The same story could be found throughout the underhive, but the darkness within the souls of the revellers seemed to grow as the storm troopers got closer to the lower reaches. There was a madness eating away at the denizens of Kovos Rising, and Godric began to believe that flattening the planet through orbital bombardment was the only way of sanctifying this place of evil. Even the structure of the underhive seemed to twist and change as the Hell’s Rejects ventured deeper – warped effigies and blasphemous scrawlings marked every tunnel; great metal spikes jutted from walls at impossible heights, adorned with chains from which hung flayed bodies.

  ‘If we truly are the Hell’s Rejects,’ muttered Thyrus, ‘then it can’t be long before this place spits us out.’

  At the entrance to a deserted cargo hangar, Captain Tarvin signalled the storm troopers to stop.

  ‘This is level five. To get lower, there’s only one route, and it leads through the old sector house. Unfortunately, it has long been taken over by criminals from the biggest gangs in the underhive. It was a no-go area before the rebellion, so now…’

  Godric growled, conveying his impatience more clearly than any words.

  ‘If we get to the hangar bay doors, we can reach a skywalk,’ said Tarvin, nervously. ‘We can get to the mining levels from outside the hive, and we’ll only have to get past a few isolated outposts. I reckon it’s a better option than fighting our way through these corridors.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Godric, ‘but there’s a battle raging out there. We’ll be exposed to fire from all sides.’

  ‘Possibly,’ nodded Tarvin. ‘We also have to hope that the enemy aren’t watching from the viewing stations and outer platforms – we’ll be out in the open if we’re spotted.’

  Godric conferred with Sorokin, before turning back to Tarvin. ‘The Emperor protects,’ he said.

  The air was awash with bullets and las-fire. Valdimar dragged Tarvin bodily across the gantry and into cover as gangers peppered the storm troopers with autogun fire. The rappel descent had already claimed its first victim – Lavalis, one of Tarvin’s men, had misjudged the distance and broken both of his legs as he crashed into a plasteel railing. His pain had been short-lived as a stray stub round took him through the eye. From the moment they had leapt from the old hangar, the Hell’s Rejects had met opposition from the elements and the natives alike. The wind had threatened to blow them over the edge of the platform into the sulphur pits below, while a large patrol of cult gangers had spotted them almost as soon as they had touched down on the walkway.

  Trooper Ishmael advanced as far forwards as he dared and found a vantage point amid a pile of scrap barricades. As soon as the solid slugs of the gangers had stopped ricocheting off his cover, he unleashed a fusillade of searing plasma at the enemy. The gangers flinched from the onslaught, unused to such ferocious opposition, and their pause for thought allowed the remainder of the storm troopers to advance in good order, picking off foes with every shot. When finally the two sides closed, it looked as though the gangers may attempt to engage the Imperial trespassers in hand-to-hand combat, but any such notion was quashed when Siegfried stepped to the front of his unit, flamer in hand, and engulfed the gangers’ makeshift defences with blazing promethium.

  With the enemy routed, the Hell’s Rejects regrouped. Captain Tarvin looked out across the landscape he called home. The walls of the kilometres-high Kovos Rising loomed at their backs, whilst ahead of them the planet burned beneath a crimson sky. Some ten kilometres away, a second hive lay in ruins, its top quarter struck from its body, fires burning from every crack and crevice. Beyond that, bombs fell, troops fought and men sold their lives dearly.

  ‘That’s Spiridov Hive,’ said Tarvin, ruefully, almost to himself. ‘I was born there.’

  Tarvin was afforded no time to grieve as Godric gave the order to move on. The skywalk split into two further ones, with one fork looping around back to the hive, and the other descending to ground level via stairways and maintenance lifts. It was this path the storm troopers took, finding themselves on the outskirts of a huge refinery on the planet’s surface.

  ‘No sign of the workers,’ said Tarvin, his voice raised against the incessant thundering of explosions and the thrumming of automated industrial machinery. ‘Looks like the path is clear.’

  ‘Can you get us back inside?’ asked Godric.

  ‘Yes, but we need to find the maintenance entrance. From there we should be able to reach the mines unhindered.’

  The sea
rch was brief, and finally Tarvin hooked up a security cipher to the access panel of a ceramite-plated bulkhead. It felt strange being at ground level outside a hive – most of the millions who dwelt within Kovos Rising had never set foot outside, nor even beyond the limitations of their own hab-zones. Yet the Hell’s Rejects had traversed the length and breadth of the cyclopean city, and now sought to re-enter the bowels of the soaring structure.

  Once inside, Tarvin led the troopers in single file through a maze of dark, cramped access tunnels. Their progress was monitored by the glassy, lifeless eyes of engineering servitors, which stood silently, plugged into service niches in the walls. These cybernetic workers awaited the return of their overseers, most of whom were undoubtedly dead. The route twisted and turned, dipped and ascended, and gradually the environs began to alter. The Imperial icons, devotional shrines and industrial fixings that adorned every inch of wall became less prominent, until the walls were smooth. Though corroded with age, the rooms and passages that the troopers traversed seemed no longer to be of Imperial design. Finally, they descended yet another level in a rickety service lift, and emerged into a large, low-ceilinged chamber with carved stone walls and a flagged floor.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Sorokin.

  ‘The threshold to the Forbidden Deeps,’ replied Tarvin. ‘Few have ever looked upon these chambers. I myself believed them to be the stuff of stories until recently.’

  ‘Are they xenos-built?’ asked Tarek, suspiciously.

  ‘No. I am told they were built by the first Terran colonists, in the time of the Great Crusade. Some of our most powerful geothermic processors are ported into archeotech down here – even the tech-adepts have no idea how they work, but we thank the Emperor that they do.’

  ‘No time for history lessons,’ Godric said. ‘Lead on, captain.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir, but from here on I know as much as you.’

  ‘Very well,’ Godric said. With two simple hand gestures, Godric gave the Hell’s Rejects their orders – the squad fanned out into a reconnaissance formation, and stepped fearlessly into the gloom.

  The chamber was vast. Excavations were evident from the unearthed rubble that lined the hewn pit in the centre of the cavern, piled high around tall columns of polished stone. From that dig-site, large tendrils of pipes and power cables seemed to grow organically, grasping at the farthest reaches of the chamber. Beyond them, vague silhouettes of digging machinery served to emphasise the size of the room. Portable lumens still stood within and about the gaping hole, providing scant light in the gloomy cavern, but illuminating the object of the storm troopers’ mission. Between the compact generators and crates of tools was a bulkhead of strange design, partially uncovered by a now-absent workforce. Tiny blinking lights flickered around it, and a dormant screen was recessed into its frame, above three partially opened panels.

  The troopers spread out around the platform by which they had entered, and crept down to ground level. Only when McLeod signalled that there were no readings on his bio-scanner did the troopers relax, and approach the ancient portal with awe.

  ‘McLeod, I want this examined immediately. See if you can get it open.’ McLeod nodded in response, and set to work with his equipment. As he worked, his bio-scanner began to glow faintly. Godric took the device from McLeod.

  ‘Keep at it. I’ll see to this,’ he told the young trooper. Godric studied the scanner intently. ‘One blip detected, two hundred metres – it’s slow, but it’s heading this way. Men, take up defensive positions – I want a secure perimeter. And move those lumens. I want to see what we’re up against.’

  Within the vast excavation pit, the storm troopers scurried like insects, too few in number to defend such a large area effectively against a determined foe. Now they were approached by a single enemy, and thus went about their business confidently. That confidence, however, was shattered as soon as the lumens were moved to cast their light around the chamber. As the shadows shrank back from the illumination, humanoid forms were revealed standing all around the edges of the cavernous room. Light gleamed off metal, and the storm troopers stared at hundreds of servitors, of all classes and designations. Some carried fearsome weapons in place of arms, whilst most were equipped with grappling arms, rock drills and buzz-saws. Not one of them moved, instead standing sentry, dormant and silent as the grave.

  The storm troopers clenched their guns and took up firing positions. That the servitors could be hostile did not bear thinking about, and the blip on the bio-scanner was still moving towards them. The eerie silence in the room was broken by Trooper McLeod, who had carried on working, oblivious to the danger.

  ‘Got it!’ he said. And his words were accompanied by an electronic thrum and a faint glow of light from the bulkhead’s access panel. Godric hushed him immediately, and McLeod looked momentarily sheepish.

  ‘Why isn’t it open?’ Godric whispered.

  ‘Sir, that will take some time. I don’t understand the tech… but we’ve got power at least.’

  ‘Step away from that panel, trooper!’ A metallic voice rang out from the darkness. The Hell’s Rejects readied their weapons, trusting to their targeting reticules to pick up any sign of movement.

  ‘And lower your weapons.’

  This time the command was accompanied by movement. As one, six of the Rejects trained their weapons on the target, which shuffled towards the crater with an awkward gait.

  The lumen revealed the deep-red robes of a tech-priest of Mars, but the storm troopers relaxed only slightly. The figure that approached them was not the most reassuring one. The red robes hid something both more than and less than human. Metallic tendrils snaked from beneath the hunchbacked creature’s hood and sleeves, and its one bionic hand held a long-hafted power axe, upon which it leaned heavily as it traversed the sloping sides of the crater. Even from a distance, the tech-priests breathing apparatus was audible as a regular hiss-click.

  ‘Halt!’ barked Godric. ‘My men will open fire unless you identify yourself.’

  The tech-priest checked his advance, and paused momentarily before responding.

  ‘I am Magos Explorator Korech,’ he said. As he spoke, a small servo-skull flitted out of the shadows behind him and approached Godric, its anti-gravitic drive purring. It stopped a metre away from the sergeant, and projected a holographic display in the air before him. Godric’s bionic eye translated the coded identification readout for him, and he nodded.

  ‘Approach, magos. We meet at last.’

  The storm troopers had never seen anything like it. The thought that their forebears, tens of thousands of years ago, could have wrought such a flawless technological wonder was astounding.

  The door had led to an underground complex, evidently built to withstand the most ardent assault. Korech led the storm troopers through twisting corridors and room after room, flanked by his ominous gun-servitor bodyguard. When eventually they reached the central chamber, they could barely comprehend what they beheld.

  ‘This is the reason we are here,’ said the magos. ‘This is – was – a standard template construct system. It is barely functioning, but I have been able to piece together fragments of data for perhaps several dozen templates.’

  ‘Throne of the Emperor…’ muttered Godric. ‘Are you saying there are new templates here?’

  ‘Impossible to confirm. The data is largely encoded. The templates may be new, or may be already known to us. My equipment here is insufficient for the task. The data must be restored and returned to the explorator fleet for further study. It will take many years to translate this material, damaged as it is.’

  Godric nodded, and looked around the chamber. Trails of power cables spilled from every console like guts from a dying soldier. The magos had patched every data port and power conduit with his ancient and thrice-blessed equipment, and was running data sequences constantly, with logis-skulls and calculus servitors overseeing the most tedious work. It was hard to take in – this room had once been a m
arvel of technology, from a time when anything was possible. Now, it was in such disrepair that perhaps it would never yield its secrets. The magos would search like a zealot for even partial confirmation of a new design hidden away within the corrupted data – should he find it, his contribution to the glory of the Imperium would be assured, whether the design was for a star-destroying las-weapon or a new type of prosthetic limb. So avaricious were the tech-priests in their pursuit of STC technology that a deep longing for technological discovery was , for many, their only remaining human trait.

  Godric noticed that Tarvin and his men were close by. One of the soldiers looked like he was about to pass out from the wonder of it all.

  ‘You, private. What’s your name? Vilkas?’ The private nodded. ‘Make yourself useful and stand watch by the main entrance. I want to know if there’s any movement out there.’ The private saluted and scurried off. Better to give men like that something to do, Godric knew.

  ‘How are we going to get this off-world?’ asked Captain Tarvin. ‘Surely we can’t risk transmitting such information to the fleet?’

  ‘No, captain, we cannot. And besides, this console long ago lost the ability to send such transmissions. To think, it was the ignorance of men that wrought such damage. How could they deliberately harm such treasure? And then to bury it beneath a million tonnes of rockcrete… it is inconceivable.’

  ‘From what I understand, they had their reasons,’ growled Godric, already tiring of this mechanical man and his obsession.

  ‘The answer to the captain’s question,’ continued Korech, ‘is that we must record as much data as possible in a physical form, and take it off-world ourselves.’

  ‘And how much of it is there?’ asked Godric.

  ‘Come, I will show you.’

  The magos led the way to a side chamber, where CAT units scuttered about the troopers’ feet and servo-scribes slaved away transcribing data that was meaningless to the uninformed observer. The magos waved a metallic arm at a pile of hard-copy material – thick ledgers, holo-crystals, data-slates and porta-drives galore, lying in crates and cupboards. The scribes worked ceaselessly on more reams of parchment, ready to be threaded into further books. If the storm troopers had all filled their packs with this material, they would still have to make dozens of trips.