TWENTY-THREE

The Valkyrie flew with engines baffled, running dark and staying just above the cloud layer like a night bird gliding on the wing.

Hauptmann had rolled back the side hatch, clipping in to prevent any mishap should the aircraft need to bank or manoeuvre suddenly. But the skies were clear, the V’heduak patrolling elsewhere or having quit to some other part of the island entirely. It was a mercy, for the Archonate air cadre were ruthless and tenacious.

He closed his eyes, letting the wind buffet him and fill his senses with white noise, a voiceless thunder that smothered his thoughts and left his mind a peaceful blank slate. No screams, no smell of burning… at least for a while. His hand found the clutch of parchments in his uniform pocket and the dead returned, as if summoned by the ink on paper that told of their ending and offered hollow consolation. Old feelings of loss resurfaced, like bodies left overlong in a river, bloated with regret.

The crumpled pict wormed its way into his gloved hand without Hauptmann realising, and he thought of Chari, her hair swept back on a frontier wind, their son cradled in her tanned arms.

‘I drink…’ said a voice from the hold interior, the Tunnel-Rat, 19th Talpa. Hauptmann thought his name was Pikk or Pakk or something like that. Remarkably, he wore a lieutenant’s badges and Hauptmann wondered briefly if he had stolen the ragged jacket to which they were pinned.

‘I beg your pardon?’

The Talpa had a greasy flask in his cloth-wrapped mitts. A sloshing emanated from within, the liquid redolent of fyceline.

Hauptmann politely refused.

‘Good for forgetting,’ said the Talpa, scratching at the tattoo on his cheek, a mournful shadow passing across his dirty face.

And blindness… thought Hauptmann but kept that to himself, smiling instead.

‘Or I smoke the kappa.’ He bared liquorice-black teeth.

Neither vice sounded particularly appealing. Hauptmann spared a quick glance to Lennox, hoping for moral support, but the sniper had his feet up on a bench and was snoozing peacefully, an easy smile on his face. Oh to be young, and less burdened. He showed the Talpa his pict.

‘My family,’ he said.

The Talpa stared at the faded image for a long time, eventually nodding. ‘’Tis good,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘That you are here and they are not. No place for a family, this war.’

Hauptmann found no argument there, but it didn’t ease his grief. A grubby hand hastily wiped on grubbier fatigues came his way.

‘Pukk,’ uttered the Talpa.

‘Hauptmann,’ Hauptmann replied.

The Talpa smirked. ‘Funny name…’ and swilled back his illicit grog.

It took six more hours to find the loc-beacon, one of the First Sons poring over the signal returns on a radar unit that turned his face the colour of sweaty emerald.

‘Here!’ he said curtly, his counterpart Scion in charcoal and black sitting up and hurrying over to the dulcet screen.

Hauptmann had learned their names were Zarek and Venetor. Apart from their hair, one fair, the other dark, they could have been forged from the same mould, their ruthless edges left untrimmed. There was a potent physicality to both men, even more so than the Bluebloods, who had thoroughbred bodies like slabs of perfectly wrought muscle. This wasn’t breeding though, it was grown, actually crafted. Hauptmann could almost smell the stimm sweat wafting off them. They had not elucidated about rank, or much else really, beyond the fact that Zarek was in charge of the operation and Venetor his second-in-command.

The remainder of the seven-man team was made up of a pair of Slokans in warm crimson and silver carapace armour. These two didn’t speak much at all, though happily conversed in their own tongue, often sharing a joke that more than once Hauptmann had thought was at his or the Talpa’s expense.

‘Confirm reading…’ said Zarek, his chiselled face rendered like green marble in the radar light. The ping from the unit perpetuated, getting steadily louder.

Venetor corroborated the loc-ident and nodded, his eyes fierce and exultant.

‘Throne, we have him.’ Zarek turned his cold eyes on the others. Even Lennox was stirring. ‘Arm up and be ready. We move as soon as we’re down.’

It appeared they had found Lieutenant Sakker.

Eddies of swirling dust obscured the departing Valkyrie as the troopers marched out.

The First Sons took point, Zarek out front, a Tempestus volley gun held in a low grip. Venetor was at his shoulder, clutching a hellgun. They moved fast and smooth through the rugged terrain, almost like automata, and further dehumanised by their rebreather and visor-masked helmets.

Hauptmann’s own rebreather hung around his neck, the sergeant preferring a scarf to ward off the grit on account of it feeling less claustrophobic. A breeze had kicked up from somewhere, its katabatic zephyrs sending dust in all directions like a lazy sandstorm. It chafed but was otherwise no more than a mild irritant.

He coughed, surprised to find a little blood flecked on the edge of his scarf.

‘Everything all right, sir?’

Hauptmann nodded to Lennox, the lad a few feet behind him and to his right.

‘Must’ve bit my lip.’

Lennox had brought his sniper rifle, but it was piss-all use on the move and in these conditions so it remained slung across his shoulder, a combat shotgun favoured instead. Pukk roamed the other side, his position similarly refused. He had an axe, a pick hooked to his belt, and a shit-shovel of a lascarbine on a strap that he carried one-handed. Possessing neither rebreather nor scarf, he kept his head low against the wind.

Rearguard was the two Slokans, both trailing crimson cloaks that had yellowed at the edges from the dirt, the heavy-armoured bastards like small tanks and wielding siege-grade autoguns in their gauntleted fists. Each man wore a ‘fright mask’, a snarling death-visage meant to inspire fear. They did not look so fearsome slogging through the dirt in their ornate panoply.

A hand signal arrested the march abruptly, Zarek’s clenched fist ­apparent to all.

He gestured ahead, a hand just above his eyes in a silent instruction to ‘look’. It took a moment, Hauptmann peering into the mustard haze, just the faint song of the wind lamenting in his ears, and then a structure began to appear. An outline at first, but then more detail as he discerned architectural characteristics from mere silhouette.

An old fort. It had dilapidated crenellations, the merlons and embrasures of the walls sunken down to rubble in places in spills of tired, old rock. Despite the disrepair, it appeared solid, a combination of stone and metal, bleached starkly by the elements. No outer wall, no gate, just a roundish tower jutting from the earth like a sword.

No sentries either.

‘Looks deserted,’ uttered one of the Slokans, a brutish sort, dark eyes glittering behind the anonymity of his mask. The voice came out distorted, a feral resonance worsened by the inbuilt breather. He and his compatriot had moved up from the back ranks to stand upon the edge of the shallow defile that looked down on the fort like all the rest.

Zarek stared a moment longer, a handheld auspex scanner pinging softly, before turning to Hauptmann.

‘Pardus Mechanised is a scout unit, isn’t it?’

Hauptmann nodded. ‘Amongst other things.’

‘Not any more,’ said Zarek, and it took all of Hauptmann’s resolve not to strike him. ‘I need you to reconnoitre that fort.’

‘Draw out any trap or sentries, you mean.’

‘Call it what you will, soldier.’

‘That’s sergeant-cavalier,’ Hauptmann replied indignantly.

‘Not here it isn’t.’ He gestured for the Pardus to move out.

Hauptmann obliged; it was either that or kill him. Pukk started after him, head low against the wind.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Zarek, but he didn’t intervene.

‘Stretch my legs…’ He looked around the barren wastes. ‘Nice weather for a walk,’ he said, and followed Hauptmann into the defile.

‘Stay close,’ Hauptmann murmured, Pukk trailing behind him, and glanced up to the edge of the defile. The First Sons and Slokans had spread out across the ridgeline but a sniper sight watched every step the scouts took, Lennox waiting patiently at the other end of the scope. Hauptmann gave a small nod to his friend and countryman. That easy smile again in return.

‘You think it’s deserted?’ asked the Talpa.

‘No, I do not.’

They trudged on. The drifts had gathered here, collecting in shallows of dust and grit that rode up to the ankle as Hauptmann approached the fort. A round wall presented itself, an ironbound door the only entrance. It wasn’t sealed, or even properly shut, and banged gently on its frame, hinges creaking like scraped piano wire.

He nudged it with his boot, Pukk observing keenly and as silent as a shadow. He nodded to Hauptmann, his readiness unspoken.

No pressure plate, no trigger cord…

The door opened, revealing an unadorned circular chamber and a lozenge-shaped metal hatch in the ground. Faint, ambient light caught its edges. The hatch led down. And it was sealed.

Hauptmann used the vox. ‘Bring blasting charges.’

A few minutes later and everyone stood around the hatch, a few feet back, hugging the edges of the room – with the exception of Venetor, who was rigging a line of det cord. A bandolier of krak grenades hung off his body as he stooped but they wanted the hatch breached, not the fort collapsing.

He scurried back, eyes on the group, and counted down with his fingers.

Three…

Two…

One.

A plosive spurt and the hatch fell loose, shorn from its frame. After a few seconds it hit the ground below, the noisy clang echoing back up a narrow shaft.

Zarek’s stablight strafed the darkness, revealing a ladder leading down to a grated deck plate and nothing else. He waited, listening until long after the echo had faded.

Still nothing.

Venetor had the auspex now, its signal return silenced but an urgent screen pulse indicating the loc-beacon’s proximity. He gave a shallow nod.

The Slokans went first, heavy armour to the fore, autoguns slung on their backs as they descended rung by painstaking rung. It took over twenty minutes for everyone to traverse the ladder. Hauptmann arrived second last, just ahead of Lennox, who was a few feet further up the shaft as the sergeant-cavalier’s boots touched metal.

What became immediately apparent was how much larger the footprint below was compared to that above, as a vast subterranean chamber spilled out into seemingly endless darkness.

‘Cold…’ hissed one of the Slokans, breath pluming.

Stablights ventured outwards, their grainy beams criss-crossing and overlapping in a gulf of blackness. Eventually one found a wall, the condensation on it shining like glacial ice.

They left Lennox at the ladder, guarding the only known egress, and he gave Hauptmann a look as the sergeant-cavalier glanced over his shoulder as he was departing.

Watch yourself, it said.

Using the wall, the rest followed the periphery of the chamber but when they found nothing it became obvious they needed to move inwards. After several more feet, Venetor checked the auspex. The dull light barely lit the screen, its soft pulse quickening like a heartbeat in cardiac arrest. Venetor panned the device but static rippled across its face, the depth fouling the signal until it cut out completely.

Deeper in and the darkness began to feel almost residual, its soft tendrils clinging, like it was darker than it should be or the stablights were losing power, but Hauptmann thought it just a quirk of the chamber, which was metal throughout like a ship’s cargo hold… or a meat locker.

They reached the centre, and it felt pretty far from where they had started. Hauptmann assumed they must have passed a column or support because he had lost sight of Lennox.

‘Guns up…’ whispered Zarek, and the company obeyed as one, a flurry of ineffectual stablights preceding their advance. The light barely reached ten feet. One of the Slokans rapped his lamp’s casing but Venetor hissed a warning and he stopped. The beam flickered, as if passing through a patch of interference, but stayed on.

Old burn marks seared the metal underfoot, which rose up in a wide and expansive platform.

‘How big is this place?’ Hauptmann heard a Slokan murmur. He had been wondering the same thing, and tried Lennox on the vox but the signal was dead. He made this known to the Scions, who exchanged a stern glance with each other.

‘I saw no Valkyrie in the vicinity,’ offered Venetor, still baffled at the blank auspex. ‘Maybe Sakker shed his loc-beacon and he isn’t here?’

He sounded worried, which sent a chill through Hauptmann and an urge to bolt that he fought down. Zarek stared wide-eyed, caught on the threshold between decisions, before moving them onwards.

Streaks and blemishes on the metal continued, but appeared too thick to be made by fire. Pukk stopped to run his finger through one. It came back dark and glistening faintly.

‘Sange…’ he said, sniffing fervently like a rat sensing danger.

The air grew colder, freighted with a wet copper odour.

They came upon the first of the machines shortly after. Disused, dormant, like nothing Hauptmann had ever seen. Not Mechanicus. Edged and spiked, a metal frame with straps and articulated limbs. Like a torture rack.

Sakker was bound in one. Bloodless, emaciated, he had the stillness of the dead. His neck had been arched back, a studded iron circlet across the forehead preventing movement. Both arms were strapped down too, and the ankles. Two metal limbs extended from the back of the machine and ended in three articulated talons that attached to Sakker’s eye, pinning the lid open.

Venetor had been about to move in, when Zarek put an arm across him. He was looking at the ground, his lamp straying to something daubed on the deck plate.

Sentiwa mai.

Or, more precisely, Ssentiw a ma I.

An outstretched hand lingered at the light’s penumbra. Hauptmann swept his lamp over and revealed another of Sakker’s men, dead, stripped back to fatigues and vest. His head had lolled on the side to reveal over-wide eyes that would never close. The rest of the missing Scions lingered nearby, trapped in the machines, heads back, eyes held open, looking upwards.

Pukk craned his neck, and Hauptmann followed the Talpa’s gaze and found his own face staring back at him.

A mirror ceiling arched above them. Huge, vaulted. It was made up of shards, mismatched flects of glass fused together into a patchwork mosaic.

Ssentiw a ma I.

‘I am a witness,’ said one of the Slokans, the truth of the message revealed in reflection.

A witness to what? thought Hauptmann.

‘To the all and the everything,’ the darkness answered.