Annihilation Squad, page 20
I’m not sure how much further we have to go, or how long he’s got. Occasionally the pipeline bends without me noticing, and it’s only as I slip on the sloping sides that I know we’ve changed direction. At one point, I feel a gust of air on the side of my face, and I turn and look but can’t see anything. Perhaps there’s a secondary pipe or some kind of vent. I consider stopping, hoping that it’ll be bringing in fresher air. I stop myself though, equally conscious that the toxins could be coming from there instead.
I can’t tell how far we’ve gone, perhaps two desperate kilometres, before Fenn starts to calm down. I can’t see him, so I risk pulling out my rebreather. I swallow a lungful of stale air, but it’s the usual stale air of the pipe. I take off the ork hunter’s mask and he’s gulping it in. He bends double, hacking and coughing. Then he slumps sideways, falling from my grasp, and I fumble around in the pitch black until my hands find him again.
I dump myself down next to him. Both of us are panting heavily, not able to spare a breath for words. We sit in silence, in the total darkness, hoping that the others will catch up with us soon. Hoping that they’re not all dead.
It can’t actually be more than half an hour until we see a glow from further up the pipe, though it feels like half a day to us. There are definitely things in the darkness, creatures skittering past, brushing under my legs, scratching at my boots.
As the light draws closer I make out the Colonel, and the others close behind him. He doesn’t even give us a second glance as he walks past. Brownie dumps my pack at my feet and offers a hand to haul me up. Lorii pulls up Fenn. Nodding his thanks, Fenn falls into line. I pull on my pack and take up the rear, following behind Kin-Drugg as he limps along.
FOURTEEN
THE UNDERHIVE
The pipeline is teeming with rats that scurry underfoot and dart through the glow of the lantern into the darkness. Here, lower down the pipe, they swarm in front of us, hissing, screeching. Some of them are as long as a man is tall, their tails fat ropes of pink flesh.
Many of the rats are misshapen, with hunched backs, bony protuberances, overlong fangs and are covered in scabs and boils. They nip at our ankles, bare their fangs and whip their tails in agitation as we kick them aside. Here and there, the pipeline is cracked, and the rats hide in the shadows; their glittering eyes regarding us menacingly. They seem to plague Kin-Drugg more than the rest of us. Perhaps they sense that he is wounded and is the easiest prey. I have no doubt that had he strayed from the circle of light they would have been on him as quick as possible.
I reckon any one of us would probably be easy meat, for that matter, the hunger of the rats only kept in check by their fear of our numbers. I figure it was the skeletons of those that had unwisely ventured into the gas pocket that we had been crunching through in the pitch black.
After several hours, the rat population slowly begins to dwindle and we start to hear noises. The pipe shudders almost imperceptibly with a distant thumping. The rats here are leaner and more active than their cousins further up the pipe. As we march, the thumping becomes more pronounced and blends in with sounds of other machinery whirring and grinding.
The Colonel stops and shuts off the lantern for a while. As my eyes adjust, I detect a tinge of light from far ahead. It gets brighter as we walk, and I become steadily more aware of the clumping of our boots on the hollow metal of the pipe. I realise that it’s no longer burrowing through the ground.
Smaller pipes spring off from the main one, heading left and right, up and down, to different parts of the Acheron underhive. The route branches into two pipes roughly half the size of the one we stand in and the Colonel leads us to the left, stooping and shuffling through the much narrower space. It’s not far, less than half a kilometre and the pipe suddenly ends, opening out into a wide, low tank. Dropping to its bottom, we find ourselves knee-deep in thick, oily sludge that sucks at our boots. Dull light streams in from an open hatch in the roof ahead of us, and iron rungs, corroded and broken, stick out of the tank’s wall. The Colonel switches off the lantern, stowing it in Lorii’s pack and signals for me to lead the way up the ladder.
Poking my head out of the hatch, I find that we’re in a high chamber, filled with similar rectangular tanks arranged in a regular pattern over a ferrocrete store. Dust, centimetres thick, lies over everything, stirred gently by large fans rotating solely behind grilles in the ceiling.
There’s no sign of life so I pull myself out, readying my lasgun. I crouch on top of the tank and gesture to the others to come up.
We fan out across the room, securing the two wide doorways at either end, both barred from the inside with steel slide-locks. I look to the Colonel for further instructions but he just shakes his head and then points to the door next to me.
‘We are inside the underhive,’ Schaeffer says, keeping his voice low. ‘From here we will have to establish our exact location and commence our search for von Strab. Remember that there are the native underhivers, Imperial forces, von Strab’s Army of Liberation and the orks. And none of them will necessarily be sympathetic to our cause. We must acquire suitable disguises at the earliest opportunity and preferably a guide of some kind. We must not be discovered.’
He nods for me to slide back the bar on the door. It squeals as rust flakes off and drops into the dust. Kin-Drugg puts a hand on the door and thrusts it open. It swings out noisily on corroded hinges, revealing another chamber, much like the one we’re in, but filled with spherical tanks ruptured from within. The floor is sticky with ancient chemicals. Flickering glow-globes cast moving shadows over the gauges and control panels, and reflect off another doorway opposite.
I scoot forward, my boots sticking to the tacky floor, holding my lasgun in a tight grip. The others follow, spreading out to the left and right, picking their routes between the abandoned machinery. The glass in the gauges is cracked; the pipes between them are split and frayed and a moss-like growth is spread over most of the tanks.
‘Water reclamation,’ I say quietly, remembering the parasitical algae that I was tasked with cleaning off the tanks when I was four years old.
The next door swings open with little noise; its hinges have more recently been oiled. Instantly, we’re all alert, realising that whoever oiled them could be close by, perhaps living in the area. Oahebs points at the ground and I glance down, seeing obvious boot tracks in the grime of the floor. Behind me, Brownie whispers to Erasmus to prepare the heavy stubber ammo, and he pulls out the bipod from its barrel, ready to drop down and give covering fire at a moment’s notice.
The roof is low, buckled inwards in places, sprouting coils of pipes and cables, covered with grilles and hatches. We’re on some kind of landing, a stairwell spirals up through the roof and drops down beneath us. Other doorways open up from the walls around us, some into darkness, others into brightly lit areas. From below comes the flickering orange glow of flames.
As we move to the stairwell, we see that the handrail is dotted with small spikes, made from short nails crudely welded to it. Fenn motions for us to stop where we are and stalks forward, crouching; examining the steps. He bends down to look through the railing and then sits back.
‘Trip-wire,’ he says, running his finger along a fine wire strung across the front of the first step.
‘Attached to what?’ the Colonel asks, stepping forwards.
‘Bolts, metal plates, spoons,’ says Fenn. ‘It’s an alarm, not a booby trap. Everyone watch where they tread.’
He leads the way, the Colonel following, as we step carefully down the stairway. I glance over the rail into the darkness below, and there’s an unmistakable glow of flames from near to the base of the stairs some thirty metres below. I’m sure I see movement, and Lorii’s glance over her shoulder at me confirms that I haven’t imagined it. Without a word, and trying to make as little noise as possible, we spread out, allowing a gap of a few steps to open up between each of us. Looking up, it’s easy to see the crude tripwire and rattling, clanging alarm system suspended from the steps above.
Suddenly, Fenn freezes and we all stop immediately, weapons brought up to the firing position, ready for anything. He hands his lasgun back to the Colonel and draws his knife, keeping it behind his back to prevent any reflection from the firelight below. The Colonel lets him to disappear further down the steps. Shortly afterwards there’s a muffled groan, and the sound of boots scraping on metal. Then a heavy sigh.
Receiving some signal from Fenn that we can’t see, the Colonel carries on downwards, and we follow, catching up with Fenn a dozen steps on, stooped over a body, his lasgun reclaimed from the Colonel. The man is thin to the point of being wasted. He is dressed in ragged breeches and jerkin and his arms are tattooed with a pattern of interlocking black squares. On his head he wears a black and red scarf, tied in an intricate knot at the base of his skull. The tattered ends drip with blood from the ragged wound across his throat.
I glance at Fenn and he gives me a ‘him-or-us’ sort of look. I nod in understanding. We’re close enough to the fire now to hear the crackling of flames and the murmur of voices. It’s only about ten more steps down, and by crouching we can see into the low room below through the spiralling banister. The substantial fire is a little off to our right, and there are seven or eight figures sitting around it on blankets.
The room itself, ruddy from the firelight, is some kind of old slaughterhouse. Hooks on belts hang from the ceiling, rusted gears seized together from the ancient mechanism that used to move them. Blood channels are cut into the floor, angling down towards one wall into a gutter and down into a sinkhole, even redder than the rest of the room.
Along one wall is a long, rusted metal bench, covered with junk of all kinds: broken knives, hammer heads, corroded spanners, planks of wood, nests of wire and stretched springs, leaking power packs and pieces of broken glass.
At that moment, one of the figures by the fire half turns to look over its shoulder straight at me. It’s a woman, she has long straggles of hair sticking out of her headscarf. Her mouth is open as if she’s about to speak and her right hand is raised holding a bottle. Her eyes lock on mine for an eternity, and I can do nothing but stare back at her.
Her invitation for a drink turns to a shout of warning.
The others around the fire boil up from their places, grabbing weapons and shouting. Fenn leaps down the steps, followed by the Colonel and the rest of us. The crack of gunfire echoes around the room and bullets whiz past me as I jump down the last few steps, almost losing my footing.
Lasbolts and muzzle flares blot out the firelight as we return fire. A bullet plucks at the material of my trousers just below the knee. Hurling myself to the left, I fire from the hip, aiming at the woman who is crouched down with a pistol held in both hands.
The first shot is high, but the second takes her in the shoulder and the third low in the stomach. She sprawls backwards, pistols flying from her grip, and clutches her stomach.
Brownie curses to my right, sheltering behind the iron of the staircase, fumbling with the heavy stubber as Spooge slaps an ammo belt into the breech. The Colonel’s bolt pistol roars in my ear. One of the enemy is flung backwards by a hit in the chest, onto the fire. His ragged clothes erupt into flames and his piercing shrieks can be heard over the noise of the fire fight.
In a few seconds, all but one of them is down, dead or wounded and the last one bolts for an archway to the left of the fire.
‘We need him alive,’ snaps the Colonel, knocking aside Fenn’s lasgun with his pistol as he takes aim.
‘Got him!’ I shout, and I sprint forwards after the getaway.
I don’t spare a glance at the groaning wounded as I duck through the arch, which opens out into a high chamber, vaulted with buttresses and pillars. Ancient, defunct machinery fills the room, soaring above my head with banks of dials and gauges, creating a maze of pathways. Water drips down from rusted pipes that criss-cross the ceiling. A splash to my right sends me heading in that direction. I jog along, half-crouched and alert, wary of an ambush. To my left I see a deep puddle rippling against the base of the machines and turn to follow my prey.
I catch a glimpse of him in the gloom, about twenty metres ahead. He ducks to the right and out of sight. Speeding up, I leap over the puddle, lasgun grasped in both hands as I pound up the rockcrete aisle.
Skidding around the corner, I have to spin and twist to avoid the knife thrust at my face as the man jumps out of the shadows at me. Instinctively, I drop and roll to the left using the momentum of my run to come back up to my feet, grabbing my lasgun by the barrel and swinging it. The butt connects with the man’s arm above the elbow; it knocks him off balance and jars the knife from his fingers.
I step in to drive the toe of my left boot into his family jewels. I almost lift him off the ground. With an agonised squeal he drops like a sack of synthi-spuds, grasping his crotch, coughing and choking. I loom over him, and he looks up at me, pleading in his eyes.
He’s older than me, I would guess thirty-five years at least, his face thin, his premature wrinkles lined with grease and grime. His eyes are watery and weak. They are filled with tears from the pain in his nuts, his lips cracked and raw as he wordlessly mouths his agony. Like the others, he’s dressed in breeches and jerkin, which is open to reveal a tight, wiry body tattooed with the same overlapping boxes design on the sentry. His scarf is pinned in place with gaudy brooches shaped as cogs and skulls.
I hear the others making their way through the room and I call out to them. Slinging my rifle over my shoulder, I offer him a hand and pull him to his feet. He stamps several times on the ground, trying to get his balls to settle properly. He is still bent over.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask him, and he looks at me with hate-filled eyes.
‘Derflan Kierck,’ he wheezes. ‘By the Great Cog, who are you?’
‘We’re your new best friends,’ I tell him as the others gather behind me. ‘Say hello to the Last Chancers.’
FIFTEEN
TRAITOR CITY
The underhive is lit with thousands of burning braziers. They stand on poles and are slung from chains from the high plasteel rafters that soar above the small conglomeration of huts and hovels. They are wedged into spaces between the banks of gigantic pistons that seized up thousands of years ago.
We’re standing at the top of a wide sweep of stairs that leads down into the vast hall. We are now dressed in rags and headscarves taken from the dead underhivers. Our packs have been swapped for ragged, rope-strapped sacks, our lasguns swathed in strips of dirty cloth to conceal their well-maintained appearance. It turns out that the group we killed were tool merchants, who scavenge and repair whatever they can find to sell. It was a workshop we’d found them in. They used to spend half their time travelling from settlement to settlement.
Kierck stands at the front of our group, the Colonel right behind him, ready to grab him if he tries to do a runner.
‘Is Firehole,’ the underhiver says, grinning and revealing his stubby, brown-stained teeth. ‘Good tradin’ at Firehole. Allas plenty of tradin’ at Firehole.’
He looks at me and flinches. His expression changing into an oily, sycophantic smile before he looks away.
‘We will circle around,’ says the Colonel. ‘We should avoid contact as much as possible.’
‘No!’ says Kierck, his voice a nasal whine wholly in keeping with his scrawny, withered appearance. ‘They seen us already. Wonder why we not come in if we leave now. Is good, no worries. We trade, we go on, they not know where we go next.’
The Colonel considers this for moment and nods.
‘We will do this your way,’ he says. ‘But if we run foul, you will be the first to die, understand?’
‘No worries, Derflan not run you foul, you see, yes,’ Kierck says, almost bowing because he’s so hunched over, the same ingratiating smile on his face. ‘Derflan talk, we sell, they buy. Is allas good, yes?’
The Colonel nods again and Kierck leads us down the steps. He pulls a small hammer from his belt and then produces a triangular sheet of metal hung on a chain. Holding the chain, he begins to rap the hammer against the sheet, ringing out a sharp clang every few steps. He begins to holler, his accent so broad I can’t understand what he’s saying.
‘No talk,’ he says, looking over his shoulder at us. He eyes us critically, obviously not pleased with our disguise. A leering look enters his eye as he examines Lorii. ‘Mouths give you away as outsiders. I say you cousins, brother-keepers of the Great Cog. You learnin’ tool tradin’ from ole Derflan. You promise keep ears open and mouths shut, that why you not talk, yes?’
As we approach, people emerge from the hovels of Firehole. Most are semi-naked, dressed in leather aprons, heavy kilts and thick breeches, their chests bare. This goes for the women too, and like the men who emerge, they’re also painted with orange and red flame designs from navel to shoulder. Some show branding scars on their faces, breasts and arms, and the men have a strange F-shaped runes burnt into their foreheads. A few have small children with them, unmarked as yet. In all, about thirty or forty gather around us as we walk into the middle of the settlement.
I can feel heat rising up from the ground and I guess that there are some kind of forges or furnaces below us, that once worked the huge pistons, but are now turned to some other use. The fact that they’re fire-worshippers is as plain as the nose on my face, and their whole lives are based on this valuable resource so they’ve built their settlement on top of it.
