The Reaping Time - Robbie MacNiven Read online

  Toa raised his bolt pistol, steadied against the rim of the Coral Shield.

  ‘Hold, brother,’ Te Kahurangi snapped, a sliver of his psychic potency stilling Toa’s finger on the trigger. ‘Remember why we are here.’ Toa grunted unhappily and lowered the weapon as more bolts cracked off the Carcharodons.

  ‘Whatever the damned reason is, we can’t stay,’ Strike Veteran Dorthor growled. The weight of fire was intensifying as more cadets recovered their weapons and took snap-shots through the dust. Whether it was deliberate treachery, or just a panicked reaction to the blast, Te Kahurangi didn’t know. But Dorthor was right.

  ‘The grav-lift,’ Akia said, motioning to the mesh doors that stood below the sagging remains of the gantry behind them.

  ‘Whoever has done this may well be able to override the controls,’ Te Kahurangi said.

  ‘We’ll take it anyway,’ Akia responded. ‘Unless you wish me to butcher every boy in this chamber on my way to the stairs on the other side.’

  Another las-bolt hit Te Kahurangi, earthing against his breastplate and leaving the blue ceramite scarred. There was no more time for dispute. With Akia at his side, he led First Squad towards the waiting lift, punching the doors open. Las-bolts pursued them, snapping at their heels or sizzling overhead.

  ‘Take us to the surface,’ Akia ordered as they forced their way into the lift plate. ‘We must re-establish contact with White Maw. Then we’ll discover the extent of this treachery.’

  ‘Company Master, I cannot,’ complained Signifier Karra as he tried to enter commands into the lift’s rune panel. ‘The mechanism isn’t responding.’

  Before Akia could reply, the lift lurched beneath them. Akia and Te Kahurangi’s helmet lenses met.

  ‘Mag-locks,’ Te Kahurangi voxed. A split second after the thudding sounds of mag-boots engaging, the floor fell away.

  Te Kahurangi had been right – whoever had wired the gantry for destruction also possessed the master key for the grav-lifts. The one they stood upon had been sent into plummeting freefall, plunging at an ever-increasing speed towards what could only be total annihilation at the bottom of the shaft.

  The Pale Nomad reached out with his mind as they fell, bending the lift’s mechanisms to his will. He slammed vices of psychic force around the rotors and grav-shafts, triggering the disabled emergency breaks. Feet locked to the lift’s floor, he slammed his force staff down, its rune-carved, psy-reactive bone channelling his powers and making the green shard at its tip glow.

  Almost imperceptibly, they began to slow. The tortured shriek of the lift mechanism eased. The plummeting sense of dislocation passed. Te Kahurangi said nothing, his stance firm and braced, the servos in his armour locked and his sharp teeth clenched as he focused every ounce of mental strength into arresting the plunging descent. Blue witchlights snapped and crackled around the carved ceramite of his psychic hood, and burned behind his helm’s black lenses.

  Finally, the grav-lift clattered to a complete stop. Te Kahurangi managed to utter a single word.

  ‘Out.’

  With a series of thuds the Carcharodons unlocked their mag-boots. Akia tore back the mesh door, revealing a red-lit corridor beyond. The entrance was misaligned with the door to the lift, so that the Space Marines had to duck down into the tunnel, scraping their power-armoured bodies through the gap.

  Te Kahurangi was the last to go. After a moment more of shuddering concentration he threw himself at the gap, rolling through. The instant his psychic will was gone the lift fell again, like a drop pod plunging through a planet’s atmosphere. Its descent was lit by a hail of sparks and heralded by the shriek of burning brakes, until both were lost in the utter darkness of the shaft’s depths. Eventually, a distant crash boomed up from the deeps.

  ‘You have our thanks,’ said Akia, offering Te Kahurangi his gauntlet. The Librarian took it, struggling to find his breath. Every enhanced muscle in his transhuman body ached, and his temples throbbed with pressure-pain. He could feel blood running from his nose, swiftly clotting.

  He took a moment to gather himself, assessing their location. The tunnel they were in was more of a natural fissure, the only evidence of human engineering a narrow metal walkway that ran above the slow-moving lava flow constituting the tunnel’s floor. It was largely scabbed over with a dark, cooling crust, but the Carcharodons’ auto-senses still read the temperature in the corridor of blackened rock as infernally hot.

  ‘We have no schematic traces,’ Akia said. ‘No idea where we are. And no connection to White Maw.’

  ‘If we do not make contact soon, Strike Leader Oruka will enact protocol and begin an assault on our last known location,’ Te Kahurangi said.

  ‘Which is an expenditure of resources I would rather avoid,’ Akia replied. ‘Our objective is to re-establish contact and end this foolishness with all expediency.’

  Te Kahurangi knew that ‘expediency’ likely involved Akia’s two-handed chainaxe, Reaper, and the leaders of the treacherous Zartakians. He gestured up the bending tunnel.

  ‘At least our course is clear enough. There is no other way.’

  ‘That much is true,’ Akia said. ‘Brother Dorthor, take point.’

  The Space Marines advanced along the walkway, feet clanging sonorously against the metal. Unprotected humans would not have been able to survive the tunnel’s infernal heat, but the scavenged, mismatching power armour worn by the Carcharodons was capable of withstanding far more inimical conditions. Provided the walkway held, Zartak’s depths were no danger to them.

  ‘How did you sense what would happen in the cavern?’ Akia asked Te Kahurangi. ‘Was it a vision?’

  ‘It was,’ the Chief Librarian admitted.

  ‘But you didn’t deign to warn us beforehand? You knew we were walking into a trap, yet you said nothing?’

  ‘The future is not a straight path, Company Master,’ Te Kahurangi responded. ‘It is a murky, bottomless depth. I could not be certain that by speaking of my vision, I would not guarantee that it came to pass.’

  ‘Yet it did, all the same.’

  ‘This time, yes. How a vision will play out is never certain.’

  ‘Contact,’ Dorthor interrupted. Te Kahurangi looked past the Strike Veteran to see that they’d turned a corner. Ahead was a heavy-looking door, and a man in a bulky grey thermoweave suit. As he caught sight of the Space Marines he went for the door’s wheel lock, trying to slam it shut.

  ‘Terminate,’ Akia ordered. A second later the boom of Dothor’s bolter thundered through the tunnel. The man’s head burst apart and he slumped against the half-open door.

  The Carcharodons moved up to the end of the tunnel and passed through, bolters raised. Te Kahurangi let the tendrils of his consciousness reach out, seeking what lay ahead. He found thoughts, lonely and desperate, edged with fear.

  They were in a holding block. The bare rock walls had been bolted with prison cages, the mesh wires electrified. Figures huddled on rocky ledges within, clad like their captors in heavy thermoweave. There were dozens of cages ranking down the long, dark chamber. Their occupants stared at the Space Marines as they entered.

  There were guards too. They went for their heat-wrapped autoguns. One tripped an alarm, its wail filling the subterranean space. The Carcharodons put them down quickly, a rapid staccato of bolter shells bursting the gaolers apart, their remains steaming in the hot air.

  ‘There is a stairwell at the far end of the chamber,’ Dothor voxed as his auto-senses probed the half-dark.

  ‘Make for it,’ Akia ordered.

  ‘Wait,’ shouted a voice over the wail of the alarms. One of the prisoners had risen, a stooped, elderly figure. Wordlessly, the Carcharodons turned towards her.

  ‘We’re not common criminals,’ she said, words muffled by her thermoweave suit. ‘We’re loyal to the God-Emperor and the true Guild Houses. We can help you.’
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br />   ‘What does she want?’ Akia demanded of Te Kahurangi over the vox, anger colouring his voice. ‘She wishes to be freed?’

  ‘These prisoners are not just criminals,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘I have touched upon their thoughts. They are victims of the rebellion here. Loyalists.’

  ‘Then they will be released once we have purged the traitors responsible for this,’ Akia responded.

  ‘They likely possess local knowledge. Our chances of reaching the rebellion’s leaders would be improved with their guidance.’

  ‘They will slow us down. We do not have time to shepherd them all.’

  ‘Not all,’ Te Kahurangi said. He slammed his staff into the rune lock of the elderly prisoner’s cell. The electricity shorted and died, and he tore the door mesh aside with one fist. The woman and the cell’s other occupant, a boy, cowered back, eyes wide behind the grimy vision strips of their thermos.

  ‘Who do you serve?’ Te Kahurangi demanded in Low Gothic. The woman responded first.

  ‘Groundworks Corporation Guild, and the God-Emperor.’

  ‘What are your names?’

  ‘I am Eustice Maudlin, former guildmistress,’ the woman said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘And this is my grandson, Caderik.’ The boy stared up at Te Kahurangi.

  ‘Do you know the route to the surface from here?’

  ‘I do,’ the boy, Caderik, said before Maudlin could reply.

  ‘What about the location of the ringleaders of this rebellion?’

  ‘The sub-guild quota hall,’ Caderik said. ‘That is where all their announcements are routed from.’

  ‘Show us,’ Te Kahurangi replied, taking the boy by the scruff of his suit and dragging him from the cell.

  ‘Not without grandma,’ the boy shrieked, reaching back. After a moment, Te Kahurangi relented.

  ‘We will not slow for you,’ he told Maudlin as the matriarch stepped out on uncertain legs.

  ‘You’re going to kill those treacherous bastards?’ she demanded.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Then I’ll be right beside you,’ she said. Te Kahurangi fancied she was smiling behind her suit’s respirator. He ushered them out.

  ‘Caderik,’ Maudlin said. ‘Lead on,’

  ‘What about all the others?’ the boy asked. The dozens of prisoners held in the adjacent cells had begun to shout and clamour, getting as close to their electrified bonds as they dared.

  ‘They’re loyal, like us,’ Maudlin said to Te Kahurangi. ‘Anyone who didn’t agree with Thornvyl and his plot was thrown in here.’

  ‘There’s no time–’ Te Kahurangi began. Before he could go on there was a series of cracking sounds, and the alarm suddenly shut off.

  The silence lasted only a second. With a crash of collapsing bedrock, part of the chamber wall caved in. Lava burst through the fissure, a blazing, molten jet that hit the bare floor and quickly began to spread.

  ‘The escape failsafe,’ Maudlin said. ‘Someone’s triggered it.’

  ‘We go, now,’ Akia said over the squad vox. There was no more time for persuasion. Te Kahurangi threw the protesting guilder woman over one arm and snatched the boy in the other. The rest of the Command Squad were already making for the stairwell. The other prisoners began to wail and scream as they realised they were being abandoned. The Carcharodons paid them no heed.

  The lava was spreading rapidly, more of the rock walls either side collapsing to admit a blazing rush of heat and magma. The screaming of the prisoners reached new heights as the lava reached them, and even the resistant thermosuits began to burst into flames.

  Te Kahurangi saw none of it. He reached the stairs, and began to climb.

  The sub-guild quota hall was once again in an uproar. Thornvyl drew his gilt-edged laspistol and raised it in the air. The ornate weapon wasn’t loaded, but the sight of it was finally enough to bring silence.

  ‘Your petty arguing is achieving nothing,’ he snarled at his fellow guilders. ‘We need to work together, now more than ever.’

  ‘Where has working with you got us?’ Xeron of Carbonwing Ventures snapped. ‘You assured us you had this entire situation under control!’ The other guilders shouted their agreement, until Thornvyl waved his sidearm again.

  ‘It is under control,’ he snapped, gesturing at the viewscreen banks. The split images showed vid feeds from across sink shaft 1. The assembled guilders had watched as the Space Marines had evaded the explosives set for them in drill cavern 11 and, through some sort of damned witchcraft, escaped the trap of the plummeting grav-lift. Now they had not only survived Thornvyl’s initiation of Order 19 – the directive to execute the loyalist prisoners seized when the rebel guilders had taken control – they had even absconded with two, the old matriarch of Groundworks Corp and her grandson.

  ‘The Sub-Western mineworks,’ Ghorst said. ‘My assets. The tunnel workings there are incomplete. We’ll lose track of them.’

  ‘But they have to reappear somewhere within the main works of the sink shaft if they want to reach the surface,’ Thornvyl said.

  ‘Or if they want to reach us,’ Krane added darkly.

  ‘We should evacuate,’ said Maron shrilly.

  ‘No,’ Thornvyl replied. ‘If we flee we guarantee that they’ll make for the surface, and once they have re-established contact with their ship more will come. If they can be convinced to come to us directly, we’ll have them. And once they’re dead we can seal the mines. The rest in orbit will have to pay in blood for every tunnel and rathole they take. It would take them years.’

  ‘Have you seen what we’re dealing with?’ Maron demanded. ‘Have you seen what they are?’

  ‘Did you see what they did to my man?’ Tork added, still in shock after having witnessed one of the ashen giants smash the skull of his body double on the drill cavern’s viewing gantry.

  ‘Enough,’ Elinara said, rising. ‘You’ve led us from bad to worse these last six years, Thornvyl. We’ve trusted you for too long. I am going to secure my own assets, personally.’

  The mistress of the Freehold Prospector Guild drew her ceremonial shawl about her shoulders and made for the quota hall’s doors. The click and hum of a charged power pack stopped her.

  ‘Nobody is leaving this room,’ Thornvyl said, raising his now-loaded laspistol. ‘Not until this situation is resolved.’

  ‘You can’t stop all of us,’ Elinara said defiantly.

  ‘No,’ Thornvyl said, smiling coldly. ‘But the drill walkers outside can.’

  ‘You’ve requisitioned my walkers?’ Maron demanded.

  ‘Only as a precaution. A last line of defence, should our unwelcome guests make it this far.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare turn them against us,’ Ghorst said. Thornvyl’s smile didn’t waver.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t realised how far men will go for wealth and position. After all, that’s why we’re here, is it not? Now sit down, all of you, and relax. Everything will be fine.’

  Caderik led the Carcharodons into the darkness. Te Kahurangi worked a sliver of calm into the boy’s mind, taking the edge off the terror he felt in the presence of the gigantic warriors. He spoke to the Pale Nomad, his words halting as he took them up narrow stair shafts and along increasingly low, tight work tunnels and loco-rail haulage lines.

  Caderik and his family had been imprisoned for almost six years. That was when a faction of the guildmasters that ruled Zartak’s disparate mining companies had first launched their coup. Apparently driven by the belief that the Imperium’s adamantium tithes were extortionate, a ringleader named Thornvyl had ordered the destruction of an Administratum tribute ship, the Praetorian, in high orbit above Zartak. The rebel guilders had used their influence to gain complete control over the colony. The Imperium hadn’t responded, until now.

  Te Kahurangi let the boy talk. The Librarian needed him
– his grandmother less so. The Space Marine didn’t waste any of his psychic power in easing her own fear or mistrust. She wheezed along behind Te Kahurangi, seemingly forgotten.

  Caderik spoke of how his parents had died in the holding block, years earlier. The boy claimed he barely remembered it, but when he described their passing Te Kahurangi sensed his anger spike. The Librarian stoked the emotion, using it to give fresh vigour to the flagging boy. They were rising steadily, the dimly lit mineworks they passed through seemingly abandoned.

  Until the blast charges in the tunnel they were passing through detonated, pulverising Caderik and Maudlin and pounding the Carcharodons with tonnes of earth.

  Te Kahurangi had a split second to respond to the sudden vision. He snatched Caderik and Maudlin and turned to his left, shielding them both. In the same moment the charges, concealed in a rathole on the far side of the right-hand tunnel wall, detonated. A concussive wave of dirt and rock slammed into the seven Carcharodons, hammering them into the opposite wall, smashing plate and spraining muscle. Only Te Kahurangi, his servos locked, withstood the blast.

  He didn’t have time to check whether Caderik and Maudlin had survived. He didn’t have time to do anything but rise. From the wall of smoke and debris, men in respirators and bagged grey work overalls charged them.

  The first of them shot Te Kahurangi at point-blank range. The las-bolt, set to its highest megathule range, seared deep into the Chief Librarian’s breastplate, nicking at his black carapace. The second and third speared the cracked rock ceiling above, for the Librarian’s force staff shot out to intercept his attacker, cracking the weapon from his hands. Before the man could respond an uppercut from the staff snapped his head back, tearing his respirator seal. He crumpled.

  Around him his fellow ambushers waded in. Clad in their masks and mining overalls, they came at the Space Marines with manic desperation, eyes wide behind the filmy lenses of their respirators, wielding lascutters, lasguns and simple half-picks.