Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Read online

  She half turns away, eager to be moving too, eyes straying back down the passageway.

  ‘Where’s Karol gone? People are gonna die in the stampede.’ I grab her shoulder, dragging her attention back to me. ‘Where’s Karol?’

  ‘He went to the sumpgates, to lock the portal.’

  ‘It’s too late for that, if there’s orks in the Waste Scrub,’ I say. She glances down at my fingers digging through the material of her vest. I let go, stepping back. ‘Head down into the walkarounds and round up everyone you can. Take them to the downflow.’

  ‘Downflow? There are orks at the other end of the downflow.’

  ‘Less than uphive.’

  ‘What is your plan?’ The Colonel suddenly at my shoulder causes me to flinch. ‘You do have a plan, yes?’

  ‘Run,’ I say. ‘Get everybody out of the sumpways first and worry about what’s next once we’re out of here.’

  A slow clanging begins in the pipes running along the length of the passageway and up through the sump hall. A trickling follows after, becoming a stronger flow, the brackets rattling as liquid surges up the long-disused pipeways.

  ‘What does that signify?’ asks the Colonel, looking up.

  I start down the passage, grabbing Karste’s wrist so that she follows.

  ‘It means Karol was too late, and now he’s flooding the dropdrains to slow the orks down.’

  A wailing siren joins the sound of gushing water, intermittent and distant. I feel Karste shudder at the noise and increase my pace to a jog, glancing back to make sure Schaeffer is following.

  ‘And that’s the signal from the flue yards. They’re coming at us both ways.’ My jog becomes a run as shouts echo down the passage from the sump hall. A question keeps hammering at my thoughts and I let it out with a snarl. ‘Why now? What are they after?’

  As I feared, the sump hall is pandemonium. Those on the upper levels are climbing back up through the vent pipes, but that’s going to take them into the runnerways that criss-cross the broken hivefloor above – no way out of there except back into the sump or into the path of the orks. Those lower down the viewing galleries are heading to the floor, some of them trying to push others, clawing their way forward. Fights have broken out, adding to the mayhem.

  ‘I thought you would be better prepared for attack,’ says the Colonel as we reach my throne platform. ‘How have you survived for so long?’

  ‘The underhive orks are scrawny things, like the jungle ferals we fought. There’s not enough down here for them to feed on, Nazrek says, so they don’t get too big. The hive orks, they don’t bother coming down here because there’s nothing worth taking and nothing worth fighting.’

  ‘Until now,’ adds Schaeffer.

  I shrug.

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing’s changed.’ My gaze settles on the prisoners, sitting huddled and confused in a ring of my fighters. The escorts don’t look happy, caught between the job of keeping them captive and the spreading panic. I can see a few of them have made a run for it already.

  ‘Maybe they thought there was a new attack,’ I say, letting go of Karste. I point her to the steps on my left. ‘Go on, round up who you can.’

  She bolts off without a look back.

  ‘Maybe the orks heard a rumour of Imperial soldiers coming into the underhive and came to say hello.’

  ‘You think this is my fault?’ The Colonel shakes his head. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of soldiers camped outside Acheron, why would the orks pay attention to a single platoon?’

  ‘Rumours can kill,’ I say. ‘A platoon becomes a company, becomes a regiment… And if those uphive orks have been getting as cranky as the ones we’ve been scrapping with lately… Itching for a fight. Any excuse.’

  I wave my hands and start yelling, trying to attract the attention of the mob churning down into the sump hall, imploring them to slow down, to stop panicking. Some turn, steps faltering; others plough on towards the door at the far end – a vertical gate that used to be for the algae scrapers to access the main sump that I turned into my audience hall.

  ‘With me!’ I bellow at the guards, grabbing the lasgun from the closest as I reach them. Some of them look at the Colonel and the captives, slow to react. ‘Don’t worry about them. Come with me.’

  Schaeffer musters his soldiers while I push on with mine, calling for people to calm down as I wade into the crowd. The command starts to ripple outwards, too slowly for some, pressed tight in the pack or trampled as they fall.

  ‘Clear the way! Out of my way!’ As I shout, I slap my hand on the shoulder of Yousef, one of the guards. ‘Get over to the steps on the other side, slow everything down. Nobody’s getting out of here if we just panic.’

  He nods and sets off with some of the others. They’re my best, like Karol and his lot, ex-Imperial Guard, veterans of the ork war. Clear-headed, but some of them not so dependable I’d turn my back on them. Given the company I’ve kept before, they’re a pretty solid bunch.

  Schaeffer stays close to me, happy to follow for the moment. I start dragging people back, forcing my way into the crush as we get closer and closer to the gateway. Like line-passing buckets at a fire drill, we pull people away and move them to the back, like we’re digging through the crowd.

  Finally, we get to the gate, parting the last press like a blade, forcing a few through the gap in front of us.

  ‘Two at a time, no more,’ I growl to the men and women around me, passing through the gate. ‘Take the eaststride to the downflow.’

  I linger just on the far side of the gate to make sure everything is in hand. There’s some tussles as they establish the new system but I hear the message spreading back through the mob. Just the smallest hint of order, or someone with a plan, settles the mood over the next couple of minutes.

  ‘Follow on, when the last ones are out,’ I tell my people, receiving nods in reply.

  There’s a steady stream of folks heading down the dimly lit passage, turning left at the fork at the end, further into the depths. The tramp of feet on ferrocrete is continuous, filling the space along with the smell of smoke and sweat. A breeze wafts back from a clanking recyc­ling unit at the far end, bringing the stench of old water still trapped in the sumpheads.

  ‘We’ll hook up with Karol by the deepbounds and then lead the way through the downflow,’ I tell Schaeffer.

  I’m just on the verge of thinking that we can keep this under control when the whole passage shudders and a boom thunders around us, cascading dust and rust from the ceiling. A few shouts from behind warn us that not all is well and I half-turn in time to see a fresh tide of people surging through the gate, shouting and screaming.

  ‘Armoury! That way!’ I yell at Schaeffer, pointing down the right fork ahead. I throw him the lasgun too. ‘Anyone tries to stop you…’

  He’s already moving a heartbeat later, snapping off orders to have his group fall in. I feel a shiver course up my spine and catch a glance of a familiar face as they go past. It’s Oahebs, the psychic null, glaring at me, and then he’s lost in the shadows of the gloomy corridor.

  ‘The Burned Man!’ The cry comes from a woman in the crowd, hidden by the masses, her voice almost lost in the returning chorus of shouts and cries. ‘Bless me! Bless me!’

  Her intent is caught by others and some of them break away from the general movement, coming towards me with hands outstretched, eyes alight with desperation.

  ‘The Burned Man!’ they call, hoping that I can somehow save them just with my presence. My touch.

  ‘Frag this,’ I snarl, to no one in particular. I break into a run, weaving through the people streaming down the eaststride. The corridor broadens out into a wider, vaulted hall. There’s a section where the underhive has shifted over the centuries, creating a drop of about ten metres. Walkways of scavenged metal and plastek cabling zigzag down the ferrocrete cliff. />
  I take the shorter route. Jumping from one to the next, I reach the bottom just as another boom of detonation rolls from above. Everyone else is streaming across the split hall to the remains of an old pumping station to the right, but I head left. There’s a shortcut here, providing you can pull yourself up about five metres of cable and squeeze through a crawl hole I wouldn’t wish on a servitor.

  I haul myself up the improvised rope and through the access hatch, getting a face full of stinking, hot fumes flowing from somewhere uphive. My eyes sting, my nostrils burn and I keep my mouth clamped tight as I wriggle across the maintenance flue and push open the grille on the other side. Head first I roll out of the pipe, coming to my feet on a haphazard scaffold platform. Rotten wood almost gives way under my boots as I edge along the planks to a corroded ladder at the end. Straight down is a hundred-metre drop into the undersump. Nothing down there but rust rats and slow death.

  I step out onto the ladder and then jump across a small gap to a more solid ledge on the other side – the remains of an old inspection walkway around the outside of the main sump container. Ducking through a service gap, avoiding the last vestiges of jagged glass around the frame, I come back onto the eaststride, avoiding the massive dog-leg around the pump station remains.

  Dropping the last metre back to the ground, I give myself time to think. It’ll be another minute or two before anyone else catches up from the long way round, though I can hear them coming.

  There’s a junction just a few metres away, a sort of nexus between the main sump and dozens of access routes that must have led to monitoring stations, hab-blocks and Emperor knows where else. Most of it’s a rubble-choked mess, impossible to get through now. The strideways are tunnels dug through the broken rockcrete, a lot of them collapsed again. Three that I know of keep going.

  The eastern corridor curves around to the downflow, a massive dry-drain system where the orks have created a settlement. The moisture’s good for them and we have to use flamers to keep their fungal spread from creeping too far back up the pipes.

  There’s the south-east corridor that leads deeper into ork territory, about another two kilometres in-hive as near as we can tell. It’s where our patch joins with the broken expanse known as the Waste Scrub. No point going that way, straight into the hive orks.

  And the northway.

  I linger for a moment, looking down the black passage. It’s just about big enough for a person to go along at a crouch. Whiffs of gas pockets mean you don’t want to take a naked flame down there with you, and portable powercells are rarer than commissar smiles down here, so it’s a three-hour pitch-black crawl.

  But after that, there’s a good chance of getting out to the hive rim. It’s too small for the orks to use, and too treacherous for a group to evacuate, so it’d just be me.

  I tell myself that I’ve changed. I felt the touch of the Emperor on my soul and that’s got to mean something. He didn’t keep me alive just so that I could scav together a half-arsed cult for Him and then run away when it got dangerous.

  I’m the Burned Man. I have followers. People depending on me. A whole bunch of folks have put their trust in me. Their faith.

  And still my body is ignoring my good intentions, keeping me hovering at the junction instead of turning to the east strideway like I’m supposed to.

  A guttural shout causes me to flinch, instinct almost throwing me into the darkness before I process the sound.

  ‘Boss!’ Nazrek bellows again, lumbering towards me from the south-east tunnel, Grot scampering at its heels. Beyond them I see Karol with beard-braids swaying, and about ten others coming at me quickly.

  My guilt makes me keenly aware of where I’m standing, and I step back from the north passage, as though putting distance between me and it will allay their suspicions.

  ‘What’s the news?’ I ask as the ork and Karol reach me.

  ‘Never seen anything like it,’ says Karol.

  ‘Big green,’ grunts Nazrek. The ork raps the side of its head with bulging knuckles. ‘Feel big green in here. Lots of green. All coming this way. Lots of Waaagh!’ This last sound is delivered as a deafening shout.

  ‘Thousands, I’d say,’ Karol continues, expression haunted. ‘I just opened the flood bars and ran.’

  ‘Angry. Very shouty,’ Nazrek adds.

  Grot says something in its chirpier voice. Its ears are flat against its head – a sign of worry. Nazrek snarls back and Grot scampers away a few strides, hiding behind Karol’s leg, red eyes glaring up at the ork.

  ‘We’ll keep moving,’ I tell them, starting towards the east passage. ‘I’m sending everyone out through the downflow. Keep tight, together, we might catch the under-orks by surprise.’

  ‘Not good,’ says Nazrek, shaking its head, thick lips curling into a grim­ace. ‘Big green. Down-runts feel big green too.’

  ‘No other choice,’ I say. I turn as I hear footsteps coming down from behind us, the first of the folks fleeing the sump hall emerging from the distant shadows. It’s not so much a rush now, more a moving huddle, the braver followers leading the way in small clumps, most of them carrying pipes, sharpened metal shivs and other improvised weapons.

  ‘Go with them, but don’t start through the downflow yet,’ I tell Karol. Nazrek moves to follow him as he steps away but I grab the ork’s arm. ‘Stick with me. Tell me more about what you feel in the big green. How far away is the hive-mob?’

  ‘Is not scanner, boss,’ it replies with a shrug. It’s odd how it’s picked up some of our words and expressions. A surprisingly quick learner, when I think back to the grunts and bellows that used to make up half of Nazrek’s speech. It says it’s because the ‘green’ is strong on Armageddon, makes the orks smarter. Hearing about some of the stuff the Beast Ghazghkull did, I can believe that.

  ‘Like, you feel hotter but can’t say how closer fire is. Is getting lot hotter.’

  ‘Right,’ I say with a nod.

  People are moving past us in numbers now, scores of them. I see Karste among the crowd and give her a thumbs up. She looks afraid but manages a hesitant smile in return.

  The ork grunts and turns its head to look back towards the tunnel leading to the Waste Scrub, eyes narrowed.

  ‘Is noisy. Loud.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve said that. What do you mean? What’s loud?’

  ‘Big green is loud, boss,’ the ork says, squinting down at me. Its brow furrows. ‘Big green sorta like buzz in head. More orks is bigger buzz, louder noise. Big green is big loud now. Not just green, summink else too. Bigger loud.’

  ‘Bigger loud?’

  ‘Sorta. Diff’rent loud. Blood loud.’

  I don’t really have any idea what Nazrek is talking about, except I can feel a pinch at the nape of my neck. It’s been that way for the last few minutes and I thought it was tension, but it’s like a pulsing that isn’t in time to my heartbeat. The pressure I felt before, creeping down my spine, compressing my backbone with its weight.

  Louder. What’s louder? I think.

  ‘Keep moving!’ I shout, waving the crowd on to distract myself from disturbing, half-formed thoughts. ‘Those with weapons to the front. Report to Karol.’

  I linger for another half-minute, urging folks onward. I see Schaeffer moving with the crowd, a head taller than everybody else. He surges through them, parting people with growled commands and sheer presence, the rest of the Last Chancers following behind. They have a mix of lasguns and autoguns, a few with pistols. Schaeffer tosses a laspistol to me as he breaks from the stream of people turning towards the downflow.

  I take the lead, striding purposefully along the side of the descending crowd, calling for people to make room ahead. The flow of people starts to slow down, gathering them together a hundred metres or so from the broken valve station that opens onto the downflow.

  ‘Keep moving,’
I tell them, waving them forward. They seem sluggish, reluctant to press further forwards. A few whispered pleas and desperate moans greet me as I arrive.

  ‘Not everyone is used to marching into danger,’ the Colonel reminds me. ‘Most people try to move away from it.’

  ‘I hadn’t given it a second thought,’ I confess. ‘I guess I’m just used to confronting deadly enemies head-on, thanks to you,’

  He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Get going,’ I shout at the dawdlers.

  ‘What about the orks?’ someone asks from the crowd. ‘We haven’t got any guns.’

  ‘The ones behind us aren’t going to be any nicer,’ I remind them. Still a lot of them seem hesitant, the initial panic worn off, the thought of moving into danger when they seem safe too much to overcome. I raise my voice. ‘I’ve stared down death too many times to remember, but do you want to hear the one thing I know for sure will get you killed quicker than anything else?’

  Some of them demand to know the answer, almost begging in their fear.

  ‘Not trying to stay alive,’ I tell them. I point down the tunnel. ‘We’re going that way, with our guns. The orks are coming from behind, so if you want to live, you come with us.’

  I don’t wait for any more debate and set off, shoulders set, eyes fixed ahead. I can hear the tramp of Departmento Munitorum boots behind me from the Colonel and his troopers, and then a more diffused shuffling as the crowd gets moving again. I pick up the pace, not sure how long we have until the hive-mob are going to be on us. I’d rather be deep in sump-runt territory before then.

  There’s about a hundred gun-armed followers with Karol at the filtration valve station. A yawning pipe, about five metres high, cuts through the broken debris, straight into the artificial mountainside we call the downflow.

  ‘Any sign of the orks?’ I ask, seeing some lamplights through the pipe.

  ‘Not yet,’ Karol replies. He glances past me at the Colonel and the Last Chancers, eyes widening as he sees the weapons in their hands. His eyes come back to me, full of suspicion. ‘What’s the plan, Burned Man?’