Inferno volume 5, p.23
Inferno! Volume 5, page 23
Outside, in the middle of the firefight, the thin line of the dead ganger’s climbing rig swayed in the wind. I tapped my dice and whispered, ‘Give me luck.’ Then I moved.
I shot out of my hiding space, lasgun bolts sizzling around me, but my hand closed on the cable. The spool above spun, and I dropped. Not fast enough, and the only thing that saved me from having my head popped like that ganger’s was the Lady’s blessing and my swinging. But I picked up speed, and the catwalk vanished, Rast and the Goliaths and the Van Saars gone. I was free, I was safe, and then with a wrenching jerk I was at the end of the line and the cable ripped itself out of my hand. I had time to scream now as I fell, and I did until I crashed into a pool of black water and my breath was smashed out of me.
It fitted the Lady’s sense of humour to save me with water. She knew I couldn’t swim.
I thrashed, trying to keep from sinking, until my hand hit something and I grabbed hold. The thing bobbed but held me up, and I gulped air.
Water surrounded me, stinging and caustic. Remnants of the last poison rain, mixed with factorum waste and sewage, it made my eyes burn and my skin itch. If I’d stayed under, if I’d inhaled any of this stuff, it would have eaten holes in my lungs, but thank the Lady I’d grabbed hold of this… corpse.
The body of the Goliath, bloated with stimm, floated in the water, adding its blood to the other contaminants. ‘Thanks,’ I muttered, and kicked my legs until I reached the edge of the pool, using the dead ganger as a raft. I heaved myself out and tried to look around, but the light spilling down the ventilation shaft far above was too weak. Reaching into my medkit, I dug past my dice and found the sparker I used to sterilise my blades all good and proper. Pulling it out I gave it a squeeze, and with a shower of sparks it sent out its jet of flame. But I didn’t get a chance to look around. A spark landed on my sleeve, and the contaminated water soaking the cloth flashed into flame.
I yelped and slapped the fire out, dropping the sparker. Still burning, it hit a puddle of the toxic water, and with a pop it lit. I danced back from the sudden heat, but the firelight gave me a flickering glimpse of the massive room surrounding me. It was huge and empty, except for the rows of thick rockcrete pillars that held up the distant ceiling. The floor was slicked with puddles, but otherwise bare. Some kind of reservoir, probably part of the hive’s drainage system. Perfect. The flames died, the shadows swept back in, and I picked up my sparker, hot but unbroken, and shoved it back in my medkit. How deep was I? Too deep. No one went this deep, if they could help it. There was nothing good down here.
Crouching down, I checked the corpse. A knife rode its hip, huge for me but that was OK. My eyes were on the water as I reached for it, searching for what had made those ripples. Nothing, nothing… until the body shifted its head.
I jerked the knife free and shoved back, watching the corpse’s head bob. Something crawled out of the water, clinging to the ganger’s hair. A rat. Not a fat meat rat like they had on the farms though. No, this was a mutie thing, its hairless skin split all over with oozing eye sockets. Those eyes stared at me as the rat crawled up the ganger’s ruined head, dipped its muzzle into the shattered skull, and began to feed.
I’d helped Kicker with a thousand rough surgeries, but the sound of the rat’s teeth made me sick. I backed away, trying not to retch, and I saw another rat scamper across the floor, its many eyes flashing as it dived into the pool. Then another, another. A flood of dripping-eyed rats rushed out of the shadows and into the pool, trying to reach the body to tear out their chunk of meat.
Cursing, I backed away. The rats ignored me, busy feasting, but that wouldn’t last. The swarm would finish that ganger, and I needed to be gone by then. But how? I was deeper than I’d ever been, surrounded by darkness and mutant rats, and had no idea how to get back. And even if I did get back, I had no idea if Rast was still alive. I groaned, and dug out my dice.
They sat in my hand, symbols meaningless. What was I thinking? What good had the Lady done me? She’d got me into this hole. ‘Damn you,’ I whispered, wanting to throw the dice, wanting to throw them away.
‘Damn who?’
The words cut over the sound of the rat’s hideous feast, a high, sweet voice, like a juve’s. I spun, the ganger’s knife raised before me.
‘Who’s there?’ I asked, my voice cracking as I tried to make it deeper and failed.
‘I am.’
I could see them slipping around the columns, silent despite the shallow pools of water. They were shaped like people, but there was something wrong. They shimmered, and as they came close I shuddered, seeing why. They were twisted with mutation, like the rats.
Their skin was thin and crinkled like an old person’s, but split all over with damp, tearing sockets that held eyes that blinked and shifted. A hideous mob of mutants, clutching crude clubs and shivs that could split my head or spill my guts. They crept towards me on silent, blinking feet, pinning me against one of the rockcrete columns. Around them slithered more of the mutant rats, huge ones, almost waist-high. When I was surrounded, they stopped, staring, twitching, silent.
‘Stay back,’ I said, fighting to keep the knife from trembling.
‘Why?’ A shadow moved through the mutants, a dark little thing in a black robe, and that sweet high voice came from the shadows beneath its hood.
‘Because I’ll kill you if you come close.’
‘You will?’ Small hands reached up and pushed back the hood. It was a girl, younger than me, and though her skin was pale like the mutants’, it flowed smooth over a face free of any extra eyes. She only had two, and like the rest of her features they weren’t just normal, they were beautiful. Wide and blue, they glowed like a plasma torch. Her scalp was smooth, hairless, but I’d seen plenty of people like that. Not everyone was dark and shaggy as me. Nobody would call her a mutie, so what was she doing down here?
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m me,’ she said, walking forward. She reached out and touched the knife I still held in front of me. ‘Put this down.’
‘No,’ I said, now almost as confused as I was scared. Almost.
She frowned, then her beautiful eyes went hard. ‘Put it down.’
I felt it, deep in my head, like a wire shoved into my brain, fishing to find something, to hook it out of me. It didn’t hurt but it felt wrong, like having someone reach through your skin and touch your heart.
‘What are you doing?’ Whatever it was, I hated it, and I gritted my teeth and somehow flexed my thoughts as I spoke. ‘Get out of my head!’
Her eyes went wider, and I felt that probing wire try to shove deeper into my brain, and my fear turned to rage. This was my head. ‘Get out!’ I shouted, and flexed my thoughts again, harder, and shoved the wire of her will away. I shoved it out and almost collapsed, nauseous and panting. The girl could have pulled the knife from my hand then and cut my throat, but she didn’t. When I looked at her again, she’d cocked her head to one side, watching me, beautiful eyes curious. Not a mutant, I thought. No.
A wyrd.
‘You stopped me,’ she said. ‘You’re like me.’
‘No.’ Not a wyrd, just a heretic, like Kicker said. But the girl was shaking her head.
‘You stopped me,’ she said again. ‘So you must be blessed too.’
‘I never had a name. Teacher just called me student.’
The girl sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at me with her dangerous eyes. Behind her, her mutants worked, the only noise they made the slice of flesh, the crack of bone. While I’d sat here telling the girl about Rast, about gangers and guns and how I’d ended up here, they’d caught and killed as many of the small rats as they could, then dragged the corpse of the ganger out of the water. They’d stripped him of clothes, equipment, and now were stripping him of flesh.
I kept my attention on the girl and tried to ignore their ‘cooking’.
‘These don’t speak.’ The girl nodded at the ones who’d stayed near us, watching me, fingering their weapons with staring hands. ‘No names. But you have one. How did you get it?’
‘Kicker gave it to me,’ I said. I met her eyes, and that wire feeling skittered through my skull, but I kept her out. I had no idea how, but I did. It was getting easier. ‘I… didn’t used to like to operate.’ That was a way to say it. When I was little, I’d been terrified of slicing people, squeamish and sick when I saw blood. ‘I didn’t like cutting them, so they called me Cutty.’
She frowned at me. ‘But then that’s a wrong name.’
‘That’s the thing,’ I said. ‘It’s a joke, right? To call me Cutty, because I didn’t like to cut people.’ She was frowning at me. ‘It’s funny. Like calling Kicker Kicker, cause his legs don’t work so well, and the one time he tried to kick someone he fell on his ass.’
‘Fell on his ass.’ She held a hand out, and a mutant silently handed her a flask. She took a drink. ‘Tried to kick, and fell on his ass. Kicker.’ Then she laughed. Laughed, high and sweet and terrifying, and I had to fight not to scream. As suddenly as it started, she cut her laughter off and stared at me. ‘I want a funny name too. Give me one.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. Her frown came back, and I tried to distract her. ‘That man you call Teacher. Who was he?’
‘He was the man who taught me.’ The girl shrugged. ‘That’s what he was. He kept me in a room, alone except for machines that fed me and watched me and showed me things. Sometimes he came and taught me things. About being blessed.’
‘Blessed?’
‘I can do things that most people can’t. Like you. We’re blessed.’ She smiled and patted my hand, and I tried not to twitch. ‘He said that’s why I had to be kept by myself. To learn and train, to count my blessings, until I was ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘I don’t know.’ The girl frowned, annoyed. ‘He never told me. And then… then he stopped coming. I don’t know why, and the machines were stupid and useless. They tried to keep me there, waiting for him, but they ran out of food and I got bored so I broke them and left. Went exploring, all by myself, until I met these.’ She waved her hand at the mutants. ‘They wanted to eat me, but I told them not to. They’re… not blessed.’ She looked at me, her eyes innocent and strange. ‘Is Kicker like you? Are there more blessed where you come from?’
‘I’m not–’ I shut my mouth on the denial. This girl… raised alone, by machines and this nameless man… She was wyrd, and she was weird, and maybe I didn’t want to argue with her. ‘No. Kicker, everybody else, none of them are blessed.’
‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed. ‘Teacher said there were more blessed. He said most of them were dangerous. You don’t seem dangerous, Cutty.’
I felt her touch my mind again, poking at me, and I shoved her away and she smiled. My ability to reject her seemed to please her.
‘Have you thought of a name yet?’
‘Uh, no,’ I said. ‘Teacher. He never mentioned any names?’
‘No. But I pulled some from his mind once, when he was asleep.’
‘You–’ I shut up again. What would happen if I couldn’t keep that sharp wire of her power out of my head and she figured out I wasn’t really a psyker, wasn’t blessed? Would she lose interest in me, and let her mutants take me apart like they’d done with the Goliath? I didn’t want to find out.
‘Helmawr,’ she said. ‘That’s the one name in his head that I remember. That name scared him.’
Helmawr. The Imperial Governor, the man who sat atop the highest spire. Even I’d heard of him. Had this girl’s Teacher served Helmawr, or had he been hiding from him? Which was worse? My gut twisted, and I wanted to run. Run from this wyrd girl with her mysteries, her talk of the blessed, and her gang of cannibalistic horrors.
I wanted to run, but I had nowhere to go.
‘Helmawr’s not a funny name,’ the girl said. ‘Not like yours.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘What can you do, Cutty?’
‘What?’
‘What can you do?’ She looked over her shoulder, and the mutant who’d given her the flask took it back and offered it to me. I flinched from its hand, from the little eyes that stared at me from between its finger joints, and despite my thirst I shook my head.
‘I ask for things,’ the girl said. ‘And I get them. That’s my main blessing. What’s yours?’
My fingers tapped nervously on my medkit, right over my dice. What should I say? Your blessing’s a curse, you’re a monster, and I’m not like you? Thank the Emperor. No. ‘I’m just lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘I can read fortunes in my dice. Sometimes.’
‘Show me.’
I pulled the pouch out of my medkit and poured my dice into my hand. She examined the little cubes with their crude symbols.
‘Teacher tested me, to see if I could read the future. He had these funny cards. But they never meant anything to me. What do you see now?’
‘Now?’ I shrugged. ‘Nothing. I…’ My eyes caught on the dice spread in my palm. The symbols danced and twisted, and spilled their message into my head. Malice. Death. Revenge. The Weapon. Opportunity.
Death.
‘Something’s coming.’ I jammed the dice back into my medkit, and spun to face the pool. Dark lines were falling through the dim light coming from above, surrounding the water. Climbing cables, at least a dozen, and Rast had only brought eight gangers with him.
‘Van Saars,’ I said to the girl. ‘Gangers. We have to run!’
She looked at me, and I felt the wire of her power pressing for a moment against the walls I’d built against it. Then she opened her hands like someone mimicking an explosion, and around us the mutants moved, scattering and hiding. She grabbed my hand and ran too, surefooted and certain in the dark, leading me behind one of the columns. She stopped, and we peered back around the rockcrete at the pool.
The cables jerked as the gangers slid down, a dozen, then more, definitely Van Saars. They wore tight bodygloves in black and grey, carried lasguns polished and decorated, and were the size of normal humans, not Goliaths. Except one.
He was one of the last, moving awkwardly. Lowered on one of the cables, because his arms were bound behind him. Rast.
‘Where is he, you pink-skinned ork?’ One of the Van Saars glared up at Rast. ‘Where’s your boy who can find such carefully hidden things?’
‘Dead. Hope so.’ Rast’s voice vibrated with anger. ‘Led us into trap.’
‘If it’d been a trap, you wouldn’t have killed three of mine.’ The Van Saar shook his head. ‘Today’s been bad luck for both of us, thief, and I don’t like it. I want the boy who brought that luck. I want to know how he knew about my guns.’ The man looked at the others. ‘Take him alive. Go.’
The Van Saars split into squads of four and began to move carefully away from the pool, leaving one squad with the talking man and Rast. I ducked behind the pillar, ready to run, but the girl was staring at one of the mutants close to her. Her blue eyes shone in the darkness, and the mutant stepped away, every eye blinking. Then it disappeared around the pillar, heading towards the pool.
‘What–’ I whispered, but she shook her head.
I heard a shout, the sound of a lasgun, and the leader shouting, ‘Alive!’
‘Not him!’ another voice shouted back. ‘Some kind of mut–’ The voice suddenly ended with a hideous gurgle, and beside me the girl smiled.
‘Watch,’ she whispered.
The battle was short, choppy, vicious. The mutants were silent, knew the territory, and outnumbered the Van Saars four to one. But the gangers had lasguns and armour. I caught flashes of light as lasguns spat their bolts, saw clubs and shivs flash. Watched many-eyed giant rats scamper like roaches across the great columns and fall on unsuspecting men. I saw mutant after mutant fall, their flesh boiling, eyes bursting. I saw all this as the girl moved, dragging me with her as she scampered through the dark. Ordering her mutants to fight, sending them to their deaths with silent looks. I ask for things, and I get them. I shuddered and understood what Kicker meant when he said that wyrds were dangerous.
Then it was done. All the gangers that had moved away from the pool were dead, heads split, throats torn, guts spilled in tangles around them, each group surrounded by heaps of glazed-eyed mutant corpses. The only Van Saars left were the ones standing next to the pool – four terrified gangers pointing lasguns at the shadows, their leader, grim-faced and angry, and Rast, looking pleased.
‘Bad luck,’ the Goliath growled. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Shut up,’ the man snarled.
We crouched behind another column, staring at the remaining knot of Van Saars. ‘What now?’ I whispered, and the girl smiled, raised her hood and took my hand, pulling me as she tried to move into the open. ‘What? Are you trying to get me killed now?’ I hissed, resisting.
‘Of course not.’ She shook her head, looking annoyed. ‘You’re blessed like me. C’mon.’ She pulled again, and this time I let her lead me out.
‘Help!’ she shouted, sounding terrified, a little girl lost and afraid, and the Van Saars aimed their guns at us but didn’t fire. ‘They were going to eat us!’ She led me forward, and the gangers watched us, wary but curious. All except Rast. He was focused on me, and the huge muscles in his shoulders shifted as he fought to break his arms free. So he could snap my neck, probably.
‘Stop,’ the Van Saar leader ordered.
‘Please,’ the girl said again, her voice quivering with desperation.
‘What is this?’ The ganger leader sounded furious, fearful, confused. ‘What were those things? Who are you?’ His eyes left the robed figure of the girl and landed on me. ‘Thief,’ he snapped. ‘Is this the boy?’ Rast’s only answer was a growl, but that satisfied the Van Saar. ‘Damn me, that’s one thing at least. Come here.’ His voice was cold, dangerous, and I didn’t want to move, but his laspistol, lacquered pink with crimson veins, like a heart torn fresh from a body, was aimed at me. I started forward, the girl beside me. In her dark robe she was hard to see, though she kept her hands carefully visible.
