The Inquisition War (106 page)

Purestrain genestealers were so strong and resilient. Their claws could rip through steel. Hybrids shared enough of that vigour and robustness to endure a rise in temperature. The leathery appearance of the hermits must be due to the emergence of some mature stealer characteristics – the horny purplish hide – in response to environmental disaster.

If all the hermits out in the open were hybrids who could pass as human, what monsters might lurk within the central shrine? Hermits and monsters alike would all be brood-bonded in empathy to a hideous armoured hog of a patriarch! Sabulorb had not been successfully cleansed after all. Survivors of a brood had subverted this desert hermitage and multiplied...

If Meh’lindi were only here. If only she were still equipped with genestealer implants, whereby to confuse the hybrids on their pillars. No, that was a vile wish! Her implants had been an abomination.

‘She tore hybrids apart with her claws!’ repeated Jaq.

Exhausted and almost demented, Rakel shuddered convulsively. ‘You have high expectations of your mistresses, my lord inquisitor!’

Shame whelmed Jaq. His voice shook. ‘Your imitation of her is sacred,’ he declared.

Yet no: it was profane.

Yet no again: Rakel’s imitation of Meh’lindi would become sacred when Meh’lindi was reincarnated within Rakel – and when the Chaos Child stirred in the womb of the warp, sanctifying Rakel’s sacrifice of herself and Jaq’s baptism of the new soul within her! ‘I apologize on behalf of the Ultramarines,’ declared Lex as he surveyed pillar beyond pillar, upon which white-clad shapes stined slowly. ‘That the genestealers should have regained such strength so soon! Truly it is better that this world be scorched.’

A hermit had risen slowly to his full height the better to survey the sluggish advent of the residue of the migration. His cowl fell back, revealing a bald head glossy in the glare of light, and the bony ridges of his brows. He stretched out muscle-corded arms. He was inviting that advent onward, blessing it.

The scattered mass of refugees must have seemed like manna – or cause for imminent mania. Other hermits were rising. In time of crisis the absolute imperative was to pass on the genetic heritage of stealers. Here came so many human cattle, to be inseminated. Maybe this trek of human cattle was also welcome for the nourishment it could provide, if the heat died down rather than increasing. This desert was so barren. Did the hermits’ servants grow food in the catacombs? Did hens cackle and lay underground? Were there tanks of algae? A feast of human flesh might be welcome; carcasses for pickling or smoke-curing. Grimm sniggered hysterically. ‘Pad along softly, beast,’ he told his mount. ‘Keep up the pace, there’s a good ’pard.’

They passed another pillar, from the top of which a hybrid regarded them with magnetic eyes.

Thousands of flies were entering a web. The hybrids were like toads whose tongues are awakened by an appropriate flicker across the retina as prey moves within reach.

How soon would hybrids begin to descend? Maybe just as soon as mature stealers empted from the mouths of those tunnels in the shrine-rock.

This had been a hallucinatory, sun-struck journey – yet now the worst hallucination of all was real.

‘T
ROTTING A BIT
faster, there’s a good ’pard...’

To break into a gallop or even a canter might precipitate the onslaught. Alas, their informant had not supplied the command for trotting. Grimm urged his mount with his knees.

‘Hey,’ he called softly to the women who accompanied them, ‘what being the name for trotting?’

‘Be saying
asan
,’ was the reply from the younger woman. ‘
Easy riding
being the meaning.’

‘
Asan, shutur. Asan!
’ This word was like a prayer. Grimm’s mount picked up some speed. Others followed suit. How Grimm yearned to be riding a power-trike rather than this lolloping quadruped. His rump was so stiff and sore.

In all directions hermits had arisen. All seemed to be straining to hear some sound. Were they awaiting an audible signal from the shrine-rock – or a psychic cue to attack? Yet their attention was focused northward from where the migration came.

‘A
IRCRAFT
!’
ANNOUNCED
L
EX
. Soon anyone could hear the drone of engines.

Into sight in the glowing sky came a large troop transporter, flying slowly. Lex shaded his eyes and stared as the plane began to bank. It was intending to circle the hermitage.

‘Imperial emblems, I think.’

How alert the hybrid hermits were now.

One of the aircraft’s four engines spluttered and coughed and died. ‘It’s almost out of fuel!’

That aircraft couldn’t have come from Shandabar. Shandabar was ashes and smouldering wreckage.

‘Must be from the northern continent, from the planetary army base or the Departmento—’

After the dust-storm and before the city exploded, some astropath must have sent a message regarding intrusion by aliens and renegade Space Marines. Then Shandabar had fallen totally silent. A troop carrier had flown to invesdgate. To become so low on fuel, it must have met storms en route. The pilot would have counted on putting down at Shandabar. He would have beheld the utter and inexplicable destruction of the capital city. The plane had carried on. The pilot would have seen the signs of the migration: dozens of kilometres of corpses and abandoned vehicles; then refugees still struggling along, and camelopards – and that veering in the direction of the trek, away from the obvious route to Bara Bandobast. The migration would have seemed to be heading for this place of pillars deep in the desert.

Airspeed would have ventilated the interior of the plane. Conditions on board might not have been too stifling. A hatch opened in one side of the plane. Bodies began to fall out. White chutes opened up. Bodies were drifting down – troops in mottled yellow and grey desert-camouflage, long-barrelled lasguns slung around their necks. Only one soldier’s chute failed. He plummeted directly to the ground. Body after body plunged from the door. White blossoms opened. A hundred and fifty of the troops, at least!

One after another the plane’s other engines coughed and cut out. Now it could only glide ponderously, its pilot hoping to reach open desert. An especially tall spire of rock clipped a wing. The plane promptly spun over and disappeared. The thump of impact threw up a cloud of dust but no fireball. No fuel was left for an explosion.

Troops were landing. Hermits were descending swiftly from their pillars, familiar with every finger grip. And the tunnel mouths of the shrine-rock vomited monsters!

Creatures with four arms, the upper set equipped with claws! Oh that characteristic loping gait. The speed, the sheer speed. Horns projecting from the spines. Bony sinuous tails. Long craniums jutting forward.

Behind those purestrain monsters boiled forth a mob of hybrids who were far from human in appearance. They were such vile satires upon humanity with their swollen jutting heads and jagged teeth. Even from a distance their distortion was conspicuous. Some brandished a claw instead of a hand. Spurs of bone jutted from the backs of others.

Those hideous hybrids were armed with a motley of autoguns and shotguns and regular swords and chainswords. Of course the purestrain stealers used no weapons nor tools other than their own fierce armoured bodies.

Having reached the ground, hermits were pulling stub guns and laspistols from under their white robes. A hermit cried out, ‘Silver-tongued Father, your saliva salving our souls!’

In the largest of the tunnel mouths, to survey the massacre which his brood intended, had appeared the patriarch. Oh what a leering fang-toothed hog of a four-arms! Armour-bones protruding from its curved spine were the size of loaves. Three-clawed hooves raked the rock on which it stood. Too far to make out its rheumy violet vein-webbed eyes.

Yet far too close as well!

Grimm shot the nearest of the hermits, wrecking his chest. ‘
Tez-rau, yald!
’ shouted Jaq.

They cantered, they galloped. Already one stealer was racing to intercept them. The bouncing of Lex’s camelopard spoiled his aim. A bolt was wasted on destroying the inscription upon a pillar. With a prayer and a bolt from
Emperor’s Mercy
, Jaq halted the monster. It remained alive, writhing and ravaging the gravel.

Hermits were waylaying weary, sun-struck refugees, often killing bare-handed. Some stooped to suck blood to slake a thirst. The toughest refugees defended themselves with stub guns. Scattered all over a great area, troops in yellow and grey were firing energy packets wildly as stealers or hybrids rushed towards them. Most stealers reached their chosen victims and tore them apart. Attracted by the sight of the descending chutes – and now by the detonations of this lethal affray – a half-track vehicle came speeding. Upon it was a black-uniformed Arbitrator. He had lost or discarded his mirrored helmet. Skin was peeling from his inflamed face. A genestealer raced from behind a pillar towards the half-track. The Arbites swung the serpent-mouthed auto-cannon mounted upon the vehicle. Shells blazed towards that monster which should not have been present upon Sabulorb. A high-velocity shell took off one of the lower arms of the stealer.

On account of the extra revving perhaps the driver inside the halftrack succumbed to heat prostration. Or perhaps he tried to swerve the vehicle away from the oncoming monster. One of the vehicle’s tracks locked, hit a rock. The vehicle skidded and began to overturn. The auto-gunner was thrown clear. The genestealer bounded faster. The Arbitrator rolled and tried to pull a side-arm from a holster. Claws closed upon his burned bare head.

The genestealer turned its attention to the capsized half-track. Claws impacted in metal, seeking a hold by which to wrench a panel loose.

A jetbike was coming.

A streamlined aerial shark with a rune on its sloping nose, and short stabiliser-wings each shaped like a double axehead, it dodged its way between pillars, flying at only twice the height of a man. It had made a close approach before being spotted. Such low-level flying risked a stealer leaping and clutching at a wing.

In the seat of that jetbike was a confusing blur of hues – a Harlequin whose holo-suit was in kaleidoscopic flux. From either side of the shark’s snout jutted, like tusks, shuriken catapults. The twin guns dipped momentarily, and spat discs of razor-metal ahead almost too swiftly to be seen. A stealer was crippled. Discs had sliced through its rugged carapace into its softer core.

The jetbike was angling towards the shrine-rock from which the patriarch surveyed the carnage. Blatantly. Genestealers were here – and here was comparatively close to an entry to the webway. Guardians of a vile secret, the hybrid-hermits would not have ranged far from their pillars in the past. Not as far as the stone labyrinth. Survival of their brood demanded isolation, not exploration. But now Sabulorb was about to burn. If the patriarch of the brood realized that there was a way to escape, hybrids and purestrains would do their utmost to find that place. Purestrains certainly could survive the mounting heat for long enough. Stealers could be loose in the webway, able, if fate played a black enough trick, to find a craftworld.

This must not happen. The Harlequin angled the jetbike upward toward the shrine-rock, toward the terrible shape in that tunnel mouth.

A hail of shuriken discs bracketed the four-armed monstrosity. A good many discs hit it. The armoured hog staggered but did not collapse. One of its two humanoid hands hung by a single remaining ligament. An eye had burst, but the shuriken disc responsible must have lodged in especially tough orbital bone, not piercing through to the brain. Injuries wept gluey ichor. An armoured knee was shattered. Yet the creature’s will was indomitable. Perhaps fatally injured but alive, the patriarch still stood defiantly.

All this the Harlequin would only have a couple of seconds to perceive. Maybe it had been the Harlequin’s original intention to destroy the genestealer patriarch – then at the last moment to swoop up vertically, avoiding collision with the shrine-rock. Now he dared not do so.

Still hurling discs, that shark of a flying bike crashed into the patriarch’s chest. The impact hurled the beast backwards into the tunnel, along with jetbike and suicidal rider. Then the jetbike exploded, and cleansing flame gushed from the tunnel mouth.

‘Y
ALD
! Y
ALD
!’

Jaq’s group was almost clear of the last of the pillars when a hybrid hurled himself at the younger of the two Shandabari women. The hybrid pulled her from her mount. He sprawled upon her as she writhed and shrieked. The hybrid was screaming incoherently. He made no effort to spring up and seize her ’pard, to leap into the saddle and ride.

‘Don’t slow!’ bellowed Lex, staring back; for Rakel had shown signs of reining in – something that the refugee woman’s older friend was already doing. ‘Keep up the pace!
Yald, yald!
’

The stout woman was swinging her mount around, to return. ‘Helping us!’ came her cry.

No help was possible except at the cost of delay. Delay in putting the hermitage behind them might easily outweigh the use of the two women as a show of normality. One must pray that enough combatants amid the far-flung pillars killed or incapacitated each other, so that no effective pursuit would occur.

The hybrid was still shrieking incomprehensibly as if it was he who was pinioned upon the ground. Because of the death of the patriarch, a psychotic tempest must be raging in the minds of the brood, disrupting any lucid behaviour. Maybe the stout woman would be able to knife the hybrid and rescue her friend.