[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World Read online

  Landon was eager to please, bragging about a time back on Catachan when he’d wrestled a blackback viper single-handed. Myers and Storm were pretending to be impressed, but Lorenzo knew they were poking fun at the rookie.

  The other newcomer, Patch Armstrong, had an easier ride. It had taken an ambush by four ice apes on the frozen world of Tundrar to deprive Armstrong of his left eye—and even then he had snapped the spine of one beast, gutted two more and gunned down the fourth as it had fled. The patch he wore, and the crooked ends of the scar that protruded above and below it, were his badges of honour. Like Dougan’s leg, and the plate in Sergeant Greiss’ head.

  The drop ship was being shaken.

  It had only been a little at first, but now it was growing stronger. Sharkbait Muldoon had rolled up the left sleeve of his jacket to paint his own, better, camouflage pattern directly onto his skin, layering on natural dyes with his knife, he let out a curse as the blade slipped and nicked his arm. Lorenzo said nothing, but his fingers tightened around the armrests of his seat.

  “Must be one hell of a storm,” commented Woods. But Lorenzo observed that Greiss’ jaw was set, his teeth clenched, his nostrils flaring, and he knew this was no mere storm.

  Then, just like that, they were falling.

  The drop ship plummeted like a brick, like it had when it had first been launched from its mother. Lorenzo’s stomach was in his mouth again, had he not been strapped in, he would have been slammed into the ceiling. Woods, cocky as ever, had loosened his own restraints, and now he was fighting to hold himself down as g-forces rippled the skin of his cheeks.

  For eight long seconds, Lorenzo was facing his worst nightmare. Then the engines caught them and they were flying level again, but still buffeted, the deck lurching unpredictably beneath their feet. Behind the din of the protesting hull, the soft, artificial voice of the navigation servitor sounded over the vox-caster:

  “Warning: extreme atmospheric turbulence encountered. Destination coordinates no longer attainable. Prepare for emergency landing. Repeat, prepare for emergency landing!”

  The first impact came almost as soon as the warning was issued.

  Lorenzo had barely had time to get into the brace position, his chin on his chest, his hands clasped over his head. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to every bone in his body at once. And then it happened again, with only marginally less force this second time.

  The drop ship was skipping along the ground, its engines shrieking. Lorenzo was rattled in his seat, his straps biting into his chest. He concentrated on keeping his muscles relaxed, despite the situation, knowing that to resist the repeated shocks would do him more harm than good.

  Then they hit the ground for the final time, but they were still barrelling forwards, and the scrape of earth and branches against the outer hull was almost deafening. Rogar III, as Donovits had taken pleasure in informing everyone, was blanketed in jungle. There were no open spaces in which to land, but for those cleared with axe and flame. Lorenzo pictured the scene outside the drop ship’s hull now, as it ploughed through tangled vegetation, the servitors straining to rein in its speed before it hit something that wouldn’t yield to its considerable mass. Before it crumpled in on itself like a ball of paper.

  And then, at last, they were still, the engines letting out a last dying whine as the drop ship’s superstructure creaked and settled. The lighting flickered and cut out, and Lorenzo could see nothing in the sudden total darkness. But he knew his way to the hatchway, and his squad was the closest to it.

  The drop ship had come to rest at an angle. The deck was tilted some forty-five degrees to the horizontal, so Lorenzo had to climb to reach his goal. He swung himself from one empty seat to the next, using their backs to keep his balance and his bearings. From all around, he could hear the sounds of buckles popping and men leaping to their feet.

  He was almost there when he realised he had been beaten to it. The hatch had buckled a little and was sticking in its frame, but Woods managed to shoulder it open even as Lorenzo was about to lend him a hand. First a crack, then a rectangle of brilliant light blazed in Lorenzo’s eyes, and he blinked to clear the patterns it burnt into his retinas.

  In the meantime, Woods had clambered out onto the angled side of the ship. “Hey,” he called down to the others enthusiastically. “You’ve got to see this. It’s a beautiful evening!”

  Lorenzo frowned. The upturned hatchway offered him the familiar sight of a jungle canopy—but behind the greens and browns, the leaves and the branches, the sky appeared to be a perfect, deep blue, free from cloud. Woods was right. If there had been a storm, it had passed, impossibly, without trace. But then, what else could have tossed the drop ship about like that?

  It was there again: that sense of wrongness he had felt in the warp. He needed to get out into the open. The rest of the platoon were crowding up behind him anyway, so Lorenzo followed the sweet scent of fresh air, mingled though it was with the stench of burning. He gripped the sides of the hatchway and pulled himself up and out through it.

  He had barely raised his head above the parapet and started to take in his new surroundings, when Trooper Woods pushed him down again, with a warning yell: “Incoming!”

  Three plants were shuffling towards the drop ship. They looked like the mantraps of Catachan, but taller. Three bulbous pink heads, surely too heavy for their stalks to support, split open like mouths. No teeth within, though. These plants were spitters.

  Three jets of clear liquid plumed through the air. Lorenzo and Woods tumbled back into the drop ship together. Woods had been hit, a thick gobbet of acid sizzling on his arm. He whipped out his knife—a devil claw, typically ostentatious—and half-cut, half-tore his sleeve away before it was eaten through. Still, the attack had left a livid red burn on his skin.

  Somewhere, not far away, a carrion bird was screeching in delight.

  “So, how’s it looking out there?” asked Greiss—and Lorenzo realised that the sergeant was addressing him.

  A smile tugged at his lips as he gave the traditional answer: “Reckon I’m going to like this place, sergeant. It reminds me of home!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The air outside the hatch filled with acid spray again, and a few drops made it inside the ship. The Catachans withdrew from the danger area, those at the front yelling at the others to get back. Lorenzo’s bandolier was splashed—only a little, but enough to leave a steaming hole in the fabric.

  Sergeant Greiss had shouldered his way up to Lorenzo and Woods through the crush. The platoon commander was only a few steps behind him. Lieutenant Vines was a quiet-voiced, unassuming man—but, because he had earned his rank, been elected to it by his fellow Catachans, they listened when he spoke. He asked the two troopers to describe what they’d seen, and Woods told him about the spitting plants. “Three of them, sir,” Lorenzo confirmed, “at two o’clock.”

  “Who’s your best marksman, sergeant?”

  Without hesitation, Greiss answered, “Bullseye, sir. Trooper Myers.” As he spoke, he seized the shoulder of a wiry, dark-skinned man, and pulled him forward.

  “You know what to do, Myers,” said Vines.

  With a nod of understanding, Myers drew his lasgun. He waited a few seconds to be sure it was safe, then darted up to the sloping hatchway.

  As soon as he popped his head up into the open, there came another deluge. Myers let off two shots, then dived and rolled back under cover, landing at Lorenzo’s feet. Lorenzo heard acid spattering the drop ship’s hull above his head. He looked down, and saw that the deck plates were bubbling beneath the droplets left from the previous attack.

  Donovits was a second ahead of him, his eyes already turned upward. “Do you think it can melt through adamantium?” asked Lorenzo.

  “It’s possible,” said Donovits, “with the damage we must have taken on the way down. I’d keep an eye out up there. You see that ceiling starting to discolour, you find yourself a steel umbrella quick.”

 
“And that’d help?”

  “For a few seconds, yes.”

  “I’ve never seen plant acid so strong,” breathed Sharkbait Muldoon, “not even back home.”

  “Makes you wonder,” said Donovits, “what kind of insects live on this world if that’s what it takes to digest them.”

  In the meantime, Myers had made his report to Lieutenant Vines: “Three of them, sir, like Hotshot and Lorenzo said. I picked off the first, but I swear the second ducked under my shot. Got the measure of it now, though.” Vines signalled his approval with a terse nod, and Myers approached the hatchway again.

  He was halfway there when the plants fired a fourth time.

  This time, their two sprays were perfectly aimed. They collided above the hatchway, so that a sheet of liquid dropped into the ship with a slap. Myers let out a curse and leapt back. Several troopers were splashed, but those who had alkali powders in their kits—ground from the vegetation of their last deathworld—had readied them, and they quickly pressed them into service.

  An acid river trickled down the angled deck, petering out as it sizzled into the metal. Still, Lorenzo wasn’t the only trooper forced to climb onto a seat to escape its path.

  “Cunning critters,” breathed Myers, almost admiringly. And then he was off, without awaiting instructions. He vaulted through the hatchway, the ship’s hull ringing as his booted feet connected with it. Then he was out of sight, but Lorenzo could still hear, and feel, his footsteps overhead, and the crack of a lasgun, firing once, twice, three times, four times, then another spattering of acid, uncomfortably close to the point from which the last footstep had sounded.

  Then there was silence.

  Lorenzo held his breath, alert for any sounds from outside the drop ship. Then he caught Sergeant Greiss’ eye, and realised that Old Hardhead was smiling. A moment later, Myers appeared in the hatchway again, and he too was grinning from ear to ear. He blew imaginary smoke from the barrel of his lasgun. “All clear,” he announced.

  Four sergeants bellowed at once, ordering their respective troopers out of the ship double-quick. Lorenzo knew that whichever squad was last to form up outside would pay with extra duties for embarrassing their commander.

  Fifty men rushed for the hatchway, but Woods reached it first. As Lorenzo climbed out onto the surface of a new world and looked for his squad, he felt a thrill of excitement. He was back in the jungle—back in his element. He knew that, whatever perils may lie in store for him on Rogar III, they couldn’t be as discomforting as that stifling room with its single bed, up there in space.

  The trees of Rogar III were generally tall, thin and gnarled, but they grew close together—too close, in places, for a man to squeeze between them. Their leaves were jagged, some razor-edged—and creepers dangled from their topmost branches, bulging with poisonous pustules. The undergrowth was thick, green-brown and halfway to knee height, the occasional splash of colour thrown out in the shape of a flower or a brightly patterned thistle or patch of strangle-weed. From a distance, it looked like any jungle Lorenzo had seen. He wanted to get closer, to inspect the peculiar shapes and patterns of this jungle, to begin to learn which shapes he could trust and which spelled danger—but, for now, it was not to be.

  The drop ship had gouged a great gash out of the planet. Undergrowth had been flattened, trees felled, branches shorn. Small fires were still burning, and creepers twitched like severed limbs in their heat.

  Vines checked his compass, and received a navigational fix from the troop carrier in orbit. They were ten kilometres away from the Imperial encampment, he reported, and the quickest route to it was to retrace the trail of devastation to its source. It was also the safest route—for, although Lorenzo saw several more acid spitters among the ashes, most had been burnt or decapitated. When one plant did dare stir, and cracked open its pink head, it immediately became the focus of eight lasguns, and was promptly blasted out of existence.

  The Catachans proceeded cautiously to begin with, and there was little talk. Each of them knew this was the most dangerous time: their first footsteps on a new world, not knowing the threats it posed, knowing that an attack could come at any second from any quarter. In time, they would become familiar with Rogar III—those of them who survived these early days. They would learn to anticipate and counter anything it could throw at them. Then this world would be no challenge anymore and, Emperor willing, they would move on to another.

  Lorenzo loved this time. He loved the feeling of adrenaline pumping around his body, loved the edge it gave him.

  For the moment, though, the planet was nursing its wounds, keeping its distance. He heard more birds screeching to each other, but apart from a brief flutter of wings on the edge of his vision he never saw a single one. A jungle lizard skittered away as the Catachans approached. Lorenzo estimated it to be about twenty centimetres long, but without a closer inspection he couldn’t tell if it was an adult or a baby.

  It was almost as if Rogar III was watching the new arrivals, sizing them up just as they were sizing up it.

  Bulldog Rock was the first to order his squad to double time, and Greiss and the other sergeants followed. Not to be outdone, another squad struck up a cadence call.

  A scream of engines drew his attention to the sky, and he caught a glint of red as the rays of the sinking sun struck metal. Two drop ships, ascending, from a point no more than a couple of kilometres ahead. He wondered what had happened to the third, and suppressed a shudder at the thought that one platoon may not have been as fortunate as his own.

  Not long after that, they came to the end of their own ship’s trail—the point at which it had hit ground. Lorenzo had looked forward to entering the jungle proper, but instead he found himself at the edge of an expansive clearing. It was man-made, about two kilometres in diameter, doubtless the product of many hours of toil by Imperium troops with flamers—and yet the vegetation at the clearing’s edge was already showing signs of re-growth.

  Without breaking step, the Jungle Fighters made for a huddle of prefabricated buildings in the clearing’s centre, now little more than shadows in the twilight. As they reached it, the sergeants shouted more orders, and the Catachans formed up in their squads again and fell silent. Lorenzo was aware that their noisy arrival had turned the heads of several Guardsmen who’d been standing sentry. It had also given fair warning of their approach to the commissar who now came to meet them.

  He was a young, fair-haired man with pale skin and ears that protruded very noticeably. The Imperial eagle spread its wings proudly on his peaked cap, and his slight form was almost swallowed by a long, black overcoat. Fresh out of training, Lorenzo thought. Even Lieutenant Vines, not a tall man, seemed to tower over the senior officer through presence alone. Lorenzo thought he could see a sneer pulling at Vines’ lips as he folded his arm into a lazy salute and announced, “C Platoon, Third Company, Catachan XIV reporting for duty, sir.”

  “Not before time, lieutenant,” said the commissar tersely. “I assume it was your drop ship that screamed over our heads an hour ago, and almost demolished the very camp we’ve been fighting to defend?” He made it sound like an accusation, as if Vines had been piloting the ship himself. Before Vines could speak, however, the commissar raised his voice to address the assembled platoon. “My name is Mackenzie. I am in command here—and as long as you are on Rogar III, my word is the Emperor’s word, is that clear?”

  A few of the Catachans mumbled a derisory, “Yes, sir.” Most of them said nothing.

  Mackenzie scowled. “Let me make this clear from the outset,” he snapped. “I don’t like deathworlders. In my experience, they are sloppy and undisciplined, with an arrogance that far outstrips their ability. The Emperor has seen fit to send you here, and I concede you may have certain expertise that will hasten a conclusion to this war. But had the decision been mine, let me tell you, I would rather have fought on with one squad from the blessed birth world than ten from Canak or Luther McIntyre or whatever hellhole it was you lo
t crawled out from.”

  “Catachan, sir!” hollered Vines, and a proud roar swelled from the ranks of his men. If Mackenzie had expected to get a rise out of the Jungle Fighters, he was disappointed. Most of them ignored him, not quite looking at him, undermining him with a wave of indifference. Woods said something under his breath, a few men laughed, and the commissar’s eyes narrowed—but he hadn’t quite caught the words and couldn’t pinpoint their source.

  “As you are here,” he continued, “I intend to make the best of it. I’m making it my mission to whip you rabble into shape. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll be the smartest Guardsmen in the Imperium.”

  Mackenzie turned on his heel, then, and snarled in Vines’ direction, “Your platoon is late for my briefing, lieutenant. Ten laps round the camp perimeter, double time. Last squad back does another ten.”

  “With respect, sir…” began Vines, the look of contempt in his eyes suggesting that respect was the last thing he wanted to show.

  “That includes you, lieutenant.” Mackenzie barked—and he marched away stiffly, into the largest of the buildings.

  Vines took a deep breath. “All right,” he said, “you heard the man.”

  The Catachans took their circuits at a leisurely pace, and with a cadence call that contained a few choice lyrics about senior officers.

  By the time they got to the lower ranks’ mess hall, there was only enough slop left for half rations, and it was cold.

  About fifty Catachans and a handful of ogryns from A and D Platoons had taken over a generous area, perching on tables with their feet up on chairs, swigging from flasks and punching each other boisterously. They had broken out the hooch to celebrate their arrival, it had been brewed on the troop ship, and put aside for a special occasion. They filled the large space with their raucous laughter.

  There were other Guardsmen here—they outnumbered the Catachans two to one—but they were finishing their meals in silence, along one side of the hall, looking very much like they’d been edged out by the newcomers. They wore red and gold, and were identified by their flashes as members of the 32nd Royal Validian Regiment. To Lorenzo’s eyes, most of them looked tall and gaunt—but then, he was aware that Catachan had a higher than average gravity, which made its people more squat and muscular than most.