[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World Read online

  Muldoon’s night reaper was smaller than Lorenzo’s fang, but just as deadly. Its blade was triangular, shaped to leave a large entrance wound that wouldn’t clot—and knowing Muldoon it was almost certainly poisoned. Probably with the venom of a jungle lizard. He was always the first of the Catachans to turn a deathworld’s threats to his advantage.

  Lorenzo kicked out with both feet, trying to unseat Muldoon, but Muldoon knew too well how to spread his weight to maintain his balance. That knife hand was coming around to strike again. Muldoon loomed over Lorenzo, his unshaven features crazed with blind fury, his eyes wide, white, unblinking. There was no point talking to him, in appealing to reason. He was too far gone. There was no way to know what was going on in Muldoon’s head, what those insect bites were making him see, but Lorenzo would have laid odds he didn’t even recognise his old comrade right now. He was fighting his own daemons.

  He couldn’t afford to hold back. He found Muldoon’s face with his free hand and dug his fingernails into his eyes. Momentarily blinded, Muldoon threw back his head and let out an uncharacteristic howl of pain and rage. Lorenzo pulled his right arm free, twisted out of the path of a badly aimed knife blow and seized Muldoon’s wrist in his left hand. He tried to shake Muldoon’s grip on his weapon, but his fingers were locked around its haft. As Muldoon lashed out again, Lorenzo guided his thrust and buried the night reaper’s blade in the ground beside his head.

  If Muldoon had been in his right mind, he would have abandoned the knife until it was safe to retrieve it. Working on primal instinct, however, he only knew the night reaper was a part of him, his most important possession, and he all but forgot about Lorenzo as he struggled to reclaim it from the unyielding earth. Lorenzo crawled out from beneath him, and tackled him side-on. He hurled blow after blow at Muldoon’s head, praying each time that the next one would be the one to put him down, knowing he was made of sterner stuff than that. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop him without inflicting a lasting injury.

  Lorenzo could have drawn his own knife. He could reach it now. Against any other foe, he would have done it. He would have ended this.

  Blood rushed in his ears, dulling his senses. He could hear, though, that the rest of his squad had broken cover. They were slashing and beating their way through the jungle, regardless of the danger from hostile flora or more insect hives, toward the gretchin. The creatures couldn’t help but hear them coming, and they turned and fled back up the path they had cleared for themselves.

  Muldoon must have been in pain, near senseless, but he was fighting back. Lorenzo would have expected no less from him. Fortunately, his fever slowed his reaction time, and Lorenzo ducked the worst of his punches.

  Help came, at last, in the form of Dougan. The older trooper knew his bionic leg slowed him down, and so it was natural that he should have been the one to stay behind. Dougan came up behind Muldoon, and tried to restrain him while Lorenzo knocked the wind out of him with a double jab to the solar plexus. He remembered head-butting a Validian Guardsman the previous day, finding his stomach soft and yielding, in contrast, hitting Muldoon was like driving his knuckles into rock.

  Muldoon let out another animal roar, and broke Dougan’s hold. Lorenzo held back for an instant, waiting to see what he’d do. Muldoon looked wildly from one of his comrades to the other, realising he was surrounded. His eyes flicked towards his night reaper, still buried in the ground, but it was too far away. Muldoon reached into a pouch of his bandolier and pulled out a demolition charge.

  With a quick flex of his thumb, he popped out the charge’s pin.

  Lorenzo and Dougan hit him at the same time, from opposite sides. Dougan was trying to wrestle the charge out of Muldoon’s hand, but his grip was as resolute as that on his night reaper had been. Lorenzo’s survival instinct was telling him to dive for shelter, but he wasn’t about to abandon Muldoon while there was the slightest chance he could be saved. He added his strength to Dougan’s, taking one of Muldoon’s fingers in each fist and forcing them open.

  The demolition charge dropped out of Muldoon’s hand.

  Lorenzo had to dive for it, cradling his palms to give the explosive device the softest landing he could. In so doing, he left himself exposed, and Muldoon punished him with a brutal kick to the face. Lorenzo felt his lip splitting. He rolled with the blow, and was back in the grass again, his own blood on his tongue. But Dougan was keeping Muldoon busy, keeping him from pressing his advantage, and Lorenzo had the charge with—he estimated—less than a second to spare before it went up.

  He hoisted himself onto one elbow, took a fraction of that second to orient himself, to check where the others were, then he put all the strength he had into an overarm throw. The demolition charge seemed to have barely left his hand, arcing towards the treetops, when it burst and showered him with hot shrapnel.

  Dougan had locked an arm around Muldoon’s throat, and was holding on despite his kicking and screaming. Lack of oxygen had an effect on the frenzied trooper at last, and Muldoon’s eyelids fluttered and closed. Dougan waited a moment longer before he relinquished his grip. A flicker of regret crossed his face as Muldoon’s legs buckled beneath him and he crashed into the undergrowth.

  Lorenzo and Dougan drew their Catachan fangs, cut down a couple of thin vines and bound their unconscious comrade’s wrists and ankles with them. Lorenzo yanked the night reaper out of the ground, and respectfully returned it to its sheath. Even with Muldoon in this state, he couldn’t deprive him of his knife—though he ensured that his tied hands couldn’t reach it.

  Lorenzo could hear las-fire through the foliage, and he knew the rest of his squad were close on the heels of their prey.

  Myers and Storm were the first back from the gretchin hunt. They were followed by Donovits and Armstrong.

  “How is he?” asked the one-eyed veteran, nodding in Muldoon’s direction. He must have seen the start of the fight, and deduced the reason for it.

  Dougan shrugged. “Hard to tell. His fever’s broken, so he could be alright. Best leave him to sleep it off, and hope he’s seeing things more clearly when he comes to. How’d it go with the gretchin?”

  “We got ’em,” said Storm, baring his white teeth. “They won’t be taking any tales back to their greenskin masters.”

  Commissar Mackenzie came crashing through the foliage then, Guardsman Braxton at his heels. “What the hell was all the screaming about?” the young officer demanded to know. “And who let off a bomb? Where’s the point in our chasing down gretchin left, right and centre if some idiot just broadcasts our position to every ork on the planet?”

  “Couldn’t be helped, sir,” said Dougan.

  “And the jungle would have deadened the sound of the explosion,” added Donovits. “I’d say it couldn’t have been heard more than, say—”

  “I don’t want to know, trooper!” snapped Mackenzie. “This operation is turning into a shambles. Where’s Greiss?” He turned, and jumped to find that the sergeant had appeared noiselessly at his shoulder. Recovering himself, he snarled, “Sergeant Greiss! Is it too much to expect you to exercise a modicum of restraint over your men? God-Emperor knows, I wasn’t expecting much—but so far I’d have been better leading a squad of orks into the jungle. At least they have some semblance of self-control!”

  Greiss glared at Mackenzie as if he was an acid grub he’d just found eating into his boot. The rest of the Catachans—somehow without seeming to move, just shifting their stances—formed into a vague circle around the commissar. No words had been spoken, but something had definitely changed.

  Lorenzo caught Braxton’s eye. The Validian didn’t know what was happening—but he couldn’t have been more aware at that moment that this was Catachan turf, that he and the commissar were the outsiders here. Instinctively, he shrank back against Mackenzie. He looked pale.

  Mackenzie himself appeared to keep his cool, but Lorenzo could see the apprehension in his eyes.

  Sergeant Greiss broke eye contact, took
a half-step back, and just like that the threat was dissipated. “Well done, men,” the sergeant barked. “A bit of bad luck, Sharkbait here going crazy when he did—but it couldn’t have been helped, and you dealt with it well.”

  Greiss wasn’t normally so effusive with his praise—it wasn’t usually needed—so Lorenzo knew his words hadn’t been for the Jungle Fighters’ benefit. Mackenzie looked irritated, but he didn’t protest.

  It was only when Greiss detailed Woods to pick up the unconscious and bound Muldoon that the commissar broke his silence with an outraged splutter. “What the hell are you thinking, Greiss? That trooper has given us away once already. We can’t afford to let it happen again.”

  “And it won’t.” Greiss promised. “I’ll see to it.”

  His tone left no room for argument, but Mackenzie didn’t take the hint. “That man is diseased. He might be infectious. Even if he isn’t, what can we do for him out here?”

  “You got anything at the camp that could help him?”

  “No,” said Mackenzie emphatically.

  “Then Muldoon comes with us,” said Greiss with equal force, “until I’m sure there isn’t a cure for him.”

  “You think you can drag him all the way to the warboss’ hideout and back? You think you can guarantee he won’t wake up along the way and bring the orks down on us? No, sergeant. No, no, no. I don’t like doing this—but I’m ordering you to abandon this trooper for the sake of the mission!”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Woods, who by now had slung Muldoon over his shoulders and was carrying the bigger man effortlessly. “Isn’t the sergeant’s decision no more. Sharkbait is my buddy. You want me to drop him now, and leave him here for the lizards and the birds, you’ll have to shoot me.”

  With that, Woods turned his back defiantly and set off into the jungle once more. The rest of the Catachans wasted no time in joining him, leaving Mackenzie standing. The commissar turned to Greiss as if for support, but recoiled at the malicious half-grin on his face. So he took the only course open to him at that moment. He lapsed into a judicious, if sullen, silence.

  They moved on.

  It was as the evening closed in that the birds launched their attack.

  The sky, where it could be seen, was still a light shade of blue—but with the sun having surrendered its efforts to pierce the trees, the shadows had free rein down here. The canopy had captured much of the heat, but it was beginning to evaporate. The Catachans were used to jungle nights, of course, and their eyes adapted well to the gloom. The same could not be said of Mackenzie and Braxton. After stumbling one too many times, Braxton had made to light a torch, but Greiss had hissed at him to put it away. “You want to draw every critter in the jungle to us—and blitz our night vision while you’re at it?”

  They were caught by surprise, because they hadn’t heard the birds massing. This in itself was unusual. It suggested a level of coordination unprecedented in such creatures, in Lorenzo’s experience—that the birds had appeared in such numbers, so quickly.

  The beating of their wings was like oncoming thunder, except that it sounded from all directions at once. Their bodies were a storm cloud, drawing with it a darkness even the Catachans couldn’t penetrate. And then they were there, the birds, plummeting through the leaves like hailstones—but hailstones that, when they hit, burst into screeching, scratching darts of fury.

  Lorenzo had just had time to draw his Catachan fang and lasgun. He was wielding the latter one-handed, keeping his knife hand back to protect his face. He fired repeatedly, aiming up above the heads of his comrades. It felt like the air was full of whirling blades, scratching, cutting, pecking at his flesh. He could barely see to take aim through the tumult of black wings—but as a particularly large bird flew up before him, claws outstretched, beady eyes trained upon him, Lorenzo saw his chance and struck. He felt his bayonet punching into the soft tissue of the bird’s heart, and he smiled grimly as blood welled onto his fingers. The bird had been skewered, and Lorenzo didn’t have time to remove it, so he fired the lasgun again and swung it like a club, knocking a few of his avian attackers from the sky, hopefully stunning some. The dead bird’s corpse split, lost its grip on the bayonet, and hit Lorenzo’s boot with a wet slap.

  A sharp beak had clamped onto his ear and was tugging at it, so he sideswiped its owner with his fang, which left his face exposed for a split-second and gave another bird the chance to swoop in and jab at his eye. Lorenzo twisted his head aside in time, but they were tugging at his hair, clawing at his scalp. The birds had torn away his bandana, and drawn blood. He was pumping las-bolt after las-bolt through feathered bodies, but for each one that dropped two more seemed to replace it. And, unexpectedly, they had his gun, their claws scrabbling at its furniture, working in concert to yank it from Lorenzo’s grasp. They didn’t quite have the strength, so instead they piled their weight on top of it, forcing its barrel down until he couldn’t pull the trigger for fear of blowing off his own foot.

  The gun was useless to him now, a dead weight in his hand, so he sacrificed it. He flung it to the ground, taking several startled birds with it. He delivered a vicious kick to one as it struggled to right itself, and sent it sprawling. Then he brought his boot down on another, and snapped its neck.

  Was it his imagination or was the flock thinning at last? Lorenzo could focus on individual birds now, rather than being overwhelmed by their mass. They were indeed, as first impressions had suggested, jet black, from their wingtips to their claws, even their eyes. There was no expression in those eyes—no rage or satisfaction, just a matter-of-fact blankness. Their wings were short, flapping furiously to keep their squat bodies aloft. Their black beaks came to wicked hooked points.

  Lorenzo found a tree and backed up to it, denying them the chance to come at him from behind. He kept his fang in motion, slashing at any bird that ventured too close. They had become less bold with fewer numbers, keeping their distance, giving the impression of watching, waiting for an opening, although their eyes were still glassy. Lorenzo feinted, drew one of them in, and tore open its stomach with his blade, showering himself in its guts.

  Another tried to blindside him, but he caught it by the throat, squeezed, felt its bones popping between his fingers and thumb. Its body joined the growing pile at his feet—and then, something in that pile nipped his ankle. At first Lorenzo thought it was just one bird, crippled, unable to fly but still single-minded in purpose. He raised his foot, tried to kick the wretched creature away—but there were more of them down there, scratching and pecking. The air around him seemed to have darkened with their bodies again. Reinforcements?

  A bird shot up from below and got past Lorenzo’s defences, latching onto his face and hugging it, and he would have let out a cry if he hadn’t bitten his tongue in time. He was blinded, he could barely breathe for the bird’s sticky, bloodied feathers in his mouth and nose.

  He clawed at it, but its brethren were pecking at his knuckles, biting his fingers, keeping him from getting a grip, and his tormentor’s claws were like nails raking his cheeks. He dropped into a protective crouch, closed his fingers around the creature on his face at last, and tore it away from him, taking too much of his own skin with it. He saw it properly for the first time as it struggled in his hands—and although Lorenzo had seen much in his short career as a Jungle Fighter, the sight that greeted him now caused his mouth to gape in surprise.

  The bird’s neck had been cut almost through. Its head flapped lifelessly against its wing until, as Lorenzo watched, it detached itself at last and plopped into the long grass. But the body was still moving—and not just the uncoordinated twitching that could follow death in some species, but a deliberate and almost successful attempt to squirm free from him. With a shudder of revulsion, he dashed the bird against the nearest tree, with enough strength that his hand cracked through its body like an egg. It didn’t move again.

  Then Lorenzo felt them, saw them clawing their way up his legs: more bird corpses, some nursing brok
en legs, wings, backs, some eviscerated. Some of them had been dead a long time before this battle had begun. Putrid flesh slid from their gnarled bones, the stench that hit Lorenzo’s nostrils would have been sickening to someone less familiar with it.

  The first few skeletons had climbed as far as his lap, and they sprang for his throat, falling short, their wings too tattered and rotted to catch an air current. Lorenzo tried to brush them off, but they were tenacious. He mimicked Muldoon’s earlier actions, rolling on the ground, feeling a satisfying crunch of bones beneath him. One skeletal bird hopped onto his face, and he stabbed at it with his knife. The blade passed through its empty eye sockets, and he lifted the undead creature off him, its legs pedalling the air, wing bones cranking uselessly. He flicked it away.

  And then, suddenly, he was unmolested, the last of the birds around him finally still in death. His own survival assured for the moment, Lorenzo’s thoughts went to his comrades. He was relieved to see that each of them had won or was winning his own battle. He joined them in shooting, slicing and bayoneting the few remaining birds. Without their superior numbers, they were easy prey, and soon the Jungle Fighters were jumping and stamping on hundreds of small corpses.

  Then there was silence.

  They regrouped, and took stock of their injuries. Landon was the worst, his face red with his own blood—but nobody had escaped harm, apart from the unconscious Muldoon. Lorenzo’s comrades all sported crazed scratch patterns on their arms and faces, and he could tell from the prickling pain in his cheeks and forehead that he looked no better than any of them. His jacket sleeves were gashed and ragged, one trouser leg also torn.

  Guardsman Braxton appeared to have held his own, though he was exhausted. He leaned against a tree trunk for support, flushed and out of breath. Storm was looking particularly irked that the birds had taken great clumps out of his beard. Dougan’s bionic leg had been gummed up with feathers, which he was picking out of its joints ruefully.