Lermentov led his main divisions north east, breaking down through sparsely occupied ganger levels until the vanguard emerged inside an old sewage conduit heading up towards the Armengand industrial zone. As his bodyguard, mostly burly abhumans equipped with shock mauls, rumbled through the narrow mazes the blind and ivory-pale inhabitants scuttled into the shadows, cloth-bound feet splashing in the dark.
Spinoza, Khazad and the storm troopers ran with him. The False Angel had been as good as his word, and their full armour and weapons had been restored to them. Back in the fortress, one of Lermentov’s men had hauled Argent up to her, his brow sweat-soaked from the weight of it, and she had taken a cold satisfaction in taking it from him lightly in one hand. The False Angel himself wore decent armour of his own — a Militarum-issue flak-suit, closed-face helm, synthleather boots — and he carried a regulation M35 lasgun.
‘You’re Guard, then,’ Spinoza remarked to him once they’d set off.
Lermentov nodded, breathing hard. ‘Was.’
‘What brought you down here?’
‘Served for ten years,’ he said. ‘All across the sector. Saw a lot of fighting. Then I came here.’ A hollow laugh. ‘I was a pilgrim, you believe that? Applied for leave, and they gave it to me. We were shot to scraps, our commissar was dead — they knew the end was coming. I told them I’d be back.’ He kept on running. His command group, such as it was, came on behind, filling the sewer with foul-smelling eddies of kicked-up water. ‘I never went back. It’s not hard to disappear here. But then you see what the world’s like once you’re nothing.’
They jogged on in silence for a while. Spinoza’s tactical readout had been damaged during the attack on the assembly hall, and her comm-unit was scrambled. She tried to open a channel to Crowl, and met the predictable wall of static. Then she tried Rassilo, and to her surprise got a faint counterreading.
‘My lord inquisitor,’ she voxed over an internal ciphered link, shielding the transmission from Lermentov. ‘Transmission from your servant Interrogator Luce Spinoza, retinue of the Lord Crowl. Onward coordinates are sent with this databurst. I take you at your word, and request immediate aid. Xenos encountered under Armengand. Supposition: large numbers, significant force required to repel. Am in the company of irregular militia and temporarily making use of their numbers. If you find us, request respectfully you do not terminate allies until xenos priority threat neutralised. End transmission.’
That was it — there was no indication of whether it had made it. She only just finished when Lermentov spoke to her again.
‘I didn’t want this,’ he said. ‘Why would I want it? But they were good to me when my luck ran out. They’re not all vermin and gangers in the underhive. There’s a better system, and we show them what it looks like.’
‘Do not attempt to excuse yourself,’ said Spinoza. ‘I do not wish to hear it.’
‘No, of course you don’t.’
‘How far?’
‘This takes us under Armengand. It’s on the western sprawl. Not far.’
‘Those… things. They’ll cut you apart.’
‘They know it.’
There were few illusions down here, where life was measured in a few half-decades and the sun was never seen. Still, the rabble-army ran on with enough enthusiasm, knowing what inaction would cost them. Spinoza had told Lermentov nothing of Crowl’s suspicions over the purpose of the xenos incursion — it would make no difference to their desire for vengeance, something she could approve of even if everything else was anathema.
They ran, and the air became cold and clammy. Spinoza had not been cold since arriving on this roasting, parched planet, and it felt strangely alien to her. The stench became overwhelming — if the sewer tunnels had once fed into active processing stations, the systems had long since broken down. The sloped walls and roof were caked in a glowing mat of organic pulp, and straggly creatures scampered through the shallows ahead of them, draggled and sleek. All told, Spinoza had around her the only living things still capable of thriving on this old, spoiled world — humans, rats and algae.
Their course took them down steeply. The water became viscous and slime-choked, the tunnels narrower and more decrepit. Whole ceiling sections had collapsed into rubble, and cracks opened up in the walls and floor, gaping blackly into nothingness. The warbands maintained a good pace for the most part, though the weaker began to struggle as the fumes intensified and their malnourished bodies began to creak.
Spinoza sniffed hard, flaring her nostrils to draw the air in deep. Amid the filth she could almost detect it again — that musk of sickliness, the one from the void-hauler, also exuded by that horror chained up in Lermentov’s fortress. They were getting nearer.
‘Stay close,’ she voxed to Hegain on the closed squad-channel. ‘Any sentient xenos, they are the priority. If we can extract one and withdraw, we do it.’
‘As you will it,’ replied Hegain. ‘And the Lord Crowl?’
‘I will maintain attempts at contact. We are a long way down.’
‘Heh. You have the right of it. Further down than I’ve been, I will say it. It is cold. Imagine it — cold. I had dreamed of that, some days and nights. So there’s that.’
Spinoza smiled. Hegain seemed restored. Only Khazad remained silent, running hard in the dark alongside them, a little less fluently than before, but still exuding power.
‘You could have left,’ Spinoza voxed.
‘And go where?’
‘This is not your cause.’
‘Is what Phaelias wish to know. Say no more, interrogator. Course is set.’
Spinoza cut the link. The level of mutual distrust was almost amusing, and the only thing binding them together was the promise of uncovering more abominations, which if they existed in any number would likely be enough to kill all of them, down in the dark and far from any conceivable help.
The tunnel began to level out. A chamber loomed ahead of them, and the bootfalls echoed strangely in the unfurling space. They burst out into a sodden, stinking subterranean hall, and weak helm-lumens swept across rotting piers of brickwork. The floor was scored by what looked like old rail tracks, thick with slime and pitted with the endemic rust.
The aroma was pungent now. Several of Lermentov’s troops began to retch as they breathed it in. More exits led away from the chamber, many little more than raw cavern maws, blacker than old bile. Lermentov’s abhumans, too stupid to fear, started to push ahead into them, ducking under sagging girders and grunting noisily.
‘Hold,’ said Khazad, edging towards one of the openings, her sword drawn and glimmering in the perpetual night. ‘Tell them not trample over this.’
More of Lermentov’s forces arrived in the chamber, many already limping and breathless. Yet more would arrive soon as the warbands caught up. Lermentov held up a closed fist, and Alvia, a woman who seemed to be his second in command, called the ogryns back and ordered the remaining fighters to form up.
‘What is it?’ Lermentov asked, approaching the opening warily.
‘You cannot smell it?’ Khazad asked, treading carefully.
Spinoza gave battle-sign for Hegain to come with them, and the storm troopers and Lermentov’s command group fell in behind them. The archway had half fallen in, leaving piles of rubble amid the pooling effluent, but the passage was still wide enough for them to enter in pairs. As they passed under the lintel, clusters of lumen beams swept across decaying brickwork, all plastered with patches of bleached lichen. Amid the streaks of glistening slime were patches of darker matter, and long scratches along the soft, rotten walls.