Jurgen pulled the trigger of his lasgun, and the 'stealer remained where it was, despite the fresh crater which appeared in its misshapen forehead. My aide shrugged. 'It is now,' he said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
I listened to the echoes of the crack of the weapon's discharge fade away into the distance, rebounding into the labyrinth, and hoped it hadn't attracted any attention; but the damage was already done, if any had been, and chiding him would have been pointless at this juncture. Instead, I merely nodded. 'So it would seem.'
Emboldened, I approached the creature and examined it curiously. The wound Jurgen had inflicted had penetrated its skull, neat as you please, but that wasn't what had done for it. Its thorax was ripped open from the inside, in a manner I could recognise all too easily.
'That's a bolter wound,' I said, wondering how in the warp it had managed to crawl this far from the attacking Astartes before expiring.
My aide nodded. 'Old one, too,' he added, his face twisting into a grimace of distaste. 'It's getting pretty ripe.'
'It is indeed,' I agreed, the stench of decay belatedly reaching my nostrils through the nearer and more familiar odour of Jurgen. As he widened the sweep of the beam, I began to discern a spattering of dried ichor and viscera on the walls and the grating underfoot. 'And it was shot right here.' I indicated the traces left on our surroundings by the explosive projectile's detonation somewhere within the creature's chest cavity.
Jurgen nodded thoughtfully. 'You think there's another group of Astartes on board?'
'I doubt it,' I said, after thinking it over for a moment. It was possible that Gries had dispatched another team without telling me, but it hardly seemed likely. Getting our own group together had been an unholy scramble, and I couldn't see that he'd have had the time, even if the Reclaimers did have some clandestine business they didn't want to share with the rest of us. 'Why would they shoot their own CAT?'
Jurgen shrugged. 'Beats me,' he admitted. 'But why would a hybrid shoot another genestealer?'
That didn't make much sense either, and I shrugged in turn. 'We're missing something,' I said, edging gingerly around the repulsive cadaver. But there was no point worrying about it now. The important thing was to get back to the hangar bay and safety as quickly as possible. I hesitated for a moment, reorientating myself, and selected the next right-hand turning I could see, a few metres further on from where we stood. 'This way, I think.'
For once, it seemed, I was in luck. The corridor I'd chosen was long and unobstructed, and we made good time, despite the caution with which we continued to move. Though I carried on listening as assiduously as ever for the sinister skittering sound I'd come to know so well, there seemed to be a remarkable absence of genestealers in this part of the hulk, for which I gave continual thanks to the Emperor under my breath. Welcome as this unexpected development was, I must admit I found it vaguely disquieting. The only explanation which occurred to me was that Drumon and the Terminators were continuing to make a fight of it, and keeping the brood mind distracted. I couldn't see that happy circumstance lasting for much longer, if it was indeed the case, however, and made as much haste as possible, to wring the maximum advantage from the situation while I still could.
After a while I became aware that our surroundings were growing a little more distinct, the shadowy forms of struts and girders emerging out of the murk, and the outlines of piping and ventilator grilles becoming more clearly visible. I gestured to Jurgen. 'Kill the luminator,' I said.
He complied at once, plunging us into a darkness which seemed at first to be as profound as before. As our eyes adjusted, however, I found I'd been right, a pale glimmer of illumination seeping into our surroundings from somewhere up ahead. 'We need to go carefully,' I cautioned.
'Right you are, sir,' Jurgen agreed, holding his lasgun ready for use, and we pressed on, alert for any signs of ambush. So far as I knew, purestrain genestealers had no more need of light than the Astartes did, but some hybrids at least seemed more comfortable being able to see where they were going[124], and I could conceive of no other explanation of the lights ahead of us. We were a long way from our own party, if there was anything left of it at all, and the chances of a luminator system still happening to be functional aboard one of the derelicts after centuries of drifting in the warp without the ministrations of a tech-priest seemed vanishingly small. All my instincts were to turn back and avoid whatever might be waiting for us, but there was no sign of any immediate threat, and the Thunderhawk wouldn't wait forever. At least if something tried to kill us now we'd be able to see what it was, which in my experience is generally an advantage.
As I'd expected, the ambient light levels continued to grow as we moved closer to the source, the brightening glow leaking around corners and from side passages, until at last we came to a section of corridor where the luminators were functioning normally. As I stared around us, taking in our surroundings, a sense of disquiet I couldn't quite account for settled over me like the ever-present pall of choking dust. Wires were running from the glow-plates in the ceiling, linking them to one another, and down through a ragged hole in a nearby wall panel, beyond which they'd been crudely spliced into a thicker cable, which sparked and sizzled alarmingly.
'Tracks,' I said, stooping to examine them, but the dust had been kicked up too badly to discern anything other than the fact of considerable activity - something the repairs to the luminators had already been enough to tell me.
Jurgen edged past the hissing cable as though it might suddenly rear up like a serpent to strike at him, and I must confess I felt something of the same apprehension. This was clearly unsanctified work, with none of the amulets or prayers of protection a tech-priest would have put in place to make it safe, and the place positively crackled with the sour scent of danger[125]; I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stirring in response.
So pervasive, in fact, was the sense of some lurking threat in this unhallowed place, that the sudden sound of gunfire erupting from a nearby corridor came almost as a relief.
I HESITATED FOR a moment, torn, as so often in the course of my life, between the impulse to flee and the desire to discover precisely what threat I was facing. In truth, however, there was only one choice to be made, and I did so; on the battlefield it's the unexpected that kills you, and the best chance of safety I had was to find out what else was lurking in these corridors apart from me, a malodorous Guardsman, and an inordinate number of genestealers. I suppose I could have been influenced by the realisation that at least some of the shooting appeared to be coming from a bolter, which might mean the presence of more Reclaimers to hide behind, but in my heart of hearts I knew so convenient a development would be too much to hope for. Accordingly, I gestured for Jurgen to accompany me, and set off to discover what else the Emperor had placed aboard the Spawn of Damnation to make my life difficult.
Confident that the sounds of battle would mask any noise we might make, Jurgen and I picked up our pace, grateful for being able to see where we were going at last. The roar of gunfire grew louder as we got closer to its source, and I tightened my grip on my sidearm, snuggling the grip reassuringly into my palm. My recently acquired augmetics felt like a natural part of my body now, the forefinger resting gently against the trigger needing the merest flexion to spit death at whatever enemy had the temerity to present itself. In my other hand I held the chainsword, my thumb poised to activate the whirling blades at a heartbeat's notice. All of which may convey a little of what I felt at the time; although I was as loath as ever to go looking for trouble, I was pretty confident of being able to deal with any we might come across, especially if we could sneak up on it from behind. A notion, I'm bound to say, which I was soon to be disabused of.
124
This kind of fluctuation in the local gravity field is apparently common aboard space hulks, and far from unknown on the larger naval vessels and charter ships, particularly when they've been cobbled together from salvaged hulls: it's apparently due to the misalignment of overlapping gravity generators, something which is almost inevitable when as many vessels as commonly make up a space hulk have been randomly thrown together.
125
A debatable point. Some, otherwise indistinguishable from humans at a casual glance, seem to have inherited all the arcane senses of the abominations which polluted the genes of their forebears, while others, much closer to purestrains in appearance, do not. As with so much else where genetics is concerned, random chance appears to play a major part in the distribution of these characteristics.