'I thought that too,' my aide confirmed, rekindling the luminator attached to the barrel of his lasgun once he was certain the greenskins were too far away to notice it. Although they were kind enough to let us know they were coming from scores of metres away, the genestealers were far less considerate, and neither of us felt particularly keen to be taken by surprise, the fate of Blain and his battle-brother still vivid in our memories. 'They can't expect to be running into any 'stealers this close to their camp.'
'I don't think they know about them at all,' I said, having had long enough to consider the matter to be fairly certain by now that my initial conclusion had been correct. 'They'd be moving a lot more carefully if they did.'
'Wouldn't whoever shot the one we found earlier have told them?' Jurgen asked, and I shook my head, forgetting for the moment that he couldn't have seen the gesture in the dark even if he hadn't been several paces ahead of me.
'They would if they made it back,' I said, having thought about this too, 'but I don't think they did. We only found one dead 'stealer, and they tend to hunt in packs. Look what happened to the Terminators.' If they'd been able to overwhelm such formidable warriors by sheer weight of numbers, a relatively unprotected ork would have had virtually no chance.
'Makes sense,' Jurgen agreed. 'If one or two went missing out of all that lot, no one'd notice.'
'I suppose not,' I said. If a recon patrol of Guardsmen disappeared, the entire garrison would be on alert within hours, and assiduous efforts made to either find them or determine their fate. But greenskins come and go on a whim, caring little or nothing for any of the others, and unless the genestealers' prey had been sent out on a specific errand by a nob further up the food chain[134], it was indeed probable that their absence had gone unremarked. All of which merely confirmed the disquieting conclusion I'd already come to: the brood mind had a reason to keep the invaders ignorant of its presence aboard the space hulk. Try as I might, though, I just couldn't conceive of what that might be; and when I found out, I was going to wish devoutly that I'd remained in ignorance.
TWENTY-ONE
DESPITE SEVERAL CLOSE calls with wandering greenskins, we eventually made it to the far side of their enclave without serious incident; and I must say I felt a strong sense of relief as the last lingering glow of its luminators faded into the darkness at our backs. True, we were forfeiting whatever protection from the genestealers we'd been deriving from its proximity, but every step we now took brought us closer to our goal. We were still some appreciable distance from the Redeemer-class wreck we'd first boarded, which meant I was having to find our way purely by luck and by instinct. But my old underhiver's affinity for environments like this seemed as reliable as ever, and I was fairly confident that another couple of kilometres would bring us to the area I'd seen magnified in the hololith on the Revenant's bridge. Brief as that glimpse had been, what now felt like a lifetime ago, I was sure that once we reached the area it delineated I'd be able to recall enough detail to accelerate our progress considerably, so I pressed on as quickly as seemed prudent, as anxious to reach it as you might expect.
I was still more than aware of the danger from genestealers, of course, and kept my ears open for any tell-tale scrabbling in the darkness, but the further we got from the greenskins the more my spirits rose. At the very least, it meant we could concentrate on one threat at a time.
'We'll have to go back, sir,' Jurgen said, from a few metres in front, sounding no more discouraged than if he was letting me know that my morning tanna was going to be a few minutes late. 'It's a dead end.'
'Frak,' I said, feelingly. We'd been making good progress over the last half hour or so, having hit on a relatively unobstructed passageway, but we'd passed few side turnings which looked passable, and none at all in the last ten minutes. To the best of my recollection, retracing our steps to a point where we could branch off with a reasonable chance of finding a parallel route would take us uncomfortably close to the orks again, not to mention losing rather more time than I felt we could afford.
I was about to turn away, when a faint, regular pattern flickered into view in the circle of light cast by Jurgen's luminator, all but obscured by the patina of rust and accumulated filth adhering to the metal wall in front of us. I moved closer and raised a hand to brush the worst of it away, rendering my glove almost as disreputable as my much-abused headgear in the process. 'Can you hold that light steady?'
'Of course, sir,' Jurgen replied, leaning a little closer to see what I was doing and bringing a strong blast of his unique aroma with him. Preoccupied, I barely noticed, tracing the faint Gothic lettering my efforts had made marginally more legible. 'What does it say?'
'Emergency bulkhead,' I picked out laboriously, in what had once been authoritative capitals, followed by a series of letters and numbers, presumably identifying the section of the vessel which lay beyond. 'It must have been tripped by whatever happened to the ship this once was.'
'Like the Hand of Vengeance,' Jurgen said, no doubt remembering the thick slab of metal which had slid into place to seal off the decompressing section we'd been trapped in when our transport ship had taken a hit off Perlia. I shuddered, the same recollection striking me. 'Can we get it open, then?'
'We can try,' I replied, a little dubiously. We'd manhandled plenty of obstructing hatches open on our unintended hike through the bowels of the space hulk already, but this one seemed heavier and more obdurate than most. I glanced around the litter of debris surrounding us. 'We'll need something to lever it open, though.'
Fortunately we found a metal bar some three metres in length, which seemed stout enough, after a few minutes of foraging, and I hefted it experimentally. 'This ought to do,' I concluded, returning to the obstacle, which Jurgen helpfully illuminated for me.
I examined the slab of metal carefully, searching for a suitable spot. There was no sign of a join down the middle, which meant it must have moved as a single piece. Not encouraging. I transferred my attention to the nearest edge, Finding only the narrowest of grooves where the bulkhead met the wall. It must retract into this side then, which would mean levering it from the other.
'Frak,' I said vehemently, discovering exactly the same thing after a cursory inspection on the other side of the corridor. 'It must have come down from the ceiling.'
'We won't be shifting that, then,' Jurgen said gloomily.
Even though the same thought had occurred to me, I shook my head. The sense of disappointment which had washed over me was abruptly pushed aside by a surge of anger, almost childish in its petulance, a fact I can only attribute to the hunger and exhaustion I'd been keeping at bay for some time now by willpower alone. I was damned if I was going to let a lump of scrap metal get the better of me now we'd come so close to our goal. 'Wait a moment,' I said, my voice sounding surprisingly level under the circumstances. 'Let's not give up just yet.'
I examined our surroundings in more detail, my eyes having long since adjusted to the level of light supplied by the Guard-issue luminator. It goes without saying, of course, that the decking under our feet had changed innumerable times since we set out on our interminable hike through the bowels of the Spawn of Damnation, from solid metal to mesh grating and back again, occasionally varied by way of carpeting, the odd slab of wood and, once, what seemed uncomfortably like bone[135]. Now we were standing once again on metal mesh, suspended a few centimetres above a gully running beneath the floor, through which cabling and pipework ran to mechanisms Emperor knew where, and which had no doubt ceased to function generations before.
135
He must have been almost completely exhausted by this point to take such an uncharacteristically reckless course of action; although he does at least seem to have retained sufficient sense not to try cutting through the bulkhead directly, which would have taken a considerable amount of time and noise even if his chainblade had been able to penetrate it.