I bent down and tugged hopefully at the section of mesh closest to the bulkhead; finding it sealed immovably into place by the rust of centuries, I gave up the subtle approach and freed it with a couple of swipes of my chainsword. The adamantium teeth ripped through the venerable metalwork within seconds, with a shower of sparks and a shriek which set my teeth on edge. After a few anxious moments, in which hordes of genestealers and curious orks failed to erupt from the shadows, I sheathed the weapon again, marvelling at my folly, which I can only attribute to the fatigue which was still threatening to overwhelm me. The utility gully was too shallow to squeeze through, of course, but I found what I was looking for, and smiled; the thick metal slab was resting in a groove cut into the floor, running from one wall to the other, lined by the decayed remnants of some flexible sheet material, no doubt intended to ensure an airtight seal. The rotting material had left a gap, into which I was able to thrust the end of the bar, and after a few moments of hopeful manipulation, I felt it catch against the underside of the lowered bulkhead.
'So far, so good,' I said, and the furrowing of Jurgen's forehead dislodged some of the grime adhering to it. (Although, to be fair, I can't have looked much cleaner myself by this point.)
'We'll never shift that with just the two us,' he said reasonably, illustrating the point by leaning his entire weight on the raised end of the pole. Beyond a faint, protesting creak from the edge of the mesh deck plate now acting as a fulcrum, his efforts had no discernible effect whatsoever.
'I know,' I said, leading the way back to the debris-choked side passage where I'd found the bar. Part of the ceiling had given way here, Emperor alone knew how long ago, and there were plenty of pieces of sheet metal, cabling and general clutter left lying beneath it. Nothing short of the arrival of a 'stealer swarm or an ork horde would have persuaded me to risk entering so obvious a death trap, but enough of the detritus was close enough to the main corridor to lay hold of without much danger to life and limb, and we'd soon accumulated a collection which would have netted us a small fortune if we'd been able to get it to a downhive trading post somewhere.
A few more moments of perspiration and profanity were enough to transfer our hoard to the barrier blocking our progress, and I looped some of the electrical cable I'd scavenged around the top of the bar, knotting it as securely as I could, before repeating the operation at right angles to the first. That left two loops crossing one another, hanging from the end, and I lost no time in wedging a flat sheet of metal into them, creating a short, but relatively stable, platform. After that, it was simply a matter of wedging the largest chunk of debris under the jutting pole, to create a higher fulcrum than before, and beginning to load the rest of the scrap onto the high end. I was just beginning to doubt that it would work after all when, with a heart-stopping groan, the whole thing shifted several centimetres, and I tensed, on the verge of leaping for my life. After an anxious second or two I became convinced that it wasn't going to collapse, and, somewhat nervously, resumed piling debris onto the makeshift counterweight.
'It's working, sir!' Jurgen said, unmistakably pleased, despite his habitual lack of excitement. But that was fine; I was anxious enough for the pair of us.
'Last piece,' I said, wondering if I was going to have to go back for more ballast, but the last lump of scrap was enough. With another shriek of ancient metal against metal, the whole mess tilted, raising the thick metal slab blocking our way about half a metre above the deck plates.
'It's open,' Jurgen told me, as though I might somehow have failed to notice, and ducked, to shine the beam of his laminator through the gap. The bulkhead turned out to be around thirty centimetres thick, and I marvelled at our good fortune in being able to shift it at all; had I realised quite how great its mass was, I suspect, I wouldn't have bothered even making the attempt. Jurgen sniffed the air beyond it suspiciously. 'It smells a bit,' he reported, as oblivious as ever to the irony, 'but it's breathable.'
'Good,' I said, dropping to crawl under the suspended slab of metal in my turn. I must admit to a strong sense of apprehension as I passed beneath it, but as I stood and surveyed our surroundings, that was replaced by a rush of elated relief. We'd overcome the obstacle after all, and although doing so had cost us a fair amount of time, it was still far less than we'd have squandered retracing our steps and looking for an alternative route. To say nothing of the risk of running into the orks.
The passageway here was just as clear and uncluttered as it had been on the other side of the bulkhead, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief. It seemed I'd made the right decision after all. As I inhaled again, I noticed a faint tang in the air I couldn't quite identify, but which made my palms itch nevertheless. Suddenly, although nothing had changed, the shadows surrounding us seemed deeper, more threatening, and I urged Jurgen into motion again. 'Come on,' I said. 'The sooner we're out of here the better.'
IF ANYTHING, HOWEVER, my sense of unease grew ever stronger as we pressed on, despite the fact that we seemed to be making good progress. I started to hear the muffled scrabbling sounds I'd learned to associate with prowling genestealers again, and urged Jurgen to halt on several occasions while I tried to pinpoint the source. Every time I did, though, the sinister susurration either faded away entirely, or echoed so much that I found myself unable to narrow it down. In the end I just determined to proceed as cautiously as possible, and trust my instincts to warn us of any ambush up ahead. But when an attack did come, it was in a form it had never occurred to me to expect.
'There's an open space up ahead,' I told Jurgen, as quietly as I could, after another nerve-shredding half-hour or so had passed. The echoes of our footfalls and the air currents against my face felt different, and the odd, faintly acidic tang in the air seemed a little stronger now.
'The hangar?' my aide asked, and I shook my head.
'Fraid not. We're still a good couple of hours from that. Probably a hold.' I'm no expert on starship construction, of course, but I'd travelled on enough of them over the years to be fairly certain that the wreck we were currently picking our way through was a bulk cargo hauler of some kind - or at least it had been, before some catastrophe had overwhelmed it, leaving it marooned in the warp until the capricious currents of that hellish realm had washed it up against the Spawn of Damnation. The sounds in the dark around us were growing louder and more numerous now, and I drew my weapons again, tension winding tighter in the pit of my stomach. For a moment I considered ordering Jurgen to extinguish the luminator, but the 'stealers seemed to have no use for light, so I didn't suppose it would attract their attention any more than the sound and scent of us would[136].
As I've remarked before, I've generally found it helpful to be able to see anything trying to kill me.
'You're right, sir,' Jurgen told me, a few moments later, the beam of his luminator picking out an open door in one of the walls of the corridor. As we passed it the pervasive smell grew stronger, and I glanced through the portal, regretting the impulse at once; the space beyond was vast, and the floor so packed with the inert bodies of genestealers, their four arms curled protectively around their thoraxes, that not a millimetre of metal was visible.
136
Or from a different nest; similar hibernacula would have been distributed throughout the hulk, allowing the brood mind to survive the loss of a group or two.