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.
The roar of weapons had increased in volume by now, and I began to pick out the sounds of several different kinds. The unmistakable sibilant bellow of bolter fire I'd already recognised, as I said, but behind and around it was a syncopation of stuttering slug-throwers, and the sharp bark of a shotgun or two. Something about the cacophony struck me as vaguely familiar then, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. There was another sound too, which surrounded and overlaid the others, an inchoate roaring like a deephive sumpfall [126], which I felt sure I ought to be able to identify, but which somehow continued to elude me.
'We seem to be coming to a hold or something,' Jurgen said, and I nodded, surprised. We'd passed through a few open spaces in our erratic progress, but the last really vast chamber we'd seen had been the hangar bay in which the Thunderhawk had docked; and the deeper we'd penetrated into the hulk, the more constricted our way had seemed to become.2 Now, though, the pattern of echoes indicated an open space far larger than any we'd so far come across, and I began to move more cautiously again. The passageway we were following seemed to be coming to an end, a rough rectangle of brighter illumination growing ahead of us, although as yet I had no idea what we'd find when we reached it.
As we did so, the noise, no longer attenuated by distance, battered at us like a physical force. I edged forwards a final pace or two, finding the corridor ended in a vertiginous drop, and glanced down, flattening myself against the last metre or so of the metal wall. My breath seemed to congeal in my chest, and I muttered a few expletives, in a combination I'd only previously heard in a gaming establishment when one of the patrons turned out to be carrying a few of his own cards for luck.
Jurgen was, as always, more succinct. 'Orks,' he said, as though they might somehow have escaped my notice. 'Thousands of 'em.'
TWENTY
AT FIRST GLANCE, which was more than enough for me, my aide's estimation of the greenskins' numbers seemed depressingly accurate. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be more of them. From our vantage point high on its sloping rim, we were able to look down into a vast hollow at the heart of the hulk, hundreds of metres across and almost as many deep, seething with activity. And everywhere my eyes fell there seemed to be more of the creatures, squabbling, hurtling around randomly in ramshackle vehicles, or busying themselves battering metal into new shapes, for purposes which eluded me. There were at least as many gretchin among the larger creatures, of course, scurrying around on errands for whichever ork offered them a measure of protection, being casually swatted out of the way by any others whose progress they impeded, or engaging in vigorous altercations of their own. A pall of smoke drifted over the section where the bustle seemed greatest, where the mekboyz[127] and their stunted servants were busying themselves with the construction of new engines of war; but strain my eyes as I might to penetrate the choking shroud, it and the distance combined to obscure any useful details about what they might be up to.
For a moment or two I found myself wondering how a space this big could exist in such a densely tangled accumulation of derelict ships. Then my eye fell on the ragged edge of the deck plates I was standing on, and the answer came to me, as I registered the unmistakable marks of crudely wielded tools: the orks had created this steel cave themselves, hacking away at the metal surrounding them with all the brute force they were capable of, scavenging the pieces to construct fresh weapons and the other necessities
