concentrating on the orks instead of us, good luck to 'em.'
Well, those were sentiments I could hardly argue with, so I nodded instead, but kept my weapons handy nevertheless. Both xenos breeds were utterly inimical to humankind, and they were welcome to take lumps out of each other until there were none of either left standing so far as I was concerned; but my finely tuned sense of paranoia was convincing me that whichever side won, we'd lose.
WORKING OUR WAY round the greenskins' beachhead took just as long as I'd feared, and more than once I had cause to be grateful for the tanna flask and ration bars Jurgen had secreted about his person before leaving the safe haven of the Revenant.
Though necessary, each of these pauses for rest and refreshment were anxious ones, punctuated by glances at my chronograph, until even my most optimistic estimates of how long the Thunderhawk would remain waiting for survivors to straggle back to it had been long exceeded. But there was nowhere else to go that I could think of, so the hangar bay remained our objective. Even if the entire expedition had been massacred by the pure-strains stalking it, I was pretty sure the Reclaimers and their allies in the Adeptus Mechanicus would be unwilling to leave the treasure trove of archeotech aboard the Spawn of Damnation alone for long, and it would only be a matter of time before they launched another attempt to loot the hulk. Which meant rescue would simply be a matter of waiting, and hoping we didn't succumb to starvation, the blades of the orks or the jaws of the genestealers, before they stopped dithering and got on with it. True, there was no guarantee that they'd make for the same docking bay again, but that was a possibility I didn't allow myself to dwell on for too long.
By the simple expedient of keeping the faint glow of the functioning luminators to our right, as it continued to seep through the labyrinth of passageways, ducts and conduits like the herald of dawn on some habitable world, we contrived to remain far enough from the main body of the greenskins to avoid ready detection, without deviating too far into the depths of the hulk again. On several occasions we were forced to seek refuge in some shadowy side turning, or behind some tumbled debris, by the approach of footsteps and the guttural barking of the greenskins' barbarous tongue, but orks and gretchin aren't exactly stealthy at the best of times, and Jurgen and I were able to conceal ourselves long before the risk of detection became a real possibility. Though all these parties were armed, the carrying of weapons being as natural as breathing to an ork, so far as I could see, without sticking my head out far enough to be noticed, they were being hefted in a distinctly casual manner, and I remarked as much to Jurgen, as the shrill squabbling voices of a gretchin scavenging party under the sullen supervision of an apprentice mek and a couple of bored-looking boyz[133] faded into the distance.
'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
