Criid peered through the chain link at it as they walked by, presuming it was a firefield, a boundary margin left deliberately open so that nothing could cross it without becoming a target for the main wall guns. Were the high chain fences and wire roofing just there to slow down an invader’s progress?
A shape slammed into the chain link, making it shiver. Criid recoiled. Something feral was glaring at her, clawing at the chain link separating them.
‘Keep back from the wire,’ Erreton said. ‘We keep shock-dogs in the inner run.’
It wasn’t a dog. It wasn’t even an animal, though it was making the animal growl the three of them had heard outside. It was a form of attack servitor, a grim fusion of cybernetic quadruped and human flesh. It barked and snarled at them, dragging its steel foreclaws across the mesh. Its steel jaws looked like they could bite a man’s arm off. Criid couldn’t see its face. Its scalp and nape were covered with a thick mane of cyber cables that draped across its deep-set eyes like dreadlocks.
Other shock-dogs appeared out of the darkness behind it, drawn by the lights and the smell of unmodified humans. They padded forwards, growling, hackles raised. Some sported spikes, or body-blade vanes, or saw-edge jaw augmetics. They were feral kill-servitors, permanently goaded to madness and hyperaggression by neuro-psychotic implants, most of their humanity long since surgically excised and replaced with biomimetic augmentation. Criid had heard of such inhuman monsters, but she had hoped never to see one.
Erreton waited while the inner blast door opened, then led them through the portal into the inner gatehouse. His hopper scuttled after him diligently. A full squad of Urdeshi Heavies and two towering adept wardens of the Cult Mechanicus Urdeshi were waiting for them. The wardens were robed in embroidered rust-red silk and stood almost two and a half metres tall. They carried ornate stave weapons, and their cowled faces seemed like nightmarish cartoons of Guard-issue gas-hoods: big, round ocular units staring out above pipework rebreather masks. Their duty was the protection and security of the forge facility. They turned to look at the visitors in perfect neurosync unison.
‘This is unorthodox,’ said one. His voice was a modulated arrangement of digital sounds emulating human words.
‘You’ve seen the authority,’ said Erreton.
‘It has been relayed by the manifold,’ said the other warden. ‘Noospheric verification is complete. However–’
‘–this is unorthodox,’ the first finished. One voice, speaking through two bodies. ‘We serve the Omnissiah.’
‘Right now, you serve the Lord Executor,’ said Ludd, ‘who is protecting your interests on this world. My regiment is a Special Task Deployment sent by the Lord Executor himself. You will cooperate fully.’
The adept wardens looked at each other, a perfect mirror of movement, and exchanged a burst of machine code.
‘Signal your commanding human officer–’ said one.
‘–the gates will open now,’ the other finished.
There was a deep rumble of heavy machinery.
‘Move in,’ Elam’s voice crackled over the vox.
‘Understood,’ replied Pasha. A bloom of light appeared through the rain, as the main gate hatches unlocked and yawned open, dragged by immense hydraulics. Outer defence barriers beside the gatehouse retracted into the ground, and a long metal ramp extended across the ditches like a tongue.
‘Pasha to Kolosim,’ she said. ‘Please to hold back one quarter strength and take up a broad defensive position around the access road and surrounding waste-ground, as per pattern. Please also to cut damn fence down and get all transports off the road. I want a clear, unimpeded run when we come out. I’ll want to be moving fast. Do it by book, Ferdy, and keep me advised of anything.’
‘Understood.’
‘I mean anything.’ Pasha looked at Konjic. ‘Start her up,’ she said.
Konjic nodded and woke the big engine of the cargo-10.
‘Engines live,’ Pasha said into the vox handset. ‘Recovery detail, orderly fashion, single file, follow me in, please.’
A voice in the darkness, a whisper barely loud enough to hear, told him, ‘Stay still and don’t make a sound.’
Domor obeyed, dumb. The firm hands that had grabbed him pulled him back against the cellar wall. He could feel the rough brick of it.
‘Who is that?’ he managed to hiss.
‘Shhhhh!’ the whisper replied.
The bone saw sound died away. Near silence settled like a stifling weight in the impenetrable blackness. All Domor could hear was the blood pounding in his ears and the water lapping around his knees. The quiet pressed in on him, robbing him of the ability to fill his lungs.
It wasn’t the quiet doing it, it was fear. He tried to focus. He knew his cortisol levels had ramped right up. He wondered what his heart rate was. Higher than 140, and his motor skills would be eroded. Higher than 160 or thereabouts, he’d have tunnel vision and begin to slide into the decayed, non-rational world of fear.
He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t see to tell if his vision was tunnelling down. But he knew for a fact he’d never been so scared. Ever. And that was saying something, because he’d been through some wicked feth in his time. Domor knew fear. They all did. The story of their lives was punctuated by regular spikes of terror: the threat of death, the insanity of combat, the gnawing in-between times of waiting that whittled away the soul.
Domor had known men, strong men, freeze or panic, or lose the ability to speak, or perform simple motor skills. There was no hierarchy to fear. It bit everyone who came near it. The best of the Ghosts had learned, with only brutal experience as a tutor, to tame it. They had honed intuitive mechanisms to channel the adrenaline and the hindbrain threat responses, to overcome the drastic shifts in blood pressure and biological process, and remain operational. Gaunt was a master at it. Some, like Mkoll and – Domor fancied – Rawne – had been born with the knack. Others, like Baskevyl and Varl, had acquired the skills over time and hard use.
Domor had evolved that way. Most of the veteran Ghosts were only veterans because they could look fear in the eye and remain functional. The crucible of battle did that to a man or woman quickly, and they coped or they died. The initial startle response was still there, but you barged through it and used your heightened state to push on rather than be crippled by it.
Some called it the rush. Hark called it fight time. A good Guardsman turned his own poleaxing biological responses into a weapon.
But this… this wasn’t a battlefield. There was no whip-crack of passing las to trigger the startle, no visible threat to engage the mind with. Domor had no idea why this was the most terrifying experience of his life.
That puzzled him, and it felt like a weight lifting. His bafflement acted like a sponge, blotting up the fear. His mind became occupied with the question of why he was so uniquely scared rather than the fact of being scared.
He wrested control of his breathing.
‘Are you still there?’ he whispered.
A hand squeezed his arm in affirmation.
Domor sheathed his blade, and fumbled with his optics. There was a fizzle of green light as the augmetics came back on. He glimpsed the chamber, awash with water; his own dripping hands, ghost-white and radiant. Then it went out again.
The reassuring hands gripped his shoulder and guided him backwards. His boots kicked blindly at step risers, and he felt his way up them. A dry floor. His right hand found the wall beside him.