Re-aligned, he turns around and heads back the way he came. Now he’s got his bearings, he knows where the farmhab is.
He passes a cultivator unit, on its side and half-sunk in black mud. Then he finds the lane, or what used to be the lane. It’s a groove of ooze, a muddy furrow, knee deep in violet water along its belly. He sloshes along.
‘Master Persson?’
He stops, shocked at the sound of a voice.
A man sits at the edge of the track, his back against what’s left of the fence. He’s plastered in mud.
‘Who’s that?’ asks Oll.
‘It’s me. It’s Zybes.’
Zybes. Hebet Zybes. One of the labourers. One of the pay-by-the-days.
‘Get yourself up,’ Oll says.
‘I can’t,’ says Zybes. He’s sitting oddly against the fence. Oll realises that the man’s left arm and shoulder are wrapped to the fence post with barbed wire. They’ve become tangled together in the flood surge.
‘Hold on,’ says Oll. He reaches into his belt, but his work tools are long since lost. He goes back to the overturned cultivator unit and digs around in the thick mud until he finds the tool box in the cab. Then he comes back with a pair of cutters, and sets Zybes free. The man’s flesh is pretty torn up by the wire.
‘Come on,’ says Oll.
‘Where to?’
‘We’ve got places to be,’ says Oll.
It takes twenty minutes to trek across the mire, through the fog, to the farmhab. What’s left of it.
On the way, Zybes keeps asking questions, questions like, ‘What happened?’ and ‘Why did it happen to us?’
Oll doesn’t have any answers. None that he has the time or desire to explain, anyway.
Five minutes from the hab, they come across Katt, short for Kattereena. Ekatterina. Something like that, Oll forgets. She’s a paid-by-day too, like Zybes, works in the kiln store, drying the sheaves. She’s about seventeen; his neighbour’s girl.
She’s just standing there, in the fog, smirched in mud, looking vacant, staring at something there’s no possibility of seeing because there’s no distance visible, thanks to the fog. Maybe she’s staring at something comforting, like the day before, or her fifth birthday.
‘You all right there, girl?’ Oll asks her.
She doesn’t reply. Shock. Plain shock.
‘You all right? Katt, come with us.’
She doesn’t make eye contact. She doesn’t even nod. But when they start walking again, she follows them at a distance.
The hab is a mess. The floodwash swept right through it, taking away the doors, the windows, and most of the furniture, leaving a half-metre carpet of silt and wreckage in exchange. Oll thinks about looking for that pict of his wife, the one that used to stand on the dresser in the kitchen, but the dresser’s gone, so he doesn’t see much hope of finding a picture that he last saw standing on it.
He tells Zybes and Katt to wait, and goes in. His room’s upstairs, in the roof, so it’s weathered the smash better than the rest. He finds his old service kitbag, made of faded green canvas, and packs it with a few useful bits and pieces. Then he strips off to his work boots, and puts on dry clothes. The best he can find are his old Army-issue breeches and jacket, also green and faded.
He picks up a last few items, choosing things to take and things to leave. There’s a spare coat for Zybes, plus a medicae pack, and a blanket from the bed to keep Katt warm. He goes back down the stairs to find them.
His old lasrifle is still hanging over the fireplace. He takes it down. From the niche in the chimney breast he retrieves a small wooden box. Three magazines, fully charged. He puts two in his pocket and gets ready to slot one into the weapon.
He hears Zybes cry out, and rushes into the muddy yard, slipping and slithering. The bloody mag won’t slot. It’s been a long time since he drilled with a rifle, and he’s forgotten the knack.
He’s scared too. More scared than he’s ever been in his life, and that’s saying something, because his life has included Krasentine Ridge.
‘What’s going on?’ he asks, reaching Zybes, who has ducked behind a toppled stack of grass crates.
‘There’s something over there,’ he says, pointing at the side barn. ‘Something big. Moving around.’
Oll can’t see anything. He looks around to check where Katt is. She’s standing by the kitchen door, gazing at the past again, oblivious to Zybes’s panic.
‘Stay here,’ Oll tells the injured man. He gets up and moves towards the barn, rifle trained. He hears something move. Zybes wasn’t lying. It is big, whatever it is.
Oll knows he’ll need a clear shot. A kill shot. If it’s big, he’ll need to stop it fast.
He wrenches open the barn door.
He sees Graft. The big loader servitor is rolling around in the barn, bashing into things. Mud and riverweed have totally baffled its sensors and visual systems.
‘Graft?’
‘Trooper Persson?’ the servitor replies, recognising his voice.
‘Stay still. Just stay still.’
The big cyborganism halts. Oll reaches up and yanks the ropes of weed away. He gets a cloth and cleans the optics, and gets the mud out of the fine sensor grids.
‘Trooper Persson,’ says Graft. ‘Thank you for the assistance, Trooper Persson.’
‘Follow me,’ says Oll.
‘Follow you where, Trooper Persson?’
‘We’ve got work to do,’ says Oll.
2
‘Explain this,’ says the Word Bearer. His name is Ulmor Nul.
‘There was an ambush,’ says Vil Teth. ‘Two of the Ultramarines.’
Nul looks down at the corpse of the cataphractii.
‘They did this?’
‘They did this,’ agrees Teth. ‘They killed my watcher, killed members of my team, and then took the speeder. One was a captain.’
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’ asks Nul.
‘The cataphractii couldn’t stop them,’ says Teth, in surprise. ‘What makes you think I could?’
He pauses.
‘Forgiveness, majir. They were legionaries. We had no means.’
‘You have stayed in position since the attack, waiting for support?’
‘Yes, majir.’
Ulmor Nul raises his warp-flask. He speaks into it, alerting the formation officers that at least two more of the enemy elite are loose in that section of the starport.
‘They might have transport,’ he adds.
Nul looks at his squad members.
‘They need to be hunted down,’ he says, simply.
One of his men, Kelter, nods and brings the tracker forward. He has to use the electric goad. The tracker is angry and uncooperative.
It’s about the size of an adult mastiff, but it’s bulkier and it’s not canine. It growls and snuffles, drooling mucus from its flared black-flesh nostrils.
‘We need something they touched,’ says Nul.
‘The captain touched me,’ says Teth. ‘He knocked me down–’
He’s still saying it when he realises he’s an idiot.
Nul looks at him and nods.
‘Majir, no–’ Teth begins to say.
The tracker surges forward. It’s on him. Teth shrieks as it begins to eat him alive.
‘It’s got the taste,’ Kelter says. He pulls the tracker off the Kaul Mandori warrior. Teth’s not dead. He should be. He ought to be. Too much of him is missing and gnawed away for him to ever mend or lead any kind of life. He can’t speak. He can’t even express his overwhelming agony, except to paddle his fingerless hands and churn what’s left of his jaw.