Sandy Mitchell - The Emperor's Finest

'Dream on,' Mira said scornfully. 'If you think I'm going to betray my world and my father, you're even more stupid than you look.'

'You'll think differently when the brood takes you in,' the sergeant assured her, and a gush of ice water seemed to sluice down my spine. There were innumerable minor wounds among the turncoat soldiers, but all had sustained identical ones below the ribcage, marked by a trickle of blood, already clotting. I'd seen wounds like those before and searched the men's faces again. As I'd expected, they looked dazed and disorientated, but followed the lead of the sergeant. He alone seemed alert and in control, his own armour unmarred - a third-generation hybrid, then, or even later, able to pass fully for human.

Despite my mounting horror, I kept my voice steady, concealing the knowledge of what I'd deduced and looking desperately round the chamber for some avenue of escape. More people, or, to be more accurate, things that looked like people, were emerging into the light, from tunnel mouth after tunnel mouth, some armed, mostly not. Many bore visible traces of their inhuman heritage: some had an extra limb or two, tipped with razor-sharp talons, while others had skin thickened to natural armour, or were betrayed by nothing more than a subtle wrongness of posture, like Kamella, the joygirl who'd tried to bite my head off on Keffia.

'What are they?' Mira asked, curiosity and revulsion mingling on her face. 'Mutants?'

'The stories don't seem so far-fetched now, do they?' I asked, unwilling to reveal to the hybrids that I knew their true nature. I didn't know quite how concealing that knowledge would aid us, but I wasn't willing to concede any potential advantage, however small, over an enemy. One tunnel seemed to be open still, and I powered up my chainsword, nudging Mira towards it. Of course that was precisely what we were meant to do - I didn't need to be able to tap into the brood mind to know that - but pretending we were fooled, even if only for a few seconds, might just tip the balance back in our favour. It was an insanely slender chance, but it was only a few weeks since I'd taken a header through a necron warp portal, and compared to that, what I was contemplating looked positively sensible.

As I'd expected, the whole damned lot of them responded at once, taking a couple of steps forwards in eerie silence, tightening the cordon around Mira and me, while moving out of the tunnels and into the open space. Including, to my carefully concealed relief, the hybrid sergeant and his newly implanted squadmates.

'Follow my lead,' I murmured, certain that if I wasn't actually overheard, enough of the abhuman monstrosities would be able to read my lips and share the knowledge of what I'd said with their brood mates. 'Back towards that tunnel behind us. If any of them look like shooting, drop them first.'

Mira nodded, once, tightly, her posture stiff with nerves. 'Count on it,' she said, her voice hardly wavering at all.

'Good girl,' I said, keeping up the charade and feeling that a bit of quiet encouragement at this juncture would look appropriately commissarial. 'If they rush us, just hose them down on full auto.'

Which would probably be about as effective as giving them a severe talking to, if the mob I'd survived on Keffia was anything to go by. The brood mind doesn't care about a few losses, any more than a tyranid army does, but it's the sort of thing that would work against a mutant horde, and I was more interested in misdirecting the alien gestalt intellect facing us than giving sensible tactical advice.

It almost worked, too. We were just edging into position for my desperate gamble, the hybrid sergeant practically within reach of my humming chainblade, when I became aware of an ominous susurration in the depths of the tunnel behind us. I turned slowly to face it, Mira following suit, the pit of my stomach knotting. I knew that sound: a chitinous exoskeleton, moving fast.

I brought up my weapons, but before I could shoot, the ghastly form of a purestrain genestealer burst from the darkened portal and flung itself upon us.

AS SHE GOT her first sight of the xenos monstrosity, Mira screamed, as well she might; if I hadn't had an image to maintain I'd probably have done the same, but as it was, I took an ineffectual cut at it with the chainsword, diving to one side to get out of its way. By great good fortune, the movement got me closer to my real objective, but there wasn't any time to exploit the fact, as the creature turned, all four arms reaching out to eviscerate me. Mira pulled the trigger of her lasgun, unleashing a burst, and I flinched, anticipating falling to friendly fire; but she was aiming down the tunnel, from which another 'stealer emerged, seconds later, bearing down on her like a Chimera at full throttle. How many more of the things there may have been lurking in the depths below the city I've no idea, but fortunately the brood mind seemed to think that one each would be more than enough to implant the two of us with its taint [20] Many of the hybrids probably had the ability to do this as well, but by now the brood mind had evidently concluded that Cain would be less easy meat than the PDF troopers, and deployed the most formidable of its assets accordingly. .

'Drop your weapons,' the hybrid sergeant urged us. 'They won't harm you if you don't resist.'

'Yeah, right,' I said sarcastically, parrying the reaching limbs with my chainsword. It bit deep, shearing through chitin in a welter of flesh and ichor, which spattered liberally around the chamber, misting the faces of the nearest spectators. None reacted with the revulsion you'd normally expect, just continuing to watch in impassive silence, which in its own way was more unnerving than the creature in front of me.

'Just turn us into abominations like you [21] I suspect a little exaggeration may be creeping in here, as close combat against a creature as formidable as a purestrain genestealer is hardly likely to leave enough time for defiant speeches. 1 Imperial Guard regulations are firm on this point, prescribing execution as the penalty for losing a weapon, unless it was an unavoidable consequence of action in the field. Which probably accounts for most Guard troopers' tendency to carry theirs everywhere when on duty, even to the latrines. .'

The creature flinched, withdrawing the injured limb, and I rolled under another just as its fist closed in a grab, missing me by millimetres. The one closing in on Mira momentarily checked its charge too, as a rash of las-bolt craters erupted on its thorax, then came on again as her lasgun fell silent, its powerpack expended. With a shriek which all but ruptured my eardrums she flung the empty weapon at the onrushing monstrosity, hoping to achieve Emperor knows what. The 'stealer swatted the mass of metal aside in an eyeblink and it clattered to the floor nearby, where the watching hybrids ignored it.

'You couldn't just have reloaded?' I asked pettishly, finding myself close enough to slash at its leg as I tried to make distance from the one attacking me, and doing so with enthusiasm. Again, the blade bit deep, and it stumbled sideways, crashing into the other 'stealer, which was still lunging desperately in my direction.

'He's carrying the spare powerpacks!' Mira snapped back, taking advantage of the ensuing confusion to slip past the entangled creatures, and glowering at the sergeant as she did so. The crowd of hybrids began to close, moving forwards to narrow the arena we fought in, and I cracked off a couple of shots from the pistol in my hand, dropping the two nearest to the tunnel the 'stealers had emerged from.

Of course he was, I thought irritably. Nobles never carried anything for themselves; that's what servants were for. 'Pick the bloody gun up!' I shouted, as she almost tripped over the thing, and she scooped it into her hand again without slackening her pace. If she'd been issued with it, she should damn well look after it, so far as I was concerned.