Blood Sacrifice Read online

  Varus voxed back a moment later, her voice soft in the beads in Cully and Lopata’s ears. Steeleye had one too, but Cully didn’t think she had activated it yet.

  ‘I see it,’ the scout reported. ‘Three hundred on the nine, end of the street. Looks half derelict.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what my guy said,’ Lopata said. ‘Sounds like the place.’

  Cully turned to Steeleye.

  ‘Find a roof, cover the entrance,’ he told the sniper. ‘And switch your vox on. Report when you’re in position.’

  She just nodded and followed her orders, vanishing silently into the shadows. Vardan IV had been hell, but it had taught them skills that most Guardsmen simply didn’t have.

  ‘How much do you trust your guy?’ Cully asked Lopata. ‘Really, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone outside the regiment,’ Lopata said. ‘Still, I think this is on the level.’

  Cully grunted and waited in cover behind a low wall until the vox-bead crackled in his ear.

  ‘Steeleye, in position.’

  He tapped his bead in acknowledgement and gave Lopata the nod.

  The two of them moved together, sweeping the deserted street with their lasguns as the rest of their squad formed up behind them, Strongarm and Tarran, Merrith and Esannason, all with their weapons raised to their shoulders as they moved. Varus was two hundred yards ahead of them and she stayed out of sight until they passed her position, then leapfrogged ahead once more until she was within throwing distance of the main entrance. She had a frag grenade in her hand, Cully noticed, just in case.

  Better safe than sorry, he thought bitterly.

  Vardan IV had been a harsh teacher indeed.

  ‘Looks clear,’ Varus reported over the vox, her voice a low whisper. ‘No movement.’

  Cully nodded and led the other five towards her position, with Strongarm right behind him and Lopata on rearguard duty. Somewhere, and he had no idea where, Steeleye would have her long-las dialled in on the shadowy entrance of the abandoned medicae facility.

  The single caged bulb over the entrance was flickering like a dying ember, making the shadows twitch and jump. At least it told him the place still had power. Cully gave a hand signal and Varus rose out of cover and crossed the fifty yards to the pitted, brown-stained steel doors in a low crouch. She pushed the left-hand door and Cully winced as it swung open with a rusty scream of unoiled hinges.

  Varus flattened herself to the wall with her lasgun tight to her shoulder, but nothing happened.

  A moment later she stepped inside.

  ‘Clear,’ she voxed back, and Cully felt himself relax slightly as he led the squad after her.

  The corridor inside was in near darkness, lit only by a flickering glowstrip in the tiled ceiling maybe twenty yards away. There was an abandoned hospital gurney against the wall, its once-white paint peeling to expose ancient rust below. This place had obviously been disused for a long time, Cully thought. Somewhere in the distance he could hear water dripping from a broken pipe. He turned and looked a question at Lopata.

  The big man shrugged.

  ‘Pickup for Bastian DeMarr,’ he called out. ‘Dulce et decorum est pro Imperator mori.’

  High Gothic had never been Cully’s strong point. ‘What’s that mean?’

  Apparently it wasn’t Lopata’s strong point either.

  ‘No idea. Some devotion to the Emperor, I suppose. It’s the code phrase for the pickup.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Cully cocked his head, listening. He could hear footsteps approaching, one leg dragging with each step as though whoever it was were injured, or crippled.

  ‘Here he comes,’ he said.

  ‘About time,’ Lopata muttered.

  A hunched figure emerged in the shadows beyond the buzzing glowstrip, dragging its right leg and walking with a pronounced lurch. There was something wrong with its left arm too, but Cully couldn’t make out what it was.

  ‘Pickup for Bastian DeMarr,’ Lopata called out again. ‘Are you Klassian?’

  The figure started to lurch faster towards them. As it passed under the glowstrip Cully saw it was wearing a tattered white smock with the red aquila of his regiment’s medicae corps stencilled on it. It was bald, and the skin of its peeling scalp showed a pallid grey in the fitful light.

  ‘What the–’ Varus began. The thing raised its left arm.

  Not an arm – an articulated servo-manipulator that ended in a cluster of long, filthy needles where the hand should have been.

  ‘Nuuuurrrse,’ it rumbled.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Cully whispered, his hands tightening on his lasgun.

  ‘It’s a servitor,’ Varus said.

  ‘Not my guy, not my problem,’ Lopata said, and raised his lasgun to his shoulder.

  He put a three-round burst into the chest of the advancing monstrosity. That, Cully realised a second too late, was a bad idea.

  ‘Nuuuuuurrrrrse!’ it roared, and charged them with its fist of needles raised to plunge into the first person it could reach.

  ‘Fire!’ Cully ordered.

  The wall beside him exploded into fragments as something crashed through it.

  Cully was thrown backwards by the force of the impact, and a huge shape tore into the abandoned gurney with a shriek of grinding gears. The light flickered sickeningly as the thing ripped its way through the wall, a hunched and lumbering nightmare of heavy augmetics and withered, greyish flesh that screamed as it came on. It too wore a stained and rotting medicae smock, with the word ‘psychiatric’ stencilled across it. Lopata turned and put a burst of full-auto into it before it lashed out with the heavy restraint grips that made up its left arm and dashed him to the floor.

  ‘Kill, kill, kill!’ Varus shouted, her lasgun cracking in her hands.

  The las-bolts flashed and sparked off the monstrosity’s built-in armour, and it turned its plated back on the scout as the huge amputational chain scalpel where its right arm had been spun up with a howl.

  ‘Nuuuuuurrrrrse!’ it howled. Behind it the other stabbed with its needles and missed Strongarm by a whisper.

  The huge thing lunged at Trooper Tarran from Lopata’s section and rammed the monstrous scalpel through the man’s flak armour and into his chest. A whirlwind of blood sprayed from the hapless trooper as the heavy instrument punched straight through him and out of his back.

  ‘Retreat!’ Cully roared, his lasgun barking even as he moved. ‘Draw them outside!’

  Trying to fight the maddened medicae servitors at close quarters was suicide and he knew it. Out in the street they could cut them apart with their weapons, but at this range…

  Trooper Merrith shrieked as the huge psychiatric servitor’s restraint grips caught him around the leg and dragged him back. Lopata moved to go after him but Cully grabbed his arm.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he snarled.

  The servitor stomped a huge metal foot down on Merrith’s chest and ripped his leg off as if it were pulling a ration bar in half. Merrith’s screams echoed in the corridor as Cully ran for the entrance with his squad on his heels. The servitors came lumbering after them, the larger of the pair drenched in gore and with its chain scalpel roaring.

  ‘Steeleye!’ Cully shouted into his vox. ‘Company incoming! Two targets!’

  Steeleye tapped her bead in acknowledgement. Cully could imagine her lying prone on some filth-stained flat roof, her view of the world narrowed to the unwavering point between her crosshairs. He needed to get the servitors into that point, and not lose any more men doing it. They burst through the doors and into the gloom of the street with the monstrosities barely yards behind them.

  ‘Scatter!’ Cully yelled.

  Troopers went in all directions and Cully turned and ran backwards from the entrance, shooting on full-auto as he went. The huge psychiatric servitor c
rashed through the doors behind him, chunks of metal and dead flesh flying from its hideously twisted body but not slowing, relentless in its pursuit. Behind it the other followed, the rhythmic dragging of its crippled leg making Cully’s nerves scream.

  There was a searing flash as Steeleye unleashed the killing power of her long-las with a bellow like furious thunder. The full-charge hotshot blew half the psychiatric servitor’s head away.

  It kept coming.

  ‘Reloading,’ Steeleye said over the vox.

  The servitor raised its screaming chain scalpel and roared with fury.

  ‘Nuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrse!’

  Cully turned and ran for his life.

  ‘Cover!’ Strongarm yelled as he reared up and hurled a krak grenade.

  Cully threw himself over a broken wall and rolled with the impact, flattening himself on the ground with his hands over his head. The high explosive grenade detonated between the two horrors with a tremendous blast and Steeleye put another two hotshots into what was left, and silence fell.

  ‘Emperor’s sake, what have I got myself into?’ Cully muttered as he got up and dusted himself off, and turned to look at the damage.

  Dying is what soldiers are for.

  The krak grenade had left a shallow, smoking crater in the ferrocrete street, the ground around it streaked with gore and strewn with bits of shattered metal. Even so the shapes of the servitors were still discernible, carapaces cracked open and the withered organs and broken spinal cords inside horribly recognisable. Cully had never cared for the man-machine creations of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and seeing the reeking insides of them was enough to remind him why.

  Cully rounded on Lopata.

  ‘I take it your guy didn’t mention this?’

  Lopata shook his head grimly. ‘When I get hold of him… Come on, we’re still doing the thing.’

  ‘You honestly think whoever we were supposed to be meeting in there is still alive, with those things on the loose?’

  ‘Honestly, no,’ Lopata confessed, ‘but I need to at least check. We’re the fearless Astra Militarum, remember? This is what he hired us for.’

  Varus joined them, and Cully voxed Steeleye to come down from wherever she was hidden.

  ‘Why did they attack us?’ the scout asked. ‘These things are supposed to be docile, aren’t they?’

  ‘Malfunction, I suppose,’ Cully said. ‘There’s no saying how long they’ve been here. Abandoned, like everything else.’

  Varus frowned at that, but said nothing.

  Steeleye joined them a few minutes later, and Cully led her and Lopata, Varus and Esannason and Strongarm back into the facility. The hallway was drenched with gore where Merrith had bled out on the ground. The glowstrip down the corridor continued to buzz and flicker unsteadily.

  ‘Which way?’ Cully asked the big man.

  Lopata shrugged. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘My contact was supposed to be right here.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ Varus snapped.

  ‘We’ll sweep the ground floor and give it up for dead if we don’t find him,’ Lopata decided.

  Cully grunted in agreement and took the point, heading down the long corridor towards the buzzing glowstrip. He thought he could hear something else now, too. He frowned and took another few steps, trying to shut out the noise of the light so he could concentrate on the other sound. It was faint, but… yes. There.

  ‘I hear someone,’ he said.

  A human voice, crying out in pain. Varus joined him and cocked her head, listening.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Someone screaming.’

  Their eyes met for a moment as they exchanged a look. This can’t be good, that look said.

  ‘Is this really our problem?’ Varus whispered. ‘We’re not even on watch.’

  ‘That’s an Imperial citizen, Varus,’ Cully said. ‘The Emperor protects, and we are the mortal instruments of the Emperor on Voltoth. This is what we’re for.’

  Dying is what soldiers are for.

  He wiped his hands on the trousers of his battledress, feeling the sick sweat of dread and the creeping thought that he had reached the end of the line at last. Shut up, Cully. Just shut up and work.

  ‘Too right,’ Lopata said, but there was a haunted look in his eyes as he said it.

  Cully thought the big man probably had some regrets of his own to deal with, but that was Lopata’s business and nothing to do with him.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go to work.’

  Lasguns at the ready, they walked on into the flickering darkness across a floor of cracked tiles, littered with stained bandages. The dripping noise intensified, until they rounded a corner and found a hole in the ceiling where the tiles had collapsed under the weight of leaking water. The ruptured pipe bulged overhead like a cirrhotic artery, and brackish, brown water fell to pool on the floor below, drop after drop after drop.

  Not brown, Cully realised. Dark red, like the outflow from a surgical drain.

  ‘I think there’s someone still working here,’ he whispered.

  Lopata nodded. ‘Then we go up.’

  They found the stairs and ascended, breathing through their mouths to block the ammonia stench of stale urine that clung to the concrete stairwell like a rotting shroud. The walls were dark with graffiti, old ganger slogans in the main, but near the top of the steps someone had simply written ‘It hurts.’ The words were brown and crusty, as though they had been written in blood.

  ‘What kind of hospital was this, exactly?’ Varus gagged as they finally reached the door that gave out onto the second floor landing.

  Written on the inside of the door, in the same hand: ‘Turn back.’

  ‘A very, very cheap one,’ Lopata said.

  Cully thumped his shoulder to tell him to shut up, and he pushed the door open and eased out into the hallway with his lasgun held tight to his shoulder. There were two glowstrips still working here, both of them strobing and out of sync with each other. It gave the light a broken, battlefield staccato quality that made his head begin to hurt almost at once. The walls were lined with gurneys, their once-white paint peeling over blistered, rusty frames. Some were stripped to bare, dark-stained mattresses, while others bore heaped mounds of reeking bedding.

  Down the hall, something shrieked behind a closed door.

  ‘Careful,’ Varus cautioned in a low whisper, her hand on Cully’s elbow to stay him. ‘It could be a trap.’

  ‘You can’t fake agony like that,’ Cully replied, and shook her off as he began to advance down the corridor.

  They found the operating theatre, the source of both the surgical drain and the screaming.

  There was something strapped down on the table, and it was still alive. A man, Cully saw, or at least some of one. The room was filthy with dried blood and old, rotting offal, but the equipment and surgical machinery looked well maintained, gleaming with sacred unguents and bedecked with fresh purity seals. The poor bastard on the table was mewling in agony, unable to form words with his lower jaw surgically removed, but his lidless eyes were open wide in mute appeal.

  He had been bisected at the waist, his pelvis and everything below removed, but the base of his spinal column and his tailbone still thrashed helplessly in a pool of seeping fluid on the stained and rotting leather beneath him. His right arm was gone too, the stump freshly sutured into a flesh-welded steel socket from which brightly coloured cables protruded like raw nerve endings. Tubes ran in and out of his mutilated body carrying blood, spinal fluid, nutrients. It was plain that none of them contained anaesthetic.

  ‘Emperor save us,’ Cully whispered. ‘Someone’s turning him into a servitor without lobotomy first.’

  ‘Who… who would do this?’ Lopata asked.

  Varus just turned and vomited on the floor while Steeleye looked on impassively beside her.

  The
thing on the table drew in a great breath and let out a warbling moan.

  ‘Kuuuuh muuuuhhh! Uuuuuz kuuuuuh muuuuuhhh!’

  Cully swallowed, and shot it through the head with a three-round burst that put a final end to its suffering.

  ‘The Emperor’s Mercy,’ he whispered.

  ‘We are not leaving until we make this right,’ Steeleye rasped.

  ‘Agreed,’ Cully said. ‘Move out.’

  The further into the facility they went, the worse it got. A maddened buzzing sound drew them to a closed room. When Cully forced open the door, a swarm of bloated black flies burst out into the corridor around them. He gagged at the stench of filth and rot that enveloped him.

  The room was lined with open, reeking medical waste bins. A severed human arm lay atop a pile of flyblown offal, the pale skin bright with crude ganger tattoos. Hooks along one wall were hung with the bloodstained grey smocks of manufactorum workers.

  ‘Oh, Throne,’ Varus choked.

  Even Lopata was retching, but all Cully could do was stare.

  Cully had been starving to death, on Baphomet. He had eaten human flesh to survive. They all had. The Emperor protects, but He does not forgive. Cully could feel his punishment coming down on him like a hammer from the heavens.

  ‘These are the remains of local people,’ he whispered. ‘Gangers. Workers.’

  ‘I wish we had a flamer,’ Strongarm muttered as he hauled the door closed again. ‘It needs burning.’

  ‘This whole place needs burning,’ Cully said. ‘Come on.’

  At the end of the corridor they heard thrashing behind a closed door, the metallic screech of unlubricated gears meshing as something woke as though from a long sleep.

  ‘Nuuuuuuurrssse!’ it roared.

  Strongarm pulled a frag grenade from his bandolier and primed it, held it in his hand to cook for a second then booted the door open and hurled it inside.

  ‘Cover!’ he shouted.

  The others flattened themselves to the solid concrete walls as the grenade detonated, filling the enclosed space of the room with hyper-velocity shrapnel.