DEVIL’S MARAUDERS

William King

‘THEY’RE COMING,’ SAID Nipper, peering out into the jungle. Even with his nightsight goggles set to max he couldn’t really see anything, but he could tell something was wrong. The jungle was too still, everything was too calm. He had a crawling feeling between his shoulder blades. That feeling had kept him alive for nearly six months in the steaming arboreal wastes of H’thra. He respected his intuition.

‘I can’t see anything,’ Borski said. Nipper turned to look at him. In the moonlight filtering down from topside the commissar looked even more skeletal than usual. Amazing how he manages to keep that uniform so clean, Nipper thought. Everyone else looks like they’ve been swimming in a pool of sweat, but not Borski.

His trenchcoat was immaculate, his silver skull buttons gleamed. His youthful fanatic face gazed out from beneath his peaked cap through a transparent spore mask. ‘If Nipper says there’s something out there then I believe him, sir,’ Sergeant Krask said, hesitantly. Borski glanced over at the sergeant as if he could measure Krask’s devotion to the Emperor at a glance.

‘Very well, soldiers, lock and load. Ogryn - the Emperor wants you to ready the grenade launcher.’

‘Sure thing, sir,’ Trak said worshipfully. ‘Truk is ready to dine.’

Nipper watched the huge ogryn raise the heavy weapon like a toy. Truk grinned at him. He looked as if he were enjoying himself. It was hard to believe he was the last survivor of the company’s ogryn section. Nipper considered the comrades he had lost in the previous three nights’ fighting, and was anything but cheerful.

He turned his attention back to the jungle, trying to ignore the pain-filled moan of Lieutenant Mikals. A small suckerleech crawled across Nipper’s combat jacket and he swatted it with one heavy gauntleted hand. He wiped his palm on his thigh before adjusting his spore mask left-handed.

Need to change the filter as soon as possible, he thought. It was only a temporary distraction. What’s wrong, he wondered? Why am I so uneasy?

‘No tree-swingers,’ Sal said. Nipper looked at the little sanctioned psyker. She had crawled over to where he was and lay on her stomach beside him. He noted her lovely face on top of her thin twisted body. He saw eyes and teeth discoloured by the crimson stain of witch-spore addiction. She has a strange beauty, he thought.

‘Thank you,’ Sal said. Nipper felt his face flush. Sal’s talent was intermittent but her mind-reading ability was at peak tonight. She had been taking huge doses of witch-spore to enable her to track the rebels. It had amplified her powers greatly. Suddenly what she said sank in.

‘Hey, sergeant, no fuzzymonkeys,’ He pointed upwards to topside, straining to make out movement through the clouds of spores that drifted in the moonlight.

‘That’s it,’ Borski said, drawing his pistol. ‘Prepare to hold your positions, men. For the Emperor!’

‘Commissar, I can feel mindforms moving about half a click east. Human but strangely distorted. Feels like rebels.’ Sal looked deeply disturbed. She said there was something about the minds of their foe that made her uneasy. Nipper thought he understood. Delving into the minds of heretics must be upsetting.

The thirty or so survivors of A Company were taking up their prepared positions. Everyone was tired after three days of daytime sniping and night-time warfare. They had been ordered to hold this position for as long as possible before falling back. So far they had blocked the rebel offensive but tonight Nipper did not doubt that the heretics would break through.

All around him he could see the green ready lights of weapons wink as their owners made final checks. The familiar litany of the Weaponers’ chant filled his ears.

‘Emperor save us,’ muttered Nipper worriedly, his nerves frayed by the three long days of combat. He was singled out for Borski’s special attention.

‘The Emperor will aid you if, and only if, you fight bravely,’ the commissar thundered. ‘And the daemons of hell will take all cowards. I personally will see to that.’

The religious intensity in Borski’s voice made Nipper shiver. The commissar had risen in full view of his men, eschewing cover. Nipper had to admire his courage. If the Emperor protects the brave he will certainly watch over Borski, Nipper admitted.

Some of the commissar’s unshakeable certainty in his own righteousness transmitted itself to Nipper. He prayed silently to the Emperor. The rest of the company seemed similarly enthused. The whining and quiet chatter had stopped.

‘Our faith is our shield,’ said Borski. ‘We are weapons in the fist of the Emperor and we will be worthy. We will smite the unrighteous.’

Nipper turned to see movement among the distant branches of the nation-trees.

‘Tea’s out,’ said Truk.

All around him the jungle seemed to burn. From overhead came blinding laser flashes as rebel jetbikes swooped insanely under topside. Nipper raised his laser and snapped off a quick shot. He hit a bike-pilot in the face. The wounded man leaned forward on the controls. The bike nose-dived. Nipper could see his gunner trying to jump clear.

Nipper tracked its fall, ready to shoot any survivors. The jet-cycle hit a weak patch in the carpet moss and vanished from view. Nipper heard a long scream followed by a splash. Involuntarily he shuddered. The things that lived below, in the eternal wet darkness beneath the nation-tree’s roots, were things he had nightmares about.

‘Nipper, down!’ he heard Borski shout.

Without thinking he threw himself flat on the greenside floor. A stream of bolt pistol fire passed through where he had just been standing. Nipper looked at the point of impact and saw a tall, thin warrior in the camouflage uniform of the rebels fall. He turned to thank the commissar but he had already moved on, rushing towards the cover of a muck-fungus tree. Laser fire withered the carpet moss behind his feet.

Nipper rolled over and searched for the firer. He saw a huge dark figure moving among the shadows of nearby tree boles. He brought his lasrifle up to the fire position and sent a full-intensity burst towards his target. Brilliant white fire played over it. Burn, heretic, thought Nipper.

He felt a thrill of fear as the figure refused to fall. His finger slackened on the trigger. He could make out details as the rebel advanced towards him. His heart sank. It was a killer robot, obviously modified to find its way through the greenside. One hand was a chainsword, the other had a heavy bolter which it was laboriously bringing to bear on Nipper.

He could hear the whine of servomotors as the arm moved. The heavy plasteel of its carapace had melted and ran where Nipper’s laser had struck. It was painted with several strange and disturbing runes. Nipper leapt back as it opened fire.

Explosive bullets churned the carpet moss where he had been. He cast a glance towards the nearest cover. Too far, he thought, I’ll never make it. He grinned, as adrenaline raced through his body. His circle of awareness seemed to expand as he waited for bullets to rip through him. He turned and he could make out the tiny webwork of engraving on the robot’s carapace, hear the crack of small arms fire and the screams of the dying. Everything seemed discrete and distinct. He could hear his breath ramble within his chest and feel the individual movement of every muscle. He stared down the barrel of that huge gun.

Facing death, he felt totally alive.

He rolled to one side and the robot’s arm seemed to track as if in slow motion. He raised his own weapon and reached for the action of the grenade launcher. Only one chance, he thought. Better get it right.

He came to rest and fired the grenade. It arced towards the robot’s feet and detonated. Nipper felt the force of the explosion ripple the carpet moss.

He looked back at the robot. It still stood. I’m dead, thought Nipper.

Then the robot seemed to slowly disappear. It vanished from view and fell. As Nipper had intended, the grenade had weakened the moss beneath it. He let out a long breath. It felt good to be alive. He noticed more rebels advancing among the trees. Their full-face spore-masks and bulging goggles made them look like horrible insects. He saw that they too had strange runes on their chests where badges of battle honour should have been.

‘Fall back,’ he heard Borski shout. There was a note of bitterness in the commissar’s voice. He did not relish sounding the retreat.

Nipper ran back towards his own lines. Each step took forever. He felt light, as if he were walking on the moon. Laser beams blurred past his head, almost blinding him. Miraculously none hit him. Under the shadow of swooping jetbikes he reached the cover of a snapwort bush. A familiar figure huddled behind it, laspistol in hand.

‘LEAVE ME,’ SAL said. ‘Save yourself.’

Her wounds looked worse than they were. The long sticky leaves of the vampire plant fondled them obscenely, looking for blood. Nipper looked out from cover.

Flitting from bole to bole were hundreds of rebel troopers. From above, a dozen heavily modified jetbikes gave covering fire. The enemy had broken through.

Nipper checked Sal’s filter mask. It was still completely in place. Good. He undipped some med-plas from his belt and sprayed the wounded area.

‘That should kill any spores,’ he muttered, watching the plasti-flesh congeal. He hoped the disinfectant and fungicide worked better than the last lot or Sal was in for a painful death.

‘I mean it, Nipper. Go! If you’re still here when the rebels come, they’ll-‘

‘No can do, Sal,’ he said. ‘You know the code.’

She looked up at him and smiled in spite of her pain. ‘The Marauders look after their own. Nipper, we’re not back on Thranx and this isn’t a streetfight.’

He shrugged. ‘Hey… If we don’t look after each other no one else will.’

Suddenly Sal’s face went slack. He knew she was in listening trance. A moment later intelligence flooded back into her face.

‘Borski and Krask have the rest of them about two hundred metres back. They’re heading for the old comms hutch. Go the way I tell you. I think we’ll have a clear path.’

Nipper nodded. ‘Can you run, Sal?’

‘I’ll have to.’

Just before they made the break she turned and looked back towards the oncoming enemy. An expression of fear passed across her face.

‘By the Emperor, they hate us so,’ she said. She and Nipper ran. From behind came the sounds of sporadic firing as the rebels mopped up the last of the opposition.

‘WE’RE ON OUR own,’ Borski said, with a certain grim satisfaction. He looked like a man who had just found a big enough challenge to measure his faith against. He cut the comm-link with HQ. Lieutenant Mikals cried out in agony.

Wonderful, Nipper thought, looking around the old Harvesters’ cabin that some dead tech-adept had converted into a communications nexus. It had a familiar homey look. He had grown up surrounded by machinery, not giant plants. For a moment he felt home-sick for a place far beyond his ability to measure distance.

He slumped wearily down on the hard bench. He was tired, as much from the brief firefight as the night of marching that had followed.

He didn’t want to think about that nightmarish journey through the green. He had had to partially carry Sal while keeping alert for any threats from the surrounding forest. Once he had almost been ensnared by a dreamspider’s web. Several times he had nearly fallen through the carpet moss to swamp-side thirty metres below. Twice he had to hide, frozen with fear, while rebel scouts filtered by. It had taken them what felt like forever to reach the comms hutch.

He looked around at the few survivors of A Company. He saw Borski, the sarge, Lieutenant Mikals, Truk. There were few familiar faces from the old days when the Devil’s Marauders had been a streetgang in the worldcity of Thranx. That had been before the Raising when they had been fierce and desperate enough to be inducted into the Imperial Guard.

By the Emperor, there had been nearly a hundred of them then. Now there was only himself and Sal, Hunt, Glyn, ��� and Colquan. His friends had changed. They still wore their gang colours but they had been incorporated into the uniform of the guard. The only real sign of their former allegiance was the huge devil head on the backs of their combat jackets. They still had the old face tattoos but the faces themselves were thinner, gaunt and haunted, patched with scars. Hunt had a bionic eye visible under his face mask. ��� had an arm of plasteel and servomotors.

A palpable air of demoralization had fallen over the room. All the others are dead or in the hands of rebels, Nipper thought. He didn’t know which was worse. Mikals whimpered in agony.

‘No chance of any support?’ Krask asked. The sarge looked more tired than any man had a right to be and still be alive, Nipper thought. He had carried the terribly wounded Mikals all night on his own.

‘None,’ Borski said sternly. ‘The heretics have begun a massive offensive right across Blue Zone. Still, the righteous will prevail. Within one standard day Divine Retribution will cleanse this whole zone with an orbital bombardment. We have been ordered to fall back.’

‘What?’ Krask was both frightened and bewildered. Nipper broke from his reverie. Anything that scared Krask terrified Nipper. He had never seen the sergeant display anything but laconic cool.

‘That’s madness,’ Krask muttered. ‘The whole reason for sending us into the jungle in the first place was to drive Governor Damian’s rebels out without damaging the witch-spore crop.’

‘That was before the full scale of the insurrection was realized,’ Borski said, almost gently. ‘We did not realize the cancer of heresy had spread so deep. We are not facing simply a rebel garrison but many of the native tribes of the interior. They’re armed and they’re allied with something dark and terrible. They bear its mark.’

For the first time Nipper thought that he detected a trace of what might have been fear in the commissar’s voice. He thought back to the strange runes he had seen on the robot. He had heard stories, muttered tales, of daemons who existed in the dark between worlds and sought to undermine the works of the righteous. He had always dismissed them as stories to frighten children.

Beside him Sal muttered. ‘It makes sense. Where better for them to strike than on the world where witch-spore comes from? Many latents would have their powers brought to the fore.’

Nipper wondered what she was talking about. He knew that psykers were dangerous. The priests of the Imperial cult told everyone so. Only ones who had been bonded to the Emperor or who had undergone the terrible training to become sanctioned could be allowed to live. Could those who had not been bonded provide some sort of gateway for enemies of the Emperor?

Nipper felt Sal nudge him in the ribs. She gave him a warning look. ‘You are on dangerous ground,’ she whispered. ‘Best to not even think of such mysteries.’

Another more pressing problem struck Nipper. He addressed Borski. ‘Sir, if they are going to cleanse this place in twenty-four hours what will happen to us?’

‘We are ordered to fall back to Zone Amber.’

Mikals reached out imploringly, eyes filled with pain. ‘Commissar, I am wounded. I will only slow you on the march. I have failed the Emperor. I seek atonement.’

Borski looked down at him, cold eyes hooded. He nodded. ‘Very well. Soldiers outside, prepare to depart.’

The guards left the hut. From within came the sound of a single shot. Borski emerged alone. ‘Now we must go,’ he said.

‘Zone Amber is fifty kilometres away. We’ll never get there before the bombardment starts,’ Nipper said.

Borski showed his chilling smile. ‘Then we will die joyous in the knowledge that we have served our Emperor well,’ he said.

WEARILY THE SURVIVORS pushed on through the nation-forest. Dawn had come, bringing a wash of green light down through topside. Nipper watched the endless tide of airborne spores rise on convection currents. Dazzling dragon-moths, long as a man’s arm, pursued shoals of glitterflies. Sometimes puff-balls would roll out onto the main branches they followed and Truk would kick them, laughing moronically as they exploded.

Only Truk did not seem oppressed by their surroundings and the fact that they were twenty hours from being reduced to plasma by the orbital bombardment. Nipper wondered how he could ever have liked this place.

It had all seemed so fresh and amazing to him six months ago: a riot of green life erupting across a continent. From the two hundred metre high banyan-like nation-trees to the triple-tiered ecology they supported, it had all been wonderful to a boy from the steel corridors of the hive-world of Thranx.

He had marvelled at the differences between the layers. It had delighted him that topside, with its swinging monkeys and bright sunlight, was as different from greenside as that was from the devil-python-infested swamps below.

He could well remember his first sight of topside: an endless garden of flowers visible from the armoured aircar’s glassteel windows. He could remember the terror of his first patrol, hunting raiders in the eternal darkness of the humus swamps at the nation-trees’ roots. Even that had held a strange kind of wonder, as they had walked across the rippling surface on pontoon shoes while pale beasts scuttled from the light of their torches.

But it had been greenside he had loved best. He had marvelled at the way branches of the great trees had intermeshed so tightly that carpet moss could grow between them to form a near solid surface which could, mostly, support a man’s weight. It had seemed miraculous that it was all supported underneath by the steel-hard cablewebs of the weavers.

It was so perfect that it could almost have been designed by a god. Even now that the initial glamour had faded it still seemed slightly blasphemous to him that it was about to be vaped from orbit.

He looked up at the cathedral-like arches of the trunks rising above him and shook his head, as if he could shake off his feelings of reverence as easily as a dog shaking off water. He couldn’t. The place dwarfed him, as it dwarfed the straggling line of his companions, even mighty Truk.

‘You’re right,’ Sal said from beside him. She was looking up at him with a strange expression on her face, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘We don’t belong here.’

‘We don’t fit, do we?’ he said. ‘Everything else here has symmetry, contributes something to the pattern about us. Even the rebels have learned to blend in, in a weird sort of way. That’s why they are beating us.’

Sal smiled. ‘Symmetry - it’s because this world was designed by bio-adepts during the Dark Age of Technology. That’s what records say. I was in the mind of the clerk who was transcribing the report back at Dropsite.’

Sal fell silent. Nipper looked down at her. She was pale and drawn. Already lines of pain and fatigue were etched into her face. She stumbled and almost fell but Nipper supported her. She did not ask to rest. Nipper guessed that, like the rest of them, she knew she would be left behind.

SIX HOURS INTO their march they found the body. It was that of a man. He had been left stretched out in the glistening coils of a dreamspider’s web. His mask had been torn away and fungus emerged through his mouth, nostrils and other orifices. Nipper thought it was a ghastly way to die - lungs filled and insides eaten away by parasitic fungus. Yet the man was smiling. The narcotic strands of the web had done their work. He could see the dreamspider retreating from its decomposing prey as they approached.

Krask looked at the body, a haunted look on his face.

‘What’s wrong?’ Borski asked.

‘Look at the man’s clothing, sir. He’s wearing green bark-cloth and carrying a spore-harvesting pouch. He’s one of our loyalist scouts.’

‘So?’ Borski said.

Nipper understood. ‘A man like that knows the forest. He wouldn’t blunder into a dreamspider web.’

‘Someone put him there?’ Borski looked thoughtful.

‘Rebel woodsrunners. The natives believe that the web of a dreamspider ensnares the soul. It’s the worst form of death in their book. We lost a man up near Spook Mountain last spring. They’d done the same thing.’

‘This means rebels had already passed our outpost line before their big push,’ Borski snapped. ‘Weapons at the ready. Be wary of ambush!’

Without any great enthusiasm the guards began to check their weapons. Gingerly they passed the web.

For some time afterwards, as he and Sal limped down the trail, Nipper could feel the dead man’s calm, ecstatic eyes staring at his back.

NIPPER SURVEYED THE surrounding woods fearfully, looking for signs of the rebel woodsrunners. He knew that if they were concealed his chances were slim. The natives wore chameleoline suits and were expert at blending in with the terrain. He paused for a minute and placed the stimm injector into the conduit on his filter mask.

There was a hiss of gas and he breathed deep. Artificial energy surged through him and he felt suddenly strong and alert, as if he could count the leaves on all the nearby trees. He knew the feeling would not last and in the end would leave him feeling worse, but at the moment he needed some encouragement to trudge on.

He offered the injector to Sal but she shook her head. Perhaps it interferes with her powers, he thought.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I’d go bug-crazy if I mixed that stuff with witch-spore. It’s bad enough having to try and tune everybody out all the time but when you’re on stimm it’s like everything is so loud it hurts.’

Nipper looked at her. For the first time he considered that her gift might also be a curse. He had always imagined what fun it would be to be able to listen in on other people’s thoughts, what advantages he could gain from it, how god-like it must feel to have that power. He had never considered that it might have disadvantages as well.

Sal smiled knowingly at him. He felt a brief flash of resentment. Damned spy, he thought. She shook her head and looked away.

Almost at once he was sorry. She had been a good friend to him. It was just that he had never seen her power so active before. She seemed to be reading him all the time. It was as if the proximity of death had tripped a switch within her, turning her power up to full. It was disturbing for him but he decided he could live with it. He squeezed her shoulder.

‘Sorry,’ he said but she did not reply. He noticed that her eyes were closed and she was once more in trance. Her eyes snapped open. Nipper could see panic in them.

‘They’re out there,’ she said. ‘East and west, about twenty of them. They’re running parallel to us.’

Overhead the restless movement of branches had stopped. The tree-swingers were gone.

‘COMMISSAR, SHOULD WE stop?’ enquired Krask. ‘We could make a stand.’

Borski turned and glared into the jungle, keen fanatic eyes searching. ‘What are they waiting for?’

Krask shrugged. ‘Maybe for us to tire or make camp. Maybe there’s something ahead that we don’t know about. Best be wary.’

‘I doubt if we could surprise them,’ Borski said. ‘Best that we continue southward as swiftly as possible. We have our orders.’

‘Commissar, Truk would like to fight. Truk will wait for enemy. Cover others.’

Borski looked at him. ‘The Emperor appreciates your bravery, ogryn. But that will not be necessary.’

‘We’ll see action soon enough,’ ��� muttered.

Nipper examined the nearby trees carefully but could see no sign of the enemy. He was not reassured. He had known men to pass within two metres of rebel scouts who had killed them and they had never noticed their killers. He cast an uneasy glance at the sky. Up there was another invisible threat that was just as deadly.

By now the Divine Retribution would be in position, awaiting merely the command to fire. He checked his wrist chrono. Ten hours to go.

GLYN DIED FIRST. A hail of magnetically accelerated shuriken ripped through his body.

Nipper saw a dozen cuts appear on Truk. The ogryn looked around bemused, as if he did not really feel any pain. He was searching for the source of the attack.

Nipper flung Sal to one side, then threw himself flat into the hollow of the mainbranch they had been following. He peered around but could see no sign of the enemy.

He knew shuriken catapults were perfect for jungle warfare. They accelerated their razor-edged weapons to a speed where they could penetrate body-armour. They were rapid-firing and silent. All rebel scouts carried them.

Nipper lay quiet, feeling his flesh crawl, expecting at any minute to be shredded by their hidden assailants.

‘Nipper,’ Sal said. ‘That tree fork fifty metres south-west, about five metres up.’

He stared at where she directed. He thought he saw something just as he heard Hunt scream. The cry was cut off by a horrid gurgling sound, as if blood clogged Hunt’s throat.

Now Nipper could just make out the outlines of a humanoid form. It was almost invisible, so perfectly did its cham-cloth suit blend into the surrounding green.

Sweat rolled down Nipper’s face. He made himself take careful aim at the target, all the time fighting to hold down the fear that the rebel was drawing a bead on him.

He opened fire, praying to the Emperor that his aim was true. He saw a line of fire blacken the branches he had aimed at. He heard a scream of intolerable pain and it seemed for one obscene moment as if the tree was screaming. Then something fell from the bole onto the carpet moss below. For a second it was conspicuous, a green body on the brown forest floor, but then it seemed to vanish as its suit did its work.

Nipper looked at Sal. ‘Where are the rest?’

She concentrated. ‘They seem to have pulled back out of range. I think it was a lone sniper. Hunt and Glyn are dead. I felt them die.’

Her face was white and she seemed close to tears. Nipper was truly glad that he was not a psyker. It’s bad enough watching comrades die but feeling it from the inside must be dreadful, he thought. There was a void inside him, a vacuum. He had known the two men for most of his life. Now they were gone. He shook his head.

He noticed how drawn Sal looked. A tick twitched far back in her jaw. Her eyes were wild and staring. He wondered how much more of this she could take. Wearily he checked his chrono. Eight and a half hours left.

‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘We’ll make it.’

He wished he sounded more convincing.

ONE FOOT IN front of the other, Nipper thought. And again. And again. It was physically painful for him to move now. It was as if a great weight had been attached to each foot and he had to swing it to move. He no longer watched the forest for rebel scouts. He was past caring. There were times when he would have welcomed being cut down by enemy fire. It would have put him out of his misery.

The forest had become a green hell. His companions were damned souls on their way to purgatory. The light hurt his eyes and made the trees seem like looming gigantic daemons. It was if the forest had taken on a malevolent sentience and mocked them. It sneered at the tiny people who crawled across its body like ants.

Well, you’ll get yours, Nipper thought feverishly. You won’t laugh at us when the Divine Retribution blasts you right out of existence.

Beside him Sal was a constant drag, pulling at him like the gravity of a black hole, slowing his steps, draining his energy. Her eyes were half closed and her movements were stiff. Nipper felt that if she had not been leaning against him she would have fallen right off the main branch. By the Emperor, he would probably fall over himself if she had not been there.

From behind him he could hear Trak singing in a deep tuneless bass. He seemed to be repeating the same words over and over again, occasionally changing the order in which they came. The monotony worked on Nipper’s frayed psyche. It was exquisite torture. Ahead of them ��� and Colquan bickered like two drunk men. Their arguments had the relentless circularity of people too weary to think. They were reduced to making statements that they had said before. Their words had become mantras as leeched of meaning as Trak’s song.

‘We should wait and ambush those daemon-loving scum-suckers,’ said ���, flexing his metallic fingers.

‘Naw, we should push on back to Zone Amber before the bombardment, otherwise we’ll all fry.’

‘Look, if Damian’s little buddies get us, we won’t care about the bombardment. We’ll all be dead anyway.’

There was an edge of hysteria to Colquan’s voice. ‘We’ve got to move. That way we can keep ahead of them.’

‘They know the terrain. They’re natives. We’ll never outran them.’

They seemed to be about to come to blows.

‘Silence,’ said Borski in a hoarse rasping whisper that cut through all the other noise. ‘Such bickering is unseemly among the Emperor’s chosen troops. You are a disgrace to the uniform.’

Both ��� and Colquan stiffened and pulled themselves up straight. They said nothing but nodded shamefaced and began to march with renewed vigour.

Six hours, thought Nipper. Let them pass quickly. All I want is an end to this. He stumbled and both he and Sal fell. It was nearly a minute before they could get up again.

*

THEY CAME TO a vast open space between the nation-trees. All around the forest was burnt. Nipper looked down. For a moment his curiosity overcame his weariness.

Already weavers were throwing their silk cables across the gap. He could see a huge web, brilliant in the green light. It was anchored against the boles of the nearer trees. Strands of carpet moss were starting to fill in the gaps. He could see the dull lumps that were the weavers continue their work. It was hard to believe that the mindless dog-size arachnids could build such a perfect structure. ‘What caused this?’ Borski asked.

Krask looked up and then moved ahead to the edge of the webbing. ‘Crash,’ he said.

Nipper saw that above them a huge swathe of topside had been cleared away. In the clear sky above he could see hive balloons floating, their long stinger lines dangling.

Nipper moved to the edge of the burned-out area and looked down. He peered into the gloom. Something was half-buried in the humus-swamp below. He upped the magnification of his goggles and saw that it was an armoured transport flyer. It looked like a gigantic beede.

‘Side’s been torn out of it,’ Krask said. ‘Somebody must have hit it with a rocket-launcher. It’s no use to us.’

Nipper shook his head. He wondered who had been on the flyer, whether he had known any of the people for whom the vehicle was a coffin. It all seemed so futile.

What are we doing here, he asked himself; walking the surface of a world so far from home that the distance is incomprehensible. Fighting people I don’t even know, against whom I have no quarrel. In this jungle thousands of people are dying, and for what? The glory of the Emperor? The megalomaniac dreams of an insane governor?

He was shocked to find himself thinking such thoughts. They ran totally against his training, his indoctrination. What had happened to him? Once he had been proud to be an Imperial guardsman, to fight for the safety of the Empire. Now he just felt hollow. He was thinking like a heretic.

He was suddenly ashamed of himself. He was staining the honour of the regiment for which many of his comrades had died. He looked over at Borski and envied him his faim. Nipper had reached the limits of his. He felt an overwhelming urge to go to the commissar and confess his failure, to say that he was unworthy to be a soldier of the Emperor, to beg for the release from the endless fear that the commissar’s gun would bring him.

He was afflicted by a weariness not only of the body but of the spirit. It seemed pointless to go on. Even if, by some miracle, he escaped the bombardment he would just be sent back into the jungle to fight again. He did not want that. He had failed. The only thing left to do was atone.

He began to move towards the commissar. He felt Sal clutch at his hand with desperate strength.

‘No, Nipper, don’t,’ she said. ‘We can do it. If only you can make yourself go on.’

He tried to shake her off.

‘I can’t make it without your help,’ she said imploringly. He looked at her. She seemed desperate. He could not let her down. He did not feel capable of living up to the Imperial tradition of discipline and self-sacrifice but this was personal. The Marauders looked after their own.

They trudged on, a step at a time, away from the abyss. Behind them the weavers continued to work mindlessly, unaware of the passing of men or the imminence of their own doom.

Only three more hours, Nipper thought. And it will be over one way or another. I can put off death for that long.

‘I THINK THEY’RE getting ready to attack,’ Sal said. Nipper had thought he was too tired to be afraid but found he wasn’t.

‘You sure?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘They’ve been following us all this time. They thought we might lead them to a hidden base. Now they’re getting impatient. Something seems to be affecting their minds. They want to kill.’

‘You hear that, sergeant?’ Nipper asked.

Krask nodded and muttered something to Borski. The commissar straightened up and brushed spores from the cuff of his uniform.

‘Break out what’s left of your stimm. We are going to kill some heretics.’

Nipper emptied the inhaler and felt a trickle of nervous energy pass through him. It was enough to make him alert. He saw ��� and Colquan looking at him. I wonder, he thought, do I look like that?

There was a jerky quality to the other guards’ movements and their eyes seemed dead beneath their bubble goggles. They cocked their heads like caricatures of people listening, assumed postures of exaggerated wariness. They looked so ridiculous that Nipper almost laughed, but he recognized that as a side-effect of the drug and fought to bring the mad hilarity under control.

‘It’s going to be dark soon,’ Krask said. ‘That’s when they’ll attack.’

‘This looks like as good a position as any to defend,’ Borski said crisply. ‘Krask, use your chainsword to cut down those fungus trees. They will give us some cover.’

A feeling almost of relief swept over the other Marauders. They seemed happy. It was as if they were tired of running, as if they had already given up on their lives and relished the chance of some action, Nipper thought. At least it would be a break from the monotony of the march, he found himself thinking crazily. Still he was full of fear.

‘COME ON,’ COLQUAN muttered.

They had been waiting twenty minutes and there was still no sign of the enemy. Their drug-induced energy was starting to fade. Lying behind their fungal barricades reminded them of how tired they were. Darkness swept over the dense forest like a wave.

‘Truk is feeling peckish,’ the ogryn said.

Borski glared at Sal. ‘Are you sure they are going to attack, psyker?’

‘Yes, commissar,’ she said. She had drawn her laspistol and was inspecting it carefully. ‘They are out there now. About two hundred metres and closing. They’re advancing warily. They wonder what we are up to.’

‘Keep your eyes peeled, soldiers,’ said Borski. Nipper sighted in the direction Sal had indicated. He ventured a quick glance at the sky, visible through a gap in the foliage. Was that rapidly-moving star the Divine Retribution, he wondered, or just the nearest planet, Ka’ana? He checked the time. Under an hour till the bombardment starts, he thought. How far had they come? He felt sure it wasn’t far enough.

It was strange. Earlier, filled with shame at his own weakness, he had wanted to die. Now when death seemed imminent he found that he desperately wanted to live. He was filled with disgust. Truly I am a spineless creature, he thought.

Was that movement he saw? He felt a thrill of fear pass through him. He stared at a patch of shadow suspiciously. No, he thought, just jumpy. Adrenalin was pumping through his system and weariness had begun to recede.

Was that shadow lengthening? It was, and in no natural way. Emperor guide my hand, he prayed, and squeezed the trigger of his lasrifle. There was a hum as the weapons generator kicked in. A perfectly straight beam of light crackled though the night and hit the shadow, illuminating the figure of a man. Nipper heard a scream. In the torchlight of the burning figure other rebels were revealed.

All of a sudden everyone was firing. Nipper saw the flash of las-fire out of the corner of his eye, partially dampened by his protective goggles. He heard the strange coughing sound of the grenade launcher as Truk fired it. A brilliant explosion shattered the night. Nipper saw rebel bodies tumble through the air away from the point of impact. He felt vibration ripple through the carpet moss.

Mist rose from the fungus tree trunk. For a second he wondered what was happening, then he realized that shuriken darts were hitting it.

Nipper took a wild guess at where they were coming from and fired a burst in that direction. He was rewarded with a shout of pain. He dropped flat just as a hail of shuriken hissed through the air where he had been. Pure terror surged through him. That had been too close.

Once more the ground trembled, once more he heard the sound of an explosion. He fought the urge to remain still, to huddle up in a ball and beg for mercy. He remained frozen in place. He could not move. Tears streamed down his face.

Suddenly a shadow passed over him. He cringed with fear, forced himself to look up. It was Borski. He looked calm and unafraid.

‘Get up, soldier,’ he said, ignoring the hail of darts which blurred by him. Nipper shook his head. Borski raised his pistol and snapped a shot off into the distance. Nipper heard a ricochet, saw borski grimace with annoyance, like a man who had just missed a target on a practice range. He fired again and something close by groaned.

‘You can die like a cringing dog or like a soldier of the Imperium,’ Borski said. His calm voice carried clearly over the noise of battle. He fired again. The noise of his pistol seemed impossibly loud. ‘Be quick, your soul is in peril.’

Momentarily the noise of battle seemed to recede. Nipper looked up at the face of the commissar. Borski was strong and certain. His faith seemed to shield him as he stood amid the hail of enemy fire. Nipper knew his own hopelessness and lack of faith and felt diminished. He was filled with terror at the certainty of his own death. It turned his limbs to liquid.

He tried to make himself move. We all die in the end, he told himself. It is the manner of our dying that counts. Insight filled him. He knew as Borski knew that they were going to die here. That being the case, he had nothing to fear. His fate was already sealed. There was nothing he could do to alter it. His only choice was the way in which he met his end. Borski was setting him an example of how to do it. He smiled up at the commissar and rose to his feet.

Borski nodded, satisfied. ‘The correct decision,’ he said. ‘You are a true guardsman.’

Then his face was blown away by a hail of shuriken. Nipper looked at him and screamed.

A red haze fell over Nipper and he twisted, firing insanely into the oncoming rebels. He vaulted on to the top of the tree stump he had been cowering behind and set his lasrifle for full coverage. Howling with rage, he sprayed the enemy. He clicked the single-shot grenade launcher and fired again. An explosion racked the air. He continued to fire until his rifle powered down.

His terror had been transmuted to berserk fury. Filled with rage, he charged towards the enemy, miraculously avoiding being shot. The Emperor protects me, he thought crazily. He began laying about him with the butt of his rifle, crunching into the rebels with insane strength.

‘Follow me, Marauders,’ he yelled. ‘For the Emperor, for Borski, for our dead!’

Suddenly he was the centre of a swirling melee. He could hear the crack of small-arms fire and the gleeful shouts of Truk as he went hand-to-hand with the foe. Nipper picked up a chainsword from the hands of a dead rebel NCO and began to lay about him. Everywhere he struck a man died. The Emperor guides my hand and fills my heart with fury, he thought. The others emerged to join him in the fight.

Soon the enemy were routed, unable to face Nipper’s insane anger. As he watched them depart Nipper did not think they would return. He fell on his knees and wept.

‘HALT! IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!’ said a harsh voice in Imperial Gothic.

‘A company of the Fifth Thranxian Regiment, the Devil’s Marauders,’ replied Krask.

‘Pretty small company,’ replied the sentry. Nipper agreed. Only ���, Krask, Sal, Truk and himself were left of all the people who had set out. The ogryn carried the body of Commissar Borski under one arm.

‘Any more disrespect and I’ll have you shot,’ Krask said in his best imitation of Borski’s tone. ‘Where are we anyway?’

Nipper heard the sentry gulp. ‘Pretty far south, sir. Perimeter station Amber Twelve.’

‘We’re inside Zone Amber then?’

‘Yes, sir. Five kilometres.’

Nipper felt relief flood through him. He looked forward to getting some sleep in a relatively secure camp.

The sentry spoke again. ‘You just made it in time.’

‘I know,’ Krask said.

‘How could you, sir? We’ve only just got the order. We have to fall back to Zone Grey. The enemy have broken through perimeter Amber. The Divine Retribution is going to bombard this area from orbit in twenty-four hours.’

Nipper felt like screaming. Behind them a curtain of fire descended from the sky and the sector they had just left caught fire. From where Nipper stood it seemed as if the whole world was burning.