A Man Of His Word
..11..
THE MARSH SKIMMER PUTTERED and popped across the dark expanse of marshland, outrageously loud in the endless black quiet. Only the beseecher beetles dared to counteract its mechanical clamour with their insistent chirruping, like a million rubber soled boots squeaking on a newly polished floor.
A good two hours had passed since they had fled Ironfig Hold. Without the noise of the howling creatures behind them it almost felt like an ordinary evening skimming down the bayou. Just one more hour and they would be docking alongside the narrow jetties of Old Town, home safe. Greon checked on his sister a number of times but she was out cold. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes rolled sluggishly beneath their lids. Behind him Chagwin Mulbar peered resolutely into the inky darkness. The old mudhop vendor swung the marsh skimmer around floating logs and submerged islets, squinting against the tiny biters that flew into his face before being sucked into oblivion inside the turbine behind him. He had eased the vessel off its breakneck pace and the roar of the prop-blades was almost tolerable.
'Those things back there,' Greon asked, testing the word out before using it. 'Tyranid. They were the Tyranid, weren't they?'
Chagwin Mulbar nodded. 'Makes your skin crawl, don't it? Thinkin' about such things. Knowin' things like that are real, scuttlin' about upon the same world as you.' He leaned over and spat another line of goop out over the gunwale. 'When Inquisitor Tosk assigned me to Old Town all we could go on those first few years were whispers and rumour. People were fleeing Ironfig and other holds near it, babbling about monsters comin' up outta the mud. Some believed 'em, most just shook their heads. Then people started disappearing. Folk got real scared. All the signs were there. Corporaptor hominis was what we feared the most. The genestealer. That's why Tosk assigned me to the mudhop stalls. To watch the faces of the locals coming and going. Worse thing a world could have hiding on it, a genestealer. Meshing its DNA with the local populace, turning them into its own xenos lovin' cult. Its happened before upon thousands of other worlds just like this one. Though Corporaptor Primus is likely in the region also. That's the thing your sister calls 'The Father'. A Broodlord. Having one of those in your back yard is about as bad as it can get.'
'We have to tell the Imperial Guard,' Greon gasped. 'And the Inquisition will surely help. They have command of the Adeptus Astartes and the Imperial Navy, right?'
Chagwin laughed aloud and spat a long stream of zerrafam tabac juice out across the black water. 'It don't always work like they tell you in the stories, boy. The Inquisition is all seeing and all powerful, of course - and don't forget it - but we've as many problems as there are worlds in the Imperium. An Inquisitor needs proof positive before he can make his decision. He won't just take a man's word for it. Not yours, or mine.'
Greon stood up in shock. 'I was fighting the bastard with my own hands. I knocked it out. I saw its eyes roll back and they were black beneath. My sister's husband wasn't human! Its teeth! Surely you saw its teeth, Chagwin?'
The old man sighed and ushered the guardsman back to his seat. 'I know, I know it. I saw it first hand just like you. Your sister's husband was an advanced strain of Corporaptor hominis, likely second or third generation. But he's not here in the boat with us, is he? If I can get into contact with my master, Inquisitor Yuriel Tosk, you and your sister's personal account might just be enough to catch his attention. I know a Magos Biologis on the mainworld too who would be interested in your sister's... ordeals...in isolation. A tech-priest's evaluation is guaranteed to speed up the process. But without a physical specimen to examine we don't stand a chance of bringing in the big guns like the Space Marines, or even the Guard. Not yet at least. And it's going to take time. We need to be patient. My last communiqué to Inquisitor Tosk took a year for him to reply.'
'It took him a year to answer a call?' Greon felt his heart plummet out beneath him.
He had hoped to bring salvation to his sister and their hometown, but now it looked as though salvation was little more than the teeniest filament of hope. 'I thought the Inquisition was all-powerful in its facility to act against the foe?'
Chagwin scowled. 'As I said, we're stretched thin, boy. Policing the galaxy is no easy feat. You try and do it some day. Inquisitor Tosk has his hands full already with several sectors already under threat - some by this very same fiend. But don't worry yourself now. If I go missing the Inquisition will know something's definitely up in El Arbora. It may take them a year or more to get boots on the ground but they will come.'
Greon swallowed a stiff knot of anguish and slowly shook his head. He leaned over and stroked his sister's hair, pushing her long, dark curls back from her face. All the money he had saved up over time was in the pocket-seal of the mucksuit he had left on the floor back in Ironfig. How was he going to get Mericca Ann offworld now? And with his short-leave ending in the next few days, who knew where the Departmento Munitorum would be shipping him off to next, or how long it would be before he saw Verdantis Minor and his sister again - if ever? There had to be some way to bring the rightful and powerful authorities necessary down upon this menace.
The marsh skimmer hit something big.
The collision was so fierce it sent the entire skimmer airborne, flinging its three hapless occupants high into the air like juggling pins - spinning in three separate directions.
The motor was cut to silence and the beseecher beetles won their war against its mechanical clamour. For a time it seemed the marshlands had returned to their natural, primal splendour.
