Hive 13
Repentant adjusted his rack and hooked the ammo drum on the side of his heavy stubber. He counted his frag grenades a third time to ensure he hadn't lost any. He still had six. Setting his heavy stubber aside, he pulled his large black robe on over his rack and hung a golden chained necklace with the Inquisitorial rosette around his massive neck.
Beside him, Quind was putting lubricant in the chamber of his autogun. He wore the bulky black power armor, now fully charged and ready for his final battle. Full magazines lined the belt that was strapped around his waist, and Bloodculler rested hungrily in its sheath.
Repentant checked the plugs and mountings on their pict servitor, Vassal 7. The mechanical man's pict recorder was already blinking its red record light. Their last moments amongst the undead would be recorded on this pict servitor so that Quind's final assault on the Wounds of the Empire could be recovered when Bizmoe's conquest had been discovered.
Without words, Quind locked and loaded his weapon and left the apartment. The Guild Astropathica was quite a distance from the outer tower where he and his servant were holing up. Since the death of Penitent, Quind had retreated to the top level of the hive and Repentant had almost been sure that they would make their escape through Hive 13's spaceport. True, it was now common knowledge that the zombie menace had overrun the spaceport. But with Modus Pons dead the pair had no strong leads on who was the head of Wounds of the Empire anymore.
Repentant realized that it was unlikely that the Guild Astropathica had any remaining astropaths that could send a message off world. Repentant could see in his master's eyes that he, too, seemed to think this a fool's errand. Repentant knew that deep in Quind's soul he wanted to be seen for what he truly was: a pillar of Imperial virtue. True, his methods were sometimes questionable. True, some innocents had fallen on the path to righteousness. But everything had been done with the betterment of the Empire as the end product.
Vassal 7 would ensure that Quind's name was at least remembered as honorable amongst his colleagues after he fell.
As the three figures left the tower lobby the quiet morose tones of the matins chimed through the hive tunnels. The previously teeming streets of Hive 13 were impossibly empty, an evacuated warzone with no battle damage. Speeders remained parked and dormant along the pathways, the tall black street lights that provided the hive's dull illumination still burned against the ever-dark of the permanent indoor night. Signs in shop windows indicated that they were closed, as though they would open normally in just a few hours. Repentant felt a chill run up his spine. He had never seen an empty hive before. It was as though the entire population had been obliterated while he and his master weren't looking.
Quind looked at the heavily-armored black speeder he had brought to Bizmoe and ran his hand along the hood. The Inquisitorial seal was stamped above the driver's front wheel housing so that it was visible only upon inspection. The plate glass windscreen was reinforced to withstand the impact of a five-pound explosive device. Despite its numerous defenses, this would certainly be its last journey.
Quind placed his autogun inside the vehicle and called Repentant to the back so they could lift the miniature mine plow out of the trunk. Although it usually served no great purpose, the bulldozer mount was included with the vehicle's basic load for combat situations. Quind had procured the speeder from a backwater world's PDF and had it styled to his liking there. Since then he took it with him wherever he went.
It took only a moment to hook the mine plow onto the front of the vehicle, all the while Vassal 7 looked on blankly. When they were finished, Repentant picked Vassal 7 up and shoved the servitor unceremoniously in the back seat.
Quind keyed the ignition and the engine turned over. The Inquisitor looked up at his servant.
"Aerin Klos," Quind started to say.
"Don't," interrupted Repentant. "It's not time yet. And if I go, I want to go as Repentant, not as Aerin Klos. Aerin Klos can never atone for his sins."
Quind nodded wordlessly and floored the accelerator.
********
The battle begun only two blocks from the hab tower the group had just left from. Repentant had opened a hatch on the top of the vehicle and was unloading in all directions with his heavy stubber. Quind plowed mercilessly over the oncoming hordes of zombies with the large black speeder, the mine plow mincing the creatures at their knees and pushing them under the speeder's crushing tyres.
In the back seat Vassal 7 watched wordlessly as the mindless creatures clawed at the windows and doors, moaning and screeching without end. Quind grew tired of the sound, and switched on the radio.
The triumphant booming of an Imperial orchestra thundered out the tune Colonel Tarin's Victory March inside the armored cabin, not quite managing to drown out the echoing moans of the assaulting monsters.
Quind shifted into the next highest gear and drove on. He looked at the auspex that was bouncing gently on the seat beside him. He was still thirty blocks away, at least. Two more turns and he would be head-on with the Astropathica building on file.
It was difficult to navigate through the river of bodies that the speeder was wading through. He had almost thought himself lost several times since leaving the hab tower, but stayed the course trusting his auspex. It was unlike him to put so much faith in Imperial electronics, but since Penitent's death he felt psychically numbed.
In the hatch, Repentant had switched to his bolt pistol while he reloaded the heavy stubber with one hand. The barrel of the stubber was white hot and needed to be replaced, but the Inquisitor and his cohort had no such supply. The moment or two of reloading time was the only cooldown it would get. As a trained gunner, Repentant hated working so dangerously. But given the circumstances he decided he'd rather his weapon explode and kill him than become one of those vile monstrosities.
Quind pulled his turn hard and Repentant lost his grip on the ammo can. It fell over on its side, spilling the linked rounds from the container and sliding into the crowd of zombies. They swallowed it instantly and Repentant knew the rounds were gone.
"Ammo!" he shouted to Quind.
"There's none left down here," Quind shouted back. "You shot all two thousand rounds already?"
"I just lost the last five hundred on that turn," Repentant explained.
"Well improvise," Quind answered.
Repentant shrugged and blasted a hole in the forehead of a zombie that had managed to climb onto the speeder's back. He fired again into the crowd, a misfire. He checked his bolt pistol – it was just an empty magazine. He dropped mag and changed out in time to catch another climber on the side. They were using each other as ladders now.
"They really want us dead," Repentant shouted over the booming orchestra.
"I really want them dead too," Quind shouted back. "Take my autogun if you need it."
Repentant pegged a few zombies that were trying to mount the driver's side. "You'll want it later."
"Another turn coming up," Quind announced.
"What?"
"Another turn coming up!"
"So?"
"I don't want you to lose any more ammo!"
Repentant blasted away several more undead and then switched magazines. "Don't sweat it, Boss!"
The speeder raced down the street, crushing the zombies with little resistance. Suddenly, a wide-bodied ghoul appeared through the crowd before vanishing underneath the passenger's side tyre which caught on his overlarge remains. The speeder pivoted on the fat creature's corpse and nearly rolled onto its side. A wide gap was opened behind the vehicle as it turned but was quickly filled in by a rush of hungry undead.
"What was that?" asked Repentant from the hatch.
"We hit a snag," answered Quind, flipping off the radio. The sound of howling ghouls returned to fill up the vehicle's cab. "Can you see it from up there?"
Repentant leaned over the side of the vehicle as far as he dared, but came too close to the grasping fingers of the zombies. He dispatched a few of them for good measure and tried for another look. It was impossible to see from his angle and the onslaught of zombies made it too dangerous to get a better one.
"What can you do with what you've got?" asked Repentant.
The tyres screeched on the pavement and shot rotted brown entrails into the back of the bulldozer that hung from the front of the vehicle.
"I thought that bulldozer was supposed to prevent that kind of thing from happening!" called the massive blank.
"It's supposed to clear mines, not zombies," said Quind as he put the vehicle in low reverse.
Repentant stopped blasting zombies for a moment as a shining star shot from a fifth-story window of a building down the street. Apart from the swarms of zombies that were charging the speeder, there seemed to be a gathering at the entrance of that building as well.
"Survivors!" Repentant said.
"What?"
"Survivors!" Repentant pointed excitedly to the flare that dropped onto a zombie and ignited it in the street. It continued its pressing assault unabated. The smell was horrendous.
Quind watched the flare fall on the zombie and followed the smoking arc it left behind. Some survivors of the Wounds of the Empire's attack had holed up on a high-level hab stack in hopes of rescue. For some reason they seemed to believe that Quind and Repentant were it.
"Seems to be our best option right now," Quind said to himself. He cranked the steering wheel all the way to the left and gunned the accelerator backwards. Finally the vehicle dislodged itself from the fat creature's remains and plowed over the zombies that were clawing and moaning behind it. The upper torso of the fat zombie continued to reach out for the vehicle, seemingly unaware that its lower half had been obliterated by the massive tyres of the offending speeder.
Shifting back into first, Quind once again plowed headlong through the stream of zombies, this time aiming at the monsters that were pushing and shoving at the door to the survivors' building.
"Look out!" cried Repentant from the hatch. Quind looked up to see a kitchen appliance – either a dishwasher or a stove – being shoved from the fifth-story window. It crushed a small group of the zombies pressing to get in, bouncing three meters back into the air as it fell apart. The debris fell back down into the crowd of monsters, taking a few more out but doing little other damage.
"Grenade!" cried Quind.
Without question, Repentant pulled a frag grenade off of his rack with a firm tug. The way he had it set up, the removal of the grenade from his rack also pulled the pin. The large man cocked back and chucked the grenade right into the doorway of the survivor's building. Repentant quickly ducked back into the hatch.
The explosion created a neat hole into which Quind parked the speeder. Quind leapt out through the passenger's door into the building while Repentant grabbed Vassal 7 from the back seat and threw him out after the inquisitor. As Repentant got out of the speeder a crawling monstrosity with its body severed below its armpits latched onto one of his ankles.
Repentant half-turned and put a bolt-round into the monstrosity's slack-jawed face. Only a dome with a gaping hole looked up at him, the mandible broken in half and most of the teeth on it missing. The creature's grip went slack.
Repentant moved the rest of the way into the building and heard The Bloodculler roar to life not far away. The hefty manservant pulled out his own close-combat weapon: a long serrated combat knife that he had acquired on his homeworld. He kept it for sentimental reasons mostly, and preferred to use either his bare fists or ranged weapons.
There were a few zombies that were milling around on the first floor and it only took a few quick slices from Bloodculler to dispatch them. The vehicle holding back the mobs outside was now being rocked by their multitudes and Repentant knew it wouldn't hold long.
"The fifth floor?" asked Quind.
Repentant nodded, and they made their way to the lift. Repentant hit the rune to call the lift, but nothing happened. He tried again.
"No power," Quind noted aloud. "We'll have to hoof it."
"I was really hoping you wouldn't say that," said Repentant as they made their way to the service stairs.
The building was in poorly condition, the black flakboard walls molding with age. The stairwell smelled of mildew, urine, and alcohol. Starting on the second flight of steps and leading up to the fourth flight was a trail of caked and dry blood. The lights were running on emergency power and flickered low light constantly. The rockcrete steps crumbled beneath Quind's power armored feet making the way all the more difficult for Repentant and Vassal 7 behind him.
When the trio reached the fifth floor they found the door barricaded with carious amounts of furniture that the residents had deemed heavy enough to hold back the horde. A voice called out to them from the other side.
"Are you there?" it asked. The voice seemed to belong to an elderly man, hoarse and quiet. At first Quind wasn't sure he heard it at all.
"I am Inquisitor Nethin Quind," announced Quind through the barricade. "You have no reason to fear me."
The distant sounds of the zombie moans from outside grew louder and the echoing slams of plodding footsteps reverberated up through the decaying stairwell.
"They're in," Repentant told Quind.
"If you'd please hurry," added Quind to the old man. "We'll have company soon."
Repentant readied his knife in one hand and his bolt pistol in the other. He only had this one last magazine and then he'd be completely spent. He hadn't expected to run dry so soon.
Quind listened closely and could hear the scraping of furniture sliding across the floor. After a moment, it stopped and Quind heard the old man clear his throat.
"Tell your friend to take a few steps down the stairs," the old man called.
"Are you serious?" asked Repentant. The zombies had already taken at least the first three flights and were pressing quickly upwards.
"Do it," instructed Quind.
Hesitantly, Repentant stepped down several steps into the stairwell.
In one rush, the furniture pulled away from the door and lined itself neatly along the hallway. Quind could see the old man standing by his lonesome in the hall, holding his hands up as though they were extensions of his psychic power.
"Let's go!" shouted Quind, and he darted inside. The sound of his footsteps clanged through the walls around him and he heard someone down the hall shriek. Repentant was right behind his master clutching Vassal 7 as though it were a doll, and Quind watched as the old man doubled over as Repentant came near.
"Repentant, into that room," ordered Quind. His manservant quickly obeyed, shutting the door behind him. "Can you put the furniture back? I'll help you."
The old man nodded and between the two psykers they replaced the furniture barricade in the doorway using telekinetic force. A moment later, wiry desiccated hands found holes amongst the furniture to grasp through. The reached hungrily for anyone who dared to get too close.
Quind turned to the old man and held out a gauntleted palm. The old man put a weak hand in it and they shook.
"Inquisitor Quind, I am Zelph Astrodus," the old man said. "You are lucky that one of us spotted your vehicle."
"It is good to meet you, Zelph, but tell me why it is that I am lucky?" asked Quind.
Zelph smiled up at the Inquisitor and patted his shoulder guard.
"Come into the den and I will explain," he said.
They proceeded into the hab that Repentant had ducked into and Quind saw the survivors who had signaled him. They were cleaner than he expected of refugees, though all clearly terrified to their wits' end. The hab was dark and smelled of the same rotting walls as the hallway, but there was an added smell of some kind of stew that was wafting in from an adjacent room.
"I didn't notice you at all," Zelph explained to Quind. "Because of your friend, of course. I have never met a real blank and I had gone my whole life believing them to be a myth."
Quind nodded. "So why am I lucky to be here with you then?"
"Well it's a damn sight better than down there with them," laughed Zelph. One of the survivors, an athletic young man with patchy stubble on his chin, nodded assent. "We have enough supply here to last for a year until help arrives."
"Do you have ammunition?" asked Repentant, holding up his bolt pistol.
"I'm afraid not," the young survivor answered him standing up. "I'm Titos Astrodus, Zelph's son. What my father means is that we have food, water, and power for a year."
"And if help never comes?" asked Quind.
"Then may the Emperor take us," said Zelph.
Quind looked at the other survivors. Most were old, scared men and women who had been lucky enough to shack up with their neighbor. Some were small children and their mothers. They numbered perhaps twenty altogether, and there seemed to be no strong male leadership besides Zelph and his son.
"Tell me," Zelph said, placing his hand on Quind's shoulder guard again, "just where in the warp were you two headed at a time like this?"
"The Guild Astropathica," answered Quind. "I need to send a message for help."
Zelph nodded his face suddenly grave. "The Guild has been overrun. There is only one survivor, and he is not at the Guild hall."
"How do you know this?" Quind asked.
"Where is he then?" Repentant asked simultaneously.
Titos stood beside his father. "You're looking at him," said the young man. "My father is the one surviving member of the Guild Astropathica."
Quind's jaw nearly dropped. "Truly the Emperor guides us all with his light," he said. "You can send a message off world?"
The old man looked at his son, then back at Quind. He nodded quietly.
"Look!" one of the children had wandered over to the window during all the commotion and was pointing wildly down at the street. "Look!"
Quind, Zelph, Titos, and Repentant all moved to the windows at once, looking down into the street five stories below. It was flooded with zombies, all of them pouring into the building over the overturned black speeder that Quind had loved so much.
"There's no way out of here, Boss," Repentant said. "We may as well settle in."