Dead City – Part 11
Carson stood stock-still as he looked upon the lifeless faces before him, while his feeble light cast weak shadows over their emotionless faces. Some had metal hoods or skullcaps, while others had bald heads with wires, or augmetics, protruding from their skin, looping around their faces and necks.
None of them moved. They stood in lines, frozen in time. Servitors – hundreds of them. He had come upon some form of production line or store room. He realised he had been holding his breath, and finally let out a long, weary sign, before his body took over his mind, taking in deep gulps of stale air. The hall he found himself smelt awful too – clearly these dormant servitors had been closed off in here for a long time, untended to, while the world above descended into a differing form of unlife and madness. What a joke life had become if the closest thing to it he had been confronted with was an inactive servitor!
Something heavy violently clattered against the door, abruptly snapping Carson out of his reverie. Bore. Luckily the metal frame held, but slight dents appeared with every bone-smashing impact. Carson moved away from the danger, blindly pushing into the mass of statuesque tech-slaves. The banging stopped, and quiet, yet dreadful moments passed before, ever-so-slowly, the door handle turned slightly.
'No…' said Carson under his breath. 'You can't be serious?'
But whatever fate controlled Carsons' destiny failed to stop what was happening, and the door handle continued to turn, opening the door. Somehow the beastly remains of Magos Bore had memories, or know how, to apply reasoning to a situation. Maybe it was the machine parts helping to control the dead brain, or merely luck. No matter the cause, it was happening, and he had to do something about it.
He turned his back to the entrance, and started to run through the long lines of servitors, looking for some form of weapon, or another escape route. Several hundred metres to his left, he saw a store room of some kind, and he broke out into a run towards it.
As he ran past the final servitor – some power-clawed monstrosity - his luck finally changed. A dark, dangerous looking armoury lay before him. Multitudes of weaponry sat braced in rows upon rows of shelving. What was this place? Some war-room, or hidden secret? Or salvation from the Emperor, a coarse light in eternal darkness?
Who really cares? he thought, running to the first brace of shotguns. He pulled the closest one from its bracing, having to jam his light between his arm and his side while snapping the protective plastek holding it in place. It felt heavy and cold in his grip. Of course, it was unloaded, so he snatched his light and played it across the hall once more, looking for any sign of an ammo locker.
A metal-on-metal scuffing sound came from the direction of the doorway. Carson's mind flared with images of the multi-limbed Magos snaking into the hall, infecting the servitors and turning them to his control, their gnashing jaws filling with mucus-laden saliva as they prepared to eat his flesh…
'Focus damn it!' he swore. He moved deeper into the room, memories of the dead servitor he first found upstairs blinking in his minds' eye – he hoped no more gruesome surprises waited within. Further down the hallway he found a closed door, though he swiftly realised the deadbolts there positioned so it stayed open. He slung the shotgun under his arm and with the flailing light found a handle and pulled. Slowly the heavy-set door gave way, his light illuminating scores of assorted trays filled with ammo clips, varying bullets and other such supplies.
Now all he needed to do was find the right kind of shell to fit. As he checked several lockers, he found a shock maul – the old favourite crowd control weapon of the Arbites – it still had charge on it, so he clipped it to his belt. As he raked through the room, a familiar rasping echoed sibilantly through the air.
The tech-zombie had found him. And trapped him. A quick search with the light confirmed that there was only one way out – and the rotting and heavily augmented undead monster blocked the exit.
He frantically hunted through the room, looking for the right shotgun shells as Magos Bore pulled himself into the store room, his putrid smell once more consuming Carson's battered senses. A shell smoothly slipped into the shotgun. He hastily loaded the gun as he moved to the back of the ammo-room, knocking over small crates and tools as he did so. This seemed to anger or excite his enemy, as a dull-metal mechahendrite snaked around the store room door before latching on to the side of the wall, pulling the full bulk of the Magos forwards – filling the entrance.
Carson's shotgun was smaller and more compact than any he had used before – some drum-fed combat shotgun he'd seen used by the elite enforcer units of the arbiters. More reliable, and powerful, he'd been told.
The ghastly remains of Magos Bores face appeared out of the gloom, his metal teeth gaping in a wide, silent scream as his augmented limbs drove him forwards. With his hand-light held along-side the barrel of his weapon, enabling some form of accuracy, Carson prepared to fight for survival once more.
The Magos suddenly issued his signature metal rasping and charged at Carson.
'Time to die again,' he whispered, his heart pounding. Then he opened fire.
The recoil forced him back into the wall, and his light fell to the floor, twirling wildly and turning the tight confines of the room into a weird parody of a low-hive dance-meet. The roaring blast of the weapon deafened him, making him feel like he was suddenly under water.
After the initial shock, Carson fired again, emptying the shotgun in the general direction of his foe.
Pain trilled through his arm as a rusting mechanical appendage grasped his wrist, pulling him into the air. The shotgun tore out of his hands at the same time, and through the din of his damaged hearing, he heard a metal clang as it hit the floor. His legs struck a nearby table and then rebounded off something hard, yet fleshy.
The light on the ground shone off of a mirror, or a shiny surface, abruptly lighting the room decidedly brighter, and Carson saw finally realised how bad his situation really was: The tech-zombie had him in its grasp, and although he could see terrible damage rot by the shotgun shells, the beast was still functioning. Slowly Carson stopped swinging in the air, and the arm holding him drew him towards the intact jaws of the Magos.
The shock maul! He realised almost too late that it was strapped to his side. With his free hand, he seized hold of its handle. He saw the Magos open his metal jaws wide, the fetid breath watering Carson's eyes as acidic bile rose in his throat. Yet he tore free the maul form his belt in a final attempt for survival, and thumbed on the activation switch.
The potent electric field fizzed over the top of the maul in a startling blue haze. Carson brought it round over his head, crying out with animal instinct as he did so, and violently jammed it into the tech-zombies gaping maw.
The effect was instantaneous. Wild blue electricity ripped through the metal exoskeleton and augmented body parts, frying the biometric machine spirit and turning the remaining fleshy brain into crispy meat. Magos Bore died silently, crumpling to the floor in a smoking heap.
Carson fell with the body, and his last memory before darkness consumed his thoughts was of smelling roasting flesh…
*
'…Carson… Carson!' his dad cries. 'To the left! Watch our flank!'
He is kneeling with his back to a cold, flat wall. Gunfire, explosions, screaming and a cacophony of noise surrounds the hab-unit he finds himself in. Where is this?
Then he remembers. Tarsus City. He's in the Planetary defence force, the Tharius Recon unit. They're fighting a cult, or was it dissident fighters? Heretics no matter what.
He's part of the 51st unit, under the overall command of his father, the glorious Colonel Leto. Their enemies have ambushed them in the massed hab-sector – nothing but miles upon miles of hab buildings, tight corners and kill-zones. A rocket shot detonates in the corridor outside of the ground floor flat sheltered in. Thick smoke filters passed, and Carson snatches up his rebreather, finding it hard to fix it over his head with his sweaty, shaking hands.
A cold, consuming fear has gripped him. As the smoke swirls majestically through the air, he tries to block out the brutality and death around him.
Vister, the youngest in the unit, drops to the ground in the doorway; he's missing am arm and blood spills across the hab-unit.
Carson is shaken aggressively. He looks up and sees his dad's eyes through a rebreather mask. His comm-link crackles. 'Son, are you with us?'
He mumbles something.
'Take the left street, as soon as the smoke clears, cover us.'
He nods. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to protect his fathers' no doubt heroic charge. It's not that he doesn't love or respect him – it's just that he does not want to be part of this. He hates the gunfire, the violence, and the death.
It scares him.
'Now!' his father yells. 'For the Emperor!'
Carson remembers turning and looking out of the window through the clearing smoke. The enemy is in the adjacent building. He knows he needs to cover his father and the rest of the unit that has survived, but fear has gripped him, froze him.
He sits there, his gun silent by his side.
His father leads the unit into the open.
The enemy open fire…