The Killing Ground by Graham McNeill

  The Sons of Salinas will rise again!

  Uriel frowned as he read the words, wondering what they meant.

  Who were the Sons of Salinas?

  A cult? A resistance movement? A pro-Imperial faction?

  Whoever they were, they had been careful to hide their imprecation to rebellion and that alone made Uriel suspicious of their allegiance.

  Was Salinas a person or the name of this world?

  Uriel turned as a shadow was thrown out on the wall before him. Crunching, heavy footsteps and a wet animal smell told him who had followed him and he lowered his sword.

  He edged into the main room of the house, and as he cleared the doorway, he saw the Lord of the Unfleshed crouching beside the wall where the two silhouettes were emblazoned. The creature's enormous head lowered to sniff at the wall and his eyes widened as he took in the scent.

  'These people...?' said the Lord of the Unfleshed.

  'What about them?'

  'This place... Many families?'

  'Yes,' agreed Uriel. 'This was a city.'

  'And these people?' asked the Lord of the Unfleshed.

  'They lived here,' said Uriel.

  'They died here.'

  Uriel nodded, sheathing his sword. 'They did, but I don't know why.'

  'This world feels wrong, sick. I not think that we be happy here,' whispered the enormous beast. 'Men that killed these people... They are bad men, like Iron Men.'

  'How do you know that?' asked Uriel.

  The enormous creature shrugged, as though the answer should have been obvious, and turned away from the wall, to where a collection of children's toys lay scattered in the corner of the room. The Lord of the Unfleshed crouched beside the toys, a melted doll with a scorched dress and a pile of blocks with the letters burned from them.

  The beginnings of what might have been a smile creased the creature's face and Uriel felt his heart go out to the Lord of the Unfleshed, wondering what the future might have held for the child he had once been had the Iron Warriors not cruelly abducted him.

  'Bad men will want to kill us,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed without looking up.

  'Why do you say that?' asked Uriel, though he suspected the sentiment was accurate.

  'I know we are monsters,' said the creature. 'A bad man that kills families will fear us.'

  'No,' said Uriel, 'I won't let that happen.'

  'Why?'

  'Because you deserve a chance to live.'

  'You think the Unfleshed can live here?'

  'I don't know,' admitted Uriel, 'but what chance did you have on Medrengard? I don't know anything about this world, where it is or even what it's called, but I promise you I will do everything I can to make sure you have a better life here. What happened to you... It was monstrous, but you don't deserve to be condemned for it. You just have to be patient for a little longer and stay hidden until I can find the right time to tell people of you. Can you do that?'

  'Unfleshed good at staying hidden. Not be found unless we want to be. Learned that on world of Iron Men.'

  'Then stay here, stay hidden and when the time is right, Pasanius and I will come and get you. Then you will feel the sun on your face and not have to worry about Iron Men.'

  'A better life,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'You promise?'

  'A better life,' agreed Uriel.

  'And the Emperor will love us?'

  'He will,' said Uriel. 'He loves all his subjects.'

  The Lord of the Unfleshed nodded and turned his massive head towards Uriel. Such a terrible, twisted face was incapable of guile and Uriel felt the responsibility of the creature's simple faith in him. He had promised them a better future and he had to make good on that promise.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed's head snapped up and the folds of flesh above his jaws pulsed.

  'Men are coming,' said the creature, 'men on machines.'

  COLONEL VERENA KAIN stifled a yawn and rubbed a gloved hand across her eyes, her body naturally rolling with the motion of the Chimera armoured fighting vehicle she travelled in. Sitting high in the commander's hatch, she had a clear field of view across the rugged predawn landscape that followed the course of the river towards the ruined city of Khaturian.

  She could see the jagged outline of the city ahead, stark against the bleak ruggedness of the mountains and a grim sight for this Emperor-forsaken hour of the morning. Moving with a unique, striding gait, six scout Sentinels darted ahead through the gloom, the bipedal machines ensuring that this fool's errand Mesira Bardhyl's warning had sent them on wasn't a Sons of Salinas ambush.

  The scrawny psyker woman had arrived at the palace in the dead of night and demanded to see Governor Barbaden, which only served to prove her idiocy. Bardhyl had claimed she had something of great import to tell him, and once ushered into the governor's presence, she had sobbed out some nonsense about monsters and oceans of blood spilling out from the Killing Ground.

  A slap to the face from Kain had halted her ramblings and she smiled as she remembered the look of shock on the woman's pinched face. Mesira Bardhyl had once been the sanctioned psyker attached to the Screaming Eagles, but was one of the cowards who had chosen to muster out of the regiment following the partial demobilisation of the Falcatas after Restoration Day. Kain had little time for such cravens and the chance to put Bardhyl in her place could not be passed up.

  As a psyker, Bardhyl should have been handed over to the Commissariat following demobilisation, but, for reasons known only to himself, Barbaden had allowed her to quit the regiment without a fuss. Why he allowed Bardhyl to do so was beyond Kain, but she took great pains not to press him too hard on the subject, for Leto Barbaden's cold, diamond-sharp mind was an icy thing that could end her career as surely as his patronage had advanced it to the position he had once held.

  When Bardhyl had calmed enough to speak without gratuitous hyperbole, she spoke of a great surge in warp energy that had appeared in the ruined city of Khaturian. Consultation with the Janiceps had confirmed that, and Barbaden had ordered her to take a detachment of troops out to the Killing Ground and investigate.

  Behind Kain's vehicle, a further eleven Chimeras spread out in a staggered arrowhead formation, filled with over a hundred of her Screaming Eagles. Veterans of a score of campaigns and the most feared and disciplined soldiers of the Achaman Falcatas, the Eagles were her favoured warriors when order had to be restored with maximum efficiency and speed.

  As the outline of the dead city drew closer, Kain felt a shiver of apprehension, but shook it off. The last time she had seen this place it had been completely ablaze and the sights and sounds of that night returned with the force of a recently unlocked memory.

  She realised she had not thought of that night in many years, but the recollection did not trouble her as it did some members of her regiment. They had done what needed to be done and the planet had been brought to heel. She had no regrets and unconsciously reached up to touch the eagle medal that hung from the left breast of her uniform jacket.

  Her Chimera bounced over the uneven ground and she raised battered magnoculars to her face, scanning the outline of the city as the Sentinels drew near the razor wire fence that surrounded the ruins.

  Tumbled buildings filled her view, rendered green and milky by the mechanics of the viewfinder, but there was precious little else to see. Their route was becoming rockier and cut through some wooded hills, so Kain pulled her arms in tight and slid back down inside the Chimera.

  It paid to be cautious. The Sons of Salinas had stepped up their campaign of guerrilla attacks and, while it was unlikely they would attack such a well-armed force, it was possible that a number of snipers could be lying in wait within such terrain. This whole endeavour could simply be a ruse to lure out and kill an Imperial officer.

  Inside the Chimera, it was noisy and dim. Engine noise roared from the back and the stink of oil and sacred unguents was thick in the air. Cramped and filled with solid iron and dangerous moving parts, it paid to be
slightly built as she manoeuvred her body into the commander's seat.

  'Anything, ma'am?' asked Bascome, her aide-de-camp, from his position by the vox-gear.

  'There's nothing there,' she said, shouting to be heard over the rattling noise of the engine.

  'Any idea what we should expect?' asked Bascome.

  Kain didn't know what to expect after the frustrating vagueness of Bardhyl's warning, but it did not become a colonel to admit ignorance in front of her junior officers.

  'Possibly some Sons of Salinas activity,' she said. 'Or else more fools coming to place their trinkets on a pile of stones.'

  Bascome shook his head. 'You'd think they'd learn not to come here, especially after the last lot we shot.'

  Kain did not reply, remembering the sight of the three men put before the firing squad against the palace wall for breaking the cordon around Khaturian. Entry to the city was strictly forbidden and punishable by death, something that appeared not to deter the many numbskulls that regularly risked their lives to place memorials.

  If Barbaden had listened to her, the ruins would have been obliterated by massed Basilisk fire the hour after Restoration Day, but the newly installed Governor had decided that such a move would only re-ignite flames of rebellion so recently extinguished.

  Well, the last ten years had shown how well that had worked out: a decade of bombings, riots and discontent from a populace too stupid to realise that it was beaten. Imperial rule held sway over this world and the Sons of Salinas were a spent force, no matter how charismatic and cunning Pascal Blaise was said to be.

  All sorts of wild rumours had grown up around the leader of the Sons of Salinas: that he had once served in the Guard, that he had once been Barbadus's chief enforcer before Daron Nisato had taken over or even that he was a rogue inquisitor. Whatever the truth of his former life, Kain had killed enough of his soldiers to know that he clearly wasn't that good a leader.

  'I hope it is the Sons of Salinas,' said Bascome. 'It's been too long since we had a proper stand up fight.'

  Kain echoed her aide's sentiment. Since Restoration Day, there had been precious little proper soldiering for the Falcatas. No intense firefights against xenos or the warriors of the Ruinous Powers, but plenty of civilian rioters and thankless patrols through districts of their own derelict war machines where improvised explosives waited to blow off limbs and snipers lurked to take pot shots at the patrolling Imperial soldiers.

  The entire situation made no sense to Kain. Hadn't they liberated this system from the Ruinous Powers? True, there had been no overt outbreak of rebellion on Salinas, but with three other worlds in the system already fallen prey to heresy, it had surely been only a matter of time before Salinas came under the sway of the Great Enemy. Didn't these people realise how lucky they had in fact been?

  The Falcatas had arrived in a flurry of pomp and ceremony, an occasion demanded by the Master of the Crusade, General Shermi Vigo (a man who loathed Leto Barbaden and who was, in return, despised), but it had only served to inflame the people, leading to three years of grubby, inglorious warfare.

  The result of the pacification had never really been in doubt, for the Achaman Falcatas had fought through the treacherous hells of two of the system's worlds already and were in no mood to offer mercy. As brutal and necessary as the fighting had been, there had been little glory in shooting civilians who thought that holding guns made them soldiers.

  'Don't get your hopes up, Bascome,' warned Kain. 'This isn't likely to be anything out of the ordinary.'

  'WHAT DO YOU think?' asked Pasanius.

  'It sounds like Chimera engines, and Sentinels.'

  'That's what I thought,' agreed Pasanius. 'Guard?'

  'I think so.'

  'Let's hope they're friendly.'

  Uriel nodded and ran a hand across his scalp as the noise of the engines drew nearer. Uriel's superior hearing filtered out the distortions caused by the ruggedness of the landscape, allowing him to pick out the different engine noises and pinpoint their location.

  The vehicles were perhaps two kilometres away and would be here in moments.

  Uriel had raced back through the streets of the city, feeling its character change once more, the wind whipping through the streets as though bearing word of the approaching men with every gust. The Lord of the Unfleshed had long outpaced him, his lumbering gait and long, elastic limbs propelling him through the rubble-strewn streets with uncanny speed and grace.

  Pasanius was waiting for him and the two gathered their meagre possessions before heading towards the southern edge of the city. Whoever these men on machines were, Uriel and Pasanius would meet them with their heads held high.

  As they prepared to leave, Uriel turned to the Lord of the Unfleshed. He reached up to place his hand on the creature's arm, but remembered how such a gesture had hurt it before and pulled his hand back.

  'You understand what you have to do?' asked Uriel.

  The mighty creature nodded, his brood of twisted followers echoing the gesture. 'Hide.'

  'Yes,' said Uriel, 'you need to hide, but it won't be for long, I swear to you. Let us deal with these men and find out more about this world.'

  'Then you come and get us? Tell men not fear us?'

  Uriel hesitated before answering, unsure of what to say and loath to promise something he could not deliver. 'I'll come and get you as soon as it is safe, but until then you have to stay hidden. Move higher into the mountains. It looks like there's food and water there and you should be safe as long as you stay away from any settlements.'

  The Lord of the Unfleshed took a moment to process all that Uriel had said, his massive form suddenly seeming to be much smaller than before. Uriel realised that the creature was feeling fear and as ridiculous as that thought was, it was completely understandable. Since their last days on Medrengard, the Lord of the Unfleshed had looked to Uriel as a child looks towards its father for guidance.

  Now, that guidance was going away and Uriel saw the fear of abandonment in the creature's milky, bloodshot eyes.

  'You will be safe,' said Uriel. 'I give you my word. I will not let anything happen to you. Now you have to go, quickly.'

  The Lord of the Unfleshed turned and led his followers into the depths of the ruined city and as Uriel watched them go, he hoped they might have a chance of life on this world.

  Now, as he stood before a long line of razor wire that appeared to encircle the city, he wasn't so sure. Their explorations of the previous night had not carried them this far south and to find that this dead city was cordoned off was a cause for some concern.

  'They sound like friendlies,' said Uriel. 'Looted Guard vehicles don't sound as smooth. The engines are well cared for, I can hear that much.'

  'Well, you always did have better hearing than me,' said Pasanius, affecting an air of casualness, but Uriel could sense his friend's unease. 'So, what do you make of this razor wire?'

  Uriel looked left and right, following the line of tall wooden posts rammed into the ground and strung with looping coils of vicious, toothed wire.

  'They didn't skimp on it, that's for sure,' said Uriel. 'Anyone caught in that fence would be torn to bloody shreds trying to cross it.'

  'Aye,' agreed Pasanius, holding the bolter loosely at his side. 'From the scraps of cloth and bloodstains on it, it looks like there's no shortage of people attempting to get through.'

  They had reached the edges of the city and followed the road until reaching a wide gate, strung with coloured ribbons and garlands of faded flowers. More of the prayer strips hung from the wire and it had the effect of making the gate look almost festive.

  'How are we going to play this?' asked Pasanius.

  'Carefully,' said Uriel. 'It's the only way we can. I want to be honest with these people, but I don't want to be gunned down by some overeager Guardsman with an itchy trigger-finger.'

  'Good point. Best we don't mention where we've been.'

  'Probably not,' agreed Uriel. 'Not yet, at lea
st.'

  Pasanius nodded to the horizon. 'Here they come.'

  Uriel watched as a trio of boxy, bipedal machines stalked through the landscape towards the city, moving with a wheezing, mechanical gait. Painted a deep rust red, each was, much to Uriel's relief, emblazoned with a golden eagle on their frontal glacis. Two bore side-mounted autocannons, while the third sported a lascannon that hummed with a powerful electric charge.

  'There's more than these three,' said Pasanius, his head cocked to one side.

  'I know,' said Uriel. 'There's one on our right and another two in the woods to the left.'

  'Autocannons and a lascannon... They'll make a mess of us if they open fire.'

  'Then let's not give them reason to, eh?'

  'Sounds good to me.'

  Uriel watched as the three visible Sentinels slowed and approached the gate with greater caution now that they had spotted the two of them. Guns were trained, hissing hydraulics powered up and arming chambers unmasked the war spirits within the weapons.

  'Easy now,' whispered Uriel.

  All three Sentinels had their weapons firmly aimed at them.

  'If they open fire...' said Pasanius, his grip twitching on the grip of the bolter.

  Uriel spotted the gesture and said, 'Slowly. Very slowly, put down that gun.'

  Pasanius looked down at the weapon, as though he had forgotten he was carrying it, and nodded. With his truncated arm raised, he knelt and placed the bolter on the ground. The Sentinel armed with the lascannon followed his movements.

  None of the other vehicles moved, content simply to cover them with their weapons.

  'Why aren't they doing anything?'

  'Communicating with their commanding officer I expect.'

  'Damn, but I don't like this,' said Pasanius.

  'Nor I,' said Uriel, 'but what choice do we have? We have to make contact with Imperial authorities sometime.'

  'True. I just wish we weren't doing it with a company's worth of heavy weaponry pointed at us.'

  The Sentinels before them didn't move, but Uriel could hear the sounds of the ones out of sight moving around to confirm that they were alone. He hoped the Lord of the Unfleshed had managed to get his followers clear of the city, for if the commanding officer of these soldiers was even halfway competent, he would order a search of the city to confirm that they were alone.