Unmarked by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2013-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

[mark: –?]

The humidity on the far side is intense. They feel it coming through the slit before they step across. Beads of sweat immediately manifest on their pale skins, gleaming like diamonds.

A rainforest awaits them. It has been waiting forever. It is an endless jade twilight of water-logged glades, and they are knee-deep in bright green murk. Graft struggles to maintain traction and stability. Sunlight sparkles and shafts down through the canopy. Moss as thick as emerald velvet coats the tree trunks and half-sunken logs. There is a throat-tightening smell of rot.

Winged insects – each one looking like a watchmaker’s intricate masterpiece – whir past them, hover, and then speed on.

It is another place that Oll does not know. He wonders if this is a sign that their route is less guided now, more random. Or is it a sign that it is becoming all the more concealed? Which forsaken outworld is this? What rimworld hell? His sweating palms shift the rifle nervously. The rainforest is a bad place for a fight. He has never liked jungle warfare.

They keep stopping to help Graft free himself, sometimes having to lever him out of the ooze with blackened lengths of log.

‘I don’t like this,’ Krank remarks. It is matter-of-fact. Oll wonders if the young soldier means the physical discomfort of the wet heat and the toil, or simply the location. The attitude applies convincingly to both.

Then the place falls silent.

It is a chilling thing. Until the silence, they had not realised the rainforest was so full of noises: the buzz of insects, the splash of water, the crack of undergrowth, the chirp of amphibians, the whistle of birds.

Only when it stops, when it all stops at a stroke, do they recognise it by its distressing absence.

They all freeze, listening, willing sounds to return.

Oll holds up a hand, and turns slowly, training his rifle. His movement makes the very slightest slooshing sound in the water around his shins.

Something rushes them from the stand of trees behind them. It is man-sized and man-shaped, though its legs are proportionally shorter and its arms proportionally longer than human standard. It is an ape-thing, scrawny and lean. It has no eyes. Its head is entirely a gaping mouth of carnivore teeth, lips pulled back.

It shrieks as it charges. Water sprays. Katt screams. It bounds over a half-sunken log, leaping, clawing paws outstretched.

Oll fires. Three shots smack into its torso and bowl it backwards into the green soup with a clumsy, slapping splash. Thrashing, it sinks.

‘What in the name of–’ Zybes starts to say, but there is not time. There is another ape-thing charging them, and another, and then a fourth. They come pounding out of the topaz gloom, shrieking, unmindful of the fate that greeted the first of them.

‘Rapid fire!’ Oll commands, shooting. Multiple targets. He cannot take them all. He needs the others. Krank is fumbling with his rifle, his frantic hands caught in the strap. Bale fires, winging one of the creatures enough to slow it, and then aims to kill it.

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