Legacy of Caliban by Gav Thorpe

Author:Gav Thorpe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2016-08-10T13:25:06+00:00

Corruption

‘Can anybody hear me?’ a non-stop succession of colourful phrases and curses followed, confirming to Telemenus the identity of his fellow Terminator.

‘Daellon?’

‘Emperor damn me! Telemenus?’

The citadel had become a labyrinth and Telemenus was sure that he had walked in circles for nearly an hour, except that the circle was changing every time he took a turn, so that even if he crossed his path a hundred times more he would never recognise the exact same layout of tunnels and chambers. He had quickly succumbed to the depressing thought that he would die alone in this awful place, until he had picked up the distant echo of a shout.

‘Wait while I configure my audio pick-ups,’ Telemenus called back. He stopped walking and adjusted the sensitivity of his auto-senses, hoping to detect the direction of Daellon’s bellowing. ‘Configuration complete. Call again!’

‘Telemenus!’ Daellon’s shout almost deafened the Space Marine, erupting from the vox-link inside his helm. Feedback squealed close at hand, masking any location he might have picked up.

‘Brother, your vox is on,’ Telemenus replied quietly over the open channel.

‘And working again, it would seem. A damn joyous moment for you to hear my voice again, I am sure.’

Both of them spent thirty seconds trying to contact anyone else, switching between squad, personal and company frequencies but with no success.

‘It must be range interference,’ said Daellon. ‘At least that means we are close to each other. I’ll use the external system again.’

Telemenus listened intently, the stereoscopic detectors of his auto-senses turned up to maximum sensitivity. He heard his name rebounding from a passageway behind and to his left. He backtracked and called down the oval-shaped corridor, which like much of the maze resembled nothing so much as an artery clogged with fatty tissue and rank black residue. He told Daellon to call again and by these means was able to navigate his way through two more turnings until he came up on his battle-brother from behind.

‘A perturbing location,’ admitted Telemenus as they raised their power fists to each other in salute. ‘I assume you have seen nothing of our brothers?’

‘You are the first,’ said Daellon. ‘I was right behind Sergeant Arbalan when we teleported, but the moment we arrived… nothing. Not that I would have noticed if he was right in front of me at that moment. I thought I was going to puke out my lungs and my brain would fall out of my arse.’

‘Quite,’ said Telemenus, who had never really come to terms with Daellon’s unique capability for colourful language. He skirted on blasphemy at times but, oddly enough, seemed perfectly capable of keeping his tongue in order whenever Chaplain Asmodai was within earshot.

‘Not tried the sensorium since I switched it off, have you?’ Daellon said. Without any spoken consent, the two of them started heading in the direction Daellon had been facing. ‘I shot holes in the wall as a means of keeping track.’

‘Good idea,’ said Telemenus. ‘And no, I have not reactivated my sensorium. I hate to think what would happen to it if we created a scanner net between us.

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