Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

Now the cacophony of scuffling boot soles, rustling garments and heavy breathing was stilled, I was able to contemplate the tunnel ahead of us without distraction. It had evidently been an outflow of some kind millennia before, and probably still was on occasion judging by the erosion of the rockcrete and the lingering smell. But the surface underfoot was quite dry, the only damp to be seen condensing on the partially visible reinforcing bars protruding from the roof where sections of it had fallen away to form mounds of debris on the floor, through which we’d been picking our way for some time. Pipes or conduits had apparently run along the roof of the channel too, mostly now fallen, leaving the stubs of their supporting brackets, but the pipes themselves had long since been spirited away by enterprising hivesteaders; the few exceptions left clinging on grimly to the intact parts of the ceiling were no doubt too inaccessible to bother with. They were thick with the dust of centuries, their outlines blurred, as though wrapped in shreds of tattered cloth. As my eyes continued to adjust, it seemed as if that was actually the case – the last remnants of old insulating material perhaps, rustling faintly as they stirred in the air currents.

Then, with sudden sickening clarity, I realised what I was looking at. The faint whisper of circulating air against my face wasn’t nearly strong enough to move anything as much as that.

‘Back the way we came,’ I said, urgently. ‘Slowly.’

Matching the deed to the word, I began to follow my own advice, Jurgen keeping the melta trained down the tunnel as he retreated after me. Anyone else might have hesitated, or asked what the hell I was on about, but we’d been through so much together that he simply followed my lead without hesitation or question.

‘What is it?’ Amberley asked, still staring at the auspex, as though that was going to be of any use.

‘Face-eaters,’ I said. The Catachan predators had, like far too many unpleasant species around the galaxy, hitched a lift off their home world millennia before, nestled among cargo pods or deliberately relocated by idiots who thought they could contain them, finding a veritable home from home on a number of other death worlds or, in this case, the lower levels of the underhive.140 The only time I’d ever seen one in the flesh before was in the jungles of Mychtarsh, when it decided to snack on an ork lurking in ambush ahead of us, and the ensuing firefight with the greenskins had left me little time to study the local wildlife.

For a moment, I thought we might actually make it, sneaking away before the ghastly things became aware of our presence, but of course we had no such luck. The nearest must have detected our body heat,141 as without warning it suddenly sprang at Jurgen’s head. As so often my reflexes took over and I struck at it with the chainsword before I even knew what I was doing, cleaving it neatly in two. It looked like a large, ravenous towel, studded on the underside with far too many teeth, claws and diseased-looking nodules oozing acidic digestive juices. The back of it was almost as bad, bristling with spines, which probably explained the condition of the hands of the first corpse we’d discovered.

As the bisected sheet of viscid flesh splattered on the tunnel floor, an ominous rustling began to pervade the roost. ‘Run!’ I bellowed, suiting the action to the word and turning to let fly a flurry of las-bolts from the pistol in my hand as I broke into a sprint. I caught a couple as they sprang,142 punching holes through their middles, and they dropped spasming to the pitted rockcrete. I’d hoped the others would have stopped to take advantage of the free meal, but apparently they had no appetite for cannibalism, carrion or both, launching themselves towards us in a wave of skittering horror instead.

Everyone opened up with whatever weapons they had in their hands, smacking down the vanguard, but there were plenty more where they’d come from. I took up a guard position with the chainsword, protecting my face, skewering another of the hideous things as it sprang at my head. I turned to flick the macerated remains from the whirling blade, avoiding one which passed through the space I’d just vacated more by luck than judgement as a second, possibly its mate, followed the first. The abominable creature just missed my head and smacked into the tunnel floor, where it lay wriggling, gathering itself for another leap. Before it got the chance I stamped down, feeling something squish, crunch and squirm under my boot sole. Only then did I remember the spines on its back, but fortunately they proved no match for the cured nauga hide of my Guard-issue combat boots, bending and snapping off as I kicked out at the vile abomination.