by David Guymer
Occasionally, Rauth would see a face peering imploringly from a partially shuttered window after the departing transports. They would fight and live or they would fight and die. And if they should die? Well then they were weak, and their deaths would have cost the Imperium nothing.
‘I can vox Harsid, ask him to slow down,’ offered Mohr.
The Apothecary walked a few metres off the pace, his bolt pistol aimed into the shadows that followed behind them.
You can cut off my leg like a real Apothecary. ‘I can keep up.’
‘I will make sure of it,’ said Khrysaar.
Rauth was unsure whether to take that as a promise or a threat.
The sudden shuddering of the overhanging jetties distracted him from the thought, and he gripped his brother’s shoulder, looking up as a formation of Thunderbolt and Lightning fighters rocketed overhead. This district was wealthy, the preserve of the upper echelons of the Adeptus Mechanicus. As if being able to see the sky is some kind of a gift. They must consider themselves blessed about now, watching their doom come. Burning debris, presumably from ork attack craft, clawed at the sky, bursting apart and smoking out as they punched through rain-thickened clouds.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Rauth. ‘Vox Harsid. Tell him to hurry up.’
Laana ran a short way ahead of them, forced to keep to a brisk clip to keep pace with the genhanced warriors, far enough into the dark and the wet that she would have been invisible if not for the bright yellow overalls that she was still wearing. Her captive stumbled ahead of her, exhausted by the pace that Harsid had set. Even on the run, she managed to hold the magos’ shoulder in one hand and a needler in his back in the other. With his hood drawn and dampened to his head, his servo-harness detached, his ego deflated, he looked smaller than the consumed memories had led Rauth to expect.
Captain Harsid waited for them with vulturine patience by the gates to a walled compound. It looked deserted. The gate was of some artificer wood designed to resemble Terran ebony, the brass flourishes subtly doubling as reinforcements. I’m not looking forward to knocking that down. The Death Spectre turned his beaked helm towards the captive magos. Most Space Marines exploited their armour’s vox capabilities to stun and subdue with sheer volume. Harsid achieved the same with the opposite. He spoke as though every word carried a death sentence for anyone that did not strain to hear.
‘Is this the one?’
‘It… it is,’ said the magos, face down.
‘Are there any security countermeasures?’
‘I… I… I…’
Laana jabbed her needler into the magos’ back.
‘Y-yes,’ he stuttered. ‘But I left my identity cryptex at the tournament.’
‘Do not fear,’ said Harsid. ‘Your door won’t keep us out.’
Before the magos could stammer an answer, the door simply opened itself.
The hairs on Rauth’s denuded body shivered as Autarch Yeldrian appeared inside.
The eldar’s armour luminesced, the effect doubly striking in the near absence of external sources of light, the vibrancy of yellows accentuated by the infinite depths of blues. Empyreal echoes shadowed his movements. Trace arcs of ether light edged the contours of his armour, the jump pack that enclosed his shoulders and pushed him into an elegant bow purring to quiet. The lingering embrace of the warp perhaps, but some aspect of the warrior’s tall, alien helm turned Rauth’s soul to meltwater, a sub-psychic suggestion that bypassed every layer of genhancement and conditioning to attack a fear centre too deep even for the genetic sorceries of the Emperor to reach. Rauth felt Khrysaar stiffen against his shoulder.
Flesh is weak. The mantra ran through Rauth’s head like a warding cant. Flesh is weak.
‘Inside,’ said Yeldrian, his voice dopplered by the eerie helmet he wore.
The magos’ residence conformed to the gothic archetype. The large courtyard was surrounded by high walls. A fortified manse abutted one end. The courtyard was tiered, conforming to an algorithmic pattern, rising towards the house. It was paved with red stone. A few carefully cultivated mosses overflowed from pots. Gunmetal statues depicting Martian Saints stood in poses of contemplation. Rauth’s first thought was that they must be cybernetic artifices, part of some kind of auto-defence system, but on second inspection they appeared to be wholly decorative.
Laana looked around and whistled.
The Adeptus Mechanicus will find a way to thrive anywhere.
The compound gave every indication of being empty, but the Deathwatch team spread into cover regardless. Rauth slumped against the nearest statue, and waved his brother off. Weakness makes me ill-tempered. Khrysaar unholstered his bolt pistol and ran off after Harsid, moving into the shadow of the house.
Rauth turned his face into the rain.
He could almost smell the trickle down from the upper atmosphere. The fyceline of Avenger autocannons. The oxidising fury of Lightning lascannons. The ash and promethium of their kills. It was war. His physiology had been engineered to be responsive to it, and he felt his blood vessels opening for the vasodilators flushed into his cardiopump. His breathing deepened, his thoughts sharpened. His eyes narrowed as he picked out the quartet of black wedges that dropped through the cloud layer like depth charges. A murmur of engine noise rumbled out, touching the ground, as they veered out to hunt for a landing zone a kilometre or two to the west.
No mortal pilot could make entry like that.
‘Yeldrian…’ Rauth murmured.
‘I see them,’ the eldar answered.
‘Clan Garrsak. Heading towards Sevastian’s compound.’
‘I see them.’ The alien’s plastek armour crinkled, like the scales of a serpent shifting position, as Yeldrian turned towards the magos. The human’s eyes bulged. His face lost all shape. ‘Time runs away from me. Like the Wailing Doom it will be mastered by no mortal.’
The magos whimpered, blinking rain out of his eyes.
‘What is your name?’ Laana asked.
‘Cavinash,’ he murmured, unable to drag his eyes from whatever horror unfolded for him alone across the eldar’s mask. More effective than hammers and blades, I’ll admit.
‘We are alone here?’
The magos nodded mutely.
‘You are sure?’ Laana hissed.
‘Household garrisons will have been recalled to the fabricator-locum’s compound.’
Laana nodded. But then she would have known that already. She’s good at this. Rauth found himself wondering just how long she and Yeldrian had been working together. They had an unspoken rapport that seemed to go deeper even than between the autarch and Harsid. What is your interest in all this? Just how did a Medusan Death Cult assassin end up out here with an eldar?
‘This is a fine home,’ Laana continued. ‘Fit for someone important.’
‘I am magos preservator. There are many relics in the temples of Fort Callivant that require maintenance. Many are particular about the rites of reverence they will accept.’
Laana suddenly hauled the magos towards her by the collar of his robes. ‘Was the Dawnbreak device one of those artefacts?’
‘Yes!’
The assassin dumped him onto his back with a disgusted snort, wiping flecks of spittle from her cheek on the sleeve of her coverall. Stronger than she looks too. For a mortal. Perhaps I’ve been harsh. She caught Rauth’s appraising look and scowled.
‘I’ve got this, Iron Hand. Don’t stand up on my account.’
‘Enough, Laana,’ whispered Yeldrian. Cavinash moaned as the horrors being driven into his mind changed once again. ‘Tell me where the artefact lies. Where did Kristos bury it?’
‘Where the fabricator-locum interred it. I took nothing. I swear it. Omnissiah, I swear it. I only allowed some contacts to see it. Collectors, acquirers of the relics I serve.’
‘Hereteks,’ said Laan
a, with a sneer.
Coming from the assassin at the eldar’s right hand. Rauth’s gaze found Mohr, watching from the other side of the grounds. The Brazen Claw must have read his expression, for he shook his head. Maybe not now, but I will be asking these questions of someone later.
‘I have been magos preservator on Fabris Callivant since before Exar Sevastian ever set foot on this world,’ said Cavinash, finding a measure of courage in the haughty contempt that must have served him so well until now. ‘I know what the Omnissiah commands of me.’ He managed to drag his gaze from the eldar. ‘Do you?’
‘I know what the primarch commands of me,’ said Laana.
‘The? There was more than one you know, girl.’
‘Who cares what any of the others command,’ grunted Rauth.
A hidden smile pulled at the edges of Laana’s face.
‘What of the pits?’ she said. ‘The Aequalis cult?’
Cavinash shook his head. ‘Misunderstood. They simply seek a third path between the flaws of the flesh and the pyramidal orthodoxy of incremental substitution.’ He looked to Rauth, as though believing him his most likely friend. Which doesn’t speak well to his situation. ‘Think about it–’
‘Speak no further.’ Yeldrian’s hand floated like a leaf on the wind, blown by fate and circumstance to the bejewelled grip of his blade.
‘The Voice of Mars sent you. Didn’t he?’
Yeldrian straightened and looked at Laana. Rauth could imagine the order he was going to give.
Had the Darkward not taken that precise moment to die.
He knew it instantly for what it was. The silent explosion rippled outwards from the star fort’s tidally locked orbit above Fort Callivant, back lighting the leaden clouds with yellows and reds. Another explosion followed, even more massive, but equally silent. Unnervingly so. As if gods waged war above the heads of mortal men. And the clouds broke. They burned off, steamed off, evaporated out into the stratosphere as a burning hunk of meteor ripped through them on its terminal plunge towards the planet’s age-blistered crust. Another followed in fiery succession. Then another. Six. Twelve. Twenty-one.
A rok.
That was what the Imperial strategos called them: asteroids fitted with engines, sometimes with armour and basic armament, packed with tens of millions of battle-charged ork warriors, and driven at an unsuspecting world. Orks were inhumanly resilient. If any species could survive entry and impact it was them, and if one per cent of the original cargo reached the surface then that was a massive force to have to face over the devastated ruin of a defensive installation-turned impact crater. They were odds that an Iron Hand would go to war on. The impact with the Darkward had scattered the fragments of the rok away from Fort Callivant. Even so, the resulting tectonics were going to be shattering. Rauth had seen the ancient hive from bottom to top and didn’t think highly of its prospects. Even the upper levels where they were now, which looked immaculate, were built on top of ten kilometres of neglect and corrosion. A single shivered foundation column in the underhive would trigger a cascade collapse that would bring down entire wards and crush millions.
‘Grab him!’
Rauth looked up at Laana’s shout, just in time to see the assassin fire a pair of needles through a potted moss, which then toppled off its plinth and shattered as Cavinash ran past it. Glass needles shattered off walls and statues and sank into artificer oak as the magos took full advantage of the orbital cataclysm to sprint through the open gates.
The assassin swore and plunged after him. Rauth stumbled into pursuit, ignoring the ache in his wounds. Reality folded around Autarch Yeldrian and the eldar vanished into thin air. Rauth shuddered as Laana tore through the gates, swinging round to gun the magos down with a needle shot between the shoulder blades.
The signature clatter of a heavy, tracked vehicle registered with Rauth a split second before it did with the mortal assassin. Wet breaks squealed. A stab-lumen lashed out. Suddenly, Laana was caught in a slash of light. A curfewed street. In the garb of a manufactorum labourer from a recidivist district. Brandishing a pistol and aiming it at the fleeing magos preservator.
Blood of Manus, I’d shoot her.
‘Drop your weapon!’ The shout rang out of the growling wet. ‘Surrender and be treated mercifully.’
Laana’s weapon gasped as it loosed a single shot, then someone opened up with a storm bolter.
Sometimes gods disappoint. That was what Laana said to me. Sometimes gods disappoint even each other.
The assassin disintegrated before his eyes, high-explosive rounds ripping her mortal body apart. Rauth skidded through the gates with a howl of outrage before he could stop himself. A red mist filmed over his face. He clamped his lips shut lest a droplet land on his oomaphagia. It would have felt disrespectful. Go join the primarch’s undying legions then, sister. I hope it’s worth it. He saw that Cavinash was dead too, spread out prone and already beginning to bloat with the assassin’s needle toxin.
For all that mattered now.
‘Sir. Another one here.’
The lamp turned sharply, spearing Rauth against the frame of the gate.
Rauth blinked, but his genhancements compensated quickly. Looming out of the glare was a Chimera armoured transport, iron-grey, the bright hull markings of the Mordian XXIV. Its roof hatch was open, a trooper in royal-blue and gold manually operating the vehicle’s stab-lumen. Parked behind it at an angle was the even greater silhouette of a Leman Russ Eradicator. The tank commander stood in the cupola, hands tense around the grip-studs of the vehicle’s pintle-mounted storm bolter. He was a shimmer of a peaked cap, an anxious glitter of braid.
‘Drop your weapon,’ the Mordian demanded.
Where is Yeldrian?
Rauth licked his lips, drying under the ferocity of the stab-lumen, and raised his hands. He was unaccustomed to having to think on the spot, or for himself.
He was surprised by how naturally it came to him.
‘I am with the Iron Hands,’ he began. ‘I could use transport.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘Stronger together.’
– Burr
I
The small armoured convoy rumbled down the middle lane of a wide, deserted highway. The Leman Russ Eradicator, Grey Hammer, was in the van. The Chimera, Iron Blood, the rear. A tarp-roofed munitions truck bumped along between them, hammered by the rain. Explosions murmured, nearby, but muffled by the vehicle’s armour and engine noise, the sporadic rattle of small-arms. Rauth and Khrysaar swayed with the Chimera’s adaptive suspension. Rauth stared through the firing slits at nothing. Gloomy buildings and rain. No sign of orks but the odd flicker in the sky. The Mordian Guardsmen shared their transport with him about as willingly as they would with a claustrophobic ogryn. There had been some considerable shuffling along to make space, but Rauth suspected that they would have found room for Mohr as well if the Apothecary had chosen to accompany them.
Khrysaar leant towards his brother’s ear.
‘How did you do that, before, convince them we were part of Kristos’ force?’ Lying by omission came easily to the Iron Hands. They were taciturn by default. But outright fabrication ran contrary to their nature.
‘I don’t know. It just came to me.’
‘What’s the matter, brother? You seem distracted.’
‘I’m thinking about Laana.’
‘Why?’
Why? How many mortals have I killed, seen killed, or allowed to die? Why does this one upset me?
Gods disappoint.
‘I am not sure.’
Rauth turned back to his firing slit, troubled by what he was starting to feel inside, when an explosion blew out the anonymous rockrete of a roadside building and hurled it across all six lanes of the highway. ‘Turn and fire! Turn and fire!’ The command peeled through the vox as the Chimera slammed the breaks and hu
rled the Guardsmen towards the front of the tank. Rauth watched through the slit as the spiked roller of an ork tank chewed through what was left. It crushed the splash shield that ran the companionway, mangling the metal frame, winding it up through its spikes and shattering the stained glass.
Rauth felt almost relieved.
The troop ramp slammed onto the road and with impeccable order the Mordians stormed out, lasguns snapping into the rain. Khrysaar hauled Rauth up and practically threw him out after them.
He splashed onto the hard-packed rockrete, face first. Something in his chest tore as he scrambled out of the line of fire. Solid ork shells banged against the tank. A Mordian Guardsman took a bullet in the neck and fell in a spray of blood. The others fanned out, using the vehicles for cover, and returned fire. The ork tank’s roller had become fouled up in the power lines and structural wires that had been running through the splash barrier. Black smoke thumped out of its big exhausts as an impatient driver crunched through its lower gears. Meanwhile orks poured out through the ruined barrier and into the road.
Grey Hammer’s heavy bolter mowed them down.
The Leman Russ rocked back, the recoil of its eradicator cannon pushing sixty tonnes of tank onto its rear axial suspensors. The eradicator cannon was not principally an anti-armour weapon. Neither was the heavy bolter glacis mount, nor the twin heavy flamer sponsons. Grey Hammer was built for urban warfare, for murdering infantry street by street, hab by hab, but ork vehicles were always one solid push from collapsing into a pile of bolts. A miniature atomic explosion lifted the battlemented rear turret from the snarled ork vehicle. The mushroom cloud didn’t dissipate so much as sink under the rain. It smothered the collapsed building that the ork tank squatted in as, with a bark of joy pumped out by the vehicle’s crude speakers, the tank finally ground through and took the road. It swayed on its crazy suspension, losing a pair of turret gunners that hadn’t been holding on tightly enough.
There’s always more where they came from.
