by David Guymer
The Iron Hands will cure him of that. If it’s Iron Hands. Rauth frowned. It will be Iron Hands.
‘I should be there too,’ said Rauth.
Mohr made a non-committal grunt and kept at the leg.
‘I know how to fight my own.’
The Apothecary glanced up, a weighted look that said he understood well and fully what they were up against. ‘Done.’ He ripped the rigid cuff of armaplas from Rauth’s ankle.
The foot was a hideous thing to look at. Flaps of skin hung from where the Callivantine cyber-ghoul’s drill had gouged through the bone, almost to the top of the foot. Now the boot had come off Rauth was starting to pick up a sour, milky odour that smelled distinctly unwholesome. A dark tinge was creeping into the tips of his toes. It will have to come off. He should have taken it off already. Mohr, hopeless as he was, remained adamant that the foot could be salvaged. The carapace though had had enough.
The Apothecary sprayed the pallid extremity, wound it with several turns of a bandage roll and then slid a replacement carapace boot over the top. Somewhat on the bulky side. Rauth sat up off the surgical slab and put some weight on it. Flesh of the Father, that hurts. He glanced to the slab beside him. Captain Harsid lay flat out on the metal, still in his broken armour. There had been no time to remove it. His flesh was fully cocooned within an impermeable sus-an membrane. He would keep until the battle was over. Probably forever then, unless Kristos gives him a quicker end. He thought about that a moment. Could definitely be worse.
‘The padding in the boot should deaden the worst of the pain,’ said Mohr.
Cutting it off at the knee would do that too. ‘Would a Brazen Claw thank you?’
‘You never know.’
Mohr stood aside, depositing the handsaw into an enamel basin and drawing his pistol from its mag-holster. With a scowl Rauth limped behind him, and walked straight into Yeldrian.
He could not be sure if the autarch had been waiting for him in the corridor or had simply been coming the other way at exactly the wrong time. I suspect the former. The eldar held his fluted helmet underarm, the face underneath almost human although its ratios were all just a little off. Insofar as one set of numbers can account for an Imperium of superhumans, abhumans and ten million worlds. It was too long, too thin. Its cheekbones and brow were a shade too high. Its wide oval eyes sat a fraction of a millimetre too far apart.
That look of strain though, I’ve never seen an expression quite so human.
A tortured groan ran the spine of the ship from aft, tossing Mohr and Rauth together and into the narrow corridor’s wood-panelled walls.
Yeldrian swayed like a grass stalk in a breeze.
‘Go to Ymir,’ the eldar snapped at Mohr, clearly no stranger to giving orders, and gestured down the hallway with a twist of his head. ‘Keep them from the bridge, and from the engines.’
‘What of the hold?’
The autarch sighed, as if troubled that it should all have come to this. ‘That is where I will be.’
The Apothecary threw a stiff salute, the kind that warriors deliver when they expect it to be their last, and sprinted down the shaking corridor.
Rauth hugged the wall and regarded the eldar. I know what you are now, alien. You will have to do better to make me jump like Mohr.
‘There was an Inquisitor Tala Yazir once,’ said Yeldrian, those keen, alien eyes studying him. ‘We aided each other on several occasions, when the interests of Alaitoc and the Imperium aligned. After Dawnbreak, I sought her out again.’
‘I thought the eldar scoured Dawnbreak.’
‘You were interlopers on a world that was not yours,’ said Yeldrian, suddenly cold. ‘And more, Kristos took something that should have remained buried until the universe turned dark and the final Cycle was played. Yazir understood, even if it meant working with me against those like you. But Dawnbreak was long ago. She died, as humans tend to do.’ He gave a willowy shrug, and his emotions disappeared as swiftly and as subtly as they had appeared. ‘I kept her name alive to further what we had begun together. Harsid was not the first I recruited, and they were all sceptical at first, but like Yazir, they all understood.’
A shudder ran through the deck plates, hidden under the plush teal carpet, and the eldar turned on his heels and began walking quickly away. ‘Come. I need you with me. You and your brother.’ Without thinking on it further, Rauth fell into step, his protective boot thumping a steady counterpoint to the sporadic rhythm of bolter fire and the pained keen of the hull. ‘I had hoped to return the device to my people, but Kristos is cunning beyond words. He destroyed the Ryen Ishanshar and with it our clearest path to the craftworld.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘If Morai-Heg has decided that this is where my Path ends then this is where it ends. There is a webway entrance within the Callivantine System. If we can reach it, then we can at least consign the device to the labyrinth of oblivion. Even Kristos would not be so crazed as to seek it there.’
‘Why not just destroy it?’
The eldar sighed with the weariness of the ages. ‘Children. You believe all the universe’s problems can be solved with a stick.’
‘Strange talk, for a warrior.’
‘I followed the Warrior Path once. The Warrior fights because he must, when he must, never because he craves it. That is how the Warrior loses.’
Rauth frowned at the floral carvings on the wall. ‘We actually have a similar code.’
‘I know.’
The Lady Grey was not a large ship. After a few minutes at the eldar’s pace, they came to a small chamber shaped like a narrow diamond. Its panelled walls and rococo ceiling were exquisite, apparently, but ever so faintly scuffed from the passage of goods. Slightly wider corridors extended from the port and starboard points towards the corresponding shuttle bays. In her prior life as the pleasure yacht of a merchant prince, the Lady Grey had shipped everything from priceless artworks and religious artefacts, both war salvage and honest purchases, to shak’ora caviar and ky’husa from the T’au Empire, rare manuscripts from lost worlds and even, on one occasion, an STC fragment for a superior caterpillar track grip-pattern. The limits on space imposed by her upgraded engines, shields, auspectoriae and weapons ensured the premium quality of her cargo.
I doubt that Hypurr Maltozia XCIII ever held something as sought after or as dangerous as Yeldrian does now.
Yeldrian made for the hold doors. They swam in Rauth’s vision. I have been this way before. He remembered, but it was swirled up in other memories, like sugar and milk in murky recaff. I see a bulb helm, tall and narrow, fluted like carved ivory, aquamarines studding the neck, a tinted visor. Yeldrian hadn’t yet noticed that he wasn’t following. It’s not Yeldrian. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated on the doors, as if he could blast them apart with his will. I don’t remember bringing the technology aboard. I don’t remember stowing it. I don’t remember shuttling it back. I don’t remember retrieving it from Draevark. What was I doing in that time? He wobbled forwards, and this time Yeldrian turned. He pressed his finger to his top lip, and pulled it away bloody. How many times has this happened to me? What was it that Yeldrian had said to him, while he had still been masquerading as Yazir?
‘I want one of you or Khrysaar under Cullas’ observation at all times.’
But it wasn’t Mohr, was it. Why did I never stop to wonder – who crews this damned ship for Yeldrian?
He glared at Yeldrian, eyelids twitching. ‘Where is my brother?’
‘Inside.’
‘He’s not alone, is he?’ One thing Rauth did remember perfectly was how Yeldrian had gone toe to toe with Draevark, until the iron captain’s unexpected surrender, yet the autarch allowed Rauth to grab him by his gemmed armour and draw him to his chest. ‘What have you done to us?’ The eldar’s heels came off the ground. ‘Why did you really bring us from Thennos?’
There was a hard bark of bo
lter fire and Rauth looked up with a snarl.
Apothecary Mohr fell into the panelled wall of the port-side cargo corridor from a passage parallel to Rauth’s as though shoved. If an entire magazine had done the shoving. His plastron was a ruin of mass-reactive craters. He slid down the wall before the echoes of the burst died. An Iron Hand emerged from the passage and stepped over the Apothecary as though he were a hump in the carpet. His armour had suffered at least as badly as Mohr’s, but he was still standing and looked as though he could walk through worse. Garrsak clan icons and a sergeant’s markings stood out amongst the bolter damage.
Rauth watched him come, Yeldrian held close in a bizarre embrace, four more warriors trooping robotically after their sergeant. The last carried a lascannon.
I thought the Deathwatch would hold them longer than this. Lydriik oversold their qualities.
‘I will tell you everything.’ Yeldrian’s eyes bored into Rauth’s. He could taste the alien sweetness of the eldar’s breath. ‘There is time yet before our deaths for you to learn how to trust.’
Rauth bared his teeth. Trust. He opened his mouth to share, for the first time in his life, exactly what he thought about something, when he noticed the cricket-like whir emanating from the eldar’s jump pack. He looked down. His hands were still firmly gripped to Yeldrian’s armour. It was as though they’d been magnetised. He couldn’t pull away.
The sound that finally came out of his mouth was a strangled scream. The explosive roar of the Garrsak sergeant’s bolter came from a universe away, a web of dark energies spraying out from the autarch’s wargear and dragging them both under.
VI
Sweeping the empty chamber with his bolter, Jalenghaal walked to where the pair had been standing. He turned slowly on the spot, scanning for auspex traces.
‘Short-range translational teleporter,’ said Burr.
‘Warp Spider,’ said Jalenghaal. He had not seen the technology first-hand before, but his armour had several thousand years more experience. It recognised the trace.
‘That was an Iron Hands Scout with him,’ said Burr.
‘Confirmed.’
Jalenghaal had fought too many resource skirmishes, honour raids and full-blown clan wars to be troubled unduly by that. Medusa taught a man to defend what was his. And no one looked out for themselves and their own with the blind tenacity of the Garrsak. ‘Mission imperatives remain unchanged. Seize the hold, secure the contents, kill everyone.’
‘Compliance.’
Jalenghaal remained stationary a moment longer, running down the threshold time interval that his systems had calculated for a Warp Spider flicker-jump and relayed to his visor as a countdown. There was a concussive bang as Thorrn doubled back to put a bolt-round through the helmet of the Apothecary they had left ruined in the passageway. The warrior had the look of an Iron Hand, and it would be ill-advised to make assumptions on his durability. The gunshot lingered in the confined chamber, but nothing more deadly made itself felt. The eldar was gone.
Locking his bolter to his thigh plate, Jalenghaal approached the doors.
Wood panelling and gilt brushwork concealed two slabs of thick plasteel and a serriform vertical join. Heavy duty for a non-military vessel, but far less formidable than the bridge doors of the Shield of the God-Emperor. With fists and elbows, Jalenghaal smashed the wood from one side of the join and laid his gauntlets to the metal. Activating mag-locks suckered his palms to the door. He turned to Burr who proceeded to clear away the panelling on the other side of the join.
A numeric countdown blinked across their two helmets.
<3. 2. 1.>
As one, the two Iron Hands threw their strength into the doors. They parted with a shriek of metal. Hugon stepped up to brace them, lascannon hanging by his knees from its power hose, arms spread like a pylon. With flawless choreography Jalenghaal and Burr unclamped their bolters, ducked under their brother’s locked arms and advanced into the chamber. Karrth and Thorrn followed them through. The doors closed as Hugon let them slam behind him.
It was dark.
Spectral scans tinged Jalenghaal’s lenses with reds, through a range of blues to purples and the short-wave frequencies beyond. Nothing penetrated. Jalenghaal felt his skin begin to itch, a degree of discomfort that bore no correlation to the available surface area of flesh.
‘Lamps.’
He spoke the order rather than canted it, the sound of his voice in the dark disturbingly welcome.
Light extended from the clave’s lumen points like the tentacles of a bioluminous squid. The beams brushed the stencilled metal of a standard template Departmento Munitorum boxcrate. Jalenghaal coaxed his beam up. Hundreds of the boxcrates had been stacked from floor to ceiling, creating a maze of temporary passages that burrowed ever deeper into the hold. His auspex bounced back to him with a null rune. Something was blocking him. He engaged his senses against the boxcrates’ binaric tags, but they refused to surrender their secrets.
The boxstack fritzed like an unstable hololith and jumped a centimetre to the right. Jalenghaal rapped the side of his helm with his knuckles and shook his head.
‘Systems compromised,’ grunted Thorrn, sharing the same compulsion to speak aloud. Weakness shared gave Jalenghaal little relief.
‘Confirmed.’
‘Confirmed.’
‘Confirmed.’
Hugon, Karrth, Burr.
‘Alien countermeasures,’ said Jalenghaal. ‘Holo-fields and psyk-out barriers. Mission imperatives remain unchanged.’
‘Unanticipated,’ said Thorrn. ‘We should withdraw and resubmit the calculus.’
Jalenghaal wanted nothing more than to agree. ‘Negative. Mission imperatives remain unchanged.’
The darkness had weight. Jalenghaal could feel it on his armour like ten kilometres of empty ocean. His lumens curved, as if the density of the materium increased the further they ventured from their point sources. Threat brackets floated aimlessly. System updates made a witless tick in his ear. He became suddenly aware of his breathing. Even. Mechanical. Loud inside his helm. A pressure weighed on his chest, as if the iron core where his hearts had once beat had collapsed under its own mass and was drawing in the steel and tissue of his chest. He felt his brothers’ unease. It filled the clave interlink, each warrior adding his own poison to the water.
A sound echoed from the maze of boxstacks. A footstep. Plastek on metal.
Jalenghaal ran another sweep. A string of null returns plastered his displays, but he could feel enemies closing. His systems lied to him. Some trick of eldar technotheurgy had gulled them. He brought his bolter to his chin. He stared at the heavy gun as if it had the mass of a world. It was…
… shaking.
‘Flesh is weak,’ said Burr, hesitantly, as if he had heard the mantra once, long ago, and was working it through.
‘Withdraw,’ Thorrn insisted again.
‘They are coming,’ said Jalenghaal, backing up. ‘Wait for visual contact.’
‘Contact!’ said Karrth, and shot Jalenghaal in the back.
>>> INFORMATIONAL >> THE WEBWAY
This unfortunate idiom refers to the hyperspatial corridors of the eldar, that bore under, through, or parallel to [THE PRECISE GEOMETRIES ARE UNCLEAR] the substance of the empyrean. Transit through this ‘webway’ can be orders of magnitude faster than conventional warp travel, although the obvious necessity for an active terminus within sublight distances of both origin and destination severely restricts the range of eldar armies. For reasons unknown the species, though eminently capable of warp travel, seem determined to avoid it at all costs.
VII
Mirkal Alfaran stood with ready blade in the mustering space towards the front of the cathedral bridge. The elite warriors of t
he Vigil stood around him, their white armour pristine under the blood of the alien, and armed like soul-twins with broadswords bearing names and histories as lengthy as Anointed. Their swords and their souls were pledged to his, to witness his death, and to replace him from amongst their number when it came.
‘Entering teleportation range,’ called a serf, in good voice.
‘My lord!’ cried another. ‘I’m detecting–’
‘The Emperor Protects,’ roared Alfaran.
‘The Emperor Protects,’ the Vigil sang, sotto voce.
‘But–’
‘Commence teleportation.’
VIII
Artex watched through the Alloyed’s spartan oculus as the ork warship with which they had been trading fire for nearly twenty minutes crumbled. He waited for the sting of pleasure, but none came. There was pride in that. It made the few hard-to-cut dregs of flesh that still clung to him itch for the attention of the Chaplain Braavos’ blade. The kroozer’s bow was shedding mass from the Alloyed’s last barrage, torsion lines spreading over the rest of the superstructure and shaking the warship apart with surprising rapidity. This here was truth. This was weakness in action.
‘Recall the gunships.’ Such as Draevark had left him. ‘Divert reserve power from the weapons grids and initialise an auspex sweep. Locate new target.’
‘Aye, lord.’
An unmanned system emitted an urgent bleep. It took the nearest serf a second to sprint towards it. Crew were thinner on the ground than usual.
‘Power spikes,’ the man said, pockmarked face lit from beneath as he read off the rune display. ‘Another ship off our stern. They’re–’
His head left his shoulders before he could finish, a long, glittering blade striking it off even as its gilt edge materialised from the ether. The body toppled, trodden into paste by a Hospitaller in baroque white power armour.
More Space Marines appeared in bursts of warp matter and eruptions of blood. The Alloyed had never had a large crew, its complement depleted further by void war and the surface deployment. Against the Hospitallers they lasted about a second.
