by Andy Hoare
Brielle watched as Quin progressed, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, across the wide chasm. She imagined for an instant that the green light blazing from below flickered for a moment, as if in recognition of the intrusion, but cast off the idea as imagination born of tension. A sound caught her attention, and she looked towards Adept Seth, noting that the astropath was mumbling under his breath, his ruined mouth working, the incoherent words muffled by the helmet of his survival suit.
‘Seth,’ Brielle called softly, mindful of disturbing the stygian silence of the tomb. The astropath appeared not to have noted his mistress’s call. ‘Seth!’ she hissed, her teeth gritted.
‘Mistress?’ Seth replied, finally comprehending that he was being addressed.
‘What is it, Seth?’ Brielle asked, once more forcing down concern at the astropath’s manner.
‘I…’ Adept Seth stammered. ‘I think we should leave now, mistress.’
‘Leave? What are you talking about, Seth? What’s wrong?’
‘It’s the sleepers, mistress… it’s their dreams… I can’t…’
Brielle weighed the situation in her head. Her astropath appeared to be losing his grip on reality, but she needed him here, to communicate with her vessel in orbit, and for the edge his prodigious powers could provide in a dangerous situation. Yet, it appeared now that those same powers were proving his undoing, for it seemed to Brielle that the echoes of the dreams of the long-dead builders of this vast tomb were somehow afflicting him. If it came to it, she knew she could order one of the armsmen to incapacitate the astropath, to bind and drug him until the expedition was completed, but in so doing she would handicap their efforts significantly. She could not afford to lose the astropath, not yet, at least.
‘My lady?’ Brielle heard Quin address her over the vox channel. She turned, to see that the feral-worlder had made it safely across the chasm. ‘My lady, I will have one of the armsmen attend to the adept, have no fear. Now please, it is safe for you to cross.’
‘Thank you, Santos,’ Brielle answered, noting that one of the armsmen had moved closer to the astropath, evidently responding to a surreptitious order from Quin. She approached the lip of the chasm, and stood at its very edge for a moment, gazing past her feet into the lambent depths far below. She experienced again a wave of disorientation, having little to do with any fear of heights and more to do with the subtly wrong geometry of the tomb. She could not quite place it. It appeared sometimes that no two planes intersected exactly how they should, as if perspective were somehow out of kilter. Taking a deep breath, she pushed such concerns to the back of her mind and withdrew a cord from her belt. She seated herself at the edge of the chasm, and clipped the cord to the grapnel line.
In a single motion, Brielle swung out beneath the line, suspending herself below it. She tested the cord attaching her belt to the line, and, satisfied that it was properly attached, began to winch herself across. Above her, Brielle could see little more than darkness, the vaults far overhead twinkling with what she took to be stray reflections from the actinic energies raging below her. Pulling herself along, one hand over the other, she concentrated not on the hundreds, perhaps thousands of metres below her, but on those minuscule points of green light twinkling in the darkness overhead. She judged herself halfway across the mighty gap before she noted that the lights above appeared to be growing in brightness.
‘…dreams… the guttering flame… stirring…’ Brielle heard Adept Seth over the vox-channel, and craned her neck to look towards Quin. Doing so, she saw that the feral-worlder’s gaze was turned upwards, transfixed upon those same green lights that had held her own attention as she had crossed the gap.
She looked back upwards, to see that those same lights were now twice as bright, and were swooping down towards her!
‘My lady!’ Quin shouted. ‘Beware!’ The warrior raised his boltgun in both hands, bracing its butt against his shoulder. The weapon’s staccato bark was deafening, and its discharge illuminated the darkness with blinding orange fire.
Hanging precariously halfway across the depthless chasm, Brielle felt suddenly painfully aware of how exposed her position was. She had no time to seek out the targets Quin was firing at, or to engage them herself. Instead, she gritted her teeth and hauled on the line, dragging her body into motion, hand over hand.
Even as she concentrated upon crossing the chasm, the air all around Brielle was filled with flashing light, the discharge of the armsmen’s heavy-gauge shotguns as they blasted at the foe Brielle could not see.
‘My lady!’ Brielle heard, surprised by how close Quin’s voice sounded. She looked around, to see that, somehow, she had traversed the chasm, and Quin was reaching out a hand to help her climb up over the lip. She looked to his outstretched glove, before something behind him caught her eye.
‘Quin!’
The warrior followed his mistress’s gaze, turning on the spot and bringing his boltgun up, one-handed.
The weapon barked, its report shockingly loud at such close quarters, even through Brielle’s survival suit helmet. Something exploded, peppering Brielle and Quin with small metallic shards. With relief, Brielle saw that her suit was intact, its armour having protected her from the potentially lethal shrapnel.
‘Are you hurt?’ Brielle asked the warrior, aware that he had been closer to the detonation than she.
‘Not badly, my lady,’ Quin replied, before shouting a warning to one of the armsmen across the chasm.
Brielle looked across the gap, towards the remainder of the party. She was greeted by the sight of the armsmen arrayed in a semicircle, their backs to the edge of the chasm, with Joachim Hep and Adept Seth at the centre of their formation. While the fighters blasted into the darkness above, Hep was attempting to get Seth to cross the chasm.
From the darkness above the group flashed silvered, insect-like attackers, each little more than a metre in length. From what Brielle took to be the head of each creature, there shone a green light, clearly akin to that which blazed so brightly in the depths of the chasm she had just crossed. One of the metallic creatures swooped down upon an armsman, the green at its front increasing in brightness until the attacker was surrounded by a nimbus of pulsating energy. The armsman racked the slide on his shotgun and unleashed a blast at near point-blank range, but the creature swerved aside as it dived towards its target.
As the attacker fell upon the armsman, the green field surrounding it increased in intensity still further. At the last, his attacker closing, the armsman rotated his shotgun and drove its solid stock upwards, ramming it hard into his attacker’s head. The green light exploded as the shotgun crunched into the attacker’s fore section. The armsman was driven backwards, falling to land at the very edge of the chasm. His attacker plummeted, out of control, right above his supine form, and was lost in the pulsating depths far below.
‘Everyone across, come on!’ Brielle yelled, reaching for the bolt pistol holstered at her hip. Bracing the weapon in both hands, she drew a bead on the nearest of the insectoid attackers as it circled overhead.
‘Hep!’ she called. ‘Get Seth over here, now!’
Not waiting for an acknowledgement, she squeezed the trigger. Brielle’s pistol barked, and the shot struck home, burying itself in the outer shell of the creature’s body. The impact caused the creature to swerve abruptly, but before it could correct its course, it exploded into a thousand metallic shards, the miniature explosive warhead of the bolt round having detonated itself with lethal effect after penetrating the target’s armour.
As Hep forced the astropath onto the grapnel line and helped him cross, Brielle and Quin kept up their fusillade, the bolt rounds accounting for another three of the creatures. Then suddenly, the attackers broke off as one, as if in answer to some unheard order.
‘Is anyone hurt?’ Brielle asked Quin.
‘Not seriously, my lady,’ the warrior answ
ered. ‘I do not think these creatures were made for fighting.’
Brielle looked to Quin. ‘Explain.’
‘My lady, these creatures appeared to me to be testing our defences and our capabilities. I believe they were little more than sentinels.’
‘Sentinels?’ Brielle repeated. ‘Sentinels guarding what?’
‘This place, my lady,’ Quin answered. ‘They guard this tomb against intruders. Against desecration.’
‘Against thieves,’ Brielle finished, allowing herself a wry smile.
‘They are close now, mistress… can’t you hear them?’ Brielle heard Seth mumble from her side as the party made its way through a maze of narrow passageways. Despite herself, she was beginning to lose her patience with the astropath, but knew there was little she could do about it now.
‘What is it you hear?’ Brielle replied. ‘Please, Seth, speak plainly.’
‘I hear these…’ Brielle turned as she walked, and saw that Seth was trailing his outstretched hand along wall, his unfeeling, gloved fingers following the intricate engravings that covered its every surface.
‘What do you mean?’ Brielle asked, knowing that she was unlikely to receive a coherent answer, but preferring to keep the astropath from descending into total madness.
‘It is all connected, mistress… all of it. They barely dream at all, mistress, not like we do…’
Brielle shook her head and turned her gaze back to the path ahead. The passages through which the group moved were narrow and dark, the only illumination provided by a green light emanating from the endless streams of alien script running along the walls. She tried not to look too closely at the script. To her, the interconnected circles and lines formed nodes and links, described hierarchies and progressions, told of alien domination and processes in which the human race had no part.
She shook her head once more, this time to clear it of the odd notions that crept into her consciousness whenever she looked too closely at the patterns on the walls.
‘Seth,’ she said. ‘Do not lay hands upon the walls…’
‘We must leave,’ the astropath announced, halting in his tracks. ‘We must turn back, mistress, now.’
Brielle stopped and turned on the astropath, ready to admonish him or order him sedated. And then, she caught an echo, a sound from the direction in which the party had come.
‘It’s the chasm, my lady,’ Quin said as she looked to him for his assessment. ‘The sentinel creatures.’
‘It’s them!’ Seth shrieked, and turned as if to flee.
‘Restrain him,’ Brielle ordered. Quin motioned to a nearby armsman, who moved in behind the astropath and gripped both of his arms at the elbows.
‘Why would the sentinels be active once more?’ Brielle asked, not expecting any of her servants to answer. She shared a glance with Santos Quin as he raised his boltgun and made to continue along the passageway. She lingered a moment, listening intently to the last of the sounds from behind as they echoed and faded to silence. She imagined for a moment that the sentinels might be attacking once more, before rejecting the notion, and following after Quin.
Leaving the dark, sigil-lined passageway behind, Brielle stepped out into a vast, circular chamber. The space was dominated by hundreds of tiered galleries, each one stacked upon that below, the highest lost in darkness far above. Each tier was lined with alcoves, in each of which a dully gleaming, humanoid statue stood.
‘Joachim?’ Brielle asked, as her advisor stepped up beside her. ‘What do you think?’
Hep’s gaze took in the vastness of the chamber, scanning the galleries with an expert eye. ‘I have never before seen the like, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘But I can think of half a dozen cartels that would pay a fortune for just one.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Brielle replied with a broad grin that was quite inappropriate on the lips of the daughter of a bearer of a Warrant of Trade. She crossed to the nearest of the statues. She stood before the metallic form, seeing that it had evidently been crafted to resemble some form of skeletal warrior, its face an impassive, skull-like death mask. Across its broad, ribbed chest, it held what was unmistakably a weapon.
‘The Catacombs of Skard were attended by metal grave guards,’ Brielle mused aloud, recalling gleefully an expedition into the subterranean vaults of that doomed world two years earlier. ‘They bought the clan an entire world…’
‘They did, ma’am,’ Hep replied, standing beside his mistress. ‘But they were cast of solid rhodium. These appear…’
‘Mechanical?’ Brielle interjected. Her eyes followed the many cables and pipes that led from sockets in the alcoves to points on the statue’s body. Was one of those cables twitching? ‘These are not mere grave-goods. Some manner of xenos technology is at work here…’
‘They slumber…’ Brielle heard Adept Seth sob from behind. The astropath had been restrained by two of the armsmen, but he continued to mumble an incoherent stream of nonsense. ‘We must leave!’ Seth bellowed, his voice echoing for long moments in the galleries high above.
‘Sedate him, now!’ Brielle ordered the armsmen restraining the astropath. She would save the apologies for later, when the party was back on the ship and its hold was full with xenos-tech.
Then, a voice filled the chamber.
‘You would do well to heed his words.’
Instantly, Santos Quin was at his mistress’s side, his boltgun raised as he scanned for the source of the voice. With a single gesture, he motioned for the armsmen to form a protective ring, with Brielle, Seth and Hep at its centre.
Raising the visor on her helmet, Brielle called into the darkness, ‘Who addresses me?’ As she spoke, she turned slowly around, seeking any sign of the individual who had spoken.
‘I address you,’ the answer came back. The voice was strangely lyrical in tone, not human, but not wholly alien either. Brielle followed the sound to its source, and saw a tall figure step from a dark portal on the other side of the chamber.
‘We claim this place, by right of conquest,’ Brielle called out, advancing towards the chamber’s centre as she spoke, her servants aiming their weapons at the intruder. ‘Be gone, or face the consequences.’
‘Consequences?’ the reply came back, the figure stepping forwards from the shadowed archway. A suspicion began to form in Brielle’s mind. ‘Pitiful idiots,’ the speaker replied, scorn dripping from every word. ‘You truly have no conception of your folly. Even as the galaxy crumbles to ash all around you, you flounder in your own filth, dragging yourselves and all of creation down with you.’
‘Such arrogance I’ve only ever heard from the lips of the eldar,’ Brielle replied, now certain of the intruder’s species. She came to a halt near the centre of the chamber and placed her hands at her hips, surreptitiously loosening the catch on the holster of her bolt pistol and the scabbard of her chainblade.
The figure approached, and came to a halt opposite Brielle. Her intuition had been correct. Before Brielle stood a tall, lithe humanoid figure, dressed in a long cloak of shifting, chameleonic fabric. Across his back, the eldar carried a long rifle, confirmation, if Brielle needed it, of his caste.
‘Pathfinder?’ Brielle asked, seeking to wrong-foot the alien with her knowledge of his kind. As she spoke, she counted another three aliens waiting in the shadows not far behind.
‘Indeed,’ the eldar demurred, nodding his head a slight degree. ‘If you have knowledge of my kin, then you know the folly of disregarding my warning. Leave this place. Do as your seer begs you. He has the truth of it, while you are blinded by avarice.’
Anger welling in her breast, Brielle raised a pointed finger as she advanced on the eldar. Her armoured boot thudded into an object on the dusty ground before her. ‘I know that you speak in riddles. I know that you lie. I know that you can’t be trusted,’ she spat, jabbing her finger at the eldar. ‘I know that you’d slaughter
a million humans if your witches foretold it would save a single one of you from breaking a nail!’
‘And what of it, child?’ the eldar replied bitterly, ignoring the jibe but understanding Brielle’s meaning all too well. ‘My people have beheld the birth and the death of gods, while yours have barely crawled from the mud that begat you. What use reason, what use wisdom, when you seek nothing more than your own destruction, and care not if the galaxy burns along with you?’
‘More lies,’ Brielle retorted. She glanced down at the object at her feet. Half-submerged in the dust of aeons, there laid an ornate stave, a faint green glow shining at its bladed tip. ‘More words to cover your own arrogant selfishness.’
‘I say again,’ the eldar said, his glance following Brielle’s to the stave on the ground before her. ‘Disturb nothing, and you may yet live. We all may yet–’
‘You dare threaten me?’ Brielle returned. ‘You dare order me to do anything?’ She reached down and lifted the stave. It was heavy, and cold. ‘I’ll disturb whatsoever I choose, xenos.’
‘No!’ the eldar shouted, his former arrogance wavering. The alien looked around, as if searching for something amongst the galleries, his slanted eyes wide with fear. He reached for the long rifle slung across his back.
Before Brielle could react, the air around her erupted as a dozen weapons discharged as one. The eldar staggered, his body hammered as round after round slammed into it. An instant later, the remaining aliens returned fire, their own weapons unleashing a hail of silent, yet deadly precision projectiles.
Bringing her right arm upwards in a sharp movement, Brielle unleashed the deadly payload of one of the miniaturised weapons she wore as ornate, yet lethal rings. A jet of chemical liquid arched forth, erupting into flame as it arrowed towards the nearest of the eldar’s companions. The target saw his peril and rolled aside, the now-blazing liquid fire splashing down nearby. For an instant, Brielle cursed her misfortune, for the ring bore only a single charge. Then, a single gobbet of the fiery liquid splashed out, catching the eldar’s flowing, chameleonic cloak. Before he even realised his peril, the eldar had been engulfed in the hungry fire.
