“Keep a wary eye,” the sergeant advised. Behind them, Hrydor swept the darkness with his assault cannon. The last member of the squad, Brother Invictese, was a half-pace ahead of him. “It’s not the xenos we face here,” Praetor concluded.
Distance from the cryo-chamber helped. The mission chrono told the Firedrakes they had left Nu’mean’s squad exactly thirty-three minutes ago. Tsu’gan estimated with some accuracy that they had travelled several hundred metres in that time. But despite the distance, he still felt the same old feelings from before tugging at his resolve.
A shadow darted ahead of them but before he had aimed his storm bolter it disappeared seemingly into smoke. Copper was heavy on the recycled air. Psychic fabrication or real, Tsu’gan had no way of telling. He saw Praetor eyeing the dark, too, finding apparitions in the deepest alcoves before deliberately looking away.
Hrydor’s heart rate and respiratory functions relayed on Tsu’gan’s tactical display were elevated. Praetor had seen them too.
“Gird yourselves, brothers.” He didn’t single any one of them out, but Tsu’gan knew to whom he was really speaking. “Our minds are our enemies. Rely on your instincts. Use your mental conditioning routines to find balance. We were born in Vulkan’s forge. We all crossed the gate of fire and were tested before the proving-forge. Our mettle is unbendable, as Firedrakes it must be so. Remember that.”
A series of solemn affirmations answered the brother-sergeant but all felt the uneasiness in the atmosphere, like a serpent crawling beneath the skin. Hrydor gave his last of all.
So far, they had encountered no resistance. According to the schemata, the central power room was not much further.
But, even as his halo-lamps strafed the dark, Tsu’gan couldn’t assuage the uneasy feeling in his gut.
At the bulkhead door to the cryo-chamber, Nu’mean waited impatiently.
Emek was slumped against the back wall, still bleeding. He was conscious but not entirely lucid. He’d used whatever medical unguents and salves he had in his narthecium kit to do what he could. His brothers, under his faltering instruction, had done their best to aid him. He was in Vulkan’s hands now. Either he would endure the anvil and emerge re-forged or he would break against it. In any event, Nu’mean had taken the vial in its brass partial outer casing and mag-locked it to his vambrace. Though small, the device was not so delicate that he couldn’t apply the serum himself. It would be difficult and better handled by an Apothecary but that option was no longer viable.
“Sergeant Nu’mean.” The comm-feed address came from further up the long corridor, where Brothers Mercurion and Gun’dar guarded the junction Praetor and his squad had taken to reach the central power room. “Report, brother.”
“Contacts on my scanners. Closing quickly.” Nu’mean went to his own bio-scanner, one of the concomitant systems of his Terminator armour.
Several heat traces, distant but very real, were approaching. He deduced their origin from a section of the ship that had previously been sealed.
“Maintain defensive cordon,” he said to Brothers Kohlogh and Ve’kyt beside him.
“Hold position. Fall back only on my order,” he told the advance line.
Something is wrong, he thought. With the farseer active, he had expected to be assailed with visions and mental tortures by now. He had expected the screams of the dying, to witness the burning faces of the thousands he had condemned to death. But there was nothing, just the nagging sense of something out of kilter.
“Hold position,” he repeated and felt his unease growing.
Hrydor whispered something, but not loud enough for Tsu’gan to hear. The Terminators moved in close formation through the final few corridors like the Romani legionnaire formations of old, some of Terra’s battle teachings having permeated Nocturnean culture. Only Hrydor was lagging at the rear.
Several junctions went by, each leading off into another area of the ship, each a darkened recess that needed to be scanned and checked before they could proceed.
Tsu’gan was about to send Praetor a sub-vocal warning about his troubled battle-brother when a moment of revelation struck him. The nagging at the back of his skull, the itch he felt upon his neck and shoulders, the invisible tension that charged the air, he knew it. He’d felt it before. Watchers. Watchers in the shadows.
Something scuttled almost imperceptibly through the darkness. Tsu’gan got the impression that the shadows and it were one, blended as night on top of night.
The figures he’d dismissed earlier were not hallucinations—they were real. Nor had Praetor witnessed and refuted apparitions in the gloom but something very tangible and very dangerous; dangerous enough to foul the Salamanders’ auto-senses.
Tsu’gan’s warning came too late as something else set its influence against them and fell hardest on Hrydor.
“I see it!” he cried out, breaking squad coherency and clanking off back the way they’d come. “Grimhildr…” he waved the imaginary Space Wolf over his shoulder in a bid to follow, “the kraken… Bring your axe and bond-brothers. I have it in my sights!”
How long poor Hrydor had been quietly under the farseer’s influence, they’d never know.
Praetor turned and saw him disappearing down one of the other junctions into an unknown part of the ship. “Brother!” he called, but Hrydor was lost to his own version of reality.
Assault cannon fire echoed back to them loudly as he engaged the imaginary beast of the deeps.
Praetor was already moving. “After him.”
“Where is he going?” asked Tsu’gan.
“To his death, if this continues. We are not alone here.”
Tsu’gan nodded and followed his sergeant.
The junction Hrydor had chosen led to a long corridor. He was still visible as the others reached it, firing bursts from his assault cannon before stomping ahead again.
“I can clip him, maybe take a piston out in his leg.” Tsu’gan was already taking aim. “It will slow him.”
Praetor shook his head.
The scuttling sound returned. They all heard it this time, as well as a high-pitched keening as if issued by a flock of mechanised birds.
“Name of Vulkan…” The sergeant scowled, trying to track the source of the raucous noise as a bulkhead door slammed down to impede them. They lost sight of Hrydor, though Tsu’gan swore he noticed the shadows closing in on him just before they did, as if detaching from the very walls.
“Hold the junction,” Praetor told Invictese and Vo’kar. They assumed defensive firing positions at once. He turned to Tsu’gan. “Get it down, now!”
Tsu’gan plunged his chainfist into the metal and cascading sparks lit the corridor.
It took several minutes to tear through the bulkhead.
Tsu’gan was the first to see to the other side.
“Gone,” he snarled, but then detected blood traces on the grated floor. The corridor had a vaulted ceiling, littered with pipes and narrow vertical ducts. Chains hanging down from the gloom jangled faintly. Praetor and Tsu’gan pulled at the gap in the bulkhead with their hands until it was wide enough to traverse. More precious seconds were lost.
Hurrying now, Praetor and Tsu’gan cleared the corridor in another two minutes. Leaving the others behind and rounding a tight corner, they found Hrydor’s body.
The xenos were coming fast, dozens and dozens of them.
The long corridor afforded a decent fire point for Nu’mean’s squad and the ceiling was solid enough that they didn’t have to worry about ambuscade from above.
If the genestealers came from the Protean’s aft they could hold them off.
A few metres from the cryo-chamber’s door was the cross-junction bleeding left and right. Nu’mean had positioned himself, Emek and the other two Firedrakes in his squad here.
To the left was the chamber housing the bank of saviour pods. An incursion from that direction was unlikely. But if the xenos came from the right-hand corridor at the same time as the aft-facin
g one, the fight would likely be a lot shorter. Already he could hear them: chittering, scuttling, loping. It would not be long.
Approximately fifty metres separated them and Brothers Mercurion and Gun’dar at the next junction. Another hundred or so and the long corridor terminated in a patch of darkness their halo-lamps were too far away to penetrate.
“Wait until you have a target then lay suppressing fire to slow their ranks.” Nu’mean ordered down the comm-feed. “Let’s see if we can clog the way ahead with xenos corpses, brothers.”
A belligerent “affirmative” delivered in synch told him he’d been heard and that the Firedrakes were making their final oaths.
The door behind him, where his prey partially slumbered, felt hot against Nu’mean’s back.
All of this for vengeance.
Nu’mean crushed his doubt in a clenched fist. No price is too steep.
“Here they come!” The corridor ahead was suddenly lit by the muzzle flare of crashing storm bolters.
Fleetingly, through the press of bodies and gunfire, Nu’mean saw the rabid xenos exploding. They were relentless. Even at a distance, he noticed a fervent glow in their eyes. It gave the beasts aggression and awareness. Nu’mean realised then why they’d barely felt the farseer’s psychic emanations. He was part of the ship and that extended to the denizens aboard. The eldar was channelling his power through the ’stealers, animating and guiding them like a substitute Hive Mind.
The bolter fire from Gun’dar and Mercurion lasted another few seconds before they began to fall back. They loosed in sporadic bursts after that, one then the other, overlapping their salvos.
Nu’mean could barely discern whole alien bodies such was the gore and dismemberment wrought by the guns.
“Running low,” said Mercurion.
“Aye, brother.” Gun’dar replied.
Nu’mean started forwards, but discipline took hold and he stopped. He went to the comm-feed instead.
“Fall back. Rejoin the line, brothers.” There was an urgency to the sergeant’s tone that suggested he knew what was coming.
Genestealers were everywhere, clambering over the dead, clawing their way over wall, floor and ceiling. Such fury…
“Vulkan’s fire beats—” Mercurion began. He was snapping a fresh load in his storm bolter, Gun’dar covering him, when a ’stealer got close enough to tear off half of his helmet and face. Brother Mercurion staggered, sputtering a few more rounds from his storm bolter, before another xenos punched a hole through his chest. A third leapt on his back. Then they engulfed him and a Firedrake was lost to the swarm.
“Rejoin the line! Rejoin the line!” But Nu’mean’s imploring was for nothing.
Gun’dar fell moments later. Surrounded, he could not hope to hold out for long. His storm bolter lit up the corridor for another six seconds before it fell silent.
Nu’mean held on to his anger, prevented it from sending him crashing into the onrushing ’stealers to his doom and vainglory.
“Brother Kohlogh.”
The Firedrake took a step forwards to brandish his heavy flamer. Nu’mean’s voice was hollow. “Burn it.”
Hrydor had been hacked apart. Chain-toothed weapons left scars across his armour. The cuts were heaviest at the weaker joints. His Terminator suit was badly rent and scorch marks suggested close-ranged plasma. Sections of partially dissolved ceramite, which left gaping crevices in Hrydor’s sundered flesh, had been made by a melta gun. His assailants had set upon him from all sides and took him apart, piece by piece. Blood painted a grisly scene that glowed a deep, visceral red in the starkness of the halo-lamps.
A solitary figure stood mockingly at the end of the next corridor, poised at the junction. It was clad in archaic power armour, dark like twilight or deeper; it was hard to tell precisely. A battle-helm, morphed into the graven visage of some howling daemon, its crude mouth grille locked in a silent scream, looked stretched, almost avian, as did its clawed feet and gauntlets. Tilting its head on one side, the hideous thing clicked. The motion was strange, slightly syncopated, and its clawed foot grated the metal in time.
Tsu’gan’s mouth curled into a snarl behind his helm. “Raptor…”
Then he barrelled, headlong, down the corridor, storm bolter crashing.
Screeching in bird-like, mechanised monotone, the Raptor leapt into the air, the densely throated thrusters on its back coughing out plumes of smoke and fire to lift it.
Tsu’gan cursed. He missed.
Above them, the chains and pipes clanked noisily. Tsu’gan fired into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling where he thought he’d detected movement.
Cruel laughter, like a vulture’s cawing and impossible to pinpoint, greeted his failure. Then came another blast of bird-like screeching, synthesised through a vox-grille mouth.
“Chaos Traitors!” he snarled to Praetor, scything chain links with another salvo and sending them cascading like iron rain onto his armour.
His sergeant’s reply was cut off by the bulkhead door slamming down between them. He’d been caught. Tsu’gan spat another curse as several armoured figures, the first Raptor’s kin, descended from above on bladed wings. Freefalling, they seemed to melt out of the shadows, and only engaged their jump packs to arrest their flight at the last moment.
Ozone from the melta stink and the reek of blood-laced, oiled chainteeth filled the air. The blades were buzzing already, growling for prey.
“You’ll not kill me so easily, hellspawn,” he vowed, trying to shut off the other sensations pressing at the edge of conscious thought, the copper stink, the veil of sulphur…
These foes were real. Night Lords—terror-mongers and cowards, unworthy of the name Astartes, even when they’d been loyal to the Throne.
Raptors were pack-hunters and he had sprung their trap. The blades came in quick. Tsu’gan barely had time to see, let alone defend them.
It took Praetor three blows from his thunder hammer to batter the bulkhead door down and send it screeching from its moorings into the corridor at speed. Like most sons of Vulkan, his strength was prodigious, but even amongst the Fire-born Praetor had a reputation for incredible feats. Brought on by fury and determination, this one ranked amongst the toughest.
The closest Raptor didn’t see it coming. Six thousand kilograms of half-metre-thick metal took the renegade down, slamming into its torso and nearly cutting it in two. A death rattle escaped from its skulled faceplate before it died.
Tsu’gan saw the improvised missile in time, twisting aside, but the flying bulkhead still grazed the front of his plastron and left a groove in the ceramite. The rents in his armour from the chainblades were light. The Firedrake took advantage of his assailants’ shock, albeit a few seconds in duration, to gut one at close range with a burst of his storm bolter.
Crushing the Raptor’s pauldron in his fist, he rammed the muzzle hard into its stomach and pulled the trigger. Tsu’gan was throwing the body aside as another tried to leap into the air to regroup. It got so far, arching its body to draw a bead with its plasma gun, when Tsu’gan reached out and seized its ankle. With barely a portion of his strength, he sent the Traitor smashing to the deck. It slid, claws scratching at the deck for purchase, in front of Praetor. The sergeant severed the creature’s head with the edge of his storm shield.
“Feel Vulkan’s wrath!” he bellowed, battering another Raptor aside that sprang over to engage him.
Tsu’gan was free of the flock and laid about him with controlled bursts. Warning icons blazed across his retinal display, intense thermal temperature spikes. The melta gunner weaved out of his initial salvo, firing small bursts of its jump pack to stay aloft, before Praetor blindsided it and slammed the Raptor into the wall.
By now, Vo’kar and Invictese had been summoned from the strongpoint and were placing careful blasts into the melee from the end of the corridor.
Like weird, metal dolls, the Raptors jerked and shuddered as they died.
Facing almost a full Terminator squ
ad, they couldn’t hope to win.
What had begun as a cynical ambush had turned into a bitter and desperate defeat before the might of the Firedrakes.
Barely four of the Traitors remained. The Salamanders were in the ascendancy. Two, blazing contrails from their jump packs, made for the vaulted roof. Combined storm bolter fire—so concentrated, so close—shredded their armour like tin.
A third lashed out at Praetor, but the chainblade it wielded ran afoul of the sergeant’s sturdy armour. Broken metal teeth rattled the deck, followed swiftly by the Raptor’s sundered corpse.
Tsu’gan came face-to-face with the lone survivor, their leader and the one who wore the daemon’s distended face. It angled its head, fibre bundle cabling at its neck sparked as its body spasmed. Then the wretched, avian creature screeched at him. The goad forced Tsu’gan to swing—he wanted to feel its flesh and bone churning against his chainfist—but the Raptor leader had banked on this and avoided the blow, snatching up the fallen melta gun instead.
It looked like it was about to turn the weapon against the Firedrake before the creature boosted its jump jets and soared into the vaulted ceiling, burning through metal sheeting as it went, fashioning an escape route. Tsu’gan’s bulk blocked a clear shot for the others and storm bolter rounds tore up the pipes above harmlessly before the Firedrakes were alone again.
“Night Lords,” spat Tsu’gan. “Craven whelps and molesters. What are they doing aboard the Protean?”
Praetor couldn’t answer. He was listening to the comm-feed.
“Nu’mean is in trouble,” he said when he was done. “The Traitors will have to wait—”
Tsu’gan bristled. “Hrydor’s vengeance!”
“Will have to wait,” Praetor repeated firmly. “Our brothers, those who yet live and breathe, need us to breach the central power room now.”
They were about to retrace their steps when an explosion, loud enough to resonate through Tsu’gan’s armour, rocked the corridor. Metal debris fell in thick chunks. Dust and fire billowed out ahead of them in a blackened plume.
Fear the Alien Page 11
