Malwrack placed a hand on Sawor’s shoulder. “Gather the kabal,” he said. “Our entire force. I know now what to give Mistress Baeda.”
Cthelmax was a desert world. Outside a baleful sun beat down, but here, in the vast interior of the tomb complex, it was so cool that Malwrack could see his breath when he spoke. He and Sawor stood bathed in an eerie green glow. In all other directions stretched an inky blackness, stabbed by beams of light as the warriors set up a defensive perimeter and studied how best to abscond with their prize.
“Do you know what human males customarily use to buy the loyalty of their women?” Malwrack asked his daughter. “Stones. Lumps of compressed carbon, especially.”
“I’ve never understood your fascination with mon-keigh culture,” Sawor answered distractedly. There was something about this place, this city-sized mausoleum that genuinely frightened her. The sooner they left here, the better.
Malwrack was too enraptured to notice the slight. “I have no idea what this thing is actually made of, but its size and rarity should finally stifle that damned widow.” He turned to Sawor and laughed.
The necrontyr power crystal towered above them. Its base fitted into some kind of circular pedestal from which arcane conduits ran off in all directions. It glowed from within, but dimly, like a lamp nearly out of oil. A sybarite approached and informed Malwrack that the men were ready to disconnect it. The archon nodded impatiently.
Sawor frowned. “I think you misunderstood me. When I said you had to give her something no one else could, I didn’t mean—”
The green light went out suddenly, as the crystal was separated from its base. It grew very dark, and very still.
Malwrack clapped his hands together. “Right, let’s get this back home.”
Sawor walked a few steps away. Her breath came in short spasms. There was something stirring here now, touching her latent senses. Then she heard it. Over the grunts of the men working, and of her father barking orders, there was a scraping sound from the blackness. Metal on stone. Tiny dots appeared in the distance, and for a moment Sawor thought that some kind of phosphorescent carpet was undulating towards them with fantastic speed.
Realisation splashed over her like cold water. “Father!” she screamed.
Then the scarabs were on them, surging forwards like a wave. They swarmed around the disconnected crystal with hissing, chittering sounds. The warriors attempted to defend themselves with pistols and knives even as the tiny machines slashed at their leg armour.
Malwrack backed away and jerked his neck, feeling the drugs pour through him. He had time to see Sawor do likewise before his incubi formed a protective circle around him. From the darkness above, massive forms were descending with thick, pointed legs unfurling. Their faces were tightly packed clusters of camera lenses, glowing brightly. They made a churning noise, and from their abdomens more scarabs appeared, raining down. The archon’s bodyguards began to slash out with their pole arms, their every motion fluid. Malwrack activated his shadow field, and shoved his way between two of his protectors. One of the tiny machines tried to amputate his foot. He impaled it on his bladed glove for its trouble.
He had an unobstructed view now. The power crystal, its base and everyone who had been standing on or around it were covered by hundreds of tiny insectoid robots. For each one his soldiers killed, the large spider-forms floating above made several more. Sawor was in full swing, surrounded by wyches and attacking anything that got too close to her. She was shouting something, but Malwrack couldn’t make it out.
A moment later, there was a rush of hot wind and the sound of rocket engines. Sawor had called in reinforcements from their base camp outside, Malwrack surmised. More soldiers leapt from Raiders while behind them several slower-moving gunboats began to blow the scarabs apart with volleys from their energy cannons. The horde of machines began to thin. One of the large spiders crashed to the floor in a pool of slag. As if in response to the shifting tide of battle, twisting streams of green fire stabbed forth from out of the darkness. Humanoid shapes were slouching towards them, skeletal and hunched; cumbersome weapons hung heavy in their hands. Every soldier they hit flew apart into piles of burnt flesh and charred bones. The gunboats began to ignore the scarabs and turned their attention to this new threat.
There was a bright flash to Malwrack’s left that cast twisted shadows across the broken floor. Another group of necrons, nearly two dozen in all, suddenly appeared. Above them floated a machine that looked like one of the scarab-making spiders with a skeletal torso fused to the top. In one hand, it raised a long stave. In the other was a glowing sphere. The ones on the ground immediately began firing their rifles. Two of the incubi were killed outright, but the armour of the others withstood the barrage. The archon’s protective field turned opaque in several places, protecting his eyes from the blinding beams as it saved his body from vaporisation. Then it was his turn.
Malwrack leapt the distance and slashed out with his gauntleted hand. Five of the machines collapsed, heads severed and torsos ripped open. Wires spilled gut-like onto the ground. Behind him, his remaining retinue thrust forwards with their pole arms. Nine more of the things were destroyed. The floating machine brought its stave around in a sweeping arc, effortlessly decapitating two incubi, and the remaining necrons fell into the melee. There was a flurry of blows, all of which Malwrack easily parried. Then, responding to some command only they could hear, the machines began moving backwards, stunned perhaps at the ferocity of the dark eldar attack.
Malwrack let them retreat for the moment, and struggled to locate Sawor amidst the chaos. Despite the great strides he was making, the rest of his kabal was not faring half as well. Two of his gunboats were floating helplessly, abandoned by their crews and gutted by fire. The bodies of his soldiers were piling up everywhere, blackened and smoking. Amidst them, dead necrons were staggering back to their feet, reassembling themselves somehow until they again looked like gunmetal skeletons. Worse yet, two of the giant spiders were setting the crystal back into place. Newly minted scarabs swirled around them like a river of chrome. An archon came to power by knowing two things: when to fight, and when to run. For Malwrack, it was time to run.
“Back to the boats!” he yelled.
Those that could, began to fall back, weapons blazing and throats screaming. Malwrack and his remaining two guards ran to where Sawor stood alone again. Bodies, both flesh and bone and metallic, lay in pieces all around her. She herself was bleeding from a score of lacerations, none of which seemed to slow her down or lessen her fury. Malwrack grabbed her forearm, dragging her from atop the charnel pile, and together they sprinted towards a nearby Raider. Bolts of green energy flew around them. The last incubi staggered and fell, but Malwrack never so much as glanced back at his erstwhile defenders. If none but he and Sawor escaped this, he would consider the day a victory.
Underlings were clamouring around the transport. Malwrack shot one of them and impaled another, flinging the man into the encroaching necron phalanx. Sawor, following suit, lopped off the arm of one warrior who refused to give up his place for her. The machine lurched violently before it blasted up and out of the tomb. Dark walls sped past them as they raced towards the exit. Sawor held on tightly and craned her neck to look behind them. A squadron of necron vehicles was in pursuit, firing powerful beams at them, but their speed was no greater. The Raider would make it to surface first, where their base camp and a portal to Commorragh awaited. Despite all the carnage, it seemed that she and Malwrack would live to fight another day. Sawor looked over at her father. He met her gaze, and realising the same thing, he actually smiled.
They were almost to the exit when the Raider crashed. Without warning, serpentine enemies emerged from the walls and floor of the tomb. They lashed out with pointed tails and monstrously bladed hands, tearing through the hull and engine housing. The transport pitched downwards and cartwheeled through space with a terrible velocity. It careened through the exit, and impacted on the sand out
side, crumpling and shearing. Malwrack’s shadow field flared into protective mode, turning pitch-black as he was thrown free of the wreckage.
How long he lay there, Malwrack had no way of telling. His shadow field was clear, so any danger was apparently past. Slowly he sat up. While he waited for his vision to stop swimming, he registered a pile of flaming wreckage, a half-dozen bodies clad in purple armour and the silent entrance to the tomb. Presumably, the necrons within were under no instructions to pursue invaders out here into the desert. He looked around for Sawor, but didn’t see her. He called her name, but there was no response from anyone. He called again, louder. Still no reply. With a twinge of panic, he limped to the bulk of the downed Raider.
He found her beneath one of the running boards, literally folded in half. Jagged pieces of the transport protruded from her in several places, the most gruesome of which exited through her gaping mouth. He made a mewling sound and dropped down to her side. He inhaled desperately, but there was nothing there. Her life essence, her soul, had dissipated. She was dead beyond any haemonculus’ resuscitational skill.
“Get up,” he said.
He stood once more and looked down at her shattered form. “Get up,” he repeated. “I order you to get up.”
Malwrack realised with a start that he was powerless. No beating, no threat, no command would make her live again. This was not the way it was supposed to have happened, his kabal gutted, his successor gone. He activated the portal back to Commorragh, and strode purposefully through the gate, oblivious to the fact that as he did so, he was crying.
When her servant refused him entry, he kicked down the door. When five of her incubi formed a wall across the foyer, he gutted two of them in a flash, and massacred the rest as they tried to fall back. On the grand staircase that led up to her personal chambers, an entire unit of warriors fired their weapons at him. He walked through the hail of splinters and, with shadow field blazing darkly, killed every last one of them. Then, he made his way upstairs. Throwing the doors wide, he found her in the room with arched windows where he and Sawor had first come to see her. She bolted off her settee, one hand flying up to her pendant, the other pulling an ornate handgun from the folds of her dress. Malwrack strode in, arms wide, eyes unblinking, head lowered. His tattered cape flowed behind him like a purple sea.
“What does a man have to do around here to get a little attention?” he roared.
Two more incubi, lying in ambush behind the door, lunged at his back. Malwrack spun low. His gauntleted hand tore out the throat of one assailant, then flashed back to impale the other before either one could even land a blow. When he rose and faced Baeda again, his forearm was dripping with gore.
She backed away, slowly, never taking her eyes off him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked coldly.
“Don’t you be coy,” he growled. “Don’t you even dare.”
“Is this about that planet you wanted to give me?”
He kicked a chair with such force that it sailed across the room. “You know what this is about! It’s about you. You’ve destroyed me.”
Baeda noticed then that something was terribly wrong with his face. Streams of water were gushing uncontrollably from his eyes. She’d never seen the like.
“I tried so hard to win you, and all you did was spurn me. I killed for you, and all you could say was that I did not impress. I should have stopped even then, just called the whole thing off and moved on, but I couldn’t. It was like you’d infected me. You were all I could think about. I gave you a world, but you wouldn’t even see me. Why wouldn’t you see me? If you’d just let me in that day, she’d still be here, but no, you thought it would be more fun to refuse me. Was that your plan, mistress, to starve me? Like a dog? Deprive me of your presence until I just went rabid?”
He was babbling, Baeda saw, hyperventilating and lost in a dark train of thought. She could have shot him dead right then and there, he was so distracted, yet there was something about his behaviour that was fascinating.
“Who would still be here?” she asked him.
“Well, it worked,” he continued. “I swore that I would have you, Baeda. Inyon lama-quanon. To the detriment of everything else. My followers, my armies, all gone. My kabal is finished because of you; because I became so enraptured, and thought I’d finally found the perfect gift with which to win you.”
He still had not answered her question, and so she asked again. “Malwrack, who would still be here?”
The old archon appeared to deflate, shoulders stooping, his chest caving in. He gave a heart-wrenching sigh and said, “Sawor.”
Outside the room, Baeda could hear running footsteps. More of her soldiers and protectors were rushing to her defence. They would surely kill the old man, by weight of numbers if not by martial skill. Yet, she had to hear him out first. His tears, his ragged breathing, his palpable aura of loss were entrancing.
When he spoke again, his voice was almost inaudible. “I took her to Cthelmax. There are ruins there. Very well preserved. I looked over at her. I was so certain that we would be all right. Then she was gone.”
Weapons clicked into readiness behind him as Baeda’s forces piled into the room. At the slightest signal from her, they would open fire, and that would be the end of Lord Malwrack. He seemed to take no notice, however. Instead, his whole being shuddered, and he collapsed at the widow’s feet.
“She’s gone!” he cried from a place so dark, it made Baeda gasp. Malwrack could see now that Sawor had been no mere hierarch. She had been his sounding board, his strong-arm, his partner in all things. She had been his most prized possession, and he had loved her. He would never be complete again, and thus, there was no point in his life continuing.
Sobbing, he waited only for a volley of splinter fire or a killing blow from Baeda to end it all.
He felt her lift him up. Spent, he didn’t resist. Baeda looked him square in the face, placed a hand on each of his cheeks, and clamped her mouth over his. Malwrack was certain she was giving him the kiss of death, but it just went on and on. Instead of stabbing or shooting him, he felt Baeda’s body soften and press into his. Her tongue darted around his steel teeth. Her fingers dug into his cheeks. He kissed her back and wrapped his arms around her so tightly that her body armour creaked. When she finally pulled away, she had a dreamy expression on her face.
“Lama-quanon,” she said. “I yield to you.”
“I don’t understand,” Malwrack said. “I have no kabal left to fight you with. You wouldn’t take the planet, and I couldn’t retrieve the crystal, so I have nothing with which to buy your obedience.”
“Of course you do,” she purred as her long fingers traced his wrinkled brow. “You’ve given me the greatest gift imaginable: your suffering. There’s a void in you now, a delicious emptiness that will never heal. Say you’ll always give that to me, that you’ll feed me with it the rest of our days, and all that I have will be yours.”
Malwrack looked over his shoulder at the horde of warriors behind him. Baeda began scratching at his armour as if she meant to undress him here, immediately, and in front of everyone, cement their new partnership in a torrent of public lovemaking.
A smirk slowly crept across Malwrack’s face. He had squandered one kabal only to inherit another.
These soldiers would live and die at his command, and he was not, after all, defeated. Malwrack pointed to the doorway, and after a moment, the soldiers lowered their heads and shuffled out. He threw his bladed gauntlet to the floor, increased the flow to his drug injector, and grabbing a fistful of her hair, wrenched Baeda’s head back. She smiled at him. Soon he and the widow would ride out across the galaxy together, inflicting anguish on any who could bear it. With his experience and Baeda’s resources, there would be no stopping them. He could avenge his daughter’s death a thousandfold upon the whole of creation.
“It’s going to be glorious,” Baeda said cryptically. She kissed Malwrack again, deep and long. Through the window behind them,
the spires and lights of the Dark City watched without comment.
IRON INFERNO
C.L. Werner
The sky was a livid bruise of ochre and mauve, what little daylight filtering through the murk turned a sickly yellow by the thick layers of dust polluting the atmosphere. Izanagi was a wounded world, maimed and mutilated by an assault from the stars. The shrieking winds that churned the dust clouds were like the pained wail of the planet, crying out in agony to an uncaring universe and an impotent Imperium.
Lord General Ro Nagashima wiped the grit of dust from his goggles and glared at the murky sky. The Prefect-Governor of Izanagi had assured him the astropaths had sent a psychic alarm into the aethyr. It was small consolation. Even if the psionic cry was heard, even if a relief fleet was mobilised, the vagaries of travel through the interstellar warp meant it could be years before help arrived. By that time, Izanagi might be far worse than wounded.
General Nagashima sighed into the rebreather mask that straddled his face, his breath echoing back into the comm-filters of his helmet as a harsh metallic wheeze. His gloved fingers brushed against the row of campaign medals sewn into the breast of his tunic. The tactile feel of old glories brought a bitter smile to his face. Annihilating the pirates of the Oni Cluster, bringing to heel the serf uprising on Tetso, defeating the renegade House Carcalla and their mercenaries, all of these had been wars he had fought in the further reaches of the Yamato System. There had been honour and grandeur in those battles. They had been a furnace that had forged him from a fragile man of flesh and fear into a warrior of steel and valour.
The general looked again at the ugly, dust-choked sky. This war was different. This was not some backwards corner of the system, some scraggly planetoid overrun by rebels or some pirate-infested asteroid. This was Izanagi, the jewel of the Yamato System. This was his planet. This was his home.
Fear the Alien Page 14
