Fear the Alien

by Christian Dunn - (ebook by Undead)

  “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’ 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.

  With a cold outer ruthlessness that belied the disgust within, Brielle drew her bolt pistol, levelled it calmly at the living torch before her and put a bolt shell through the unfortunate’s skull, ending his suffering for good.

  Even as the dull crump of the bolt-round detonating inside the eldar’s skull echoed away, a burst of alien fire scythed through the air around her. Brielle dived aside, the stave still in her hands. She hit the dusty ground and rolled, coming up into a ready stance, to see that the firefight was already over. The aliens who had fired upon her lay dead, or grievously wounded, while the one she had killed with her concealed flamer guttered. Several of her servants were writhing on the ground, suppressing screams of pain from wounds that appeared no more than pin pricks, but had, she knew, probably wreaked havoc upon internal organs.

  “The xenos!” Hep called out. “He lives still, ma’am, beware!”

  Brielle looked across to the centre of the chamber, seeing that the eldar lay in a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood. His head was raised upon his straining neck as he looked straight at her. Seeing that the dying alien presented little danger, Brielle stood, pulling herself up on the alien stave as she did so.

  “Listen to me, human,” the eldar coughed, blood flecking his lips as he spoke. “If you leave this place now, you may still avert a disaster you cannot possibly comprehend.”

  Reac
hing the place where the alien lay, Brielle looked down upon his broken form. The hiss of venting gases sounded from one of the galleries high above. She knelt at the eldar’s side, and leaned forwards to bear witness to his last words.

  “There are forces in this universe you know nothing of,” the eldar whispered, his fading gaze sweeping the highest of the chamber’s galleries. “Minds that have slumbered for aeons turn their attentions upon us once more…”

  A sharp, cackling laugh sounded from behind Brielle, and she was struck by the terrible realisation that Adept Seth’s ravings might have contained something of the truth.

  “What forces?” Brielle said. “What minds?” She turned her head sharply as she thought she caught sight of movement in one of the alcoves nearby.

  “My lady…” Quin said.

  “Wait!” Brielle answered, aware that the eldar’s life was fading before her very eyes, but knowing that she must bear witness to what he had to say to her. “Tell me,” she demanded.

  “Your race will discover, in time,” the eldar responded, coughing. He vomited blood across his chest. A loud hiss sounded from very nearby, causing Brielle to look to the nearest of the alcoves and the skeletal statue within. “But you…” The alien smiled grimly through bloody lips, fixing his gaze upon Brielle as she turned back to him. “You shall find out all too soon…”

  Before the eldar could complete his sentence, the dusty ground on which he lay appeared to subside beneath him. Brielle looked on in frozen horror as the eldar sank into the dust. The alien’s eyes widened in terror as realisation of his fate hit home. A moment later, an area of dust three metres across was sinking, and then, a wide, circular hole opened up. The eldar tumbled downwards, dust cascading after him, and was gone.

  “My lady!” Quin shouted. Brielle stared down into the dark hole that had opened up directly before her, and then turned to face Quin. “What?”

  The feral-worlder’s only answer was to look towards the nearest of the alcoves. Within it, a pair of green lights shone. Looking closer, Brielle saw that the eyes of the metallic statue had come alive. She looked upwards, turning as she did so to take in the row upon row of galleries lining the chamber all the way up into the darkness far above. Dimly glowing within every single one of the thousands of alcoves was a pair of lights.

  Brielle brought up her bolt pistol, as a sub-sonic drone sounded from somewhere very far beneath the ground on which she stood. Before her, a lurid green glow appeared in the dark hole in the centre of the chamber. She took a step backwards as her servants appeared at her side, their weapons raised.

  “Ma’am I strongly suggest we—” Hep started.

  “I know,” Brielle interrupted. Anger filled her, along with cold dread. In an instant, her dreams of the riches this place might yield evaporated, to be replaced by the raw instinct to simply survive. She realised with a start that the stave she still held in one hand was now glowing fiercely at its bladed tip, its haft feeling suddenly cold even through the glove of her survival suit.

  And then, a column of blinding green light appeared, lancing upwards from the hole before her. Motes of drifting dust glittered as if trapped by the shaft, and the low rumble rose in volume, the ground now visibly trembling.

  “Fall back!” Brielle called.

  A scream cut the air, almost deafening even over the steadily increasingly sound emanating from the trembling ground. Brielle turned, to see Adept Seth bent double, both hands clamped across his helmet as if the astropath tried in vain to cover his ears. At the sound of the roar of Quin’s boltgun, she turned back towards the column of green light.

  Within the shaft, a figure was rising. At first, all Brielle could make out was a humanoid form wreathed in a pulsating nimbus of light. As the figure rose upwards, she saw that it was floating, as if held aloft by the light itself. It was huge, easily three metres tall, its body a metal skeleton swathed in rags that appeared to writhe as if stirred by some unseen current.

  “We leave,” Brielle ordered as the figure rose to a height of ten metres above the hole. “Now!”

  Before her servants could react, the figure’s eyes came suddenly alive, aglow with the same green light that illuminated those of the statues, yet a hundred times brighter. Its death-mask head turned, as if it awakened, and regarded the sight before it.

  That terrible gaze settled first upon the cowering form of Adept Seth. The astropath shrieked once more, and vomited inside his helmet, his face obscured by the dripping fluids. The skeletal figure’s eyes blazed still brighter, and a wet crump sounded from within the astropath’s helmet, the inside of the visor turning in an instant to the vivid red of fresh blood flecked with the grey of brain matter. Brielle watched in mute horror as Seth’s body toppled lifelessly to the ground, a great cloud of dust billowing up from the ground around it.

  Casting off the unadulterated shock, Brielle levelled her bolt pistol and drew a shaky bead on the figure’s head. Breathing a silent prayer to the Emperor to guide her hand, she squeezed the trigger. Her shot struck the figure square across its metal brow, but the bolt exploded, leaving little more than a black smear to mark where it had landed. The creature appeared not even to register her attack.

  A moment later, Quin bellowed a savage curse born of the barbaric world of his birth. The warrior raised his boltgun and in scant seconds emptied an entire magazine at his foe. Several dozen bolt-rounds, each sufficient to reduce a normal body to a bloody ruin, glanced harmlessly from the metal form above.

  “Quin!” Brielle bellowed over the deafening roar of the armsmen’s shotguns joining in the fusillade. “It’s no use! We’re leaving!”

  But the feral-worlder appeared not to hear his mistress’ words, or was perhaps held in the grip of some barbaric death-frenzy. Brielle reached for his shoulder, but he shrugged her off as he reloaded his boltgun. “Go!” Quin shouted.

  Brielle made to repeat her order, but the savage fury in Quin’s eyes told her that she would be wasting her breath.

  “I made a pledge,” the warrior said, his eyes alight in his tattooed face. “I promised your father… Please, my lady, allow me to keep my word.”

  Looking around her, Brielle saw the metal statues in the ground-floor alcoves had come to life and were even now advancing towards the centre of the chamber. She saw too that Quin hoped to buy her time to escape, with his very life. For an instant she considered ordering him to leave, begging him to leave, but she knew that neither course would work. Unable to speak, she nodded silent thanks to the warrior, hefting her bolt pistol in one hand and the glowing stave in the other. A small part of her mind prayed the warrior’s sacrifice was worth it, and his death would be a noble one.

  “With me!” Brielle called out as she retreated towards the passageway. Joachim Hep appeared at her side, a laspistol raised before him, followed a moment later by a dozen armsmen. At the sound of Quin’s boltgun opening up once more, she turned to run for the passageway.

  A metallic warrior barred her path. Instinctively, she brought her bolt pistol to bear, opening fire from a distance of scant metres. At the same moment, her companions did likewise, and the foe was rocked backwards as its skeletal body was hammered by round after round of precision fire.

  For a moment, Brielle feared that this enemy’s metal form would prove as impervious to attack as that of the larger figure that floated above in the shaft of green light. She gave heartfelt thanks as she saw angry sparks erupt from within its chest, followed an instant later by a small explosion.

  “Again!” She ordered, firing three more bolt-rounds into the enemy’s chest. The armsmen pumped shell after shell at the foe, forcing it backwards still further.

  And then, the metal skeleton blew apart, ripped asunder by an explosion deep within its armoured ribcage lagged metal shrapnel lanced outwards, one piece shattering the armoured visor of Brielle’s helmet, and slashing a deep cut across her forehead.

  Even as blood from her wound ran freely into Brielle’s eyes, she rushed on
wards, almost gaining the passageway before turning to take one last look at the scene.

  Quin had stopped firing once more, evidently having emptied another two-dozen bolt rounds into the floating figure. Even as he ejected the spent, sickle-shaped magazine, the figure turned Its gaze upon him, as if noticing his presence for the first time.

  Quin slammed home a fresh magazine and looked up into the blazing eyes of his enemy. The figure reached out a metallic skeletal arm, ragged swathes of cloth flapping as if in some aetheric breeze around it. As Quin raised his boltgun once more, his tattooed face a mask of savagery, the figure’s palm blazed with pulsating green light.

  The feral-worlder convulsed, his boltgun slamming to the ground at his feet. Brielle screamed his name, but it was too late. Before her eyes, Quin’s survival suit appeared to melt away. First the armoured plates dissolved, as if the metal were being peeled away, one layer of atoms at a time. Then the fabric too disappeared, to reveal the warrior’s tattooed flesh beneath. For a moment, Quin stood naked before the metal daemon above him, and then the tattoos that covered his body faded, followed an instant later by his skin.

  Quin’s bloodcurdling death-scream split the dusty air of the tomb chamber as his skin dissolved and the raw musculature beneath was revealed. Layer by layer, the flesh was peeled away, atomised to nothing by the awful power of the green radiation. At the last, only Quin’s skeleton stood, silhouetted against the blazing shaft of green light, and in an instant, that too was gone, the last of his marrow reduced to dust evaporating on the unnatural wind.

  Before Brielle could react, the floating horror came fully to life, stepping from the column of green light before descending to the dusty ground with an earth-shaking impact. With a single motion, several thousand of its skeletal minions took a pace forwards, those on the ground level forming a circle around Brielle and her companions. Resigned now to the inevitable, but unwilling to go meekly, Brielle took a deep breath and raised her bolt pistol for one final act of defiance.