Void Stalker

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘You did well.’

  Talos almost flinched at the sudden proclamation. ‘I see,’ he said, purely from a need to say something, anything at all.

  ‘You seem surprised. Did you expect my anger?’

  Talos was acutely aware of the others watching him. ‘I had expected to kill you at best, or awaken you at worst. Your anger – either way – hadn’t occurred to me.’

  Malcharion was the only thing in the room standing truly motionless. Though the others remained in place, they’d shift their posture from time to time, or tilt their heads, or share quiet words between claw-kin. Malcharion was monumental in his stillness, never breathing, never moving at all.

  ‘I should kill that accursed tech-priest,’ he growled.

  Across the chamber, Cyrion chuckled. Convincing Malcharion not to annihilate Deltrian for the traumatic and agonising resurrection had taken the two brothers some time. Deltrian, for his part, had been mortified – albeit in his subtle and unemotional way – at the failure of his resurrection rituals.

  ‘But the eldar…’ Talos wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

  ‘With no officers, you’ve managed to keep us alive this long, Talos. Reclaiming the Echo was a fine gesture, as well. The eldar’s trap is meaningless. The only way to avoid it would have been to continue existing on the fringes, accomplishing nothing, making no difference to the galaxy. How many worlds will have fallen dark from your psychic scream?’

  He shook his head, unsure of the specifics. ‘Dozens. Perhaps a hundred. There is no way to know without accessing Imperial archives once the dust has settled on every afflicted world. Even then, we may never know.’

  ‘That is more than Vandred ever did, even if it wasn’t done on the field of battle. Do not be ashamed for fighting with your mind instead of your claws, for a change. The Imperium knows something happened out here. You’ve sown the seeds of a subsector legend. The night a hundred worlds fell dark. Some will be silent for months. Some will be lost to warp storms for years. Some will never be heard from again – the Imperium will no doubt arrive to find them reaved clean of life by the daemons loosed upon them. I confess, Talos, you are colder than I ever imagined, to dream up such a fate.’

  Talos fought to turn the subject away from himself. ‘You say the Imperium will know something happened here, but the eldar already know. For them to have reacted as fast as they did, their witches must have peered into the future and seen something in the tides of alien prophecy.’

  The Dreadnought moved for the first time, turning on its waist axis to look over the gathered Night Lords.

  ‘And this troubles you?’

  Several heads nodded, while other warriors replied with ‘Yes, captain.’

  ‘I see what you are all thinking now.’

  The Night Lords looked back at their captain, incarnated in his hulking shell, a towering monument to a life lived in devoted service.

  ‘You do not wish to die. The eldar herd us into a final fight, and you fear the call of the grave. You think only of escape, of living to fight another day, of preserving your lives at the cost of all else.’

  Lucoryphus hissed before speaking. ‘You make us sound craven.’

  Malcharion turned to the Raptor, his armoured joints grinding. ‘You have changed, Luc.’

  ‘Time changes all things, Mal.’ The Raptor’s head jerked to the side, with a whine of servos. ‘We were the first on the walls at the Siege of Terra. We were the blades of the Eleventh before we were the Bleeding Eyes. And we are no cravens, Captain of the Tenth.’

  ‘You have forgotten the lesson of the Legion. Death is nothing compared to vindication.’

  The Raptor gave a harsh croak, his equivalent of a laugh. ‘Death is still an ending I would rather avoid. Let us teach the lesson and live to teach it again another day.’

  The Dreadnought gave a rumbling growl in response. ‘The lesson wasn’t learned if you have to teach it twice. Now stop whining. We’ll face these aliens down before we worry about dying at the day’s end.’

  ‘It’s good to have you back, captain,’ said Cyrion.

  ‘Then stop sniggering like an infant,’ the Dreadnought replied. ‘Talos. What is your plan? It had better be grand, brother. I have no desire to die a third time in anything less than glory.’

  Several of the gathered legionaries shared a grim chuckle.

  ‘That was no joke,’ Malcharion growled.

  ‘We didn’t take it as one, captain,’ said Mercutian.

  The prophet activated the tactical hololithic. A dense spread of asteroids filled the space above the projection table, densest in the void above a shattered sphere. At the heart of the cluster, a pulsing rune showed the Echo of Damnation.

  ‘We’re safe for now, within the Tsagualsan asteroid field.’

  Malcharion made the gear-grinding sound again. ‘Why is the asteroid field so dense in this region? Even allowing for drift patterns, this is different to what I remember.’

  Lucoryphus gestured to the hololithic. ‘Talos shattered half of the moon.’

  ‘Well.’ Cyrion cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps a fifth of it.’

  ‘You have been busy, Soul Hunter.’

  ‘How many times must I drag you back from the grave and tell you to stop calling me that?’ Talos keyed in another set of coordinates. The hololithic shrank, zooming out to show Tsagualsa itself, and a host of other flickering runes ringing the world and its wounded moon.

  ‘The enemy fleet is gathering beyond the field’s perimeters. They’re holding off from coming in after us, and are refraining from attacking the several thousand souls we left alive on the planet itself. For now, they seem content to wait, but this is it. The noose has tightened. Each time we sought to run forward, they forced us back. They know we have no choice but to fight. Our backs are to the wall.’

  He looked around the war room, meeting the eyes of his last living brothers. The warriors of Tenth and Eleventh Companies, now grouped into four final claws.

  ‘You have a plan,’ Malcharion rumbled. It wasn’t a question this time.

  Talos nodded. ‘They’ve tightened the noose to force us into a fight, true enough. They have the firepower to annihilate the Echo of Damnation, without a shadow of doubt. More of their vessels are arriving every hour. But we can still surprise them. They’re expecting us to cut out of our hiding place and make a last stand in the void. I have a better idea.’

  ‘Tsagualsa,’ one of the other Night Lords said. ‘You can’t be serious, brother. We stand a better chance in the void.’

  ‘No.’ Talos refocused the hololithic. ‘We don’t. And this is why.’ The flickering image resolved to show a spread of Tsagualsa’s polar region, and the jagged remnants of a structure that had once rivalled the sky with its towers. Several of the gathered legionaries shared quiet words, or shook their heads in disbelief.

  ‘Our fortress scarcely stands,’ Talos said. ‘Ten thousand years haven’t been kind to the spires and battlements. But beneath the remains…’

  ‘The catacombs,’ Malcharion growled.

  ‘Exactly so, captain. Auspex scans show the catacombs are largely unchanged. They still reach for kilometres in every direction, with entire sections of the labyrinth immune to orbital bombardment. A fight on our terms. If the eldar want us, they’re welcome to come down into the dark. We’ll hunt them as they hunt us.’

  ‘How long can we last down there?’ Lucoryphus asked, his vox-voice crackling.

  ‘Hours. Days. Everything depends on the force they deploy to chase us. Assuming they land an army and flood into the tunnels, we’ll still bleed them more savagely than we could in a fair fight. Hours and days are both longer than lasting a handful of minutes. I know which one I’ll choose.’

  The warriors were leaning forward now, hands resting on weapons. The atmosphere had turned, all reluctance filter
ing away. Talos continued, addressing the claws.

  ‘The Echo of Damnation is unlikely to survive even the brief run to the planet’s atmosphere. Once we break from the densest region of the asteroid field, the eldar will be on us like a second skin. Everyone who intends to survive must be ready to evacuate the ship.’

  ‘And the crew? How many souls aboard?’

  ‘We’re not certain. Thirty thousand, at least.’

  ‘We cannot evacuate that many, nor can we afford essential crew members leaving their stations. What will you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Talos. ‘They’ll burn with the Echo. I’ll remain on the bridge until the last moments, so the command crew doesn’t realise the Legion is abandoning them to die.’

  ‘Cold.’

  ‘Necessity. There’s more. This is our final stand, and we damn ourselves if we hold anything back. First Claw will remain with me, to arrange our final surprise for the eldar. The rest of you will make planetfall via drop-pods and Thunderhawks as soon as you can. Lose yourself beneath Tsagualsa’s surface, and be ready for what follows. Remember, even if we survive this, the Imperium is coming. They will find the survivors we left in Sanctuary, and spread the story of our deeds. The eldar care nothing for the populace. They’re here for our blood.’

  Fal Torm of the newly-gathered Second Claw gave a wicked chuckle. ‘Suddenly you’re talking of survival. What are the odds of us actually surviving this, brother?’

  Talos’s only reply was a singularly unpleasant smile.

  Hours later, the prophet and the Flayer walked together through Variel’s personal apothecarion. The facilities here were more specific in scope, with far fewer attendant slaves and servitors to get underfoot.

  ‘Do you realise,’ Variel asked, ‘how much work you are asking me to simply cast aside?’

  Cast aside, thought Talos. And Malcharion calls me cold.

  ‘That’s why I’ve come to you,’ he said. As he spoke, he ran his hand along the mechanical arm of a surgical machine, imagining it in motion, in sacred use. ‘Show me your work.’

  Variel led Talos to the holding chambers at the apothecarion’s rear. Both warriors looked in, where the Flayer’s charges huddled in their bare cells, chained to the walls by collars around their throats.

  ‘They look cold,’ Talos noted.

  ‘They probably are. I keep them in aseptic containment.’ Variel gestured at the first of the children. The boy was no older than nine, yet his flesh showed the ragged pink scars of recent invasive surgery along his chest, back and throat.

  ‘How many do you have?’

  Variel didn’t need to consult his narthecium for exact figures. ‘Sixty-one between the ages of eight and fifteen, adapting well to the various stages of implantation. A further one hundred and nine of harvestable age, yet not ripe for implantation. Over two hundred have died so far.’

  Talos knew those kinds of figures well enough. ‘Those are very good survival rates.’

  ‘I know that.’ Variel almost sounded piqued. ‘I am skilled at what I do.’

  ‘That’s why I need you to keep doing it.’

  Variel entered one of the cells, where one of the children lay on his front, unmoving. The Flayer turned the boy over with the edge of his armoured boot. Dead eyes stared back up.

  ‘Two hundred and thirteen,’ he said, and gestured for a servitor to drag the infant’s body away. ‘Incinerate this,’ he ordered.

  ‘Compliance.’

  Talos paid no heed to the servitor as it went about its funereal work. ‘Brother, listen to me for a moment.’

  ‘I am listening.’ Variel didn’t stop keying in notes on his vambrace, recording yet more details.

  ‘You cannot stand with us on Tsagualsa.’

  That made him stop. Variel’s eyes – ice-blue to Talos’s black – lifted in a slow, sterile stare.

  ‘You tell a hilarious jest,’ the Flayer said, utterly without warmth.

  ‘No jest, Variel. You are holding the key to a significant piece of the Legion’s future. I am sending you away before the battle. Deltrian’s ship is capable of warp flight. You’ll be going with him, as will your equipment and your work.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is not a debate, brother.’

  ‘No.’ Variel tore the flayed skin from his pauldron, revealing the winged skull beneath. The symbol of the Eighth Legion stared back at Talos with hollow eye sockets. ‘I wear the winged skull of Nostramo, the same as you. I will fight and die with you, on that worthless little world.’

  ‘You owe me nothing, Variel. Not anymore.’

  For once, Variel looked close to stunned. ‘Owe you? Owe you? Is that how you see our brotherhood? A series of favours to be repaid? I owe you nothing. I will stand with you because we are both Eighth Legion. Brothers, Talos. Brothers unto death.’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘You cannot–’

  ‘I can do whatever I wish. Captain Malcharion agrees with me. There is no room on Deltrian’s vessel for more than ten additional warriors, and even that is better devoted to relics that must be returned to the Legion. You and your work must be preserved above all.’

  Variel took a breath. ‘Have you ever realised how often you interrupt those you are speaking with? It is almost as irritating a habit as Uzas constantly licking his teeth.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Talos replied. ‘I’ll work on this alarming character flaw in the many years of life I have left. Now, will you be ready? If I give you twelve hours and as many servitors as you need, can you ensure your equipment is loaded aboard Deltrian’s ship?’

  Variel bared his teeth in an uncharacteristic angry smile. ‘It will be done.’

  ‘I’ve not seen you lose your temper since Fryga.’

  ‘Fryga was an exceptional circumstance. As is this.’ Variel pressed his fingertips to massage his closed eyes. ‘You are asking much of me.’

  ‘Don’t I always? And I need you to do something else, Variel.’

  The Apothecary met the prophet’s eyes again, sensing something disquieting in the other Night Lord’s tone. ‘Ask.’

  ‘Once you’re gone, I want you to find Malek of the Atramentar.’

  Variel raised a thin eyebrow. ‘I am never returning to the Maelstrom, Talos. Huron will have my head.’

  ‘I don’t believe Malek will have remained there, nor do I believe the Atramentar would willingly join with the Blood Reaver. If they boarded a Corsair vessel, it was for another reason. I don’t know what that reason was, but I trust him despite what happened. Find him if you can, and tell him his plan worked. Malcharion lived. The war-sage resumed command, leading the Tenth again in its final nights.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No. Give him my thanks.’

  ‘I will do all of that, if you wish. But Deltrian’s ship will not get far without needing to refuel. It is too small for long-range flight. We both know this.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to get far. Not at first. It just needs to get away from here.’

  Variel gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘The eldar may chase us.’

  ‘Yes. They may. Any other complaints? You’re wasting what little time I can give you.’

  ‘What of Octavia? How will we sail the Sea of Souls without a Navigator?’

  ‘You won’t,’ Talos replied. ‘That’s why she’s going with you.’

  He could have guessed her reaction would be somewhat less polite than Variel’s. Had he bothered to predict such a thing, he’d have been quite correct.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I’m sick and tired of doing what you tell me.’

  Talos wasn’t looking directly at her. He walked around her throne, casting his gaze across the fluid pool, remembering the chamber’s previous occupant. She’d died in filth, broken apart by the bolters of First Claw. Despi
te a memory that bordered on eidetic, Talos found he couldn’t recall the creature’s name now. How rare.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ Octavia asked. The tone of her voice, so exquisitely courtly, drew his attention back.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ She sat in her throne, one hand cradling her swelling stomach. Her near-emaciation made the pregnancy all the more prominent.

  ‘What are the chances that Deltrian’s ship will even make it to safety?’

  Talos saw no sense in lying to her. He looked at her long and hard, letting the seconds pass by to the rhythm of her heartbeat. ‘Your chance of survival is almost amusingly small. But a chance, nevertheless.’

  ‘And Septimus?’

  ‘He is our pilot and my slave.’

  ‘He’s the father of–’

  Talos held up a hand in warning. ‘Be careful, Octavia. Do not mistake me for a being able to be moved by emotional pleas. I have skinned children before their parents’ eyes, you know.’

  Octavia clenched her teeth. ‘So he’s staying.’ She wasn’t sure why she said it, but it came out in a spill, nevertheless. ‘He’ll follow me, somehow. You can’t keep him here. I know him better than you do.’

  ‘I have not yet decided his fate,’ Talos replied.

  ‘And what about you? What’s your “fate”?’

  ‘Do not speak to me in that tone of voice. This is not the Imperial Court of Terra, little highness. I am not impressed or awed by a haughty tone, so save your breath.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m… just angry.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘So what will you do? You’re just going to let them kill you?’

  ‘Of course not. You saw what happened when we tried to run, how we battered our prow against blockade after blockade. They won’t let us run to the Great Eye. The noose started to close around us the moment I let out the psychic scream. We make our stand here, Octavia. If we leave it any longer, we’ll lose our last chance to choose where this war will be fought.’

  ‘You’re not answering my question.’