Void Stalker

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘How many were still on the ship?’ asked a female voice at his side. Talos didn’t glance down at her; he’d forgotten Marlonah was still there. The fact she’d even considered the question was the starkest difference between them both in that moment.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. The truth was that he didn’t care. His masters had made him into a weapon. He felt no guilt at the loss of his humanity, even when it caught him by surprise in times like these.

  The Echo of Damnation went down behind the southern mountains. Talos saw the flash of its reactor flare going critical, lighting the sky like a second sunset for a single, painful heartbeat.

  ‘One,’ he counted. ‘Two. Three. Four. Five.’

  A roll of thunder broke above them, fainter than the voice of a true storm, but all the sweeter for it.

  ‘The Echo’s final cry,’ Cyrion said from behind.

  Talos nodded. ‘Come. The eldar will be on us soon.’

  The two warriors walked past their downed escape pod, through the uneven remnants of the landscape left by the erosion. Marlonah kept pace as best she could, watching them hunting through the broken buildings and ruined walls, seeking an uncollapsed tunnel that would lead deeper into the labyrinth.

  After several minutes, they came across an empty Legion drop-pod, its paint seared off during descent, and its doors open in full bloom. It had shattered through a weak roof in what had once been a large domed chamber. Little else but two walls and a span of arcing ceiling remained, like the filthy ruins discovered by xeno-archaeologists on long-dead worlds. What was left of their grand fortress looked like nothing more than the remains of a dead civilisation, unearthed millennia after a great extinction.

  Marlonah heard the clicking of the two warriors conversing over their helm voxes.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ she mustered the courage to ask.

  ‘That is unwise,’ Cyrion told her. ‘If you wish to live, your best chance at survival is making the three-week journey south, towards the city we allowed to survive. If the scream was loud enough, the Imperium will come one night, and save those souls.’

  She didn’t know what any of that meant. All she knew was that there was no way she’d survive walking for three weeks with no food and no water, let alone make it through the dust storms.

  ‘Cy,’ said the other Night Lord. ‘Does it matter if she follows us?’

  ‘Fine then.’

  ‘Descend into the catacombs if you wish, human,’ said Talos. ‘Just remember that our own lives are measured in mere hours. Death will come quicker than in the desert of dust, and we cannot afford to linger with you. We have a battle to fight.’

  Marlonah tested her aching knee. The bionic was throbbing where it joined to her leg.

  ‘I can’t stay up here. Will there be places to hide?’

  ‘Of course,’ Talos replied. ‘But you’ll be blind. There’s no light where we’re going.’

  Septimus listened to the engines whining into life. Nowhere else was as comfortable for him as the very seat he now occupied – the pilot’s throne of the Thunderhawk gunship Blackened.

  Variel sat in the co-pilot’s throne, still unhelmed, staring off into the middle distance. Once in a while, he’d absently reach to run a thumb along his pale lips, lost in thought.

  ‘Septimus,’ he said, as the engines cycled live.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘What are the chances of us reaching Tsagualsa undetected?’

  The serf couldn’t even begin to guess. ‘I… know nothing about the eldar, lord, or their scanning technology.’

  Variel was clearly still distracted. ‘Blackened is small, and the void is close to infinite in scope and span. Play to those advantages. Stay close to the asteroids.’

  Septimus checked the bay doors ahead. Beyond the gunship and several stacks of what Deltrian insisted was essential equipment, there was precious little room in Epsilon K-41 Sigma Sigma A:2’s only landing bay. Even the Thunderhawk was loaded with vital supplies and relic machinery from the Hall of Reflection, denying any room for extra crew. Deltrian was less than thrilled to see it departing.

  There’d been no time to speak with Octavia. A short vox message to her private chamber was all he’d been able to arrange, and he’d barely known what to say, anyway. How best to tell her he was probably going to die down there, after all? What would reassure her that Deltrian would protect her once they reached the Great Eye?

  In the end, he’d mumbled in his usual awkward tone, in a mixed mess of Gothic and Nostraman. He tried to tell her he loved her, but even in that inspiration deserted him. It was hardly an elegant declaration of emotion.

  She’d not replied. He still didn’t even know if she’d received the message at all. Perhaps that was for the best.

  Septimus triggered the launch cycle, closing the forward gangramp. It shut beneath the cockpit with a mechanical slam.

  ‘We’re sealed and ready,’ he said.

  Variel still seemed to be paying little attention. ‘Go.’

  Septimus gripped the control levers, feeling his skin prickle as the engines shouted harder in sympathy. With a deep breath, he guided the gunship out from the confined hangar bay, and back out into the void.

  ‘Have you considered the fact you might be wrong?’ he asked the Flayer. ‘Wrong about Talos surviving, I mean.’

  The Apothecary nodded. ‘It has crossed my mind, slave. That possibility is something else that interests me.’

  Time passed in darkness, but not silence.

  Talos viewed the subterranean world through a red veil, his eye lenses piercing the lightless corridors without strain. Tactical data in tiny white runes scrolled in an endless stream down the edges of his vision. He paid no heed to any of it, beyond the healthy signals of his brothers’ life signs.

  Tsagualsa had never been home. Not in truth. Returning to walk its forgotten halls bred a certain uneasy melancholy, but nothing of sorrow, or of rage.

  The human serf hadn’t remained with them for long. They’d outpaced her limping stride in a matter of minutes, ghosting through the corridors as they tracked their brethren’s vox-signals. For a time, Talos had heard her shouting and weeping in the dark, far behind them. He saw Cyrion shiver, surely a physical reaction to her fear, and felt the acid tang of corrosive saliva on his tongue. He didn’t like to be reminded of his brother’s corruption, even as subtle and unobtrusive as it was.

  ‘She’d have been better off on the plains,’ Cyrion voxed.

  Talos didn’t reply. He led the way through the tunnels, listening to the vox-net alive with so many voices. His brothers in the other Claws were laughing, making ready, swearing oaths to bleed the eldar dry before they finally fell themselves.

  He smiled behind his faceplate, amused by all he heard. The remnants of Tenth and Eleventh Companies were on the edge of death, cornered like vermin, yet he’d never heard them sound so alive.

  Malcharion reported that he was alone, walking through the tunnels closest to the surface. When the claws protested and argued they should fight alongside him, he’d cursed them for fools and severed his vox-link.

  They found Mercutian and Uzas before the first hour fully passed. The former embraced Talos, wrist-to-wrist in greeting. The latter stood in mute inattention, breathing heavily over the vox. They could all hear Uzas licking his teeth.

  ‘The other Claws are getting ready to make their stands in similar chambers.’ Mercutian gestured to the northern and southern doorways – open now that the doors themselves had long since rotted away to memory. Talos took his brother’s point: the two entrances would make the chamber relatively easy to defend compared to many others of comparable size, while still giving them room to move. He followed Mercutian’s second gesture, indicating a crawlspace high in the western wall that had once been an access point to the maintenance ducts. ‘When they fall back, they�
��ll move through the service tunnels.’

  ‘Will we fit?’ Cyrion was checking his bolter with meticulous care. ‘They were built for servitors. When we left this place, half the ducts were too small for us.’

  ‘I’ve scouted the closest ones,’ said Mercutian. ‘There are several dead ends where we can’t make it through, but there are always alternate routes. Our only other choice is to dig through the countless collapsed tunnels.’

  Talos took in the whole chamber. It had once belonged to another company, used as a training hall. Nothing remained of the room’s former decoration. When viewed through the red wash of his eye lenses, Talos saw nothing but bleak, bare stone. The rest of the catacombs looked no different. The entire labyrinth was the same naked, hollow ruin.

  ‘Our ammunition?’

  Mercutian nodded again. ‘Already done. The servitors who came down in the other pods landed close to the claws. As for gunships, it’s less obvious which ones made it down. Our mules are down here, and safe. I’ll take you to them; they’re idling in a chamber half a kilometre to the west. With so many tunnels collapsed between here and there, it’s quicker to take the maintenance ducts.’

  ‘They made it, then,’ Cyrion said. ‘A slice of precious luck, at last.’

  ‘Many didn’t,’ Talos amended, ‘if the vox is anything to go by. But we’ve smuggled enough ammunition down here to give the eldar a thousand new funeral songs.’

  ‘Is our primary cargo intact?’ Cyrion asked.

  For once, it was Uzas who answered. ‘Oh, yes. I’m looking forward to that part.’

  As First Claw made their way in ragged, hunched formation, clattering their way down the service ducts, Talos heard the first report of battle over the vox.

  ‘This is Third Claw,’ came the voice, still coloured by laughter. ‘Brothers, the aliens have found us.’

  Septimus hunted for the right touch. Speed was of the essence, but he had to fly close to every asteroid – hugging them, staying in their shadows wherever possible, before sprinting to the next closest. Beyond that, which was easily enough to worry about already, he was careful not to push the engines too hard in case the eldar vessels now stationed in high orbit above the fortress had the capacity to detect their presence via heat signature.

  They’d only been flying for ten minutes when Variel closed his eyes, shaking his head in gentle disbelief.

  ‘We have been boarded,’ the Flayer said softly, to no one in particular. Bootsteps from behind forced Septimus to crane his neck to look over his shoulder. The gunship slowed in response to his wavering attention.

  Three of Octavia’s attendants stood by the doorway leading into the confined cockpit. He recognised Vularai at once; the others were most likely Herac and Folly, though their ragged cloaks and bandaged hands meant they could be almost anyone.

  Septimus looked back at the windshield, bringing the gunship in a slow bank around another small rock. Smaller dust particles ceaselessly rattled against the hull.

  ‘You stowed aboard before we left?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said one of the males.

  ‘Did she send you?’ Septimus asked.

  ‘We obey the mistress,’ replied the one who was probably Herac. In fairness, they all sounded similar, too. Voices didn’t always make it any easier to tell them apart.

  Variel’s unwholesome blue eyes fixed on Vularai. The attendant was wrapped in a thick cloak, and though she wore her glare-goggles, the bandaging around her face and arms was loose and hanging in places, revealing pale skin beneath.

  ‘That deception would fool a disinterested Mechanicum menial,’ Variel said, ‘but it is almost tragically comical to attempt the same with me.’

  Vularai started to unwrap her bandaging, freeing her hands. Septimus risked another glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Fly.’ Variel’s eyes were enough of a threat. ‘Focus on your duty.’

  Vularai let the wrappings fall at last, and cast aside the heavy cloak. She reached up to her face, removed the glare-goggles and checked her bandana was in place.

  ‘You’re not leaving me alone on that piece of crap ship, with that mechanical abomination,’ said Octavia. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Deltrian made his way to Octavia’s chamber in the vessel’s bulbous belly, seeking to contain any traces of irritation from manifesting in his movements or vocalisations.

  When he’d given the order to his servitor-pilots to make their way through the asteroid field, all had been well.

  When he’d calculated the best prospective location to risk entering the warp without attracting attention from eldar raiders or risking a hull breach from accidental collision during acceleration and reality dispersion, all had still been well.

  When he’d ordered the warp engines to begin opening the tear in the fabric of the material void, all had still been well.

  When he’d ordered Octavia to ready herself, and received no reply of confirmation… he encountered the first flaw in an otherwise perfect process.

  Repeated attempts to contact her elicited the same response.

  Unacceptable.

  Truly, utterly unacceptable.

  He’d ordered the vessel back into hiding, and started to make his way down to her chamber himself.

  A handful of her attendants scampered aside from his hurried advance down the corridor. That in itself would have been curious to anyone that knew the Navigator well, but Deltrian was not such a soul.

  His thin fingers overrode the lock on her bulkhead, and he stepped into the cramped chamber, standing before the cabled throne.

  ‘You,’ he said, preparing to initiate a long and accusatory tirade, centred on themes of obedience and duty, with subsidiary aspects of self-preservation to appeal to her biological fear of corporeal demise.

  Vularai sat back in Octavia’s throne with her boots up on the armrest. Without her bandaging, she was a wretched thing – anaemic flesh showed the veins underneath, swollen and black like cobwebs beneath the thinnest skin. Her eyes were watery, half-blinded by cataracts, and ringed by dark circles.

  For several seconds, Deltrian catalogued a list of visual mutations in the woman he was seeing before him. Her warp-changes seemed subtle by some standards, but the overall effect was a fascinating one: beneath her thin flesh, it was possible to see the shadow of bones, veins, muscle clusters and even the beating silhouette of her heart, moving in disharmony with her swelling, contracting lungs.

  ‘You are not Octavia,’ he vocalised.

  Vularai grinned, showing scabby gums populated by cheap iron teeth. ‘What gave it away?’

  Talos was last to enter the chamber. The prophet panned his gaze around the empty hall again, alighting at last on the only other living souls. Fifteen servitors stood in slack-jawed repose, too dead of mind to be considered truly patient. Almost all of them had their arms replaced by lifter claws or machine tools.

  First Claw moved over to the stowage crates the lobotomised slaves had hauled down into the depths.

  Talos was the first to pull something forth. He held a massive cannon in his gauntlets – a lengthy, multi-barrelled weapon rarely used by the Eighth Legion.

  With a glance at the closest servitors, he dumped the cannon back in its crate. It rested atop a ceramite breastplate, densely armoured and proudly displaying its aquila shattered with ritual care.

  ‘We don’t have long,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this started.’

  XXV

  SHADOWS

  They ghosted down the corridor, blacker than the shadows that shielded them. His eyes weren’t what they once were – relying on movement as much as shape – but he watched them draw nearer, moving in a haunting, sinuous unity he could only call alien. Alien. While the term was accurate, even as the creatures bore down on him, he felt the term lacked a certain poetry.

  He knew little about thi
s xenos breed. They burst the same as any human under the grinding hail of auto-cannon fire, which was reassuring but hardly a surprise. Watching them shatter and crumble in wet showers told him very little he didn’t already know.

  Had he been able, he’d crouch over one of their corpses, peeling the broken armour back, and learn all he needed in a feast of flesh. With the taste of blood on his lips, his enhanced physiology would infuse him with instinctive knowledge about the fallen prey. In an existence he still barely understood, the pleasure of tasting fallen foes’ lost lives was one of the things he missed most of all.

  Eldar. He admired them for their disciplined silence even as he found their bending grace repulsive. One of them, evidently unprotected by its fragile interlocking plates, burst across the left wall in a wet slap of gore and clattering armour.

  He couldn’t kill them all with the sluggish cannon that served as his arm. Several of the aliens ducked and weaved beneath his arc of fire, conjuring chainblades into their thin-fingered hands.

  The Night Lord laughed. At least, he tried to. He gagged on the pipes and wires impaling his mouth and throat, while the sound emerged as a gear-shifting grind.

  With no hope of outrunning them, he still needed to step back to brace himself. The feeling of them chopping and carving at his vulnerable joints was an unusual one – without pain, without skin, the sensation became an almost amusing dull scrape. He couldn’t make out individual figures when they were this close, but the corridor lightning-bolted with sparks from the blades chewing into his connective joints.

  ‘Enough of that,’ he grunted, and lashed down with his other fist. The servos and cable-muscles of his new body lent strength and speed beyond anything he’d known in life. The fist hammered into the stone floor, shaking the entire corridor and breeding a rain of dust from the ceiling. The alien wretch caught beneath his downswing was a pulped ruin, smeared across the ground.