Shadow Captain - David Annandale

by Warhammer 40K

  Passavan looked back at the church. He frowned and stopped walking.

  ‘You think it might be under that?’ Alathannas asked. The irony would be disturbing.

  ‘No. I thought I saw…’ His eyes moved over the wings of the eagle. That seemed to satisfy him. ‘I’m wrong,’ he said and moved on.

  Alathannas scrutinised the face of the church. He trusted Passavan’s skills. He also valued his own. He looked for movement, or an anomalous shadow. But no, the farseer was right. There was nothing there. He scanned for another minute before he was certain, then walked after the others. He stopped just as he caught up and looked again.

  There was only the night, pooling around the doorways.

  The night watched the eldar continue north away from the cathedral. Krevaan remained as motionless as the stones around him until the trio were almost out of sight. Then he spoke softly into his vox-bead. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Several other small groups are roaming the streets.’ Techmarine Thaene had taken up a position on the roof of one of the tallest habs in the south-central zone of Reclamation. He and Krevaan had approached directly from Eighth Company’s encampment. There was a delicious edge to the challenge of going so deeply into the shadows that even the eldar could not see them. Thaene did not venture far into Reclamation, as Krevaan needed his eyes from the commanding heights of the tower. From there, the Techmarine had a view of the square where the eldar had established their base, and a good perspective on the central avenues.

  Krevaan wanted to be closer. He had spotted Alathannas and his companions heading towards the cathedral. He had chosen his post in the recesses of the portico and waited. His Deathwatch years had left him with some knowledge of the eldar tongue. It was not enough for him to follow the conversation as the trio paused in the intersection. He was able to pick up some fragments, though. They were searching for something. That much he gathered. He noticed the way the leader was examining the buildings as they left.

  He asked Thaene, ‘Are the groups on patrol?’

  ‘No, Shadow Captain. I have used high magnification to look at the ones that passed the closest to my position. They appear to be very interested in the foundations of the buildings.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Krevaan said. He was grateful. Thaene’s observations dovetailed with his own. There was a pattern now to the eldar behaviour. Why the foundations?

  We must protect the city.

  The foundations of Reclamation were older than what was built upon them.

  Which city are you protecting? Krevaan wondered. Answers blossomed before him. They were dark ones, but they explained much. If an eldar city had once stood here, it made more sense that the Saim-Hann had been so desperate to preserve it.

  More sense? No, that wasn’t quite true. Less irrational? Yes, that was closer to the mark. He could understand the location having an importance to the xenos. But their willingness to lay down their lives for something that had long since been erased almost completely from the face of Lepidus was still not explained. Their search was not for traces of the city itself. They were looking for something contained within the city. Whatever this prize was, it was worth any sacrifice. And if eldar lives were less important than this goal, what of the humans who now lived here?

  That answer was easy. They were less than nothing.

  Krevaan felt no outrage. If Reclamation had to burn in order to defeat the orks, then it would burn. He would take no pleasure in such an event, though, and he would seek to avoid it. What was impermissible was that the eldar harm the subjects of the Emperor in the pursuit of their own ends. The treachery of their race was rising to the surface, as he had known it would.

  Thaene must have reached some of the same conclusions. He voxed, ‘Will we be attacking them?’

  ‘Not until we have dealt with the orks. The eldar will still be useful in that endeavour. But we should make some preparations for afterwards. How populated is the camp?’

  He waited while Thaene carried out more observations.

  ‘Very few of the eldar remain. A skeleton guard.’

  Either they were not expecting an attack, or they were arrogant in their estimation of their capacity to spot an enemy’s approach. Krevaan was not surprised. The eldar seemed unable to grasp the ability of the Raven Guard to wraith-slip. They looked at the power armour, and saw only juggernauts. Good.

  ‘Any likely targets?’ he asked Thaene.

  ‘Many. The vehicles are on the outer perimeter of the camp.’

  Of course. For rapid deployment. That would make his task easier.

  Krevaan debated following Alathannas. He decided against it. As shadow-cloaked as he had been, both the ranger and the psyker had become aware of something. He would not tempt fate. The longer the eldar did not think that he was actively moving against them, the better. Their cooperation was still useful, and their actions would be more revealing if they believed themselves unobserved by any eyes that mattered. Better not to give them the chance of suspicion. Whatever they were seeking, they did not know where to find it.

  ‘Meet me at the tower base,’ he told Thaene. ‘Have the equipment ready.’

  Krevaan made his way back to the Techmarine’s position with the same care that he had used in reaching the cathedral. The eldar search parties were not in this sector, as far as he and Thaene knew. Krevaan assumed that they didn’t know enough. He anticipated the enemy’s gaze at every step. He factored in the chance looks of mortals at their windows. He was hidden, a massive shadow among shadows, a heavily armoured silence moving in on prey. No matter how circuitous his route, he would complete his hunt.

  Dawn was still an hour away when he reached the hab-tower. The night pressed down on Reclamation with the full weight of the siege to come. Thaene stood against the façade, in the dark between two of the street’s lumen globes. He was holding the melta bombs. Krevaan examined them. ‘Near the engines of the skimmers,’ he said.

  ‘That is correct, Shadow Captain. Inside would be best.’

  ‘But any location where they are unlikely to be discovered, at any rate. There is no chance of their being triggered accidentally?’

  Thaene shook his head. ‘The detonators will not function unless they receive the signal that I send them.’

  ‘Good.’

  He did ask himself, as the flow of shadows took him towards the eldar encampment, if there was any situation that would not result in his ordering Thaene to set off the bombs. He didn’t think there was. If the eldar betrayed the Raven Guard during battle with the orks, he would kill them and their vehicles. If they remained trustworthy to the end of the war, there was still the question of Reclamation. The eldar wanted something here. Victory against the orks would change nothing. The Saim-Hann would have to be expelled by force. This was the simple truth of the matter.

  Krevaan found it interesting, all the same, that he even considered the question. The extermination of the xenos had been a given in the Deathwatch. He wondered why he engaged in this speculation at all.

  Because you can, he thought. Because the orders come from you, not the Inquisition. He had the luxury of acting with the full knowledge of why the actions were called for, and what purpose they served. He was proud of his achievements, now over two centuries in the past, in the Deathwatch. He had been less enamoured of how the true purpose of the missions had often been shrouded from his vision. He understood the motivation behind the secrecy. He understood its utility. He had chafed at being subject to it. Now he made use of it. He wielded it as he would any other weapon.

  He reached the square. Crouching in the darkness cast by the squat hab-block, he was only a few metres from the perimeter of eldar vehicles. He slowed his breathing and heartbeats. He became the thing that the eye passed over as it moved between points of interest. He watched the movements of the eldar.

  They had patrols along the edge of the ca
mp. There were few guards, but the timing of their circuits was complex. They didn’t appear to move at a constant speed. It was difficult to predict when he would fall in a blind spot. The minutes to dawn fell away. He was patient, unhurried. There was time. He would not need long.

  When the moment came, he was moving even before his conscious mind noted the opportunity. He crossed the open space, slipping between the overlapping gazes of the guards. He reached the vehicles, staying low and motionless before the Vyper. He waited for the next opportunity, then moved along the skimmer’s nose and fixed a melta bomb to the underside of the fuselage, where it joined the short, angular wings.

  Stillness again. Then a shift among shadows. A bomb attached beneath the engine of a jetbike. He repeated the pattern. He was never where the eldar looked. He was engaged in a duel that he would lose if his opponent ever realised that battle was engaged. He respected the eldar’s perception.

  And he thwarted it.

  The operation took an hour. The sky was lightening as he headed back to meet Thaene. The tide of darkness was receding. It was still more than deep enough. He did more than evade the eldar’s sight. He smashed its power. When he rejoined the Techmarine, he completed an act of war that would not be known until he chose. The shadows had planted a gladius in the heart of the eldar. He had killed them. He would let them sustain their illusion of life only for as long as it suited him to do so.

  As they headed back to Eighth Company’s base, Thaene asked, ‘Is there any chance we will not use what you have prepared?’

  That question again. No, Krevaan started to say. He changed his mind. ‘If the eldar prove trustworthy, you will not have to send that signal.’

  ‘No chance, then,’ Thaene said.

  A thought crossed Krevaan’s mind. It was close to being a doubt. Was he setting impossible conditions? Was it possible that he was acting dishonourably?

  Before he could answer himself or the Techmarine, Caeligus’s voice came over the vox. His tone was urgent. The background noise was chaotic.

  Then it resolved into the roar of a gigantic engine. And that was much worse.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Travelling in sustained bursts from the jump packs, Caeligus had led his battle-brothers on a wide sweep. They were the squad furthest out from the base, sent dozens of kilometres to the east of Reclamation. Reaching the reconnaissance point assigned, learning the details of the landscape but finding no enemy, Caeligus pushed north as hard as he could. He didn’t expect to intercept the orks. He assumed that they would turn in towards Reclamation at the first opportunity.

  He was frustrated by the position Krevaan had designated for his squad. His hope was to catch sight of the orks during one of the jumps. He accepted that he would not be among the first to engage, but he wanted his knowledge of the greenskins’ position to be first-hand. It was a point of pride, not of necessity. He admitted this to himself. Though he said nothing to the others, their grim drive told him they felt the same. The engagement against the orks at the Reclamation bridge had been unsatisfying. It had felt too much like what it was: fighting in defence of the eldar. Now, though, the true war of extermination could begin.

  He saw a light to the north. It was an intermittent glow.

  ‘That can’t be them,’ Vaanis said. ‘Why would the greenskins travel that far out of their road?’

  ‘That isn’t sunrise,’ Caeligus said. ‘And it isn’t natural. So it’s either the orks or the eldar.’

  The squad had already travelled much further than Caeligus had anticipated. The glow was more distant yet. It made no sense that the orks had headed in that direction. It therefore makes perfect sense, given these orks, he thought. Even if he was wrong, ignoring this event would be a mistake. Orks or eldar, I see enemy activity. ‘That is our destination,’ he said.

  ‘Should we report in?’ Havren asked.

  ‘When we have something definite to report,’ Caeligus told him. Unlikely as it seemed, if the lights were the result of a freak planetary feature, he would risk deviating the war effort from its proper course.

  He would also risk humiliation.

  They arced towards the light. With each flight, the glow sharpened. Caeligus began to distinguish individual beams. He could hear the sound of engines. Then they picked up the tracks of the ork passage. The terrain was chewed up in a swath. But not a wide one. The main body of the ork army had not come this way.

  Caeligus swallowed his rage. A portion of the enemy was ahead. The activity had to be investigated.

  The squad was still several minutes away from the ork position when a formation of eldar jetbikes flew towards the lights. Caeligus cursed.

  A few leaps away, the scene ahead began to take form. It was no less confusing. There was a building that looked like a crude hangar. It was huge. It had been covered with earth, camouflaging it from any distant onlookers. A large party of orks surrounded it, their guns facing out.

  The eldar were conducting hit-and-run attacks. The greenskins were laying down forbidding barrages of shells and bullets, but they had no tanks. One jetbike burned. The ork casualties were mounting quickly, though they had the resources to hold out for some time yet.

  The squad came within range. Caeligus called a halt on a small hill just beyond the range of the orks’ rifles. The brutes hadn’t noticed them yet. They were focused on the eldar. The sounds of industry came from inside the hangar. There was also a heavy, continuous, beating roar. An engine? Caeligus wondered. If so, it was colossal.

  The sky was shifting from black to grey. In the growing light, Caeligus realised just how blasted the land here was. The orks had been on Lepidus longer than anyone had thought. Long enough to have built this hangar. Caeligus thought, at first, that this was the point to which the greenskins had been teleporting their battlewagons from the moon. Then he realised that in that case, there would have been no reason for them to attack Reclamation from the west. This was something else, perhaps originally intended to provide reinforcements, thereby trapping the city in a pincer assault.

  ‘The orks are looking outward,’ he said. ‘We will use that distraction.’ He pointed. ‘We land before the doors. We will destroy what the greenskins wish to protect.’

  They made the jump. They came down hard, bolters already firing. The orks nearest the hangar doors died without knowing what was striking them. The next ones spun in confusion. Half of Squad Caeligus tore into them, spreading an arc of death outward from the building. The orks’ fire lost all coherence as they tried to respond to eldar and Space Marines at the same time. While Havren and his brothers waded into the enemy, Caeligus and the others provided cover for Vaanis as he set demolition charges on the doors. On the other side of the iron wall, the rumble and whine of the enormous engine intensified. The sound felt loud enough to shatter bone.

  The details of the cacophony were hard to sort. Even so, Caeligus realised something had changed. The sounds of construction had ceased. They were replaced by a rhythm. It was slow at first, the heartbeat of a huge machine. Within seconds, it accelerated.

  It was easily recognisable. It was also impossible. It was too big.

  Vaanis turned his head to look back at Caeligus. ‘Brother-sergeant…’ he began. He knew. They all did.

  ‘Move!’ Caeligus roared.

  The locomotive smashed though the hangar doors. The iron barrier disintegrated. Metal shards flew like sleet. Vaanis was smashed against the front. It bore the shape of immense clamped jaws, and the machine leapt forward with such speed that the impact held the Raven Guard’s body against the lower fangs for a few seconds before he fell. Treads ten metres long crushed him, hundreds of tonnes of mass smashing ceramite like an eggshell, smearing his genhanced flesh across the ground.

  Caeligus used an emergency burst from his jump pack to hurl himself up, back, and to the side. So did the rest of the squad. Reflexes and speed were not e
nough. Three others were knocked down by the juggernaut’s charge. Brother Cyok rose above the height of the cab, only to come into the line of fire of the enormous gun mounted on the rear car. It fired. Cyok vanished. The shell lit up the dawn with a streak of flame. When it reached the ground, kilometres ahead, it struck with the force of a meteor.

  The side of the engine clipped Caeligus. It knocked his flight out of true, and he slammed into the ground at a steep angle. He launched himself back into the air immediately, shaking off the stun in mid-flight. He landed fifty metres away, then turned to fight the new enemy.

  The land train was a colossus. The locomotive alone was several times larger than the battlewagons. It pulled four cars that were almost as huge. The lower half of each appeared to be troop compartments. The top half held turrets and rocket pods. Engine and cars bristled with so many guns, they looked like clusters of spines on a living animal. Running on treads constructed of metal so thick that it seemed the cars were solid all the way through, the train should have advanced at a tectonic crawl. But its engine was so overpowered that the monster tore up the earth with the eagerness of a hunting saurian. The orks on the ground shouted their joy as their great machine was unleashed. Many of them did not move from its path in time. They were pulped in their turn. The celebration only grew more frenzied.

  The train’s sudden emergence placed it in the path of two of the eldar jetbikes. Their drivers tried to evade. They veered hard to the left and the right. They might as well have tried to avoid a moving mountain chain. The Saim-Hann worship of speed turned them into burnt offerings. The skimmers became fireballs as they collided with the monster.

  On top of the locomotive, towards the front, was the clear blister of a canopy. In it, a single ork surveyed its works, and exulted.

  ‘Raven Guard!’ Caeligus called over the vox. ‘Strike the engineer!’ As he began his descent, he opened the company channel. ‘The orks have a land train,’ he warned. ‘North-north-east of Reclamation.’ He fired a long burst of shells at the canopy. ‘The eldar…’ he began, but trailed off when he saw the look on the ork’s face. The brute was a big specimen, bent over by a giant, flashing collection of coils on its back. It looked up at the Raven Guard assault squad coming at it from all angles. Still twenty metres out, Caeligus could see the monster grinning.