Shield of Baal: Tempestus

by Braden Campbell

  ‘I’ll do no such thing,’ Ulrich said.

  Grace exhaled, well aware of the chain reaction that she was about to start. She pulled the plasma pistol from her holster and aimed it at the containment cylinder. In a blur of motion, Ulrich had his own pistol in his hand, levelled at the Canoness. Chavis drew his weapon. The Battle Sisters hoisted their bolters. The five Scions raised their lasguns.

  ‘Put down your weapon, Canoness,’ Ulrich said slowly. ‘This canister is coming back with me to Terra.’

  Grace blanched. ‘To Terra? Are you mad? That would mean the end of everything. Don’t you know what this thing is?’

  ‘Proof of a legend. And the start of a new future for me.’

  ‘No. No, I cannot allow this.’

  Just as she began to squeeze the trigger, her weapon was knocked from her hand. She blinked. The inquisitor had dashed forward and disarmed her far faster than she had ever expected. She drew her sword. Ulrich jumped to avoid the blade as it left her scabbard.

  The Canoness charged, ducking low. She slammed her entire weight into Ulrich, and sent the man tumbling. His gun clattered to the ground. He rolled, and sprang back to his feet. His own blade was out.

  The Sisters and the Scions regarded one another, and backed away. By some unspoken consensus, they formed a rough circle around their respective champions. Both the Canoness and the inquisitor were wielding power weapons, and both of them were highly skilled fighters. The matter would be settled very quickly, and with at least a semblance of honour. There was no need for them to become involved.

  Ulrich thrust at the Canoness once, twice, and a third time. She managed to parry the first two attacks, but the final one got past her. He lunged and then withdrew. For a second, she wasn’t sure that she’d been wounded at all. But as he danced backwards, sword held straight out before him, Grace could see blood dripping from his blade. She hadn’t even felt it bypass her armour and its blessed wards.

  Grace swung at Ulrich again, hoping to lop off his legs. Instead, her blade edge stopped millimetres away from his flesh, and bounced away. There was a slight rippling around the area, like sunlight playing over water.

  Grace scowled at his use of a personal force field. ‘A bit dishonest of you to use a refractor in a duel,’ she said.

  Ulrich shrugged, and charged forward. He and Grace collided again in a flurry of slashes and parries. Sparks flew as their weapons touched. Then they were apart once again, surveying one another coldly.

  The Canoness was panting, which she thought odd. She was in excellent shape for a woman of her age. She glanced down at herself to see that Ulrich had rent her armour just below her collar bone. She snarled.

  Ulrich, for his part, shot the Canoness a look of pure, undiluted hatred, and then toppled to the ground. His chestplate was slashed clean through from left to right, and blood began to gush through the rent. He gave a grunt of disbelief, dropped his sword, and clasped both hands over the wound.

  Grace sheathed her sword, and went to collect his pistol from where it had fallen.

  ‘Scions,’ Ulrich croaked, ‘kill them.’

  Grace froze, kneeling over her gun with hand outstretched. Slowly, she lifted her face.

  Across the landing field, the people pressed against the fence screamed and tried to scatter. A groundcar ploughed through them at top speed, sending bodies flying, and smashed its way through the gate. The Scions recognised its make. It was exactly like the ones they had encountered earlier in the day.

  The car barrelled straight towards them. Without a word, the Scions and the Sisters turned their weapons on it. Sister Fayhew’s heavy bolter spat out round after fist-sized round. Erdon’s volley gun tore three of the passengers apart. Superior Cairista and Sister Paniece, the newly-promoted bearer of the flame, covered it with gouts of promethium flame. Within seconds, the car crumpled under the combined firepower and exploded. Flaming pieces of metal radiated outwards.

  Through the collapsed gate, a wave of bodies began to pour onto the field. Grace saw that many of them were dressed in the blue robes and modified diving gear of the Shelsist cult.

  Grace picked up her pistol. ‘Sisters, kill the heretics!’ She glanced back at Chavis.

  ‘Scions,’ he shouted. ‘Autonomous fire! Push them back!’

  Erdon and the others rushed forward, firing their lasguns. They were joined by the Battle Sisters, who advanced on the breach with a storm of bolter fire. Yet the cultists did not break or flee. They flew apart and crumpled and turned to ashes, but onward they came, pouring through the breach. Their resolve was insane.

  Two more of the disgraced governor’s groundcars came flying through the collapsed gate. They skidded to a halt, and from each of them, eight figures leapt out. They might have once been human, but they were obviously no longer so. Some of them had hands that were tipped with elongated claws. Others had an additional set of arms sprouting from their ribcages. Their skin all showed varying degrees of mutation, and all of it appeared aquatic in nature: scales, shells, and tentacles covered them in haphazard places. They began to sprint forward.

  Grace’s sword was in her hand, still stained with the inquisitor’s blood. Las-fire and bolts flew all around her, glass and flaming debris crunched beneath her heeled boots.

  The mutants came at her with their claws bared. With rapid swipes, they cut at her face and chest. She lopped the head off of one of them, and impaled a second one through the centre of his chest. They attempted to surround her, so that she couldn’t hope to stop them all, and pounced. Grace kicked and shoved at them. Something struck her on the top of her head and opened a wide gash. She flipped her sword around and thrust it into the soft belly of someone behind her.

  There were too many of them, she realised, and their awful, hybrid nature made them faster than she. She calmly accepted the possibility that this was going to be her final fight. Then, through the blood that smeared her face, she could see that the Scions had joined her. The six of them fought with powerful, exacting moves, blocking the attacks of the mutants until they spied an opening that they could exploit. They kicked, and stamped, and used the bulk of their firearms to bash in skulls. It was a style of fighting completely different from any the Sororitas used, but in that moment, Grace was thankful for it.

  From the sky came a deafening screech. A fireball plunged down from the heavens and impacted the hab-crawler very near to the landing field. The plates beneath their feet shook with the impact.

  ‘Meteor,’ Chavis yelled.

  The Canoness shook her head. ‘Those are no mere rocks. They’re a sign. Something terrible is about to come upon us.’

  As if to illustrate her point, another dark object slammed into the Taurox with a terrible velocity. The transport crumpled and detonated. The shockwave knocked everyone from their feet. Fire and smoke obscured everything.

  The object in the centre of the flames cracked along one side. Thick mucus gushed out, bubbling in the heat. Another crack appeared. One entire side of the massive egg-shape gave way, and a dozen alien shapes spilled out onto the field. Through the burning haze, Chavis saw that the Canoness was correct. The things falling from the sky were hollow pods, not solid hunks of rock. The things inside were half as tall as a man, with long tails and scythe-like talons in place of hands. Their heads were bulbous, with tooth-crammed, oversized mouths. Armour plates covered their backs. They stretched their jaws wide, and made guttural, utterly inhuman noises.

  A group of twenty or more Shelsists seemed to catch their glinting black eyes. The creatures darted off towards the cultists, leaping up to slash them with their bony, bladed front limbs. Compared to their attackers, the Shelsists reacted with glacial slowness. Their spears and tridents were knocked aside with ease. The creatures pounced on them, knocking them to the ground with a combination of speed and body weight. Then they hacked the Shelsists to pieces and rabidly began to eat the remains.

  The roar of turbines drowned out the world as the lander’s engines began
to cycle up. Grace and Chavis simultaneously looked at the place where the inquisitor had been lying. He was gone, along with the canister. The engine bells began to glow. They had only moments before the lander lifted itself skywards, and they were all vaporised by its rocket exhaust.

  ‘Get up!’ Chavis yelled. ‘All of you, on your feet.’

  Grace pointed to the control tower. Several of the Sisters nodded and stumbled towards it. Chavis helped Erdon and Devries, and the three of them ran for the control tower doorway.

  Everywhere was madness. The Shelsists continued to pour through the fence. They fired harpoons and spears at the lander. Another meteor impacted near the hab-crawler, destroying one of its treads. The entire community shuddered and ground to a halt. Steam pipes and fuel lines burst, spewing geysers of fire and water into the air.

  The Scions and Sisters scrambled into the control tower. Chavis slammed the heavy blast door shut. The space was small and cramped. A staircase spiralled upwards. Outside, the Shelsists were being torn to ribbons by the scythe-limbed monstrosities.

  Seconds later, the lander’s engines ignited and bathed the field with super-heated clouds.

  They made their way up the stairs. At the top of the tower was a circular control room. A single door led out onto the roof of an adjacent building. Chavis and the Canoness ran out through it. The landing field below them was littered with corpses and smouldering craters. The scythe-limbed aliens were nothing now but blackened husks. At the gate, a fresh wave of Shelse’s followers began running towards the control tower door.

  In the sky above, the lander continued to rise on a plume of rocket exhaust, taking the inquisitor with it.

  The Sisters and the Scions joined their respective leaders. All around them, their enemies’ numbers grew and grew. The small rooftop was becoming an island inundated by a murderous sea.

  ‘What are your orders, Canoness?’ Chavis said.

  Grace touched her forehead, her chest, and hilt of her sword. The Sororitas mirrored her.

  ‘We fight, of course,’ Grace said.

  Chavis nodded grimly and pointed down at the mass of cultists, mutants, and renegade soldiers. ‘Scions,’ he shouted, ‘directed firestorm sanctioned!’

  Grace raised her blade above her head. ‘Emperor, grant ascension! Sisters, strike them down!’

  Together they attacked the horde before them with las-fire and bolt, while all across the hab-crawler, meteor pods continued to impact, crack open and vomit out their murderous cargo into the streets and buildings.

  Coda

  The canister had been a considerable load for two Tempestus Scions to carry between them. It was nearly impossible for Damien Ulrich. The exertion of dragging it up the lander’s boarding ramp was causing him to bleed out, he knew. His wounds were covering everything with a slick film of blood. His vision began to swim. Still, he refused to give up; not when victory was close at hand.

  At last he managed to reach the top of the ramp. He slammed his fist into the door controls, and staggered to the cockpit as the ramp slowly closed behind him. He sat down heavily in the pilot’s chair, activated the launch sequence, and then reached under the control board. It took him two tries to open the emergency medi-pack. As the engines began to come to life, he grasped a thick hypodermic injector, squeezed his eyes shut, and stabbed himself in the stomach with it.

  The elixir within the syringe flowed into his wounds like liquid fire. He pushed his head back into the seat’s deep cushions and gasped with pain. Outside, the lander’s engines ignited. The landing field was consumed in clouds of burning gas. The lander shook violently all around him.

  Something clipped the lander as it rose into the air, sending it spinning wildly. Ulrich’s eyes shot open, and for a moment his agony was forgotten. He grasped the controls and steadied the craft.

  Outside the viewports, the skies of Lysios were choked with dark, misshapen objects. They rained down surrounded by wreaths of fire, and impacted on the surface below. Ulrich knew exactly what they were. He was of the Ordo Xenos, after all.

  The atmosphere outside began to thin from blue to black. Ulrich put his head back again, and gave a weak laugh.

  ‘The Shattered World,’ he said aloud, knowing now what the Emperor’s Tarot had been trying to tell him.

  As the pain began to abate, exhaustion took over. Well, no matter, he thought. Very soon, he would dock with the ship that had brought him here, and he could relax all the way back to Terra. His chin sank down to this chest. He did not hear the tentacle banging against the inside of the containment cylinder, nor did he hear it smash its way free. He was too busy dreaming of the fine reception that would no doubt await him upon his return, and of the rewards he was sure to reap.

  About the Author

  Braden Campbell is the author of Shadowsun: The Last of Kiru’s Line for Black Library, as well as several short stories featuring the dark eldar. He is a classical actor and playwright, and a freelance writer, particularly in the field of role playing games. Braden has enjoyed Warhammer 40,000 for nearly a decade, and remains fiercely dedicated to his dark eldar.

  The elite soldiers of the Militarum Tempestus undertake a daring rescue, far behind enemy lines.

  For Holly, who misses me whenever I vanish into the grim darkness of the far future.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Great Britain in 2014.

  This edition published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Cover illustration by Kai Lim of Imaginary Friends Studio.

  © Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.

  Black Library, the Black Library logo, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy logo, The Horus Heresy eye device, Space Marine Battles, the Space Marine Battles logo, Warhammer 40,000, the Warhammer 40,000 logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated brands, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, ™ and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2014, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world.

  All rights reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78251-668-2

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  See Black Library on the internet at

  blacklibrary.com

  Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

  games-workshop.com

  eBook license

  This license is made between:

  Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

  (2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

  (jointly, “the parties”)

  These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

  * 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

  o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

  o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

  * 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you ar
e ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

  * 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

  o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

  o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

  * 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

  * 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

  * 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

  * 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.