by Marc
Sven swiftly weighed things up in his racing mind. He could stay here and die – or he could save the sergeant’s gene-seed, himself and another Space Marine. The balance had already been tipped; there was no choice.
‘Goodbye.’ he said, rushing towards the last beacon, the one belonging to the boarding torpedo.
‘Farewell, landsman.’ he heard Egil say. ‘I’ll show you what makes a true Space Wolf.’
EGIL HOWLED HIS laughter and fired again. He leapt to his feet and pumped the trigger of his pistol, blasting shots wildly at the tyranids. Their advance halted in the face of the withering fire. The Space Wolf scout unclipped a grenade and lobbed it at them. They ducked back behind a sphincter-door. The grenade exploded against it. The door buckled but didn’t give.
Suddenly it was quiet. Egil risked a glance back over his shoulder towards where Sven and Gunnar had vanished. Briefly he considered following them. Yet he couldn’t guarantee that the tyranids wouldn’t follow him and overtake him. Better to keep them pinned down.
He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. The tyranids had circled round and entered the chamber from the other side. Good, Egil thought, feeling the killing rage build within him. More enemies to take to Hell with him.
The tyranids rushed at him. He swung his pistol round but a blast from an organic gun tore into his arm, ripping the bolter from his grasp and shredding his flesh to the bone. He fought to keep from blacking out as unquenchable agony seared him. He gripped his knife tight and howled with rage. He lurched to his feet and ran towards them.
‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!’ he shouted, blood-specked froth staining his lips. The last thing he saw was the monster take careful, direct aim at him. He pulled back his knife to throw.
THE SOUND OF fighting stopped. Sven bundled Gunnar into the torpedo, slammed the hatch shut and hit the control icon.
As the alien craft shrank smaller and smaller in the flickering green view-screen, Sven commended Egil’s soul to the Emperor. He noticed that Gunnar was weeping. Whether it was from sorrow or relief, Sven could not tell.
HAUPTMAN WATCHED AS the plasma-bombs raked the tyranid craft from end to end. Within scant moments the organic ship was utterly destroyed. As Hauptman stared in rapt fascination, the solar wings so recently unfurled tore off and drifted into space. The men in the Spiritus Sanctis turrets used them for target practice. He saw the look of satisfaction on Sven’s face as he watched the alien artefact being cleansed.
‘Well.’ he said. ‘I think that ends that.’
‘I think not.’ Chandara the astropath said from next to the pair of them, pale faced and drawn. ‘Before it died, it sent out a signal of enormous psychic power. It was tightly focused in the direction of the Magellanic Cloud but it was so powerful that I picked up its overspill.
‘It was a signal, shipmaster. It was summoning something. Something big.’
An appalled hush fell over the steering chapel of the Spiritus Sancti.
Sven looked down at the gene-seed in his hand. He swore to be worthy of his dead comrades. If war with the tyranids was coming, he was ready to fight.
SUFFER NOT THE ALIEN TO LIVE
HELLBREAK
Ben Counter
‘YOU WILL NEVER know, scum.’ the mechanically translated voice hissed in Commissar von Klas’s ear, ‘just how lucky you are!’
An unseen hand thrust him up the last few stairs, out of the darkness and into the searing glare of the arena. He stumbled in the sudden light and slipped, hitting the coarse sand face-first, scouring a layer of skin off his cheek. From all around him there rose a cackling cheer. He looked up and a terror shot through him that his training couldn’t banish.
An area the size of a landing field spread out before him, its sandy floor streaked with crescents of maroon that could only be the bloody traces of those who had come before him. Around the edge of the arena was a ring of spikes as tall as a man, with a head impaled on each tip. There were heads of men and orks, the long slender faces of eldar, the twisted alien features of a hundred different species.
Beyond them, the amphitheatre rose, huge and dark, forged of black iron into forms which seemed to have been pulled, fully formed, from a madman’s imagination. Wicked spikes and curving galleries formed the mouths of leering faces; immense claws of iron held up the private boxes of the elite. The whole edifice rose to join the myriad black pinnacles and spires of Commorragh which speared upwards, a mockery of beauty, to puncture a sky the colour of a wound gone bad.
That was not the worst of it. As von Klas hauled himself to his feet, feeling his muscles complaining with the sudden release from the steel bonds which had held them for so long, he felt their eyes upon him, and he heard their laughter. The audience of eldar renegades, many hundreds of thousands strong, sat in great serried ranks, their pale alien faces shining like lanterns against the purples and blacks of their clothing. Silver blades gleamed everywhere, and he could hear them talking to one another in low voices – perhaps wagering on whether he would live or die, or just mocking a man who didn’t know he was dead yet. In the prime position, right at the edge of the arena, sat a great dignitary, with a face that even from this distance yon Klas could tell was as long and cruel as any he had ever seen. His purple robe only half-concealed ceremonial armour with great crescent-shaped shoulder guards. The dignitary was surrounded by a bodyguard who stood stone-still and carried spears tipped wim bright silver blades, and any number of hangers-on and courtiers lounged nearby.
Von Klas had barely time to take all this in when the dignitary raised one slender hand to the crowd, who screamed their approval with a deafening rising screech. Von Klas looked around him to see what had just been signalled – but he was alone in the vast arena. The doorway through which he had been pitched had sunk back into the sand behind him.
Something flickered in the corner of his eye. In the time it took him to turn and face it, it had got much closer. As a storm of thoughts and fears rushed through his commissar’s mind, his old, trained instincts took over and he tensed his aching muscles for the fight.
THE HUMAN HAD maybe a second and a half to see the wych as she back-flipped and cartwheeled her way across the sand towards him. She wore armour only to display her body, which was lithe and supple to an extent which no human could match. Her long red-black hair flowed out in a stormy trail behind her as she moved, along with the glistening metallic net that she held in one hand. In the other, twirling like a rotor blade, was a halberd, as long as she was tall and tipped with a broad, wickedly curved blade.
In his luxuriously fitted box at the front of the audience, the eldar who had signalled, Archon Kypselon, leaned across to Yae, who reclined next to him, her long, slim body draped over the seat, showing off her snakelike muscles. The leader of the Cult of Rage, Kypselon’s most valuable ally, Yae looked every bit as formidable as her reputation, her dark hair braided with lengths of silver chain and her glassy, emerald eyes enough to intimidate any lesser eldar into submission.
‘I hear this is one of the finest of your wyches.’ he said off-handedly. ‘Rather wasted on a single creature.’
‘Perhaps, my archon.’ she replied. ‘But I hear it is one of their ruling class. It might provide some sport. They can breed them remarkably tough.’
Out in the arena, the human turned, holding its body low and hands high preparing for the wych’s first strike. Through the blur of violent motion it would just be able to make out her face, twisted with exertion and hate, her eyes burning with the sacred narcotics which coursed joyfully through her veins. The delicately pointed eldar ears and large eyes would do nothing to offset the base savagery.
‘I hope she is as fine as they say.’ Kypselon continued. ‘The Kabal of the Broken Spine needs fine warriors. There are others who would take away the authority that I have earned.’
‘You know the Cult of Rage is with you.’ Yae smiled. ‘Power and wisdom such as yours is enough to secure our loyalty.’
Kypselon smirked indulgently. He had been around long enough to know such words were nothing more than a cipher on Commorragh – he had seen enough eldar die by treachery, his included, to know that. But Yae’s wyches were truly vital to him. Uergax and the Kabal of the Blade’s Edge were threatening to shatter the delicate savagery of his territory. But those were matters for his court. He tried to concentrate on the entertainment at hand; it had, after all, been put on specifically for him. Such honour was really born of fear, of course, but on Commorragh fear and honour were much the same thing.
The wych let out a piercing shriek of pleasure and rage as she whipped the halberd back over her shoulder, leaping high into the air and preparing to bring the blade down on the human in a shining arc.
Yae gave a sudden, sharp gasp of excitement, like a child, sitting up with a glint of rapture in her eyes. Kypselon smiled – an old eldar like him could still appreciate the simple pleasures. A dead human was a pleasure indeed.
The man drove one foot into the arena’s sand and thrust himself sideways, away from the shimmering blur of the wych’s limbs, just as her blade scythed down in a silver-white blur past his face. Anyone else would have lost their balance and pitched into the bloodsoaked sand, but the wych somersaulted elegantly, landing on her feet and turning on a heel to face her quarry. But the human was ready too, and quicker than most men could, it drove the palm of one hand into the wych’s face, snapping her head back, splitting her nose open in a vermilion spray.
There was a dark, displeased hiss from the galleries. Kypselon heard low obscenities muttered around him. Yae stood up, her eyes still shining with glee – for a true wych loves combat whoever wins. But the rest of the audience were not so happy.
The wych in the arena rolled onto her front in a heartbeat, ready to rise and face the upstart human, but he stamped a booted foot into the small of her back, pinning her to the ground.
‘Kill it!’ yelled an incensed spectator. ‘Kill the animal!’
A hundred other voices joined in, rising to a roar – that became a cheer as the wych caught one of the man’s legs with her own and tipped him sprawling on his back. She sprang up for the kill, her net forgotten, ready to swipe off his head with her halberd.
The audience noticed before she did: she was no longer holding the weapon. Her opponent was. Before she had time to respond, he drove the blade towards her. She held up the net in front of her neck and face, knowing its metallic strands would parry the blow and keep her head on her shoulders.
But the human was not aiming for her neck, for it did not care for the elegant decapitation that was the most graceful of murders. Instead, the blade went right through her stomach and out between the wych’s shoulders. As her lifeblood gouted upwards, she looked unutterably surprised, still coming to realise that her weapon had been stolen.
The man drew out the blade and pulled himself to his feet. The wych slumped to the ground, amidst a growing crimson stain upon the sand.
The yells from the audience became a wordless howl of rage that rang violently around the amphitheatre. Yae was still on her feet, breathing in sharp, shallow gasps, her eyes wide.
Kypselon rose to stand at her side.
‘Never fear.’ he whispered to her under the din, ‘This is as grave an insult to me as it is to you. I shall have the human given to the haemonculi. Then I shall deliver the skin to you once I am sure it can take no more pain.’
Yae did not answer. Her eyes burned and a snarl grew on her face. With a silent gesture, Kypselon ordered his black-armoured bodyguards to fetch the man and remove the body of the wych.
Seeing the dark eldar approaching, the man dropped the wych’s halberd, perhaps expecting a quick despatch as a reward for his victory. The crowd continue to howl its derision as one of the warriors knocked him unconscious with the butt of his spear, and the body was dragged away to a fate that it could never have imagined.
It was always the same with aliens, Kypselon reflected. They are simply too stupid to realise when they would be better off dead.
THE ROOM WAS mercilessly lit by a bright glowing ceiling. Two of the alien warriors stood guard at the back wall. The floor was of bare metal, sloping towards a drain in the centre through which his bodily fluids were supposed to drain away. The walls were hung with skins, complete human pelts, presumably the finest of those taken by the torturer over the years. Tattoos had been favoured, and von Klas could recognise the regimental insignia and devotional verses inscribed on the skins: Catachan, Stratix, Jurn, even his own Hydraphur. The words of the Ecclesiarchy in intricate script. Primitive tribal scars. Even a green-brown ork hide with kill tallies gouged into the chest.
He looked down at himself. He was not bound. Presumably they thought the fear alone would keep him here. They were probably right.
‘I won’t die.’ von Klas said aloud, every word like a hammer blow to his aching head. ‘I’m a difficult man to kill.’
The warriors said nothing. The door between them opened with a hiss, and the torturer shuffled in. Von Klas had heard rumours about the torture artists of the renegade eldar, but it was only now that he started to believe them.
The eldar looked at von Klas with eyes which had long since sunken out of sight, the sockets just deep, ravaged tunnels. His skin was a dead blue-grey, stretched and striated by age and untold torment, the lips drawn back like a corpse’s, the nose crashed and misshapen, the scalp hairless and paper-thin so white bone showed through.
The robes that covered his shuffling frame were fashioned from skins too, and he had picked out the best designs for them: rare metallic tattoos, the elaborate medical scars of an Astartes veteran. From a belt of gnarled hide, perhaps from an ogryn, hung a multitude of implements, scalpels and syringes, strange arcane devices for lifting the skin or teasing out nerve endings like splinters from a finger. There was something else, too, an articulated silver gauntlet with a medical blade tipping each digit, so sharp that their edges caught the acidic light and scraped incandescent curves in the air.
Behind him was a slave, a young human female, dressed in rags with long, lank, once-blonde hair, who scampered along behind the torturer like a fearful pet. She bore few obvious scars, the torturer needing her alive and lucid, since she acted as his interpreter.
The torturer hissed some words in his own language, a tongue as dry as snakeskin slithering between the exposed teeth.
‘Verredaek, haemonculus to Lord Archon Kypselon of the Broken Spine Kabal,’ began the translator in hesitant Imperial Gothic, ‘wishes his… his subject to know that he does not rely on mindless devices to perform his art. Some haemonculi employ cowardly machines which produce mediocre results in the art. Verredaek will only use the ancient talents passed on by the torturers of the Broken Spine. He is proud of this.’
Von Klas stood up, still aching. He was tall, as tall as the guards and far taller than the shrivelled haemonculus. ‘I am not going to die here. I am going to kill every single one of you myself.’ He kept his voice level, as if he was instructing his own men. ‘I might not see it, and I might not even be there. But I will kill you.’
The terrified girl stammered his words back in the eldar language. Through her, Verredaek replied, ‘It is good that you do not give up. The bodies and souls of creatures who do not believe themselves to be on the edge of death have long… fascinated me. The first cut will be sweet indeed.’
Without any discernible motion, a blade as long as an index finger, so sharp it disappeared when turned edge-on, appeared in Verredaek’s hand. The torturer stepped forward, the skins of his robes hissing as they rubbed together. ‘You will know fear, but know also that it is not in vain you die. The art of pain continues through souls such as yours, their agony distilled and passed on, and one day you shall become part of a much greater work.’
Von Klas looked from the knife to Verredaek’s sightless eye-sockets, and saw his mistake. This was how he managed to torture his victims without strapping them down or tying
them up. Those desperately empty caverns, the ridges of desiccated skin picked out by the harsh light, seemed to bolt him to the ground and drain his limbs of strength.
His superiors had decided that von Klas was officer material, but he had never been a greatly distinguished officer, never led charges that shattered armies, never held the line against awesome odds. He had the medals they give commissars as a matter of course, and nothing more. He might have been in effective command of twenty thousand men, but in the Imperium that made him one amongst a million.
But he had survived the battle in the arena. He had proved to be something special to his captors, so much so that he had been given to Verredaek as a punishment. And now he would be something again. He would survive this, too. He didn’t care if it was unknown. He would still do it.
For a second, Verredaek’s hypnotic aura was broken as von Klas made his vow to survive. He closed his eyes, and his body was his own again. He would not get a second chance.
With all his strength, he punched, low and hard. His hand hit spongy flesh and drove deeper. The haemonculus gasped in astonishment. The commissar grabbed Verredaek so he would not fall, and spun both of them around, just as the eldar guards began to shoot. One shot sprayed Verredaek across the back, his skin splitting and bursting like a rotten fruit under the assault of a hundred splinters of crystal. The second caught von Klas on the shoulder, a glancing blow but one that drove a dozen splinters deep into the muscle.
The translator screamed and scampered across to the far side of the room, wrapping her arms around her head so she couldn’t see.
Von Klas drove Verredaek’s body forward into one guard, smashing the eldar into the back wall, knocking him senseless. The second eldar hesitated. It was enough. Von Klas scrabbled at Verredaek’s belt until he felt the cold steel of his gauntlet. He thrust his hand into it, feeling the woven metal mesh close around his hand. With one motion he snapped it off the tendon that bound it to the belt and thrust it deep into the second guard’s chest. The eldar let out a muffled cry, then slumped lifelessly to the floor.
