by Marc
The captain’s face grew serious again. ‘I only wish we had more time for proper reconnaissance, but the Imperial Guard cannot be expected to hold their defence while scouts locate the main eldar positions.’
‘I’ve never known the eldar to form a static camp, captain.’ Ramesis commented.
‘That is true.’ the captain agreed, his helmet moving slightly as he nodded his head. ‘If we had waited to find them we may have wasted what precious time we have. As you once taught us, Ramesis, we must always temper action with wisdom. Though we live for battle, a war is fought with wits as well as weapons.’
‘I’m afraid I cannot take the credit for that, brother.’ Ramesis confessed with a wry smile. ‘I took it from the sermons of Chaplain Gorbiam, my tutor during my time as a Novitiate.’
The captain removed his helmet and took a deep breath. His forehead was pierced by eight service studs, each representing ten years of loyal duty to the Emperor. A pink scar cut from his right cheek to his chin, standing out against the supple sheen of his dark skin. Like the other Salamanders, his face and throat were covered with burns, each medal of honour intricately etched into his flesh. His dark eyes gazed solemnly out into the darkness, the weight of several hundred years of battle hung in that look. With a nod to himself, the captain replaced his helmet.
‘Enough talk. Move our battle-brothers out.’
THE SPACE MARINES advanced more cautiously, sending out regular patrols to search for eldar ambush sites. Ramesis was with Brother-Captain Nubean and Brother-Epistolary Zambias of the Chapter’s librarium. They had been marching for half an hour when Zambias held up a hand and Nubean signalled a halt. Without a word the librarian took off his helm and stared up into the sky where the stars of the galactic rim were scattered across the cloudless night like a fine dust. The librarian’s face was gaunt, his bald head glistened with waxy sweat. His eyes were milky white with no pupils, as though he were blind, yet he gazed up into the heavens with a furrowed brow, as if searching for something. Ramesis saw a pale eldritch light playing around the psyker’s eyes as he used his powers to scan the surroundings for other minds.
With a slow blink and a long exhalation, Zambias closed his mind once more. ‘The eldar have broken off their attack. They are moving further north.’ he told Nubean and Ramesis.
‘Then we advance quickly while they regroup!’ Nubean barked, waving a hand forward to signal the surrounding squads to start moving again.
‘Have you no clues as to the eldar’s intent?’ Ramesis asked Zambias as they broke into a ran.
‘Their witchery is strong, as you know, brother-chaplain. I cannot penetrate their minds, I can only sense their presence. It leaves a foul stain upon the air, a corruption on the aura of this world. These lands belong to the Emperor, they abhor the presence of these vile aliens.’ the librarian explained, his clenched fist showing his anger at the aliens’ desecration of Slato.
‘I have pondered upon this myself, brothers,’ Nubean said. ‘I have been in contact with the lieutenant in charge of the Imperial Garrison and there are a number of factors which puzzle me. I would welcome your guidance in these matters.’
‘With our weapons we bring the Emperor’s judgement; with our minds we bring his wisdom.’ Zambias replied, putting his helmet back on.
‘Three times the eldar have launched a full frontal assault on the Imperial positions.’ Nubean said. ‘That is unusual. The eldar are as fast as lightning on the plains, striking then disappearing as quickly. They know they are no match for massed guns, yet three times they have hurled themselves onto the tanks and squads of the Imperial Guardsmen.’
‘I believe they are acting in haste.’ Zambias answered after a moment’s consideration. ‘The force they left to waylay Ramesis was small, composed entirely of their so-called “Rangers”, experts in infiltration, disruption and delaying tactics. Even the host they sent against us was not a large proportion of their warriors, if the auguries assessed their strength correctly. It seems they are concentrating everything they can spare on the portal and the humans defending it. Their usual strategy of hit and run would bleed us dry if we did not take the offensive, ensuring them a good chance of victory. Yet here they are, throwing their warriors into the teeth of the Imperial army. They are desperate to break through, of that much I am certain.’
‘What matter is it whether they are desperate or nonchalant? They will die under our bolters either way!’ Ramesis spat, taking his bolt pistol from its holster and brandishing it fiercely at the horizon. ‘If they choose to make themselves easier targets then we should be grateful. I have little stomach for fighting the eldar. They slink and crawl and slither like serpents, never standing and fighting like honourable warriors. Their witchcraft is potent, their machines of war fast and manoeuvrable; it will be better for us that they forego such tactics to stand and fight for once.’
‘That is true.’ Nubean agreed with a nod. ‘We fight for a just cause, for the eldar cannot be allowed access to their infernal portal. If they reach their device they’ll bring more of their kind to this world and slaughter the colonists, and it will be lost to the Emperor. We must ensure that does not happen.’
‘Why do we not destroy the portal and end this matter immediately?’ asked Ramesis.
‘There is an agent of the Machine God in the Imperial Guard force.’ replied Zambias. ‘I believe he wishes it preserved for study.’
‘Ach! The Machine God. Politics.’ Ramesis’s simple statement conveyed his contempt. ‘I do not pretend to understand why we waste time with such matters. We fight, we kill, we are victorious. That is what it means to be a Salamander.’
‘And what would we be without our armour and our weapons, Ramesis?’ Nubean gently chided the chaplain. ‘You above all others know that we exist only to protect the Emperor’s domains and his servants. If the Mechanicus wish to examine this thing, as foolish as it seems to us, it is our duty to protect them whilst they do so.’
As he pondered this, Ramesis cast a look at the mountains around him. The light of Slato’s twin moons had not reached into the valley yet and everything was swathed in shadow. They were jogging easily through the long wild grass, their passage only broken by the odd clump of withered mountain trees or cluster of tumbled boulders.
‘That is another curious matter here, brothers.’ Nubean said, picking up on Ramesis’s earlier words. ‘The eldar excel at the sneak attack, the hidden blow, but they forewarned the garrison of their approach. They sent them an ultimatum – allow access to their portal or be destroyed. Why would they give up the element of surprise, when perhaps they could have swept away the defences with a single conclusive assault?’
‘Perhaps they wished to terrorise the Guardsmen, in the hope that they would not have to fight at all?’ Ramesis offered, not trying to hide his lack of faith in the courage of the Imperial Guard.
‘Equally, an attack with total surprise might have swept aside all resistance and given them access to the reinforcements they desire.’ Nubean countered, adjusting his right shoulder pad as he jogged along, so that it sat better on its actuators.
‘Ramesis is correct.’ Zambias said, pulling his force sword from its scabbard. Psychic energy flowed through the blade, causing faint blue flames to play along its length. ‘It matters not what their devious scheme is. They will fall before the blade of the Emperor’s anger all the same.’
THE SPACE MARINES reached the pickets of the Imperial Guard force without encountering any more eldar, though twice Zambias informed them that an enemy psyker had tried to break through the Epistolary’s psychic shield. The Imperial Guard were in poor shape. The charred hulls of both of their tanks sat smoking in the darkness. The bodies of the dead were lined up, their faces covered by helmets, in a line that stretched for thirty paces. Ramesis could see the thirty metres of killing ground which the Guardsmen had cleared in front of their line. It was scorched, pockmarked with craters and shell holes, yet there was no sign of any eldar dead. Ramesis p
resumed that the enemy had taken them back when they had been forced to withdraw from the sheer weight of the Guard’s short-range volleys of las-fire.
The few surviving Imperial Guard squads sat around campfires, their long greatcoats and peaked helmets ragged and stained from battle. Their lieutenant hurried through the darkness to greet the newcomers. His eyes were ringed with fatigue and stress and his dark blue tunic was unbuttoned. A bandage was wrapped around the thigh of his left leg, blood seeping from beneath it in a red stain across his white breeches He saluted to Captain Nubean in the manner of his regiment, one finger to the peak of his cap.
‘Lieutenant Raskil of the Fourth Levillian, seconded to the Adeptus Mechanicus on garrison duty,’ he said. ‘Praise the Immortal Emperor that you are here to save us.’
Nubean looked down at the officer, the tip of whose head only reached to the Space Marine’s chest eagle.
‘You are mistaken, lieutenant.’ he told Raskil. ‘We are not here to save you. We are here to protect the portal from the foul eldar. Your survival is only important with regard to that mission.’
The lieutenant stepped back as if slapped, mouth gaping wide. Before he could say anything more, the hulking form of Brother Zambias was towering over him.
‘Where is this alien artefact, lieutenant? I wish to examine it,’ the librarian asked. The Imperial Guardsman was still taken aback by Nubean’s reprimand.
‘I’ll, er… I’ll take you there myself. Do you wish to rest and eat a little before we see it?’ Raskil offered.
Ramesis felt his anger rising. This impudent human was suggesting their physical needs took priority over their mission objectives. He stomped towards the lieutenant, but Nubean interposed himself, holding up a hand to halt Ramesis’s approach.
‘We do not require any sustenance yet, lieutenant.’ the captain interjected swiftly. ‘However, we must attend to the defence of this position before any other matters. Please detail your sergeants to work with my brothers. Your men can rest for the remainder of the night, my squads will stand watch until daybreak.’
‘You realise that night here lasts for eighteen hours?’ Raskil asked.
‘We are aware of Slato’s rotational cycle, lieutenant.’ Nubean said, his voice betraying his confusion at the officer’s inquiry.
‘And your men are going to stand watch until daybreak, some ten hours away?’ Raskil continued incredulously. ‘I can detail some men for watch duty, it isn’t a problem.’
That was too much for Ramesis. He stepped around Captain Nubean and stared down at Raskil.
‘Your men require food and sleep. We do not!’ Ramesis felt like he was stating the obvious. ‘If your men do not receive these things, their combat performance is adversely affected. We have no such weakness. We can fight for a month on the proteins contained within our armour recycling systems alone. You also suffer from stress-related physical and mental disorders over protracted periods of conflict, which is why I will ignore these insults. Our brothers will stand watch. Please do not question the captain’s wisdom again.’
Lieutenant Raskil gave a worried glance at the three giant Space Marines standing around him. Looking across the camp he saw the other Space Marines moving into positions from which they could keep watch to the north and south, along the valley. He wasn’t surprised to notice his own men giving the massive warriors a wide berth, moving out of their way when they approached.
‘Follow me then. Magos Simeniz has been analysing the… the objective for several days.’ he said finally, setting off to the rear of the encampment.
RASKIL LED RAMESIS and the other Marines into an even, bowl-shaped depression which was surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, just behind the eastern side of the ridge where the Guardsmen had set up their defence. The artefact at its centre was instantly recognisable as eldar in design. The obelisk stood roughly twice the height of a man and was constructed from a deep purple stone, eldar runes were painted in gold leaf along its length. Delicate strands of silver wire hung from rods in the ground around the portal, tracing out a hexagram. The air was filled with a hissing sound, which was emitting from a square box, two foot across and covered in dials and valves, which was sat nearby and linked up to the wires by coils of cables. The whole area was lit by the flickering flames of three braziers placed in a triangle around the dell. As they strode towards the alien creation, a stooping robed figure shuffled into sight from behind the machinery.
‘Ah, Raskil, there you—’ the figure started, then halted as he noticed the Space Marines for the first time. As he turned to regard them, the flames illuminated the face beneath the heavy cowl of his robe. Parchment-like skin hung in fleshless folds from his cheeks and his back seemed permanently hunched. From his right eye socket protruded a strange optical device with several different sized lenses which slid back and forth as he adjusted his focus. His nose was also absent, an air hose coiling from the middle of his misshapen face to a small cylinder at his belt.
‘Come, see this!’ Simeniz offered, beckoning to them with his right hand, from which protruded a number of small antennae. He led them to the far side of the analysis machine and pointed to one of the numerous screens showing a succession of sine waves and curving graphs. The Adeptus Mechanicus agent pulled a small plug from a receptacle implanted into the side of his forehead and plugged it into a matching socket in the machine, the wire linking him to the plug glistening with a thin sheen of blood. The screen which he had indicated began to change as the tech-priest chanted a low, almost sub-vocal, invocation. The outline of the artefact appeared in solid green lines and as the adept chanted faster, swirling orange dots began to form into concentric ovals that span in a seemingly arhythmic pattern around the centre of the monolith.
‘You see?’ Simeniz demanded, stabbing a finger at the screen with obvious excitement.
‘We do not understand the workings of this machine,’ Nubean said, looking blankly at the ever-moving image.
The tech-priest gave a snort of derision and flicked a switch which locked the moving shapes in place, before pulling the mind-plug from its socket.
‘That is a definite warp-coil energy wave.’ the tech-priest said slowly, as a patient adult would address a child. ‘Our suspicions were correct: this edifice is capable of opening a warp gate, enabling objects to pass through. Rather large objects if my calculations are correct. However, there have been some anomalies. The wave signature is not consistent with any point of warp-interface we are aware of. It is as if it led to somewhere that is part of the warp, yet is separate from it.
‘Also, it has been increasing in magnitude since my arrival. I am certain that someone is trying to activate it remotely.’
‘Can you prevent that happening?’ Ramesis asked, looking up at the great obelisk. The construction seemed to absorb the light from the braziers rather than reflecting it, staying in constant shadow. Being near to such an alien thing, with the scent of otherworldly evil hanging in the air, made Ramesis’s spine tingle with some preternatural sensation of foreboding.
‘I could potentially destabilise the warp field, but that could prove catastrophic if I am incorrect,’ the tech-priest suggested, with a shrug of his slight shoulders.
‘Be prepared to do so if I give the order,’ Nubean said. ‘We will endeavour to preserve this portal intact for your study, but our orders are to prevent the eldar from fully activating it. We will destroy it if necessary, for the lives of two hundred thousand colonists could be in danger.’
‘Colonists?’ Simeniz asked with a sneer. ‘There are always more colonists – but we might not find another specimen of this quality for another five centuries.’
‘If the eldar reach this portal, then it will be lost to us anyway,’ Zambias said. The librarian held out his hands to either side and walked slowly towards the portal stone, gradually bringing his hands together in front of him as he did so.
‘I can feel evil in this place. Ancient, alien evil,’ he said, turning back to the g
roup. ‘We will be ready for it,’ Ramesis answered confidently.
IT WAS STILL several hours before daybreak when the eldar attacked again. Ramesis had been with Zambias and Nubean for the whole night, positioning their warriors and the Imperial Guard for the best defence. The bulk of the force was stationed watching the northern approaches, where the eldar had attacked from before. However, Nubean had ordered Ramesis and a small contingent to guard the south, in case the eldar used their swift skimmer vehicles to launch their attack from the other direction. There were forty-four other Space Marines, as well as some sixty Imperial Guardsmen, and Ramesis was feeling confident that they could hold out. He was with Squad Lysonis when the first firing erupted to the north, on the right flank of the defenders.
The Imperial Guardsmen sent a steady stream of volleys into the darkness, the harsh white flare of their lasguns burning brightly against the dark. Sleek beams of blue energy struck back from the shadows, followed by a succession of flickering plasma bolts which impacted into the ground with blinding explosions. Ramesis’s suit had automatically imposed a filter over his visor to stop his vision being impaired by the glaring light of the attacks, but he knew that the Guardsmen would have difficulty seeing anything in the darkness. As he watched, a fist-sized star of energy shot from the gloom and impacted into the chest of a Guardsman, flinging his ragged corpse a dozen metres across the ground. Ramesis could hear the bellowed orders of the Imperial Guard sergeants, and in the occasional seconds of near-silence his ears picked up the shrill whine of eldar shuriken catapults tearing through the night air.
‘We hold here. That may simply be a diversionary attack.’ he told Lysonis, turning his attention away from the firefight that was raging a hundred paces to his right. Checking to his left, Ramesis saw the heat auras of several eldar craft skimming forward slowly, silently stalking towards the Imperial position.
