The Gildar Rift

by Sarah Cawkwell

  Hopelessly out of control, it careened into the Silver Skulls, causing three of them to overbalance and come off their own bikes. The others swerved as much as they possibly could to avoid the situation, but there was very little manoeuvring space.

  What had seemed a pointless waste of life on the part of the Red Corsairs had proven to be a surprisingly canny move; blocking the passage until they were able to recover their vehicles. As for moving the corpse of the enemy out of the way, there was no need. The heavy bikes were perfectly able to grind over the armoured body with the minimum of difficulty.

  For good measure, one of the riders at the back turned to the unmoving body of the first biker and fired on him with the meltagun he carried. The battered ceramite armour explosively vaporised under the weapon’s fury and within scant seconds, all that remained of the rider were his melted gauntlets and a few other scraps of armour. He would most assuredly present no threat now.

  Following this moment of cold – but necessary – brutality, the Silver Skulls resumed their pursuit, but the maglev had pulled further away from them during the brief altercation.

  Gunning the throttle, pulling it round as far as the mechanism would let him, Arrun’s front wheel briefly left the ground. He inched his bike ahead of the others, taking the lead. He was not going to let the traitors get away if he could do anything at all to prevent it. As they rounded a bend in the tunnel, several figures could barely be made out in silhouette as they mounted the top of the train.

  Seconds later, the pursuing Silver Skulls were being subjected to covering fire. They increased their speed, tucking in as close as possible to the underside of the maglev rail and making themselves difficult targets. They wove masterfully in and out of the slender struts, describing strangely graceful figures of eight. Their control over the bikes was consummate and despite the hail of fire, they dodged and avoided without any seeming difficulty. The Red Corsairs, robbed of their moving targets, began firing instead at the tunnel walls. Rock and shell shrapnel ricocheted off the Silver Skulls, peppering them with tiny, razor-sharp projectiles and filling the tunnel with choking dust.

  They pressed onward, passing several carriages and promethium hoppers, coaxing more speed from the bikes until they were more than halfway up the length of the maglev. Riding beneath the rail proved to be a good tactic, but it forced the Silver Skulls into a slower pace that Arrun found unacceptable. Every part of his being burned with the need to reach Huron Blackheart and these delaying techniques on the part of the Red Corsairs were unnecessary obstacles in his way. Enough, he determined. It was time to make his move.

  With a bellowing roar of fury that resounded around the tunnel, the enraged captain made a gesture to his closest companion. The warrior whose meltagun had put paid to any threat from the fallen Red Corsair nodded his understanding and levelled the weapon at the train as he pulled forward alongside it.

  The first blast of the weapon ate through the thin exterior of the train with ease, leaving a gaping wound in its side. The second eliminated the three Red Corsairs who appeared in the gap before they could return fire.

  With a further twist of the bike’s throttle, Arrun turned his body and pulled himself level with the maglev. With perfect timing, he gripped onto the sides of the aperture that the melta blast had opened up. He hauled himself up until he was standing. The gap wasn’t quite large enough to accommodate him, but with his strength and bulk, it was a problem that was swiftly resolved.

  His abandoned bike hurtled onwards, remaining remarkably stable until it finally fell and clattered noisily along the side of the tunnel.

  ‘Silver Skulls, on me!’ Arrun bellowed into the vox, not knowing whether his companions would even hear the command. He trusted them to follow his lead, however, and he righted himself inside the carriage. Slowly, he unfolded himself from his stoop to his full height, the silver half-skull of his helmet lending a macabre aspect to his profile.

  His lightning claws extended themselves with a crackling whisper and he stood with his arms outstretched as far as the confining space of the train car would allow, like a hawk ready to swoop down on its prey.

  The interior of this car was devoid of any further Red Corsairs. The three who had been in that particular section had been destroyed by the meltagun. For the first time since the pursuit had commenced, Arrun felt that something had actually gone in his favour. He prowled forward, down the length of the carriage. This one was completely empty; containing not a single passenger and no evidence of pilfered resources or anything that could have been taken from the refinery as a spoil of war.

  Three more of the assault bike squad had followed his example and appeared through the hole blasted in the train and torn larger by the captain’s ingress. Now all in the same proximity, their vox communications worked perfectly once again.

  ‘Your orders, captain?’ Merchus, the sergeant of Squad Malachite addressed him. He had barely been promoted to the position and not for the first time, Arrun’s regret at the number of losses the company had suffered in recent times was strong. Merchus was proving every bit as solidly reliable as his forebears, however.

  Outside the train, the sounds of gunfire continued to permeate everything and Arrun glanced upwards at the sound of heavy footfalls. The train had never been designed to carry the weight of a Space Marine and the metal was bending and buckling under the load. It would be bare moments, Arrun suspected, before those Red Corsairs presently fighting from the train’s roof simply crashed through the metal as though it were paper and literally landed in their laps.

  Let them come, he thought with a soft growl. He would be ready for them. A ripple of blue lightning ran down the length of his claws.

  ‘We need to make our way forward through the train,’ he said. ‘Blackheart has to be here and we need to reach him before this train reaches its destination. So...’ He pointed with the claws of his right hand. ‘We move onward and we deal with each threat as it presents itself.’

  Above them, the stressed metal creaked ominously. Arrun forced back the urge to tear through the ceiling with his claws and expose the Red Corsairs to the hungry weapons of his squad. There was no time for such indulgence, however.

  Merchus nodded. During the brief exchange, two more of the bike squad had ditched their bikes and were climbing into the train as well. Outside, the last of the Silver Skulls had done the best they could to maintain distraction fire and had held their ground for as long as they were able. They had fired indiscriminately at the Red Corsairs bikers and, from the change in pitch and timbre of the shots, occasionally firing at those on the roof of the train. The silence that ensued now told of their unfortunate but anticipated demise.

  The void was filled in due course by the sound of other bikes; the other enemy riders whose vehicles had pulled ahead had dropped back and would very soon present extra problems of their own. The time to act was now.

  Arrun moved forward swiftly and punched his fist through the end of the train carriage. The lightning claws tore through easily, shredding the metal and shattering the armaplas window. He did the same with the rear end of the next car, providing them with an easy route through to the next car. The comprehensive destruction of the door complete, the remains of the squad moved onward.

  He could hear them. They were perhaps six or seven cars behind their current position. There was a lingering contingent of Red Corsairs and a few of the remaining cultists left who would act as a reasonably effective buffer. But Huron Blackheart could hear the Silver Skulls as they tore the train apart. It was music to his ears. Closer. Closer.

  He laughed and swung his axe lightly in his hands. His own estimates put their exit from the tunnel at a good five to ten minutes more and he had absolutely no doubt that the arrogant Captain Arrun would be upon them well before that. His determination and tenacity was nothing if not commendable.

  He had long devolved past owning a sense of anything that could pass for disappointment, but there was some core part of his sh
rivelled soul that felt the faintest pang of what he could only equate to regret. Regret that his offer for the Silver Skulls to become part of his own collective had been thrown back in his face. Regret that this delightful exchange of strategies and ideas with Daerys Arrun would soon come to its obvious conclusion.

  Arrun’s staunch refusal to bend to his will had irked him but had left Blackheart with no choice now other than face him down and bring him to an end. The Silver Skulls captain would undoubtedly fall under the power of the Blood Reaver and his death would mark the passage of a great strategic mind; perhaps even the first one in a long while that had actually genuinely presented a challenge for Blackheart. It was a waste.

  A waste, perhaps – but their confrontation was inevitable now. If he couldn’t engage Daerys Arrun’s mind, then he would exact the necessary toll on the Silver Skull’s body.

  Blackheart swung the axe again, its finely honed blade cleaving the air with an electric snarl. Impatience gripped him and he fought down the urge to tear his own passage through the maglev train to meet his enemy head on. The mechanisms in his claw hissed and creaked angrily and liquid fire dripped from the nozzle discreetly designed to protrude from its palm.

  He could, if he so desired, simply give the order for his Red Corsairs to obliterate Arrun long before he got anywhere close to the front of the train. But the Silver Skull had outwitted him once already. At this time, he had no way of knowing just how many of them were in pursuit and to pull his forces away from other areas of the train right now could prove to be an error of judgement that he was unprepared to make.

  Inevitability proved infallible when the ceiling of the carriage finally gave way under the combined weight of the Red Corsairs above. Four of them, wearing the old Astral Claws livery, heavily scarred and defaced, dropped like stones into one of the cars. It was currently occupied by two of the Silver Skulls who had yet to make their way through to join Arrun and they spun around, ready to fight.

  The altercation that ensued was brief and savage; the exchange of bolter shells on both sides ultimately resulting in the bloody, violent deaths of all four of the Red Corsairs and one of the Silver Skulls. The remaining battle-brother paid a price for the brief victory, too. His armour was pitted with craters and smoke curled from the muzzle of his bolter where it lay, still held by the bloody ruin of his hand. There was no real pain, merely a faint sense of annoyance at the inconvenience the temporary loss of the appendage would cause. A mangled scrap of flesh and ceramite was all that remained at the end of his arm. With cool, clinical detachment, the young warrior drew his chainblade and completed the job.

  The Larraman cells in his bloodstream had already formed a rapidly-closing seal over the wound, and he simply switched to his bolt pistol before joining his brothers in the next car.

  Heavy footsteps continued to sound above them. A moment’s pause allowed Arrun to gauge the number of enemy still above them and he put the number at no more than five or six. So far, their passage through the train had gone largely unimpeded, but the sounds of angered shouting from the next car suggested that this would shortly cease to be the case.

  Blue ripples of energy sparked from Arrun’s lightning claws and he felt the old, familiar sense of hunger that always came right before engaging in close quarters combat. He had grown to young manhood in one of the more civilised tribes on Varsavia, but like so many others, he had fought for his survival from an early age. Hand-to-hand combat gave him an adrenaline rush and sense of exhilaration like no other form of fighting he had ever known.

  Thus, when the melta weapon blew through the next carriage and the cultists tore towards them, he engaged in the fight with ferocious delight. His claws flashed like shards of silver as he skewered one cultist up against the wall whilst simultaneously slicing through another’s abdomen with a well-placed low strike.

  The carriage, already filled with the cultists’ battle cries shifted in pitch until death groans and the sounds of war were the only things to be heard. The coppery stink of their lives being snuffed out was strong and the floor of the train quickly became a slippery mess of blood and viscera.

  Arrun inhaled the stench of death through his helm’s mouth grille. It fired his own blood, fed the feral side of his rational, logical personality and drove him onwards. He stormed towards the end of the carriage only to be blown backwards as the Red Corsairs on the other side duplicated what his own warriors had been doing. Arrun flew back and landed amidst the rest of the Silver Skulls.

  Within seconds, the carriage was a seething mass of power armour clad bodies bearing down on each other with grim determination. The weight of so many post-humans in one confined space took its toll on the maglev, however, pressing its undercarriage so far down that it scraped along the rail with a squeal of protest. The speed of the train dropped sharply. A few short metres ahead, the white glare of impending daylight could finally be seen. It was tantalising and Arrun’s adrenaline pumped harder still.

  ‘Press forward,’ he bellowed.

  ‘How much longer will it take before we can detonate the charges?’ Blackheart snapped at the Corpsemaster, whose calm demeanour seemed to have taken something of a shaking in the sudden deceleration of the train. He gathered his wits to him, not wishing to demonstrate another moment of weakness in front of Blackheart. He tapped a long, thin finger on one of the many dials on the front of the maglev.

  ‘According to the instruments, still another few minutes remain until we are out of the mountain pass. I cannot say for certain. I am no tech-priest or enginseer, my lord. But look ahead. Perhaps that will better answer your question.’

  He pointed to where the chink of daylight shone through the darkness. Blackheart nodded.

  ‘I do not doubt for one moment that the Silver Skulls will be out there waiting for us. I place you in charge of ensuring our cargo gets loaded. I will take care of whatever remains of them.’ Blackheart swung his axe once again, this time with enough force to split the carriage door. He wrenched it from the shattered portal with ease and took a few steps forward. ‘We will need to move quickly. The moment we are into wider vox-range, alert the others.’

  The Corpsemaster nodded his assent and watched the bulk of Huron Blackheart as it made its way out of the front of the train.

  Somewhere in his long, forgotten past, Lugft Huron had always been a master of strategy. His ascendency to the coveted position of Chapter Master had been testament to his skill and ability. Now, so many years after the end of the Badab War, his mental acuity was impaired only by his own unpredictability. He would change the direction of his plans with alarming, sometimes incomprehensible speed.

  What had once been a mind that could produce plans to serve the Imperium now merely turned inwards and became truly self-serving. Blackheart did very little for his Red Corsairs other than provide them with a staging area for war. He never praised them or rewarded them but none of them questioned it; least of all the staunchly loyal Astral Claws. He expected them to die willingly at his whim, and they did. If they survived a campaign or a raid, so much the better; he could utilise their muscle again. Nobody ever spoke out against it and Blackheart never changed the ground rules. It was a perfect arrangement.

  Objectively it could be argued that he gave his victims every chance to survive. More often than not, he laid out one-sided terms of surrender. When it came to Imperial lapdogs, however, they more often than not figuratively and literally spat them back in his face. The Silver Skulls had done that. Huron Blackheart was merely answering them in kind.

  Arrun pushed through the fourth cluttered carriage in as many minutes, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. The further up the train they went, the more littered and crammed with tools and supplies the train was becoming. They had travelled half of the length of the vehicle before boarding it so had no way of knowing what the rear cars may have contained. Bitter irony suggested that it may well have been the Red Corsairs battle force.

  Here, towards the front, the
Red Corsairs had clearly thrown anything that they felt they could use. Arrun was vaguely aware that such items fetched a good price on various black markets around the sector, but it was more likely that the traitors were gathering equipment for their own purposes.

  Boxes were stacked haphazardly on top of each other, but most of the equipment had quite simply been thrown in, almost as an afterthought. There was no care or order to their storage. He pushed his way through the mountain of boxes, the sounds of battling behind him.

  Then Arrun froze. Between him and the next car the armaplas window gave him a clear and unobstructed view. Unobstructed, that is, apart from the bulk in blood-red armour that stood there.

  Arrun had never seen Huron Blackheart in the flesh. The one-time Space Marine was intimidating; almost as huge in his regular suit of power armour as First Captain Kerelan when he was clad in his Terminator wargear. A momentary flash of what Blackheart must have been like in his heyday, clad from head to foot in his own Terminator regalia gave Arrun a moment’s hesitation. Now, the Tyrant’s armour was a twisted amalgamation, built to accommodate the many enhancements and mechanical replacements that had saved the Tyrant’s life. The declaration of his allegiance to the forces of Chaos was emblazoned on his chest and the motif repeated in other, smaller ways elsewhere.

  All the sounds around him, everything else simply melted away in the moment of first contact with this hated enemy. Arrun’s visor focused totally and utterly on Huron Blackheart. Red cross-hairs targeted him and a hunger rose in his stomach. As the Silver Skulls captain turned his head this way and that, he absorbed as much information as he possibly could about his impending foe. He was looking for any sign of weakness or stress in the armour, anything that he could use to his advantage in the fight to come. Because there was going to be a fight. There was such an inevitability about it that it was ludicrous.