But it had been unfulfilling. Of course it had. Especially when one considered the money hadn’t even been all that great. True, she’d raked in more than she would have expected, permitted a small allowance to her personal finances as well as the tithe to House Mervallion, but she was hardly living comfortably. Syne was always spending massive sums of Imperial crowns on upgrading his precious fat matron of a ship, and wasn’t that just so very hilarious in light of recent events. Good job, Captain Syne. All those guns certainly helped when it really counted.
Very calmly, with another glance around the camp and its busy servitors, she spoke a stream of curses that would have made any within her family utter a prayer for her apparent degeneracy. Several of the words in this barrage of invective were made up, but remained obscenely biological.
All of her worries quickly became moot, however. Unarmed, stranded on an asteroid, not as rich as she’d like to be (and doomed to die within the month anyway) Eurydice watched a fireball streaking down from the starry sky.
“Tomasz?” she spoke into her vox-mic, hailing the mining operations chief. She wasn’t entirely alone down here, but a dozen technicians and the pack of armsmen with her hardly mattered if the enemy was capable of ending the Maiden’s journeys in the blink of an eye.
“Yes, my lady?” came the response from the other side of the camp.
“Uh. Problems.”
“I know, my lady. I know, we see them coming, too. You must get to safety.”
“Really? Where’s safe?”
He didn’t respond. She looked over her shoulder at the four armsmen; they never left her side when she was out of her trance chambers. They were staring as well, over to the horizon, at something inbound.
“Lady Mervallion,” the leader, Renwar, voxed. “We need to leave the site. Come with us.”
“Sounds fun, but I’ll die here, thank you.”
“Lady…”
“You can run if you like. I think with Syne dead, you’re excused from needing to guard me with your lives.”
“Lady, the secondary landing site—”
“Is over two weeks’ march from here,” she laughed. “You think we can outrun their landing vessel?”
“Lady, please. We have to go.”
“I don’t have to do anything. We don’t have time to fire up the lander, and we’d likely be shot down if we tried. And while the four of you look awfully proud with your shotguns, I doubt they will do much against whatever is coming our way.”
The soldiers shared worried glances. “Lady,” Renwar said, not meeting her eyes, “can’t you… use your powers?”
“My what?”
“Your eye, my lady. With all due respect. Can’t you kill them?”
Her forehead itched. Covered with a black bandana, her third eye, the gift of her Navigator heritage, pulsed softly beneath the material. She wanted to scratch, which was impossible in her glass helmet.
What could she say? Her powers were weak? Her eye didn’t work that way? She’d never even tried to employ it in such a manner?
“Just go,” she sighed. “Syne is dead. We have no way off this rock, and I’m not coming with you to the second camp.”
The men moved away in silence, and she felt their relief all too clearly. Guarding her had been a pleasure for none of them. Fear came with the duty. She was too different. She saw into the warp, and no sane soul wanted anything to do with those who stared into the empyrean.
The thought never depressed her. From birth, it had always been this way. The unease of other humans was so ingrained within her perceptions that she barely noticed it happening.
“Tomasz?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Are you taking the servitors?”
“We planned to leave them as a distraction, my lady.” She chuckled at that. Bloody cowards. Eurydice waited as the technicians and armsmen started their low-gravity loping run to the south.
Soon she was alone but for the continued unpacking and unloading of the hundred servitors all around. The fire in the sky grew, drawing closer. Whoever or whatever had killed Syne and the rest of the crew—she wouldn’t exactly call them her friends, but Tore hadn’t been so bad—was evidently on its way to kill her.
“Well,” she said, using a word that had featured heavily in her last tirade, “shit.”
The landing party consisted of four demigods and one mortal. Septimus, in an old atmosphere suit, trailed behind the lords Cyrion, Uzas, Xarl and his own master. Their boots made the gunship’s gang ramp shake as they stalked down to the asteroid’s silver-grey surface.
The human slave allowed himself a moment of smiling reflection as he glanced skyward. It wasn’t much of a sky—just stars, like always, no clouds or sunlight—but it was enough of a change to keep him smiling as he followed the demigods.
Septimus’ master led the small group, clad in his battle armour, breathing the chemical-tasting recycled air within his helm. His visor display, tinted crimson through ruby eye lenses, flickered from servitor to servitor as the squad moved through the small camp. In his dark fists was an ancient bolter, loaded and primed, though he doubted he’d have cause to fire it.
“Servitors,” he said, for the benefit of those back aboard the Covenant. “Technical servitors, outfitted for mining. I count a hundred and seven.”
“Perfection,” drawled a voice over the vox. It was a wet, burbling growl, like a wolf with a throat full of tumours. Septimus’ own vox-link allowed him to listen to the demigods speaking. He shivered at the voice of the Exalted.
The squad moved in patient precision around the camp, utterly ignored by the labouring servitors. The bionic slaves paid them no heed at all, mono-tasked as they were to perform their current operations.
“Final count is one hundred and seven,” Septimus’ master repeated. “Most of these could be easily refitted for our use.”
“Who cares?” another voice snarled. Septimus watched as Xarl stopped in his patrol ahead. Skulls, some alien and some human, were mounted on Xarl’s war-plate. Several dangled on chains from his belt, forming layered faulds that covered his thighs. “We did not come here for mindless slaves.”
“Yes,” one of the others growled, most likely Uzas. “We must not delay here. The Warmaster calls us to Crythe.”
“Septimus,” the master said, turning back to his servant. “Confirm the asteroid is what we seek.”
Septimus nodded, already scanning a gloved handful of dust and small rocks. His handheld auspex display showed a series of green bars in perfect alignment with a previously imprinted pattern.
“Confirmed, master.”
The bulk lander from the Maiden towered above them all. Its armament was pathetic, but with the most irritating timing imaginable, the single laser turret mounted upon its hull opened fire on the demigods below. Inside the grounded ship, Eurydice Mervallion sat at the helm console, directing the turret’s aim through a distorted pict-link, scowling at the blurry screen and not hitting a damn thing.
Outside, the squad remained unharmed, taking cover behind six-wheeled ore loader trucks and drilling tractors. They watched the lone turret unleashing its minor rage, the red beams pulsing into the dusty ground, nowhere near any of them.
“Under fire,” Cyrion voxed to the Covenant. He sounded amused.
“Barely,” Septimus’ master amended.
“I’ve got this one,” Xarl said, rising out of cover, his bolter in his fist. It shuddered once, the echo of its fire transmitting over the vox but not in the airless atmosphere. On the side of the lander, the single weapon detonated under the kiss of the explosive bolt shell.
“Another glorious victory,” Cyrion chuckled in the silence that fell afterwards. Septimus couldn’t help but smile as well.
“Do we truly have time for this idiocy?” Xarl grunted.
“Someone is alive in there,” Septimus’ master said quietly. The squad looked up at the cargo lander, its blocky sides and the gaping maw of its landing bay, lit from
within by dim yellow light. “We must face them.”
“This is insignificant prey,” Xarl argued.
Uzas grunted an agreement. “The Warmaster calls. Battle awaits us in Crythe.”
“Yes,” Xarl voxed back, “let this weakling prey rot.”
Cyrion spoke up, cutting them off. “This prey is someone capable of managing a hundred servitors. They almost certainly possess technical skill. Such skill will be of use to us.”
“No,” Septimus’ master breathed. “The prey is much more than that.”
Xarl, draped in skulls, and Uzas, his dark armour sporting a cloak of light brownish leather that had once been the skin of a hive-world’s royal family, both nodded their reluctant assent.
“A prisoner, then,” Xarl said.
“Night Lords,” came the wet growl of the Exalted, “move in.”
They divided up once they were inside. The lander was large enough that even separated it would take them up to fifteen minutes to sweep the entire hulk. Uzas took the storage decks and the cargo hold. Xarl made for the bridge and the crew deck. Cyrion remained outside, watching over the servitors. Septimus and his master moved towards the engineering deck.
Septimus drew his own weapons as he followed the reassuring bulk of his master. Two laspistols, Imperial Guard standard issue, were gripped in his fists.
“Put those away,” his master said without turning around. “If you shoot her, I will kill you.”
Septimus holstered the pistols. The two figures moved down a row of silent generators, each one twice as tall as a man. Their boots clanked on the metal gantry of the floor. Beyond the threat, which was hardly out of character for any of the demigods, something in his master’s answer caught his interest.
“Her?” he asked over a direct vox-link to his master.
“Yes.” His master advanced, his weapons undrawn but his gauntleted hands tensed into claws. “Even had I not seen her in my vision, I can smell her skin, her hair, her blood. Our prey is female.”
Septimus nodded, shielding his eyes again from the glaring illumination of the strip lighting above. It ran the length of the chamber, just as it had in the previous three chambers. “It’s bright in here,” he said.
“No, it’s not. The ship is on low power. You are just used to the Covenant. Be ready, Septimus. Do not, under any circumstances, look at her face. The sight will kill you.”
“Master—”
The demigod held up a hand. “Silence. She is moving.”
Septimus couldn’t hear anything, except his master’s vox-clicks as he changed channels to address the rest of the squad.
“I have her,” he said, and calmly turned to catch a blur of shrieking movement that launched at him.
Eurydice had been watching from her darkened hiding place between two rumbling generators. She had no weapon except for a crowbar that she’d scrounged from her tools, and although she’d been scowling alone and telling herself she would go down fighting, kicking and screaming, that pledge faded a little when she saw the two figures coming down the gantry. One was a human, armed with two pistols. The other was a giant, well over two metres tall, and wearing archaic battle armour. Astartes.
She’d never seen one before. It was not a pleasant sight. Awe met fear, mixing to form a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach and a sour taste that doggedly coated her tongue no matter how much she tried to swallow it. Why were the Astartes attacking? Why had they killed Syne and destroyed the Maiden?
She retreated into the shadows, willing her heart to calm, and gripped her crowbar in sweating fists. Maybe if she aimed for the joint where his helmet met his neck? Throne, this was insane. She was dead, and there was nothing she could do about it. With a mirthless grin, she suddenly regretted all the mean things she’d said to… well, to everyone. Except to Syne. He was always an arse.
For all her faults, her spiteful tongue among them, Eurydice Mervallion was no coward. She was the daughter of a Navigator House, even if their name wasn’t worth spit, and had looked into the madness of the warp and guided her ship safely each and every time. The sight of a demigod stalking closer to her made her head ache and her guts tighten, but she kept the promise she’d made to herself. She’d go down fighting.
They drew near, walking down the aisled gantry. Eurydice’s forehead itched with fierce sensitivity, and with her free hand, she pulled off the bandana of black silk. The recycled air of the lander’s internal atmosphere tingled unpleasantly on her third eye, even closed as it was. As naturally as drawing a breath, she opened the eye slowly, feeling the uncomfortable tingle intensify, on the edge of irritation now. The tickling connection of the eye’s milky surface meeting the air forced a shiver through her body. It was a sickening sense of vulnerability. The eye saw nothing, yet it felt the warm, scrubbed air brush over its soft surface with every movement she made.
She was ready. Eurydice clutched the crowbar in both hands again.
The giant passed slowly, and as he did, she leapt at him with a cry.
The crowbar banged against his helm with the dull clang of iron on ceramite. It was a strange sound, half a metallic chime, half a muted and echoless clank. She swung with all her strength coupled with a rage born of desperation. The impact would have staved in the head of a human, and had she chosen her target better, Septimus’ skull would have collapsed under the blow, killing him instantly. But she chose the Astartes. That was an error.
The bar had already struck three times before she realised two things. Firstly, her furious strikes against the giant’s helm were barely even causing him to move his head. His skull-faced helmet glared at her with ruby eye lenses, juddering only slightly under each of her flailing strikes.
Secondly, she hadn’t landed yet. That was what sent her into a writhing panic. He’d caught her as she jumped, and was holding her off the ground with his hand around her throat.
The realisation hit her when he started to squeeze. The pressure on her throat choked her so suddenly, so completely, that she didn’t even have time to squawk a cry of pain. The crowbar landed one last time, deflected from his forearm by the dark armour he wore, before it clattered to the ground with a reverberating clang. She couldn’t hear it; all she heard was her own heart thundering in her ears. Eurydice kicked out at him as she dangled, but her boots clacking against his chestplate and thigh armour met with even less success than her crowbar had.
He wasn’t dying. Her eye… it wasn’t killing him. All her life she’d heard tales that allowing any living being to stare into a Navigator’s third eye would result in some arcane, mystic, agonising death. Her tutors had insisted this was so—a by-product of the Navigator gene that granted her this obscene and priceless mutation. No one understood the reason behind it. At least, no one in the ranks of House Mervallion, but then Eurydice knew she’d only ever had access to tutors of relatively poor quality.
She stared at the giant with her third eye wide and open, as her human eyes narrowed in breath-starved pain. Yet the Astartes stood unfazed.
She was right. Had the demigod looked into her sightless eye the colour of infected milk, he would have died instantly. But behind the crimson lenses, his own eyes were closed. He knew what she was. He had foreseen this moment, and a true hunter didn’t need every sense to bring down prey.
Her vision started to swim. She couldn’t tell if she was really being pulled closer to him, but his skull helm filled her sight, bone-white and blood-eyed. The giant’s voice was low, inhumanly low, grinding like distant thunder. As her vision misted and finally blackened, the demigod’s words followed her down into unconsciousness.
“My name is Talos,” he growled. “And you are coming with me.”
Septimus’ master was the last to leave the asteroid. He stood on the surface, his boots leaving eternal prints in the silver-grey dust, and he looked up at the stars. Stars he didn’t recognise from the last time he’d stood upon this rock and stared up into the heavens. This asteroid had been a world once—a pla
net far from here.
“Talos,” Cyrion’s voice crackled over the vox. “The servitors are loaded. The prisoner is ready to be taken to the mortals’ decks aboard the Covenant. Come, my brother. Your vision was true, there was much to discover here. But the Warmaster calls us to Crythe.”
“What of those who fled?”
“Uzas and Xarl have ended them. Come. Time eludes us.”
Talos knelt, seeing how the dust clung to his black-blue armour in an ashen covering. Like sand sifting through his fingers, he watched a fistful of the dust cascade from his open hand.
“Time changes all things,” Talos whispered.
“Not everything, prophet.” That was Xarl, his voice pitched in respect as he waited in the gunship. “We fight the same war we’ve always fought.”
Talos rose to stand once more, making his way to the waiting Thunderhawk. Its engines cycled live, blasting dust away in all directions as it readied for the return flight, where the Covenant of Blood waited in orbit.
“This rock came a long way,” Cyrion voxed. “Ten thousand years of drift.”
Uzas chuckled. It wasn’t that the emotional significance was lost on him. It was simply that the situation held no emotional weight in his mind at all. He couldn’t have cared less.
“It was good to come home again, hmm?” he said, still smirking inside his helm.
Home. The word left a burning afterimage in Talos’ mind—a world of eternal night, where spires of dark metal clawed at the black sky. Home. Nostramo. The VIII Legion’s home world.
Talos had been there at the end, of course. They all had. Thousands of the Legion standing on the decks of their strike cruisers and battle-barges, watching the shrouded world below as the end rained down upon it, piercing the caul of cloud cover, tearing holes in the dense blanket of darkness in the atmosphere and revealing a venomous illumination: the orange glow of flame and tectonic ruination blazing across the surface. The skin of the world split, as if the gods themselves were breaking it apart out of spite.
[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter Page 3
