Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

by Paul Kearney

  ‘There is something more,’ she said suddenly. ‘Something you have not yet told me.’ She felt their unease, even a level of apprehension.

  Ainoc nodded. He extended one long hand to Anandaiah, and the young eldar bowed her head.

  ‘My lady, Vol-Aimoi has been under Imperial control for several millennia, it is true, but in the recent past the forces of Chaos have swept across that sector of space, travelling from the Eye of Terror in vast armadas.

  ‘They have an interest in the sector which goes beyond their normal lust for conquest and slaughter. The human warriors known as the Adeptus Astartes repelled a huge invasion a hundred and fifty of their solar cycles ago, at great cost to both sides.’

  ‘You think that the Great Enemy also believes what you conjecture to be true?’ Te Mirah asked.

  ‘It would explain their repeated attempts to take control of that sector,’ Ainoc said grimly.

  ‘There are ripples in the warp, playing out from Vol-Aimoi as we speak,’ Anandaiah said. ‘It is what first drew my attention to that sector of space.

  ‘My lady, Chaos has come again. There is battle and slaughter on the planet – the echoes of it are coursing through the immaterium. The Great Enemy has returned, to lay claim to that ancient world. The Imperium is fighting to keep it. Untold millions have been adding their screams to the currents of the warp, and the carnage is stirring up the Dark Powers.’

  I had felt it, Te Mirah thought. I had known it, and ignored it. Ainoc is right – I have become jaded. I should have had an inkling of these events long before some lowly craftseer, no matter how gifted.

  She stared at the slowly pulsing star on the summoned display before her.

  ‘How long have you known this?’ she asked.

  Anandaiah lifted her hands. Not long. I–’

  ‘Not you. Ainoc.’

  The warlock had no trace of levity on his fine-drawn face now. His features were set in the white mask which she had seen come upon him in battle.

  ‘Two turns of shipday, no more.’

  Time. Time was running past them like some lithe child, scampering into the Void and taking all their possibilities with it.

  No time to send back word to Il Kaithe. No time to consult with the Autarch. They were too far from the craftworld.

  Decisions came harder to her now that she was old in the reckoning of her people. She saw more than she once did; the outcomes of every choice she made crowded her mind almost as soon as it was selected.

  But she still knew what she had to do.

  She looked up at the graceful contours of her beloved ship, the Brae-Kaithe, to which she had been wed for centuries.

  Beloved.

  She did not want to bring this spouse, this child of hers into harm’s way, but that was the essence of the decision she was about to make.

  Forgive me.

  Then she raised her head, and her eyes glittered as bright as the summoned stars of the craftseer’s display.

  ‘Steering, set us a course for the Pe-Kara system. Set more sail and bring us to best speed.’

  Her voice rang around the wraithbone vault, as musical as the notes of a song.

  ‘Ainoc,’ she said to the warlock standing before her. ‘Ready your people. Wake the warriors from the stones.

  ‘We go to look upon a war.’

  TEN

  Casum Regis

  There was a horrible fascination to the spectacle of war, Governor Riedling thought. Viewed at a distance – ideally, a great distance – it took on the grandeur of which the poets prated. An epic worthy of verse, of song, of prayer.

  Up close, it was a squirming, black shock of nightmare.

  And – he sipped his wine – they never talk about how it smells. Like a dead rat under the floor. The smell never leaves one, no matter how many perfumed handkerchiefs are held to the nose. No matter how many baths one takes, one feels the reek of it on the skin, day and night. It steals away appetite, it ruins sleep.

  And still, there is the fascination in that spectacle.

  And the fear that it may draw close, until the eyes of the beast are at the very door.

  Riedling gulped back his wine. His hand shook a little. Roiling smoke from the burning hive-scrapers of the city made a carpet of black cloud below, and in that carpet bright flashes came and went, the boom of them coming here to the palace several seconds later. It had been going on for weeks now, a monsoon of artillery.

  Dietrich’s men would be making their assault round about now – such hopeless, fruitless bravery. He raised a glass to them.

  The citadel was the only place on the planet where they could hope to hold out now. Upon these heights, guarded by the heaviest calibre guns on the world, they would sit tight, repulse the enemy, and await relief. Ras Hanem was too important to let slip away. Cypra Mundi must see that – it was elementary logic. Help was probably thundering through the warp towards them even as he stood here.

  Government must survive; the core of authority must survive, Riedling told himself. Otherwise what is left is the merest anarchy.

  My family have ruled this planet for a hundred generations. The Emperor himself entrusted my forebears with its care. I will not be the one to betray that trust.

  He spilled his wine as he drank. The ground-fire was intense out there today. He looked down on it like some detached god. It seemed so far away, almost irrelevant.

  And then from close by there came the massive rippling boom as a salvo of the citadel’s heavy guns opened up. Riedling felt the vibrations of their firing tremble through his boots as the entire citadel echoed to the massive concussion.

  What in the world? His face clouded with anger.

  Again, another salvo, this time from the heavy plasma batteries whose dwindling energy banks they had been conserving for days. Augur-guided bolts of light lanced out from the sides of the mountain-fortress upon which he stood and streaked down into the ruin of the smoke-choked city below.

  And then the anti-air batteries started up, rattling and cracking in a streak of gunfire that sounded like nothing so much as the ripping of a great piece of linen cloth.

  The sky filled with fire, and soaring in to meet it came squadrons of the enemy’s ground-attack craft, century-old Doomfires by the score. The citadel’s guns caught them at their bombing runs and lit them up in long lines of flame-bright destruction.

  Every gun in the citadel was firing, as though there were ammunition aplenty, as though suddenly all his orders about conserving it had never been issued.

  Riedling tossed his crystal goblet to the floor, where it shattered. He set his palm on the hilt of his ceremonial chainsword and let the anger throb through him.

  Men would hang for this. He would see it done here, today.

  ‘Gardias! In here at once!’

  The chamber doors swung open straight away, and in came his old chamberlain, who had served his family all his long life. But he was not alone. With him came Marshal Veigh, and half a dozen troopers of the Hanemite Guard.

  The soldiers looked like creatures from another world. They stalked into the opulence of the governor’s chambers bringing the reek of smoke and blood and death with them, ash falling from their boots, their lasguns the only thing about them that was not smeared with filth.

  Veigh had his hand on Gardias’s shoulder. His face was as lean as a skull and he had carbonised pockmarks on one cheekbone. He had his laspistol unholstered and there was a bright light in his eyes, almost as though there were tears hovering there.

  He spoke not to his lord, Governor Riedling, but to the old chamberlain, Gardias.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this, my friend?’

  The chamberlain looked at him with something approaching contempt. ‘I know my place. I am no traitor. I will not bite the hand which has fed me all these years.’

  He shrugged off the marshal’s hand and walked across the chamber with the firm stride of a much younger man. When he came to the astonished governor he knelt befor
e Riedling and kissed his hand. ‘Lord, know that I would never betray you, and that I had no part in this.’

  Riedling raised his eyes in bafflement to Marshal Veigh. ‘What in the seven hells do you think you are doing, marshal?’ Then he raised his voice. ‘Guards!’

  ‘Your popinjays have been redeployed where they can be of some use,’ Veigh said grimly. ‘They are on the battlefield below, even now, earning their pay at last. There is no one else here who will lift a finger to help you now, my lord governor.’

  Riedling took a step backwards. ‘What is this, Veigh, mutiny? Revolution? You will burn for this, you and all those who stand with you – you know that!’ His voice shook. Gardias rose and stood beside him as though they were comrades-in-arms rather than master and servant.

  ‘He has taken over the citadel, my lord,’ the old man said with a snarl. ‘He has usurped your command and ordered every battery in the fortress to support the attack going on below.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Marshal Veigh said quietly. He gestured with his pistol. ‘I will not let brave men die unaided. Dietrich is assaulting the spaceport as we speak. If he is successful then our forces will be linked up at last, and the munitions our guns need will be available in untold quantities.’

  ‘I vetoed that strategy,’ Riedling grated. ‘The attack cannot succeed.’

  ‘Then we will all die fighting, my lord. That is our duty.’

  ‘Do not talk to me of duty, Veigh. You have disobeyed my direct orders. You are hereby relieved of command. Consider yourself cashiered – a court martial will consider your fate once the relief expedition arrives. I will watch you die for this.’

  Veigh raised his pistol. ‘I don’t think so.’ And he shot Riedling in the head.

  The governor fell to the shining marble of the floor, eyes still open, a half-formed word still on his lips. His temple smoked where the las-bolt had entered it, and steam squirmed out through the hole as his brain boiled inside his skull.

  ‘Gardias?’ Veigh said. ‘You do not have to do this.’

  Gardias was looking down at the twitching body of his master. ‘Let me die with him,’ he said. ‘I know what he was, but I can do no other. There must be some loyalty left in the world.’

  Veigh’s face clenched in regret. ‘So be it.’

  Two rounds to the chest, and Gardias went down without a sound.

  A moment they all stood there, the troopers staring heavily. Two more bodies, piled upon a hecatomb of millions. What did it signify?

  ‘Throw the corpses over the balcony,’ Marshal Veigh said, holstering his pistol. ‘And be quick. I am needed in the command centre.’

  They hesitated a moment, even so.

  ‘Comrades,’ Veigh said, ‘this is all on me. Let it be on my head alone.’

  One of the troopers, a sergeant, slung his lasgun upon his back and bent at Riedling’s body. ‘Give me a hand, you dozy bastards – you heard what the marshal said. Like as not we’re all dead men anyway, but at least now we don’t have a coward leading us.’

  The soldiers gathered at once about the bodies and lifted them up like two boneless sacks. They hoisted them shoulder high and then one by one they tossed them over the railings of the ornate balcony so that they plummeted down into the smoke and fire of the battle far below, as insignificant, it seemed, as if they were nothing more than crumbs of rubble.

  Marshal Veigh stared down at the city below for a few moments, his men around him. He passed a hand over his red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Now, Dietrich,’ he muttered. ‘Make it worth it.’

  The Baneblade lurched and shuddered as it rode over the ruins of the spaceport terminal buildings. Dietrich clutched a ceiling rail and stared intently at the tactical readouts on the screens along the vehicle’s command compartment. Blue arrowheads were advancing steadily, sometimes coming together as his companies congregated to wipe out a particularly stubborn enemy position, then opening out again as the assault ground on.

  Ismail was leading the first wave. Four Baneblades and thirty-six Russes, the heaviest metal remaining to the 387th. Upon each tank, a squad of Hanemite infantry were clinging, and to their rear, battalions of militia trickled along in the wake of the armour.

  All told, some six thousand men were attacking, along a frontage of a kilometre. And that was only the first wave.

  In the second echelon came the Chimeras, filled with more infantry – many of them ex-tankers who had lost their vehicles – and striding in their midst came Sentinels, Hydras with their multi-barrelled guns depressed for ground-fire, and a few more Leman Russes with minor mechanical failure and battle damage which were doing their best to keep up with the advance. The Basilisk companies had been left behind to help defend the Armaments District, and the forces remaining there were stretched dangerously thin. Dietrich had staked all on this single assault.

  The vox crackled, and the general heard his commissar’s voice on the encrypted battle frequency, slightly distorted by the encoding process, but perfectly clear.

  ‘Zero, this is Granite One. Initial objectives achieved. Casualties minimal, enemy resistance breaking. We’re running them down, over.’

  Dietrich smiled, and took the vox receiver from his signaller. ‘Granite One, move on secondaries. We are following up with Granite Two, over.’

  ‘Acknowledged. The Emperor is with us today, Pavul. Out.’

  Dietrich turned to his adjutant, Lars Dyson.

  ‘Get on the vox to Gresbach and Toveson. Tell them to move up the Sentinels to the flanks of Granite One and look out for infiltrators.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s too easy, Lars.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We’re missing something. Where are their reserves? We should have been counterattacked by now.’

  Dyson bent to the comms bench, frowning, and Dietrich stared at the monitor once more. Orderly lines of blue, and red markers flicking out in sequence as his armour rolled over them. They were pounding across the rubble-strewn permacrete of the landing pads now, and even in the insulated interior of the command compartment, the raging thunder of the battle was something which threatened to overwhelm the senses.

  He was standing inside a hundred-ton armoured vehicle, the finest that Mars could make, and yet he felt utterly exposed.

  Von Arnim breathed in the foetid air. Cordite, the burned emissions of energy bolts, ashen dust, and the ever-present miasma of decay. He had known that particular reek all his life, and it meant nothing to him. It was just one more element to the battlefield, one that was never absent, save in vacuum.

  He ducked behind the open hatch of the Leman Russ as a shell landed fifty metres to his front. Shrapnel peppered the glacis plate of the tank, rattling like gravel in a tin. A piece came to rest beside him, still smoking, the edges glowing red. He flicked it off the roof of the tank and stared into the billowing, flame-shot darkness ahead.

  Las-bolts peppering the smoke in stuttering lines, and here and there the brighter flash as a melta-gun went off. He raised the vox to his mouth. It was hot against his lips.

  ‘Second Company, bear to your left. You’re bunching, Lemuel–’ He ducked instinctively as a heavy bolt of melta fire sizzled close past his head, close enough to tighten his skin. He flicked the vox to the vehicle comms.

  ‘Gunner, melta gun emplacement at fifteen degrees, at the base of the ruined silo. Seen?’

  ‘Seen,’ the laconic reply came back.

  ‘Take it out, Gannich. He has our range.’

  The Russ’s main armament traversed, the turret moving under Von Arnim. He opened his mouth deliberately as the main gun went off, feeling the concussion in his skull, his chest, in his very bowels. He grunted in satisfaction.

  ‘Good shot, Gannich. Don’t go to sleep on me now.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.’

  It was like riding the prow of a boat on a choppy sea. The huge vehicle rose and fell under Von Arnim as it powered forward at some fifteen kilometres an hour.
His mouth was full of dust, and he had not even the moisture left in it to spit.

  Then there was the tiny urgent red light on the vox of the command frequency. He thumbed it.

  ‘Granite One, send, over.’

  ‘Ismail, halt your line. Repeat, halt your line at once. Do you acknowledge?’

  He stared at the mike as though it must have more to say. Halt the attack – now – at this moment? They were in full career, driving the enemy like birds before a line of beaters.

  ‘Zero, say again your last.’

  ‘Ismail, this is Dietrich. Halt your line and go firm on your current positions. That is a direct order. Acknowledge at once, over.’

  Von Arnim blinked, baffled and alarmed. It was a direct order, and it was Dietrich’s voice, no doubt of that.

  He looked out at the wide expanse of the spaceport, lying in battered ruin before him. They were a kilometre from the base of the citadel, no more – the fortress-mountain towered over him, its shadow looming out of the smoke and the hanging dust. He could be there in minutes, if they kept to their current rate of advance. The enemy to his front was beaten – surely Dietrich must know that.

  ‘Zero, this is Granite One. We are almost at the main objective. If I had thirty more minutes we would have it! Over.’

  ‘Obey my order, commissar.’

  It was ingrained in him, buried deep in his marrow: the habit of obedience. He could not ignore a direct command, no matter how strange – nay, insane – it might seem. And he had known Dietrich for twenty years. That counted for something also.

  ‘Roger that. Am going firm on my current location.’ He changed frequencies. ‘All Granite callsigns, this is Granite One, go firm, I say again, go firm. Hold your present location and wait for further orders. Acknowledge by company, over.’

  A moment’s delay, as his commanders processed the order as he had done. Then they came on the net one by one.

  ‘Granite Three, acknowledged.’