The First Acolyte tossed the ruptured helmet aside as he stared down at the revealed face.
It was unnaturally long and thin, ethereal and otherworldly. High cheekbones and a pointed chin gave it a severe, angular shape that was at once delicate and darkly handsome, yet utterly alien. Its head was bereft of hair, and sharp, jagged runes or glyphs of xenos origin, similar in shape to the elegant blades of the eldar, were tattooed across the left half of its face. Its lips were thin and sneering, and its eyes were shaped like almonds, elegant, alien and filled with hate.
‘It’s a frail as a woman,’ said Marduk. ‘Reminds me of Fulgrim’s Legionaries.’
Kol Badar snorted.
Although the III Legion, the Emperor’s Children, were mighty warriors and had wisely thrown their weight in behind the Warmaster and embraced Chaos, there was no love lost between the Word Bearers and the Emperor’s Children.
Where the Word Bearers were severe, their lives dominated by ritual, prayer and penance, the Emperor’s Children were renowned for their flamboyant decadence, embracing excess in all its guises. Where the Word Bearers worshipped Chaos in all its varied manifestations, the Emperor’s Children dedicated themselves solely to the darkling prince of Chaos: Slaanesh.
The eldar glared up at Marduk hatefully.
‘I agree, yet they are a worthy foe,’ said Kol Badar.
‘Worthy? They are xenos. They deserve nothing more than extermination,’ replied Marduk.
‘I do not disagree,’ said Kol Badar, ‘but it does my soul good to fight against an enemy that can at least test us.’
‘Their tainted, alien weaponry is potent,’ agreed Marduk, reluctantly, gripping the eldar roughly behind its neck with one hand. He raised his fist.
‘And they are certainly quick,’ said Marduk. slamming his fist down, punching through the eldar’s face, ‘but they break easily enough once you get a hold of them.’ Marduk shook blood, brain matter and shards of skull across the floor.
CHAPTER NINE
Ikorus Baranov was an optimist. When he first heard of the plight of the worlds being evacuated in the face of the tyranid menace, he had smiled.
Hundreds of inhabited worlds were being abandoned. Countless millions had already perished, either consumed to feed the insatiable hunger of the xenos hive fleet, or utterly destroyed by the zealous policy of Exterminatus employed by the Imperium. Any world not fully evacuated before the tyranid ground invasion began was stricken from the Imperial records and bombarded from high orbit. Already a score of colonised planets had been put to the sword, every living thing – tyranid, human, animal, vegetable – utterly consumed in purifying flame.
Baranov cared nothing for the millions of destroyed lives. He saw the positive flip-side of every ill turn, and while others regarded this time as one of terror and darkness, he saw it as a time to make himself filthy rich.
His ship, the Rapture, was docked at landing zone CXVI, a privately-owned docking pad of the Phorcys starport. Only those wealthy few with the required access privileges were allowed entrance onto this private dock.
Baranov had heard that the regular docks were overrun with tens of thousands of frantic guild workers and their families, desperate to secure passage off-world. In contrast to that mayhem, landing zone CXVI was a veritable utopia of peace and tranquillity.
The private lounge adjacent to the dock was opulently decorated with extravagant off-world flora, for it had been designed to mimic a fecund, semi-tropical rainforest. Paths of fine gravel wove through the undergrowth, and ferns and broad-leafed plants grew up overhead, hiding the strip lights in the high domed ceiling. A waterfall crashed down over rocks imported from a distant feral world, creating a mist of warm water vapour in the air, and butterflies, with wingspans as wide as a man’s forearm is long, bobbed lazily through the air.
Baranov shook his head in amazement and envy. Perdus Skylla was a desolate wasteland of frozen, wind-swept plains, the crude worker class living beneath the ice, and yet there were those with enough wealth to create an oasis of life like this in its midst.
The pursuit of wealth had dominated Ikorus Baranov’s life, and he liked to think that he had achieved much from his humble beginnings, but it was at times like these that he was reminded that his wealth was not so great. This was the wealth that he desired. He wanted to be able to build a sub-tropical rainforest in the middle of an ice-locked ocean world just because he could. Of course he didn’t literally want to build a rainforest – he found this place with its high humidity and crawling things quite unsettling – but he wanted the wealth to be able to do so at a whim had he desired it.
These were the people to lift him to that stage of wealth.
There were thirty-two men here, most with young, surgically enhanced women clinging to their arms like leeches. Some were accompanied by older women, fierce beasts that clearly dominated their husbands or lovers, but they were few in comparison to the glittering array of nubile young women, bedecked in fine jewels and headdresses.
Baranov smirked. Clearly many of these high-ranking guild officials had chosen to bring their courtesans along with them rather than their wives. If he had not been a callous man he might have been offended by how easily these men cast off their wives, abandoning them to their fate while they fled for safety. A few had brought both wife and courtesan with them, but that was rare. The price that Baranov was charging for a berth on his ship was nothing short of extortionate, even for this upper echelon of the truly elite.
‘Lords and ladies,’ began Baranov, his voice silken, ‘may I please have your attention.’
The group was gathered upon a decked clearing in the middle of the rainforest façade, seated on cane high-backed chairs. The hum of conversation died as the gathered social elite turned to regard Baranov. Baranov saw fear in their eyes, which was understandable for their world was being abandoned in the face of an alien menace that would destroy and kill everything in its path. But even so, they regarded him with considerable distaste, as if he were common vermin that had somehow infiltrated into their elite company.
Baranov suppressed a grin. In truth he was vermin, but he was vermin that was about to get seriously wealthy.
He gave a mock bow, waving his hand in a flourish. He was a short man of middling build, and he wore a long-tailed coat of regal blue with overly prominent gold buttons. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hung down his back, and his fingers were bedecked with rings. He knew that to these rich guilders who were born to their wealth, he looked like a rogue or a pirate, an individual who had some wealth but not the class to know what to do with it, but he didn’t give a damn what they thought of him. Right now, he was their only ticket off this cursed world, and he fully intended to milk that for all it was worth.
‘Thank you for your patience, my esteemed friends,’ said Baranov. ‘My ship, the Rapture, is refuelled and provisioned, and is now ready for embarkation.’
‘About time,’ stated one of the guilders, a scowling, porcine individual pawing at a girl who looked little more than a child, though she was clearly his mistress. Other men muttered and huffed impatiently. These people were not used to having to wait for anything.
‘I regret to have kept you waiting, noble lords, but I assure you that the Rapture is now ready to receive your esteemed selves. She is a humble craft, but I trust that you will find her suitable for your use.’
‘Get on with it, man,’ snapped another man, an imposingly tall individual with a hooked nose.
‘I shall forestall you no longer, my lords,’ said Baranov, holding up a hand. ‘However,’ he added with a rakish grin, ‘there is just the small matter of my compensation.’
With a snap of his fingers, four of Baranov’s crewmen stepped out of the shadows of the foliage to join him. Two of them guided a container forward, which hovered just above the ground, held aloft by anti-grav technology. They were rough sorts, and Baranov saw the noses of the lords and ladies crinkle as they stared disdainfully at them.
He grinned again.
One of the crew, sat down at a desk facing the nobles, a data-slate and stylus in his hands. An immense brute with a shaved head took his place behind him, standing with his thick arms folded across his chest.
‘If you would be so kind as to make your monies ready, my associates will collect your dues,’ he said. ‘Step forward if you will, and make a line behind Lord Palantus. This will be as quick and painless as possible, and we shall all be on our way shortly.’
The nobles shuffled into line, huffing and muttering, angry at being treated like commoners. The first in line, Lord Palantus, Prime Magnate of Antithon Guild, stepped forward and slid a slim hand-case onto the desk.
‘Name?’ said the seated crewman, tapping at the data-slate.
‘Oh, for the love of the Emperor,’ said Lord Palantus, outraged at having to commune with such a lowborn cur. The seated man looked up at him, eyebrows raised.
‘Get on with it, Antithon,’ muttered one of the other nobles.
‘Palantus,’ the lord spat, glaring down at the man before him as if he were a bug that he had just found in his food.
‘Open it,’ said the seated man, indicating the hand-case with the tip of his stylus.
‘You are going to check it’s all there, Baranov?’ asked the noble imperiously. ‘I am a noble of Antithon Guild, and my word is my honour. It is all there, as agreed.’
‘My dear lord, of course I trust your esteemed word,’ said Baranov smoothly, ‘but please, indulge my men. They are unused to dealing with such luminaries. Please, open it.’
The prime magnate huffed and folded his arms, looking away. He nodded to his mistress at his side. She clicked the release nodules of the case with her thumbs and it opened with a hiss.
With a nod, the seated man made a mark on his data-slate. The heavily muscled crewman standing behind the desk sealed the case, and it was placed inside the hovering container.
‘Now, my dear Lord Palantus,’ said Baranov, guiding the man to the side with his hand on his elbow, ‘if you would please go with my associates, they will see you safely onboard.’
The lord looked outraged that Baranov dared lay a hand on him, but allowed himself to be guided away.
‘Next,’ said the seated man, tapping with his stylus.
With all paying customers aboard the Rapture, Baranov smiled and let out a slow breath. He had made an absolute killing today, and he couldn’t keep the smile from his face. The engines of his ship roared, and he gave a last look around the starport before climbing the embarkation steps.
‘A good day’s work,’ he said. Keying a sequence of buttons, he sealed the hatch behind him.
Minutes later, the Rapture was cleared for take-off. The wedged segments of the dome far overhead peeled back like the petals of an immense flower, opening up the landing pad to the fury of the elements outside. Wind swirled furiously, ice and snow spiralling in mad eddies as the Rapture’s engines roared into life, flames gushing from the powerful downward-angled thrusters. The ship lifted, rising vertically out of the landing dock, and as the petal segments of the dome began to close once more, the Rapture’s thrusters rotated backwards, and it screamed up towards the heavens, leaving the doomed ice-world of Perdus Skylla behind it.
Marduk shot an Imperial soldier in the face, and the back of the man’s head exploded outwards, spraying blood and brain matter across the wall.
‘That the last of them?’ he growled, kicking the corpse out of his way.
‘There are a few survivors,’ said Kol Badar. ‘They are being executed as we speak.’
‘Move in, secure the area,’ ordered Marduk.
The Coryphaus barked his orders, and the warriors of the Host closed in.
For three hours they had proceeded along the access tunnel, homing in on the location pinpointed by Magos Darioq-Grendh’al as the access lift that would take them down to the mining facility below, to the last known whereabouts of the Adeptus Mechanicus explorator.
They had encountered little resistance en route.
One Imperial patrol of soldiers had been encountered, escorting some two thousand civilians, and they had engaged and neutralised the foe for no losses. Not all of the civilians had been killed in the resultant slaughter, for it would have been a waste of ammunition to gun them down. Almost three hundred had been killed, caught in the middle of the firefight or hacked down in close combat, but the remainder had been allowed to flee, running wildly back the way they had come, though there was evidence to suggest that most of them had been subsequently taken by the dark eldar.
Of the eldar themselves, the Word Bearers had seen no sign since their first, frantic encounter. On several occasions, the whine of their jetbikes had been heard in the distance, accompanied by the echoing screams of Imperial citizens from further along the tunnels, but no bodies had been discovered that spoke of battle.
‘They are a piratical race,’ Kol Badar had said to Burias, who had never encountered the eldar before and seemed, Marduk noted curiously, to have been somewhat unnerved by his first encounter.
‘What are they doing here? What purpose could they possibly have on this gods-forsaken Imperial moon?’ asked Burias.
‘Certain eldar sects have been observed taking captives, though for what purpose has not been ascertained,’ growled Kol Badar. ‘I assume that the eldar on this world are such a sect, taking advantage of the confusion of the evacuations to reap a tally of slaves.’
‘It doesn’t matter why they are here,’ said Marduk. ‘The only thing that need be understood is that they are xenos, and therefore the enemy.’
‘Had the Great Crusade been allowed to fulfil its purpose,’ Kol Badar added bitterly, ‘with the Warmaster at its head, then the foul race of witches and sorcerers would have been eradicated from the galaxy long ago. But they remain a cunning foe, swift and deadly. They are not to be underestimated.’
‘Overestimation of the foe reeks of fear and weakness,’ snapped Marduk. ‘The eldar are nothing more than the last fragmented strands of a dying race. We are the chosen bearers of the great truth, the favoured sons of Chaos. We are the greatest warriors the universe has ever seen, and will ever see. We need not be concerned with the appearance of a handful of xenos pirates.’
Marduk felt pride surge through the warriors of the Host in response to his words, and he knew that they would fight even harder against the eldar if they appeared again. He doubted that they would, in truth, for he believed that Kol Badar was correct in his assumptions: that they had encountered a dark eldar sect engaged in slave raids upon this doomed world, and that they expected little resistance. Certainly, they had not expected to encounter members of an Astartes Legion. Marduk knew that the eldar were a long-lived race, and one that was on the brink of dying out altogether. He was certain that the eldar would rue the day that they had attacked the revered XVII Legion. They would move on, avoiding the warriors of the Host, to find easier pickings elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the progress of the Word Bearers was slowed, for it would be foolishness not to show caution after the lightning attack of the dark eldar. Though it defied logic for the eldar to attack them again, he knew that they were xenos, and so could not be understood. He had studied reports of engagements against the eldar, and everything that he had read spoke of their unpredictability.
The priority target was an access lift that linked one of the dozens of sub-ice hab-cities with its mining facility on the ocean floor far below, and it was towards this location that they were moving. On the approach to one of the many entrances to this guilder hab-city, they had come upon a blockade of enemy soldiers, accompanied by sentry guns with servitors hard-wired into their targeting systems and lightly armoured vehicles similar to those they had encountered on the ice above, though modified for use on man-made surfaces rather than the nebulous ice-flows. The soldiers had been ready for them, either having received warning of the Word Bearers approach or merely prepared for a dark eldar attack, but it mattered little.
The Anointed had led the attack, marching resolutely through the weight of fire while Namar-sin moved the Havocs of the 217th coterie up in support, targeting and neutralising the enemy sentry guns. With the Anointed still weathering the brunt of the enemy fusillade, Sabtec’s veteran squad took up position on the left flank, laying down a blanket of fire that allowed Khalaxis and his warriors to charge up the middle, with Marduk at their forefront roaring catechisms of vengeance and hate.
Every carefully targeted burst of fire from the Anointed had ripped another of the enemy soldiers apart, but it was Marduk’s charge that signalled the commencement of the real slaughter. Up close, the enemy had no hope of survival. Hastily fired point blank lasgun shots had seared burning furrows across power armour plates as Marduk and Khalaxis entered the fray, chainsword and axe cutting and ripping. Bolt pistols created gory craters of flesh in chests, and limbs were ripped from their sockets as Khalaxis’s warriors tore through the heart of the enemy defence.
Those cowards that had turned to run were hacked down without mercy, chainswords and heavy axes severing spines and cutting arms away at the shoulder. Kol Badar and his Anointed moved through the mayhem, ripping apart the remnants of the Imperial defenders, gunning them down with combi-bolters and heavy reaper autocannon fire. The Coryphaus smashed the scorpion-legged rapier sentry-guns aside with backhand blows of his power talons, sending them crashing into cowering defenders, crushing limbs and breaking bones.
As the last enemies were brutally butchered, and as Sabtec’s squad moved forward to secure the area, Darioq-Grendh’al stamped mechanically forward, each heavy step accompanied by a whine of servos.
The magos, Marduk noted with a smile of satisfaction, was now truly a being of Chaos. The four powerful arms of his servo-harness were as much organic as metal, and bony protuberances, serrated thorns and hooked spines ridged the once pristine metal limbs. Fleshy lumps of muscle had grown around the servo-bundles and coupling links that joined the servo-limbs to his body, and a large curving horn emerged from the left side of the magos’s head, bursting through the blood-stained fabric of the low cowl that hid his face in shadow.
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