The gathered nobles and upper guild officials were lounging on the low, cushioned couches within, sipping from glasses filled with the finest amasec that Baranov could obtain. Each bottle had cost him a small fortune, but it mattered not when compared with the price the Perdus Skyllans had already paid him, and the wealth that he was promised from his employers.
Surgically enhanced beauties, the courtesans and mistresses of these fine, upstanding gentlemen, were laughing gaily as they sipped from their high glasses, and gave each other venomous glances behind their masters’ backs. The men were gathered in small groups, talking earnestly about whatever they talked about, probably their latest guild takeover moves, or their strategies for the future.
No one paid any mind to Baranov as he stood before them. He was as invisible as a servant, and he cleared his throat to gain their attention.
‘How far are we from the Imperial fleet, Baranov?’ huffed a heavily jowled guild senator, and the rogue trader held up a hand to forestall him.
‘My most esteemed companions,’ he said with a broad smile, his voice raised over the din of chatter, ‘I come to inform you that we are nearing our destination. I hope that you have been comfortable on your journey, and I apologise for any inconvenience that the turbulence we experienced earlier caused you. Alas, it was a necessary inconvenience. It was as if the loathsome xenos were determined to make your lives less comfortable, abominable creatures, all of them.’
Baranov raised a hand as murmuring rippled across the gathered group, and gasps came from several of the courtesans.
‘Have no fear, ladies and gentlemen, the bulk of the xenos fleet is attacking Perdus Skylla from galactic east, on the far side of the planet. You were in little real danger, and my pilot, dear Eustenov, is the finest pilot in the eastern quadrant. Only the best for such vaunted company,’ he said, bowing with a flourish.
The lie came easily to Baranov’s lips. In truth, the Rapture was lucky to have avoided destruction, as several of the spores launched from the still distant tyranid hive fleets had come perilously close to colliding with his ship. It had taken more luck than skill to avoid them.
‘We will be docking in around two minutes,’ said Baranov, checking the time on his wrist-piece. ‘It has been a pleasure to have such esteemed guests aboard the Rapture. Never before has such a fine group of individuals graced its humble decks, and I shall look back upon the service I was able to perform with pleasure for many years to come.’
Many of the nobles refused even to look at him, but Baranov didn’t care.
‘Many years to come indeed,’ he said again, more softly, and bowing with a flourish, he returned to the shuttle’s cockpit, thinking of what he would do with his new-found wealth.
‘Hurry, Dios,’ said Solon as he raced through the snow towards the landed shuttle. The effort of carrying the boy had all but exhausted him, and now the boy was running along behind him, his eyes wide with excitement and hope.
They were no more than fifty metres from the shuttle, and he could see the embarkation deck at the rear of the fuselage lowering to the ground, beckoning him.
Salvation!
With a burst of speed, Dios overtook him, laughing as he ran, but then the boy stopped short, freezing in place. Laughing, Solon drew to a halt next to the boy, a smile on his lips.
‘Isn’t it the most wonderful sight you’ve ever seen?’ he breathed, his heart pumping from the exertion.
Dios’s eyes were locked on something in the distance, something moving fast. Squinting through the darkness, Solon could see four shapes moving rapidly across the ice flow, a white backwash kicking up behind them.
‘Interdiction forces?’ said Solon, but the vehicles were not the uniform white of the moon’s military forces. They were the colour of congealed blood, and a shiver ran down Solon’s spine as he looked upon them. They were larger than any Interdiction vehicle he had ever seen, for even without landmarks for reference to give the vehicles scale, he could see that they were massive.
Solon began to walk slowly towards the waiting shuttle, but a sudden wave of fear struck him, and he dropped to his belly, dragging Dios down into the snow with him. Sponson-mounted weaponry on the vehicles, which could only have been battle tanks, turned in their direction.
Solon and Dios watched with growing panic as the four battle tanks drew nearer, and they could see that their hulls were covered in chains, spikes and blasphemous runes. Skulls were rammed onto sharpened metal stakes that ran in ridges down the flanks of the massive machines, and strips of parchment were plastered to their sides, half obscured by snow and ice.
The first of the tanks ground to a halt before the shuttle, and dark smoke rose from its exhaust stacks. An assault ramp at the front of the vehicle slammed down on to the ice, and giants dressed in red plate armour emerged.
Solon had only heard stories about the blessed Space Marines that protected humanity, and he had never dreamed in his wildest fantasies that he would ever get a chance to lay eyes on the nigh-on mythical warriors of the Emperor. They were the Emperor’s chosen, biologically enhanced warriors that were as strong as ten men, armed with the most advanced weaponry the Adeptus Mechanicus could provide, and armoured in heavy plate that could withstand a direct hit from a Leman Russ battle tank, so it was said. They were the finest fighting force that the galaxy had ever seen, and it was said that nothing could stand against them. Looking upon the divine warriors, Solon could well believe it, though these warriors looked more like bloodthirsty butchers than holy protectors of humanity.
‘Angels of death,’ he whispered.
In his childhood dreams he had pictured them armoured in faultless golden plate, with angelic countenances and noble bearing. While such beliefs were clearly childish, Solon knew that there was something horribly wrong here. He was desperate to believe that salvation had come to Perdus Skylla, that the Emperor had dispatched his finest warriors to free the moon from alien invasion, but these Space Marines filled him with dread.
The other monstrous tanks disgorged their cargo of Space Marines, and two of the massive vehicles backed under the shuttle’s stubby wings. Locking clamps descended like umbilical cords, latching onto the immense tanks and lifting them up beneath its wings while the other pair manoeuvred into position behind.
The first warriors stamped up the embarkation deck into the belly of the shuttle. One of them paused on the ramp, consulting a hand-held tech-device. It turned in their direction, and Solon sank down lower into the snow, barely daring to breathe.
A warrior with a helmet fashioned like a grinning death’s head spun to face them, and a fresh wave of panic gripped Solon as he realised that they had been spotted. Other warriors turned in their direction, and, raising their weapons before them, they began to march towards their position.
Sick with panic, Solon staggered to his feet, his heart thumping. He lifted his hands up before him, to show that he was unarmed.
The Space Marines halted, though they did not lower their weapons. One of them, a lean warrior whose head was bare to the elements, turned to the skull-helmed one, speaking something that Solon could not hear. The warrior appeared to approve, nodding his head almost imperceptibly before turning away and striding up the embarkation ramp towards the interior of the shuttle.
The barefaced warrior turned back towards Solon with a cold smile upon his noble face, and Solon licked his lips uneasily. The other Space Marines turned away, but this one warrior remained staring at them. Solon felt as if he was transfixed by the Space Marine’s gaze.
Then the man turned into a monster, and Solon felt his sanity fray.
‘No,’ he whispered, as the warrior grew, his shoulders bulking out and his hands extending into talons. The warrior’s image flickered like a faulty pict screen, and for a moment Solon could see the image of two beings overlapping each other, both inhabiting the same space. Although he knew such a thing was impossible, and his rational mind baulked at what he was seeing, he could not refute wha
t he saw with his own eyes. The warrior was still there, lean and striding towards them with an easy, relaxed grace, but there was something else... something horrific.
It was a hulking daemon from the pits of hell, and its hateful features overlaid the classically handsome face of the Space Marine. Its eyes burnt with malice and the promise of pain, and its lips curled back to expose hundreds of sharp teeth, arrayed in serried layers, one behind the other, all the way to the back of its throat. Tall horns rose from its brow, and the air was thick and cloying where it exhaled.
The two images became one, a bastard hybrid, and Solon, horrified beyond reason, began to back away even as the daemonic hybrid creature began loping towards them.
‘Run!’ Solon roared, his paralysis giving way to abject terror.
Glancing over his shoulder, Solon saw that the hellish creature was gaining on them rapidly, covering the ground with tremendous leaps, using its arms to steady itself with each landing.
These were not the Emperor’s divine angels, he thought; they couldn’t be. They were the flip side of everything he had ever heard about them, and they were going to butcher him and Dios, after all they that had struggled through.
Solon glanced back to see the daemon close behind them, its powerful legs bunched beneath it as it prepared to launch itself upon them. Solon shoved Dios to the side as the creature leapt. It would not get them both at once, but he knew that he was only delaying the inevitable, for neither of them could hope to stand against such a creature.
Solon spun around to face the monster as it lunged towards him, staggering backwards in the snow, raising his hands futilely to ward off its attacks.
A beam of pure darkness stabbed through the air and slammed into the daemon’s body, smashing it to the ice, and it roared in fury and pain.
The daemon writhed on the ground. A searing hole had punched through its side just above the hip, passing clean through its body, and as it thrashed around, hot blood splashed across the ice and snow, causing steam to rise where it landed.
Solon spun to see where the blast had come from, and blinked as he saw several dark vehicles gliding smoothly across the ice. They looked similar to the skiffs that the first colonists on Perdus Skylla were said to have used, long thin boats with blades on their undersides that had used the power of the winds to propel them across the ice flow. These were not touching the ground at all, but hovered two metres above the ground, and slid forward with phenomenal speed.
Another lance of dark light stabbed from one of the vehicles, striking one of the daemonic Space Marines’ battle tanks, which exploded spectacularly, the immense fireball throwing the shattered vehicle high into the air.
Dark figures leapt from the sides of the skiffs. Somersaulting from the decks and landing effortlessly on the ground, they began running lightly towards the Space Marines.
‘Ghosts,’ breathed Dios, his eyes wide with fear and panic.
Grabbing the boy around the waist, Solon lifted him and ran.
Burias-Drak’shal pushed himself to his knees, growling and spitting. The shot had gone clear through him, passing between his hip and the base of his fused ribcage, leaving a gaping aperture of weeping flesh and internal organs exposed to the air. Already his enhanced, daemonically infused physiology was sealing the wound, his blood flow clotting and his flesh beginning to re-knit, but it would take some time before he was fully healed, and no amount of healing could repair his sundered power armour.
Pushing himself to his feet, Burias-Drak’shal hissed in pain and staggered, falling back to his knees before once again rising. All thought of the pair of humans was gone, and he scanned the landscape, focusing on the dark shapes of the eldar as they darted towards his comrades.
Wincing in pain, the icon bearer began to stagger back towards the shuttle, when his enhanced senses picked up a familiar scent on the air. He threw himself forward into a roll as he registered the appearance of the shadow-eldar behind him, and came up facing the being, teeth bared.
That the creature was of eldar origin was clear, for its frame was tall and slight, its limbs long and elegant, but that was where the similarities ended. Its skin was as black as the night, and runes of twisted eldar design were inscribed into its flesh. These runes glowed with cold light, pulsing brightly as the creature entered fully into the material realm.
Burias-Drak’shal felt the power of the warp within the creature, but it was not possessed in the same manner as he was. It was almost as if the daemon within the eldar shade was at once there and not there, its will and individuality gone, but its strength tapped.
The shadow-eldar hissed at him, elegant, alien features contorting to reveal an array of small, sharp teeth, and its milky, elongated eyes, shockingly white against its black skin, flashed its murderous intent a fraction before it moved.
The creature disappeared, leaving a smoky outline in its wake, before it reappeared beside Burias-Drak’shal, the blades emerging from the back of its forearms slashing towards his wounded side.
Burias-Drak’shal was ready for it this time, swinging his arm around in a brutal arc that would have decapitated the slender eldar had its reflexes been less than preternatural. It swayed backwards from the blow, the possessed Word Bearer’s talons passing just centimetres from its face.
Burias-Drak’shal pushed his advantage, throwing a stabbing blow towards the eldar’s torso, seeking to rip its heart from its chest. The shade threw itself backwards and disappeared again, only to reappear to the icon bearer’s left, and the twin blades protruding from the back of its arm stabbed deep into his body. The blades of its other arm slashed across his pauldron, slicing monomolecular cuts through his power armour and drawing blood from his bicep.
Burias-Drak’shal snarled and spun, lashing out at the shadow-eldar, but his claws merely passed through a dark mist as the creature leapt away once more. It re-entered the material plane to his other side, its blades flashing again, and the icon bearer felt hot blood begin to flow from another trio of wounds.
His anger grew as the eldar continued to prey upon him, taunting him with its speed, and Burias-Drak’shal roared in frustration as once again his claws found nothing but air.
For all his anger he could sense that there was a pattern forming in the creature’s attacks. It attacked and jumped away, always moving, and always attacking from a different angle.
As the shade disappeared once more, Burias-Drak’shal spun around on the spot, anticipating where its next attack would come from and lashing out. The eldar appeared where he had expected, and even its alien speed and reflexes were not up to avoiding the icon bearer’s pre-emptive strike.
Burias-Drak’shal’s talons closed around the slender eldar neck, and he pulled the creature sharply towards him, throwing it off balance.
‘Got you,’ growled Burias-Drak’shal, pulling the alien straight onto his rising knee, which thundered into the creature’s sternum.
Burias-Drak’shal grinned as he felt the bones and tendons under his grip strain, and he clubbed the creature in the back of its head as it bent over double. It was slammed to the ground, and Burias-Drak’shal followed it down, driving his knee into the small of the eldar’s back.
Burias-Drak’shal pulled his right hand back, and thrust down with all his enhanced might, seeking to drive his talons through the back of the creature’s skull.
It disappeared from beneath him, his talons spearing deep into the ice, and the icon bearer snarled in frustration.
Flicking his head to the side, he saw that his brother warriors had been engaged by the bulk of the eldar raiding force, and with a hiss he began loping painfully towards the escalating battle.
Baranov could barely contain his satisfaction as he hauled the bay doors of the Rapture open and the pompous, condescending elite of Perdus Skylla gaped in horror.
Eldar warriors were standing just outside the bay doors of the Rapture. Several of the courtesans screamed, while others whimpered in terror or merely gaped and soile
d themselves. Baranov grinned, and stepped to the side.
A screaming woman was dragged from the shuttle by her hair, and the remaining high-ranking guilders shrank back, only to be pushed forward by Baranov’s burly crew members.
Chuckling, Baranov swung away from the spectacle. For a moment, his gaze was drawn towards the shimmering integrity field that covered the yawning docking bay. It was almost imperceptible to the naked eye, looking as though nothing separated the inside of the ship and the vacuum of space, and it always made him feel slightly uneasy, as if he would be sucked out into the void at any moment.
Ikorus Baranov stepped back alongside the dark eldar lord’s proxy, his arms folded across his chest as the wailing, weeping guilders and their lovers were led away in glimmering manacles that crackled with energy. He had never learnt the name of the eldar pirate, nor that of his representative. Not that it mattered, he thought. He would be unlikely to be able to pronounce it anyway.
‘You have done well for me these past months,’ said the eldar, his voice as smooth as velvet. The eldar spoke a curious form of Low Gothic, his pronunciation pitch perfect, but with a strangely singsong inflection.
‘I am glad that your lord has been pleased with my deliveries,’ replied Baranov, trying to keep his voice calm. In truth, the eldar terrified him, but they paid well. ‘That will be the last of them, I’m afraid. I won’t risk another run, not with the tyranids so close.’
Baranov flashed a glance at the eldar’s face, trying to read him. Normally a good judge of character, he found it galling that he could not gauge the eldar’s emotions in the slightest. Never again will I work with xenos, he thought, though he knew as soon as he thought it that it was a lie.
Word Bearers Page 56
