Smiling at the thought, the hunter whispered to the machine-spirit of his armour, a single word that enticed the war plate’s soul with the knowledge that the hunt was beginning in earnest.
‘Preysight.’
His vision blurred to the blue of the deepest oceans, decorated by supernova heat smears of moving, living beings. The hunter watched the team move on, separating into two teams, each of two men.
This was going to be entertaining.
Talos followed the first team, shadowing them through the corridors, knowing the grating purr of his power armour and the snarling of its servo-joints were unheard by the sense-dimmed salvagers.
Salvagers was perhaps the wrong word, of course. Disrespectful to the foe.
While they were not full Astartes, their gene-enhancement was obvious in the bulk of their bodies and the lethal grace of their motions. They, too, were hunters – just weaker examples of the breed.
Initiates.
Their icon, mounted on each shoulder plate, displayed a drop of ruby blood framed by proud angelic wings.
The hunter’s pale lips curled into another crooked smile. This was unexpected. The Blood Angels had sent in a team of Scouts…
The Night Lord had little time for notions of coincidence. If the Angels were here, then they were here on the hunt. Perhaps the Covenant of Blood had been detected on the long-range sensors of a Blood Angel battlefleet. Such a discovery would certainly have been enough to bring them here.
Hunting for their precious sword, no doubt. And not for the first time.
Perhaps this was their initiation ceremony? A test of prowess? Bring back the blade and earn passage into the Chapter…
Oh, how unfortunate.
The stolen blade hung at the hunter’s hip, as it had for years now. Tonight would not be the night it found its way back into the desperate reach of the Angels. But, as always, they were welcome to sell their lives in the attempt at reclamation.
Talos monitored the readout of his retinal displays. The temptation to blink-click certain runes was strong, but he resisted the urge. This hunt would be easy enough without combat narcotics flooding his blood. Purity lay in abstaining from such things until they became necessary.
The location runes of his brothers in First Claw flickered on his visor display. Taking note of their positions elsewhere in the ship, the hunter moved forward to shed the blood of those enslaved to the Throne of Lies.
A true hunter did not avoid being seen by his prey. Such stalking was the act of cowards and carrion-eaters, revealing themselves only when the prey was slain. Where was the skill in that? Where was the thrill?
A Night Lord was raised to hunt by other, truer principles.
Talos ghosted through the shadows, judging the strength of the Scouts’ suits’ audio-receptors. Just how much could they hear…?
He followed them down a corridor, his gauntleted knuckles scraping along the metal walls.
The Blood Angels turned instantly, stabbing his face with their beam lighting.
That almost worked, the hunter had to give it to them. These lesser hunters knew their prey – they knew they hunted Night Lords. For half a heartbeat, sunfire would have blazed across his vision, blinding him.
Talos ignored the beams completely. He tracked by preysight. Their tactics were meaningless.
He was already gone when they opened fire, melting into the shadows of a side corridor.
He caught them again nine minutes later.
This time, he lay in wait after baiting a beautiful trap. The sword they came for was right in their path.
It was called Aurum. Words barely did its craftsmanship justice. Forged when the Emperor’s Great Crusade took its first steps into the stars, the blade was forged for one of the Blood Angel Legion’s first heroes. It had come into Talos’s possession centuries later, when he’d murdered Aurum’s heir.
It was almost amusing, how often the sons of Sanguinius tried to reclaim the sword from him. It was much less amusing how often he had to kill his own brothers when they sought to take the blade from his dead hands. Avarice shattered all unity, even among Legion brothers.
The Scouts saw their Chapter relic now, so long denied their grasp. The golden blade was embedded into the dark metal decking, its angel-winged crosspiece turned to ivory under the harsh glare of their stabbing lights.
An invitation to simply advance into the chamber and take it, but it was so obviously a trap. Yet… how could they resist?
They did not resist.
The initiates were alert, bolters high and panning fast, senses keen. The hunter saw their mouths moving as they voxed continuous updates to each other.
Talos let go of the ceiling.
He thudded to the deck behind one of the initiates, gauntlets snapping forward to clutch the Scout.
The other Angel turned and fired. Talos laughed at the zeal in his eyes, at the tightness of his clenched teeth, as the initiate fired three bolts into the body of his brother.
The Night Lord gripped the convulsing human shield against him, seeing the temperature gauge on his retinal display flicker as the dying initiate’s blood hit sections of his war plate. In his grip, the shuddering Angel was little more than a burst sack of freezing meat. The bolt shells had detonated, coming close to killing him and opening the suit to the void.
‘Good shooting, Angel,’ Talos spoke through his helm’s crackling vox-speakers. He threw his bleeding shield aside and leapt for the other initiate, fingers splayed like talons.
The fight was mercilessly brief. The Night Lord’s full gene-enhancements, coupled with the heightened strength of his armour’s engineered muscle fibre-cables, meant there was only one possible outcome. Talos backhanded the bolter from the Angel’s grip and clawed at the initiate.
As the weaker warrior writhed, Talos stroked his gauntleted fingertips across the clear face-visor of the initiate’s atmosphere suit.
‘This looks fragile,’ he said.
The Scout shouted something unheard. Hate burned in his eyes. Talos wasted several seconds just enjoying that expression. That passion.
He crashed his fist against the visor, smashing it to shards.
As one corpse froze and another swelled and ruptured on its way to asphyxiation, the Night Lord retrieved his blade, the sword he claimed by right of conquest, and moved back into the darkest parts of the ship.
‘Talos,’ the voice came over the vox in a sibilant hiss.
‘Speak, Uzas.’
‘They have sent initiates to hunt us, brother. I had to cancel my preysight to make sure my eyes were seeing clearly. Initiates. Against us.’
‘Spare me your indignation. What do you want?’
Uzas’s reply was a low growl and a crackle of dead vox. Talos put it from his mind. He had long grown bored of Uzas forever lamenting each time they met with insignificant prey.
‘Cyrion,’ he voxed.
‘Aye. Talos?’
‘Of course.’
‘Forgive me. I thought it would be Uzas with another rant. I hear your decks are crawling with Angels. Epic glories to be earned in slaughtering their infants, eh?’
Talos didn’t quite sigh. ‘Are you almost done?’
‘This hulk is as hollow as Uzas’s head, brother. Negative on anything of worth. Not even a servitor to steal. I’m returning to the boarding pod now. Unless you need help shooting the Angels’ children?’
Talos killed the vox-link as he stalked through the black corridor. This was fruitless. Time to leave – empty-handed and still desperately short on supplies. This… this piracy offended him now, as it always did, and as it always had since they’d been cut off from the Legion decades ago. A plague upon the long-dead Warmaster and his failures which still echoed today. A curse upon the night the VIII Legion was shattered and scattered across the stars.
Diminished. Reduced. Surviving as disparate warbands – broken echoes of the unity within loyalist Astartes Chapters.
Sins of the father.
/>
This curious ambush by the Angels who had tracked them here was nothing more than a minor diversion. Talos was about to vox a general withdrawal after the last initiates were hunted down and slain, when his vox went live again.
‘Brother,’ said Xarl. ‘I’ve found the Angels.’
‘As have Uzas and I. Kill them quickly and let’s get back to the Covenant.’
‘No, Talos.’ Xarl’s voice was edged with anger. ‘Not initiates. The real Angels.’
The Night Lords of First Claw, Tenth Company, came together like wolves in the wild. Stalking through the darkened chambers of the ship, the four Astartes met in the shadows, speaking over their vox-link, crouching with their weapons at the ready.
In Talos’s hands, the relic blade Aurum caught what little light remained, glinting as he moved.
‘Five of them,’ Xarl spoke low, his voice edged with his suppressed eagerness. ‘We can take five. They stand bright and proud in a control chamber not far from our boarding pod.’ He racked his bolter. ‘We can take five,’ he repeated.
‘They’re just waiting?’ Cyrion said. ‘They must be expecting an honest fight.’
Uzas snorted at that.
‘This is your fault, you know,’ Cyrion said with a chuckle, nodding at Talos. ‘You and that damn sword.’
‘It keeps things interesting,’ Talos replied. ‘And I cherish every curse that their Chapter screams at me.’
He stopped speaking, narrowing his eyes for a moment. Cyrion’s skulled helm blurred before him. As did Xarl’s. The sound of distant bolter fire echoed in his ears, not distorted by the faint crackle of helm-filtered noise. Not a true sound. Not a real memory. Something akin to both.
‘I… have a…’ Talos blinked to clear his fading vision. Shadows of vast things darkened his sight. ‘…have a plan…’
‘Brother?’ Cyrion asked.
Talos shivered once, his servo-joints snarling at the shaking movement.
Magnetically clasped to his thigh, his bolter didn’t fall to the decking, but the golden blade did. It clattered to the steel floor with a clang.
‘Talos?’ Xarl asked.
‘No,’ Uzas growled, ‘not now.’
Talos’s head jerked once, as if his armour had sent an electrical pulse through his spine, and he crashed to the ground in a clash of war plate on metal.
‘The god-machines of Crythe…’ he murmured. ‘They have killed the sun.’
A moment later, he started screaming.
The others had to cut Talos out of the squad’s internal vox-link. His screams drowned out all other speech.
‘We can take five of them,’ Xarl said. ‘Three of us remain. We can take five Angels.’
‘Almost certainly,’ Cyrion agreed. ‘And if they summon squads of their initiates?’
‘Then we slaughter five of them and their initiates.’
Uzas cut in. ‘We were slaying our way across the stars ten thousand years before they were even born.’
‘Yes, while that’s a wonderful parable, I don’t need rousing rhetoric,’ Cyrion said. ‘I need a plan.’
‘We hunt,’ Uzas and Xarl said at once.
‘We kill them,’ Xarl added.
‘We feast on their gene-seed,’ Uzas finished.
‘If this was an award ceremony for fervency and zeal, once again, you’d both be collapsing under the weight of medals. But you want to launch an assault on their position while we drag Talos with us? I think the scraping of his armour over the floor will rather kill the element of stealth, brothers.’
‘Guard him, Cyrion,’ Xarl said. ‘Uzas and I will take the Angels.’
‘Two against five.’ Cyrion’s red eye lenses didn’t quite fix upon his brother’s. ‘Those are poor odds, Xarl.’
‘Then we will finally be rid of each other,’ Xarl grunted. ‘Besides, we’ve had worse.’
That was true, at least.
‘Ave Dominus Nox,’ Cyrion said. ‘Hunt well and hunt fast.’
‘Ave Dominus Nox,’ the other two replied.
Cyrion listened for a while to his brother’s screams. It was difficult to make any sense from the stream of shouted words.
This came as no surprise. Cyrion had heard Talos suffering in the grip of this affliction many times before. As gene-gifts went, it was barely a blessing.
Sins of the father, he thought, watching Talos’s inert armour, listening to the cries of death to come. How they are reflected within the son.
According to Cyrion’s retinal chrono display, one hour and sixteen minutes had passed when he heard the explosion.
The decking shuddered under his boots.
‘Xarl? Uzas?’
Static was the only answer.
Great.
When Uzas’s voice finally broke over the vox after two hours, it was weak and coloured by his characteristic bitterness.
‘Hnngh. Cyrion. It’s done. Drag the prophet.’
‘You sound like you got shot,’ Cyrion resisted the urge to smile in case they heard it in his words.
‘He did,’ Xarl said. ‘We’re on our way back.’
‘What was that detonation?’
‘Plasma cannon.’
‘You’re… you’re joking.’
‘Not even for a second. I have no idea why they brought one of those to a fight in a ship’s innards, but the coolant feeds made for a ripe target.’
Cyrion blink-clicked a rune by Xarl’s identification symbol. It opened a private channel between the two of them.
‘Who hit Uzas?’
‘An initiate. From behind, with a sniper rifle.’
Cyrion immediately closed the link so no one would hear him laughing.
The Covenant of Blood was a blade of cobalt darkness, bronze-edged and scarred by centuries of battle. It drifted through the void, sailing close to its prey like a shark gliding through black waters.
The Encarmine Soul was a Gladius-class frigate with a long and proud history of victories in the name of the Blood Angels Chapter – and before it, the IX Legion. It opened fire on the Covenant of Blood with an admirable array of weapons batteries.
Briefly, beautifully, the void shields around the Night Lords strike cruiser shimmered in a display reminiscent of oil on water.
The Covenant of Blood returned fire. Within a minute, the blade-like ship was sailing through void debris, its lances cooling from their momentary fury. The Encarmine Soul, what little chunks were left of it, clanked and sparked off the larger cruiser’s void shields as it passed through the expanding cloud of wreckage.
Another ship, this one stricken and dead in space, soon fell under the Covenant’s shadow. The strike cruiser obscured the sun, pulling in close, ready to receive its boarding pod once again.
First Claw had been away for seven hours investigating the hulk. Their mothership had come hunting for them.
Bulkhead seals hissed as the reinforced doors opened on loud, grinding hinges.
Xarl and Cyrion carried Talos into the Covenant’s deployment bay. Uzas walked behind them, a staggering limp marring his gait. His spine was on fire from the sniper’s solid slug that still lodged there. Worse, his genhanced healing had sealed and clotted the wound. He’d need surgery – or more likely a knife and a mirror – to tear the damn thing out.
One of the Atramentar, elite guard of the Exalted, stood in its hulking Terminator war plate. His skull-painted, tusked helm stared impassively. Trophy racks adorned his back, each one impaled with several helms from a number of loyalist Astartes Chapters: a history of bloodshed and betrayal, proudly displayed for his brothers to see.
It nodded to Talos’s prone form.
‘The Soul Hunter is wounded?’ the Terminator asked, its voice a deep, rumbling growl.
‘No,’ Cyrion said. ‘Inform the Exalted at once. His prophet is suffering another vision.’
BITTER END
Sarah Cawkwell
For many years, he had made bargains, accords and dark pacts, both with powers he could name
and several more that he dared not. He could not remember the last time he had merely requested something and the Imperium had provided it. In the days of his hated and enforced servitude to the Corpse-Emperor, he had but to requisition something and it was his.
Now, whenever he wanted something, Huron Blackheart simply reached out with the might of his loyal Red Corsairs and he took it. His greedy, grasping claws closed around objects, people and entire star systems and stole them away. He looted and plundered, he stole and he murdered. Occasionally though, he would come upon a treasure that he could not simply claim.
When this happened, he would be roused from the shadows in which he now existed and he would hunt down his quarry in an entirely different manner. He would sit down with agents of the most powerful and most influential and he would talk. He would barter and negotiate, bringing his considerable charisma and cunning to the fore and he would make more deals.
His reputation preceded him wherever he went and many wisely shied away from reaching any sort of arrangement with the Tyrant of Badab, fearing for their lives. But there were many more who boldly sealed their agreements with him in blood.
Sometimes, Huron Blackheart even kept his word.
This had been an agri-world once. But in the wake of an exterminatus it had become uninhabitable. Its given name was lost in history, leaving it with the identifier that had been bestowed upon it during the halcyon days of the Great Crusade. Eighty-Three Fourteen was a wasteland. Nothing grew here any more and the only things that lived were the most tenacious of bacteria. The seas had boiled away, leaving vast expanses of arid ground that was cracked and blistered. The ferocity of the bombardment had broken open the crust and disturbed something deep in the planet’s core. Volcanic lava bubbled up through the wounds in the earth and spilled across its ruined surface like blood. There was a constant smouldering heat haze that loaned everything a slightly distorted, unreal appearance.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 151
