by Various
Brother-Captain Pelenas watched as the display drew on overhead. The pitted crystal of the great atmospheric dome above him scattered and distorted the starlight, but the predatory shadows of the xenos craft glided over the surface as they broke off and moved towards the nearest docking ports. They would have known that the Space Marines were waiting for them – armed and armoured, and ready for combat – and yet they had come regardless.
Pelenas had never seen an eldar in person. Not living, anyway.
The old-incense reek of the ancient halls was disturbed by the smooth equalisation of pressure from the alien void-locks, somewhere beyond the curve of the debris-strewn passageway, and the Purifiers took up position around their captain. With helms sealed in place and swords drawn, they waited in grim silence.
There was no bustle of insertion, no clamour of booted feet. The aliens moved quickly and quietly, picking their way between scarred wraithbone columns and the remains of long-dead tyranid bio-forms that still littered the craftworld.
Vanguard warriors appeared out of the gloom – their chameleon-cloaks rendered them all but invisible to the naked eye, but their guarded souls burned hot in Pelenas’s psychic sight.
The eldar were outraged. Vengeful. Filled with sorrow and anguish.
It was difficult to track all of them as they spread out, securing the ruined dome. Some of the more twitchy battle-brothers started to edge into a tighter defensive formation, but Pelenas waved them back. With his blade resting upon the deck, he stood in his scarred Terminator battleplate, ready to receive the xenos delegation.
There were five of them in all. Bedecked in long, flowing robes and crystalline hoods, they strode into the hall flanked by a dozen more guardian warriors armed with projectile rifles. Pelenas noted the runic talismans, the gemstones and intricate psi-webbing that festooned the seers’ panoply; though he did not doubt that their mastery was great, they put him in mind of nothing more than primitive totem-shamans. They regarded him with the cold, blue glare of their faceless masks as they approached.
The leading seer – a particularly lithe creature carrying a great staff that struck the deck noisily with every fifth step that he took – pointed at Pelenas with a slender finger.
‘Your presence here is a travesty, human,’ he uttered in harshly accented but flawless Gothic. ‘You trespass upon our domain. The lost souls of Craftworld Malan’tai – after the doom that has already been heaped upon them, how much more must they suffer at the hands of your ignoble breed?’
The delegation drew up before the Purifiers, surrounded by their guardians. Even armed for war, the eldar were as consumptive children before the hulking Space Marines.
Pelenas removed his helm, and handed it off to one of his brothers. ‘I am Brother-Captain Ornhem Pelenas, of the Grey Knights Chapter Adeptus Astartes,’ he said, ‘and I must beg your worthy forgiveness. I have no quarrel with you or your kind, xenos, and no servant of the Imperium knows the horrors of the warp better than the battle-brothers of Titan.’
Planting his blade before him, he and the Purifiers knelt as one in supplication before the startled seer council. For a long while, the hall was utterly silent.
The captain drew a simple cloth bag from his belt, and held it out before him. It rattled with the handful of plucked eldar soul-stones that it contained – those that Pelenas had personally wrested from the hungry grasp of the warp-beasts that had overrun Malan’tai.
‘As was our message to you, we traced our daemonic enemies to this place, though I fear we arrived too late to save all the imprisoned spirits of your kinsmen. Our foe is vanquished for now, but this is your holy ground, and we have indeed besmirched it with our presence. I would not sully it further by leaving it unattended and open to the depredations of those-that-wait-beyond.’
The eldar were clearly staggered, though their discipline was enough that they managed to remain quietly aloof in spite of it. An attendant seer stepped forward and took the stones from Pelenas with a reverential nod, which the captain returned.
The leader of the delegation slid back his featureless visor, and bid the Grey Knights to rise. ‘Forgive me, Pelenas of Titan. We are... unused to seeing your kind, unless it be upon the field of war. The respect that you do us here is great, and will not be forgotten by the living or the dead.’ He gestured to his guardians, who parted to clear the way to the void-locks. ‘You will be accorded safe passage to your starship, and an escort from this system. As our honoured guests, if there is anything else you would have in return for this kindness, name it now.’
Pelenas drew a long, calming breath. When he spoke again, his voice was edged with bitterness.
‘There is nothing that you can offer us, xenos, except to know that we suffered greatly in preserving this place for you. The most noble of our number is fallen...’
He took his proffered helm, and gazed into its dark retinal lenses.
‘If you would praise the architect of Malan’tai’s deliverance, then remember he who gave his life most selflessly to defend it. He martyred himself so that we – so that I – might live to fight on against the daemon-spawn.’
The seer nodded.
‘So shall it be. This warrior shall be noted in the annals of my people.’
Pelenas replaced his helm with a snap-hiss of pressurisation, and made to leave with his battle-brothers. ‘Then always remember the name of Anval Thawn.’
The eldar’s eyes widened, almost imperceptibly, and he faltered for a moment before glancing at his fellow seers. Pelenas caught a flicker of alarm in the creature’s aura, before it was swallowed once more in a careful projection of calm indifference, and his alien features broke in a forced simulacrum of a smile.
‘So shall it be.’
The spiritseer’s haste was evident. Returned to his own craftworld and with the waystones of Malan’tai restored to the infinity circuit, he now made for the farseer enclave.
He alone had been made emissary for the council. The message that he bore was simple, but filled with grave import. They would need to know.
‘The mon-keigh have rediscovered the last Perpetual – Anval Thawn has ascended to the ranks of the Grey Knights. I await your guidance.’
They stank, the greenskins, and their rancid corpses littered the main deck of the Byzantine. Formerly, it had been a battleship, a vast Castellan-class war cruiser that had dominated the stars. Now it was a wreck, part of a hulk and floating through space, infested with vermin.
As battlefields went, it was hardly prestigious.
Tiamed scowled as he withdrew his sword from the warlord’s bolt-ravaged torso, wiping off the blood and transferring the stink of it onto the ork’s crude armour.
‘This is dirty work, brothers,’ he remarked to Vorda and Mageln.
‘Aye, the greenskin are noisome creatures,’ said Vorda, a brute of a Templar, as he redressed the broken oath-chain of his power axe.
‘Foul indeed,’ said Mageln, though he saluted what he regarded as worthy foes.
‘Not so vile as the stink of dishonour around your final deed, Tiamed,’ another voice put it.
Three warriors, ramshackle in yellow and black armour, moved slowly into the light.
‘What did you say?’ Tiamed bristled with anger as he turned to face his accuser.
Servos in the newcomers’ powered forms growled and whirred as they moved, but in a throaty, staccato fashion. As the speaker advanced a step, he turned a little. It made the winged lightning bolt on his left shoulder guard visible.
‘Malevolents,’ sneered Mageln, unable to keep out the distaste in his voice. He finished off his own kill to stand alongside Tiamed. Gore-splattered from the blow, Mageln’s power maul dripped menacingly with greenskin blood.
Vorda took up position on the opposite side, power axe unsheathed.
Tiamed said nothing, but rose to his full height before scabbarding his own blade. Then he stooped and, taking a firm grip, wrenched one of the warlord’s tusks from its dead, drooling m
aw.
‘What dishonour?’ he snapped, his open hand, low and by his side, the signal for his brothers to stand down. ‘Speak quickly, Ballak, before I misunderstand you and interpret your words as a challenge.’
Black Templars were, by their nature, belligerent. So too were the Marines Malovelent, though the source of their fury came from a subtly different source. It didn’t provide much of an accord, this similarity. In fact, it promoted just the opposite.
‘The beast was mine,’ he snarled, garnering grunts and nods of approval from his kin, ‘and so too the honour of the kill.’
Tiamed went unhelmeted. A black cross adorned his face, painted over eyes and nose. It could not hide his anger or his incredulity.
‘And yet my blade pierced its rugous hide and ended its miserable existence, as I will gladly end yours if you persist with this insult.’
The leather cracking on the haft of Vorda’s axe was audible above the ship’s background hum as his fist clenched around it.
‘Those are my bolter wounds in its torso, Tiamed. I would not waste ammunition to merely stun the beast.’
‘That much is true,’ whispered Mageln, but not so quietly as to be unheard. ‘These scavengers waste little and covet scraps. They are dogs.’
Ballack stepped forward again.
‘Dogs are we?’ he asked, taking the Templar’s bait. ‘Would you like to see us bite?’
Relations between the Templars and the Malevolents had been less then cordial ever since they had discovered each other’s presence on board the hulk. They met with warm enough welcome but their war philosophy was at odds and now, it seemed, would come to blows.
Ballak came to stand in the midst of the greenskin charnel house created by the six Space Marines squaring off on the Byzantine’s main deck. He thumbed the guard back on the serrated blade he wore at his hip. Two finger widths of adamantium shone dully in the ship’s half-light.
Even obscured by the gloom of the capacious deck, swimming now in blood as well as filth, the gesture was obvious.
Tiamed nodded, understanding. He tried to keep the smile from his lips, not that they would see it in the shadows. This was about honour, upholding the virtues of the Black Templars in the face of these… pirates who gave the Adeptus Astartes a bad reputation; it was not about personal satisfaction or settling the verbal slights that had issued from the Malevolents ever since they had boarded. Tiamed promised himself he would try not to enjoy this too much.
‘Very well,’ he said, stony-faced.
Vorda quickly came to Tiamed’s ear.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. ‘Don’t lower yourself to their base level.’
Mageln was of a different mind. ‘Kill him, brother. Then we vanquish the rest. They are barely Space Marines. We would be doing the Imperium a service by ridding it of them.’
Ignoring his fellow Sword Brethren, Tiamed unclasped his cloak and took off his weapons belt.
‘Name your challenge,’ he called to Ballack, whose own seconds had now come to his side.
‘A trophy, if I win this duel,’ uttered Ballack, fully drawing his chain-blade and setting the weapon’s teeth burring. ‘Any of my choosing on this deck.’
‘Agreed,’ answered Tiamed, and handed his red cloak to Vorda whose warning gaze through his war-helm did not dissuade the other Sword Brethren.
Ballack nodded slowly before removing his own belt. Blade versus blade, no secondaries. He turned for a moment, giving up his trappings to the waiting arms of Nathlec, who glared intently at Ballack through his vision slit.
‘None of the rounds you fired would’ve killed that thing,’ he whispered.
Ballack smiled.
‘I have a greater prize in mind.’
He turned again, and the duel began.
Tiamed went first, carving a brutal overhead that would have cleaved Ballack in two had he not thrown his body aside at the last moment.
‘To the death then, is it?’ he roared at the Templar, coming up from a crouch, his face a mask of pure rage.
‘Yours, yes!’ snapped Tiamed, and lunged.
Ballack was taken off balance, his half-parry only partially blocking the attack and snarling in pain as the Templar’s blade cut into his forearm. The stench of rapidly cauterised flesh pricked at the Malevolent’s nostrils.
A flurry of fast and heavy blows from the Templar forced Ballack into a hasty defence. The last, the hardest, put him on one knee. Tiamed kicked out and sent the Malevolent sprawling.
Ballack almost lost his chainsword and as he was rising managed to lash out with an improvised swipe that Tiamed repelled easily, then backed up to get some distance between his vengeful opponent.
‘More cowardice, Ballack?’ Tiamed growled, sensing victory but incensed at how low the Malevolents had stooped, at their patchwork armour and battered blades, at their mercenary sensibilities.
‘I did not kill an already half-dead ork and claim its head as my own, brother.’
Tiamed, coming at Ballack with a deadly cross, was quick to bite back.
‘I am not your, brother, you sc– hrrrkk!’
The Templar stopped short, his charge arrested by the half metre of snarling chain-blade sticking out of his chest.
In a display of consummate swordsmanship belied by his earlier missteps, Ballack had weaved around Tiamed’s anger-fuelled blow and pierced his unprotected flank. He gave a second thrust, silently enjoying the shock of the other Templars who had gone from anticipating their brother’s victory to witnessing him spitting up his own blood all over the deck.
Tiamed jerked, mustering the last of his energy to turn and regard Ballack with an imperious, yet despairing, glance.
‘I may look ragged,’ Ballack told him before the Templar died, ‘but my blade craft is anything but.’
As he tore out the chain-blade, noble Tiamed slumped first to his knees and then fell forwards. His sword, still chained to his wrist, slipped from his hand, as did the ork tusk.
Ballack eyed the other two Templars, who looked ready to kill him but stalled when they saw the pair of bolters aimed at them by the Malevolent’s battle-brothers.
‘Narlec and Sykar are both excellent marksmen,’ he said, kicking away the tusk from where it had rolled near to his boot.
‘You refuse your trophy even now,’ snapped Vorda. ‘Is his blood not enough to slake your sense of dishonour?’
‘I do not refuse it,’ said Ballack, sinking to one knee beside Tiamed’s slowly cooling body. He began to unstrap the armour. ‘I simply choose one that is of use on the battlefield and not a hollow chamber of honours. It is a pity I had to damage the breastplate, though. They are hard to find intact.’
‘Whoresons!’ Mageln looked about ready to brave the bolter storm when Vorda stopped him, one arm across his chest.
‘No…’ he said. ‘No, brother!’ he hissed sharply when Mageln didn’t take the first hint. ‘We’ve lost enough to their perfidy already. Leave them to their scavenging.’
Ballack stood, having removed Tiamed’s vambraces and greaves. He took both pauldrons too, handing off the pieces of armour to Narlec, whilst Sykar kept the other Templars in his sights.
‘Know this,’ said Vorda. ‘When we meet again – and we will – there will be no duel, no quarter given.’
‘If I were you, Vorda,’ said Ballack, looking up from the half-stripped corpse, ‘I would have shown no such restraint.’
‘It is honour, for Tiamed, for his sacrifice that I do this. Restraint has no part in it.’
Ballack shrugged. ‘Then I suspect you will die for it. The body will be waiting for you upon your return. Its intact trappings, including this magnificent sword,’ he held the blade up, one-handed, to the light, ‘will not.’
The Templars went back the way they had come, back to their ship and the Apothecary that waited on board.
Alone, Sykar lowered his sights and Narlec spoke up.
‘You planned this, didn’t you?’
‘I sa
id we do not waste our ammunition.’ He examined a vambrace, in pristine condition against his own battered armour. ‘I would say it was well spent, the rewards commensurate with the price paid.’
‘Aye,’ said Narlec, admiring the armour pieces. ‘It is a fine reaping.’
Ballack rose to his feet and smiled ruefully. Vorda did not lie. The Templars would want recompense in blood. Only their sense of honour had kept them acting on their instincts thus far.
‘No,’ said Ballack, his smile turning into a scowl. ‘It is bitter salvage, brother, and worth every drop of their ire.’
The ground trembled beneath the worn treads of the Munitorum half-tracks. The grey-hulled, trough-shaped vehicles had been scoured of all Imperial insignia, and now their armour plates dripped with exotic unguents and sinister sigils that scarred the eye of any who looked at them for too long. Each of the half-tracks carried ammunition and power cells for the hive city’s defence batteries.
Badly grafted vox-speakers blared out abominable hymns to unspeakable gods as the half-tracks navigated the devastated streets, and pintle-mounted stubbers swung to and fro as the gunners watched warily for attack as overcharged engines vomited oily black clouds into the already smoky air of the fallen hive city.
Over the roar of the debased vehicles, the thunder of siege-guns could be heard. The hive shuddered to its very foundations with every impact upon its outer defences. The Imperium did not intend to let Khost Hive remain in the hands of its renegade aristocracy. One way or another, the hive city would fall. Whether to the forces without, or to those within, it would fall. The only question was one of time.
At least, that was the only question that Manse Jah-Hlley, Tutor of the Mentors Chapter, considered worthy of consideration, in the three-point-eight seconds prior to the destruction of the second of the three half-tracks. The Space Marine noted the time as it registered on his helmet’s built-in chronometer and recorded it for future review, even as he swept aside the debris that had concealed him. His normally ivory and emerald hued power armour was covered in a coat of ash and dirt, in order to blend in with his surroundings. It would require many months to purify the armour after this campaign was concluded, but, on the whole Jah-Hlley considered the tedium of purification rituals preferable to dying. The Codex tactica relating to the preservation of all resources necessary to prosecute further stratagems applied as much to battle-brothers as bolter ammunition.
