Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  Five levels below the bridge, there was still no sign of the foe. Then Braxas called out, ‘Brother-captain, possible targets on the auspex.’

  ‘Finally.’ Volos stopped to see what Braxas was picking up. ‘I was starting to think they would all be waiting at the bridge.’ He knew the raiding force wasn’t a large one, but he had never known eldar of any description to barricade themselves in a confined space. They would be playing to the Black Dragons’ strengths, not their own. ‘Heading our way?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Braxas answered. ‘Parallel to us. One level down and to port.’ He cocked his head as he looked at the auspex. ‘The signatures are massive, brother-captain. Too great for a raiding party. This looks like an army.’

  ‘And moving away from the bridge,’ said Urlock. ‘This is a diversion at best. Almost certainly a trap.’

  Volos nodded. Braxas showed him the screen. ‘They are expending great effort of some kind to convince us to leave the bridge alone.’

  ‘An effort we shall ignore, brother-captain?’ Urlock asked.

  Volos looked at the bulk of Nithigg looming behind the rest of the squads. ‘Your thoughts, brother?’

  ‘If the eldar cannot account for that much movement,’ Nithigg said, his voice shaking the walls, ‘what can?’

  ‘People,’ Volos muttered, dreading the conclusions he was about to reach.

  ‘Reaching the bridge will put a stop to whatever is going on,’ Urlock said, though he did not sound convinced of his own reasoning.

  ‘Will it?’ said Volos. ‘How much of the enemy’s force is being deployed in this effort?’ The grid on the auspex screen had almost vanished in the glare of light from thousands of contacts moving together.

  ‘We have come to exterminate the raiders,’ said Nithigg. ‘There they are.’

  ‘It must be a trap,’ Urlock insisted.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Volos. ‘Though we may not have any choice but to take it.’

  They altered their course. Following the readings took the squads down even larger corridors until they passed through loading bay doors. They had arrived in a gigantic cargo hold. Most of what had been contained here had either been sold or destroyed, leaving an empty space the size of a frigate. Wide platforms, corresponding to deck levels, ran the length of the walls. The Black Dragons were standing on the second level, at the stern end of the hold.

  Towards the centre of the hold, the eldar had gathered their prisoners. There were thousands of them. The mortals stood like herded grox, shoulder to shoulder, milling and turning in aimless terror as their captors circled them on jetbikes.

  ‘What are they planning?’ Liscar muttered. ‘What use is this? This hold has no strategic value.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Volos. ‘Yet we are here. Where they want us. Still a distance from the bridge.’

  ‘Then let us disappoint them, and slaughter the contingent at the bridge,’ Urlock urged.

  Nithigg spoke over the vox-channel, muting his thunder. ‘The prisoners…’

  There were Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes for whom that would not be a consideration. Volos wanted to believe that he was fighting for an Imperium with subjects, rather than a mere tally of victories. He wanted to believe. He was no longer sure that he did. The price of the Black Dragons’ victories on Aighe Mortis had been a river of civilian blood. The words of Canoness Setheno had become a refrain that dogged every decision: ‘Become what you must be. You are the Emperor’s monster. And you are necessary .’

  He could not deny the truth of Setheno’s exhortation, and he knew he had not yet fathomed the full extent of that truth. Necessary was a two-edged blade. It was necessary that he become monstrous. That was another curse to be blessed. But the monstrous act was not always necessary.

  And so? he asked himself. Is it now?

  The eldar answered the question. Their lookouts must have spotted the arrival of the Space Marines. They ceased their herding and began their slaughter. The jetbikes descended on the prisoners. They became a razored cyclone. The xenos were too quick, and still too far, for Volos to make out the details of their actions. He could see the results, though. The outer perimeter of the circle of prisoners erupted with blood. Bodies disintegrated. Thousands of voices joined in a single scream.

  Volos knew an invitation when he saw it. He would be damned if he declined.

  Today, we come to slay monsters , he thought. ‘Brothers!’ he called as he leapt from the edge of the platform. He hit the floor of the cargo hold hard enough to dent its steel plating, and he charged towards the massacre. ‘The enemy offers us his presence in great numbers. Let us reward the gift with fire and bone!’

  From behind him came the answer: ‘Fire and bone! ’

  The Black Dragons rushed the eldar in a double-wedge formation. The two squads began firing, aiming the bolter shells just above the heads of the mortals. The eldar broke away from their butchery immediately. They had been expecting the attack, and the squadron of five jetbikes jerked up and down unpredictably as they flew at the Space Marines. Even so, one was struck in the first seconds of the battle. The shells destroyed the xenos machine’s anti-grav technology. It pitched nose-first into the floor and at such high speed that it and its driver were spread across a dozen metres in seconds. Two of the other bikes opened fire with a stream of dark, crystalline splinters. When they struck Volos’s armour, they sank in as darts into leather, scarring the ceramite. None hit the joints, but he knew that if they did, the hellish shards would release their toxins into his flesh.

  The bikes flew around the squads in a wide arc and ceased fire. The other two jetbikes came in without firing their guns. As they closed, Volos saw the pale faces of their pilots contorted by open-mouthed anticipation. The keels of the bikes came at the Black Dragons like scythes.

  Pride , Volos thought as he threw himself down and rolled onto his back. The xenos didn’t just want to kill him. They wanted to kill him in a particular way. They were risking close quarters with their vehicles because of an obsession with their art. He used that. The bike passed over him. Brother Vasuk was slower, and the blade sideswiped his shoulder plate. It sliced like a blade, hit like a torpedo. It sent him spinning off his feet, blood jetting into the air. He collided with Nithigg, and regained his feet while the bike jinked to the fight, avoiding the Dreadnought.

  The bikes reversed course, came in low and fired this time. The first two now attacked from each side, taking their turn at the bladed kill. One of them never made it. Ignoring the splinters, Nithigg tracked its flight with his assault cannon. The massive shells tore it apart and its pilot vanished in a shower of blood.

  As before, the supporting fire ceased just before the charging jetbike crossed its stream. Instead of evading, Volos maglocked his bolter to his thigh and lunged at the bike. His leap took him above the pilot. He extended his arms, snapping out his bone blades. He slammed into the front of the vehicle, crumpling its nose. The impact was stunning, but he shrugged it off. His blades punctured the skull and chest of the eldar. He leapt off the bike as it careened to the surface of the hold, cartwheeling past the squads.

  The eldar warriors’ foot infantry closed in. They kept their distance, circling the Black Dragons at a run, harrying them with splinter weapons.

  ‘Give me two fists,’ Volos called. Squads Pythios and Ormarr contracted into tight formations, guns facing outward, with Nithigg in the centre. Pythios marched to port, Ormarr to starboard, driving the eldar back towards the wall, while Nithigg launched a barrage, denying the enemy the chance to come up between the squads. The speed of the eldar made it almost impossible to draw a bead on them. Volos felt like he was shooting at the wind. The murderous splinters sank deeper into his armour. Some struck home. Venom coursed through his blood. It was neutralized by his oolitic kidney, but not before it set his nerves on fire. He snarled away the pain, and found victory. The Black Dragons hit the eldar with such volume of fire that no degree of agility could avoid it. The mass-reactive sh
ells tore open the xenos armour and exploded the flesh beneath.

  The enemy warriors began to die. Their numbers dwindled. They could not win. And though Volos thought he saw pleasure on some of the faces of his victims, he didn’t care. He took his own pleasure from the judgement he was delivering.

  ‘We are losing, archon,’ said Desserel.

  No , Kthanys thought as she listened to the reports coming in from the cargo hold, you are . It was Desserel’s command that was being taken apart by the power-armoured mon-keigh. ‘You feel you cannot defeat them?’ she said.

  ‘We are showing undue restraint,’ he answered, sidestepping the question, attempting to blame her without doing so directly. ‘If we would commit the rest of our resources–’

  She interrupted by seizing his face. She pierced his cheek with one of the dagger-pointed fingers of her gauntlet and scraped against his teeth. Blood filled his mouth, and he choked. Humiliation, pain, ecstasy and fear fought each other in his eyes.

  ‘I will not waste our remaining strength on your failure,’ she told him. She yanked her hand away, tearing his cheek open further.

  ‘Your pardon, archon,’ said a voice that begged no pardon at all. It was a cracked, whispering rasp, filled with the dust of millennia of inflicted pain and the worms of tortures to come.

  Kthanys turned to the haemonculus. ‘We are ready?’

  Serekraal’s nod was a shadow contracting on a shadow. His skin was the desiccated grey of dead insects. Held aloft by suspensor crystals, he floated just above the bridge’s deck, a being of angles and spikes and darkness. ‘At your command,’ he said.

  His deference was a pretence, bordering on mockery, and Kthanys knew it. He had no more respect for her command than she had trust in him. But she needed him. She needed the skills he had that could keep her alive and beyond the reach of She Who Thirsts. In turn, she would provide him with an endless supply of subjects for his explorations of the outer limits of sensation. They had an understanding.

  Kthanys suppressed a smile. Her compact with Serekraal had borne fruit. The incubus had been shown his place, had been weakened militarily, and the purpose of the operation had been met. The savages had been delayed long enough. ‘Then let us instruct our guests in their new reality,’ Kthanys ordered. ‘Welcome them to the full embrace of the Desolate Sigh.’

  An eldar in armour that looked richer, more elaborate and more painful than the others raised a large-bored weapon. He stopped running and fired. The weapon unleashed a beam of blinding darkness. It caught Melus’s left hand, disintegrating it. Behind the sergeant, it hit Brother Anghen full on. He vanished.

  Despite his wound, Melus tried to return fire, but the eldar warrior had already sprinted on. His bolter shells found only air. Volos caught the exchange in the corner of his eye. On the tactical readout of his helm lenses, Anghen’s rune went from green to absent in an instant. Melus’s flared orange, but remained stable. Volos tried to track the movement of the eldar. The xenos’s weapon ignored armour. It had to be dealt with immediately. But the warrior was jinking back and forth at high speed.

  ‘Brother-epistolary,’ Volos called.

  ‘He’s mine, brother-captain,’ Rothnove answered.

  There was a flare of coruscating uncolour as the Librarian seized the powers of the warp. An aurora leapt out of Rothnove’s psychic hood and surrounded him. He stormed towards the eldar. Volos didn’t see him move. He saw a black streak, as if iron had become light. For a moment, the laws of mass and speed lost their hold on Rothnove. A ceramite rocket slammed into the eldar, shattering armour and bone, sending the dark energy weapon flying. With a single swipe of his power sword, Rothnove decapitated the xenos. The eyes of the tumbling head were wide with surprise.

  The squads reached the walls of the hold and began a wide rotation of their own, with Nithigg as the immovable, deadly centre. They did their own herding. Now the eldar felt the lack of shelter. They had nowhere to fall back to as the squads spiralled in, trapping them between the hammers of Pythios and Ormarr and the anvil of Nithigg. The eldar died. There had been forty infantry warriors. Now there were fewer than half that many. And then they no longer had sufficient numbers to be a threat. Their force was immolated by the fury of the Black Dragons.

  The victory was real, yet Volos did not trust it. These xenos were duplicitous, cunning, depraved. They were not stupid. This trap was only half a one. Were the eldar so overconfident that they had thought this contingent enough to overpower the Adeptus Astartes? He couldn’t believe that. There was a deeper game being hidden from him, perhaps even from the beings he was killing.

  The ship jerked, once, as if the immense creation were an egg in the hand of a giant. The movement was an odd one. It did not throw Volos off his feet, though the violence of the shift was great. The translation was through something other than space.

  Braxas grunted in surprise. ‘Brother-captain,’ he voxed, ‘I’ve lost contact with the Immolation Maw .’

  ‘Meaning?’ Volos blew the head off another eldar. The handful that remained responded to the inevitability of their defeat by throwing themselves directly at the Black Dragons, seeking absolute savagery in their final moments. Volos obliged. As the lithe creatures closed, he used his bone blades to give them deaths that were lingering enough to be agonizing.

  ‘It isn’t a problem with the vox,’ Braxas said. ‘The ship has vanished.’

  ‘Destroyed?’ Volos asked. Throne, no , he thought.

  ‘I don’t think so. The cut-off was too sudden. It’s as if the Maw was never there at all.’

  ‘Have we entered the warp?’ An eldar warrior swung a jagged, curved blade at him. He took the blow on his side. The sword cut deeply into his armour. It stuck. Volos retaliated with something far worse. His boneblades were edged with adamantium, but they had become something more since the struggle with the forces of Chaos on the moon Flebis. He skewered the xenos through the sternum. The being’s armour was irrelevant. The eldar writhed, an impaled insect. Volos gutted him.

  ‘There was no sign of the Absolution ’s engines powering up,’ Braxas said. ‘There is no Mandeville Point in this vicinity.’

  The steady hammer blows of Nithigg’s assault cannon ceased. The eldar were all dead. Their corpses were drained of their lethal grace. They were just meat now. The deck of the cargo hold was a mire of blood and body parts. At the other end of the hold, the thousands of prisoners pressed together in their terror. After the tumult of battle, their moans barely seemed to break the silence.

  Volos wasn’t fooled. This was a false peace.

  ‘Be on your guard, brothers,’ he said. ‘The true nature of this trap has yet to be revealed.’ And still he knew that he had had no choice in his action. If he had allowed the slaughter to progress, leaving the eldar to their pleasure as he sought strategic victory on the bridge, he would have been no different from the xenos in his morality. No, that was wrong. He would have been worse. The eldar, here, had not depended on the deaths of thousands of their species for tactical gain.

  As Pythios and Ormarr regrouped, a thought struck him. Perhaps the eldar had sacrificed their own after all. The Black Dragons had been held in a pointless battle, but to what end? One where the Maw was gone, and his squads cut off from all reinforcement.

  To what end?

  The answer came on razored wings.

  Kthanys’s transmission had been received, and, more crucially, her order had been obeyed. The greater strength of the Kabal of the Desolate Sigh was waiting when the Absolution entered the webway. She laughed at the view that greeted her through the bridge’s primary oculus, and laughed again at Desserel’s expression as he realized how he had been used. ‘Open the ship,’ she commanded. ‘And let us make sport of the mon-keigh who would think of defying us.’

  And so she provided her Kabal with the pleasure its members craved, while she delivered a wealth of slaves. Her power would be uncontested, and reaffirmed. She cast an amused glance at Desserel. She had weake
ned his prestige to the point that he needed her favour all the more. He should be grateful he still lived.

  The gates to the landing bays of the Absolution rose. All of them. The great doors to the loading docks parted. The ship was open to all. Wyches and kabalite warriors in their hundreds on jetbikes, raiders and Venom skimmers rushed aboard. Through the tunnels they came, delighting in the slaughter of whatever humans crossed their paths, all of them answering the call of the archon to inflict humiliation, agony and death on the savage mon-keigh who imagined themselves a power in the galaxy.

  It was a fighting retreat, and the Black Dragons took their toll on the swarm of eldar that descended upon them. It was still a retreat, and a hated bitterness in Volos’s soul. There was no choice, though. To stand against such numbers was to die, and there was no honour in a pointless death. As it was, Brother Ehrbon was lost, his armour damaged by splinter fire before he was shredded by the razorflails of acrobatic warriors in gladiatorial garb.

  Volos took them into the nearest corridor. Nithigg smashed support columns as he passed, collapsing portions of the next deck up, blocking the path behind them, at least for the moment.

  The mortals were left behind, once more at the pleasure of their captors. But Volos noticed that the eldar showed no interest now in their wholesale slaughter. As the Black Dragons were driven back, he had seen the humans being herded out the bay doors at the far end of the hold. The cattle had done their job. They would be preserved for some future fate. A slower and more cruel one.

  ‘How are you faring, Brother Melus?’ Volos asked.

  Melus raised his left arm. ‘The wound has sealed. I am ready to shove my stump down the throat of the xenos scum.’