On Wings of Blood

by Warhammer 40K

  The portals shut. The hive ship’s flesh was riddled with vast spherical spaces. It writhed in agony, its death scream horrible. As it faded, another built. The Great Dragon roared with fury as a part of its limitless spirit was obliterated. A black space appeared in the light of the Dragon’s soulfire. The pressure in the minds of the eldar lessened further.

  Outside the cordon of living ships, Admiral Kelemar continued his bombardment. The hive fleet, still stretched thin as it entered the system, was engaged on three fronts. It bulged outwards towards the main body of the Iyanden fleet. They flitted away, pulsars sounding their invisible, soundless songs of death.

  To the front, the Imperial fleet pushed forward towards the chief vessel of the Dragon, the norn ship. Several of their ships drifted, the beaks of tentacled kraken ships buried deep in their hulls. The remainder attempted to lumber into advantageous firing positions. They were heavily beset, but Iyanna’s strike near the core of the hive fleet was drawing away reinforcements from the front, and they were coming close to their prize.

  Iyanna selected another vessel, a bloated thing like a leathery jellyfish surrounded by darting shoals of fighter craft. This was much smaller, not a main-line hive vessel, but a potent node nonetheless.

  Target the second,+ she sent.

  Again the Hemlocks cleared the way, and again the wraithbombers delivered their deadly cargo. As the synapses were severed and the hive mind dwindled in potency, Kelemar brought his fleet in closer, sweeping over the swarm and raking it with deadly fire.

  So it went, again and again, until a seventh great ship died under Iyanna’s attack.

  The humans had penetrated into the heart of the swarm, where they pounded the great norn ship, where the tyranids’ terrible queen dwelt. The battle was won for the eldar.

  That is the last of them. Withdraw,+ Iyanna ordered. Instantly, her ships came about, and headed through the debris field they had created, back towards clear space.

  Casualties are light in the living and the dead. You are to be congratulated, my lady,+ sent Kelemar. With the synapses of the swarm destroyed, the hive mind was reduced to a background hiss, and they could communicate freely again.

  It is fated,+ sent Iyanna.

  She began to ease her mind from the world of the dead. Before she was done, she sat up and stretched, letting her soul sit in two worlds. The sensation of her own body went from disgusting to glorious as she slid back fully into her physical being. The stretch of her muscles delighted her, and she smiled.

  ‘The humans signal us again,’ said Yethelminir.

  Iyanna shrugged. Allow them to speak, the shrug said, but I do not care what they will say.

  Captain Hortense’s face appeared again. It was clouded, his lumpen human features exhibited dismay, or some simple human feeling akin to it. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘We have accomplished our task,’ said Iyanna. ‘The skein has shifted in our favour. The future conforms to our design.’

  The pressure of the hive mind, already broken by their extermination of the hive ships, diminished further as Ynnead’s Herald sped back towards the webway gate.

  ‘You are leaving us to die! You are leaving our world to be consumed.’

  ‘Not so,’ said Iyanna. ‘Look.’

  Upon the grey marble of Krokengard a flame was lit.

  Hortense was distracted for a moment, his crew delivering information. Iyanna knew what it must be. Hortense’s face hardened.

  ‘This, it was all a ruse. You came to attack us!’ His mouth twisted. ‘Exterminatus! You have destroyed our world. “Perfidious are the eldar, trust them not!”’ He quoted some human religious text. ‘I should have known no kindness would come from you.’

  Iyanna could have cut the feed, but she did not. Some feeling crept into her for this lesser creature. He had fought bravely. ‘A Fireheart,’ she explained. ‘A device to destroy this world so that the Great Dragon may not feast upon it. We kill you, yes, but it is better we do than the Great Dragon draw sustenance from your world.’ She paused. ‘You have my apologies.’

  She surveyed the battle. The hive fleet remnants fought on, disunited but deadly still.

  ‘To attack these creatures and aid you further would result in unacceptable losses to my people,’ she said. ‘There are times coming when we will fight by your side. Today is not one of those occasions. The ship of their swarm-queen is dying. This world is dead. There is nothing for them to feed on but their own dead, and nothing to reconstitute them if consumed. This tendril is destroyed, and the way through here will offer no sustenance should the Great Dragon choose to force it in future. Surely this is worth your sacrifice? One world for many?’

  She blinked, examined the human curiously. She pitied him. His own kind did the same elsewhere, and yet he was still appalled. How many others had he thoughtlessly condemned himself? One’s own extinction always seemed to matter more.

  ‘If you withdraw now you might save some of your ships,’ she continued. ‘You have, after all, nothing left to defend here.’

  Hortense spluttered. She hoped he would heed her.

  ‘This is an ou–’

  Her psychic impulse ended their conversation.

  ‘Take us home, Captain Yethelminir,’ she said. The captain bowed.

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  The webway gaped wide, and Ynnead’s Herald accelerated towards it. Behind them, the pyre of Krokengard’s destruction shone brightly.

  Iyanna was triumphant again. Fifteen worlds had been denied to the ravening hunger of the Starving Dragon by the deployment of the Firehearts, funnelling it away from the eldar towards…

  Something was wrong. A sensation at the back of her mind. The sensation grew teeth, became pain.

  Her soul was gripped by agony.

  Iyanna screamed, falling from the edge of the couch. The pain abated, then squeezed her anew. She vomited.

  The dead were dismayed. The blow against her raced out across her attack group, leaping from mind to mind. Wraithbomber engines guttered out. The Wraithborne’s sleek cruisers turned viciously, wallowing in psychic swell.

  Bright light burned at Iyanna’s soul. A long tunnel telescoped away, encompassing infinite distance. A tube stabbed through the fabric of the world. She felt its ripples in the warp. She felt its ripples in the webway.

  She had the sense of an eye, slave to a great power. An intellect that dwarfed the Great Wheel of the galaxy. She opened her second sense, to find the Dragon looking at her with terrible regard.

  For aeons it seemed it held her in its gaze. And there was fury in that examination.

  The Dragon was angry, and it was angry with her. Not with the galaxy, or this sector, or her species. But with her personally. The promise of endless torment came from it, her very being enslaved to its ends and used against others, her body rebuilt over and again so that it might suffer the Dragon’s revenge.

  Terror of a kind she could not have conceived of flooded her mind. She screamed again, and this time every eldar in the fleet screamed with her.

  When she awoke later, Ynnead’s Herald was dark. She exhaled brokenly. Her legs were weak. She hauled herself to her feet by grabbing at a couch’s cocoon. Her fingers had no strength to them. The other spiritseers lay limp in their cots. Two, she was sure, were dead.

  The steersmen were slumped over their control jewels and the captain was a crumpled peacock on the floor. The main viewing bubble glowed still. Through it she saw the eldar fleet was in disarray, drifting powerless. The humans fought on, however. The norn ship burned fiercely. Was this what had severed the connection between her and the Great Dragon?

  Thinking of the contact made her nauseous.

  As her mind reached out to the ship, the dead of Ynnead’s Herald woke too, creeping from their hiding places in the infinity core, shocked and timorous.

  The ligh
ts came back on. A dull glow from the walls that grew until the ship looked as it should. Yethelminir groaned and rolled over. He stood shakily, struggling with his iridescent cape to free his arms. The steersmen and other crew came to groggily.

  ‘My lady?’

  ‘I am well, Yethelminir,’ she said. Her eyes were fixed on the desperate battle. The hive fleet was shattered. Even bereft of direction, the individual ship-beasts were still deadly, and the humans were outnumbered twenty times to one.

  She watched as one of their light cruisers was snagged by a trio of kraken ships. It broke apart, its reactor dying with a bright plasma flare.

  She came to a decision.

  ‘Lord admiral?’ She spoke aloud.

  There was a long pause before Kelemar answered.

  ‘My lady?’ His voice was weak.

  ‘What is the status of your ship? Your fleet?’

  ‘They are undamaged. My crew are distressed. Some are dead.’

  ‘Rouse them.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘The Great Dragon,’ she said. She kept her voice cold, frightened her fear would creep into her words. If it did, she was sure she would lose her mind. ‘Bring your ships back into battle order.’

  ‘We do not return to Iyanden?’

  ‘We do not return to Iyanden. We remain to help the mon-keigh.’

  ‘That was not in the plan.’

  ‘Plans change,’ she said. ‘Every weapon will be needed in the coming fight.’

  Slowly, the eldar fleet regained its prior order, and drove on back at the tyranids.

  ‘Tell the humans we are coming,’ she said.

  Yethelminir nodded. His face bore lines it had not had before.

  Iyanna slipped back into her couch and reconnected with the dead pilots of the wraithbombers, informing them of their new task.

  They welcomed it gladly, for the vengeance of the dead knows no bounds.

  DOOM FLIGHT

  Cavan Scott

  The city was ablaze.

  Sergeant Kerikus pushed down on the stick and Wrath of Aquila dropped into a dive, the baleful roar of the gunship’s engines echoing through the blasted streets. Ruined buildings stretched up on either side like a canyon, debris from below whipped up in the Stormtalon’s wake.

  Flying this close to the battle-ravaged streets was risky. The slightest miscalculation would bring certain death. A bank of burnt-out towers rushed towards him. If Kerikus didn’t pull up soon the Stormtalon would careen into their blackened shells. Even a split second of hesitation would be fatal. Behind his battle-helm, the sergeant’s cold grey eyes narrowed. He was a Doom Eagle. There would be no hesitation, no indecision. No second chance.

  The hulking land transporter thundered ahead, thick barbed wheels churning up the already ravaged road. He’d spotted the dense smoke belching from its engine from a mile away, his mouth instinctively curling in disgust. He could almost smell the foul reek of the scum hanging from the rust-eaten plating, hear their stupid cries of alarm as his Stormtalon swung around behind them.

  The orks were swarming over the truck now, trampling over each other to reach the oversized gun turret that was bolted haphazardly to the transporter’s uneven roof. Others had produced crude hand weapons, almost tumbling from the racing vehicle in their eagerness to bring him down.

  ‘Not this time.’

  As stubber fire danced across the Stormtalon’s nose, an automatic rune flared on Kerikus’ helm-display: side-mounted lascannons locked and ready to fire. Kerikus thumbed the trigger and the transporter immediately erupted into a ball of incandescent flame. The Stormtalon tore through the sudden inferno, the heat of the blast scorching the Wrath’s silver undercarriage. Kerikus pulled up sharply, simultaneously rolling to the right. The gunship banked, rushing towards a gap between the oncoming buildings – an exceptionally tight gap. If Kerikus had belonged to any other Chapter he might have stopped to question the wisdom of running such a space. If Kerikus had belonged to any other Chapter he would be dead.

  The Stormtalon sped through the gap with inches to spare.

  No hesitation.

  Kerikus only breathed again once the Wrath had climbed to a safe distance. The manoeuvre had been dangerous – foolhardy even – but it had also been necessary. The stinking creatures crammed into that transporter would have bolstered the ork defence. Some would argue that a few less greenskins wouldn’t make any difference, that the capital of Quadcana had already been lost. They would also probably misinterpret his determination for a death wish. While the Doom Eagles accepted, and even embraced, their mortality, they didn’t long for death and glory.

  Death was inevitable. What mattered was your service to the Emperor in the years, or even seconds, before you breathed your last.

  Kerikus came about, soaring above the city limits. He glanced at the tactical display, activating a status report with a blink. The entire squadron had been lost. On the screen, a solitary signal flared on the map of the city – Wrath of Aquila, the last ship in the air.

  The battle had been swift and brutal, the outcome painfully predictable – signals blinking out of existence on the map with every fresh kill.

  The sounds of their defeat replayed over and over in Kerikus’ mind, accompanied by a pict-feed of bitter memories that he wouldn’t soon forget.

  He could still hear Malika’s curse as they dropped into Quadcana’s atmosphere to witness the scenes of total devastation on the surface, Captain Relyn reeling off the atrocities one by one across the vox.

  ‘Five billion dead. Defences completely routed. Temples desecrated. This cannot stand. Sergeant?’

  Kerikus had picked up the briefing, even as the squadron fell into position, one hundred and twenty-five miles from the hive world’s capital city.

  ‘We are to take back Quadcana Prime,’ Kerikus had stated before Relyn’s voice had cut back in.

  ‘Or ensure that the city is utterly uninhabitable. Even for a hive world, the level of production here is astonishing. The weapon manufactories in Quadcana Prime alone would give the orks an advantage for years to come, decades even. While there is even the smallest chance of victory, we must fight.’

  We will fight, Kerikus had thought automatically. He had given the command, even feeling a rush of pride as the Seventh Squadron had split into attack formations.

  ‘Can we expect reinforcements?’ Malika had asked as soon the captain’s group had broken off. Techmarine Tyrus had provided the reply:

  ‘Not for three days.’

  ‘So it’s down to us.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’ Kerikus had snapped in response. They should have been focusing, not stating the obvious. When the call from the Quadcana central administration had reached the order, the surprise wasn’t that the orks had invaded the planet, more that it had taken them so long. Either way, the auspex was already bleating, ork fighters screaming in to meet them.

  Kerikus had begun to give orders, when the captain’s voice has broken over the vox.

  ‘Enemy engaged. Never seen so many. Require immediate assis–’

  The rest of the sentence had been lost in an explosion and an ear-splitting shriek of static. At that moment, Kerikus had become squadron leader. The operation was in his hands, the lives of his brothers in his hands.

  Brothers that were now dead.

  The Wrath continued circling the smouldering outskirts of the city. The skies above Quadcana Prime were still swamped with enemy fighters.

  If he went back, he’d be shot out of the sky in seconds. A grim smile flickered across Kerikus’ dry lips.

  We are Doom Eagles. We are dead already.

  He opened the throttle, and Wrath of Aquila thundered towards the heart of the city.

  Tracer fire strafed across the Wrath’s wings. Kerikus had expected to be picked up much earlier. It wasn’t
as if the greenskins were mounting a citywide defence. He was but one gunship. And yet, the sergeant knew all too well the perils of underestimating xenos scum. What they lacked in intelligence, they more than made up in tenacity. They wouldn’t peel off until they had made the kill, or died in the attempt – sometimes both.

  Kerikus checked the rear display, noting that his pursuer was gaining fast. The Wrath bobbed around burnt-out towers, weaving through masts and spires. There was no time to think, only act, to rely on the instincts that had kept him from joining the names in the Hall of the Fallen. Never stay level. Remain unpredictable. Leave the enemy guessing.

  An unearthly wail of static burst through the cockpit’s speakers, disturbing Kerikus’ concentration for a micro­second – enough time to kill him. He pulled the Wrath into a skid, narrowly avoiding a jagged communication relay.

  ‘Dakkajet! Dakkajet! Dakkajet!’

  The gruff voice ranted over the vox, accompanied by the percussive report of autocannons. Not taking his eyes from his flight path, Kerikus reached over, instinctively knowing where to find the operational runes without looking. His helm-display flashed up confirmation; the brute had somehow managed to hack into the Stormtalon’s vox-system, overriding the Imperial channel. Kerikus thumbed the control, attempting to shut off the ork’s manic chant, but to no avail. Rerouting the system would be fatally distracting, but there was more than one way to silence the infernal babble.

  ‘Dakkajet! Dakkajet! Dakkaj–’

  Kerikus’ fist slammed into the vox-control, sparks flying over his clenched gauntlet. The ork’s cry distorted and was lost in a screech of white noise. Kerikus pummelled the dashboard until the speakers fell blissfully silent.

  ‘Better,’ Kerikus snarled as the savage unloaded another salvo into the Wrath. There was no precision in the attack, no finesse. The ork’s overriding strategy was to point itself at the Stormtalon and start firing. That’s what made it so dangerous.

  All it would take was one lucky shot.

  Switching to repulsor systems, Kerikus slammed on the air brakes, throwing the Stormtalon into a flat half-spin. It was an old trick, one of the first his flight instructor had taught on Gathis. Turn straight into the attack, putting your enemy on the defensive. Force them to react, to panic.