The spider recovered, and much to Achairas’ dismay, a whole swarm of the smaller scarab machines drifted out from under its abdomen, immediately swarming towards them. Nym’s bolter was empty, but Sevrim, Celaeno and the last four acolytes managed to cut a few down before they reached them. Achairas scythed a scarab in two with his sword, before shattering another with his backswing, even as two more latched on to him. One gnawed on his pauldron, while another tore at his breastplate with its talons. He ripped the scarab off and stomped it to pieces, as another acolyte was dragged down and eviscerated by the gnashing creatures.
Astolyev rose, still dazed, gathering up his xenos rifle. He loosed beams of dark energy at the spider, disintegrating portions of its carapace, and finally its skull. It fell to the ground with a deafening crash.
Throwing the scarab on his pauldron off and slashing it in two, Achairas ran on, followed by his surviving allies, while Vemek and his skitarii continued their losing battle against the mantis-creatures a way up the steps behind them. But when Achairas saw what approached, he realised there was little hope of them reaching the obelisk alive.
The bipedal skeletal machines advanced in full force, dozens shambling up the ziggurat towards them, clacking their talons and howling dead static. The ones that had fallen before had risen again, joining their ranks.
‘Inquisitor!’ Achairas shouted. ‘Give me your grenade and get back to the Vox Silentii! Warn Occludus!’
Astolyev saw what was coming and hesitated. Sevrim fired the rest of his bolter shells into the advancing xenos, sending a few to the ground, if only to slow them. Celaeno readied his bolt pistol, while Nym drew a pair of wickedly curved mono-edged daggers. The three remaining acolytes fired their weapons, to limited effect, while Vemek’s team was assaulted by another spider construct that had dislodged itself from a hidden socket in the upper wall.
‘Astolyev! Run! You, of all of us, must live!’ Achairas urged.
The inquisitor lowered his weapon and finally nodded, handing Achairas his vortex grenade. ‘Die well, Death Spectre.’
Achairas did not respond. There was only the rushing water. The torrent of death.
Achairas and his battle-brothers charged into the mass of approaching xenos, hurling their remaining frag grenades a moment before impact. Using his weight and momentum, he bowled through them, slashing three apart with a series of pirouetting blows. The tide of horrors washed over them. He saw Celaeno die first, decapitated by raking claws.
Even so, their charge accomplished what it was supposed to. All of the approaching xenos swarmed the most direct threat, allowing Astolyev and his last acolytes to retreat. They stayed low among the pillars as they ascended the steps, evading the frenzied vivisections being carried out by the mantis-creatures that had torn apart Vemek’s unit.
The butchery continued around the Death Spectres. The ground lurched and heaved as the tomb struggled against its stony prison. Staggering, Sevrim failed to evade a pair of curved talons that impaled him through his underarm seals. Two of the creatures lifted him up into the air, tearing an arm and a leg off, even as he pulled the pin of a krak grenade in his free hand and took several more of the xenos with him to oblivion.
Slashing their way through, Achairas and Nym inflicted a substantial butcher’s toll, bringing down a dozen xenos machines between them, despite sustaining numerous grievous injuries. When all seemed lost, the obelisk maddeningly out of reach, the onslaught ceased.
They were scarcely three hundred feet from the ring around the central obelisk when the clawed xenos retreated down the slope, hissing madly.
‘What is this?’ Nym roared. ‘Cowardice from machines?’
The four skeletal engineers operating the control ring knelt as an arc of blinding light appeared ahead of them, between the ring and the Space Marines. The light coalesced into a form. It was all dark metal, cast in the shape of a massive humanoid skeleton, easily a head taller than the Space Marines, hunched as it was. A regal crest adorned its skull, and a robe of tattered flesh was draped over its ornate emerald pauldrons. In a clawed hand, it clutched a glaive with a khopesh-like blade that shimmered with a fell greenish light. Everything about its appearance told Achairas that this was some kind of leader. An overlord of these xenos, even if it, too, was a machine.
It stood silently, still among the madness of its minions. Whatever insanity was infecting the rest of this tomb clearly did not affect its king. Achairas and Nym took a moment to gather their breath. The sound of rushing water intensified, and Achairas knew he stared into the hollow, soulless eye sockets of that which would be his end.
Nym looked at him, hobbled, but still alive. ‘Use that grenade. I’ll distract this overly decorated carcass.’
Achairas nodded. He had to get closer. He could not miss.
Smiling, the two Death Spectres advanced to their doom.
Nym hurled his last krak grenade at the overlord. It calmly caught it in its free hand, crushing it before it could detonate. Achairas flanked around, but the creature moved to block both of them. Nym rushed the towering xenos lord, raking it with his knives. His onslaught was warded off as his foe spun its glaive in an arc with alarming speed. His momentum broken, Nym was barely able to duck the retaliating swing, and the xenos’ weapon lit up with jade energy as it scythed through the air. Nym darted in, delivering a pair of thrusts into the thing’s ribcage. It was all he managed.
As Achairas sprinted forward, shouldering through two more retreating clawed xenos, he primed the vortex grenade. In a dead run, he hurled it, as hard as he could, at the central obelisk.
The grenade soared through the air, just as the overlord lifted Nym up by his throat and hurled him away. The xenos king advanced, thrusting with its glaive, impaling Nym through the back as he rose to his feet. Green fire tore through the Death Spectre, burning his flesh to ash in seconds, just as the vortex grenade contacted.
The detonation devoured all light, noise and sense, sending Achairas, and all of the xenos, staggering away as a blinding explosion of the warp’s uncolours struck the side of the obelisk. A maelstrom of polychromatic energy tore at its flanks, warping the outer shell and shattering the crystals. Rays of emerald light spewed violently, causing several of the prisms on the wall to overload and explode.
The entire chamber rocked violently, and Achairas struggled to his feet, bashing in the skull of another xenos. Looking up, he despaired as he saw thousands of scarabs and dozens of spider constructs swarm towards the obelisk. He found his sword, slashing the legs out from another horror only a split second before a searing lance of agony ripped through his midriff.
Burning blood spurted up into his helmet, as the blade of the xenos overlord punched clean through his torso, from side to side. His sword clattered from his hand as his blood turned to flame and his bones burned to ash. He did not have time to scream. The only sensation Achairas felt as he died was the cold caress of the Black River that had beckoned him for so long.
And so Brother-Sergeant Achairas of the Death Spectres died, having failed to destroy the obelisk awakening the tomb ship. But he did not fail in buying time for Inquisitor Astolyev to make his escape, and gain a chance, however small, to warn the Menrahir of Occludus of this new threat to the Halo Region.
The inquisitor’s sprint out through the tomb had taken considerably less time than his original, cautious foray. Terror soiled Astolyev’s mind. It was an unfamiliar sensation, even if he felt some minor satisfaction in having vaporised the dying, treacherous Vemek with his dark energy blaster during his escape. Of his three last acolytes, Tyberius and Heshal had fallen in the tunnels, clawed down by the skeletal xenos that had ambushed them. He’d ignored them, sprinting past. Only Kailani still lived.
He dimly made a note to give her a worthy commendation if any of them actually made it out of this wretched place alive.
The entire tomb buckled and quaked, and gravi
ty itself fought him, but he ascended the innards of the pyramid to reach the gaping rent in its apex. When he finally emerged into the wan light of the world’s stillborn sun, the scene that faced him was apocalyptic.
The earth of Thirsis 41-Alpha was a shattered mess, as the immense shape of a black metal crescent tore itself from its terrestrial prison. Rock peeled away from the pyramid, the entire crater collapsing around it, shattering the shroud station to splinters. The roar was deafening as it rose, the crust fracturing, grinding into smaller boulders and rolling off the sides of the immense superstructure below. The atmosphere recoiled as tidal surges of emerald energy stripped away the last grasping claws of rock.
The cataclysmic vista before Astolyev was truly the most awe-inspiring, terrible thing he had seen in all his many long years as an inquisitor.
He couldn’t even hear his own voice as he shouted to Apparition over the vox. He hoped the servitor on the Thunderhawk could make out his commands, and had had enough sense to take off before the research station had crumbled into oblivion.
But then, there it was, screaming through the tortured atmosphere like an apparition of one of the Emperor’s angels of death. Its ominous, black-winged shape was a joy to behold. He gripped Kailani’s arm. She was barely standing. Astolyev hadn’t even noticed the deep wound in her side. She’d said nothing of it throughout their escape.
‘Stay alive!’ he yelled through the vox, realising she’d be as deaf as he was, that words were utterly useless.
Apparition descended towards the pyramid, hovering alongside the slope of the apex, and opening its ramp. It swayed back and forth as it hung there; it would be a long jump onto a treacherous surface.
Astolyev pulled Kailani back into the tomb, before sprinting forward to gain a running start. They jumped from the slowly rising pyramid onto the ramp of the waiting gunship. Out of breath, aching and battered, they were dragged into the hold by Nerek and Ariane, and were buckled into acceleration harnesses beside a sobbing Ketyanna.
The short, twisting flight took less than fifteen minutes to reach the Vox Silentii, which was already powering up to ready for a rapid escape. The frigate flared its engines the moment they passed through its void-shielded landing bay, and began to accelerate away from the planetoid as the colossal xenos vessel tore itself free from the planetary crust.
After sprinting through the corridors of the cruiser, and hurtling up through the magnetic elevator to the strategium, Astolyev entered the chamber to find the other five Death Spectres there waiting for him.
‘Sergeant Achairas?’ one of them inquired.
The inquisitor’s hearing had returned, to some degree. ‘Dead. To buy us time to escape,’ he gasped.
The Space Marines regarded him silently.
‘Considering the size of the vessel, escape is all we can do.’ The Death Spectre gestured towards the vid display, showing the immense, crescent-shaped ship, now almost fully free from its prison. The energy signatures of the vessel did not cogitate on the Vox Silentii’s augur systems, and the inquisitor shook his head in disbelief.
‘Blood of the Emperor, what have we done?’ He turned to the shipmaster. ‘Get us out of Thirsis 41’s gravity well and make for the warp as soon as is physically possible! Make for your home world, your Menrahir must be warned.’
The Death Spectre nodded his assent.
‘That is what Achairas commanded,’ the inquisitor added with an exhalation.
And with that, the Vox Silentii surged away from the rising tomb ship at maximal speed. Whether the xenos vessel was unable to target them due to not being fully awoken yet, or whether it simply did not care, Astolyev could not guess, but it was no small mercy when the Vox Silentii’s Navigator announced that they were far enough out to tear a rift into the warp and slip away. Astolyev retreated to his guest quarters with his three remaining acolytes and Ketyanna in tow.
He would need to do some serious thinking, and perform an analysis of what they’d found, before bringing this warning to Occludus. The Death Spectres were the watchers of the Eastern Halo, the Space Marines who vigilantly kept the nightmares of the Ghoul Stars at bay. And now, they’d have one new nightmare to deal with. One that was undoubtedly far, far worse than the others. Whatever they’d awoken down there in the dark was perhaps the single greatest threat encountered in the Eastern Halo since the Pale Wasting, and Astolyev decided, then and there, that he would devote his entire being, and all of his considerable resources as an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, to counteracting that threat. That would be his atonement, for his role in awakening the sleeping nightmare buried in the rock of Thirsis 41-Alpha.
CRUSADE + OTHER STORIES
by Various authors
From a battle between the valiant Ultramarines and their plague-ridden Death Guard foes, to tales of alien enemies and the Imperium’s many brave defenders, this anthology brings together a collection of stories perfect for learning about the various factions of the Warhammer 40,000 universe – it’s your ideal first step into the adrenaline-fulled fiction of the 41st Millennium.
Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com
SOLACE
Steve Lyons
In this tale, Steve Lyons turns his attention to the Mordian Iron Guard as they face a threat away from the battlefield that may be more dangerous than the xenos they’ve been battling.
Separated from the rest of the regiment, Guardsman Maximillian Stürm and his squadron are lost deep within a forest rife with deadly aeldari. When they stumble upon the small village of Solace, they believe salvation is at hand. They can rest, regroup and resupply before heading out again. But Solace might not be the deliverance they need…
They should have made it back to camp by now.
Guardsman Maximillian Stürm was footsore and weary. He didn’t complain, of course. His squad had been tramping through the dense, thorny forest for hours. The tangled canopy stole the sun’s light, making it impossible to tell the time of day. The temperature had dropped, however, and everything was washed in shades of grey, which suggested that evening was preparing to give way to night.
Sergeant Kramer called another halt. ‘Something wrong with this damn thing,’ he grumbled, tapping his chrono-compass again.
Kramer didn’t look well. The bandages around his chest were dark with blood. His normally steel-hard, angular face was slick with sweat. His pupils were dilated, his gaze unfocused, betraying the fact that a heavy dose of stimm was keeping him going.
‘We’ve been here before,’ said Stürm. ‘I recognise the shape of those trees there. We are going round in–’
He broke off as Ven Eisen snapped up his lasgun. Stürm and the others followed suit, their tiredness forgotten. For a minute, the only sounds were Sergeant Kramer’s laboured breathing, and a nearby rustle as a forest bird took flight. ‘What is it?’ Stürm whispered.
Ven Eisen lowered his weapon. His comrades took the cue to relax. ‘My apologies. I thought I saw movement. It must only have been a shadow.’
‘Here, the shadows can kill you,’ muttered Guardsman Zoransky.
‘We must press on,’ Sergeant Kramer resolved. ‘If we are caught in the forest at nightfall, we will be dead by morning.’ No one doubted the truth of those words. The sergeant clicked his tongue and rotated on the spot. He led the way onward, following his compass needle. It might be unreliable, but it was all they had.
Stürm had never felt so far from home, so out of place. He was Iron Guard, accustomed to the noisy, bustling hives and machine-planed lines of Mordian. His squad wore bright blue uniform greatcoats and caps with gold adornments, in violent contrast to the pastel shades around them. They were shining lures to the forest’s predators.
They broke step, but stayed in formation. Ven Eisen was dragging his left foot behind him. Ludo – the squad’s youngest recruit, as yet unseasoned – held his slashed arm in a sl
ing. The morning’s battle had been brutal. They were lucky to have survived at all, and many of their comrades hadn’t. Kramer had voxed repeatedly for assistance, but no one had responded. Either the equipment was faulty, or no one was left.
Stürm felt he could have done better. He ought to have been more alert, more disciplined, fought harder. He felt ashamed of himself.
Ven Eisen stopped them again. He wasn’t seeing shadows, this time. Something, some creature, hung from a branch before them. Sergeant Kramer had missed it, which was unlike him. The creature made no move as the soldiers trained their sights upon it. Stürm struggled to discern its shape in the deepening gloom. With a jolt, he realised that it was hanging, almost bat-like, upside down.
Kramer sent Ven Eisen forward with a wordless nod. A moment later, the Guardsman signalled to the others to join him.
‘It’s dead,’ he reported. ‘Its throat has been slit. From the smell of it, at least a couple of days ago.’ The inverted face of the creature was striped with crusted blood.
It was an aeldari: a male, with the milky complexion and lithe build of its kind. Silken black hair tumbled around its tapered ears. ‘Who – or what – do you think did this to it?’ Stürm asked.
‘No man of Mordian,’ declared Kramer. Stürm knew what he meant. He didn’t mourn for the xenos. It had deserved a painful death. The means of its execution, however – its ritualistic nature – discomfited him.
‘Why hang the xenos like this?’ puzzled Zoransky. His heavy brow creased with the effort of deep thought.
‘A better question would be how,’ Kramer growled. ‘We’ve been in this forest for weeks, hunting these damn things, and barely laid a hand on them.’ He winced, and his hand went to his ribs reflexively.
‘It’s a warning,’ said Ven Eisen.
He had looked past the xenos and seen what lay beyond it. Stürm saw it too now: incongruous shapes between the trees, hard lines and angles. Falling silent again, the five soldiers crept forward – and the alien forest opened up around them. They found themselves looking at a huddle of dark, wooden buildings with sloping roofs. Well-trodden muddy tracks weaved around and between the structures.
Inferno Volume 2 - Guy Haley Page 19