[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest

by C. S. Goto - (ebook by Undead)

  “And so begins the play of our times, in which hope will die and be reborn anew!” The voice echoed and bounced around the stage, as though it were being chanted by dozens of mouths, fractionally out of synchronisation. “In the beginning there was darkness, but into that darkness from the realms beyond shone light.” Whispered murmurs pulsed around the audience, invisible beyond the brilliance of the stage lights. Then a low, throbbing music arose out of the stone beneath our feet, beating through the ceramite of our boots with an odd, syncopated rhythm.

  A shaft of red light came down from the ceiling striking the very centre of the stage like a magnificent column. Held on a podium within the light was a glittering but broken sword, sparkling with jewels of crimson, like droplets of blood. The rest of the stage remained empty, but the murmurs of the invisible audience grew slightly louder and a single note of an alien melody joined the rhythmic undertones of the background music. It was a pristine and silvering note, like a fleck of starlight on a cloudy night.

  Ahriman took a step forwards towards the blade, gazing around himself cautiously. In all the long centuries of his search for knowledge, he had never encountered anything like this before.

  I watched him take another step towards the Blade Wraith in the centre of the stage, and noticed that the other Prodigal Sons did not follow him. They remained at the edge of the stage, as though waiting in the wings for a signal.

  Looking out towards the audience, squinting my eyes against the light, I thought that I could see sporadic, eager faces dispersed throughout the stands. They were grinning, as though anticipating something unexpected.

  When Ahriman took another step, a figure shimmered into being at the front of the stage. The crested and vividly coloured Great Harlequin had his back to the sorcerer lord, his arms held out before him, as though beseeching the audience.

  Ahriman turned his head and a look of momentary confusion crossed his ghostly face. He didn’t understand what was happening. Looking from the Great Harlequin to the Blade Wraith and back again, I could see that Ahriman was trying to work out whether the aliens were attempting to defend their treasure or not.

  Is this performance just an exercise in illusion and misdirection? Is it supposed to compensate for a lack of real defences? Are the Harlequins so few that they dare not confront the power of Ahriman? The questions were in my head just as they were in Ahriman’s.

  Finally, his patience exhausted, Ahriman’s face gnarled into a grimace of frustration and anger. He drove his Black Staff down into the surface of the stage and sent a crack of lightning pulsing through the ground towards the Great Harlequin. At the same time, a lance of energy lashed out of the top of his staff and smashed into the spotlights that dazzled the stage area, shattering them and plunging the amphitheatre into relative darkness. As the curtain of shadow descended onto the stage, the Great Harlequin sprang into the air, turning an impossibly slow flip as Ahriman’s blast passed beneath him, as though gravity had been partially suspended for a moment. When his feet touched the stage once again, a troupe of Harlequins appeared around him at stage-front, glittering into visibility like a host of multi-coloured stars. They each snapped into combat poses, blades and barrels held with dramatic poise.

  A cheer erupted from the audience, filling the amphitheatre with audio waves that pulsed and vibrated powerfully through the air and the stonework. The grinning faces on the balconies remained eerily immobile, as though fixed into place. But here and there in between them appeared the menacing smiles of Death Jesters with tripod-mounted shrieker cannons and brightlances.

  Ahriman swept his eyes around the unfolding scene and laughed. Is this the best defence that the Laughing God can muster? He howled with dramatic rage, spinning his Black Staff over his head and letting arcs of raw warp power pour out of its tips, spraying it around the theatre and into the stands. As though on cue, the rest of the Prodigal Sons charged forwards on the stage, bracing their weapons and training them up into the audience to confront the Death Jesters.

  “And so it is that hope is killed!” The invisible narrator’s voice echoed powerfully around the arena, tinged with a mixture of amusement and menace.

  At precisely that moment, an explosion fired on the far side of the amphitheatre, blowing masonry and debris across the stage. Even before the smoke had cleared, a squad of Space Marines came storming out of the rough hole where once a stage door had been, spilling out onto the far side of the stage, on the other side of the spot-lit Blade Wraith.

  Drawing Vairocanum, I charged forward to join the Prodigal Sons in their stand against the decreasingly favourable odds. I felt the hum and pulse of power course into my blade, and I saw the faint green glow from its runes diffuse into the shadow-thickened air.

  Almost instantly, volleys of bolter fire erupted from the red-armoured Blood Ravens as they established themselves on stage-left. Three blue-clad Librarians lashed out with arcs of blue energy. The Prodigal Sons, on stage-right, returned fire at once, reducing the stage instantly to a hail of shells and a mire of warp power. Meanwhile, the Great Harlequin and his troupe quietly faded out of sight once again as tremendous cheers crashed down out of the auditorium.

  I know those Space Marines. The thought hit me like a bolter shell.

  I know those Space Marines. It cycled round and around in my mind, blinding me to all other thoughts and impulses. Something moved in my soul, shifting my will and binding me to forgotten oaths. I know those Space Marines.

  I stopped half way across the stage, in the middle of a charge with Vairocanum brandished above my head, my mind racing with sudden and profound indecision. I stood between the Ahriman and his Prodigal Sons on one side and the Blood Ravens on the other, centre stage before the Blade Wraith of Lanthrilaq itself.

  My head was suddenly assailed with competing voices and thoughts: Come home to us, lost son of Vidya; we are more similar than you know, friend of Ahriman; this is the death of hope; coincidences are for the weak-minded and the ignorant; I am the sword of Vidya; knowledge is power; friend of Ahriman… eyes of the Emperor… come home… everything wants to return home… Vairocanum… Lanthrilaq…

  Bolter shells and energy blasts scorched past my face as I dropped to my knees in the centre of the stage, staring up into the insane, maniacal grinning faces of the audience. As I stared, a troupe of Harlequins shimmered into being at the front of the stage. In the fore was the Solitaire that I had seen in the librarium, his mask shifting through numerous guises and expressions, as though searching for the most appropriate visage of death.

  Karebennian!

  Screaming projectiles and javelins of brightlance fire started to sizzle down from the Death Jester emplacements on the balconies, raining toxins and laser heat onto the stage. Cheers and screeches of excitement resounded around the arena, as though the acoustics amplified the sound itself into deafening weapons.

  As the flagstones beneath my knees trembled and cracked under the relentless onslaught from all sides, I watched Karebennian’s mask slide into a seductive abhorrence as he adopted the guise of Slaanesh—the role of power that was reserved only for Solitaires. As the images of the troupers behind him began to morph and shift into inconstancy, I saw them leap and dance towards me in patterns of breathtaking beauty and unpredictability. In a matter of seconds, I found myself gazing into the face of Slaanesh itself, and saw the laughing reflection of my addled soul staring back at me.

  The Avenging Sword flashed around the sun with the Eternal Star in close formation behind it. The message from the mon-keigh vessel had been garbled and incoherent, but Macha didn’t need to understand the ramblings of primitive mammals to know that the yngir were regenerating on the far side of the local star. Uldreth, the exarch of the Dire Avengers, had needed little more than a hint of shifting chemical and thermal patterns in the sun to recognise the danger. As the eldar cruisers swept around to the other side of the star, the exarch and farseer saw exactly what they had feared. The energy of the sun was bleeding out i
nto space. It was being conducted through the crystalline prisms on the decks of the dormant yngir vessels and then focussed into their energy circuits. The effect was not dissimilar from that seen on terrestrial battlefields when the yngir deployed the so-called “resurrection orbs,” which were basically micro-scaled star-fusion devices. The only difference here was scale.

  Assessment? Macha’s thoughts crossed the vacuum of space between her Eternal Star and the Avenging Sword instantaneously. It was precisely such phenomena that drove the yngir into their ancient and endless frenzies of hatred.

  I can see twenty raiders and four cruisers already online, replied Uldreth, his mind sharply angled and focussed on the battle to come. He had already sent hundreds of Biel-Tan eldar to their deaths in the Lorn system, and he was not about to lose any more to the ancient enemy. The Dire Avengers were not noted for their penchant for mercy or forgetfulness.

  I concur.

  There is something else, added Uldreth as a series of explosions detonated over the shimmering surface of one of the Shroud cruisers. The Avenger tracked the line of fire back on a curving trajectory in a tight orbit. Judging from the nature of the explosions, he assumed that the mon-keigh battle-barge had commenced bombardment of the cruisers before coming properly into range. From his position, the battle-barge was not yet even visible around the sun.

  I can see it too. Macha’s mind was full of concern.

  Uldreth concentrated and stared through the dazzling threads of lightning and starlight that interlaced across the face of the rapidly re-energising yngir fleet. Behind the cruisers, shrouded in the dark of the vacuum and constructed out of a mysterious and utterly non-reflective metallic substance, he could just make out the outline of another ship. It was bigger than the others, much bigger. It resembled a massive cross, bristling with gun batteries and the distinctive emplacements for gauss particle whips and lightning arcs. Protruding from the sharpened nose was the vaguely visible suggestion of a star-pulse generator. It’s a Harvest Ship. The realisation filled Uldreth with horror and determination simultaneously. Scythe-class, I think.

  Agreed. Confirmed Macha without emotion. It is not yet online.

  I am deploying the Sword’s complement of Shadowhunters to engage the Dirge and Jackal raiders.

  Concentrate on the Jackals, Uldreth. They are equipped with portals—We do not want to be caught up in boarding actions.

  Understood.

  Macha watched the flotilla of escort vessels spill out of the Avenging Sword and accelerate off towards the startling collection of yngir ships. For the first time she allowed her thoughts to move from the questions of whether and when the threat of the yngir would arise and she started to wonder why they would arise so closely together in time and yet so far apart in space. The coincidence of the ascension at Lsathranil’s Shield and this one in the Lorn system was simply too great to be ignored: coincidences are ignored only by the weak-minded or the ignorant, she reminded herself.

  There was something deceptive and deliberate about the coincidence that made her suspicious. Uldreth had focussed his passions on the mon-keigh, blaming them for awakening the long-dormant enemy. And he blamed himself for decisions that he had been given no choice but to make. But Macha had to see beyond these intimate emotions: the ancient enemy was not petty or vindictive on this small scale. The yngir’s ambitions were grand to the point that their realisation would mean the end of the sons of Asuryan altogether. Their hatred was focussed against living, organic matter itself, but especially against the psychic race of the eldar.

  Macha could not discount the possibility that the ascension at Lsathranil’s Shield was a diversion designed to split the forces of Biel-Tan so that the Swordwind might be defeated: the whole psychic strength of a united Biel-Tan would be awesome to behold, and perhaps not even the yngir could stand against it. At least not yet.

  But if this were the case, the implications were terrible. Macha had heard rumours of the return of the Deceiver—Mephet’ran—the star-god that had once tricked Kaelis Ra into turning against his own silvering hordes, convincing him to feast on the flesh of the yngir themselves. She had seen the Harlequins of Arcadia perform the Masque of the Deceiver, and listened to Eldarec narrate the many myths of his return.

  The Harlequins, sons of the Laughing God, had mixed and complicated emotions about the Deceiver—admiration and terror gripped their souls at the mention of his name, and only Eldarec himself was able to perform his part in the masques. Sometimes they told stories of the Deceiver’s exploits as though they were the deeds of the Laughing God himself.

  Of all the lords of the yngir, only the Deceiver might have the wit for this kind of galaxy-spanning performance.

  Together with the Solitaire, Karebennian, Eldarec had once performed the Dance of Mephet’ran and Vaul in the grand amphitheatre of Biel-Tan. In that dance, the Deceiver took on various organic forms to lure the living into his service. In the dance, the Deceiver’s objective was to convince the living to destroy or banish all of the weapons and talismans that had been constructed by Vaul, the smith god, to prepare the way for his return. He found the psychic resonance of the Vaulish artefacts offensive.

  It was certainly true that the talismans had been lost, and all but one of the Blades of Vaul had also fallen out of the memory of the children of Isha. As the numbers of the eldar dwindled throughout the galaxy, Macha felt sure that the Deceiver would be plotting his return and testing the water. The yngir could taste the cross-pollution of materium and immaterium; it was like poison to them. But as the light of the eldar faded from the galaxy, so the interflow of the warp into real space would begin to dwindle, providing a more conducive environment for the return of the ancient foe.

  But somehow she could not make all the pieces fit. There was not quite enough for her to be sure of anything, and the frustration drove her to the point of anger. The yngir were without souls, and this made them almost impossible to see clearly in the myriad unfolding futures and pasts of the present. She hated them, and hated that she could not master them or even fully grasp them.

  As she sat in her meditation chamber, watching the viewscreen that was trained on the emergent, shimmering yngir fleet, she noticed the massive form of the Litany of Fury crest the outline of the dying sun, with its cannons and torpedoes firing relentlessly.

  In her mind’s eye, she could see the radiance of the psychic presence in the heart of that ugly vessel, and she wondered whether the Blood Ravens were really aware of the value of the beacon that they so industriously and studiously maintained there. Even Gabriel did not really seem to understand, despite her persistent efforts to reveal the truth to him.

  There had been a mon-keigh warrior once, long ago, who had understood the need for psychic radiance in the galaxy, especially in a galaxy from which the eldar were rapidly fading. But those primitive mammals lived such short lives, even the most promising of them.

  Whether the humans understood their power or not, Macha was certain that the regenerating yngir could see the brilliance of the psychic pool in the Litany of Fury, and that they would seek to extinguish it as quickly as they possibly could. In comparison with the cumbersome and heavy mon-keigh battle-barge, her virtually immaterial, glittering Wraithship, Eternal Star, seemed fleeting and ethereal.

  Gabriel, hurry home.

  * * * * *

  As the doors into the amphitheatre blew, Gabriel charged forward through the smoke and the scattering debris. The dance of the Solitaire had been clear and unambiguous about the location of the sword of Lanthrilaq, and Gabriel was determined that it should not fall into the hands of the Prodigal Sons. Such a weapon could do untold evil in the wrong hands.

  Storming out of the smoke, Gabriel found himself emerging onto the stage of a massive amphitheatre. The stands were dimly lit but riddled with the grinning faces of eldar Harlequins. The stage was alive with motion and action. A terrible sorcerer lord was standing on the other side of it, with a squad of Prodigal Sons behind hi
m. He was spinning his staff in a blaze of fury, sending sheets of warpfire lashing out around the stage. Over to the right, at the front of the stage, Gabriel caught a fleeting glance of a troupe of Harlequin warriors before they quickly faded from view, leaving the stage to the Space Marines.

  Flashing a couple of rapid hand signals, Gabriel deployed the rest of his squad into a firing arc behind him. The engagement was unexpectedly sudden and furiously intense at short range. Tanthius stomped up towards the back of the stage, his storm bolter coughing and spluttering with discharging shells. At the same time, Korinth and Zhaphel peeled down to stage-front, hurling crackling blasts of warp energy across towards the Prodigal Sons, Jonas strode up to Gabriel’s shoulder, adding the fury of his own force staff to the repeated rattling of Gabriel’s bolter, concentrating his fire on the sorcerer lord himself.

  Gabriel—It’s Ahriman!

  Meanwhile, Corallis and Ephraim took up support positions behind them, loosing relentless volleys of bolter fire across the stage.

  Return fire, projectiles, bolter shells and energy blasts pinged and ricocheted off their armour, scarring the ceramite and cracking through the reinforced panels. At this range with virtually no cover neither the Blood Ravens nor the Prodigal Sons would last long.

  In the tempest of combat, Gabriel noticed that heavy weapons fire was raining down from the balconies. Through the smoke, recoil flashes and explosions of light, he could just about discern the shapes of Death festers, laughing and grinning at gun emplacements in the stands. It seemed that the Harlequins were helping him.

  Pulling a grenade from his belt, Gabriel hurled it across the stage and watched it detonate behind the formation of Prodigal Sons, throwing one of them off his feet and raining shrapnel over the backs of the others.