[Battlefleet Gothic 02] - Shadow Point

by Gordon Rennie - (ebook by Undead)

  And then the creatures were amongst them, and upon them.

  The claws of one creature took away the face of a Guardian who Kyrrl remembered had had the makings of a skilled apprentice bonesinger. A second creature fell upon Melishya, ravaging her with black-stained adamantium teeth and claws. She shrieked in pain and terror, her blood splashing against the armour of Kyrrl’s breastplate. Kyrrl dropped his pistol, its disc supply now spent, and reached for his chainsword.

  There was a flash of sudden hot pain in his sword arm as he drew the weapon. For a moment, he wondered what had happened, wondered why his sword could still be in its finely-decorated leather sheath when it was also still grasped in his hand, and then he saw the creature with the knife in its hand, and felt the hot streaks of blood pumping out of the stump of his wrist. The creature slashed at him again, opening up his body from midriff to shoulder, and Kyrrl fell to the ground, the strength spilling out of him in a torrent of red.

  The creature stooped down towards him, the knife ready to strike again, when a voice, harsh and commanding, sounded from behind it. The creature cringed back in fearful, animal-like abeyance, and another figure stood over the mortally-injured craftmaster. Cruel, pitiless, green-coloured eyes set into a pale face of exquisitely-refined beauty stared down at him. A hand sheathed in a delicately-crafted armoured gauntlet, the fingers tipped with tiny, fine-edged cutting blades, reached down towards him. Kyrrl felt a brief, searing, pain in his forehead, and then the hand came away, holding the blood-smeared spirit stone which had been embedded in the flesh there.

  Despair like nothing he had ever felt before filled Kyrrl, and he knew his very soul was forfeit to a force too terrible to be openly contemplated by the eldar mind. The dark eldar warrior smiled, brandishing its shining prize.

  “Fear not, ‘brother’,” it cooed to him. “I won’t let you die, at least not yet. My surgeons are skilled, and eager for new flesh to work upon. They’ll be upset at the loss of one of their pets. I think they’ll be glad of the opportunity to fashion themselves a new replacement for the one you helped destroy.”

  “Zane, what are you doing here? You’re not scheduled to be running any patrol missions for another two duty shifts.”

  They were on the cavernous flight deck within the Macharius which was home to both Storm and Hornet squadrons. Kaether had been making the final adjustments to his flight suit, ensuring that the plug-in nodes of his helmet were clear and that his suit’s emergency oxygen supply was unobstructed, when Zane had appeared, also dressed in full flight suit. He had his helmet off, and Kaether forced himself to look the pilot in the eye, reminding himself that Zane was still the best Fury pilot in his squadron. The fact that the man’s face, like much of the rest of his body, was a nightmare of scarred and surgically-rebuilt horror should have had no bearing on the respect due to him as the top-scoring fighter ace aboard ship.

  “My apologies, commander,” said Zane, in that disquieting electronic monotone voice which was all the tech-priest surgeons’ efforts had left him with. “I request permission to join your flight patrol. I was praying in my quarters when the thought came upon me that you and the Emperor might have need of me today.”

  Some of the other pilots shuffled nervously upon hearing this. It was undisputable that Zane’s solo actions in combat against a daemon creature had possibly saved the entire ship during the evacuation of Belatis some years ago, but no one was truly willing to speculate as to the cause of the circumstances which had allowed him alone to know of the creature’s presence aboard ship and to have been able to hunt it down and destroy it. Some claimed that it was as Zane said, and that he had been an instrument of divine intervention. Others thought that he was simply mad, and had simply been in the right place at the right time.

  Kaether was not sure what to believe. He believed in the power of the Emperor, even if that power was located on remote and far distant Terra, and he believed in the divine righteousness of the need to protect mankind from its many enemies, but he was in essence a practical, pragmatic man and, day to day, mainly put his faith in his own abilities and those of his pilots. The promise of divine protection was all very well, but Kaether preferred the more solid assurance of a Fury interceptor, fully checked-out and fuelled and armed, and a pair of trustworthy wingmen on each side of him.

  Zane waited patiently while Kaether considered the request. There was an uneasy mood aboard the ship, Kaether knew: pilots and crewmen whose training and combat experience had taught them that all aliens were the enemies of mankind were now disturbed by the uncomfortably close presence of the eldar vessel nearby, and the idea that Zealot Zane had received some kind of divine premonition would do little to dispel that unease.

  Still, thought Kaether, no matter how uncomfortable Zane made him feel, there was something about the man which compelled attention. He turned to the tech-priest in charge of the launch preparations. “Prep Storm Four for immediate launch.”

  Zane nodded in curt thanks. “What the hell,” Kaether told him, “six Furies are better than five, I suppose, and the extra show of strength won’t go amiss as far as putting on a show for our new eldar friends goes.”

  Climbing into the cockpit of his command Fury and allowing the ground crew technicians to strap him into the flight harness, Kaether, still unsure why exactly he had acceded to Zane’s request, was struck in answer by a sudden thought, and laughed softly to himself. Manetho, undergoing the same process in his customary navigator’s position in the rear cockpit space, picked up the sound over his helmet comm-channel.

  “Something funny, commander?”

  Kaether laughed again. “I think we may be in luck on this mission, Manetho. Don’t tell anyone yet, but I think I may be coming down with a touch of divine inspiration myself. That’ll make two holy madmen in the squadron, so the Emperor can’t fail to be watching over us now.”

  Manetho’s caustic and jesting, and also highly blasphemous, reply was thankfully lost in the shattering scream of a Fury engine powering up as the flight prepared for take-off.

  In space, in the void between the Macharius and the Vual’en Sho, a flight of Eagle bombers with a small, accompanying escort made long, looping patterns across their designated patrol circuit. They had received stern commands to remain a strict distance from the human ship, but, at several points in the course of the patrol, the bomber flight’s commander had allowed his formation to ‘accidentally’ wander across the invisible border line between the human and eldar ships.

  In the command blister of the lead Eagle, Kornous smiled at the thought of the alarm aboard the mon-keigh vessel, the stupid, ape-like human creatures gibbering words of anxiety at each other in the crude, barbaric sounds that passed for mon-keigh language. Perhaps he would be censured for such a breach of orders when he returned to the Vual’en Sho, although he doubted it. Craftmaster Lileathon was his life-mate, but, more than that, she was also a fellow survivor of the destruction of their original craftworld Bel-Shammon, and Kornous knew that she hated the mon-keigh with the same bright, terrible passion as he did himself.

  No, she might berate him before the eldar of their adopted craftworld of An-Iolsus, but alone, in their quarters, clinging naked to each other and whispering between themselves words spoken only in the dialect of their extinct home, she would say other, far different things to him.

  Theirs was a love born of hate and bitterness: two desperate, lonely exiles, cast adrift amidst an entire race of lonely exiles. The hate of each of them fed and fuelled the hate of the other, and soon, though neither knew it, that hate would bear deadly and violent fruit.

  Kornous thought-signalled his steersman to bring the Eagle around towards the human ship again. The mon-keigh vessel loomed large before him, its image magnified a hundredfold by the wraithbone-infused crystal material of the cockpit blister. He studied the shape and form of the enemy vessel, his keen eye picking out possible avenues of attack through the overlapping fields of fire of its defence turrets and then seeki
ng and finding vulnerable points of weakness across the surface of its armoured hull.

  His hands twitched in frustrated, unfulfilled eagerness to pass across the crystal control nodes on the instrumentation panel in front of him, the pattern of their movements, combined with a simple thought-command from Kornous, enough to launch the Eagle’s lethal cargo of missiles.

  In his mind’s eye, Kornous saw the missiles of his bomber and those around it streak away towards their target. In his mind’s eye, he saw the wave of missiles strike the mon-keigh ship. Many of them smashed themselves to pieces against the mon-keigh ship’s dense armour, but enough penetrated through to accomplish their task.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the missiles detonate in sequence within the body of their target, saw the shape of the human cruiser heave and convulse as its metal innards were pulverised under the hammer blow impacts of the missiles’ sonic warheads; saw, moments later, the target begin to break apart, its shattered internal structure no longer able to hold it together.

  Saw, a few scant moments later, the enemy vessel consumed in a white flash as primitive mon-keigh plasma reactors catastrophically ruptured apart.

  All this he saw in his mind’s eye, and all this he desired with all his life-force.

  With a mental sigh, Kornous signalled the steersman to change course again, taking them away from the human ship. He watched as the image of the ship slid away out of view. It didn’t matter, of course, for he had already committed the details of all its potential vulnerabilities to memory.

  “Mael dannan,” he whispered to himself, in mocking farewell salute to the mon-keigh ship.

  Mael dannan. Words from the warrior-cant language of his original home craftworld.

  Total and merciless extermination.

  “They’re looping away again, sir, same as they did the last few times.”

  Semper studied the icons on the surveyor screen, confirming for himself the information relayed to him by one of his junior officers. The eldar attack craft formation was indeed moving away from the outer periphery of the Macharius’s defensive range.

  “Typical attack pilot grandstanding, perhaps, A show of bravado. Maybe their bomber and fighter crews aren’t that much different from ours after all,” mused Semper, only half-seriously.

  “Or perhaps they’re testing us,” suggested Nyder, gruffly. “Practising attack runs and testing the range of our defence turrets and the reaction times of our fighter patrols. Or goading us even, maybe. Trying to find out how far they can push us before we’ll react.”

  Semper grunted in reply, acknowledging the potential truth of Nyder’s comment, even if it was not exactly what he wanted to hear at this moment in time. He looked towards his communications crew.

  “No word yet from the Mosca?”

  “Nothing yet, sir,” saluted an officer. “Same with the Volpone. Damned pulsar interference is still playing merry hell with our comm-channels.”

  “Any word on the last transmission we heard from the Volpone?” Their last contact with the patrol frigate had been over an hour ago, but it had been garbled and indistinct, almost obliterated by pulsar-created static.

  “Nothing yet, sir. We’ve given it to Magos Castaboras to play with. He’s running it through the logic engines to see if he can filter out any of the interference and make some sense of what the Volpone was saying. We should have something from him soon.”

  Semper grunted again in acknowledgement, a sure sign that he was troubled or irritated. He considered things for a moment, then gave his waiting officers their orders.

  “Mister Nyder—put out extra fighter screen patrols and have all your attack craft squadrons put on standby, ready for emergency launch. Tell your pilots to see off any more incursions into our defence zone from any of the alien craft. Let’s see how they react when we hang the ‘no entry’ sign up on the door. Comms—signal the Graf Orlok and tell them to proceed at speed to the last known position of the Mosca. If we can’t raise them, maybe Graf Orlok can. And signal Drachenfels to do likewise with the Volpone. Tell that old rogue Ramas that—”

  He was abruptly cut off by the urgent voice of a communications officer.

  “Sir, flash-comm signal coming through from the Drachenfels. They’re in combat with hostiles. They’re reporting they’re under attack by at least one eldar vessel!”

  The words were barely out of the man’s mouth before a second shout from a surveyor officer. “Eldar cruiser is coming about. Strong energy surge detected—it’s powering up weapons and defence systems!”

  A glance at the augur screens confirmed everything the surveyor officer said, and instantly brought to life all Semper’s worst fears about this mission and the true, treacherous intentions of the alien eldar.

  “Battle stations!” he bellowed. “We’re about to come under enemy attack!”

  Down on the surface of Stabia, the dust storm seemed, if anything, to have worsened in intensity. Ulanti and Kyogen sheltered in what they had laughably termed the Imperial forces’ command point, even if it was little more than a half-roofed ruin. The eldar were encamped in the ruins on the other side of what appeared to have once been some kind of central plaza or square. Horst and the eldar’s apparent commander—Ulanti was unsure what exactly the alien’s status was: some kind of high priest was the nearest he could judge—were sequestered in a temple-like building in the centre of the open area, talking over whatever urgent and covert matter it was that had caused them to arrange this parlay in the first place.

  The building the meeting was taking place within appeared to be the only intact structure in the entire area. Stavka and a handpicked guard of the inquisitor’s senior armsmen were hunkered in the ruins nearby, staring through the swirling dust in sullen, suspicious hostility at the similar eldar retinue stationed likewise nearby on the aliens’ half of the area. The eldar commander’s chief henchman or champion warrior, the same one who had been first to appear and who had regarded Ulanti and the others with such detached contempt, stood there fixed and immobile, a figure of awe and fear in his unfamiliar, peacock-hued armour, his alien weapons held at the ready. If the eldar warrior even noticed the dust storm raging around it, then it certainly gave no indication.

  “Arrogant alien bastard,” growled Kyogen, studying the figure of the eldar through an infra-red augmented auspex scope, a piece of equipment borrowed from one of Horst’s retinue, and just about the only thing they had which could pierce the veil of swirling dust. “Look at it, standing there like it owns the whole galaxy. How much longer do you think this is going to take? The sooner we’re done with this and away from these xenos scum, the better.”

  Ulanti didn’t much care for the commissar’s comments, just as he found increasingly unnerving the way Kyogen kept flipping the activation stud of his chainsword on and off, setting the weapon’s monomolecular cutting blade in brief but noisy whirring motion, or the way in which his hand constantly strayed towards the holstered bolt pistol at his side, playing with the holster’s brass clasp. The man was clearly rattled by being in such close proximity to the eldar, and Ulanti seriously, if silently, questioned his fitness for a mission such as this.

  There were, however, matters which were troubling him even more urgently: their inability to make contact with the shuttles still waiting at the landing zone, for instance. The shuttles, with their powerful onboard comms equipment, were their main link with the orbiting Macharius, and Ulanti and the others had heard nothing either from the shuttles or the Macharius in the last hour. He had despatched a squad of armsmen, led by Borusa, back to the landing zone to investigate. So far, they had heard nothing. Hedging his bets, and suspecting that there was some undetected aspect of the alien ruins which might be hindering normal communications above and beyond the effects of the dust storm, Ulanti had also sent a second and smaller armsmen squad to accompany a comms officer equipped with a backpack vox set to search for a clearer transmission zone beyond the area of the ruins.

  “Ravensburg,�
�� came a shout from the area of the perimeter guard, a panicked-sounding voice giving the codeword which would tell the nervous armsmen sentries to hold their fire. A few moments later, one of the armsmen Ulanti had sent to accompany the comms officer came scrambling into the ruin. Red-faced with exhaustion, he tore off his rebreather mask, gasping for breath in the dust-choked air. Ulanti noticed that the man was stripped of weapons and all other non-essential equipment. A messenger runner, sent back ahead of the rest of his comrades and bearing news which could not wait for the arrival of the comms officer.

  “Beg to report, sir,” gasped the man, still managing to present a passable salute to Ulanti and Kyogen. “We made contact with the Mach, although it didn’t last long. They’re under attack, sir. They’re in battle with the alien ship!”

  Ulanti’s laspistol and Kyogen’s bolt pistol were in their hands instantly, even before the first sounds penetrated through the blanket of the dust storm from the events now unfolding on the edge of the ruins. Gunfire, the familiar, barking roar of navy shotcannons mixed with the hissing crack of alien weaponry. And, following soon afterwards, human-voiced sounds of alarm and the screams of human pain.

  “Ulanti to all units,” he shouted into his comm-unit, not knowing how many of his men could hear him amidst the confusion of the storm and the sudden alien assault. “It’s a trap. The eldar have betrayed us! We’re under attack!”

  FOURTEEN

  The first Kaether and his squadron knew of the emergency was when an entire series of amber and red warning runes flashed into life across his control console, as his helmet’s comm system was filled with screaming static, and his craft was violently buffeted by invisible waves of energy.