‘This,’ Krevaan said, ‘is what the expected route of the greenskins would look like. It is not good enough. We cannot expect anything of these orks. If our intelligence is not first-hand, and based on direct observation, it is useless. So we will observe. Brother-sergeants, your squads will fan out from the eastern gate of Reclamation. Sergeant Behrasi, your squad will attempt to intercept on the likely route. The rest of you will spread out further to the north-east. When one squad makes contact, the rest will close in.’ He held his hand out, palm up, fingers splayed. He slowly made a fist. ‘In this way, we will crush the greenskins,’ he said.
‘What will the eldar be doing?’ Zobak asked.
‘Sending out scouting units as well, according to our agreement.’
‘Units,’ Behrasi repeated. ‘What about their main force?’
‘Remaining in the city. Protecting it.’
‘And what else will they be doing there?’ Caeligus demanded. His tone was accusatory.
You really can’t help yourself, can you? Behrasi thought. Caeligus sometimes accused him of excessive caution. In moments like this, though, it was Caeligus who demonstrated excess. Behrasi took the example of the captain to heart. Action was based on information: the better the intelligence, the more devastating the attack. Behrasi sometimes wondered, as he did now, whether Caeligus’s desire for information only extended to the point of confirming what he had already decided.
‘Your question is an excellent one, brother-sergeant,’ Krevaan said to Caeligus. His patience was more withering than his earlier sharp tone. ‘Which is why I will be observing them.’
Alathannas and Passavan walked a step behind Eleira. They were nearing the centre of the city. The human construction was becoming denser and more elaborate. The scale of the task ahead was increasing. So were its complexities. So were its risks.
‘They’ve changed so much,’ Eleira said. ‘I can see traces of what was once here, but our records will be useless.’
‘They were never going to be sufficient,’ Passavan pointed out. ‘This was a maiden world. The city was constructed, but never settled. As for what we seek…’
‘It wouldn’t be on the surface,’ Alathannas said.
‘Precisely. And all we know is what the surface once was.’
Eleira stopped in an intersection. She turned around slowly. ‘How do they live like this?’ she said. ‘What have they done?’
On three of the corners rose more of the human habitations. They were dark monuments of rockcrete. Their windows were like the firing apertures of fortifications. Faces appeared in some of them. They were suspicious, frightened, and furtive as rats. The people of Reclamation, believing themselves abandoned and invaded, sought strength in their prison-like homes. Relief sculptures of the double-headed eagle of the human Emperor dominated the façades. There were other figures, too, that Alathannas surmised also had some kind of religious significance. The overwhelming impression was of a race whose spirit was imprisoned by its manifestations of material power.
On the fourth corner was a place of worship. In its massive, glowering oppression, it was not different in kind from the habitation complexes, but merely in degree. It was worse. It was their inspiration. It was the enforcer. The eagle detached itself from the wall, became iron, and spread its wings over the portico. Humans, the ranger thought, spared no effort in celebrating what crushed them.
And yet there were individuals who encouraged him to hope. Over the decades of his travels, there were humans whom he felt he could call friends. Those connections, impossible in principle, were the shining fragments that shielded him from despair. He did not expect friendship from the Raven Guard. But he had to believe in the chance of honest cooperation. If that existed, these orks might be defeated. The alternative was so dreadful, it had to be denied.
Neither he, nor anyone else on this planet, could afford to believe in the most likely outcome of the war.
‘The changes are too great,’ Passavan said. ‘I cannot tell if the entrance we seek still exists. Perhaps it never did. We don’t know what happened to the Exodites who began the settlement. Their work was surely incomplete. If there were an entrance, the mon-keigh would have found it.’
Eleira started walking again, moving up the street past the church. She was looking closely at the foundations of the buildings, at the vanishing traces of the eldar city that had stood here, and been erased by the millennia without ever truly living. ‘The question of the entrance is irrelevant,’ she said. ‘That is not what we are seeking. We need a location, first. Farseer, you carry our hopes.’
‘I wish I could fulfil them.’ Passavan’s grief was profound.
‘You must.’
Passavan glanced at Alathannas as if looking for his support. ‘What you ask is beyond my reach.’
‘Merentallas and Elisath both know.’
‘And only they know. They have travelled the path of the seer much longer than I have. Their sight extends far beyond mine.’
‘If they are still alive,’ Alathannas said.
Eleira ignored him. ‘We are all being tasked with the impossible,’ she told the farseer.
Passavan looked back at the church. He frowned and stopped walking.
‘You think it might be under that?’ Alathannas asked. The irony would be disturbing.
‘No. I thought I saw…’ His eyes moved over the wings of the eagle. That seemed to satisfy him. ‘I’m wrong,’ he said and moved on.
Alathannas scrutinised the face of the church. He trusted Passavan’s skills. He also valued his own. He looked for movement, or an anomalous shadow. But no, the farseer was right. There was nothing there. He scanned for another minute before he was certain, then walked after the others. He stopped just as he caught up and looked again.
There was only the night, pooling around the doorways.
The night watched the eldar continue north away from the cathedral. Krevaan remained as motionless as the stones around him until the trio were almost out of sight. Then he spoke softly into his vox-bead. ‘What do you see?’
‘Several other small groups are roaming the streets.’ Techmarine Thaene had taken up a position on the roof of one of the tallest habs in the south-central zone of Reclamation. He and Krevaan had approached directly from Eighth Company’s encampment. There was a delicious edge to the challenge of going so deeply into the shadows that even the eldar could not see them. Thaene did not venture far into Reclamation, as Krevaan needed his eyes from the commanding heights of the tower. From there, the Techmarine had a view of the square where the eldar had established their base, and a good perspective on the central avenues.
Krevaan wanted to be closer. He had spotted Alathannas and his companions heading towards the cathedral. He had chosen his post in the recesses of the portico and waited. His Deathwatch years had left him with some knowledge of the eldar tongue. It was not enough for him to follow the conversation as the trio paused in the intersection. He was able to pick up some fragments, though. They were searching for something. That much he gathered. He noticed the way the leader was examining the buildings as they left.
He asked Thaene, ‘Are the groups on patrol?’
‘No, Shadow Captain. I have used high magnification to look at the ones that passed the closest to my position. They appear to be very interested in the foundations of the buildings.’
‘Thank you,’ Krevaan said. He was grateful. Thaene’s observations dovetailed with his own. There was a pattern now to the eldar behaviour. Why the foundations?
We must protect the city.
The foundations of Reclamation were older than what was built upon them.
Which city are you protecting? Krevaan wondered. Answers blossomed before him. They were dark ones, but they explained much. If an eldar city had once stood here, it made more sense that the Saim-Hann had been so desperate to preserve it.
More sense? No, that wasn’t quite true. Less irrational? Yes, that was closer to the mark. He could understand the location having an importance to the xenos. But their willingness to lay down their lives for something that had long since been erased almost completely from the face of Lepidus was still not explained. Their search was not for traces of the city itself. They were looking for something contained within the city. Whatever this prize was, it was worth any sacrifice. And if eldar lives were less important than this goal, what of the humans who now lived here?
That answer was easy. They were less than nothing.
Krevaan felt no outrage. If Reclamation had to burn in order to defeat the orks, then it would burn. He would take no pleasure in such an event, though, and he would seek to avoid it. What was impermissible was that the eldar harm the subjects of the Emperor in the pursuit of their own ends. The treachery of their race was rising to the surface, as he had known it would.
Thaene must have reached some of the same conclusions. He voxed, ‘Will we be attacking them?’
‘Not until we have dealt with the orks. The eldar will still be useful in that endeavour. But we should make some preparations for afterwards. How populated is the camp?’
He waited while Thaene carried out more observations.
‘Very few of the eldar remain. A skeleton guard.’
Either they were not expecting an attack, or they were arrogant in their estimation of their capacity to spot an enemy’s approach. Krevaan was not surprised. The eldar seemed unable to grasp the ability of the Raven Guard to wraith-slip. They looked at the power armour, and saw only juggernauts. Good.
‘Any likely targets?’ he asked Thaene.
‘Many. The vehicles are on the outer perimeter of the camp.’
Of course. For rapid deployment. That would make his task easier.
Krevaan debated following Alathannas. He decided against it. As shadow-cloaked as he had been, both the ranger and the psyker had become aware of something. He would not tempt fate. The longer the eldar did not think that he was actively moving against them, the better. Their cooperation was still useful, and their actions would be more revealing if they believed themselves unobserved by any eyes that mattered. Better not to give them the chance of suspicion. Whatever they were seeking, they did not know where to find it.
‘Meet me at the tower base,’ he told Thaene. ‘Have the equipment ready.’
Krevaan made his way back to the Techmarine’s position with the same care that he had used in reaching the cathedral. The eldar search parties were not in this sector, as far as he and Thaene knew. Krevaan assumed that they didn’t know enough. He anticipated the enemy’s gaze at every step. He factored in the chance looks of mortals at their windows. He was hidden, a massive shadow among shadows, a heavily armoured silence moving in on prey. No matter how circuitous his route, he would complete his hunt.
Dawn was still an hour away when he reached the hab-tower. The night pressed down on Reclamation with the full weight of the siege to come. Thaene stood against the façade, in the dark between two of the street’s lumen globes. He was holding the melta bombs. Krevaan examined them. ‘Near the engines of the skimmers,’ he said.
‘That is correct, Shadow Captain. Inside would be best.’
‘But any location where they are unlikely to be discovered, at any rate. There is no chance of their being triggered accidentally?’
Thaene shook his head. ‘The detonators will not function unless they receive the signal that I send them.’
‘Good.’
He did ask himself, as the flow of shadows took him towards the eldar encampment, if there was any situation that would not result in his ordering Thaene to set off the bombs. He didn’t think there was. If the eldar betrayed the Raven Guard during battle with the orks, he would kill them and their vehicles. If they remained trustworthy to the end of the war, there was still the question of Reclamation. The eldar wanted something here. Victory against the orks would change nothing. The Saim-Hann would have to be expelled by force. This was the simple truth of the matter.
Krevaan found it interesting, all the same, that he even considered the question. The extermination of the xenos had been a given in the Deathwatch. He wondered why he engaged in this speculation at all.
Because you can, he thought. Because the orders come from you, not the Inquisition. He had the luxury of acting with the full knowledge of why the actions were called for, and what purpose they served. He was proud of his achievements, now over two centuries in the past, in the Deathwatch. He had been less enamoured of how the true purpose of the missions had often been shrouded from his vision. He understood the motivation behind the secrecy. He understood its utility. He had chafed at being subject to it. Now he made use of it. He wielded it as he would any other weapon.
He reached the square. Crouching in the darkness cast by the squat hab-block, he was only a few metres from the perimeter of eldar vehicles. He slowed his breathing and heartbeats. He became the thing that the eye passed over as it moved between points of interest. He watched the movements of the eldar.
They had patrols along the edge of the camp. There were few guards, but the timing of their circuits was complex. They didn’t appear to move at a constant speed. It was difficult to predict when he would fall in a blind spot. The minutes to dawn fell away. He was patient, unhurried. There was time. He would not need long.
When the moment came, he was moving even before his conscious mind noted the opportunity. He crossed the open space, slipping between the overlapping gazes of the guards. He reached the vehicles, staying low and motionless before the Vyper. He waited for the next opportunity, then moved along the skimmer’s nose and fixed a melta bomb to the underside of the fuselage, where it joined the short, angular wings.
Stillness again. Then a shift among shadows. A bomb attached beneath the engine of a jetbike. He repeated the pattern. He was never where the eldar looked. He was engaged in a duel that he would lose if his opponent ever realised that battle was engaged. He respected the eldar’s perception.
And he thwarted it.
The operation took an hour. The sky was lightening as he headed back to meet Thaene. The tide of darkness was receding. It was still more than deep enough. He did more than evade the eldar’s sight. He smashed its power. When he rejoined the Techmarine, he completed an act of war that would not be known until he chose. The shadows had planted a gladius in the heart of the eldar. He had killed them. He would let them sustain their illusion of life only for as long as it suited him to do so.
As they headed back to Eighth Company’s base, Thaene asked, ‘Is there any chance we will not use what you have prepared?’
That question again. No, Krevaan started to say. He changed his mind. ‘If the eldar prove trustworthy, you will not have to send that signal.’
‘No chance, then,’ Thaene said.
A thought crossed Krevaan’s mind. It was close to being a doubt. Was he setting impossible conditions? Was it possible that he was acting dishonourably?
Before he could answer himself or the Techmarine, Caeligus’s voice came over the vox. His tone was urgent. The background noise was chaotic.
Then it resolved into the roar of a gigantic engine. And that was much worse.
Chapter Four
Travelling in sustained bursts from the jump packs, Caeligus had led his battle-brothers on a wide sweep. They were the squad furthest out from the base, sent dozens of kilometres to the east of Reclamation. Reaching the reconnaissance point assigned, learning the details of the landscape but finding no enemy, Caeligus pushed north as hard as he could. He didn’t expect to intercept the orks. He assumed that they would turn in towards Reclamation at the first opportunity.
He was frustrated by the position Krevaan had designated for his squad. His hope was to catch sight of the orks during one of the jumps. He accepted that
he would not be among the first to engage, but he wanted his knowledge of the greenskins’ position to be first-hand. It was a point of pride, not of necessity. He admitted this to himself. Though he said nothing to the others, their grim drive told him they felt the same. The engagement against the orks at the Reclamation bridge had been unsatisfying. It had felt too much like what it was: fighting in defence of the eldar. Now, though, the true war of extermination could begin.
He saw a light to the north. It was an intermittent glow.
‘That can’t be them,’ Vaanis said. ‘Why would the greenskins travel that far out of their road?’
‘That isn’t sunrise,’ Caeligus said. ‘And it isn’t natural. So it’s either the orks or the eldar.’
The squad had already travelled much further than Caeligus had anticipated. The glow was more distant yet. It made no sense that the orks had headed in that direction. It therefore makes perfect sense, given these orks, he thought. Even if he was wrong, ignoring this event would be a mistake. Orks or eldar, I see enemy activity. ‘That is our destination,’ he said.
‘Should we report in?’ Havran asked.
‘When we have something definite to report,’ Caeligus told him. Unlikely as it seemed, if the lights were the result of a freak planetary feature, he would risk deviating the war effort from its proper course.
He would also risk humiliation.
They arced towards the light. With each flight, the glow sharpened. Caeligus began to distinguish individual beams. He could hear the sound of engines. Then they picked up the tracks of the ork passage. The terrain was chewed up in a swath. But not a wide one. The main body of the ork army had not come this way.
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