Down. Deeper.
‘Brother Ha’garen,’ Neleus said, ‘you must be very careful not to die, or the rest of us will never find our way out of this ship.’
‘In which case we’ll just have to kill it,’ Ba’birin grunted.
They were, by Ha’garen’s estimate, three decks up and a few hundred metres aft of the target. The path ahead would take them along a catwalk, from which they would drop down a level and take another corridor that passed through a large open area. It frustrated Ha’garen that he could not anticipate more of the nature of the spaces before the Salamanders reached them. To know where he was going, but not what he was passing through, seemed a reckless approach. His guesses were no more than that. And he guessed that what lay ahead might be an assembly hall of some kind.
It was loud enough to be one. Even from this distance, and with the echoing hunt shaking the walls to the rear, the cacophony up ahead was deafening. The Salamanders paused. The noise before them was as rage-filled as what was behind. They might be rushing to throw themselves into the jaws of a pincer movement. After a moment, as his Lyman’s ear resolved the noise into more discrete parts, Ha’garen realised that the uproar was not another ork contingent heading their way. He heard chaos, roars, weapons-fire: the sounds of battle.
‘Well?’ Ba’birin asked.
‘That is our route,’ Ha’garen pointed out.
‘I feel left out,’ Neleus said.
Ba’birin laughed for the first time since Mulcebar’s briefing. Ha’garen felt his own lips twitch, out of practice though they now were with expressing emotion.
‘The anvil calls, brothers,’ Ba’birin said, and took the catwalk.
It did call, Ha’garen thought as he followed. War was what they, and all other Space Marines, had been bred to wage. Some of his brothers embraced it more fanatically than others, and some saw it as a regrettable necessity. But it defined them. They were war, and now battle called with its siren song, and the prosecution of their mission demanded that they answer the summons.
Down the catwalk. Over its rail. Along the corridor. Armoured boot steps bringing the beat of Vulkan’s hammer to the struggle ahead. The passageway was a wide one, ending at a large double door. Ba’birin and Neleus barrelled into it and knocked it flying from its hinges. The Salamanders burst into the vast chamber. Before them was war.
Between ork and eldar.
Chapter Four
The eldar were clad in crimson armour, its hue offset by a sinuous white rune. Ha’garen pulled a designation from his memory: Saim-Hann, the same force that the White Scars and Raven Guard had encountered. He took in their weaponry. Like the Salamanders, they were conserving ammunition, primarily using their guns to crush ork skulls. But when they fired, the orks before them vaporised. Melta weapons, Ha’garen realised. He was looking at a squad of Fire Dragons. Two had fallen. There were eight remaining. One, in more ornate armour, was wielding a heavy flamer of some sort, and was a bit more free with the trigger. A ninth member of the squad wore robes over his armour and fought with a blade whose elegance and lethality shrieked its sorcerous nature.
The eldar were fighting hundreds of orks. They moved with a fluidity that should have been foreign to armour, as if they were wearing blood-red light, and were made of nothing more than thought themselves. There was a choreography to their combat, as there was to the Salamanders’, but it was very different in its nature. The Salamanders worked together with the precision of a finely tuned engine of destruction. There was something of the machine in their synchrony, for which Ha’garen gave thanks. The Techmarine knew very little of the arts outside of warfare and its monumental representations, but he knew that they existed – perhaps more in Ultramar, where life wasn’t perpetually on the knife edge of extinction. The movement of the eldar was, he felt instinctively, of a kind with those other arts. The rhythms weren’t the unvarying pulse of machinery. They were syncopated, complex, unpredictable. As unknowable as the race itself. Alien. Ha’garen knew that he was seeing a method of warcraft that was beautiful in and of itself. He did not like it.
Still, it was remarkable. But though the eldar were dropping orks by the dozens, it was insufficient. The Fire Dragons were doomed.
The space was an arena. Concentric circles of seating descended steeply to a pit not much more than ten metres in diameter. The Salamanders had entered behind the top row of benches. Their goal was a gated tunnel at one end of the pit. The logic of the path Ha’garen had chosen now became clear to him. The arena was used for gladiatorial combat between slaves. The surface of the pit was deep in the stew of corpses, human and otherwise, in every stage of dismemberment and decomposition. The slaves would be herded in from the tunnel to fight to the death. Ha’garen did not know if they were given weapons. He suspected they were not.
The barbarism was irrelevant. He filed it away. What mattered now was that the tunnel would lead to the slave pens, and to their target.
There was almost a full second during which a decision hovered. The Salamanders saw a clash of enemies. One was a plague upon the galaxy. The other was a particular curse upon Nocturne. The decision was not whether to interfere in the conflict, and it was not whether to attack one side or the other. The question was whether to kill both as they fought their way to the tunnel.
The eldar were clustered about three-quarters of the way down the slope. They appeared to be trying to reach the pit too. They were bogged down. They were a force that would be fearsome in confined quarters, but in the open, they were vulnerable. The orks were upon them in a flood. From the top of the arena, Ha’garen could even see currents and eddies in the rampage of the greenskins.
The second, and truly it was a full second, passed. The orks on the upper levels turned to welcome the Salamanders with open arms and hacking blades. Ba’birin said, ‘Slay the greenskins. Do not fire on the eldar.’
The decision was a sound one, in keeping with the objectives of the mission. And like the mission itself, it rankled. There was too much history, and it was too dark, for things to be otherwise. But the Salamanders accepted the test, and vented their wrath on the orks.
Numerous as the brutes were, there was room to fight in the arena. Room to shoot, and room to swing a weapon properly. Ba’birin and Neleus struck first, once more leading by burning the plan of attack into the flesh of the enemy. They opened with a flamer blast, their promethium jets bathing the closest ranks of orks. The brutes turned into wailing, stumbling torches. They fell back against their kin, spreading the pain like a burning ripple over a pond of green scum. Straight ahead, a path through scorched bodies opened up. The Salamanders stormed into the breach. Ha’garen built on the opening move. He advanced, between the two sergeants. His servo-arms swung forwards, then out, crushing ribcages and smashing spines. His shoulder-mounted flamer fired, incinerating the orks that were trying to charge up the gap. More bodies, more collateral burns. But still more greenskins were rushing forwards over their flaming dead. Ha’garen didn’t think there was any other race, barring the tyranids, who were so completely unafraid of death. The orks’ fears were far more irrational, and would take much more than the wholesale slaughter of their own to invoke.
He would show them how wrong they were not to fear the Salamanders.
He took another two steps forwards, brandishing his chainaxe. He had the high ground. He dropped down the next tier of benches and swung his weapon in a wide, horizontal stroke. It roared as if hungry. Its teeth fed on flesh, muscle and bone. It sliced deep into the chest of the leading ork as it tried to climb the riser. The top half of the beast toppled backwards while the bottom stood upright for a second after death. Ha’garen’s swing side-swiped two other orks on either side of the leader, the impact sending them stumbling back. Then Ba’birin and Neleus were at Ha’garen’s flanks, striking with their own chainswords. Behind them came supporting fire, bolter shells blasting greenskins to pulp.
The orks weren’t limiting themselves to blades now, but their gunfire was a weak threat. It was wild and undisciplined, and much of it wound up cutting down their own troops as they tried to close with the Space Marines. Stray rounds struck Ha’garen’s armour. He ignored them.
The Salamanders advanced. They punched through the orks, and the eldar responded to the shift in the battlefield. The Fire Dragons changed their focus. No longer struggling to reach the pit, they began to make their way back up the slope of the arena. They were going to link up with the Salamanders, trapping a riot of orks between the two disciplined forces. And with that, the Salamanders were working in concert with the eldar.
Ha’garen glanced at Ba’birin. The gesture was unthought, automatic, the product of decades of habit suddenly resurfacing, a vestigial reflex that no longer meant shared battlefield cynicism. And yet... The portion of his consciousness that, since Mars, had become a process of perpetual analysis noted the reaction and tagged it for later examination. It noted, too, that Ba’birin had made the same gesture. Preliminary analysis: old alliances strengthened/restored in face of extraordinary new circumstances.
Interesting, but hardly relevant. Very relevant was the most effective way of disposing of the orks before him. His flamer blast joined that of the two sergeants. Orks fell. The Salamanders were over halfway to the pit. They were closing on the eldar position.
The rockets hit the riser between the Space Marines and the eldar. The orks took the direct hit. Benches and decking blew into shrapnel. Metal torn into jagged blades whipped into the squads, along with chunks and limbs of orks. Four explosions, disorienting with skull-ringing surprise. The force of the blast staggered Ha’garen.
Momentum faltered.
Through the smoke, Ha’garen saw the eldar reeling too. He looked up. Massive, armoured orks stood at the top of the arena, spread out along its periphery. They were discarding what looked like large sticks that were smoking at one end. They were very basic, single-use rocket launchers. So simple, Ha’garen thought. Their effectiveness was insulting. He didn’t know if the bombardment had missed its intended targets or not, but its impact shifted the strategic balance. Both parties of invaders were stunned. The orks outside the radius of the explosions were unfazed and charging.
Small, snivelling greenskins were handing new rocket sticks to their masters.
A plasma cutter was mounted on the left shoulder of Ha’garen’s servo-harness. He fired it now, shearing off the arm of one of the giants. It howled in annoyance, then stared down at the ground with an expression of stupid surprise before its weapon exploded, smearing the ork and its retinue across the scorched walls. The Fire Dragons recovered at the same time and drew their fusion guns. Melta beams of an intensity that Ha’garen envied struck the other rocket-wielding orks. They vanished in a flash of heat that seemed frozen in its purity. Flamer and bolter-fire from the Salamanders drove the orks back again, but only just. Another rocket assault would have been lethal. The Space Marines and eldar were in the open. Their armour did not make them invincible.
The attack had been good tactics. The ork resistance was becoming organised. Orders were being given, orders with some thought to strategy, however crude.
Through the arena entrances came more orks, all of them brandishing heavy weapons. Too many to take down at this distance. Ha’garen saw annihilation loom ahead. Annihilation even had a shape. A gigantic silhouette appeared behind the troops, towering over all the other orks. It seemed too huge to pass through the doorway, but on it came, a striding mountain of darkness and brawn. The allotted span for all life in the arena was measured in seconds.
The Salamanders used those seconds. So did the eldar. Flamers and fusion guns on full, ammo conservation be damned. The two forces turned as one and blasted exterminating fire down the bowl of the arena. They ran into the wake of their blasts, scorching armour. There was no pause in the wave of flame. Fuel canisters depleted as a swath of orks five metres wide vanished, replaced by charcoal and burning logs of bone. Eldar and Space Marines punched through the last of the orks like a spear-tipped battering ram. A fusion beam melted the gate. The eldar, furthest down the rise, were first into the mouth of the tunnel. The Salamanders were at their heels. Ha’garen splashed through the pit, the traces of a thousand miserable deaths crunching and splitting beneath his boots. He sensed the space above him hold its breath as something monstrous roared a command.
He plunged into the dubious shelter of the tunnel.
The very air of the arena exploded.
The rocket bombardment was an embodiment of will and totality. It was madness to use ordnance of such size, and in such quantity, inside a ship. For a moment, the sun rose behind Ba’birin. The blast wave slammed air into the tunnel like a giant fist, flattening every soul to the ground. As he fell, Ba’birin saw a Fire Dragon hurled against the wall where the tunnel bent. The eldar crumpled to the ground, a shattered doll with too many joints. Flame followed with a hollow, booming roar. Even through the protection of his helmet’s rebreather, Ba’birin felt the air inside his lungs turn scorching dry. He held his breath, waiting for the worst of the fire to pass. As the oxygen in the tunnel was consumed, the fire abated. In its place came choking smoke, roiling with toxic particulates and organic ash. The world’s-end thunder of the explosions faded. The aftermath was a chorus of crackling flame and groaning metal.
‘Give me the count!’ Neleus shouted. The Salamanders called out their names.
Brother Ko’bin did not.
Ba’birin followed Neleus back to the mouth of the tunnel. Ko’bin had been caught by the blast. He was tangled in the rubble at the entrance. His armour had been reduced to slag, less by the heat than by the direct force of the explosions themselves. His body had been pierced by an assemblage of metal. Perhaps it had once been decking. Perhaps part of a wall, or some seating. Perhaps all three. It had become a missile. Now it was a sculpture, a writhing, tortured abstraction of agony.
Neleus spoke softly. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look at what he did.’
Ba’birin was confused at first. Then the meaning of Ko’bin’s crucified corpse became clear. His outstretched arms and legs were not an accident of death. Ko’bin had done what he could to block the tunnel mouth with his body, absorbing fire and forming a new barrier by becoming one with debris. He had sacrificed himself to save his brothers from the worst of the explosions.
‘Thank you, brother,’ Ba’birin murmured. The loss was even greater than that of a single warrior. Ko’bin’s progenoid glands were beyond salvaging. His genetic code was lost to the Salamanders forever. The Circle of Fire, the process of rebirth as asserted by the Promethean Creed, was broken.
They rejoined Ha’garen at the head of the formation. The Techmarine stood motionless except for the plasma cutter on his servo-harness. It traced a gentle arc back and forth as if scanning the xenos before it. The eldar had recovered. Salamanders and Fire Dragons eyed each other warily. Weapons were at ready, but not trained on targets. There was enough consciousness of shared circumstances to hold off conflict for the moment.
‘Now what?’ Neleus asked.
‘Insight would be welcome,’ Ba’birin answered.
From the destroyed arena came the first sounds of orks clambering down to investigate the results of their handiwork. The huge voice was bellowing orders again. The greenskins would be here before long.
The robed eldar stepped forwards. He glanced first at the flamer-wielding commander, and received a nod. His blade w
as unsheathed, but he was not brandishing it. It seemed, rather, as if the sword were as much a limb as his arms, and moved as part of the eldar’s expression of self. He reeked of witch. When he spoke, his Gothic was accented but arrogantly precise, as if he were instructing the Salamanders in the use of their own language. ‘Warriors of the human Emperor, greetings. I am, by name, Kaderial, and by deduction certain that we are on this ship with the same purpose.’
‘And your conclusion?’ Ba’birin asked.
‘The urgent need for an alliance, and the need, as urgent again, to avoid conflict.’ He sheathed his sword. The sudden economy of the gesture made it seem as if even keeping things simple were a luxury and an art.
The noises of the ork approach were drawing closer.
‘Agreed,’ Ba’birin said.
Kaderial nodded. ‘I am, by joy, surprised.’
The hyperbole grated, but Ba’birin let it pass. ‘We should go,’ he said.
‘Agreed, in turn. Shall we lead?’ Without waiting for an answer, the eldar moved off with his troops.
Overfiend Page 28