‘Pay particular attention to your atmospheric seals,’ Courlanth bade them, ‘and your backpack air scrubbers. We must respect the environment we must enter.’
‘Ah, when you’ve fought through plasma storms and acid lakes a little hard vacuum is nothing,’ Gottrand joked. ‘Are we not Space Marines?’ Maxillus and Thucyid groaned at the old joke. Felbaine, looking a little uncomfortable, brought out the ornate casket Courlanth had first seen him carrying in the arming halls.
‘I received specific instructions before we left Zarabek,’ Felbaine said apologetically, ‘that every member of the kill-team was to be outfitted with one of these devices before potentially entering any combat.’
‘Eh? What are you talking about, what are they?’ Gottrand asked dubiously as Felbaine opened the casket. Inside were five palm-sized, finger-thick discs embossed with a design of skull against a cross.
‘Teleport homers,’ Felbaine said. ‘Devices that allow the Xenos Purgatio to lock its teleportarium onto their unique signatures over a considerable distance and through all kinds of interference. With these we can theoretically be recalled to the ship at any time.’
‘I don’t like that,’ Gottrand declared sullenly. ‘I don’t like that at all. It smacks of going into battle ready to be pulled out of it at the whim of another. I am no puppet to be dangled on a piece of string!’
‘Calm yourself, Gottrand,’ Courlanth snapped. ‘Who gave you these specific instructions, Felbaine?’
‘Watch Captain Ska Mordentodt. He said he wanted…’ Felbaine paused in momentary discomfort at the implied insult he was about to deliver. ‘He said if things went badly he wanted no one left behind under any circumstances – “no Deathwatch corpses for the xenos to despoil” were his exact words.’
‘I see,’ Courlanth said icily, trying not to show his anger at the implications for his command. ‘The watch captain has commanded and we must obey without regard to our foolish notions of pride and honour. Go ahead, Felbaine, fit your damned devices and I will have words with the watch captain after our return with them unused.’
As Felbaine set about spot-welding the disk-shaped devices to the kill-team, Courlanth consulted his inertial map via his armour’s autosenses. The Thunderhawk was sliding along unpowered and undetectable, its engines dark since their initial push away from the docking cradles of the Xenos Purgatio. Their course described a precise arc which would take them to within a few kilometres of the pirates’ asteroid base.
Mountains of rock and tumbling wreckage were all around them, sometimes so close that Courlanth could have opened a hatch and trailed his fingers across them. Micro-gravity effects from the passing asteroids made the Thunderhawk buck and judder, meteorites occasionally rattling off the craft’s thick armour plates like hail. The course had been precisely calculated to avoid any direct collision with larger bodies – or at least so the Lochos had assured him.
They would be at their closest approach to the target within just a few minutes. Felbaine was just finishing the last piece of welding. ‘Helmets on,’ Courlanth ordered before clamping his own into place. There was a momentary sensation of claustrophobia before the autosenses connected and his vision cleared into tactical view with its display of status icons showing reassuringly steady and green. He checked around the rest of the kill-team, receiving the traditional thumbs-up signal from each in turn.
Courlanth stepped to the rear hatch controls and triggered them. Warning lights flashed before the entire rear wall of the hold hinged downward to form a ramp. Beyond the open hatch a rushing blackness was revealed, where the asteroids around them were just barely visible as a turning kaleidoscope of vast interlocking shadows. Courlanth walked onto the ramp, acutely aware of the tenuous grip of his magnetic-soled boots. Below him a vaster shadow was rearing up, its highest peaks painted crimson as they flashed in the light of the distant red giant. The Deathwatch sergeant braced himself at the edge for a moment before quite deliberately hurling himself off.
One after another the kill-team flung themselves after him: Gottrand, Felbaine, Maxillus and Thucyid dropped towards the asteroid spread-eagled in perfect echelon behind Courlanth. Above them the Thunderhawk plunged silently onward through the maelstrom of stone until it could reach a safe distance to make a course change and return to the strike cruiser undetected. Thousands of metres below them, the asteroid that was their goal swelled rapidly as it came up to greet them.
Arlon Buke, King Buke the third as he styled himself, chafed uncomfortably in the rich robes he had forced himself to wear. He was hurrying through the twisting, lamp-lit rock tunnels of his kingdom of Bukehall with the robes unceremoniously hitched up around his knees for speed. Some fat Ecclesiarch or adept had died inside the starched folds of silk and satin he wore – dried blood still clotted the rich fur of the collar. But it was the freshest and most impressive looking of the pickings from the space lanes. It would have to do.
His bodyguards clumped along at his back, big men with bigger guns that Arlon Buke had deemed stupid enough to be intimidating and trustworthy. The bodyguards were being careful not to snigger but he could feel their knowing smirks behind him. Buke didn’t like wearing fancy robes. He would much rather be roistering with his men, drinking red sacra and indulging his most base lusts with the most recent acquisitions. There was no time for such happy diversions now. A black bird had flown, the winged messenger had come with fresh demands that he pay up or be replaced. They came so often now it seemed there was no end to them.
In his father’s day, Buke could remember the black bird had been seen precisely five times before Arlon grew big and strong enough to strangle Buke the Second and take his place. Now every month brought word of new gifts and new prices from the winged ones, and Arlon never had the guts to turn any of it down.
The bird had said the Crimsons were coming to collect the latest payment in person, something Buke always dreaded. The Crimsons were such sticklers for protocol that they looked down on him and mocked what they called his oafish ways at every turn. It didn’t stop them dealing with him any more than it had stopped them dealing with his father, or his father’s father before him in the first days after the Discovery, but Arlon still hated it. He did feel oafish and stupid around the Crimsons and the hungry, avaricious glitter in their eyes reappeared in his nightmares all too often.
From past experience, Buke knew that dressing in finery shielded him from some tiny part of the Crimsons’ disdain. He had a sneaking suspicion that it was because the different clothes made it easier for them to pick him out from among his men and address him directly. The Crimsons really saw them all as just meat, beasts in an enclosure they could cull at will. Buke and his men could only avoid a trip down the hell-mouth by staying useful. Otherwise they might end up being carried off like Buke’s father’s father had been.
Buke reflexively smoothed the robes down again at the thought, failing to notice the sweaty trails he left on the white satin as he hurried along. The Crimsons weren’t due for hours but he had to get things going in case they decided to play games by arriving early. Starting the meeting off with the Crimsons claiming to be insulted by his inattention would not end well for him. Ahead of him the great brass valve that was the main door of the audience chamber was coming into view. Buke slowed down and dropped the hem of his robes, ambling onward with an outward show of stately confidence that he really did not feel. He could hear strains of weird, alien-sounding music coming from within.
They had chosen an impact point a kilometre out from the widest crack in the asteroid, reasoning that would be the most likely location for the base. What had seemed a shadowed crevice through distant telescopes was now revealed as wide valley between twin peaks. As they dropped closer, metal could be seen glittering in the valley and Courlanth knew the pride of vindication. Closer still and details became apparent to his autosenses when boosted to maximum gain: the hunch-backed shapes of system vessels, a
spider-web framework of gantries and platforms, sensor dishes and defence turrets pointing at the tumultuous skies. Light and heat plumes betrayed occupation below, but the distance was too great to spot any suited figures.
Courlanth rotated to bring his heels toward the asteroid and folded his arms to his chest. He released a blast of compressed gas from his backpack to give himself a single, hard push downwards and the rocky surface leapt towards him. Seconds later Courlanth crunched into the sloping surface with legs braced, the impact of his armoured boots gouging two craters into the brittle rock. Behind him, Gottrand, Maxillus and Thucyid struck with more or less the same skill. Felbaine unaccountably misjudged his descent and struck with a force his suit’s gyro-stabilisers couldn’t cope with, sending him tumbling out of control.
The Techmarine half-stumbled, half-skidded away in a cloud of dust and debris, his excess momentum sending him down-slope toward a yawning chasm. Under the asteroid’s weak gravity Felbaine was less in danger of falling than flying off the asteroid altogether. It was still a very real danger. The kill-team would lose precious time hunting for him and Felbaine could even become irretrievable in the asteroid belt. A member lost before the operation even began would be a particularly ill omen.
The thoughts raced through Courlanth’s head in less time than it takes to tell it. He ached to give direction but he had ordered comm-silence from the outset and was loath to be the one to break it. This was Courlanth’s first real test of trust for the kill-team. All of them were members of the Emperor’s finest and should be able to resolve the crisis without any orders from him. He was not to be disappointed.
Maxillus was closest and lunged forward without hesitation. The Ultramarine grabbed Felbaine’s flailing arm and planted both of his feet and his other hand in a three-point stance for maximum traction. With Maxillus anchoring him, Felbaine managed to bring his own momentum under control and get his own boots properly down on the surface just at the edge of the chasm. Thucyid and Gottrand took up immediate overwatch positions and left Maxillus to his work when they saw what was happening. In less than three seconds the situation was under control again with nothing but a floating cloud of dust and grit to betray Felbaine’s misstep of a moment before.
Courlanth snapped his own attention back towards the pirate lair, looking for any sign that their landing had been seen. No alarm signals rippled the airwaves, no alerted guards appeared above the lip of the chasm; everything seemed quiet. The sergeant released a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding, hearing it whisper away through the tubes of his rebreather. He held up his gauntleted hand with palm outward and fingers spread to order the team to spread out. The kill-team silently moved apart and began to advance with him in low, loping bounds across the rocks.
Within minutes they had reached upper gantries that led down into the valley. Courlanth now had a clear view of a dozen system ships berthed untidily around it. The smallest was no more than a dozen metres in length while the largest was more than a hundred. The ships had the appearance of a selection of haulers and luggers that had been converted for more nefarious activities. They were bedecked with auxiliary engines, covered in crudely painted skulls and had prows barbed with antennae. The landing platforms the ships sat upon dominated all of the other structures in view. Near each platform shutter-like metal doors were sunk into the rock, this last presumably being airlocks leading to underground tunnels.
Courlanth scanned around carefully but he could see no signs of life. Gottrand pointed to his own eye-pieces and then to a set of landing platforms on the far side of the valley. After a few seconds Courlanth detected movement there, an open hatch in the flank of a ship and moving shadows that indicated men at work just out of sight. Felbaine signalled for his attention and moved closer to touch helmets with him. By using direct resonance they were able to talk with no risk of detection.
‘The spirit of my auspex-scanner was somewhat disgruntled after my terrible landing,’ Felbaine explained, ‘but I believe that we’re safe to use our communicators. We’ve passed inside their sensor net and I’ve found nothing that would pick us up this close.’
‘You ”believe?”’ Courlanth said warily. ‘I need certainties, Felbaine, not to risk discovery because you’ve made another mistake.’ He saw the Techmarine tense inside his armour and regretted his harsh words immediately. Courlanth had spoken to Felbaine as he would have done to a Chapter Brother of the Howling Griffons – short and direct, unafraid to offer challenge or criticism. But within the confines of the kill-team, where every battle-brother consciously or unconsciously felt himself to be representing the honour of his own Chapter, it had been too much.
‘I am certain our communications won’t be detected,’ Felbaine replied stiffly, ‘but there is always a risk. The decision is yours.’
Felbaine was already castigating himself over his mistake in the landing and criticism had only added fuel to the fires of martyrdom. Courlanth turned back to the squad, struggling to think of how to reassure Felbaine that he still had his sergeant’s trust. After a moment the Howling Griffon pointed to the side of his helmet and spoke via communicator.
‘Communications cleared for use. Report in.’
‘Gottrand, ready.’ A small wolf icon sprang into being within Courlanth’s autosenses as the Blood Claw spoke.
‘Thucyid, ready.’ A clenched fist appeared beside the wolf.
‘Maxillus, ready.’ An Omega sign joined the row of icons.
‘Felbaine… ready.’ A small sunburst completed the row.
The icons flashed as the suit’s communication systems tested their signal strengths and returned a positive green across all of them. When he was satisfied that all was well, Courlanth began rapidly issuing his orders.
‘We’re here and the enemy has no idea of our presence, so we still have the advantage of surprise. No guards are visible so we’ll take ourselves across to the occupied ship on the landing platform and find some prisoners there to question about the rest of the complex. Felbaine, I want you to place melta bombs on the other ships we pass and set them to a forty-minute delay. Take Maxillus with you to guard your back. Gottrand, Thucyid, you’re with me. Any questions?’
Silence.
‘Move out.’
The five Space Marines split up and disappeared into the shadowy tangle of walkways and gantries. They were rendered almost invisible by their night-black armour and the airless asteroid rendered their progress silent, save for the internal hiss of their retreaters. It seemed as if ghosts of vengeance stalked into the pirates’ lair, grim revenants called up to exact retribution for their victims at last.
Buke hauled open the main door into the audience chamber and rushed inside with his robes flapping. Beyond it a wide circular chamber rose in roughly-hewn tiers to a domed ceiling high above. The chamber was the largest open space in Bukehall and many more entrances dotted the upper tiers. Once upon a time it had been the main mining hall, a central hub from which galleries had been cut seeking the rich metal ores of the asteroid. The remains of old mine machines still littered the floor of the chamber, while torn conveyor belts hung uselessly from the upper tiers.
The Discovery had changed everything about Bukehall, changed it completely from the failing mining colony it was then to the pirate den it was now. Directly opposite, Buke could see the open mouth of hell. It looked like just another gallery sunk into the rock from the floor of the chamber. A little wider than the rest perhaps, and maybe a little taller, but unremarkable in itself. There was no indication that tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people had disappeared down that innocuous tunnel and never returned, starting with the first unlucky crew of miners that had been digging it. The weird music was coming out of it, a broken, haunting melody that hovered maddeningly close to the edge of perception.
A dark shape fluttered down from the rocky tiers above to alight on curved claws in front of Buke. The black bird was
taller than him and rake-thin, with long limbs that were as narrow as spindles. Magnificent, black-feathered wings extended from above its shoulders to scrape the floor. Dark, malevolent eyes glittered at him from a face dominated by a cruelly hooked beak. The voice that issued from the being was cool, clear and indescribably ancient.
‘Buke, Arlon Buke, here to make sure all goes smoothly,’ the black bird said, cocking its head to one side. ‘You are a wise man, King Arlon Buke.’
‘Ha-yes, all the others are coming and the offerings are being brought,’ Buke stammered, feeling the sweat running down his face. ‘Naturally I came as soon as I heard. We were ready for-for–’
‘This one–’ the black bird interrupted, pointing a claw to a crumpled, bloody mass on the floor of the chamber. ‘This one ran from our presence before the message was delivered. It died horribly. Not all are as wise as Arlon Buke, it seems; not all remember our pacts.’
‘I-I remember the pacts we’ve made with the Crimson Blossom in every detail,’ Buke said quickly and succinctly, ‘and I regret that my man did not greet you with the proper obeisance, the – ah, the magnificent terror of your appearance must have been too much for him to bear.’
The black bird made a sound but Buke couldn’t decide whether it was a snort or a titter as it turned away, flexing its wings noisily.
‘May I ask a question to better make preparations to full satisfaction?’ Buke ventured tentatively. The predatory, beaked face swung back toward him, half-opened as if in silent laughter.
‘Speak your question,’ the black bird said.
Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters Page 31