‘What is the music I can hear being played? What is it for?’
‘Celebration. A paean to the arrival of one so great that it is necessary to bring beauty as his vanguard into this benighted realm.’
‘That’s– ah that’s wonderful news,’ Buke said quietly. ‘But what does it mean? Who is coming?’
‘Sad, silly king Arlon Buke not to know,’ the black bird mocked. ‘Rejoice, you are to be in the presence of an archon of High Commorragh within the hour. Pray to your gods and give thanks that you will be permitted to grovel in his presence.’
As Courlanth crept through the long shadows cast by the pirate ships he got his first good look at them from close quarters. What he had taken for being barbed antennae from a distance were obviously nothing of the kind up close. Felbaine had called them lances and the name was highly appropriate. The xenos weapons were extremely long and slender. They tapered down from a metre-wide bulb-shape at the rear to no more than a hand’s-span in width at their tip. The greasy-looking metal they were made of seemed to shimmer oddly between black and olive-green as the light reflected from it. These clearly alien-built weapons were mounted in clusters of twos and threes on the prow plating of the ships, in some cases protruding from holes crudely cut straight through it.
‘How are those charges coming along, Felbaine?’
‘Almost done, sergeant,’ Felbaine’s voice replied after a nerve-wracking pause. ‘I will not have enough charges to destroy all of the ships, but I have rigged all of the ones along our route satisfactorily.’
‘Will the xenos lance-weapons be destroyed?’
‘I’ve placed the melta-charges to cause reactor meltdowns on the ships. I pray that the fires will be intense enough to destroy the alien weapons – they should be by all accounts.’
Courlanth hesitated for a moment. Again Felbaine presented him with uncertainties instead of solid facts, but this time he quelled the urge to demand a more specific answer. The Tech-marine was no doubt simply trying to be as accurate as he could be under the circumstances.
‘Good enough,’ Courlanth replied. ‘Rendezvous with us at the loading dock.’
There were six humans at work inside the ship’s hold, although ‘work’ was a loose definition of their activity. Four stood around watching while two others struggled to free a cargo sled that had spilled part of its load and wedged itself firmly into the rim of the hatch. The four gawkers supplied unhelpful commentary on their comrades’ efforts via crude, unencrypted radio.
‘Told you – gotta unload the whole thing,’ observed one.
‘No way you’re getting that outta there,’ chirped another.
‘I already said. Jus’ leave it or we’re gonna be late,’ warned a third.
‘…and that’ll get us skinned alive for sure,’ whined a fourth.
All of the pirates wore light vac-suits that amounted to little more than rubberised coveralls with bubble-like hoods. All were armed with a variety of pistols and vicious-looking knives that were obviously intended to make for a ferocious show. Courlanth surveyed the open hatch critically and decided it would be hard to fit more than one of his fully armoured battle-brothers through it at a time.
‘Gottrand, take the lead, I’ll cover your back. Remember, I want one alive. Everyone else: overwatch. Gottrand wait – damn it!’
The Space Wolf was already darting out of cover and pounding for the open hatch. Inside it one of the pirates looked up quizzically, some premonition warning him of the danger heading towards him. Gottrand made a powerful leap in the low gravity and slammed both boots full into the wedged cargo sled. His combined mass and momentum popped the sled free like a cork from a bottle and sent it hurtling across the cargo hold. Men scattered with cries of alarm but one was too slow to dodge the caroming sled. He disappeared behind it with a shriek terminated by ugly cracking sounds as it struck the far wall with bone-crushing force.
Gottrand crushed the skull of the first pirate to speak with the butt of his bolt pistol. A split-second later he shot another pirate as they reeled back in horror from the hulking figure that had sprung up in their midst. The mass-reactive bolt went off in the man’s chest and burst it open with a spray of gore that blinded the rest. It was an unnecessary nuance. Panic had already gripped the pirates, sending them running and screaming in all directions as they tried to escape.
The Space Wolf’s gap-toothed chainsword, Hjormir, licked out and slashed through two of the survivors in a single, gory sweep. The last pirate darted around Gottrand and towards the hatch, skidding to a halt as he saw the armoured bulk of Courlanth blocking his path. The pirate opened his mouth to speak – to plead for his life, or curse, or pray – Courlanth never found out. Gottrand’s chainsword crashed down through the gore-slicked bubble-hood of the last pirate, its contra-rotating teeth flinging out twin sprays of blood and bone as it chewed through to the spine. Courlanth ground his teeth silently as he bit back anger. The sergeant tried to recall the lesson he had already learned with Felbaine.
‘An approach worthy of your Chapter Brothers,’ Courlanth grated. ‘But what of the prisoner I sought?’
‘Fear not, sergeant,’ Gottrand replied smugly. ‘I had not forgotten.’ The Space Wolf dragged the wrecked cargo sled back from the wall to reveal one crushed, mangled, but very much alive pirate behind it. Courlanth slapped aside the autopistol the pirate was trying to raise and seized him by the throat.
‘You know that you will die,’ Courlanth told the wretch. ‘Only the absolution of death will cleanse you of your crimes against the Immortal Emperor of Mankind. You may ease your passing by answering my questions. If you do not, then Gottrand here will crack open your skull and ingest what we need to know from your still-living brain. Do you understand?
‘Yes!’ the wretch squawked past the grip of Courlanth’s steel hard fingers. ‘I-I’ll tell you anything you want to know!’
‘Where did the alien weapons come from? Who maintains them?’
‘The Crimsons bring them up from the hell-mouth! When they stop working we take them back and get new ones!’
‘Who are these “Crimsons”? Describe them to me.’
‘Tall! Thin! Not men! Something older they say, old as daemons! They demand tribute and we give it to them. They give us the guns and lots of red sacra, tell us where to find ships to hit.’
‘And what do they demand in return for their help?’
‘P-people! All kinds of things, but people most of all! They want slaves to take back to hell with them.’
‘You prey upon your fellow men and trade the survivors to xenos as slaves, you deserve a worse death than I have the time to mete out.’ Courlanth’s fingers tightened inexorably as he struggled to maintain control of himself. ‘Now… Tell me where I can find these Crimsons.’
The pirate clan was gathering in the audience chamber in dribs and drabs. They were being slow enough to make Buke nervous and he sent some of his bodyguard off as enforcers to hurry things along. Each crew that arrived dragged along their own tithe for the Crimsons of a dozen or more prisoners chained together. The slave coffles were gradually filling the floor of the chamber in ragged rows. Their suffering generated a low whine of misery throughout the chamber. It had taken Buke some time to notice it, but the sound mingled seamlessly with the weird music emanating from the hell-mouth in a number of disturbing ways.
The black bird had flown up to the tier above the hell-mouth and squatted there, enfolded in its wings like a patient carrion-eater poised over a carcass. It fluttered its wings as the alien music dipped and then swelled suddenly, crying out in a voice modulated so that it cut across the buzzing audience chamber.
‘He comes! Grovel before your true master, meat-slaves!’ the black bird announced. ‘Archon Gharax of the Kabal of the Crimson Blossom approaches!’
Purple light was growing in the hell-mouth, a darkling illumination that s
eemed to show nothing but shadows. Within it, Buke could see shapes moving, twisted inhuman shapes that were approaching up the tunnel. At the last moment he remembered himself and dropped to his knees, pushing his sweating face down on to the dirt floor. Around the chamber it was as if a silent scythe swept through the other pirates as they all followed Buke’s example. The wailing and whimpering of the chained slaves grew more intense as they realised something was happening, the weird music swelling to match it before dropping away to a sudden silence.
‘Look up, King Arlon Buke,’ the black bird said in hushed tones. ‘The archon orders you to meet his gaze.’
Buke looked up from the dirt to see that the hell-mouth was no longer empty. A sinister company of beings now filled it. Each was as inhuman as the black bird but in different ways. There were slender warriors in insect-like armour carrying rail-thin rifles like barbed stingers. There were exotic, half-naked females as alluring as visions from a drug-fuelled dream that bore cruelly hooked knives and a look of awful hunger on their beautiful faces. In the background a trio of hunched, iron-masked creatures clustered around an upright device like a glass-fronted, tube-covered casket at the sight of which Buke was filled with an unspeakable thirst. Beyond them, hulking, furred monsters twice the height of a man filled the hell-mouth with their bulk, their long claws twitching menacingly as they stood quiescent – for now.
At the centre of the horrid company stood two figures that dominated the others as a sun dominates the sky. One was the individual that Buke had dealt with on every occasion previously that the Crimsons had issued from the hell-mouth. This was Maelik Toir. His angular, bone-white face and human-skin robes were not usually a reassuring presence, but on this occasion Buke felt relief to see him. Maelik was the purveyor of many things, most of all the red sacra Buke relied on to maintain his hold over the pirate enclave. Of all the Crimsons Buke had encountered, Maelik was the one who seemed least disgusted at dealing with him, projecting an aura of amused disdain instead of withering contempt.
But Maelik Toir was standing to one side, leaving the centre stage for another that could only be Archon Gharax. The eldar physically stood no taller than the others in his presence, but seemed larger somehow. He was clad in armour like burnished ebony and cloaked with a material so black it seemed to drink light into itself. One hand rested lightly on the gem-encrusted pommel of the long, curving blade sheathed at his side, the other holding a spike-crowned helm evidently just removed. Buke met the gaze of the archon as ordered and found that he could not look away. The alien’s pitiless black gaze gripped him like a vice, its crushing presence wringing a gasp from Buke’s lungs.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Maelik Toir whispered in his precisely-accented Low Gothic. ‘An inheritance from his mother’s side – they say that the Lhamaen Yesyr could turn one to stone with the poison of her glance.’
Buke could feel his soul being laid bare beneath the archon’s gaze. Every petty malice he had inflicted, every base betrayal he had committed, felt like open pages in the archon’s presence. King Arlon Buke could feel himself being weighed and measured by an intelligence infinitely older and more wicked than his own, his fears, limitations and secrets being picked over and discarded as irrelevances. After what seemed like an eternity, Archon Gharax broke the contact by glancing up toward the higher tiers of the chamber with a faint smile on his face.
‘The archon finds you… suitable… to remain in his presence,’ Maelik Toir told Buke. ‘He will not disgrace himself by giving tongue to slave languages and so will speak through me. Address your replies to me alone, your words will offend his ears.’
Buke grovelled, keeping his face away from the archon’s terrible gaze. ‘W-we have brought our tithing as promised, illustrious one,’ the pirate king stammered. ‘We have held up our part in the pact, w-will you uphold yours?’
The words were old, a formula dating back to the Discovery, otherwise Buke would never have dared to use them right now. Maelik Toir nodded approvingly. Men had died horribly for diverging from the words of the pact in the past.
‘Yes, Arlon, we will give you what you call the red sacrament in exchange for the slaves you’ve brought. Let us begin.’
Relieved to have someone else to brutalise, Buke turned on the nearest group of quailing captives and began kicking them to their feet. Stung by a sharp sense of self-preservation other pirates quickly joined him, half-dragging and half-carrying the unfortunates toward the hell-mouth. Maelik Toir examined each captive briefly before sending most onward to be hauled off into the tunnel by the great clawed beasts. One captive was deemed unsuitable and consigned to the casket attended by Maelik’s assistants.
Buke and the other pirates salivated to see the machine at work so early in the exchange. The gurgling, reddening tubes surrounding the casket were almost hypnotic as they pumped and purified, distilling drops of the precious red sacra. He had to slap and curse at several of his fellows to remind them to keep the other prisoners moving before they became fractious. Cowed, beaten and emaciated as the prisoners were, even the very dullest of them could see their fate laid out before them now. Many would fight back rather than face being given to the aliens.
The archon stood to one side, surrounded by his warriors and entirely aloof from the proceedings. Buke wondered why the archon had troubled to come like a lord surveying his estates if he had no orders to give. He noticed the archon looking expectantly towards the upper tiers of the chamber again and glanced there himself. There was nothing to be seen up there but shadows.
‘We can take them!’ Gottrand’s guttural sub-vocal whisper came over the comm carrying a thick tocsin accusation with it. Courlanth was failing them as a leader by skulking and hiding when their opponents stood before them. Courlanth was nothing but a contemptible coward.
The kill-team crouched out of sight near the top of the large, circular chamber they had found. Below them were the pirates and their captives. To their left was the contingent of eldar they had just witnessed entering the chamber from a connecting tunnel. The kill-team’s view of events was narrow and fish-eyed, a by-product of the fact that Felbaine was using a sensor tendril to spy on them without risk of exposure.
Courlanth stared intently at the view Felbaine was communicating to his own suit’s autosenses. By his count at least a dozen eldar were at the tunnel mouth with more behind, with thrice that number of pirates handling the hundreds of prisoners filling the chamber. It was true that the more he delayed the greater the chance they would be discovered became, and yet he hesitated to start a battle that would inevitably kill so many innocents in the cross-fire.
‘This is only their meeting point, we have to track them to their lair–’ Courlanth began, just as the first wailing prisoners were dragged before the eldar. His heart sank as he saw one of them sent to the torture device the eldar had brought with them. Even now, cold tactical logic would have dictated that the prisoners and even the pirates were of secondary importance to the real goal – that of rooting out the alien. Some in the Deathwatch would sacrifice a million innocents to achieve such a goal without blinking an eye.
But tactical logic could not make it acceptable for Courlanth to sit still and witness aliens torturing and murdering humans at will. He knew the kill-team felt the same way and that only his command had held them back so far. They must act now, even when the logical choice was to wait. Honour demanded it.
Courlanth outlined his plan in a terse series of commands. Wordlessly, Maxillus and Thucyid moved away left and right along the ledge, creeping cautiously to positions where they could maximise their crossfire. Felbaine readied a thick-bodied plasma gun, checking its temperamental coolant rings before setting it to maximal power. Gottrand, for his part, squatted back on his haunches with Hjormir in his hands, watching Courlanth expectantly. The Blood Claw had removed his helmet without orders as soon as they had entered the atmosphere-filled tunnels of the asteroid base. No
w Gottrand’s long braids and coarse beard jutted free in the light gravity, fully lending him the barbaric aspect of his native tribesmen on icy Fenris.
Courlanth hefted his own chainsword and bolt pistol in his hands. He committed his soul to the Emperor with a silent prayer before issuing the final order to begin.
‘Execute.’
Thucyid’s heavy bolter roared instantly to life, the staccato beat of its fist-sized shells an accompaniment to all that followed. A split second later, Maxillus’s bolter added its sharper bark to the thunder of heavy bolts ripping across the chamber.
Courlanth and Gottrand leapt down from the ledge and saw the chamber for the first time with their own eyes. The pale ovals of hundreds of faces stared up at them from the chamber floor, both prisoners and their guards frozen in shock. A few looked up with hope, but most with abject terror at the two black-armoured giants landing in their midst.
‘Suffer not the alien to live!’ Courlanth shouted, his enhanced voice cutting across the thunder of explosions. His bolt pistol kicked in his hand as it hurled flame-tailed meteors into the nearest pirate guards. Blood sprayed as the explosive bolts punched his chosen targets off their feet with deadly accuracy. Gottrand had already bounded ahead of him, the Blood Claw having leapt down the stepped ledges to the chamber floor with reckless abandon. Courlanth pounded after him, doing his best to avoid crushing the prisoners huddled at his feet.
The chamber was in bedlam, with groups of prisoners turning on their guards while others tried to flee in panic. Panicked pirates were firing indiscriminately in all directions and sometimes cutting each other down in their own crossfire. Even though he felt a few solid slugs rattle off his armour, Courlanth ignored them as he surged after Gottrand. Maxillus was tasked with eliminating the pirates from his vantage point; each bark of his bolter marked another one being pulped by a single bolt round.
The tunnel mouth where the eldar had been gathered was lit by a lurid mass of flames where Thucyid’s Inferno rounds had been at work. In the uncertain, flickering light Courlanth briefly glanced lithe eldar bodies twisting and leaping. At that moment Felbaine’s plasma gun spoke with a crack like thunder, its actinic blaze flashing down on the eldar torture device like a finger of judgment. The device exploded instantly at the touch of the plasma bolt and sent gobbets of molten matter scything through its attendants. An animalistic howl of pain rang through the chamber, twisting a grim smile onto Courlanth’s lips.
Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters Page 32