by Marc
Before he could pull the trigger, however, the human leapt into the air, swiping the glittering blades of the scissorhand through one of the chains that suspended the gantries from the high ceiling. It landed again, almost falling onto its face. Laeveq smiled, knowing that he could not miss such a fallen target.
The room soared upwards around him as the gantry fell vertical, the chain holding it sliced through. The last things Laeveq saw were the pale, frightened upturned faces of the slaves swirling towards him through the smoke, and the violent red heat of the cauldron, before the liquid fire enveloped him.
VON KLAS ARRIVED at Kep’s side. The Guardsman was just watching as the molten metal finally covered the top of the eldar’s head.
‘Your heresy might be third-class.’ the commissar said, ‘but you’re a first-rate murderer.’
‘It’s what kept me alive.’ Kep looked over the gantry rail, and the factory floor below. Hundreds of frightened eyes gazed back. ‘So what now?’
Von Klas got to his feet. ‘We start our little war. Get Rahimzadeh and Ibn and start unchaining those slaves. And send Scleras up here, we’ll need his logistics. We’ve got an army now.’
THE MOST INTOLERABLE thing of all, thought Kypselon, was that he could see it from his own throne room. The beautiful cold temple of bone, the icon of perfection which would place the seal of immortality on his long and brutal life, now stained by the presence of two thousand barbaric aliens.
‘How long have they occupied it?’ he asked, his voice quiet and low, as it always was when Kypselon was at his most wrathful, and thus his most dangerous.
Exuma’s eyes unclouded slightly. ‘Since the turning of the second sun.’ he replied. ‘They attacked the temple and slaughtered the garrison. Some of them will be armed by now, they had quite an armoury there. It’s your human all right. It must have recruited the slaves when it took over Laeveq’s factory a few hours ago. Remember Laeveq? Bright boy.’
Kypselon waved a hand brusquely and the great window dimmed into shadow. He turned, his dark purple robes sweeping out behind him, and strode into the centre of the throne room. The eyes of his elite warriors followed his every move. He raised his arms as he spoke, his voice deep and resonant with hate.
‘To your strike craft, my children!’ he howled. ‘This is an insult to you as it is to me. There will be no animals defiling my temple. There will be no barbarian aliens defying our natural dominion! Take up arms and we shall revel in the blood of slaves!’
The warriors held up their weapons and screamed. Their keening war cry drifted through the palace and out into Commorragh, echoing across the nightmarish spires, through the evil air.
FROM WITHIN, THE temple was a vast hollowed carcass, bleached white, monstrous vertebrae spanning the ceiling, an altar of skulls the size of a command bunker towering above them all. The slaves crouched behind the barricades they had made from the shattered architectural debris of Commorragh, fragments of broken arches, bouquets of iron spikes. Those that were armed had their rifles and pistols pointed at the horizon – those that were not found themselves jagged shards of metal or heavy bars to fight with at closer quarters.
Rahimzadeh and Kep were in the front line, the slaves formed up around them. It occurred to von Klas that the wasted, broken slaves were the first command the Guardsmen had ever had. Near the altar, Ibn was organising those slaves who seemed the strongest, the ones who had been given the few heavy weapons they had found.
‘How many do we have?’ Commissar von Klas asked Scleras.
‘Eighteen hundred. Of two thousand we attacked with.’
‘Armed?’
‘Seven hundred.’ Scleras seemed unmoved by the information.
Von Klas looked between the pillars at the churning sky. He saw something, vague flitting black spots like flies. He had seen them before, untold millions of miles away, on an insignificant moon of Hydraphur. They were devastating eldar attack craft: Raiders.
‘NO ALIEN MUST live. Bring me the head of the man-scum who dared defy my will.’ Kypselon gave his order in a stern, quiet voice, knowing it would be transmitted into the very consciousness of every eldar under his control.
His ornate strike craft touched down and all around him flowed a tide of his followers, a wave that crashed against the makeshift barricades and swept over them. The first were absorbed by the slaves, those that were armed keeping low against their barricades and pouring splinter fire into their foes. Warriors fell broken to the floor, a hundred at a stroke, but they could be replaced.
From within the depths of the front lines a horde of slaves armed with little save fear and anger poured out. They were led by a shaven-headed maniac with a splinter pistol in each hand, the fury in his eyes infecting the slaves formed up around him, who attacked with crude blades and clubs.
Yae’s wyches went to meet them, dancing gleefully between the barbarians, lashing out with their silver blades, slicing through the pale skinny bodies of the slaves. But the slaves still would not fall back, still they charged forward, even as their leader died under Yae’s twin blades. Countless slaves died, slashed to pieces or riddled with splinter rounds. Heavy fire from stolen dark lances and splinter cannons scythed through the eldar warriors, but then Yae broke through, and again the slaves’ blood swirled ankle-deep on the temple floor.
Kypselon ordered his craft forward through the carnage. Before him lay only one target: the human filth who had started it all, he of the colder heart, standing defiant by the great skull altar, still bearing the weapons he had stolen from Verredaek.
Alerting Verredaek’s miserable translator slave with a cuff to the head, Kypselon landed within earshot of the human, where they could talk above the cries of the dead. The eldar bodyguard stood aside. Kypselon spoke.
‘Who are you to defy my will?’ he asked via the translator.
‘I am Commissar von Klas, of Hydraphur.’ replied the alien, almost as if he wasn’t afraid. ‘You may remember. When you took my command prisoner, you picked out a handful of us to kill at your leisure. Ten per cent.’
Kypselon thought for a second. He was old, he had killed so many…
Then he remembered.
‘Of course.’ he said with a smile of pride. “You’re the one in ten.’
The human, von Klas, smiled coldly. ‘No, the one in a million.’
Kypselon noticed the young one too late, the one in a dirty dark red uniform, with the web of metal across the side of his face, skulking at the foot of the altar. It pressed down a plunger on the control it was holding.
A dozen explosive charges stolen from the factory went off at once. They blasted the bases out from the pillars, sending great shards of bone shearing down from the ceiling. They crushed eldar and slave alike, and punched through the hulls of the eldar Raiders. Only Kypselon’s craft managed to dodge out between the pillars.
Half the warriors were buried as a cloud of dust rose to obscure the imploding mass of bone which had once represented Kypselon’s endless career of murder and savage glory. Broken skulls rained down from a sky the colour of dead flesh.
Kypselon felt that emotion he had not felt for a very long time. The feeling that he had lost control.
‘Death to men!’ he hissed to anyone who could hear. ‘I want no slave sullying my city! Kill them all! Every one! This disgusting species shall never again face me and live!’
WHEN VON KLAS awoke he was manacled to the cold metal floor of a cell. The skin on his back was raw from the lash. He was unable to focus properly; the taste of blood was in his mouth. In the minimal light he could see that his legs had been broken, and were lying out in front of him like useless twigs. He was probably dying. But had he won? He drifted into unconsciousness again.
Days or weeks later, he could no longer tell, the cell door was opened and another two prisoners were thrown in. One was human, a girl, with straggly hair that had once been blonde, who crawled like a beaten dog.
The other was an eldar, thin and feeble withou
t his armour and his legions of elite guards, his eyes dull, his wrinkling skin bruised. He stared at von Klas and started with recognition. Then he spoke. The translator took up his dark sibilant language in Imperial Gothic automatically, working from an instinct that had been bored into her soul.
‘I knew you had a cold heart, human.’ Kypselon said, with something approaching admiration.
Von Klas laughed darkly, even though it hurt his raw throat. ‘What was it in the end? What finished you?’
Kypselon shook his head gravely. ‘Uergax. We had no slaves, we had no factories, no expendable troops. We were crippled. He had the mandrakes, the incubi. He carved the Broken Spine apart as if he had been born to it.’ The archon slumped to the cell floor, and von Klas saw the old eldar’s fires of ambition were out.
‘Your Raiders turned up as blips on our scanners.’ said the human who called himself a commissar. ‘Seventy-two hours later, the only survivor of seventeen whole platoons was me, but I had my orders. I was to eliminate any threats and a commissar either fulfils his orders or dies. I fulfilled mine.’
He looked Kypselon deep in his unknowable alien eyes. ‘We humans aren’t as stupid as you eldar believe. Remember my words, when Uergax comes to execute us both. I know I’ll get a blade through the neck, like any other animal.
‘But I imagine that it will take far, far longer for you to die.’
SMALL COGS
Neil Rutledge
COLONEL SOTH BELIEVED in order, in preparation and attention to detail. But as he stood by the shining, silver doors of the Water Temple he felt far from prepared for the coming battle. True, his face was always somewhat drawn, his sparse flesh stretched tightly over his bones, his body all sinew and muscle; no more room for padding on his frame than there was for luxury in his austere life. And his dark eyes flickered restlessly around the rocky bowl in which the temple stood but this, too, was quite normal.
The colonel, rigid and controlled, did not readily display his emotions and only those who knew him well could have detected the slightest signs of anxiety. The sporadic running of his wiry fingers through his tight, greying curls. The thin lips compressed even more tightly and the occasional barely audible sniff as he straightened his dress uniform.
His dress uniform! That indeed was one of his irritations. Perhaps it was fortunate that his unit of the Ulbaran VIIIth was on ceremonial guard duty for the Water Temple festival when the infernal eldar raided. At least they were able to deploy quickly to secure the area. But to be going to war in their dress uniforms, the splendid attire of a bygone era; clumping old-fashioned boots, the traditional white fibre-cloth itching at the neck and cuffs and the gleaming, lovingly polished pectorals, it was ridiculous! No helmets, no webbing. Praise be to the Emperor that they always paraded armed and with a full complement of heavy weapons! But a slight clenching of his long fingers was another clue to the colonel’s worry as he reflected that ammunition was not plentiful. He trusted that Headquarters would get some reinforcements to them soon – and in the meantime they would manage with what they had.
The enemy worried him too, the mysterious eldar! What were they doing here on the agri-world of Luxoris Beta? Colonel Soth was an experienced and well-trained officer but other than the ork pirates his men had defeated to liberate this planet two years previously, he had never faced aliens before. Nor had any of the men. They had manuals, training materials and holo-exercises, but these were not reality. Even the supposedly simplistic orks had constantly produced harrowing surprises in action. What would the inhumanly sophisticated eldar do?
Routine, practice and experience produced confident warriors. This had long been one of Colonel Soth’s basic maxims. But they had had no experience against this foe. Lack of practice and experience meant uncertainty – and uncertainty meant fear.
Soth remembered the nervous eyes of the young lasgunner catching his, and the boy’s anxious question. ‘Do they really skin their captives alive, sir?’
With an outward calm which did not entirely reflect his inner feelings, the colonel had reassured the Guardsman. Such barbarity he had explained, was not practised by these eldar and besides, if the Guardsmen followed orders and shot straight, no alien would capture them anyway. Colonel Soth was almost confident in his advice. From what he had gleaned, these were not the so-called dark eldar, the notorious piratical renegades, but then what was the difference? They were all aliens, all humanity’s enemies.
He mentally castigated himself for such futile speculation and was about to return to his command post when a soft footfall behind him made him stop and turn. It was the priest from the temple, Jarendar. He was a tall man and, in his full ceremonial costume, he made a striking figure. Even in the shade of the temple portico, his long white kilt gleamed and the elaborate gold pectoral, set with rabies to form the symbols of the Ecclesiarchy, glinted brightly, catching the light reflected from the huge doors. As Soth looked into the priest’s face he was struck by a similar effect. The man had a strong jaw and jutting nose and though his gaze was even, there was a sense of masked strength and confidence.
A strength more than spiritual, the colonel thought, as he noted how the heavy gold and red leather head-dress spread down across powerful shoulders more like those of a labourer or warrior than a priest.
‘The Emperor’s light shine upon you.’ the priest greeted him formally. The worship of the Divine Emperor here on Luxoris had acquired its own unique trappings in the eighteen hundred years since it had first been settled, but its people were devoted servants nevertheless.
‘And also on you,’ Soth replied.
‘Are your defences prepared, colonel? Is there more my servant or I can do to assist you?’ The priest’s voice was calm, Soth noted with approval. He had courage even on the verge of an alien attack.
‘We are as ready as we can be.’ The colonel gestured towards his gleaming parade boots with his gilded ceremonial baton. ‘But we are not exactly conventionally attired for action.’ There was another slight sniff.
‘Who can fully understand the will of the Emperor?’ Jarendar asked. ‘Had it not been for the festival you would not have been here to deploy to protect us. As you said yourself, if the cursed eldar realise the irrigation controls are here and they can flood the levels to impede our reinforcements, they will certainly attempt to capture the temple.’
‘It is not an orderly way to conduct a defence.’ Soth spoke almost to himself. ‘We are not properly attired or equipped.’
‘Properly attired?’ The priest smoothed his kilt. ‘These garments go back to the dark days of our slavery to the orks, before the Emperor gathered us once more to his bosom, praise him always. Yet even in those terrible times some were able to resist.’
‘And,’ he added, pointing at the rubies on his pectoral, ‘these garments are marked now with the symbols of the Emperor’s constancy. Even when we straggled alone we were not forgotten. Why is this temple here, Colonel Soth? It is to thank the Emperor for his blessing, in giving us the means to control the irregular rains of this harsh land so that we may offer him this land’s bounty. In the short term we may see difficulties. In the long term, the Emperor cares for his children.’
Soth was irritated – and was even more annoyed that he could not control his irritation in the presence of this calm priest. ‘But how,’ he asked sharply, ‘can a commander exercise proper control without even adequate comm-links?’ He tapped the low-powered wrist communicator he was wearing to emphasis his point.
The priest pointed to where his servant, a young novice, stood by one of the pillars of the portico. ‘Rigeth, my servant, he understands. He knows he is only a novice, a servant, a minute component in the Emperor’s divine plan. We priests in charge of temples, or colonels in charge of regiments, are inclined to forget that we are merely servants too – only one tiny piece in the Emperor’s great whole. Would you allow your men to question—’
A sudden, shrieking whine and burst of laser fire from the great ridg
e above them cut off the priest’s homily. ‘The eldar!’ Soth spat. ‘It’s begun! Get to safety. I must reach my command post!’ Leaving the priest, he began sprinting up the slope to where he had set up his headquarters on the rocky edge.
The section of the ridge surrounding the depression in which the temple sat was not the steepest. To gain some cover, Soth kept off the road but the surrounding terrain was rough. He needed to concentrate on his footing and as he raced on, he dared only to glance around himself from time to time, sporadically catching sight of the blurs of red screaming along the edge of the crest, their progress marked by staccato spurts of rock dust. The ghastly screech of projectiles ricocheting off the boulders was audible even over the shriek of their engines. These, he assumed, were the eldar’s notorious jetbikes, a first wave of attack to soften up his defences and keep his men’s heads down.
He paused just before the lip of the great ridge, crouching against a boulder. The tumbled rocks of the ridge offered good cover and he could see the bright stab of lasgun fire as his troops offered up some form of defence. Praying that the eldar weren’t trying some form of jamming against which his own dress-issue communicator would be useless, he barked into his wrist unit, ‘Soth to Captain Hoddish.’
‘Hoddish receiving, sir.’ The captain’s voice was crisp even over the vox-link.
‘Pass the order to cease lasgun fire against the jetbikes. We haven’t the ammunition to waste.’
The colonel continued up the slope, his teeth clenched. He could hear Hoddish using the command vox-link. ‘Hoddish to all units: no lasgun fire on jetbikes. Don’t waste power against those lightning spirits. Save it for the infantry.’
The jetbikes continued their attack passes and Soth had to hurl himself behind a boulder as one craft hurtled straight for him, its projectiles singing an unearthly war-cry as they fragmented the rocks all around him. He caught a split-second glimpse of the alien’s helmet as its craft howled overhead. This was certainly a far cry from fighting orks. Even the very sounds of battle were different.