‘Flying things? Drukhari?’
‘Do drukhari have wings?’
‘Some of them.’
‘Then possibly. Not many of them – maybe fifty. The barques are armed to the teeth. We might be able to disable one before they spot us…’
‘No. Not yet. Hold position until I say otherwise.’ He cycled through the frequencies. ‘Salian? Report.’ Salian was Varex’s second-in-command. With his master unable to communicate, he’d taken over. Salian was somewhat more tolerable than Varex, but only just – he was a backstabber and an impassioned painter of mediocre hunting scenes.
‘We’re in position, gutter-poet.’
‘And Varex?’
‘He can hold his weapon – and fire it.’
‘That is all I ask. Hold position for now.’ He cut the link and looked at Mayshana. ‘When they reach the narrowest part of the conduit, I want you to take out the helmsman for the lead raider.’ It was a simple tactic – stall the lead vessel, you stall the column.
She patted the barrel of her long-las. ‘I can do that. What about the rear raider?’
‘We want them to run, remember?’ he chided.
‘And what will you be doing?’
‘Dealing with the ones who aren’t smart enough to run.’
Chapter Ten
Ambush
Sparks dripped down the display screens, and slaves sought to extinguish the fires. The lance strike had only been glancing, but the Baron’s Oath was ill-maintained, and its defences were far below par, in his estimation. Hexachires wasn’t so much worried about that as he was annoyed by the constant interruptions as slaves and crewmembers scurried about in their desperate attempts at maintenance.
‘This is unacceptable,’ Peshig ranted. He pounded a fist against the arm of his command throne. ‘I shall have one in ten of the crew executed for such buffoonery!’ He pounded his throne again, his face set in a petulant grimace. ‘Imagine it, Hexachires – my ship, scarred by simple mon-keigh orbital weapons. How will I ever show my face in public again? Slaves will jeer at me in the street!’
‘Yes, curious how their orbital defences were aligned in such a way as to counter our usual tactics – or at least make the attempt, however unsuccessful,’ Hexachires said. He looked at Oleander. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘Luck,’ Oleander said. As ever, his new slave loomed behind him, hands clasped behind his back, his face hidden behind his mask. Every so often, his massive frame gave a twitch – it would have been unnoticeable to anyone other than a haemonculus. Pain, perhaps. Or excitement. Knowing Oleander’s proclivities, likely both.
Hexachires laughed. ‘Even you don’t believe that. No. The only conclusion is that they were forewarned. How goes the raid itself?’
‘Badly,’ Peshig snapped. ‘I lost one of my bombers to flak, Hexachires. Those damned things are expensive.’
‘I will purchase you a new one,’ Hexachires said idly. ‘Bring up the tactical and strategic displays, if you would.’
‘Which ones?’ Peshig said.
‘All of them. Something is amiss. I can feel it in my bones.’
‘It would have been good to know that before we began.’
Hexachires ignored the archon’s grousing. Fabius was here, he was certain of it. He would return to Commorragh in triumph – a secret triumph, to be sure, but victory nonetheless. He would be able to reaffirm his control of the coven, and erase all evidence of his great mistake, once and for all.
At the thought, he turned his attentions to the strategic displays Peshig had called up. Flickering holo-screens danced across the air about Peshig’s throne. Hexachires leaned close, peering at them. While he had little experience with military matters, he was a seasoned marauder. He had often participated in realspace raids in his misspent youth, seeing them as opportunities to test his latest creations. At his grunt, Peshig said, ‘What is it?’
‘Look at this. They already have troops in place at the largest junctions of that conglomeration they call a city… as if they were expecting an attack.’ Hexachires looked at another display. ‘And there – isolate that.’
Peshig did, and cursed. ‘Gunships.’
And not just any gunships. There was precious little uniformity to them. And the troops that disembarked from them – their armour was a riot of colours and modification. Those that bore any heraldry were marked with the sigils of the Great Enemy. Peshig made a warding sign as he looked at them.
A slow smile spread across Hexachires’ flesh-mask. ‘I knew it. He’s come at last.’ He turned to Oleander. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? He’s somewhere down there waiting, isn’t he?’
Oleander looked away. ‘It could be him, yes.’
Hexachires knew that there was no ‘could’ about it. Fabius had got his message after all. And now his student had come for one last lesson.
‘Have we triangulated the location of the cache yet? I have no doubt that is where he’ll choose to make his stand.’ He laughed. ‘He could never resist a good symbolic gesture.’
Peshig shook his head. ‘Not yet. Avara is still approaching the gate. Once she reaches it, we’ll be able to use the sub-dimensional relays to pinpoint its position…’
Hexachires waved his explanation aside. ‘I am aware. I designed it, after all.’ He knotted his hands together impatiently. ‘Inform me as soon as it has been found.’ He turned, his dendrites carrying him across the deck.
‘And where will you be?’ Peshig called out.
‘Preparing a gift for my former student,’ Hexachires said.
Salar tasted blood. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and smiled. ‘Finally,’ he growled. He’d bitten his tongue when the first shots had chewed the air about his raider, rattling it down to its frame. He heard the whip-crack of the splinter cannons mounted along the rails as his crew returned fire.
Kysh was shouting orders, as if he were in charge. ‘Activate the night shields! We have to get out of here. Pull back and regroup!’
Salar hauled himself to his feet and drove his fist into Kysh’s belly, doubling him over.
‘You want to run now?’ he spat, kicking Kysh aside as he strode towards the front of the raider. ‘When we’ve finally got a real fight on our hands? Belay that. All ahead full. I want to feel the heat of the flames on my skin.’
He drew his sword as he clambered up onto the upper deck. It was a good sword. An old sword. He had taken it from his predecessor, after he’d killed her. It was lethally curved, exquisitely balanced, with a pommel in the shape of a daemon’s head – a djin blade, he’d heard it called, though he’d never bothered to find out what that meant. He’d discovered early on that the blade had a vicious sentience that complemented his own. They were of a similar mind about a great many things.
It whispered to Salar now, of victories to come, of glories that would be his if he but followed its advice. His smile became tight and feral.
‘All good things come to those willing to seize them,’ he murmured, as he kissed the crosspiece of the sword. An old saying, and one he lived by. The future was written by those with courage.
As such, when he’d realised what the humans were up to, he’d been unable to resist throwing himself – and the forces under his command – wholeheartedly into their trap. He’d lost a few raiders, across the city, but Peshig and Avara had lost more. The mon-keigh had expected them to run, and some had – that was the drukhari way, after all. The way of the raider and the slavecatcher.
But Salar hadn’t run. Instead, he’d led assault after assault, hitting the humans wherever they’d sought to hold the line. The glory was his, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to take it all. His orders had passed through the raider squadrons and Hellion gangs that were his to command, drawing them from their fun and welding them into a spear-point that he could stab into the enemy again and again.
At the other end of the street, his chosen prey welcomed them with the crackle of bolter fire. These weren’t the sort of humans he’d been expecting, but they’d more than serve. He glanced back at Kysh, who was picking himself up off the deck.
‘Try and capture a few of them. The arena-masters will pay handsomely for this sort.’
He didn’t wait for Kysh’s reply. Instead, he signalled the helmsman to increase speed. The enemy thought themselves safe behind a line of metal bulwarks. They were mistaken. His personal vessel was no gilded pleasure-craft, but a heavily armoured war machine.
Unable to contain himself, he sheathed his sword and shoved aside the gunner standing at the prow, commandeering the raider’s dark lance. He took aim at the farthest of the bulwarks and thumbed the firing sigil. He held the sigil down as he dragged the lance across the line, reducing it to bubbling slag.
The raider ploughed on, through the cloud of toxic steam thrown up by the collapsed bulwarks. The rest of Salar’s squadron followed in its wake. The armoured humans were falling back in good order – a withdrawal, not a rout. Salar’s grin was painfully tight as he took aim at one with the dark lance and reduced him to greasy motes.
Shots rattled against the raider’s armour, or splashed off the night shield. Explosions dotted the sky overhead – the enemy gunships, duelling with Peshig’s aircraft. Hellions rolled through the air on their skyboards, whooping and jeering at the combatants below. And in their wake, the wraithbone mist. Salar could feel it, itching at the base of his soul. The screaming madness of it grated on his nerves, despite the psychic baffler built into his armour.
Only these mon-keigh didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Or if they were, they gave no sign. Instead, they moved to meet the oncoming raiders. Salar fired the dark lance again and again, clearing the immediate area. Leaving the weapon to its gunner, he vaulted over the rail and dropped from the sloped prow to the street. His warriors followed him, howling like ur-ghuls.
Kabalite warriors carrying splinter cannons and blasters moved to cover the rest as they advanced along the rubble-strewn street. Salar led from the front, nearly outpacing his warriors. Dreams of glory danced in his head. He heard Kysh shout something, and was turning to reprimand him, when he heard the crunch of stone and whipped back around.
One of the armoured giants – Space Marines, the mon-keigh called them – lunged towards him, a heavy, single-edged blade in his hand. The warrior’s other hand was no hand at all, but a coiling, fleshy tendril – a sign of mutation. Salar’s skin crawled as he got a good look at the brute. Ruinous symbols covered the giant’s purple armour, and he stank of spoiled meat and incense. This was no normal Space Marine, but something else.
Salar avoided the blow, but cursed as it struck one of his warriors instead. Splinter rifles barked, but the giant ignored them, wading into Salar’s followers. The tendril lashed out, snapping an unlucky warrior’s neck. The blade chopped through armour and bone with hideous ease. Salar drew his splinter pistol and fired at the brute’s back, drawing his attention. The creature turned, and Salar fired at his visor, shattering the lenses of his helm. As the giant staggered back, Salar whipped his sword across his opponent’s midsection, slicing through the hoses and cabling there.
He leapt back as the giant bellowed obscenities in archaic aeldari and tore his damaged helm loose with his tendril. The brute hurled the helm at Salar. He ducked beneath the helm, thrust his splinter pistol into a gap in the giant’s armour and pulled the trigger.
The creature spasmed, and his bellows turned to shrieks. He caught Salar by the back of the head and flung him to the ground. Salar rolled aside as the giant’s boot came down where his chest had been.
‘I will pull out your heart and eat it in front of you for that, vermin,’ the giant snarled in his crudely accented aeldari. Salar slashed upwards, opening the brute’s ugly face to the bone. The djin blade trembled in his grip, eager to taste the giant’s tainted blood.
The giant staggered, trying to clear the blood from his eyes. Salar gave him no time to recover. He danced away from a wild blow that might have removed his head, and brought his blade down on his opponent’s elbow joint, where the armour was thinnest.
The djin blade howled as it struck, and the giant’s arm twirled away in a halo of gore. The brute barely paused, lunging after the archon with his tendril. Salar thrust his splinter pistol forward, jamming the barrel between the giant’s teeth. He fired even as the giant bit down, cracking the weapon in two.
The resulting explosion cast Salar back against a fallen statue, his gun-hand bloody. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Through the thinning smoke, he saw the giant stagger towards him, his face a wet, red ruin. Blinded, shards of crystalline splinter embedded in his flesh, the creature gibbered in agony as he lumbered forward.
Ignoring the pain in his hand, Salar met his opponent’s awkward lunge, driving his blade home with a juddering crunch. The giant gave a gurgle and slumped, his weight nearly dragging the sword from Salar’s grip. The archon stepped back, panting slightly.
‘Pity. I was starting to like him.’
Salar turned – and nearly lost his head. Only a hiss of warning from his sword helped him to avoid the crackling maul that dropped down. He leapt aside and it cracked the pavement. He scrambled to his feet, sword extended.
The woman – he thought it was a woman – stalked towards him on silver-shod hooves.
‘But, maybe you did me a favour, eh? I’d probably have had to kill Ruatha myself, before long.’ She extended her maul towards him. ‘By way of thanks, I’ll make it quick.’
Despite the pain in his hand, Salar took a step towards her. The djin blade whispered urgently to him, demanding he take her head. He rather liked the idea, and raised the sword – but stopped as a flurry of splinter-shots sent his opponent scrambling for cover. He whirled.
‘What are you doing?’ he howled.
‘Peshig says we need to get out of here,’ Kysh said, staying out of reach. ‘He says Hexachires–’
‘Damn Hexachires, and damn you!’ Salar turned back, but saw that his opponent was sprinting away, towards the open ramp of a newly landed gunship. Space Marines crouched on the ramp, covering her retreat. Salar considered pursuing, but was forced to take a hasty step back as bolt-rounds chewed the street. He allowed his warriors to drag him back into cover, resisting the urge to remove their hands at the wrists.
He glared at Kysh. ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What has the haemonculus done now? Whatever it is, it had better be worth interrupting my fun!’
Avara stared in fascination at the armoured giants striding towards her raider. They’d appeared moments after her helmsman had lost his head. Her raider had slewed sideways into the wall of the webway, its engine idling as it came to a halt. The other raiders were trying to get past, but the conduit was too narrow – and the enemy was too close.
She had never encountered this particular mon-keigh subspecies in the wild before. She’d heard the stories, of course, and seen the occasional prisoner in the arenas. But to see them up-close – and getting closer – was something else entirely.
Tall crests of white and turquoise rose over helms wrought to resemble the leers of hungry beasts. Golden chains and hooks dangled from the flat planes of their panoply, and scraps of oath-parchment fluttered from their gorgets and pauldrons. And they stank – even at this distance. Like the worst refuse pits, mingled with a courtesan’s boudoir.
Her monocle’s sensor array fed her data on the attackers. None of it made her feel any better about the situation. She drew her blast-pistol, a sick feeling in her stomach. She’d wanted glory – this seemed like it would lead to anything but.
‘What do we do?’ one of her warriors asked. ‘Should we abandon the raider?’
She turned. ‘Where would you suggest we go, Beraq? Perhaps you’d like to run into the webway and hid
e?’
‘Better that than dying here!’
She raised her pistol and put it against his helm. ‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘Think carefully.’
Bolter fire chewed the side of the raider, causing them all to duck.
‘Someone get that dark lance over here,’ she shouted. She rose to her feet and hurried towards the helmsman’s dais. What was left of Jirex was still slumped over it, and she hauled the body aside, letting it flop to the deck. She’d been something of a pilot before taking control of her kabal, and her fingers flew across the control sigils with a speed born of experience.
The raider began to shudder as she rerouted power from the ethersails and the night shields. If she could boost the anti-grav, however briefly, and get above the other raiders, she might be able to escape. It was a slim hope, but it was better than sticking around and letting the mon-keigh tear them to pieces.
As she worked, bolt-rounds crunched into the pliable metal of the deck. A warrior was knocked sprawling, a gaping crater blown into her armour.
‘They’re getting closer,’ Beraq shouted, as he took cover behind the ethersail.
‘Keep them off me for a few more moments,’ Avara growled. She paused only to occasionally fire her blast-pistol in the general direction of the foe. It accomplished nothing, but made her feel somewhat better. Finally, the raider began to rise, its prow digging a crumbling trench through the wall of the webway.
Beraq cried out, and Avara turned. He was pointing at something. She looked up. Hexachires’ wracks circled overhead. As she watched, one of them darted down.
The wrack landed with a thump, robes swirling. Its wings were stretched vanes of bone and gristle, shot through with vibrant arteries. Before she could do more than turn to ask what it thought it was doing, it had the edge of the serrated blade it bore pressed against her throat. She froze.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ A holo-display spread across its featureless helm and in moments Hexachires’ pixelated flesh-mask overlaid the dark iron.
Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Page 17