[Dawn of War 02] - Ascension

by C. S. Goto - (ebook by Undead)

  “We have located the deposit, farseer, and excavations are almost complete,” explained Aldryan, leading Macha through the rangers’ camp in the desert. “The site was well hidden, and there is no evidence that it has been disturbed over the course of the millennia. The seals are still in place, and we are awaiting your word.”

  Excellent, Aldryan, replied Macha, steadying herself by leaning on the ranger’s shoulder as they walked through the soft sand; she was still weak from her ordeal with the runes. Laeresh strode easily alongside them, the heavily augmented psychoplastics of his leg-armour making the sand irrelevant to him.

  So deep in the desert, there was a constant breeze of sand blowing across the dunes, wafting sheets and clouds of red like a pulsing mist. In her weakened state, Macha could hardly see ten metres in front of her, but in that fact there was some reassurance that the mon-keigh would not be able to see anything of their activity from the distant mountain range.

  Walking another few steps, Macha’s eyes widened suddenly as the extent of the rangers’ work became evident. As she crested the dune, in the shadow of which nestled the makeshift camp, a huge quarry loomed into view before her. It must have been about a kilometre in diameter, and perhaps half that deep. In the bottom, she could just about make out the busy forms of rangers labouring at clearing away the sand. They had some kind of suction devices strapped to their backs which drew the sand off the ground and then blasted it into long, thin fountains in the air, sending it cascading over the lip of the quarry and mounding into the massive dunes that now completely surrounded the pit.

  No wonder the air is full of sand, reflected Macha as she strained her eyes into the excavations, searching for some sign of the objectives. How much longer?

  “We are already at depth, farseer. They are now merely working against the wind, keeping the site clear and at a consistent depth.”

  “What are you waiting for, ranger?” asked Laeresh, his voice tinged with impatience and repressed violence. His distaste for the outcast was clear.

  “We await the farseer’s pleasure,” bowed Aldryan.

  Macha looked again, but there was still nothing that she could see in the pit. Let us descend.

  Before the words were even out of her mind, a film of sha’iel started to seep out of the farseer’s skin, enveloping the three of them and lifting them gently off their feet. In a matter of seconds, they were already half-way down the steeply sloping sides of the quarry. By the time they reached the bottom, the shrouded figures of Druinir and the other warlocks were already there, formed into a ring around Macha as her feet touched down.

  The base of the pit was hard, like stone, but it was run through with scratches and veins, as though water had once eroded little paths through the rock. In places, Macha could see that the surface was uneven and cracked. Stooping and pressing her hand to the ground, the farseer saw that the lines in the stone were actually formed into patterns, some of them the natural signatures of fossils but others were artificial, inscribed like text into what may once have been a riverbed.

  I see, thought Macha, letting the images of the jungle river flood into her mind from the point of contact with her fingers. The lines in the stone started to shimmer slightly and then move, swimming like eels or water snakes under the dusting of sand that blew constantly across the surface. The fossils seemed to come alive, sending the ghosts of long-extinct animals scurrying, charging and slithering across the quarry floor. And the artificial etchings began to hum, glowing with a purple heat that spoke of realms beyond the linear flow of time that had led to the eradication of life in the immense desert. The purple veins radiated out from Macha’s touch, darting through the tiny scratches and scars that had been hacked into the stone plateau in the distant past. The eerie chant of the warlocks wafted into the wind.

  After a matter of seconds, the whole of the quarry floor was awash with purple traces of sha’iel, like a small, shallow oasis of warp energy in the desert. With a sudden convulsion, the huge stone floor cracked in two, bifurcated by a faultlessly straight line. Then, very slowly, the two great slabs of rock started to move away from each other, as though receding back into the dunes that were mounded up on all sides, gradually revealing a dark, cavernous space below.

  Looking down into the exposed cavern below, Laeresh smiled. There, buried under the desert for millennia, waiting for the return of the Biel-Tan, was a pristine squadron of Wave Serpent transports and Falcon anti-grav tanks. What the mon-keigh called archaeology, he called sound strategic planning. A couple of the Falcons and two of the Serpents had already been painted in the featureless black of the Dark Reapers, and Laeresh vaulted down onto a black Falcon’s roof instantly, while the rangers and the Guardians that had accompanied Macha and her warlocks as personal retinues jumped down to check on the other craft.

  “Forward planning is the mark of a great farseer, farseer,” said Aldryan, permitting himself a faint smile at the sight of the ancient arsenal that Macha had just unlocked. Around the edge of the cavern, Aldryan could see massive, densely packed pillars, like primeval, fossilised trees, as though the battle squadron had once been secreted in a jungle-glade that had become petrified over the aeons.

  Perhaps, replied Macha. But planning for the future and realising those plans is not the same thing. Seeing what needs to be done is not the same as doing it. All that we have seen is that something is required—but it is not yet clear what. Yet, it is already the time for action, and there is nothing else to be seen.

  She watched the burst of activity in the cavern before her, weary with the effort of opening the ancient seal. But more than anything she was concerned that she had seen no visions since the ruination of her runes aboard the Eternal Star, and she had seen nothing of Gabriel’s presence at all. All those millennia before, Farseer Lsathranil had used his foresight to provide these vessels for his kin in their time of need, but now Macha could not even see the sun going down at the end of the day.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: JAIN’ZAR

  The antigravitic engines made short work of the treacherous and inconstant dunes as the squadron of Falcon tanks whisked along in the front line of the eldar assault. In the centre of the line was the impeccable black of Laeresh’s vehicle, now dusted with the red sand of the desert. Spread out to the sides were the white and emerald shades of the Biel-Tan force, sleek and deadly in the ruddy light. As the convoy had started to close on the edge of the desert and the fringe of the ring-mountains had become visible above the horizon, the exarch had climbed out of the gun-emplacement on top of the Falcon and stood on its roof, braced with his reaper launcher, eager for the battle to begin.

  On either side of his Falcon there were two jet-black Wave Serpents, hovering smoothly over the sand and scything their dual-bladed prows through any errant dunes. Laeresh could feel the presence of his Aspect Warriors in their transports, and he could sense the faint, rhythmical chant of their battle chorus echoing through the ether as the vehicles slipped forward into their waiting destinies: war is our master, death our mistress.

  As he stood expectantly atop the tank, there was a sudden and massive movement in the dunes ahead. His helmet twitched automatically, snapping the aim of his reaper launcher onto the point of movement as the weapon tracked the motion of his eyes. The mon-keigh monastery and the mountains were still over the horizon, so he was not yet expecting blood; his soul thrilled at the sudden promise.

  The entire dune that the convoy was climbing began to shift, as though a gargantuan, slumbering, subterranean creature had suddenly awoken beneath it. The desert rolled and parted, opening up a series of chasms in the dune, into which poured waterfalls of sand from each side. As the sand crashed off the sudden peaks, large cylindrical structures started to become visible beneath the grainy torrent.

  Laeresh stared at the odd structures for a moment, confused and disappointed, sensing no will or intention emanating from their apparently inanimate forms. They were still largely obscured beneath the sand when a bolt of e
nergy flared near the top of one them and flashed down towards the convoy.

  The bolt punched into one of the frontal wings of a Wave Serpent, but it bounced off the protective energy field, ricocheting wildly up into the air. Immediately, the other emergent gun towers erupted with fire, spraying laser bolts down on the eldar convoy and transforming the baking desert into an inferno.

  The Falcons returned fire, their gun turrets rotating freely as the tanks wove with surprising elegance, taking evasive action under the unexpected onslaught. The starcannon on one of the Falcons convulsed and a lance of blinding light jabbed into one of the gun emplacements, severing the structure in two and setting off a chain reaction of explosions that strafed down the height of the base before the main power cell detonated and exploded in a ball of blue fire.

  Meanwhile, Laeresh was instantly back in the gun turret on his own Falcon, his thoughts excited and his soul calling out for blood as he plotted the trajectory for his own attack. He counted under his breath, waiting for exactly the right moment, and then clenched his jaw. This was all that his customised vehicle needed from him, and three missiles roared out of the cluster launcher, spiralling around each other as they honed in on the heat source at the top of one of the mon-keigh gun towers. They all impacted at once, punching into the rockcrete structure and detonating inside, blowing a fountain of masonry and melting rock into air.

  By now the atmosphere was thick with las-fire, rattling shurikens, and scything energy blasts, all shrouded in the blood-red mist of the desert wind. The automated defence guns of the mon-keigh had taken the eldar by surprise and they had been caught in the crossfire between two formations of gun towers: one directly in front of them and another that had risen out of the desert behind them, hemming them in like cattle.

  Laeresh spun his turret, letting out a shrill battle cry and looking back towards the rear of the convoy to make sure that the farseer was unharmed. She was standing in a blaze of energy, surrounded by the coruscating forms of her warlocks, great lances of blue flame leaping out of her fingertips and crashing into the primitive mon-keigh emplacements. Her open-topped Serpent had been modified millennia ago to permit the farseer and her retinue to capitalise on their gifts during combat, and Laeresh was momentarily transfixed by the majesty of the scene.

  Then a different sort of movement caught his eye and his gun turret spun once again. Blood. On the crest of the next dune, just outside the ring of death, Laeresh could see the glints of five small, red vehicles. They were stationary, as though simply observing the bloody scene that was unfolding before them. Angling his missile launcher with a grin, Laeresh punched the trigger, sending a stream of rockets flashing through a low curve towards the Blood Ravens scouts on the ridge. Just as the missiles were away, Laeresh looked up in time to see a rain of rockets dropping out of the sky from a steep parabola and he vaulted out of his cockpit, thrilled and cursing at the same time.

  The distant thunder of ordnance rumbled through the ground, shaking the desert and sending streams of sand cascading down the dunes. The exchange was taking place just over the horizon, and even the superior augmetic vision of Corallis could not yet make out the number of foes. He stood on the roof of a modified Helios Pattern Land Raider, seemingly oblivious to the volleys of rockets that streaked out of the missile turret next to him. He watched the ballistics disappear over the horizon, nodding with satisfaction at the clouds of sand and smoke that plumed into the air after their invisible impacts. The Blood Ravens may not have a large force on Rahe’s Paradise, but they could still pack a punch, even at this range.

  Over the horizon in the desert, the monastery’s automatic defence cannons had been activated while Tanthius and Corallis were still seeing to the last-minute preparations around the base of the towering, black edifice itself. The desert gun emplacements had laid dormant for centuries, since they were set to respond only to a serious threat—a band of pirates or even a small ork war party would not be enough to trigger them. Whatever was coming over the horizon towards the monastery had set them off, so it was a force worthy of the new defences being hastily erected by the Blood Ravens.

  A cloud of dust appeared on the featureless and barren horizon as a single vehicle crested a large dune. It was a burst of blood red against the dull monotony of the sand, shrouded in frenetic dust. The bike tore through the dunes, the roar of its engine now vaguely audible under the constant concussions that were thudding through the air. It bounced and swerved, traversing the passes in the undulating and ever-shifting ground, ploughing straight through the smaller dunes and blasting their sand into sprays and fountains.

  The sound of this proximal vehicle made Tanthius pause and turn to face the desert. To him the shape was still blurred and distant.

  “Corallis?” He knew that the elevated eyes of the sergeant would be more reliable than his own.

  “It’s Caleb.”

  “Just Caleb?” asked Tanthius, staring out into the swirling cloud that engulfed the speeding figure.

  “Just Caleb,” confirmed Corallis, sharing the concern of the massive Terminator Marine.

  Eager to impress the famed Captain Angelos and the officers of the Third Company, Caleb had taken four of his trainee scouts out into the desert to check on the form and number of the enemy.

  Tanthius nodded and turned back to his work, organising the defensive perimeter around the monastery-outpost. Whatever was coming, it was coming now; this was no time for sentimentality.

  He had already deployed the magnificence of his own Terminator squad in the centre of the arc, between the hulking forms of the two Land Raider tanks. Without much effort, they had pushed back the sands of the desert, creating a giant, artificial dune behind which they would be granted some measure of cover. More importantly, this close to the mountains, which towered up behind the monastery, the sand layer was shallow, and by excavating a trench the Terminators had found solid rock on which to plant their heavy boots.

  Four Marines in shimmering power-armour stood to attention, waiting for directions from Tanthius—Gabriel had delegated authority to the Terminator sergeant while he saw to matters inside the monastery itself. “Hilkiah, take your Devastators and form a line on the north of the second Land Raider. Necho, fall in behind Hilkiah with your Assault squadron to provide aerial support when needed. Topheth, organise the assault bikes in a detachment to the west and be ready to sweep round and flank the enemy from the south. Asherah, take the Razorback and fall in behind Topheth’s bikes.”

  The four Marines snapped crisp nods and strode off to ensure that Tanthius’ instructions were carried out.

  Turning to the west, Tanthius noted with satisfaction that Sergeant Gaal had already dug his Tactical squad in on the other side of Corallis’ tank. The line was almost complete and, despite the limitations of the hardware and numbers available, Tanthius was confident that they would be able to hold it.

  By now the rider had closed and, with a roar, Caleb’s bike skidded to a halt behind Tanthius. He cut the engine just as Corallis crunched into the ground next to him, having vaulted down from his vantage point on top of the Land Raider to debrief the scout.

  The young scout swung himself off the bike and drew himself up to attention before the senior Marines. Despite his best efforts to conceal it, the pain that wracked his body flickered across his face. He had not felt pain like that in years, not since the completion of the Implantation process—it was as though something had deliberately reactivated his pain receptors.

  “Sergeant Corallis. Sergeant Tanthius,” he bowed to the Terminator as the imposing figure turned to face him. “There are jetbikes and a squadron of Falcon tanks. At least three Wave Serpent transports, and an open-topped vehicle that I do not recognise—it appears to contain a group of psykers of some kind. They will break the horizon in a matter of minutes.”

  “Understood,” replied Tanthius briskly. “Thank you, Scout Caleb,” he added, seeing the passion burning in the pale, grimy face in front of him. “T
his is valuable information. Your brothers did not die for nothing.”

  “Caleb, are you damaged?” asked Corallis, as Tanthius turned away to continue with the preparations, striding away into the midst of the line of Terminators.

  “No. No, sergeant,” He didn’t seem sure. “I don’t think so,” he added, his face still creased with concealed agony.

  Corallis inspected the scout but could see no sign of damage on his armour. “But you are in pain?”

  “Yes,” replied Caleb reluctantly. “A little. But it is nothing, probably just a temporary imbalance in my pain receptors. I have been having some minor problems with a couple of my implants… I was awaiting your apothecary.”

  Corallis looked at the scout with concern, but at that precise moment a tremendous roar erupted from the Terminator line behind him as they unleashed the first volley of shells at the eldar force as it crested the horizon, a billowing cloud of silence, sand and shimmering lethality. The automatic defences had failed to hold them, so now it was time for war.

  The darkness inside the chapel seemed to enshroud the kneeling figure of Gabriel before the faintly lit altar. His head was angled up and his blue eyes were wide, staring at the images of his forefathers and the Emperor himself. Even from the corridor outside, Prathios could see the sweat on his captain’s brow as he struggled to put his soul at ease before the battle to come. Despite himself, Prathios had to concede that Gabriel was getting worse.

  Quietly, the chaplain pulled the great doors closed, squeezing out the last of the light. As he did so, the sound of footsteps heading towards him from down the corridor made him turn. The light in the passageway grew increasingly dim and shadowy as it approached the chapel, but the far end was brightly lit, as sunlight streamed in from the huge windows set high up in the fresco-strewn walls. And in the flood of pristine light at that end marched five glorious figures of imperial virtue.