“Me, sergeant?”
“Yes, you. What’s your name?”
“Krayem, sergeant.”
“Very well, Krayem, what do you have for me?”
The helmsman looked down at the green, glowing screen in front of him and then back up at the Marine. “There is something. Little more than a light distortion, but its path appears to take it directly past our starboard side.”
“Can you track it, Krayem?” asked Kohath, repeating the name to imprint it in his brain. Loren had turned out to be useless.
“I think so, sergeant,” replied Krayem, glancing back down at the tiny shimmer on the screen. “But it is moving very fast. Very fast.”
“Don’t make excuses, just do it,” said Kohath, bringing his view screen round to match the orientation of Krayem’s terminal. Sure enough, there was something there—as though a ghost-ship were skirting along the edge of reality.
“Is this the same vessel that attacked us before?” asked Kohath, squinting his eyes into the darkness, his voice grating with aggression.
“I don’t think so, sergeant.” It was a nameless serf. “The sensor signatures are different. This one is getting stronger all the time, as though it were moving towards us.”
Kohath stared at the screen without acknowledging the new intelligence. Whatever it was, it was moving away from the Ravenous Spirit, not towards it. But something was happening—it was as though it were gradually taking shape in front of his eyes. It was becoming less intangible and less ghostly. It looked for all the world like it was being born into the vacuum of space for the first time, as though gradually emerging from a different dimension. As it started to take on a more substantial form, it seemed to slow down, giving the impression that it could not sustain its incredible speed in the universe of the here and now.
“By the Father, what is that thing?” asked Kohath, staring as though transfixed as the elegant craft gradually resolved into its final form—a long, slender vessel with massive, swooping star-sails along three axes. At its prow, a graceful command deck protruded in the form of a crescent, with massive cannons mounted on each forward-facing point.
“Sergeant, we are being hailed by Sergeant Saulh from the Rage of Erudition,” chirped Loren, reluctant to interrupt the present drama but pleased to have a simple function to fulfil.
“What? Saulh? Where is he?” snapped Kohath, dragging his eyes away from the miraculous birth outside.
“The other signature, Sergeant Kohath. The one on the edge of the system—it is Sergeant Saulh aboard the strike cruiser Rage of Erudition.”
For a moment Kohath paused. He had received no word from Captain Ulantus that a Ninth Company strike cruiser was en route. In fact, he had received no communiqués from the Litany of Fury since they had entered orbit around Rahe’s Paradise. It was well-known that the space in that sector made astropathic communication particularly difficult, and the distant position of the planet made conventional modes of communication so slow as to be almost worthless. It was often quicker to take the message yourself.
As he was pondering the arrival of Saulh, Kohath saw a school of fighter-drones pour out of the newly born vessel off his starboard side, swirling around a clutch of Shadowhunter escorts as they slid into view. They teemed out into space and banked around in a giant shoal, bringing their weapons to bear against the Ravenous Spirit. At the same time, sheets of las-fire erupted from the gun batteries that ran along the side of the long, elegant ship itself. No sooner had it opened fire than its fighters also opened up, spraying the shields of the Ravenous Spirit with a tirade of las-bolts. As all this happened, the mother vessel itself started to bank around, presumably to bring its main frontal cannons into play.
“Emperor damn it!” yelled Kohath, barking orders off to the command crew, demanding evasive manoeuvres, increased shielding, return fire, and the launch of the Cobra gunships. “Tell Saulh he is most welcome. Then tell him to haul his guns over here right now!”
The entity that attacked your psyker was but a wraith, a shadow of the Yngir, Gabriel. He spoke their name. And the blast in the desert was merely a warning. You must not underestimate this enemy. Our needs bring us together once again.
Gabriel tried to ignore the persistent whisperings in his mind as the group pressed on through one of the tunnels that dropped down away from the lava-encircled pit in the foundations of the monastery. In places the passageway narrowed so much that the group was forced to press into single file, and it was in such places that the lack of trust between them became evident. Nobody wanted to permit the others to walk behind them, but nobody wanted to let the other lead the way. In the end, Gabriel and Macha took the lead, walking close on each others heels. Then came Jonas and Druinir, with the others falling in behind. It was an unquiet company.
We must be careful with the psykers, Gabriel, for the Yngir will sense their movements and feel their presence. They will recoil from the fragrance of the warp, but in recoiling they will wake. And when they wake they will hunger and thirst for the warmth of the lives that woke them. But our lives will not be enough, and the Sons of Asuryan are no longer numerous enough to hold them at bay. They are the Great Enemy: we will cease to ever have been as the universe becomes severed from its own memories—so it has been written.
“Quiet,” snapped Gabriel, glaring at Macha and making the others start. Everyone thought that they were already walking in silence.
The winding tunnels were shrouded in shadows, but a faint red light seeped into them from veins of lava that flowed through the walls. The temperature was hot and the confines of the narrow spaces were stuffy with sulphur dioxide and wisps of methane. The passageways appeared to have been cut by machines in places, where they were perfectly tubular. But elsewhere they were little more than cracks and crevices in the planet’s crust. From time to time the group encountered great, gaping cracks in the floor, where the rock had shifted over the millennia and rent the passageways into fractions. Through the cracks poured clouds of noxious gases, and molten rock bubbled audibly down below.
They had seen a couple more black pyramids like the one in the lava-pit, and Macha had explained that they were markers, defining the perimeter of the Yngir catacombs. The sentinel eldar had fashioned them out of the Yngir’s own thirsting materials and technologies, rendering them into conductors of psychic energy, which absorbed any unusual warp discharge in their vicinity, acting to further insulate the slumbering creatures within from any fluctuations in the warp signature around the planet.
There had been other artefacts too. Some control terminals had been dug into the concave walls, forming little alcoves and side chambers off the main route. The dials and readouts had ceased functioning centuries before, perhaps even millennia before. Some of them lay half-melted and half-buried beneath solidified lava flows, as though they had grown into the walls and become fused with the inorganic structure of the catacombs themselves. Most of these devices bore the eerie imprint of eldar design, but some of them seemed almost familiar to the Blood Ravens.
Macha and her warlocks had taken it all in their stride, as though they were expecting to find the tunnel network exactly as it was. For Gabriel, however, everything was alien and almost impossibly ancient; he was unnerved by the casual disregard of the farseer towards these relics from a forgotten past. It was as though the eldar saw such things every day. Jonas was wide-eyed at the extent of the labyrinth that had been uncovered below his excavations, and amazed by the artefacts that they were studiously ignoring.
Taking another couple of steps, Gabriel emerged first into a cavernously wide chamber. Stairs had been cut into the uneven floor, and the expanse of the cavern was on a number of different levels. Flights of stone steps led up to little platforms, each of which ringed and overlooked a central pedestal. The light was faint and red, just as it was in the tunnels, but here it glowed down from the high-domed ceiling in a constant and even ruddiness. Looking up as the rest of the group pushed past him into the cavern,
Gabriel saw that the entire ceiling was laced with veins of flowing lava, as though they were running over an impossibly resilient glass roof.
“Gabriel, you should take a look at this,” called Jonas from the bottom of the nearest flight of stairs.
Striding to the top of the steps, Gabriel peered down at Jonas’ find. It was a body. A long, elegant humanoid body, still sealed into its jet-black suit of body armour. Indeed, it may have been only the armour.
Leave it alone, human. The voice was powerful and deep, blunt and forceful in a way that Macha’s was not. Druinir had drawn up next to Gabriel and was staring down at Jonas with his burning eyes only partly concealed below his hood. You will not sully our dead with your stench.
“Here’s another one,” called Ptolemea. She was crouching to her knees next to a different flight of steps, having dropped down to the lowest level. Apparently she was making her way towards the centre of the cavern. The Celestians had deployed themselves around her position, securing it silently.
There will be many bodies, Gabriel. But they are not your concern. Macha had descended to the lowest level of the cavern and made her way over to its centre where she was already striding up a narrow staircase towards one of the precarious little viewing platforms that overlooked the elevated pedestal in the heart of the chamber. She did not turn to face the Blood Raven, and she showed no signs of having seen what the others had found, but her thoughts pressed firmly into Gabriel’s mind.
“Leave them,” said Gabriel, slowly and deliberately, directing his remarks to both Jonas and Ptolemea. “Secure the chamber.”
Even as his words were still echoing around the cavern, a shrill cry made everyone turn, searching for the source. It didn’t take long to identify it.
Up on one of the balconies on the far side of the cavern, one of the eldar warlocks was emitting a hideous, keening scream. He was surrounded by a crackling blue energy field, which was spitting and sparking as though short-circuiting, and he seemed to be levitating a few metres above the ledge. For a couple of seconds, nobody could understand what was happening. But then there was a shimmer, like a phase shift, and a grotesque floating form appeared behind the eldar. It had an elongated spinal column that whipped up into a spiny, dragonlike tail, and its skull-like face leered down over the warlock, which now appeared skewered on two long, barbed spikes that seemed to protrude like arms from the beast’s wide, skeletal shoulders.
Wraith. The thought was solid, definite, and tinged with urgency.
As one, the Celestian Sisters opened up with their bolters, sending a unified salvo smashing into the location of the hideous creature. At the same time, Druinir launched himself off the ledge next to Gabriel, and started to sprint across the wide floor of the chamber, bursts of crackling warp-fire lashing out of his fingertips towards his hapless brethren.
But the wraith just seemed to fade away, as though drifting out of phase once again. The Celestians’ bolter shells tore through its shadow and impacted against the wall behind it, exploding into showers of shrapnel that ricocheted back into the thrashing warlock.
A second later and it reappeared, still clutching at the eldar psyker with the blades and scalpels that constituted its arms. But this time Druinir was ready for it, vaulting up onto the balcony and thrusting his hand through the semi-material substance of the beast’s spine. There was a deafening shriek as the wraith threw back its head and brayed, dropping the warlock from its metallic talons. Then the beast simply exploded, as though it could not bear to be touched by Druinir. Vast streams of energy poured down the warlock’s arm, filling the apparitional form of the wraith with dazzling warp energy until it could hold no more. Then it exploded into a rain of light, showering down from the balcony like a waterfall.
Druinir stooped down to the broken form of the other warlock, checking his vital signs. An instant later, he stood up and made a signal to Macha in the centre of the room, drawing his finger across his throat to indicate that the warlock was dead.
Caleb’s bike skidded and bounced over the sand dunes, weaving in and out between sleets of shuriken fire and exploding craters. As he closed on the jet-black Wave Serpent, he could see the valiant efforts of the local fighters as they clambered all over the nearly impregnable armour of the eldar transporter, clattering against it with their dulling blades.
A bolt of energy slammed into the front of his bike as he crested the last dune. It shattered the front weapons and lifted the wheel clear off the ground, throwing Caleb back. The rear wheel spun as it dug down into the sand, suddenly bearing the entire weight of the bike and Marine. Then it gripped abruptly, pushing the rear of the bike forward and under the front, turning the bike over in a flurry of sand. Caleb fell back off the saddle and then rolled clear as the bike came crashing down.
Scrambling to his feet, the scout checked behind him and realised for the first time that he was the only member of his squad to have made it this far. The main battle was still raging behind him, and he could see clearly see the inferno of destruction that ringed Tanthius and his Terminator squadron in the heart of the theatre.
Tugging his bolter out of its holster, Caleb started down the other side of the dune, snapping off shots against the Wave Serpent as he went, being careful not to hit the other human warriors that were swarming all over the vehicle.
“For the Great Father,” he muttered under his breath.
As the Wave Serpent pitched violently to one side, trying to find an angle for another blast at the monastery, a hatch opened up at the back, folding down onto the ground, and a squad of black-clad eldar warriors came storming out. They didn’t even pause to take aim, but instantly turned and started spraying the outside of the Wave Serpent with projectiles from their reaper launchers.
Before Caleb could do anything, two or three of the local warriors were already dead. They lost their grip on the transporter as their limbs were lacerated by fire from the Dark Reapers, falling helplessly into the sand where they were crushed under the antigravitic field of the vehicle itself.
Caleb loosed a volley from his bolter, and watched one of the eldar warriors stumble and fall as the shell punched through the armour on his leg. Immediately, a youth with blond braids saw his chance and leapt off the roof of the Wave Serpent, crashing down onto the wounded eldar and driving his blade down through the hairline seal at the base of the alien’s helmet.
But this was not a battle that the primitive human warriors could win, and Caleb was fully aware that he could not hold off a squadron of Aspect Warriors all by himself.
As though triggered by a sudden and secret signal, the locals leapt clear of the eldar vehicle and ran. They scattered in all directions, leaving the eldar unsure about which way to fire. And, by the time the Dark Reapers had organised themselves, the local warriors had vanished.
Caleb shared the eldar’s amazement as he scanned the desert for some sign of the human fighters. One moment they had been running through the sand, and the next they had gone, as though swallowed up by the desert itself.
After a couple of seconds, Caleb’s amazement was replaced by resolve as he realised that he was now the only fighter left to confront the eldar squadron and the Wave Serpent. One by one, the Aspect Warriors turned to face him, as they too realised that he was their last target. Even the secondary gun turrets on the transporter tracked round to his position.
“For the Great Father and the Emperor!” he yelled, stepping forward and letting loose with his bolter. If this was going to be his end, he would make it something worthy of the Blood Ravens.
The last thing he saw was the report of nine reaper launchers as their muzzles flashed with discharge. Then everything went black.
Macha paused, looking down from her elevated position, half way up one of the staircases in the centre of the chamber, and an aura of tension and trepidation seemed to emanate from her. It was as though she were holding her breath. Druinir’s poise matched that of the farseer. They were waiting for something.
&n
bsp; No more. Macha was decisive. She could feel something shifting in the atmosphere of the catacombs. No more warp casting, Druinir. We cannot risk waking more of the Yngir. Lsathranil’s Shield cannot nullify our presence within the catacombs themselves—assuming that it is still functioning, at least partially.
I understand, farseer.
Gabriel. Inform your librarian not to use his staff. His clumsiness may cause more damage than good.
The captain looked up at Macha, fixing her with his narrowed eyes. Did she really think that she could talk to him like that? He was not her lackey, and he would not stand for the dispersions that she cast on Jonas. In the entire Blood Ravens Chapter, there were only a handful of librarians more experienced than Jonas Urelie.
As he glowered up towards the farseer, she simply turned away from him and continued to make her way up the stone steps towards one of the elevated platforms. Either she was unaware of the offence that her arrogance was causing the Blood Ravens, or she didn’t care. Whatever the case, Gabriel grated his teeth in annoyance as he realised that he had little choice but to listen to the alien witch—neither he nor Jonas understood the nature of the enemy that they faced. Having followed the eldar farseer this far, it would be irrational to doubt her instruction now. Despite the logic of the situation, Gabriel hated his conclusion.
“Jonas. We must not disturb the slumbering enemy—stow your staff.” He called the request down to the floor of the cavern, making the librarian look up.
“As you command, captain,” replied Jonas, nodding smartly and making it clear that he was obeying Gabriel rather than anyone else. “But you had better tell those warlocks to do the sa—”
Before he could finish, a stutter of bolter fire erupted from the knot of Battle Sisters that had collected around Ptolemea. The little golden group was flanked on both sides by huge arachnoid creatures that scuttled in aggressive agitation, twitching their long, flexible metallic limbs and stabbing forward with their front legs, lancing them towards the Sisters of Battle like spears. Under their dark hooded carapaces, hundreds of tiny, glittering eyes shone out in dizzying patterns.
[Dawn of War 02] - Ascension Page 26