[Dawn of War 02] - Ascension

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

  As Gabriel vaulted down from his ledge and charged across towards the fray, he realised that the tomb spyders had emerged from previously hidden alcoves cut into the stonework around the central pedestal in the cavern. It was as though they were guarding it.

  The Celestian Sisters were ablaze with fire as Gabriel arrived, each parrying the thrashing arachnid legs with their blades and lashing back at the spidery forms with volleys of bolter fire, which seemed to bounce harmlessly off the hardened carapaces. Ptolemea was also alive with action, leaping and flipping away from the metallic limbs, and hacking into them with her own blades.

  With an abrupt crunch, one of the arachnid legs punctured the stomach of a Golden Sister, lifting her off her feet and into the air. The Celestian did not cry out or yell as the cold, alien talon skewered her abdomen: all that Gabriel could hear was a sharp intake of breath. She didn’t even break the rhythm of her fire, as her bolter continued to cough and splutter against the armoured shell of the creature. Her Sisters turned their weapons onto the offending spyder, momentarily ignoring the other one—leaving it to Gabriel and Jonas, who had just come storming in with his bolter flaring.

  As the spyder’s legs thrashed and interlaced, Ptolemea saw her chance and sprung forward, grasping hold of one of its legs and flinging herself up onto the back of the giant insectoid. Once there, she instantly unclasped one of the long blades that was strapped to her thigh and drove it down into the creature’s carapace, cracking it open with sheer will power. Using the blade’s hilt as a piton, she then threw herself around in front of the ghastly arachnid, swinging from one arm only a metre away from the hundreds of eyes that were hidden under its armoured hood. With her other arm, she unholstered the antique pistol that she had taken from Meritia’s chamber and levelled it into the spyder’s reeling eyes.

  “For the Order and the Emperor,” she whispered, squeezing the trigger and watching the explosive shells punch directly into the creature’s face.

  The impacts made the giant spyder shudder and twitch, staggering back under the point-blank onslaught. It thrashed its legs wildly, casting the skewered Battle Sister off one of its talons and sending her skidding to the ground. Then a series of little explosions strafed along under its carapace, as though Ptolemea had started a chain-reaction. After a couple of seconds, a tremendous keening erupted from the beast and its power-core detonated, blowing the grotesque spyder into lethal metallic shards.

  As Ptolemea pulled herself back onto her feet, she saw the ruined remains of the creature spread out over the ground. The second spyder was still twitching with the last remnants of its life, but its legs were all shattered and its belly was pressed helplessly into the dirt. Father Jonas was standing on its back with his force staff plunged deeply into its innards. He muttered a few words and a brilliant light pulsed for a fraction of second, then the beast exploded into a metallic rain.

  Looking up, Ptolemea could see the figure of Gabriel already striding up the steps towards the eldar farseer, who was nearly at the platform at the top of stairs. Propped up against the bottom steps, Ptolemea could see the heroic Celestian Sister with blood coursing out of the gaping wound in her stomach. Dropping down onto her knees in front of her, Ptolemea checked the Battle Sister for signs of life, but she was dead.

  “Sister Ptolemea,” said Jonas, striding over towards her, as though taking her into his confidence. “These spiders—I have heard stories of them before.”

  Ptolemea stood to her feet and bowed silently to the dead Celestian before turning to face the librarian. “Yes,” she agreed. “They are described in the Apocrypha of the Nightbringer. It is a forbidden text,” she continued, eying the librarian with a mixture of distrust and confession.

  “Are they not described as tomb spyders, as guardians of their master’s tombs?” asked Jonas.

  “Yes, they are thought to protect the enshrined remains of unspeakably ancient lords—a lost species known as the necron. I have never heard of anyone actually confronting a living example,” said Ptolemea, looking around the chamber for signs of further threats. Something told her that there would be more than two of these things. As though to confirm her suspicions, she saw the two remaining warlocks patrolling the perimeter.

  “Necron. Yngir?” wondered Jonas out loud. “Do you suppose that the ancient eldar buried a necron lord in these catacombs?” he asked, drawing the evidence together into an exciting conclusion.

  As one, Ptolemea and Jonas looked up towards the figure of Macha as she approached the platform at the top of the long flight of steps. Gabriel was nearly running now, trying to catch up with her.

  Between them, the two Blood Ravens strike cruisers easily outclassed the single Dragon-class eldar cruiser. Their heavy weapons batteries were pounding at the alien’s armoured shielding, and the fleet of Cobra gunships that had emptied out of the launch bays of both the Ravenous Spirit and the Rage of Erudition were engaging the Shadowhunter escorts four to one.

  “Sergeant Kohath?” crackled a voice over the vox link, as the image of a Blood Raven sergeant flickered onto the view screen.

  “Ah yes, Sergeant Saulh. Good of you to join us,” replied Kohath calmly. His confidence had returned as the tide of the battle had tipped clearly in his favour. He was not fond of space battles—like most Space Marines, he preferred to meet the Emperor’s enemies with his feet on the ground and a bolter in his hands—but victory always had a sweet taste.

  “It seems that Captain Angelos was correct about the eldar, sergeant,” said Saulh, a look of earnest concern darkening his features.

  “Of course,” replied Kohath simply. Taking note of the other’s expression, he continued. “Were you not sent to offer assistance in the battle on the surface, sergeant?”

  “No, Kohath. I was sent to request the assistance of the Third Company in the Lorn system. Captain Ulantus is en route as we speak, but the Litany of Fury is experiencing some problems in the warp. He sent me to request that Captain Angelos cut short the trials on Rahe’s Paradise and make speed to Lorn V. The green-skins are already on the ground, and it appears that an eldar fleet will arrive shortly.”

  More eldar? The significance of the coincidence struggled to resolve itself in Kohath’s mind.

  “As you can see, Saulh, we have our hands full here at the moment. I don’t think that the captain will be sending any assistance today. Besides,” added Kohath, faintly amused by the request after Ulantus had been so disparaging about Gabriel’s departure for Rahe’s Paradise, “I have not been able to make any contact with the captain for several hours. Something is interfering with our signals down to the planet.”

  Saulh nodded. “Yes, we were also unable to make contact with you after you entered this system. Hence my presence now.”

  “What is your complement of Marines, sergeant?” asked Kohath, aware that he was basically on his own aboard the Ravenous Spirit.

  “Just one squad. The rest of the Ninth are still aboard the Litany, en route to Lorn V.”

  “Understood. After we have dispatched these aliens, perhaps you would be kind enough to send a landing party down to the surface to inform Captain Angelos of the situati—”

  “Sergeant!” yelled Loren, cutting him off. “Incoming!”

  Kohath punched the controls of the view screen, vaporising the image of Saulh and replacing it with an external view. He could see that the Rage of Erudition had seen the new arrivals already. The cruiser was pitching around to face the two charging vessels, and a flurry of torpedoes had already been loosed from its frontal batteries. But the alien vessels were faster, and flashes of las-fire were already streaking towards the two Blood Ravens vessels. At the same time, shoals of little fighters were pouring out of the two new vessels, filling the surrounding space with darting flecks of light.

  “Return fire!” commanded Kohath. “And brace for impact,” he added, making sure that his priorities were correct.

  One of the las-bolts struck the Ravenous Spirit square on its nose,
rocking the command deck and reigniting the fires that been extinguished only hours before. But the torpedoes were away, and Kohath saw them punch into the side of the jet-black eldar cruiser as it banked and started to pull away from the combat zone, presumably preparing for another attack run. The other newcomer was ablaze with light already, as though made out of pure energy. It swooped and fluttered like a giant phoenix, spitting out gouts of warp fire into the gyring confusion of the dogfights that now raged all around.

  “Tell me that these were the signatures that we saw before!” yelled Kohath, without turning to the nameless serf. This was already more than he had bargained for, and the possibility that there was another eldar cruiser out there in the darkness filled him with trepidation.

  “One of them is, yes sergeant,” came the reply. “The other one doesn’t seem to have a signature at all.”

  “Great,” muttered Kohath as the Ravenous Spirit came about, and the starboard weapons batteries opened up once again, shredding the surrounding space with explosive shells and sheets of las-fire.

  On the view screen, Kohath could see that the Rage of Erudition had evaded the first attack from the incoming eldar, and it was charging off in the wake of the jet-black Void Dragon that Kohath had hit, spraying its hide with las-fire and sending volleys of torpedoes chasing in its wake.

  Meanwhile, the Ravenous Spirit was caught in between the two other cruisers and the fighter swarms were massing around it.

  “Damn it,” snapped Kohath, as he started to wish he was on the ground with a bolter once again. “I guess that Lorn will have to wait a bit longer.”

  Watching the view screen without satisfaction, Uldreth, Exarch of the Dire Avengers, glowered. He felt as though he had been tricked into coming to Lsathranil’s Shield. He had not forbidden Macha to leave—and would not have been able to even had he desired to do so. And he had not been able to prevent that untrustworthy Dark Reaper from escorting the farseer. But he had been adamant that the resources of the Bahzhakhain would not be misdirected on this futile flight of fantasy. The rest of the Seer Council had been clear about the threat posed in the Lorn system. That was the location of greatest need.

  He had been adamant, but never certain. Passion and truth make uncomfortable partners in the eldar mind.

  Having watched Macha and Laeresh vanish into the webway, and then seeing Taldeer take the Bahzhakhain in the opposite direction towards Lorn, Uldreth had cursed himself. He had cursed his decisions. He had cursed his indecisiveness. He had cursed the fact that it was down to him to make these decisions, but cursed even more the idea that somebody else might have done better.

  Finally, alone in meditation in his private chambers, high up in one of the aspiring spires of Biel-Tan itself, Uldreth had cursed himself for being so passionate and so blind. No matter what the history was between himself and Macha, he should not let it interfere with the security of Biel-Tan or with the responsibilities handed down through the Court of the Young King. If he were honest with himself, he could not even remember the source of the tension between the three of them—his passions raged in a rootless and dangerous way. He just knew that Laeresh and Macha drove him to distraction.

  So, Uldreth had organised a force from his own Aspect Temple and set out in the wake of Macha and Laeresh, guiding his Ghost Dragon cruiser through the labyrinthine webways himself. If there was even the slightest chance that Macha’s visions foreshadowed the future, then he had no choice but to act on them. That is what it meant to be the future. He muttered and grumbled all the way, realising that it took a separation of days and light-years for him to deign to agree with Laeresh on that point.

  When he had entered the system and seen the mon-keigh strike cruiser unchallenged in orbit around the key planet, his rage had been heightened once again. He reasoned that it could mean only one of two things: either the mon-keigh had destroyed Macha and Laeresh, which meant that he had let them go to their deaths; or the unpredictable farseer had come to Lsathranil’s shield precisely to rendezvous with her pet mon-keigh, which meant that Uldreth had been foolish to follow her after all.

  Unable to raise Macha with any type of communication, he had charged into battle immediately, calculating that destroying the mon-keigh cruiser would resolve his problem either way. In his rage, he hadn’t even noticed the arrival of the second pedestrian vessel on the edge of system.

  Finally, when he was beginning to realise that even his Avenging Sword could not stand against two mon-keigh strike cruisers simultaneously, the Eternal Star and the Reaper’s Blade had emerged from the dark side of the planet and engaged the enemy, turning the tide of the battle once again. To his disgust, however, this meant that they had been in orbit the whole time, and that they had suffered the aliens to live. He discovered from their pilots that Macha herself had ordered them not to attack the humans until they received further word from her. But they had heard nothing since she had descended to the planet’s surface, and they could not stand by and watch an eldar Ghost Dragon struggling for its life.

  Uldreth cursed again—things didn’t appear to have become any simpler since his arrival. As usual, proximity to the farseer made everything seem very complicated. As the space battle raged around him, Uldreth’s mind raged with unquiet thoughts: the old Fire Dragon, Draconir, had been right after all—Macha’s vision had been realised despite the decision of the Court to ignore it—Uldreth had lost his wager with the fiery exarch, and now he must win the war against these filthy mon-keigh.

  Tanthius stopped. Despite the jumble of combat in between them, he could see the grotesquely beautiful eldar exarch clearly, its bone-white plumes fluttering dramatically in the desert wind. The two massive warriors glared at each other across the fray, unperturbed by the rest of the battle, focussing their intent on each other. The other combatants seemed to steer clear of them, leaving little pockets of clarity in the sand and glass around each of them, as though the rest of the combatants knew that these warriors were destined for each other.

  For a moment they were motionless, as though preparing themselves for what was to come. Then, with movements meant to be so imperceptible that the other would not really be able to discern them, they both nodded fractionally—conceding these hints of respect for the finest warrior on each side of the conflict.

  Tanthius grinned, unaware of the sickly smile that creased the face of his opponent at the same time.

  “For the Great Father and the Emperor,” he murmured under his breath, still not moving.

  As Laeresh watched the mon-keigh machine-warrior, he could not help but be impressed by its composure. It was certainly a magnificent sight, ablaze in the reds and golds of its kind, towering out of the frenzy of combat like a beacon in a tumultuous sea. A worthy opponent—even Macha could not deny him this battle. He lived for moments like this, but they came so very infrequently. The last time that he could remember the thrill of not knowing whether he would prevail in battle he was facing a daemon prince of Slaanesh—against whom there was much more at stake than merely victory or defeat. Today, facing the undeniable might of a Blood Ravens Terminator, Laeresh once again felt the keening of war in his soul. Once again, he could hear the whispered words of Maugan Ra, the Harvester of Souls—war is my master, death my mistress. For the first time in decades, those words resounded through his being, as though filling him with the power of the Phoenix Lord himself.

  The decadent courtier Uldreth Avenger was not his master, and the beautiful Macha was not his mistress. He was Laeresh, exarch of the Dark Reapers, and he answered to nobody but fate itself.

  “War is my master,” he murmured, bringing his reaper cannon into both hands, his incisors stabbing down into his smiling lower lip and drawing trickles of blood down his chin. “Death is my mistress,” he hissed, squeezing the trigger at exactly the same moment as he saw the flashing report of the storm bolter in the Terminator’s hand.

  It was clear that the alien witch knew what she was doing. She had made her way up the
stone steps towards that platform as soon as she had entered the cavern, and Gabriel was not about to let her get away with any kind of trickery. He may have agreed to co-operate for the purposes of this sortie into the catacombs, but that did not mean that he trusted her. Even as the last of the tomb spyders were dying on the cavern floor, Gabriel was running up the steps towards Macha.

  When he was halfway up, a call from Jonas made him pause and turn. The old librarian had left the remains of the arachnids and was patrolling the floor; he had found something. He was squatting down on the ground behind a bank of machines, inspecting something laid out on the floor. From where he was, Gabriel could just about make out a pair of dirty red boots sticking out the side of the bank. He activated the vox-bead, but a rush a static squealed into his ear and he snapped it off again. With his hand, he signalled to Jonas that he would be back shortly, and then he turned to continue his way up the steps. As he climbed, he couldn’t shake the thought that there did seem to be something unusual about those boots.

  To his surprise, he was caught by the athletic, sprinting figure of Ptolemea before he reached the top. They shared a silent glance and the two of them approached Macha together.

  The farseer was inspecting an ancient and arcane control panel that protruded from the stone in the floor of the platform. It still appeared to have power, and the dials glowed with a faint light. A series of switches were blinking, but they were marked with runes that Gabriel could not read.

  Macha clicked the switches, and a hum started up in the distance, like a generator coming on line. Gradually, the lights under the control dials grew brighter, until they shed light up into the farseer’s alien beauty. Then the chamber itself started to grow lighter, as though artificial lights that had been fixed into the walls at some forgotten time in the past were being revived.