by Andy Clark
Drop-ships, bulk lifters and shuttles were labouring up into that tortured sky, braving the terrors above to escape those below. Running lights winked in the darkness. Runic beacons flashed, and rocket exhausts flared.
Closer, a buckled plasteel walkway reached out over the vertiginous drop to the waves below. On either side were landing pads, supported on frameworks of girders and gothic statuary that were beginning to collapse.
Several of the pads were empty. One had canted at an insane angle, tipping a bulk hauler onto its side. Flames chewed at it hungrily. Only one, pad nine, was still occupied, an Aquila lander sitting ready amidst decoupled fuel tanks and flashing beacons.
There had been guards, Kassar saw, Battle Sisters whose bodies were now strewn in bits around the shuttle. As the Unsung ran towards the landing pad, they saw the Sisters’ killers, a trio of Possessed Khornate Marines whose dead pack-mates lay amidst their enemies’ bodies. The Berzerkers’ bodies were malformed horrors, bone spikes and bulging muscle showing through rents in their armour. But there were only three of them left, and they were in Kassar’s way.
‘Ungifted!’ howled the biggest of the three, its bestial head swinging towards them.
‘Kill them,’ Kassar ordered, and his brothers’ guns spoke one last time. Thelgh shot one, his stolen bolt rifle reducing its head to a bloody spray. The other two charged towards them, howling and screeching. Bolts ripped the second Possessed apart, while Kassar ran the leader through, driving Hexling into its chest and then shoving it backwards off the walkway. The twisted creature plunged away, rebounding from a shattered gargoyle before falling out into space and down, towards the waves below. Kassar, meanwhile, felt a surge of exhilaration and pleasure race down his arm from his sword, tasting the blood on its blade as though it dripped from his own tongue.
‘So much for the gifts of the Dark Gods,’ spat Kassar. ‘Get aboard.’
They piled in through the Aquila’s hatch, feeling the landing pad shudder beneath them. Jade lightning stabbed down, exploding against the walkway and causing runic substations to detonate.
Thelgh was last aboard. As he thumped the rune to close the lander’s hatch, and A’khassor locked the anointed conveyance down as best he could, Kassar and Haltheus made for the cockpit. The hiss of the rain and roar of explosions was muffled as the hatch sealed, and atmospheric engines cycled.
In the cockpit, they found a blank-eyed pilot servitor awaiting the command to lift off.
‘The Coffer?’ asked Kassar.
‘No,’ said Haltheus. ‘Still angry. I’ll handle this.’
Haltheus gripped the servitor by its shoulders and tore it from its throne. Wires snapped and servos sparked as he tossed the warbling unit aside and dropped into its place.
‘Everyone secure yourselves,’ he voxed. ‘This will not be a pleasant flight.’
Haltheus flipped switches and pressed runes, awakening the shuttle’s drives and releasing its grav-anchors. Kassar gripped the back of the pilot’s throne as the Aquila lifted off with a roar, and began to rise.
‘We’re moving,’ said Haltheus. ‘But where? We can’t dock with Excrucias’ ships, even if they’re up there at all, and judging by these instruments there’s a warp storm of massive magnitude closing in.’
‘The Imperials are expecting this shuttle,’ said Kassar, as a fiery explosion blossomed to port. ‘And its cargo.’
‘You’re suggesting the Decaligah trick, aren’t you?’ asked Haltheus, then swore as he wrenched the controls to starboard, narrowly avoiding a plunging spire-top.
‘We have the beacon,’ said Kassar. ‘They’ll be terrified, panicked, desperate to leave. We have leverage.’
‘And we have Kyphas,’ said Haltheus, punching in coordinates and scanning the Imperial frequencies. ‘Why not? It’s like you keep saying, Kassar, we’re about due some good fortune.’
Kassar nodded.
‘Find us a likely target, then get us out of here. We’re done with this world.’
Haltheus fired the shuttle’s retros, and they soared away from the dying spire, into the fury of the storm. Aboard, Kassar slumped back in his throne restraints and looked around at his ten surviving brothers. D’sakh and Kyphas, both leaning back in their restraints and taking a moment with their own thoughts. A’khassor and Makhor, bracing the beacon in his conveyance, the Apothecary checking over the device’s readouts and muttering. Thelgh and Krowl, with Phaek’or strapped in between them, the wounded Alpha Legionnaire braced by his brothers. Haltheus piloting. Skaryth painstakingly etching new kill tallies into a bare space on his armour’s right vambrace.
It was enough. It would have to be. Through deception and leverage, they would make this ship theirs. With it, and the beacon, and the gene-seed A’khassor carried at his belt, they would begin again.
After all, he thought, with one hand on Hexling’s pommel, they would need all the strength they could muster.
They had revenge to seek.
Epilogue
Captain Shandri gripped the armrests of his throne, gritting his teeth as the Dutiful Blade shuddered around him. Servitors babbled binharic alarms, and Naval ratings fought electrical fires.
‘Hail them again,’ he ordered.
‘Lord, Navigator Tzanbindri is screaming at us to depart,’ said Vox Officer Gordin. ‘We cannot tarry any longer!’
‘We can tarry precisely as long as the Emperor bloody well demands,’ barked the captain. ‘Anyone who says differently can have a swift conversation with Commissar Traeda and her bolt pistol. Understood?’
‘Yes, lord,’ said Gordin, turning back to his station, face pale.
Tsadrekha filled the bridge holoscreen, picked out in flickering green lines. Madness wreathed it, fleet engagement runes and malefic manifestation warnings flashing angry red.
‘We are the last hope,’ announced Captain Shandri, his voice booming from loudhailers along the ship’s corridors. ‘Understand that. Know it. With the Mighty Colossus and the Seventh Saint gone, we are the last ship of the fleet still in position to retrieve the beacon, and we will by Emperor and by dammit wait until the last possible moment to depart. We do our duty, as all must in these times, or we die for the Emperor!’
The bridge crew of the Dutiful Blade wrestled with their controls as empyric bleed and malefic energies fought to overtake them. The storm was minutes out at most, and Khornate and Slaaneshi fleets were tearing through the Imperial rear guard. The captain was not exaggerating when he said it was duty or death.
‘Lord!’ shouted Gordin, one hand clamped to his headset. ‘Vox contact. Signifier reads as the Hand of Deliverance. It’s them, lord. They’re bringing the beacon out!’
‘Emperor be praised,’ breathed Shandri. ‘Bring them up on the imager.’
The hololith flickered, Tsadrekha replaced with a vidcam image from within the Aquila lander that was battling its way out of the atmosphere towards them.
Shandri paused as he took in the huge silhouette of a Space Marine, and the colours of a Chapter he didn’t recognise.
‘Unknown pilot, identify yourself in the Emperor’s name,’ said Shandri. ‘Where is Canoness Levinia?’
‘Canoness Levinia fell in the beacon’s defence,’ rumbled a deep, powerful voice from the bridge’s vox speakers. ‘We were forced to intercede. We have the beacon. Requesting permission to dock.’
As Shandri listened to the Space Marine’s voice, he felt the compulsion to do as he was asked, but something made him hesitate, an uncomfortable intuitive twinge that the desire to comply was not his own.
‘Who am I speaking to?’ he demanded.
‘We are loyal warriors of the Emperor,’ said the Space Marine, and again Shandri felt the desire to trust him. ‘Repeat, requesting permission to dock. Do not make us ask again, captain.’
Below, in the analytics pit, robed menials chattered in alarm a
nd sent data-packets winging their way up to his throne readout.
‘My adepts claim to have identified your armour markings,’ said Shandri, though he couldn’t find it in himself to feel the panic he should have. ‘They say you are Alpha Legion, heretics. That we should blast you from the void.’
‘Captain,’ said the Space Marine, his voice deep, resonant, reassuring yet menacing at the same time. ‘My name is Brother Kyphas and I and my warriors are representatives of the Emperor’s most holy Inquisition. The colours we wear are a false flag, a necessary deception to move amongst the traitors of the archenemy long enough to remove the beacon to safety.’
‘A… deception?’ Shandri’s thoughts were foggy, his tongue thick in his mouth. The beacon was on its way, brought to safety by Space Marines, Inquisitorial agents no less. He should comply with them, shouldn’t he?
‘Of course, captain,’ said the Space Marine. ‘This was a war against the worshippers of Khorne, you recall? The Alpha Legion was never on Tsadrekha…’
‘The Alpha Legion was never… on… Tsadrekha,’ said Captain Shandri, and suddenly it all made perfect sense. What a fool he was being, questioning these brave warriors, risking execution for dereliction of duty, jeopardising their precious cargo while danger closed in from every side. Some artifice of the archenemy, perhaps? He would have to pray for forgiveness in the ship’s chapel, if they survived this.
‘Well?’ barked Shandri at his crew. ‘What are you idiots waiting for, the Emperor’s personal say-so? Prep a landing bay. Weapons stand down, clear them for landing. Magos Delitrax, engage the bloody warp engines. We are leaving!’
Captain Shandri’s crew dashed to follow his orders and, as the warp storm closed in to swallow the world of Tsadrekha whole, the Aquila lander swept into the Dutiful Blade’s third port hangar just before its empyric shutters rattled down.
On the huge hololithic screen of his ship’s bridge, Lord Excrucias watched his defeat unfold. The Herald of Pain sliced through the Naval engagement like a blade, Excrucias’ fleet spread out in a perfect spearhead behind and to both sides. Yet though the Slaaneshi warships were making short work of the battered Imperial and Khornate fleets, it was not enough.
Excrucias let out a sibilant hiss as the Imperial shuttle docked with the larger warship, bare moments before it vanished through the veil into warp space. It left behind a world whose skies danced with ghostly flame, and whose storm clouds were underlit by vast flares of leprous energy. The situation in the void was scarcely better, the darkness of space pulling apart like overstretched sinew to allow ectoplasmic clouds and planet-sized tentacles to spill forth.
‘They took the beacon,’ said Phelkorian with manic glee. ‘The Tsadrekhan Unity will drown in a thousand years of nightmares.’
‘But they took… the beacon,’ hissed Excrucias, and a thin trickle of blood ran down his mask as he pressed his tongue to its razor lips.
Excrucias’ lieutenants clamoured.
‘My lord,’ screeched the champion Shaelbol, his tattered skin flexing over his barbed armour as he stepped forward. ‘Give me the pleasure of leading the pursuit and–’
Shaelbol’s proclamation was cut short as Excrucias’ blade sliced through his throat, leaving his head to flop backwards on a thin flap of muscle and skin. The Slaaneshi champion collapsed, milky blood gushing from his neck-stump.
‘Idiocy is a flaw,’ snarled Excrucias, wiping the blade upon his champion’s fallen body. ‘The beacon was never the point, not in and of itself. It was… the act of profaning it, of dedicating its desecration to Slaanesh and offering up all the souls in the Unity for her alone. As you… well know, Phelkorian. That should be your head lying on the floor, if you even possess such a thing any more. Your cultist failed.’
‘He was flawed, my lord, it is true,’ said the sorcerer, gloved hands squirming over the grips of his staff. ‘But I am useful to you still, and to the Dark Prince. My death would be wasteful, a flawed act of petulance and rage.’
‘It would…’ said Excrucias, breathing out and sheathing his blade. His flensing knives were foremost in his mind, and his skin itched in readiness. ‘There is nothing for us here now. This war is over. The Unity falls, and I lose interest. We must depart, and begin our hunt for those who have shamed us twice. This insult will not stand, Twyst.’
‘I agree, my lord,’ said Phelkorian, and his many mouths leered. ‘But before we make our escape, I sense something that may please you, bobbing in the ether. Lost, and prideful, and so very full of secrets.’
The sorcerer gesticulated and a shimmering spray of unclean light rose from his palm, forming a delicate sculpture in the air. A small ship amidst the void, little more than an atmospheric transport skiff. Aboard it, a single soul, full of anger and bitterness at those who had betrayed him, and hate for the galaxy that was about to snuff him so uncaringly from existence. His soul burned in skeins of green and blue, and ethereal snakes twined around him, a many-headed hydra wrought in the energies of the warp.
Excrucias stared for a moment and then, behind his mask, his scarred features twisted into a cruel smile.
‘A lost son of Alpharius, making his hopeless escape,’ he hissed in delight. ‘Signal the ship’s masters. See that he… is rescued before we leave this place. I wish to speak to him at length, Twyst. And I doubt that he will enjoy it…’
About the Author
Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novel Kingsblade and the short story ‘Whiteout’, the Age of Sigmar short story ‘Gorechosen’, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK
Dedicated to Phil, Mat, Jerm and Nick K for being the best mentors a new writer could ever have.
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2017.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Akim Kaliberda.
Shroud of Night © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Shroud of Night, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-78572-667-5
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.