by Paul Kearney
The eldar were similarly unaffected, all wearing the tall, pointed helms of their kind. They looked slender enough for a Space Marine to break over his knee, but Fornix had fought their kind before, and knew how formidable they could prove as foes. Especially the warlock, the one named Ainoc.
Ainoc caught Fornix watching him, and the mask-like helm tilted to one side. ‘I sense your hatred, human. But remember we are allies down here, and must face the pit together.’
‘For now,’ Fornix growled. He called up the plan of the mines which had been loaded into his armour’s tactical readout before leaving the surface.
‘The deepest shaft lies ahead some eight hundred metres, bearing one five three. After that, xeno, we must rely on your nose, and hope that this buried treasure of yours is not buried too deep.’
‘My nose?’
‘Whatever it takes to sniff out the location of this trinket you are after.’
They moved on. The passageway was wide enough for two files now, and the eldar walked on the left, the Space Marines on the right.
Here, the shaft became rougher, and the geology changed. Striations of quartz and mica appeared, glittering star-like as they caught the light of the torches, and the stone grew dark and close-grained. It was basalt, igneous rock which in eons past had been lava.
The man-made portion of the shaft ended, and cutting across their path was a smooth-bore lava-tube, like a giant ridged oesophagus telescoping steeply downwards out of sight.
‘This is the end of the mine, first sergeant,’ Brother Gad said, tapping the auspex screen.
‘I know,’ Fornix replied thoughtfully. In his helm readout the map came to an end here, with nothing but blankness beyond.
Ainoc strode to the front of the party. ‘Now, human, you will have to rely on the subtler senses of the eldar. Stay close behind me, and try not to fall behind.’
Fornix’s power fist clenched and unclenched in a glow of blue-white energy discharge, but he said nothing. The party began to descend the lava-tube, moving more slowly now, settling their feet in the circular ridges that lined it, and feeling the gradient steepen.
‘Brother Heinos, knock in a spike or two,’ Fornix said.
The Techmarine unfolded his servo-arm and blasted a series of thick metal pitons into the stone, the metal sparking as it was driven into the basalt. From these pitons hung carabiners, and attached to each was a small luminescent marker. Then Heinos ran out a thin filament of steel wire from the drum at his belt, locking it through the carabiners, the wire whining as it spooled out behind them.
‘A wise move,’ Ainoc said mockingly. ‘Not all species are as sure-footed as the eldar.’
They descended carefully all the same, eldar in front, Space Marines behind, the Techmarine in the rear. Brother Gad read out the depth in ever-increasing numbers. They were four kilometres down, now, and it was as hot as a steam-bath, the atmosphere inimical to all but the most tenacious of life-forms.
The spool ran out, and Heinos slammed in the last piton, setting down a small, sputtering long-life flare beside it. Fifty metres along from that, and the lava-tube turned sharply to the right, and then branched out.
The even, slippery basalt gave way to cliffs of white crystalline pillars, hexagonal, some as perfectly geometric as if carved out by precise instruments. They reared up on all sides, and the air shifted somewhat, became lighter. Fornix looked up to see the roof of the cavern some hundred metres above his head, more crystals hanging down from it in stalactites as numerous as the pipes of some great organ, all colours of the rainbow catching the light in an arced prism, curtains of crystal sweeping back and forth. It was as though an ancient sea had been frozen in mid-surge, and then emplaced in the cavern ceiling. Some of the eldar exclaimed aloud at the beauty of the sight.
‘This is no geological oddity,’ Ainoc said, wonder in his voice. ‘Our people did this, in years ago uncounted. This is a prayer-space, made for contemplation and enlightenment.’
The Space Marines stood in standard combat formation, sweeping the shadows with the muzzles of their bolters.
‘High levels of chlorine and hydrogen in the atmosphere,’ Brother Gad said. ‘Water vapour in small quantities. It’s coming from up ahead.’
‘This is a holy place of our people,’ Ainoc said to Fornix. ‘It might be better if you and yours were to remain here for now.’
‘I think not,’ Fornix told him. ‘I have orders, xeno. One of them was to keep you in my sight at all times.’
Ainoc shrugged as if it were not important, but there was anger thickening in his voice. ‘Very well, human. But tread softly in this place. You are not welcome here.’
‘I can’t remember the last time I was welcome anywhere,’ Fornix retorted. ‘You can pray in your own time – now let us get on with the task in hand.’
Ainoc hissed something venomous in his own tongue, then barked a command, and the eldar stopped staring around them and followed him in a staggered file.
The Space Marines brought up the rear, the cameleoline upon their armour catching the radiance of the crystalline formations around them, so that they seemed to be bright, iridescent giants of sparkling light.
Camouflage has its limits, Fornix thought.
They heard a new sound: water flowing in rivulets. It crossed their path, a river of it, flashing and dancing in the light. But steam rose from it, and when Brother Gad swept it with the auspex he stepped back a pace.
‘Hydrochloric acid, highly concentrated. If we walk through it, we’ll lose our legs.’
‘Elegant,’ Ainoc said. ‘I believe all this has remained untouched since the Eye of Terror was born. I cannot believe I stand in such an ancient planet-bound construction of my race.’
‘Try elegantly walking across it,’ Fornix said dryly.
‘I’m sure you and your mechanical monstrosity have some kind of idea,’ Ainoc quipped, and stood aside.
Brother Heinos joined them. Fornix set a hand on his arm. In some ways, Heinos was more unknowable to him than any Space Marine he had ever encountered. Even Jord Malchai was a brother. But Heinos had been thirty years on Mars, praying to other gods, and learning rituals no ordinary Space Marine could ever penetrate.
But he was a Dark Hunter, and that was enough.
‘Brother, I think we need some inspiration,’ Fornix said.
Heinos stopped and stared at the twenty-metre width of the acid river. His hand came up and touched the Machina Opus badge which was inlaid on one pauldron. Then he looked at the roof of the crystalline cavern above.
‘All our brethren have coils of high-tensile cable on their belts. I could fire a piton above, and we could swing across.’
Fornix thought it over.
‘Perhaps there is a simpler way.’ He strode over to a crystal pillar, the cameleoline on his armour catching its light, and with his power fist he grasped it near the base. The energy-charged fingers sank into the crystal, sizzling.
‘What are you doing?’ Ainoc cried.
With a grunt, Fornix broke the pillar free of its base and it toppled over with a crash. He stood a moment, while the eldar exclaimed in dismay and anger. Ignoring them, he shoved the hexagonal crystal, half a metre wide and thirty metres tall, across the floor of the cavern, and rolled it to the bank of the acid river.
‘Push it out. Steyr, Pendar, lend a hand here.’
The crystal was shoved out by the other Dark Hunters. Halfway across, the tip of it sank beneath the acid. But the river was not deep.
‘Two or three more should do it. Brother Heinos, lend me your arm.’
The eldar had gone silent. They watched as the Adeptus Astartes helped their first sergeant fell several more of the crystalline columns and drag them to the edge of the stream. These were pushed out over the first. It took four to finally bridge the deadly river of hissing liquid, and the acid foamed white upon the crystal bridge, releasing clouds of gas as it ate into it.
‘Shall we?’ Fornix asked Ainoc, panting.
‘That was wanton sacrilege, and I will not forget it,’ the eldar warlock said.
‘Xeno, I don’t care what you call it, but I had no wish to go swimming today. Now let us move on, while we’re still young.’
The warlock stood stock-still. His loathing of the Space Marines before him was almost palpable. But he lurched into motion at last, and led his people swiftly over the makeshift bridge. They barely seemed to set foot upon it before they were over the river.
The Space Marines followed more slowly. Fornix saw the red sigils blink on and off in his helm as spurts and splashes of acid jumped up to lick at his armour, but the damage was minimal. Before him Brother Gad, gaze fixed on the auspex, slipped and nearly fell, but Fornix caught him with his free hand.
‘Keep an eye for your feet, you young fool.’
Once the entire company was on the other side, Ainoc spoke again.
‘The Circuit will not have been left unguarded. We must proceed with great care now. I sense it up ahead, but there is something else which exists nearby, like a shadow of memory.’
‘A shadow,’ Fornix said. ‘Well, let us see if we can shed some light upon it. Lead on, xeno.’
The company started out again, eldar in front, Space Marines behind, meandering in a double file through tall pillars of crystal like pilgrims traversing the nave of a great cathedral. And the dust they kicked up floated in the air around them, alive and sparkling with iridescent light.
As they progressed, so the light grew around them, and the structures became more regulated, until even the Space Marines could dimly grasp a sense of the overall design. And now there were other elements as well. The pale arching vaults that rose above them were now upheld by sinuous beams of wraithbone, some smooth and rounded, others as sharply planed as the blade of a knife.
They traversed this space for over an hour, while every so often Brother Gad called out the distance and bearing with monotonous regularity.
Fornix called ahead to the tall eldar warlock at the front.
‘This thing you search for – if it is so precious to your people, then how did it end up buried at the core of an Imperial world?’
Ainoc’s stride did not slow.
‘This world was ours once, mon-keigh. It was named Vol-Aimoi, and before the Eye of Terror opened, this planet, and the entire system, were located somewhere else. But the cataclysm of Slaanesh’s birth shunted it through space, stripping it of its beauty and its people.
‘There is an Infinity Circuit at the heart of every eldar craftworld. It contains the souls of our dead, and protects them from being devoured by the warp when we die. The one we seek will contain the last essence of the eldar who once lived upon this planet, their memories, their knowledge. It is something beyond price to us, this thing.’
Fornix said nothing for a moment. There was real emotion in Ainoc’s voice.
‘They buried it here, then, to protect it,’ Fornix said at last.
‘Probably. It is hard to imagine the chaos and destruction of that time, the darkest chapter in the history of our race. Were it not for your deep delving on this world, it is possible the Circuit would have lain hidden and unknown until the Kargad Star died, and the system with it.’
‘Lucky for you mankind came along then.’
‘Lucky for us,’ the eldar said tonelessly, and spoke no more.
They tramped along for another hour – by Fornix’s reckoning they had now marched some eight kilometres from the acid river, and still the crystalline and wraithbone arches rose endlessly above their heads.
Until they stopped, up ahead. The light changed, grew ruddy and green and moved in and out of every spectrum, and there was what looked almost like a gateway, drawn to a point as fine as the tip of a sword.
Ainoc said something in his own tongue, and the eldar picked up the pace. Brother Gad peered at the auspex. ‘Energy readings up ahead, first sergeant.’
‘Life-forms?’
‘No, the readings are strange. And there is a power source also.’
‘Combat formation,’ Fornix said crisply. ‘Keep up with the xenos, brothers, and eyes on all sides. There’s no telling what witchery is up ahead.’
It reminded them somewhat of the Reclusiam in Mors Angnar: a dome rising in perfect strata of black stone above them, set with crystals, and in the centre a single plinth upon which the source of the light flickered and pulsed.
Ainoc gave a glad cry, and led his people into the chamber, kicking up the silver dust with his feet. He stood and looked down upon the ancient device and raised both his hands in what seemed to be a prayer, whilst the other eldar knelt around him reverently.
It was egg-shaped, about the size of a human head, and within its translucent confines light whirled and rippled like liquid, sparkling with tiny momentary stars. It was as though an entire galaxy had been confined within it and set spinning. Something even in Fornix’s cynical hearts responded to the sheer beauty of it.
Ainoc took off his helm, set it down, and they saw that he was smiling, the expression sitting strange on that implacably cruel face.
‘Isha, I give thanks,’ he said. ‘Khaine, I bow to thee.’
With great gentleness, he took the Infinity Circuit in his hands and lifted it from the plinth.
And as he did, there was a hum in the chamber, a deep, vibrating melody which seemed to bring the very stones which surrounded them to sudden, thrumming life.
It strengthened, became a low quake which set the dust in a shimmer. Fornix spat a curse.
‘Time to move, xeno,’ he called to Ainoc. But the tall eldar was staring into the heart of the Infinity Circuit, as rapt as a dreaming child.
There was a series of crashes, and from the walls of the chamber there fell massive basalt and crystal blocks, each twice as tall as a Space Marine. They tumbled to the ground, raising the silver dust in a cloud which momentarily baffled all of Fornix’s auto-senses. But there was movement in that glittering fog, massive shapes moving which had not been there before.
The eldar all seemed paralysed. Fornix strode forward and took Ainoc, shook his arm. ‘Wake up, you damn fool!’
The warlock seemed to struggle. His lifted his head and his eyes were blank. ‘So many,’ he whispered, ‘there are so many of them, and they have been here so long. What memories they have!’
A voice boomed out in the musical, sibilant tongue of the eldar. It sounded strangely metallic, as though echoing from within a steel tomb. Then a shape loomed out of the whirling dust, towering far above the eldar and the Space Marines. A two-metre-long smooth skull with a tapered end, featureless but for one bright stone glowing in the centre of it, and a skeletal mechanical frame below, bipedal, clumping towards them.
Two others like it moved in from the other sides.
Ainoc finally seemed to come to his senses. ‘Wraithlords,’ he cried. ‘My brethren!’ – and he lapsed into his own tongue, speaking urgently.
The three creatures, or machines, or whatever they were, halted. They listened to him a moment, and then all three raised their right arms.
Ainoc clasped the Infinity Circuit to his chest, and shook his head, screaming something unintelligible.
Three blasts of promethium fire boiled out towards him and met in a single flaring conflagration. The warlock shrieked, transformed in a moment into a living torch. In his arms the Infinity Circuit flared out in a flash of blue light, before his carbonised arms dropped it, and it rolled across the floor.
The other eldar opened up on the three wraithlords with their shuriken catapults, and the high whine of the projectile weapons filled the air, needle-thin shards of metal propelled at supersonic speeds around the chamber. They skittered and ricocheted everywhere.
Fornix darted forward, ducked below another flamer blast and slashed at the leg of one of the eldar wraithlords with his power fist. There was a flash of sputtering energy, and his fingers gouged deep into the alien metal, digging through the armour to find the fibre-muscles an
d wiring beneath. He ripped out a huge handful of it, and the thing crashed to one knee. Its hands came up, reaching out as though to strangle him, and one closed over his helm and began squeezing.
He heard the ceramite creak, and for a second his helm display shorted out and he could see nothing but buzzing static. Then the grip fell away, and he was able to raise his power fist blindly and bat himself free from the damaged wraithlord. Beside him, Brother Heinos stood. His servo-arm had bitten clear through the wraithlord’s other arm, and the fyceline torch at his shoulder was busy melting a hole in the thing’s huge skull plate.
‘Get up, brother,’ Heinos said, and he heaved the wraithlord onto its back. But the thing was already struggling to its knees again, flame dribbling from its remaining fist.
Fornix rose, firing his bolt pistol into the felled wraithlord’s head, the muzzle so close that it blackened the alien metal. He saw an eldar warrior thrown clear across the chamber to smash like a broken toy into the far wall. Two more were staggering like puppets, alight and burning. His own brethren were firing steadily, and though the armour-piercing bolter rounds were striking home, and gouging holes in the armour of the wraithlords, the machines seemed to shrug off the damage.
One came striding forward to where the Infinity Circuit lay at the foot of the plinth. It booted an eldar warrior aside, and Brother Steyr jumped up and clambered upon the thing’s back, holding on to the exhaust vents there like a man riding a wild steed. He clicked out three grenades and wedged them into the wraithlord’s workings under the great protective shell of its skull, then jumped free.
But the thing caught him in mid-air, twisting with incredible speed. Energy discharges flared white along its knuckles as it tore Brother Steyr apart, even as the grenades went off and blew it to pieces in its turn. It crashed to the ground on top of the mutilated remains of the Space Marine, and its promethium reservoir exploded, dousing the entire chamber in flame.
‘Get out of here!’ Fornix shouted over the vox. ‘Heinos, get that damned thing!’ he pointed to the Infinity Circuit.