by Paul Kearney
The Techmarine bent obediently and retrieved the egg-shaped artefact. As he did, two surviving eldar shouted in protest and fired their shuriken catapults at him. The monomolecular edges of the tiny missiles their weapons fired glowed in a white stream as they coursed into the Techmarine’s armour. He grunted, and fell to one knee. Blood oozed out of the shredded ceramite.
Fornix leapt forward and clawed one of the eldar to pieces with his power fist, then shot the other in the neck with his bolt pistol. He leapt back again as a wraithlord lowered its arm and blasted out another stream of promethium. It missed him, but caught Brother Pendar full-on, and the Space Marine became a walking fireball. His tortured voice came over the vox.
‘Back, brothers. I will take it with me.’
He stumbled forward, deliberately entangling himself in the legs of the wraithlord. As it bent to seize him a series of explosions went off – the Space Marine had been holding a whole fistful of grenades – and the wraithlord was blown clear off its feet. It began to right itself in that sea of flame, but as it did, Fornix ran forward, set one foot on its head and plunged the power fist deep into the armoured skull. There was a flash of blue discharge, and its struggles ended.
The chamber was an inferno, and in it the last, crippled wraithlord struggled to crawl towards the remaining Dark Hunters. Brother Gad emptied an entire magazine into its head, and at last it went still.
Fornix came out of the flames, burning, supporting Brother Heinos. He and Gad rolled the Techmarine in the dust to put out the flames and then did the same themselves. The fire had shorted out some systems and eaten into the ceramite plating of their armour. Inside Fornix’s helm, he could smell burning rubber and flesh. He felt the pain flaring at a dozen spots on his body, but blanked it out.
‘Just us three?’ he asked, breathing heavily.
‘I have it, first sergeant,’ Heinos said. He opened his servo-arm and they saw that the Infinity Circuit was cradled there, untouched by flame or violence, inviolate and disturbingly beautiful. Fornix dragged his eyes away from the seductive rippling patterns within the device.
‘Can you walk?’
The Techmarine levered himself to a sitting position. Smoke rose from the joints of his armour, and the ceramite looked as though something had eaten it away in long thin stripes. A rash of shuriken wafers were protruding from the metal, their edges still glowing red hot.
‘I can walk. I must. Without me, you will not reach the surface again.’
Fornix looked back at the roaring oven the Circuit chamber had become. Its stones were creaking in the heat. The eldar were black, mummified shapes scattered across the floor, and the armour of his dead brethren was lit from within as the flames consumed their bodies.
‘Let us leave this xenos filth, brothers. Our dead we will bear off in memory. There is nothing more to be done down here.’
TWENTY-ONE
Servo an Sacramentum
The lines were contracting, eaten away inexorably hour upon hour, day on day. And those who defended the line grew ever fewer.
‘You’re sure the message got through?’ Kerne demanded.
The eldar farseer crouched beside him in the shell-hole and rubbed at the blood which had dried on the blade of her spear.
‘Thirty-six hours ago, by this world’s reckoning,’ Te Mirah said. ‘It was acknowledged by a powerful psyker of your kind. He had a name…’ she thought upon it. ‘Grey? No, Graes.’
‘Graes Vennan?’
‘Yes, that was it. He did not welcome our attempts to communicate – we had to try three times, using the words you gave us, before he would accept that we were not bent on mischief.’
‘And the return message?’
‘Two words – Umbra Sumus.’ Te Mirah cocked her head to one side in puzzlement. ‘I take it they mean something to you?’
‘You could say that,’ Kerne said, and he smiled inside his helm.
‘Captain, it will be some time before your people can come to your relief – even with a fair passage through the warp.’
‘We are talking weeks, not days. I know that. But you have fulfilled your half of the bargain, this I acknowledge.’
‘It remains to be seen if it is possible to complete the transaction.’
‘It has been two days since our people entered the mines. That is not yet indicative of either success or failure.’
‘Agreed. And the Circuit is still in existence. I can feel it – though it is faint now, the music. As though it is being constrained in some way.’
Te Mirah did not voice her other concern. The mind of Ainoc was shrouded from her now – the warlock’s psychic imprint had dimmed with the passage underground, which was to be expected, but now there was no sense of him at all, and this disquieted her.
If these mon-keigh meant to play her in the same way she had played them, well then things would take a very unpleasant turn indeed.
She came back to the present. In her mind she felt the presence of her people, fighting in the smoking ruins ahead. Callinall was dug in there with her rangers, picking off the enemy while the guardian warriors laid down a withering stream of shuriken fire.
To their left, a company of the human militia were fighting, their lines centred on three heavy-weapons positions, and to the right was a squad of the Adeptus Astartes, barely to be seen despite their bulk. They fired and then moved and then fired again, keeping the enemy assault off balance.
Te Mirah had seen the Adeptus Astartes fight before, on other worlds and in other centuries, but she had never seen tactics such as those these Dark Hunters utilised. They were familiar to her – the Space Marines kept moving, then struck from carefully chosen concealed positions, before moving again. And they relied on their camouflage as much as on their armour. These were tactics that an eldar autarch could appreciate, and their proponents fascinated her despite herself.
‘I never thought you would agree,’ she found herself saying to Jonah Kerne. Honesty is becoming a habit with me, she thought even as the words left her mouth.
‘To our bargain? I knew if I did not that I would be consigning my brothers in Mortai to defeat, and this world to destruction,’ Kerne said.
‘Your skull-faced colleague does not see it that way.’
‘Brother Malchai is a Reclusiarch, a guardian of faith and orthodoxy. It is his mission to keep my brethren pure and untainted.’
‘He would rather see them dead than cooperating with xenos – he has said as much.’
‘Yes. But I am the force commander here. It is my word which is spoken last. My decision stands.’
‘Captain, I sense that even if you prevail upon this planet, and emerge somehow victorious from this tide of blood, the bargain you have made with me will come back to haunt you.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Jonah Kerne said simply. ‘But if it means Mortai survives, then I will count it worth the trouble.’
Elijah Kass joined them, his blue armour smeared with filth. Both he and Brother Malchai had thus far refused to don the cameleoline paint, and the Librarian stood out against the dun browns and greys of the battlefield.
‘Another armoured column is forming up to the south,’ he said, staring at Te Mirah in some distaste. ‘General Dietrich is mustering his remaining tanks to meet it, but he wants heavy-weapons support.’
Kerne blinked on the tactical readouts within his helmet. ‘Quincus squad, establish a blocking position three hundred metres to your north-west. Dig in the meltaguns and prepare to support the Guard. Acknowledge.’
‘I hear you, captain.’ That was Brother-Sergeant Kagan. His squad was down to six battle-brothers, but they were all Kerne could spare from the main line.
‘Tell me when you are in position, Kagan.’
‘Acknowledged. Moving now.’
‘They’re trying to cut us in half again,’ Brother Kass said. ‘We cannot keep this line whole for much longer.’
‘We must, if we are to hold the Armaments District,’ Jonah Kerne t
old him. And the entrance to the mines, he thought.
‘I will bring another team of my people up to reinforce you,’ Te Mirah said. Kerne inclined his helm in response.
The eldar witch was playing the game well. Her warriors were fighting and dying beside his own with no hint of treachery as yet. It would remain so until the outcome to Fornix’s expedition was known. After that, there was no telling what these xenos would do.
But he found himself admitting to a grudging respect for the farseer. She fought well, and more than once she had single-handedly turned the tide of a critical combat by plunging into the fray with that wicked spear and the psychic energies she wielded along with it. Kerne had seen her fell an entire squad of Punisher warriors with a dazzling storm of psychic energy. When the time came, she would prove a formidable foe.
She seemed to sense the drift of his thoughts, and was watching him. He guarded his mind as best he could.
‘It is nothing I have not already concluded myself, captain,’ she said. ‘We are allies of convenience only – we both know that.’
He turned away. ‘I must walk the line. Brother Kass, you will remain here with the–’ he almost said witch. ‘With the farseer.’ Keep an eye on her.
Elijah Kass nodded.
Kerne strode off. As he went, he felt the leather pouch which housed Mortai’s banner slap against his thigh. He would not unfurl it, not yet. The banner was for the end, when he needed to give his brethren a last focus. And besides, his brothers were trying to remain unseen – a banner flying above their heads would undo that.
He did long to see it fly, though. To bring some glory to this ugly, desperate fight.
For fully twelve kilometres through the ruins of Askai, the Dark Hunters held the line along with Dietrich’s men and Te Mirah’s eldar. As unlikely a combination of allies as had ever been seen on the battlefields of the Imperium, their positions ebbed and flowed along with the assaults made by the Punisher warbands. The Imperium-held ground resembled an hourglass in shape, the top being the citadel, which although heavily bombed by air attack and artillery was still capable of dealing out an enormous amount of punishment. The bottom was the Armaments District with its massive interior walls and reinforced manufactoria. The waist of the hourglass was the vulnerable spot, comprising what had once been the spaceport. This narrow killing-ground had to be maintained if communications between the two strongholds were to survive, and if the citadel were to continue to receive its nightly convoy of munitions.
The landing pads of the spaceport had long since been torn up into a shell-shattered wasteland, criss-crossed with trenches and pocked with heavy-weapons strongpoints. But it was still more open than the rest of the ruined city, and it was here that the enemy had thrown attack after attack, spearheaded by their armour. With the aid of the Dark Hunters, what was left of Dietrich’s armour had thrown back these assaults, but now his regiment was down to barely half a dozen vehicles, all of them damaged in some way. And Dietrich had lost a thousand men in the last two days.
It could not go on like this – some part of the line would have to be sacrificed so that they could consolidate on the rest.
A sigil popped up in Kerne’s readout that he had not seen in more than forty hours. He broke into a run towards the coordinates, moving faster than any unencumbered human athlete could hope to, and when he ran full-tilt into a squad of Punisher warriors, he barely broke stride.
Biron Amadai’s ancient bolt pistol came up and fired six three-round bursts, downing three of the enemy – then Kerne had barrelled into the others before the bodies even hit the ground, weaving and spinning with the chainsword at full power. He kicked a dead Punisher into two more, decapitated a third, and smashed the butt of the bolt pistol into the skull of the last, just hard enough to disorientate the head inside the ceramite casque. He felt the impact of bolter rounds as they scored his antique armour, and the pain as one pierced his side deep enough to flatten against the carapace which underlay his skin.
He ground the chainsword into the face of the one who had shot him, the blades churning through metal, then flesh and bone. And then he bent and put four more rounds through the heads of the warriors he had knocked down.
The entire skirmish took perhaps twenty seconds, and then Kerne was running again, hissing as his body began to repair itself and stem the bleeding from his side. The flashing sigils in his helm went from red to amber to flickering green again. He blinked on the tactical overlay once more – yes, there was no mistake.
Fornix was back.
He made his way into the Armaments District, all the while keeping track of the counterattack going on up to the north, shifting squads around like a man plugging ten leaks with five fingers. Dietrich’s men made way before him as he strode through the manufactoria, past the roaring machinery and the exhausted, half-starved figures who manned it, until finally he was at the main entrance to the mines. A group of Guardsmen had gathered there, and two Space Marines.
Only two.
One was Heinos, his outline unmistakeable. The other was Fornix, though Kerne would not have known Mortai’s first sergeant without the blinking sigil on the tactical outlay to guide him. The armour of both warriors was scorched black, down to the shining ceramite in some places. In others, it had been eaten away like leprous tissue. Acid damage. Kerne could see by the very way they stood that both his brethren were wounded, and weary beyond any human conception of the word.
But what had happened to the eldar?
On the vox, he said: ‘Apothecary Passarion, to the mines’ entrance, best speed.’ And to the pair of Space Marines before him: ‘Report.’
Fornix unhelmed slowly. His face was haggard, and there was the scar of a still-healing burn down the side of his neck.
‘Well, we got the thing we went for, for what it’s worth. The eldar are all dead – not at our hands – well, not all at our hands. There were wraithlords guarding their damned relic, and they took a lot of beating before they went down.’
‘Our people?’ Kerne asked quietly.
‘Brothers Steyr and Pendar died well. Without them we would not have survived. Brother Gad perished in a stupid accident on the way back.’ Fornix’s face clouded. ‘A slip of the foot, that’s all it was. He went into acid.’
‘Their gene-seed?’ Kerne asked.
‘Lost, all of it.’
The captain sighed. ‘Where is this thing the eldar deem so important?’
‘I have it, captain,’ Brother Heinos said. ‘Tucked in below my servo-arm, out of sight.’
‘Does it look like a weapon, brother – something that could be used against us?’
The Techmarine hesitated a bare second. ‘I would say no. The xenos named Ainoc said it was a repository of eldar souls, and I believe he was not lying. When he found it, his reaction was one of extreme joy – and that was his undoing. If it is a weapon, then it was not one he was able to use. It availed him nothing against the machine-spirits of the things that killed him.’
Kerne nodded. ‘Thank you, brother.’
‘Brother Heinos did well down there,’ Fornix said. ‘He saved my life.’ And he grinned, some of his old fire lighting up his face. ‘It just goes to show, Jonah, Techmarines are good for something after all.’
There was the counterattack to oversee, reserves to move around yet again. Another bloody day on Ras Hanem went down into the dark, and the fighting went on into the night. There was no let-up in it now.
Jonah Kerne called a conference of the Dark Hunters command in the early hours, once the frayed lines had been stabilised somewhat. Brother Malchai was there, as well as Apothecary Passarion, Fornix – his armour now made even uglier by a series of hasty repairs – Finn March, who was the senior sergeant after Fornix, and Elijah Kass, who had finally been persuaded to don cameleoline paint on his armour so that he might not prove to be so much of a bullet-magnet.
Jonah Kerne doffed his helm and looked at them all. They were crouched in a ruined basement, ove
rlooked by the shattered remains of one of the city hive-scrapers. It had collapsed the day before, and now there were only twenty storeys of wrecked framework still standing of a building that had once towered hundreds of metres.
The night was dark as pitch, except for the flashes of artillery lighting up the horizon and the spatter of errant tracer through the sky. Above them, they could see the stars that were not stars wheeling in orbit above the city. The Punisher fleet, looking down on them.
‘Brothers, I would have you listen to me, and take a look at this.’
Kerne produced the Infinity Circuit from under a filthy cloth. The gleam and shine of it threw blue light on their helms, reflecting in the blank lenses. The egg-shaped artefact was a thing of such beauty that even the hardened Space Marines were silent, gazing upon it.
Kerne covered it up again.
‘It is this thing which has brought the eldar to Ras Hanem, and this alone. As you know, I made a bargain with the xenos leader. In return for her help with our communications, and the assistance of her warriors, I agreed to let her search for it. That part of the bargain has been kept, but all of her people died in the keeping of it, and so this thing comes to us. I ask you – what should I do with it? Do I try to destroy it, or keep it for investigation by the Inquisition?
‘Or do I keep my word and hand it over to the xenos?’
‘It is a device of an enemy species, and thus warrants destruction,’ Brother Malchai said. Kerne had expected no less from the Chapter Reclusiarch.
‘It’s an odd weapon, if that’s what it is,’ Fornix said. ‘I told you before, Jonah, I do not think this gew-gaw is a hazard to us. Valuable to the xenos, yes, but that is all.’
‘I sense no danger in it,’ the Librarian, Elijah Kass agreed. ‘There are many voices within, raised like a choir. It contains memories, and pictures I can only glimpse, but there is no hostility there. It is alive, but inert at the same time.’
‘Can the egg hatch?’ Malchai argued. ‘We do not know. We have no way of guessing what this thing might be used for. It should be destroyed, captain.’