On the other hand, if one of them was completely still, carefully sighting its sniper rifle, the only indication they’d have of its presence would be a hail of deadly razor-sharp discs. The displacer had saved her once, but the device was too erratic to rely on entirely, and could easily fail to react in time; while Pelton had nothing to protect him at all.
‘Two o’clock,’ the ex-arbitrator said, snapping off a shot of his own. It had no discernible effect, but the leaves had rustled there a little too loudly to have been moved entirely by the air currents. ‘Have I mentioned I hate cameoline lately?’
‘Not since the last time we ran into assassins wearing it,’ Amberley said, aiming her bolt pistol down the path they’d travelled before. The sound of running feet was echoing between the glowing columns, and although their timbre was familiar, this was no time to be taking chances.
‘You found the eldar, then,’ Yanbel said, coming into view just ahead of the panting Mott and the blank-faced Rakel.
‘What was your first clue?’ she asked, with rather more asperity than she’d intended. Ciaphas was good at that, a confidence-boosting quip in the face of danger, but getting the tone right was harder than it seemed.
‘That would have been the first shot you fired,’ Mott said, ‘the timbre of a bolt pistol being quite distinctive, and noticeably different from the crude firearms of the scavvy gang.’
‘I appreciate the thought,’ Amberley said, puzzled, ‘but I told you to stay put.’ It wasn’t like any of them to ignore orders, and charge to the rescue like pict-drama heroes. They had too much tactical sense for that.
‘Easier said than done,’ Yanbel replied, turning to send a laspistol bolt down the pathway between the columns. It impacted on a fast-moving target, one she remembered all too well, throwing it back – but there were many more behind it. ‘The spiders followed us through.’
‘In too great a volume to effectively neutralise,’ Mott added, ‘overwhelming our available firepower on a ratio of approximately–’
‘Shut up and run,’ Pelton suggested, suiting the action to the word. Before he could say any more, another of the bloated bodies exploded, shredded by a hail of eldar shuriken, and Amberley flinched.
‘Stay down!’ she ordered, scanning the tangled vegetation. The blurred outlines of three eldar were dimly visible, their rifles raised; only the hand of the Emperor, nudging one of the scuttling arachnoids into the line of fire just as the ranger pulled the trigger, had saved Mott from evisceration. ‘Keep the bugs between you and the eldar!’
‘Unless you’d rather be shot than eaten,’ Pelton added. Amberley hoped he was joking, but the truth was, there were few other choices available. More of the deadly discs were hissing through the air, and spiders were falling all around them, whittling away their cover. It wouldn’t take the eldar long to find the mark, and fell their human prey.
‘Can you detonate the charges by vox pulse?’ she asked, returning fire, alternating between the eldar and any spiders which came too close. A group of arachnoids were attempting to swarm another of the predatory saurians, and paid a heavy price, half a dozen soft bodies ripped apart by talon and teeth before the sheer weight of numbers finally prevailed.
‘No problem,’ Yanbel assured her, and paused. ‘Would you like me to?’
‘Now would be good,’ Amberley agreed, biting back some rather less helpful comments, and wondering why tech-priests had to be so literal. The young magos made no outward sign of carrying out her order, but the ground shook briefly beneath her bootsoles, followed a moment later by the muffled whump of detonation.
‘I hate to point out the obvious,’ Pelton said, ‘but that was our only way out of here.’
‘Maybe,’ Amberley replied. ‘But if it was, the hive’s safe. At least for a while.’ If the Eldar returned with an invading army, it wouldn’t take them long to dig their way through to Ebon Flow, but that was a problem for later.
‘The hole’s still open,’ Rakel said, and Amberley nodded.
‘That’s what I’m counting on.’ Abruptly they burst from the end of the path into the piazza, and she glanced around, orientating herself. The dead saurian was over there, the headless scavvy off to its right, already being eaten by one of the first spiders to arrive, but the wounded eldar were nowhere to be seen. Only a trail of blood, which led straight to the archway, before ending abruptly in front of it. Rakel stared.
‘The hole in the world,’ she said, in tones of awe.
‘A webway portal,’ Amberley confirmed. It was the only explanation which made sense. The eldar had claimed this world long before humanity were even aware of its existence, preparing it for their own use, only to be usurped in the interim. Not the kind of thing they’d be inclined to forgive. ‘And our only way out.’
‘You have to be joking,’ Pelton said. ‘If we go through it we’re dead!’
‘Quite the contrary,’ Mott cut in. ‘We’ll be alive, but somewhere else. Albeit where something will almost certainly attempt to kill us as soon as we arrive.’
‘We haven’t got time to debate this!’ Amberley downed a spider which charged at her, mandibles clacking. More of the razor-edged eldar ammunition hissed through the air, missing her by millimetres, and shredding an arachnoid which had been about to jump on her unprotected back. Grabbing Rakel by the arm, she shoved the unresisting psyker through the archway; the woman vanished, evanescing into thin air. Amberley turned, returning the eldar fire, while Pelton and Zemelda added their own lasbolts to the barrage.
‘Any idea where this leads?’ Yanbel asked, scurrying across the churned-up moss to join her.
‘None whatsoever,’ Amberley said, shoving him through, and sending Mott after him a heartbeat later.
‘Got to be better than here,’ Zemelda said, taking a dive through the portal and vanishing before she hit the ground.
‘There’s a hostage to fortune,’ Pelton said, hesitating on the brink. He sent a final lasbolt into the undergrowth. ‘The surviving eldar will come after us, you know.’
‘And we’ll be ready,’ Amberley assured him, taking a last look round the clearing, and shoving him through. The incoming fire had lessened in the last few seconds as the spiders sensed fresh prey in their midst, and moved towards the eldar, who redirected their fire to meet the new threat.
With a tingle of anticipation, she stepped into the unknown.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SANDY MITCHELL is the author of a long-running series of Warhammer 40,000 novels about the hero of the Imperium, Commissar Ciaphas Cain. The most recent book in that series is The Greater Good, and there is also the audio drama Dead In The Water. He has also written a plethora of short stories, including ‘The Last Man’ in the Sabbat Worlds anthology, along with several novels set in the Warhammer World. He lives and works in Cambridge.
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First published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
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Table of Contents
Cover
Hidden Depths - Sandy Mitchell
About the Author
Legal
eBook license
Hidden Depths Page 4