The Coryphaus barked his orders, and the warriors of the Host closed in.
For three hours they had proceeded along the access tunnel, homing in on the location pinpointed by Magos Darioq-Grendh’al as the access lift that would take them down to the mining facility below, to the last known whereabouts of the Adeptus Mechanicus explorator.
They had encountered little resistance en route.
One Imperial patrol of soldiers had been encountered, escorting some two thousand civilians, and they had engaged and neutralised the foe for no losses. Not all of the civilians had been killed in the resultant slaughter, for it would have been a waste of ammunition to gun them down. Almost three hundred had been killed, caught in the middle of the firefight or hacked down in close combat, but the remainder had been allowed to flee, running wildly back the way they had come, though there was evidence to suggest that most of them had been subsequently taken by the dark eldar.
Of the eldar themselves, the Word Bearers had seen no sign since their first, frantic encounter. On several occasions, the whine of their jetbikes had been heard in the distance, accompanied by the echoing screams of Imperial citizens from further along the tunnels, but no bodies had been discovered that spoke of battle.
“They are a piratical race,” Kol Badar had said to Burias, who had never encountered the eldar before and seemed, Marduk noted curiously, to have been somewhat unnerved by his first encounter.
“What are they doing here? What purpose could they possibly have on this gods-forsaken Imperial moon?” asked Burias.
“Certain eldar sects have been observed taking captives, though for what purpose has not been ascertained,” growled Kol Badar. “I assume that the eldar on this world are such a sect, taking advantage of the confusion of the evacuations to reap a tally of slaves.”
“It doesn’t matter why they are here,” said Marduk. “The only thing that need be understood is that they are xenos, and therefore the enemy.”
“Had the Great Crusade been allowed to fulfil its purpose,” Kol Badar added bitterly, “with the Warmaster at its head, then the foul race of witches and sorcerers would have been eradicated from the galaxy long ago. But they remain a cunning foe, swift and deadly. They are not to be underestimated.”
“Overestimation of the foe reeks of fear and weakness,” snapped Marduk. “The eldar are nothing more than the last fragmented strands of a dying race. We are the chosen bearers of the great truth, the favoured sons of Chaos. We are the greatest warriors the universe has ever seen, and will ever see. We need not be concerned with the appearance of a handful of xenos pirates.”
Marduk felt pride surge through the warriors of the Host in response to his words, and he knew that they would fight even harder against the eldar if they appeared again. He doubted that they would, in truth, for he believed that Kol Badar was correct in his assumptions: that they had encountered a dark eldar sect engaged in slave raids upon this doomed world, and that they expected little resistance. Certainly, they had not expected to encounter members of an Astartes Legion. Marduk knew that the eldar were a long-lived race, and one that was on the brink of dying out altogether. He was certain that the eldar would rue the day that they had attacked the revered XVII Legion. They would move on, avoiding the warriors of the Host, to find easier pickings elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the progress of the Word Bearers was slowed, for it would be foolishness not to show caution after the lightning attack of the dark eldar. Though it defied logic for the eldar to attack them again, he knew that they were xenos, and so could not be understood. He had studied reports of engagements against the eldar, and everything that he had read spoke of their unpredictability.
The priority target was an access lift that linked one of the dozens of sub-ice hab-cities with its mining facility on the ocean floor far below, and it was towards this location that they were moving. On the approach to one of the many entrances to this guilder hab-city, they had come upon a blockade of enemy soldiers, accompanied by sentry guns with servitors hard-wired into their targeting systems and lightly armoured vehicles similar to those they had encountered on the ice above, though modified for use on man-made surfaces rather than the nebulous ice-flows. The soldiers had been ready for them, either having received warning of the Word Bearers approach or merely prepared for a dark eldar attack, but it mattered little.
The Anointed had led the attack, marching resolutely through the weight of fire while Namar-sin moved the Havocs of the 217th coterie up in support, targeting and neutralising the enemy sentry guns. With the Anointed still weathering the brunt of the enemy fusillade, Sabtec’s veteran squad took up position on the left flank, laying down a blanket of fire that allowed Khalaxis and his warriors to charge up the middle, with Marduk at their forefront roaring catechisms of vengeance and hate.
Every carefully targeted burst of fire from the Anointed had ripped another of the enemy soldiers apart, but it was Marduk’s charge that signalled the commencement of the real slaughter. Up close, the enemy had no hope of survival. Hastily fired point blank lasgun shots had seared burning furrows across power armour plates as Marduk and Khalaxis entered the fray, chainsword and axe cutting and ripping. Bolt pistols created gory craters of flesh in chests, and limbs were ripped from their sockets as Khalaxis’s warriors tore through the heart of the enemy defence.
Those cowards that had turned to run were hacked down without mercy, chainswords and heavy axes severing spines and cutting arms away at the shoulder. Kol Badar and his Anointed moved through the mayhem, ripping apart the remnants of the Imperial defenders, gunning them down with combi-bolters and heavy reaper autocannon fire. The Coryphaus smashed the scorpion-legged rapier sentry-guns aside with backhand blows of his power talons, sending them crashing into cowering defenders, crushing limbs and breaking bones.
As the last enemies were brutally butchered, and as Sabtec’s squad moved forward to secure the area, Darioq-Grendh’al stamped mechanically forward, each heavy step accompanied by a whine of servos.
The magos, Marduk noted with a smile of satisfaction, was now truly a being of Chaos. The four powerful arms of his servo-harness were as much organic as metal, and bony protuberances, serrated thorns and hooked spines ridged the once pristine metal limbs. Fleshy lumps of muscle had grown around the servo-bundles and coupling links that joined the servo-limbs to his body, and a large curving horn emerged from the left side of the magos’s head, bursting through the blood-stained fabric of the low cowl that hid his face in shadow.
Waving mechadendrite tentacles sprouted from his spine, and where before they were tipped with mechanical claws, sensory apparatus and data-spikes, now several of them ended in gaping lamprey mouths, filled with rings of barbed teeth, from which ropes of oily saliva dripped. The surface of many of the tentacles too had changed, their metal bands morphing into smooth, black skin, wet and slick like the body of an eel.
The insignia of the Adeptus Mechanicus had been altered and corrupted, for such a reminder of the false machine faith was offensive to the fundamentalist Word Bearers. The cogged wheel of the Mechanicus had been overlaid with the holy eight-pointed star of Chaos, and the black and white skull motif of the machine cult had been corrupted, now bearing daemonic horns and wreathed in flames so that it mirrored the sacred Latros Sacrum borne upon the left shoulder of every warrior brother of the XVII Legion.
As if to emphasise the corrupted nature of the magos, Darioq-Grendh’al paused besides a dying Imperial soldier, who stared up at him in horror, face awash in blood. The magos peered down at the man, his unfathomable red glowing right eye boring into the soldier. Four of the lamprey mouths of the semi-organic mechadendrites waved towards the fallen man, who recoiled away from them in horror. The tentacles were drawn to him as if they tasted his blood in the air, and latched onto him, attaching to his neck, his chest and his face.
The man screamed in horror and pain as the tentacles twisted back and forth, burrowing into his flesh and began sucking away his v
ital fluids. The man died in torment, and as the feeder mouths pulled away from the corpse with a wet sucking sound, blood dripping from their gaping apertures, the magos tilted his head to one side and, with an almost tender, tentative movement, lifted one of the man’s limp arms with one of his own mechanical power lifters. Releasing the man’s arm, it flopped back to the ground, and Darioq-Grendh’al stared down at it in incomprehension.
Amused, Marduk watched as the magos tried to raise the man to his feet, lifting him up gently in his mechanical claws, careful not to crush him in his powerful grip, but the body collapsed to the ground as soon as it was released.
“The life-systems of this flesh-unit have failed,” said the magos. “Already its body temperature has dropped 1.045 degrees, and its cellular make-up is entering corporal decay.”
“He’s dead, magos,” said Marduk softly. “You killed him.”
The magos looked at Marduk, and then back down at the corpse. Then, slowly, he raised his head once more to meet Marduk’s gaze.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” said Marduk.
The magos paused, looking down at the corpse at its feet in incomprehension. Then the corrupted once-priest of the Machine-God straightened.
“I wish to do that again,” he said.
“Oh you will, Darioq-Grendh’al,” promised Marduk.
Having breached the defences of the guild hab-city, the Word Bearers made swift progress through the tunnelled streets and boulevards, encountering no resistance and sighting few living beings. The citizens that still remained in the city fled before the advance of the enclave, scurrying like vermin into the darkness of side-tunnels and alleys.
Marduk gave them no mind. He cared not for the fate that awaited them once the tyranids had descended on the planet. They would all be slaughtered, their bodies consumed to feed the growth of the hive fleet.
They descended deeper into the guild city, guided inexorably onward by schematic maps that flickered across auspex screens, uploaded from the data banks of the guild bastion. They marched through what must have been the mercantile district of the sub-surface city, which was rife with detritus and evidence of looting. Doors were smashed from hinges, and goods and foodstuffs lay scattered across the tunnel floor, along with the occasional corpse.
“Trampled to death in the exodus,” said Sabtec evenly as he knelt by one of the bodies.
“The cowards won’t even stand to fight for their own world,” said Khalaxis, a fresh array of scalps and death-skulls hanging from his belt, “and they kill each other in their panic to escape. These are not worthy foes.”
“Rejoice at the weakness of the Imperium,” said Marduk. “Namar-sin, which direction?”
“East, two kilometres,” said the champion of the Havoc squad, consulting the throbbing blister display of his auspex. “There, we must rise four levels towards the surface, and proceed a further kilometre to the north-east before we get to the ore docks. That is where the lift rises from the ocean floor.”
“Burias, take point,” rumbled Kol Badar. “Khalaxis, move in support of the icon bearer. Let’s move.”
Dracon Alith Drazjaer raised one thin eyebrow a fraction, his almond-shaped eyes glinting dangerously. That one small movement would have been all but unseen by a human, but to the keen eyes of the eldar, the subtle nuance spoke volumes.
The dracon reclined languidly on his command throne, his thin chin supported by the slender fingers of one hand as he stared down at the supplicant kneeling before him. He was bedecked from neck to toe in tight fitting segmented armour, like the scaled skin of a serpent, glossy and black. A mask covered the left half of his face, its barbed blades, like the legs of spiders, pressing against his flesh. A pair of blood-red tattoos extended down his pale cheeks from his eyelids, like bloody tears.
“How many?” Dracon Alith Drazjaer said, his voice a soft purr.
The sybarite supplicant, Keelan, paled and licked his thin lips. Unable to hold his master’s gaze, his eyes moved to the figures behind the throne. A pair of the dracon’s incubi guards stood there, but there was no hope of support from them. They were as still as statues, their faces hidden beneath tall helmets, and they held curving halberds in their gauntleted hands. Keelan’s eyes flicked to the other two figures standing by the dracon’s side.
On the left stood the firebrand, Atherak, her tautly muscled body covered in swirling tattoos and wych cult markings. The sides of her head were shaved to the scalp and tattooed, and a ridge of back-swept hair ran along her crown like a crest, falling down her back past her slim waist. A myriad of weapons were strapped to her limbs, and she sneered at Keelan.
On the right was the haemonculus, Rhakaeth, unnaturally tall and thin even by eldar standards, his cheeks sunken. He looked like nothing more than a walking corpse, and his eyes burnt feverishly hot with the soul-hunger. Keelan quickly averted his gaze, looking at the floor.
“How many?” Drazjaer asked again, a subtle change in his inflection registering his displeasure, and the sybarite knew that he would not escape without punishment. Dracon Alith Drazjaer of the Black Heart Kabal was not a forgiving master. Doubtless he would experience torment beyond imagining at the hands of the haemonculus, Rhakaeth, but not death. No, he would not be allowed death.
“We lost twelve of our number, my lord,” Keelan said finally.
“Twelve,” repeated his master, his voice expressionless.
“It was not the regular mon-keigh forces that we faced, my lord,” said the sybarite, desperation in his voice. “The… augmented ones were there.”
A line furrowed the dracon’s brow for a second, and the haemonculus, Rhakaeth, leant forwards hungrily.
“You are sure?” asked the dracon.
“Yes, my lord,” said Keelan. “It was not my fault; it was Ja’harael. He is to blame. He drew us in, and we had no warning that we faced anything but the regular mon-keigh forces.”
“We should not have sought the service of the half-breed and its kin in the first place,” spat Atherak, her cruel features sharpening. Her muscles tightened, her hands clenching and unclenching into fists, and beads of sweat ran down her long limbs.
“The mandrake half-breeds serve us well,” said Drazjaer evenly, dismissing the wych’s words. “How many slaves did you take, sybarite?”
Keelan licked his lips again. The dracon doubtless already knew the answer to his question. He looked up, feeling eyes upon him. The haemonculus, Rhakaeth, was staring at him hungrily, a slight smile upon his lips. He looked like a grinning corpse, and Keelan swallowed thickly.
“None, my lord,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
“None,” said Drazjaer flatly, “for the loss of twelve of my warriors.”
“Ja’harael is to blame, my lord,” protested Keelan. “If anyone is to be punished, it should be him.”
“What have you to say on the matter, mandrake?” asked the dracon, and Keelan stiffened. Ja’harael materialised out of the shadows next to him, darkness clinging to him like a shroud. His milky eyes stared into Keelan’s for a moment, and the sybarite recoiled at the half-breed’s presence. He was an abomination, a thing that should not be, and his mouth went dry.
The mandrake’s skin was as black as pitch, and sigils were cut into his flesh, marking his damnation. The mandrakes were shadow-creatures. Once, they had been eldar, but they had long ago given themselves up to darkness, inviting the foul presence of others into their souls. Now they were something altogether different, living apart from the eldar race, preying on their own in the darkness of Commoragh and the webway. They existed in three planes—the real, the webway, and the warp—and were able to slip between the realms at will.
“I did not realise that I was employed to safeguard your warriors from harm, Drazjaer,” hissed Ja’harael.
“You are not,” said the dracon. If he was offended by the casual use of his name, he gave no indication.
“Their failure shames you, Drazjaer,” hissed the mandrake. “The
y make you look weak.”
The dracon smiled coldly.
“Do not seek to goad me, half-breed,” said the dracon stroking his chin thoughtfully. The haemonculus leant over the dracon, whispering. Drazjaer nodded, and leant back in his throne, stretching his back languidly.
“The presence of the mon-keigh elite intrigues me,” he said finally. “Their souls are much sought after in Commoragh, and will garner much favour.”
“And perhaps offset a certain amount of your Lord Vect’s displeasure,” hissed Ja’harael.
Drazjaer’s eyes flashed angrily, but the mandrake continued regardless.
“Perhaps you see your time running out, Drazjaer, and your quota not yet achieved.”
A blade appeared to materialise in Atherak’s left hand so fast did she draw it, and in her right she flicked her long whip, its barbed tips writhing like serpents across the floor at her feet. Her muscles quivered with anticipation, and Ja’harael smiled at her, exposing his array of teeth, flexing his fingers. The wych cracked her whip and took a step towards the mandrake, but was halted by a sharp word from the dracon. Drazjaer’s anger was gone, and he smiled coldly.
“It seems you know much, half-breed,” he said, “but be careful, knowledge can be dangerous, and my patience can be stretched only so far.”
The mandrake spread his arms wide and gave a mocking bow.
“The souls of the enhanced ones will offset any shortfall in the quota, it is true, and Rhakaeth desires to work upon one of the enhanced mon-keigh creatures,” said the dracon, indicating the haemonculus with one languid gesture, “though why he would wish to perform his art upon their brutish forms is beyond my understanding. However, he has pleased me of late, and I shall indulge his whim. Bring him some specimens, Ja’harael.”
“You would honour the half-breed abomination with this hunt?” sneered Atherak. “Let me lead my wyches in. You owe me that honour.”
“You would make demands of me now, wych?” asked the dracon. He did not look at Atherak, and the words were said casually, but Keelan could feel the underlying threat in his voice.
[Word Bearers 02] - Dark Disciple Page 16