Bastion Wars

by Henry Zou

  ‘Where is the gene-seed?’ said Barsabbas.

  Sargaul’s eyes widened. ‘You found the gene-seed! We can return, then.’

  ‘No, brother. I have not. I need your help.’

  Sargaul didn’t seem to be listening any more. ‘I must find the squad’s gene-seed. We need to report back.’

  ‘The haemonculi would have been thorough,’ Sindul observed.

  Barsabbas punched the ground. ‘Impossible. We are Astartes.’

  ‘Especially Astartes. Your pain thresholds are so high, you are every haemonculus’s greatest fantasy.’

  ‘What did they do to him?’ Barsabbas asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t know. It is dependent on the creativeness of the torturer and the hardiness of the recipient,’ Sindul said, licking his lips. ‘Injecting mercury into the liver, pumping glass filings into the lungs, stimulation of exposed nerves with contact acids, selective lobotomy–’

  Barsabbas startled Sindul with a roar, sending the dark eldar scuttling for cover. Enraged, the Blood Gorgon hammered the floor tiles with his fists. The tireless banging split the ceramic and brought down scuds of dust from the rafters. Still howling, Barsabbas rose to his feet and began to beat his own naked face against the generator’s iron bearing covers. The ridged metal scored his cheeks and opened up raw, bleeding lines across his forehead. Sargaul began to bawl too, stimulated by the loud noise. His eyes were fixed upon the ceiling and his clumsy tongue worked in a muted, stifled yell.

  Barsabbas raged long into the night. He did not stop. Seized by an anguish that had no release, he began to tear down the processing facility with his bare hands. Bones splintered wood, boots dented metal. He raged until his fists were black and bleeding and the ceramite of his gauntlets was textured with scratches. Dust clouds fumed as he broke through the walls.

  Sindul sheltered behind a storage locker as the world crashed and shook. The Traitor Marine was like an earthquake or a storm. Sindul had little hope of escaping and was helpless to stop it. Instead he hid and hoped it would pass quickly. The noise had promised such fury that even the warp beasts had fled the area, balking at such raw power.

  Gumede, hiding far out in the grass fields, prayed. He thought the end of the world had come. He prayed through the night and did not stop until the first sun crested the horizon.

  Finally, as the suns reached first dawn, Barsabbas grew tired. By then, he had levelled almost a third of the abandoned facility. He collapsed as the lactic build-up in his muscles reached toxic levels, beyond what even an Astartes could ignore.

  Throughout all of this, Sargaul was oblivious. He sat with a look of contentment upon his face as his mind drifted.

  Sargaul lay supine before Barsabbas. Where once Sargaul had been full of martial vigour, the mindless wreck that shivered on the ground could barely be recognised as him.

  ‘Brother. I have failed.’

  Those were the last words Barsabbas said to Sargaul as he stood before him. It was hard to believe there was anything left of Sargaul. Although his body was whole, his mind had been stripped bare.

  They had been warriors together. Sargaul who had burned an entire township at Port Veruca just to goad the local garrison into battle. Sargaul who had claimed over a hundred and twenty heads at the Siege of Naraskur. The very same Sargaul who culled slaves unable to lift more than a twenty-kilo standard load.

  Barsabbas unchained him and lifted him unsteadily to his feet. He had almost forgotten how much taller Sargaul stood than he, and for some reason that pained him. Tall, venerable Sargaul.

  Although Sargaul had no equilibrium to stand on his own, Barsabbas helped the veteran into his salvaged battle dress. He slowly dressed him in his beaten power armour, a painstaking process without the aid of servitor and retinue.

  Barsabbas activated Sargaul’s armour and as the suit hummed to life, the squad-linked data feed connected between the surviving members of Squad Besheba. Its initial system sweep detected almost no cognitive activity in Sargaul’s brain, as if entire portions of it had been excised.

  ‘Gene-seed. I can’t go home without the gene-seed.’

  It was the same monotone phrase. Barsabbas decided it must have been Sargaul’s last lucid thought, the last thing on his mind before the dark eldar took it.

  Barsabbas pressed Sargaul’s boltgun into his hands and took one step back. In his full battle dress, Sargaul looked whole, if Barsabbas did not look into his eyes. Except that he stood upright only by the power of his armour’s servo motors.

  ‘Brother, I have failed.’

  Barsabbas unscrewed the hilt of his mace. Holding the pommel he slid a slender metal tube from the shaft of the weapon, a device to extract gene-seed. The removal of the gene-seed was a duty of the Chirurgeon or Apothecary, and so it had been since the early days of the Crusade. But the progenoid gland, as the conduit of genetic data, was held in even greater reverence by the Blood Gorgons. To the bond-brother, the gene-seed was one half of their own lifeblood and each carried the device capable of executing the final duty.

  He stabbed the tube into Sargaul, in the pit above the collar bone just over the lip of his neck seal. There was a tearing, agonised shudder. Sargaul’s eyes opened, and suddenly they were his again. ‘Reclaim our gene-seed, brother,’ he said.

  There was a flash of lucidity, of consciousness in those eyes. A brief return of Sargaul. For a moment, Barsabbas almost believed he’d needlessly killed his bond. But then Sargaul faded fast, descending into a dazed stupor before expiring quickly, his life signs fading on the squad link.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The decision had been made for Barsabbas. There was no other option but to continue to Ur. Try as he might, he could not turn back. Like the southward bird in winter, Barsabbas was drawn to his objective. It was the behavioural pattern of a Space Marine that he could not have stopped had he wanted to. The impulse to go north lingered over his every thought and action. The original objective was Ur, and until Barsabbas received express orders to desist, his mind would allow him to do nothing else but tread step after step in the direction of that cloistered, faraway place.

  Strangely conscious of his mental conditioning, Barsabbas did not resist. The ability to execute their objectives until death made Space Marines the most effective military formation known to man. If Hauts Bassiq had a sea, he would walk along the ocean bed to reach his destination.

  Behind him, the power facility burned. A high afternoon wind lifted the flames, taunting them higher and higher. None of that concerned him. In his mind, Barsabbas could only picture the city of Ur – a solid polygon at odds with its environment. Sealed, impervious and smooth-walled, harshly artificial amongst the softly undulating clay plains. A segregated island of man amongst an oceanic spread of feral, uncultivated wilderness.

  ‘What now?’ Gumede asked, the roaring fire reflecting off his prominent cheekbones.

  ‘To Ur. It is what Sargaul would have done. Besides, there is little left for me. In Ur, I will find my death or my redemption.’

  ‘You cannot enter Ur. There is no way in,’ Gumede replied.

  Perhaps not for a plainsman, Barsabbas accepted. Ever since the Blood Gorgons harvested the first plainsman stock to replenish their ranks, they had known of the existence of Ur. But even the Blood Gorgons had never entered the city. It was sealed, a hive world with no entrance nor exit; a ziggurat that could not be entered. In turn, the Blood Gorgons had plundered more vulnerable targets, content to claim the planet of Hauts Bassiq as their own and leave the insulated bastion to itself.

  ‘I have entered Ur,’ Sindul proclaimed smugly. Content with himself, the dark eldar lay in the dry grass. He flicked his blades playfully, tossing them and catching them.

  Barsabbas remained impassive. ‘Tell me how you got in.’

  ‘It is not ruled by the Barons of Ur. The Imperial cult has fallen,’ Sindul laughed.<
br />
  ‘Don’t ignore my question,’ Barsabbas growled, shifting his weight menacingly. ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘I was in the retinue of my lord’s firstborn son. We were guests of the Ner’Gal warlord.’

  ‘Then we will not be welcome. You cannot enter Ur. Not in all of our stories has anyone entered Ur,’ Gumede concluded, shaking his head.

  ‘Then you have resigned yourself to following history,’ said Barsabbas. ‘But I have a plan.’

  It was not right for an emissary of the kabal to be treated like a pet hound. The humiliation sat like the cold edge of a rock in Sindul’s boot. Although the mon-keigh’s thrall-worm had been excised from his flesh, it would leave a humiliating scar for the rest of his days. Holding a shameful hand to his face, Sindul harboured the resentment deep in his belly.

  The three had walked for six kilometres north and made camp in a high cave overlooking the alkali flats. When they looked south, black storm clouds had crept up behind them, promising a heavy afternoon downpour.

  Barsabbas departed without explanation, disappearring into the storm as the curtains of rain fell over him.

  It was the opportunity that Sindul had been waiting for since his capture. Only Gumede remained to watch over him, an arrow notched loosely inside his bow frame. The plainsman sat cross-legged across from him, watching the sky swirl darker.

  But Barsabbas had grown careless. By extracting the slave-seed, he had removed the last reason for Sindul to stay.

  The dark eldar was no longer trapped. Barsabbas had slain the survivors of their raiding party and with it, any trace or evidence of Sindul’s disgrace. Alone, Sindul could return home as the sole reminder and the events on Hauts Bassiq would be his words, and only his words. To his great fortune, the Blood Gorgon had, in a fit of human carelessness, even removed his thrall-worm.

  Seizing the narrow window of opportunity, Sindul wasted no time. Although Barsabbas had confiscated his hook swords, Sindul knew the plainsman would provide little sport. Every dark eldar, no matter their status, spent considerable hours drilling on the atami mats of their kabal’s fighting master. Even without weapons, Sindul could use the barbs and edges of his armour to vicious effect.

  Sindul coiled himself into a crouch, tentatively watching the slopes for Barsabbas’s return. He waited until the rain was thick and nothing could be heard except for the hollow roar of droplets hammering the clay.

  That was when he attacked Gumede. The plainsman fought back gamely with clumsy fists and ill-balanced kicks, but Sindul side-sauntered and slipped them almost lazily. He struck Gumede unconscious with a flurry of pinpoint elbow strikes. Briefly, he considered killing the human for sport, but there was no time. Barsabbas could return at any moment.

  As the rain began to cease, Sindul skidded down the slope. He knew the location of the kabal’s lander was not far. If he recalled correctly, and his memory did not fail him, the vessel would still be docked at the power facility, hidden by now beneath metres of ash and ember.

  Retracing the steps he took, slim boots churning in the clay-turned-mud, Sindul fled the way he had come.

  A broken nose was a painful thing. It obstructed breathing, forcing Gumede to take in jagged mouthfuls of air. Blood and snot simmered in his sinuses, bubbling forth to drool in thick strands down his face. Worst of all was the humiliation, a bleeding, unavoidable token of his failing. An abasement of Chief Gumede’s pride.

  When he heard Barsabbas crunching up the rock slope, Gumede tried to wipe the blood off his face with his wrists. There were abrasions on his chin and forehead too but his nose was still dribbling blood.

  ‘What happened here?’ Barsabbas asked as he ducked underneath the cave entrance.

  Gumede backed away, apprehensive of the punishment that would be inflicted upon him. ‘He escaped,’ the chief admitted.

  The Chaos Space Marine stood at the cave mouth, his shoulders barricading the entrance from edge to edge.

  ‘I fought back but I couldn’t hit him,’ Gumede stammered, reaching for his recurve bow.

  Barsabbas seemed to rumble with a throaty hum of satisfaction. ‘I know, I saw him run,’ he said finally. ‘We can follow him now.’

  ‘You let him escape?’ Gumede asked, deeply concerned.

  ‘Of course,’ said Barsabbas. ‘Where would the dark eldar go?’

  Gumede shrugged, uncertain of whether it was a trick question. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Sindul came here by ship. It means Sindul must leave the same way,’ Barsabbas said, speaking slowly as if the chief were particularly dim. ‘When I track him, he will lead me to that ship.’

  ‘You will use it to enter Ur!’ Gumede said, his eyes widening with revelation.

  ‘The dark eldar ship. Guests of Ner’Gal,’ Barsabbas purred. ‘Sindul is a vindictive and deceitful creature, but predictable.’

  ‘Then this was planned,’ Gumede said, pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the blood. ‘He could have killed me.’

  The Chaos Space Marine chortled as he strode out into the rain, already checking the wet clay for prints. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t,’ Barsabbas said.

  Sindul was breathless. He sucked in deep lungfuls of air to introduce some oxygen back into his burning arms. The sprint from the cave had wearied him but he could not afford to rest. Digging with his bare hands, Sindul was frantic, spurred on by the ever-present threat of discovery.

  Despite the rain, the ashes were hot. As the water hit the charred framework, it hissed with steam. Sindul scooped with his palms, scraping at the ashes with his fingers. Like coals, it burnt through his kidskin gloves, but Sindul didn’t feel it. He was running out of time.

  Pushing aside a burnt sheet of ply-wall, Sindul uncovered a trapdoor in the ground. The metal hatch had withstood the inferno but the lock had warped and buckled in the heat. Tearing at the trapdoor in his haste, Sindul scrambled down below.

  He almost fell directly onto the hull of a ship beneath. Scrambling for purchase he swore and then began to laugh.

  The Harvester.

  An Impaler-class assault ship. Thin and spear-shaped, barbed and tapering, the ship could carry an entire crew of raiders through atmospheric entry. The thin, bat-shaped wings were underslung with pods of shardnets and a trio of dark lances jutted pugnaciously from beneath its needle prow.

  It would also be Sindul’s only way home.

  The ship was berthed in a low, underground hangar. It had probably once been the storage cellar for the power facility, centuries ago. Sagging shelves loaded with dusty tools and pipe ends filled the surrounding walls. Empty slave cages were stacked in along the far wall, ready to be loaded into the Harvester’s yawning rear ramp.

  The ship reacted to Sindul’s presence, display consoles becoming suffused by soft purple, blue and white lights. Hololithic displays were projected into the air, displaying the ship’s status in rolling eldar script.

  With deliberate, practiced movements, Sindul delicately placed receptor fibres. The thin threads interfaced directly with his fingertips, trailing translucent optic thread from each of his fingers. He contorted his fingers like an orchestral maestro and the ship responded with an agonisingly slow whine, the Impaler’s thrust engines building power.

  Then an object whistled past his ear, hard and fluid-quick. Sindul flinched, thinking something on board had malfunctioned. But when he glanced sidelong he realised it was not a malfunction at all. An arrow had thudded into his pilot cradle. A wooden shaft protruded out of the soft polyfibre headrest, a shaft fletched with a red and black feather.

  Shrieking with rage, Sindul saw Gumede drop from the hatch and behind him, Barsabbas.

  Wretched Barsabbas. The Blood Gorgon crashed through the hatch and landed on the thin prow. His weight made the large ship dip forwards. Steadily, hand-over-hand, Barsabbas began to climb towards the cockpit.

  Sli
ding back the Impaler’s outer viewport like an eyelid, Sindul drew a splinter pistol from beneath the seat. He loosed a volley of choppy shots at the Traitor Marine, the splinter fire dancing off his ceramite like solid rain. He did not manage more than six shots before Barsabbas reached him.

  Barsabbas tore away the canopy and his hand shot for Sindul’s throat, clamping tight and dragging him out, tearing him out of the seat restraints. He shook the eldar, knocking his limbs loosely about the air, shaking the pistol out of his hand.

  ‘Look how senseless that was!’ Barsabbas shouted through his vox-grille.

  ‘Don’t kill me!’ Sindul managed to gasp in-between his head lashing back and forth upon his neck.

  Maintaining the chokehold, Barsabbas unhooked the lotus-head mace from his girdle and he looped it back like a loaded catapult. ‘You knew escape would be your death, but you took that choice. I see no other way.’

  ‘You need me to fly the ship!’ wailed Sindul.

  Barsabbas lowered his mace. ‘Why?’

  ‘To take you to Ur.’

  Barsabbas let Sindul drop bonelessly back into the pilot seat. ‘I’m glad you understand. Fly well, and perhaps next time I will let you escape for real.’

  ‘You allowed me to escape?’

  ‘To lead me to your ship – yes. Ask yourself this, would you have ever told me? No, yours is a patient race. As frail as your physical bodies may be, the eldar have always been patient. You could have waited for years before you tried to escape to this ship. You work differently from the short-lived races.’

  The dark eldar allowed himself a gloating smirk.

  Barsabbas crouched down and peered closely at Sindul, his helmet almost level with the dark eldar’s face. ‘I may be of the Chaos flock, but I am not an irrational man. You cannot coerce me through fear alone. Take me to Ur. Do so without delay or deception. In return, when I leave Hauts Bassiq, you will be free to go.’

  ‘If you leave Hauts Bassiq,’ Sindul corrected.