Lords and Tyrants

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘May the God-Emperor guide you,’ the confessor said. ‘Be careful, my lord.’

  Within moments Fenk was with him, the servant carrying a plasma gun from the Internecia’s armoury.

  ‘Anything?’ Kiefer put to Ipluvian~461 as he marched past the stationary Salamander.

  ‘No, interrogator,’ the calculus logi said. ‘The servo-skulls are conducting their sweep. Motion sensors have picked up nothing. No heat signatures registering. No evidence of recent activity on the vid-casters.’

  ‘Stay with the command vehicle and maintain the search,’ Kiefer ordered.

  ‘Very good, interrogator.’

  ‘Secure the horses. Leave the auxilia here,’ Kiefer ordered Sartak and his Rough Riders. The labyrinthine interior of the freighter was no place for horses, and the ogryns hated cramped spaces. ‘I want this derelict searched for any sign of a recent enemy presence. Anything the servo-skulls might have missed.’

  The Attilans didn’t like to leave their horses, but obeyed the interrogator’s orders. Taking pommel lamps and readying their laspistols, the Rough Riders began to organise themselves in squads for the search. Sartak strode to the open bulkhead and directed lines of Attilans. Kiefer turned around to see that the captain had left Sergeant Urgamal in charge of the horses and Molidor ogryns.

  Khoga stood up, peering out of his top hatch after the interrogator. Ipluvian~461 and the Attilan gunner did likewise. Xerxes let loose a twin screech that reverberated about the hold. With the last of the Rough Riders through the bulkhead opening, Kiefer slipped his bolt pistol from its holster and joined Fenk and Captain Sartak in bringing up the rear.

  The freighter was as silent as the grave. Sand and dust had found its way in from the hold, swirling through the ghost ship with the wind, choking the deck corridors and accumulating in the chambers. Kiefer found himself negotiating indoor slopes, wading through sand-swamped openings and stalking through piles of debris with his bolt pistol gripped tight in his gloved hand and his eyes darting between every shadow-choked bulkhead and opening. Every corridor, corner and stairwell had the potential to be an Alpha Legion ambush. Despite the danger, Kiefer and the Attilans pushed on deeper into the downed freighter.

  The light of the Guardsmen’s lamps cut through the murk, throwing unnatural shadows across the wrecked interior of the ship. The search was not a natural mission for the Rough Riders, who preferred to carry out their duties in the open, in the saddle. As Sartak directed his troops down the corridors and ladderwells, they jabbed their laspistols into the darkness. Fenk stuck to the interrogator like a bad smell, clutching the weight of his plasma gun to his chest. All the while, Ipluvian~461’s servo-skulls zoomed through the structure about them, scanning for heat signatures and movement.

  ‘They must be here,’ Kiefer growled as they entered the freighter’s gloomy engineering section. He felt the pressure not just of his efforts to locate the leader of the Alpha Legion, Sisyphon Vail, and his renegades, but also to finish everything Godefroy Pyramus had tried to accomplish. Between them they had picked through the detritus of this backwater subsector piece by piece and found only disappointment and death. No less than Sartak’s sullen Attilans, the interrogator wanted this over. It was cold here in the bowels of the abandoned vessel.

  Shouldering his plasma gun on its strap, Fenk pulled out the flask of amasec he used to carry for his inquisitor master. He offered it to Kiefer, who stared at the servant with hollow eyes before murmuring his thanks and taking the bottle. As Rough Riders returned from searching the upper decks of the engineering section, muttering, Captain Sartak turned to Kiefer. The Attilan officer played with his greasy moustache, waiting in expectation for the order to withdraw. They had found no sign of the Alpha Legion. It was time to continue the search elsewhere.

  ‘Alright,’ Kiefer said. As he went to holster his bolt pistol, the Attilans drew to a halt. The search was over. It was time to move on. ‘Prepare to–’

  ‘Interrogator,’ Ipluvian~461 called across the vox-bead. ‘I have readings. I have signals.’

  ‘What signals?’ Kiefer said, his heart beginning to race.

  ‘Auspex returns from the servo units,’ the calculus logi said. ‘Heat signatures and coded vox-streams.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The engineering sub-levels,’ Ipluvian~461 reported. ‘Just ahead of your present position.’

  ‘We have them,’ Kiefer growled, bringing up his pistol. ‘They’re here.’

  ‘Interrogator,’ the calculus logi said. ‘I feel obligated to remind you that this could indicate the presence of pirates, as we discovered on Mimbosa Prime, or perhaps a small group of agri world survivors, sheltering in the derelict and living off the freighter’s supplies. My calculations indicate a chance that we might have accidentally activated a dormant system during our search.’

  ‘And what do your calculations tell you about the chances of encountering the Alpha Legion here?’ the interrogator asked, slowly pushing his way up the corridor and through the Attilans.

  The calculus logi hesistated. ‘I calculate a fifty-two point four-six-seven chance that the enemy are located here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kiefer snarled, surging towards the returns the servo-units had recorded. He snatched a lamp out of the hands of a nearby Attilan and pushed on through the benighted freighter. The interrogator could feel his sworn enemy in the darkness. Monstrous renegades, hiding in the shadow. Retreating into their lair. Leading with his bolt pistol, Kiefer held his lamp high. He would find the heretics, avenge his master and rid the Imperium of a hated enemy.

  Slinking along corridor walls, Kiefer aimed his pistol around corners and threw the light of his lamp into modules and antechambers. With Fenk close behind, and Sartak and his Attilans moving in squads searching side compartments along the way, the interrogator moved ever down into the sub-levels of the engineering section. Kiefer’s boots clunked along one of the many metal companionways suspended above an engineering control chamber. As he saw lights in the darkness, the interrogator halted and aimed both his pistol and the light of his lamp down into the chamber below. The Attilans followed his example as they moved up alongside him.

  ‘I have you now…’ Kiefer said, but the illumination revealed only a single rune bank, blinking with dull lights and glyphs. Cables running to the console showed how it had been jury-rigged, while one of Ipluvian~461’s servo-skulls hovered above it taking readings. The snarl on the interrogator’s face faded. He thought that he had finally tracked down Sisyphon Vail, but there was still no sign of him or his warband.

  The servo-skull suddenly whipped around.

  ‘Signatures,’ Ipluvian~461 reported across the vox. ‘Heat and motion.’

  Kiefer and the Attilans aimed their weapons about the gloom of the large chamber. He could hear the hum of power packs booting from dormancy and the hiss of servos and powered hydraulics.

  In the darkness below Kiefer thought he saw movement. Light glinted off the curvature of pauldrons and helms. He could make out ten, perhaps twenty figures in powered plate. Cloaks of flayed flesh clung to the armoured Traitors. Even in the gloom, Kiefer could make out the serpentine swirl of patterns etched into the dirty blue-green plate. Optics burned with expectation. Helmet grilles drizzled breath that misted on the air. The decorative muzzles of boltguns were presented like the gaping mouths of serpents up at the catwalk above.

  ‘Enemy in sight…’ Kiefer roared, yanking back upon the trigger of his bolt pistol.

  Before the blast had left the muzzle of the weapon, however, the grille flooring turned into a cacophonous storm of bolterfire and shrapnel. Stuttering streams of gunfire tore up through the mesh, punching holes through the flooring straight into the Rough Riders crowding the walkway, blowing off limbs and turning the line of Guardsmen into a blood-mulched mess.

  Captain Sartak yelled orders at his men and the barbarians moved swiftl
y, running across the catwalk and racing down a spiral stair that connected to the floor. Dancing through the carnage, they pushed on into the chamber, picking their way lightly through the exploding mesh and merciless bolt blasts. The few Attilans who tried to hold their ground on the catwalk died, blasted apart by enemy fire from below.

  The Attilans fought hard. Bolts of energy flashed off renegade plate, leaving glowing craters, but nothing could stop the Traitors.

  As Kiefer blasted his own bolt rounds down at them, he cursed the Alpha Legion and their nefarious ways: their traps, their scheming and their dark strategies. They had powered down their suits and lain in wait, as still as serpents, ready to strike. With the Inquisition forces committed, the Alpha Legion had initiated their plan. They had powered up, moved into position, watched Kiefer and the Attilans enter their trap, then unleashed the fury of their weapons.

  The interrogator’s bolt rounds crashed down into Traitor Space Marines below. He heard the grunt of an Alpha Legionnaire as a blast from Kiefer’s pistol hammered through his plate.

  The catwalk was shuddering beneath their boots. The Alpha Legion were directing some of their firepower towards the joists and walkway supports, and the structure was now on the verge of collapse. He felt Fenk grab hold of him.

  The chamber reverberated with the excruciating sound of tortured metal as the catwalk started to give way. Kiefer lost his footing and slid over the edge, but was saved from falling by Fenk, hauling back on his master’s cloak. The servant had reached a stable section of walkway and secured himself there. Attilans toppled down into the gloom of the engineering section, the light of their lamps bouncing about the chamber wildly, screaming as the fall broke bones and shattered limbs.

  As Kiefer dangled he saw the Guardsmen grimace through their pain and try to right themselves. The engineering chamber flashed with the frenetic bolts of their laspistols. The Alpha Legionnaires were merciless, however. The Chaos Space Marines marched through the broken bodies littering the floor. The Attilans were fighting for their lives but little could stop the frenetic economy of the warband’s advance. The renegades stamped down on the bodies of prone Rough Riders and ended the Guardsmen with their armoured boots. They aimed the muzzles of their boltguns down at the injured Attilans, blasting off their heads and turning their chests into smouldering craters.

  Kiefer could not allow his men to be brutally slain like dogs. He had led them into this. It was his pain and frustration that had led them into the jaws of the serpent. As Fenk tried to help the interrogator back up onto the stable section of companionway, Kiefer deliberately wriggled out of his cloak. He fell away from the servant and the remaining walkway. Bracing himself, the interrogator dropped down to the floor, many metres below. He landed with a jarring crunch, and screamed with pain as his right leg gave way underneath him with a sickening crack. With a groan of agony, Kiefer fell into an ugly roll that saw his bolt pistol bounce away from his grip.

  The interrogator blinked the torment from his eyes. Attilans were dying all around him as the Chaos Space Marines carried out their slaughter. Amid the screams, the interrogator felt the floor of the engineering chamber shake with the approach of a heavy armoured form. Looking up, Kiefer saw an Alpha Legionnaire standing over him, his ghoulish plate cloaked with the flayed flesh of his victims. A magazine clunked to the floor as the Chaos Space Marine reloaded his weapon and aimed the serpent barrel down at the interrogator.

  Kiefer scrambled desperately for his gun, waiting for the horrible moment when the Alpha Legionnaire would put a stream of bolts into his back. Scooping up the heavy pistol, Kiefer twisted around and put the traitor in his sights. Yanking back on the bolt pistol’s trigger, the interrogator put round after round into the Alpha Legionnaire’s chest and faceplate. With half a magazine blasted into him, the Alpha Legionnaire stumbled back and tripped over an Attilan body – despite the terrible state of it, Kiefer recognised it as that of Captain Sartak. Crashing to the ground, the monstrous renegade fell still.

  In the confusion of the fight, Kiefer could hear Ipluvian~461 over the vox, desperately trying to make contact with him, but there was too much noise going on for him to hear what the construct was saying.

  ‘Send the ogryns!’ Kiefer roared into the vox-bead. ‘Send them in now!’

  As a stream of bolt rounds cut past Kiefer’s face and through a screaming Rough Rider, the interrogator turned the remaining wrath of his pistol at the dark, armoured shapes moving through the chamber. Thrusting his pistol this way and that, the interrogator blasted furiously at the traitors as they moved through the fallen Attilans.

  ‘Come on!’ Kiefer roared. ‘Face me, you venomous traitors.’

  The gunfire inevitably drew the attention of nearby Alpha Legionnaires, who aimed their weaponry through the gloom of the chamber. Once again, the engineering section was lit up. Holding the bulk of his plasma gun at his hip, Fenk fired from the catwalk. The weapon bucked and steamed as the servant blazed orb after sun-like orb of plasma down at the Alpha Legion. Many blinding spheres of agitated energy sizzled into the deck, creating craters of spitting brilliance. Several slammed into traitors, however. Alpha Legionnaires thrashed and roared as balls of plasma burned through their plate.

  Redirecting their firepower, the Traitors turned the remaining catwalk into a precarious remnant of bolt-mangled wreckage. Fenk backed away from the storm, up the walkway. Kiefer sent the last of his bolts at the distracted Alpha Legion, managing to put one in the side of a traitor’s helm, turning him into a thrashing, brain-mulched mess. The shot of a compatriot traitor, aiming through the wildly waving limbs, punched into the wall and floor next to Kiefer. The explosive impact sent shards of burning shrapnel into the interrogator’s gut. The interrogator felt as if he had been cut in half. His carapace was a ragged, bloody mess and his stomach was a bottomless pit of agony. He went down, face first onto the deck, curling up in agony.

  His vox-bead squawked, but he could barely hear the message. ‘­…ogryns… ...ching your… …ition…’

  Looking up through the pain-fuelled haze, he saw more Alpha Legionnaires advancing along the walkway, up behind Fenk. The servant was swathed in steam from his plasma gun, which Fenk was pushing to its limit, splitting his furious fire between the Alpha Legion in the engineering chamber and those approaching on the walkway.

  Despite the onslaught, the Alpha Legion on the walkway continued to move forward, ahead of a helmetless officer. The officer’s plate and cloak had a rancid, understated extravagance compared to the other members of the warband. As Kiefer stared up, the lines of his face taut with pain, he saw the officer glance down. He had a shaven head and a dark nobility to his genetically engineered features, while one blinking eye gleamed yellow and black like a cat’s, indicating some kind of xenos or daemonic corruption. Kiefer knew that he had locked gazes with his opposite. This could be no other than Sisyphon Vail himself.

  Kiefer tried to bring up his weapon but couldn’t lift it. Sisyphon Vail levelled his serpentine bolt pistol at the interrogator from the walkway.

  Instead of the darkness of death, it was the fury of light and heat that found Raughn Kiefer. Fenk’s plasma gun finally overloaded. The servant had intentionally pushed the weapon beyond its capabilities. Exploding with what hydrogen remained in the weapon’s flask, the eye-scalding inferno of the detonating plasma gun wiped Fenk from existence. An expanding globe of blinding light threatened to swallow the advancing Alpha Legionnaires on the walkway. Sisyphon Vail’s patchwork cloak of flayed flesh caught alight and his plate was scorched black. Kiefer buried his head in his arms as the heat of the detonation washed over him.

  The blinding light and noise seemed to last an eternity. Finally bringing his head up and squinting up at the walkway, Kiefer found it all but gone – the detonation had melted the mesh catwalk to nothing. Thunder rumbled through the superstructure of the freighter. Kiefer watched as pieces of wreckage were shake
n loose from the remaining walkway.

  The ogryns had arrived. Like a herd of stampeding grox, they had pounded through the ruined vessel, drawn on by the sound of gunfire. The catwalk leading from the entrance above was gone, but this didn’t faze the abhuman brutes. They dropped down from the elevated entrance like giants of old, landing with thuds on the engineering chamber floor. Despite the agony of his injuries and the death about him, Kiefer allowed himself a grim smile. His orders had finally brought the agitated, claustrophobic brutes down on the Alpha Legion.

  Standing in the carnage with the cratered decking about their feet, they roared their intention to join the battle. Each ogryn was a small mountain of Molidorian muscle. A simple loyalty burned in their eyes, and the sight of Attilan blood all over the deck drove them to distraction. They threw themselves at the Alpha Legionnaires. Holding their reinforced ripper guns with both hands, they blasted the belt-fed automatic shotguns at the Traitors. Some swung their weaponry around like clubs, or even dropped them to physically attack their enemy.

  The Alpha Legion responded with indomitable confidence, pouring streams of bolt rounds into the arriving ogryns. Whereas the fury of such an attack had cut straight through the Attilans, the Molidor Auxilia were an unstoppable wall of abhuman brawn. The towering brutes soaked up bolt after bolt, crashing forward like mindless animals.

  The storm of shot blasting forth from the ogryns’ ripper guns couldn’t hope to breach the renegade plate but the relentless force of its impact was enough to hold the Alpha Legion at bay momentarily. The Alpha Legionnaires were smashed aside. Ogryns grabbed at them, tore their helms off and twisted the heads from their armoured bodies. Others raised the traitors off the ground, despite the weight of their plate, then threw them back into the floor with bone-shattering force.

  Kiefer looked up at the remaining walkway. Sisyphon Vail was beating out the last of the flames that had taken his cloak. His face was a picture of calm displeasure. His inhuman eye blinked rapidly. His remaining Legionnaires were lined up along the walkway, supporting their brothers on the engineering section floor by pouring merciless bolt-fire into the ogryn squad. While the initial attack of the hulking abhumans had surprised the Alpha Legion, the Chaos Space Marines had quickly recovered their discipline. Once again, the tide of battle turned in the engineering chamber as the Alpha Legion started to take their revenge on the ogryns. The fighting intensified, neither side willing to give way.