by Various
‘So, Angel,’ Krom called across the spiked death trap of the cell. ‘You have been making plans, I assume.’
‘It’s what they do,’ Beoric said. ‘Scheme, plot and conspire.’
The Interrogator-Chaplain said nothing. He was lost in something like prayer.
‘Plans for our liberty,’ Krom reminded him.
‘Have faith, Fenrisian,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told him.
‘I’m not interested in faith,’ Krom spat back, the hackles on the back of his neck rising. ‘Faith can’t cut through bars, Interrogator-Chaplain. Faith cannot be wielded like a weapon in the hand or vanquish enemies like a bolt round to the head.’
‘I cannot argue with that logic,’ the Dark Angel said. Krom waited for more from the Interrogator-Chaplain but he returned to his solemn silence.
‘I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,’ the Wolf Lord growled. ‘I should never have listened to you in the first place. We face hundreds of warriors in the arena, thousands in this damned amphitheatre and millions in the monstrous city beyond. Your counsel has simply added a locked cage to those obstacles.’
‘You forget the flames…’
‘A man can walk through flames, Interrogator-Chaplain,’ Krom said. ‘Bars, less so.’
‘You complain like a dog,’ the Dark Angel said.
‘That might be less of an insult than you imagine, Angel,’ Krom said. He growled to himself. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain agreed. ‘An opportunity will present itself. It is in the nature of opportunities to do so.’
‘A plague take your opportunities,’ the Wolf Lord said. ‘The Sons of Russ come for us. They are on their way.’
Krom thought he heard something familiar on the foetid coliseum air. He turned his head and put an ear between the cold metal of the bars. The Wolf Lord tried to filter one sound from another. The suffering of prisoners in the surrounding cages. The death and spectacle of the arena. The raucous appreciation of the audience as the blood sports played out before them. The sound of the Dark City beyond the coliseum terraces – murderous perversion and the sating of alien appetites. Then he heard it. The rumble of rocket engines, turbofans and afterburners. The distant and distinctive roar of Adeptus Astartes gunships on an attack run.
Staring up through the bars, over the wicked terraces of the coliseum and through the serrated towers of the Dark City beyond, the Wolf Lord thought he spotted the silhouette of Thunderhawks against the gloom of the Commorrite suns. As they blasted towards the city outskirts at attack speed, the grey of their hull plating became clear.
The Space Wolf stood transfixed as his brethren dropped from the sky. The Wolves were coming. The Emperor’s executioners, falling like the blade of an axe on the Dark City. Coming for Krom and his Drakeslayers.
The Space Wolf Thunderhawks announced their arrival with the flash of dorsal-mounted battle cannons. Krom visualised the dark eldar of the labyrinthine shardscape watching from their leaning towers, stripping bodies in the alleyways of the Sprawls and picking through the ruins of the Commorrite outskirts. They would look up at their stolen suns, and see the streaming silhouettes of the gunships, arriving to deliver the Emperor’s justice to this benighted place. There would be panic. Havoc would reign supreme. The sadistic would come to know no mercy. Slavers would know the wrath of the enslaved. The raiders would become the raided…
Krom found himself gripping the bars of his cage. His teeth were bared and he was licking his lips. He shook his head to clear it and looked again up at the sky. The Space Wolves were not coming to rescue them. Such fantasies were probably the result of some remnant of the poison in his veins or just the potent desire for vengeance. Instead of Thunderhawks, Krom realised that he had been staring at a constellation of shadowy blots drifting across the webway sky.
‘Nobody is coming for us,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. He seemed to read Krom’s mind. ‘Not the brothers of the First. Not the Wolves of Fenris. The webway is an alien environment: another dimensional reality, even. We cannot cross such a realm in our mighty warships. We’ve tried. Innumerable vessels, hopelessly lost or spat back out upon the galactic plane. Some say that forgotten gods and primarchs still roam the labyrinthine expanse of its passageways. It is a place of elegance and alien intuition that we couldn’t hope to understand, let alone navigate.’
‘It sounds like you have given up, Angel,’ Krom snarled. ‘And that is something a Wolf can never do.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, brother,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘Do you think you are the only Adeptus Astartes with unfinished business in the galaxy? I firmly believe that we can escape our present incarceration, this city and perhaps even this alien realm. It is simply a matter of waiting for the inevitable. Before the suns set on this benighted place I am sure we can find a way to help each other out of these less than ideal circumstances.’
Krom had a pithy response prepared, but he stopped himself. He was too proud to truly acknowledge what he owed the stranger, but also too proud to fail.
‘Shall we work together, then?’ Krom said.
‘We are all of the Emperor’s blood,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said.
‘So are many who have betrayed such a covenant,’ Krom said. The Wolf Lord had killed enough renegades and traitors in legionary plate to know.
Once again the Interrogator-Chaplain seemed lost in thought.
‘Of course, you’re right,’ he said, his words heavy and knowing. ‘A Wolf’s wisdom indeed.’
‘What about him?’ Krom said. ‘Is he of the Emperor’s blood?’
The Interrogator-Chaplain looked across at the cage containing the World Eater. The monster sat silent in his spiked, blood-red armour. His face was a ghoulish mess, a gore-stained skull with a single remaining eyeball staring right through the Interrogator-Chaplain, through Krom, and his own agonies.
‘He is not for this world,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘By all that is right and true, we should finish off what’s left of him, but I fear we won’t get that far. He won’t give us a choice.’
Krom nodded his agreement. The pair went silent for a moment, only the clash of blades and the deviant roar of the crowd filling the space.
‘And just so you know,’ Krom corrected the Interrogator-Chaplain, ‘I don’t think that those suns ever go down.’
A roar of appreciation from a new crowd of dark eldar sadists drew Krom’s attention. The coliseum was spilling over with pale-faced spectators, their features sharp and cruel. Extra leather-bound guards had been rushed out onto the arena wall with razorflails, impalers and bidents. As the screeching applause continued, Krom came to understand that some new gladiatrix, torture machine or monster had taken to the arena.
As the Space Wolves and Dark Angels came to the bars, it became clear, at least, who some of the combatants would be. With an agonising clunk, the barred entrance to their cages rose.
‘Eyes open, Drakeslayers,’ Krom said. ‘Round two.’ As spiked panels began to ratchet through the cells, forcing the Space Marines back out onto the sand, Krom felt Beoric Winterfang at his back. The Wolf Lord’s plate felt like sluggish scrap about him.
‘Do you hear that, Fenrisian?’ the Interrogator-Chaplain asked. ‘That’s the sound of opportunity knocking.’
‘Now all we have to do is find the door,’ Krom said.
As the Space Marines ventured out onto the blood-wet sand, Krom remembered the World Eater. Turning, he saw the skull-faced maniac advancing upon Brother Othniel and the Interrogator-Chaplain.
‘Chaplain,’ Krom warned.
The Dark Angel turned and Othniel put himself between the Chaos Space Marine and his chaplain.
‘Traitor,’ the Wolf Lord called, his voice burred like an unfinished metal edge. ‘After, yes? Supposing any of us survive this – whatever it is.’
‘Whatever it is, this barbarian will survive it,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain warned.
‘Best we kill him now, while we have the numbers.’
‘Won’t we need him if we start losing those numbers?’ Krom asked.
The Interrogator-Chaplain and the World Eater stared at each other with burning eyes.
‘The agony of choice,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said.
An alien roar of nerve-shredding intensity and bombast took the Space Marines’ attentions off the World Eater. Krom felt the sand quake beneath his boots. Something big was crossing the arena. As the prisoners emerged they saw the monster they were expected to fight.
It was a xenos horror, the height and bulk of a three-storey bunker. Despite its size, it moved with predacious assurance on its colossal hooves. A chitinous abomination, the beast was all armoured shell, fang-filled maw and bio-weaponry: a powerful tail, terminating in a hammer-head thagomizer; shoulder-sprouting battering rams; a monstrous crusher-claw and a huge, wrecking-ball symbiont that draped from its other appendage on a fibrous tendril-cord of twisted tendon and sinew.
‘Sergeant?’ Krom said.
Beoric Winterfang hesitated, then understood what the Wolf Lord was asking. ‘It’s a tyranid,’ Beoric said, identifying the beast for the rest of the Drakeslayers rather than Krom. ‘Carnifex sub-type. Some kind of stone-crusher or siege creature.’
‘Weaknesses?’
‘None,’ Beoric answered honestly, ‘as I recall.’
‘Remember Delta-Phrakaasi?’ Krom asked.
‘We had Land Raiders, missile launchers and grenades,’ Grundar Greymane said.
‘What I wouldn’t give for some grenades,’ Haegr Fangthane said.
‘We can’t kill this,’ the Dark Angel Interrogator-Chaplain said.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Krom said. ‘You could talk it to death.’
‘We’re not meant to kill it,’ the Dark Angel said. ‘It’s meant to kill us, one by one, for entertainment.’
‘No torture, no suffering?’ Krom asked.
‘Suffering was earlier,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘Something to stimulate the appetite. This is the main course – and these deviants can’t get enough of a sudden and bloody death.’
As the Space Marines spread out on the black sand, brawny beastmasters wrangled the monstrosity on huge chains connected to hooks embedded in the creature’s armour plating. The thing was clearly an arena veteran. One of its shoulder battering rams was smashed at the top and had a metal spike hammered into the stump as an extra weapon. The creature had lost an eye and wore a leather hood over the punctured orb like a bird of prey.
Sections of chitinous shell that had been ripped away had been staked back into the creature’s flesh and bound with coils of razorwire.
‘What if we tried to topple it?’ Ingrimm Thunderfell said. ‘I’ve seen these things go down before.’
‘Right,’ Grundar Greymane said, ‘but then what? We can hardly punch it to death.’
‘We could go for the other eye,’ Ulf Horghast offered.
‘It’s a tyranid,’ Winterfang reminded him. ‘It could be trailing innards from its headless body and it would still be lethal.’
‘Interrogator-Chaplain?’ Krom asked.
‘This beast could be a solution, rather than a problem,’ the Dark Angel said.
‘Agreed,’ Krom said. ‘We’ve got to stop playing this game for the xenos and start playing it for ourselves. That thing is a biological siege engine, but it’s cut off from its species. It will be confused and easy to draw. Let’s spread out and direct its talents – perhaps get it to take out one or two of these walls and provide us with an escape route.’
As the beastmasters released their chains, the tyranid monstrosity began stomping towards its prey. The dark eldar audience hissed their excitement – the unstoppable tyranid construct was clearly an arena favourite.
‘Understood?’ Krom asked.
‘Yes, my lord,’ the Drakeslayers returned.
‘For the Allfather,’ Krom said.
‘For Russ,’ his Space Wolves roared, before spreading out across the arena.
Moving towards the arena walls, with the dark eldar guards in all their svelte repugnance watching over him, Krom waited for the carnifex that was thundering across the arena towards him.
‘Interrogator-Chaplain,’ Krom called. ‘I know your Chapter likes its secrets, but you can at least tell me your name before we die.’
‘Balthus,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told him. As they prepared for the alien horror to reach them, the pair saw the World Eater stride out into the middle of the arena. ‘Would you look at that?’
‘Maniac,’ was all Krom had to offer on the spectacle.
As the carnifex charged across the sands, shaking the walls of the arena, Krom watched the World Eater walk out before it. He was curious what the Blood God’s champion was going to do. Within horrible seconds, the Wolf Lord found out. As the monstrous tyranid screeched its way across the killing ground it stamped down on the World Eater with the splayed hoof of a chitinous leg. With the full weight of the monster hammering down on the Chaos Space Marine, plate was crushed, bones ground to meal and what was left of the World Eater’s hate-curdled flesh splattered into a sand-soaking mess on the arena floor. If ever the coliseum had told a cautionary tale it was now. Krom was glad he hadn’t authorised a more direct attack.
‘Remember,’ he called across to his Drakeslayers as they spread out along the wall. ‘Do not engage. Be a moving target. Direct the beast’s attentions at the wall.’
As the tyranid approached it skidded in the sand. Krom could see that the beast was reluctant to get any closer to the perimeter wall, no doubt having been doused in flame by the projectors one too many times.
‘Run!’ Krom ordered, and run the Wolves did. They needed to disorientate the monster enough for its instincts to overcome its conditioned wariness of the wall. Stomping through the sand with powered steps, the Drakeslayers spread their number and tried to stay ahead of the alien abomination. Its grotesque head, filled to the brim with daggered teeth, reached out from a clinkered nest of chitinous plating. Bringing up its hammerhead tail and angling its shoulder rams parallel with the ground, the thing stretched its neck and opened its mouth. Two colossal tusks erupted from its bottom jaw, waiting to guide prey in.
As the young Kjarli Tyrvald set the pace, drawing the creature on, Hengist Ironaxe ran the gauntlet of an about face. Turning and accelerating back along the wall the way he came, he caught its attention. Scrambling heavily through the sand, the beast reached out with its crusher-claw. Pushing himself off the wall, to the spiteful abuse of spectators and arena guards alike, the Space Wolf ran between the monster’s legs. As the heavy crusher-claw struck the wall where Hengist had been, spidery cracks spread through the wall section. A guard lifted the telescopic shaft of her bident but the incensed organism wasn’t interested in her.
Pivoting on its hooves, the beast roared its strange, tyranid ire before setting off after Grundar Greymane. As Grundar criss-crossed paths with Ingrimm Thunderfell, the horrific beast stomped its way along the wall. As Thunderfell held its attention, the tyranid’s shoulder-column spike scouring a trench through the stone, Brother Hrothgar attempted to take up the chase. Uninterested in new prey, the carnifex charged down on Thunderfell, tearing away wall-mounted spools of razorwire and arena torture racks.
‘Ingrimm,’ Krom roared. ‘Don’t look behind. Just run!’
It didn’t help, however. The tyranid’s neck stretched out and the beast swept the Space Wolf up in its plate-mangling jaws. Krom watched another of his Drakeslayers die, disappearing into the creature’s maw.
Krom heard the cruel laughter of the audience and felt something wet hit the back of his head. Turning, he saw that the dark eldar guard behind him, a thing of extravagant hair, shredded leather and alien nakedness, had spat at him. Wiping the spit from his scalp with his gauntlet he pointed a thunderous finger at the guard. She flashed a needle-toothed smile of derision.
The Wolf Lord felt it before he sa
w it. The quake of the beast approaching. Hrothgar had tried to lead it away from his doomed brother and the wall, only to have the abominate alien construct run him down. As it reached out with its crusher-claw, other Space Wolves ran in, daring the beast to chase them.
‘Here, you mound of galactic spoilage,’ Krom roared, waving his arms. ‘Here!’
The tyranid snatched Brother Hrothgar up in its crusher-claw and snapped the huge appendage shut. What came out between the mashing force of the claws was beyond description.
A predator spoiled for choice amongst a bounty of kills, the thing simply wouldn’t stop, thrashing and turning like a creature half its size. Space Wolves, drawn in to save their brother, now found themselves within reach of the beast’s monstrous claw, snapping maw and swishing tail. Knocking an escaping Lars Thorgil into the sand with a pounding ram of its shoulder column, the tyranid pinned the Space Wolf to the ground with a hoof. As Thorgil roared, the carnifex leaned in with its horrific jaws and bit the Space Marine in two.
The tyranid’s tail swept around as the creature re-orientated itself. Beoric Winterfang was there. As promised, he hadn’t left his captain’s side. As the hammerhead end of the tail came around, the sergeant ran at Krom. Knocking the Wolf Lord out of the thagomizer’s path, Beoric was struck with the full force of the creature’s tail. Hammered across the sands like a rag doll, he landed some distance away, a tumble terminating in a pile of shattered plate. As Krom got back to his feet, Grundar Greymane and Hengist Ironaxe made it over to the sergeant. After a brief inspection, Grundar nodded an indication that the Space Wolf was alive. Signalling with two armoured thumbs to the sky and then two pointing fingers, Krom gave them the order to get the sergeant away from the tyranid and the death that surrounded it.
‘Fenrisian,’ Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus called. ‘The wall.’
Krom nodded. The coliseum boomed with the malicious jubilation of alien spectators. The carnifex screeched its disorientated desire to end them all. Like all tyranid spawn, it had been constructed to kill until nothing about it was left living. Krom had no doubt that the monstrosity would act upon such instincts, given the chance.