Void Stalker (30 page)

‘Ave dominus nox, Talos. We’ll see you in the catacombs.’

Talos heard the massive grind of the drop-pod’s clamps disengaging, and Uzas’s joyful howling. Their descent through the atmosphere carried them out of vox range in a matter of heartbeats, silencing Mercutian’s curses and Uzas’s laughter in the same second.

Talos and Cyrion butchered their way onward.

The whispering continued.
A chorus of soft voices exchanged words and laughter, each of them like silken mist on the ears, even through the hiss of vox distortion.

Variel had been listening to it for almost half an hour, his casual interest becoming keen attention, quickly evolving into rapt focus. Septimus watched the Apothecary more often than he watched the hololithic now. Variel’s colourless lips never stopped moving, softly mouthing the alien words as he translated them in his mind.

‘What are–’ Septimus tried again, only to be silenced by a raised fist. Variel made ready to backhand him if he spoke again.

‘Deltrian,’ the Apothecary said after several heartbeats had passed.

‘Flayer,’ acknowledged the adept.

‘The game has changed. Get me within vox reach of Tsagualsa’s surface.’

Deltrian’s eye lenses rotated and refocused in their sockets. ‘I request a reason for a course of action in utter opposition to our orders and planned processes.’

Variel was still distracted, listening to the breathy purring of eldar language. Septimus thought it sounded like a song of sorts, sung by those who hoped no one hears their voices. It was beautiful, yet it still made his skin crawl.

‘The game has changed,’ Variel repeated. ‘How could we have known? We couldn’t. We could never have guessed this.’ He turned around the humble command deck, his ice-blue eyes looking through everything, alighting on nothing.

Deltrian was unfazed by Variel’s distant murmurs. ‘I restate my request, altering the terms to make it a demand. Provide adequate reasoning, or cease your vocalisation of orders you have no authority to give.’

Variel finally fixed his gaze on something – specifically, Deltrian, in his red robes of office, with his chrome skull face half-hidden in the folds of his hood.

‘The eldar,’ said Variel. ‘They whisper of their own prophecies, of the Eighth Legion bleeding them without mercy in the decades that follow. Do you understand? They are not here because of Talos’s psychic scream. They have never once spoken of it. They speak of nothing but our foolishness and their need to sever the strands of an unwanted future from the skeins of fate.’

Deltrian made an error-abort sound, in his equivalent of a dismissive grunt. ‘Enough,’ the adept said. ‘Alien witchery is irrelevant. Xenos superstition is irrelevant. Our orders are all that remains relevant.’

Variel’s eyes were distant again. He was listening to the aliens’ sibilant voices sing in their whispery tongue.

‘No.’ He blinked, staring at the adept once more. ‘You do not understand. They seek to prevent some future… some event yet to come, where Talos leads the Eighth Legion in a crusade against their dying species. They chant of it, like children offering prayers in the hope of a god taking pity upon them. Do you hear me? Are you listening to the words I speak?’

Septimus backed away as Variel walked to stare down at the seated adept. He’d never seen Variel’s blood up like this.

‘They fight to prevent a future that frightens them,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘One they cannot allow to come to pass. These ships… This is a vast risk for them. A colossal gamble. They’ve backed us into a corner, using ships crewed by spirits, saving their precious alien lives for the final blow.
That
is how much they need Talos dead.’

Deltrian repeated the negative sound. ‘Purely supposition based on xenos whisperings.’

‘And if they’re right? The Prophet of the Eighth Legion will rise at the end of the Dark Millennium and bleed the Ulthwéan eldar far beyond what their dwindling population can sustain. Are you so blind and deaf to everything outside your work that you can’t hear my words? Listen to me, you heathen warlock: in these futures they’ve seen, he brings the Legion itself against them. These alien dogs believe he
unites
the Eighth Legion.
’

Loader Primaris Marlonah
secured herself in the restraint throne, shaking hands fumbling with the buckles.
Click
, went the first lock.
Click
, went the second. She didn’t know it, but she was mumbling and swearing to herself as she worked.

Dumb luck had found her on the primary crew decks rather than at her station when the battle took a turn for the worst. She’d been on her way back to the starboard tertiary munitions deck, after an emergency discharge from the apothecarion in the wake of another malfunction in her augmetic leg.

The limb itself was still a bit of a bitch. She doubted she’d ever get used to it, no matter what the sawbones said.

The sirens screamed before she’d even managed to hobble halfway back to her duty shift. These weren’t the rapid pulses of a call to battle stations, or the long caterwauling of pre-warp flight readiness. She’d never heard this siren before, but she knew what it was the moment it started screaming.

Evacuation.

Panic flooded the decks, with crew running in every direction. She’d been close enough that even her limping run kept her ahead of the pack, but the corridors leading to the pod bays were choked by the many dozens of souls that had been even faster, even closer, or even luckier.

When her time had come, she was a trembling, sweating wreck that fairly spilled into the last throne inside the pod. Outside the pod’s closing doors, people were shouting and beating on the walls. Some were trampling each other. Others were stabbing and shooting, desperate to get to the pods before the ship’s remains made one brutal bitch of a crater in the grey landscape.

Even through her relief as the last buckled
click,
she felt the ache of sympathy for those still trapped outside, hunting for pods. She couldn’t look away from their faces and fists, pressed to the dense glass.

As she watched, mouthing the word ‘sorry’ to each pair of eyes she met, the clamouring faces were swept aside in a blur of cold blue and wet red. Blood smeared across the viewing glass, while shadows danced beyond, just out of sight.

‘What the…’ one of the other crew members stammered from his seat in the opposite restraint throne.

The door shuddered in a way no amount of beating fists and yelled curses had managed to inflict. The second time was worse: it shook to its reinforced hinges.

It came away the third time, letting in a burst of sickeningly hot air, and revealing a scene from a carcass pit.

Two of the masters stood outside, ankle-deep in the dead, their blades dripping with blood. One of them hunched down to enter the confines of the pod. No thrones remained untaken, and even if they had been free, none of the Legion could fit their bulky armoured forms into a human restraint throne.

There was no debate, no hesitation. The Night Lord rammed his golden sword through the chest of the closest human, ending any resistance, and dragged the spasming body from its seat. The harnesses snapped as the Legionary pulled with one, hard tug, before hurling the body outside into the corridor to lie amongst the slain.

The second Legionary entered, his armour joints snarling as he mimicked the first murder. The second man to die shamed himself by weeping and begging before he was cut apart. Two of the restraint thrones followed, torn from their moorings and hurled out into the corridor. The towering figures meant to empty the pod in order to create the room they needed to stand within it.

Marlonah was scrambling to unlock her restraints when the third man was killed and thrown outside.

‘I’ll get out!’ she was yelling. ‘I’ll get out,
I’ll get out –
I swear I will.’

She looked up as the hunched shadow fell across her, blocking out the dim red illumination from the central emergency light.

‘I know you,’ the master growled in his vox-voice. ‘Septimus argued with one of the human surgeons to grant you that leg.’

‘Yes… Yes…’ She thought she was agreeing. In truth, she had no idea whether she was even speaking aloud.

The Night Lord reached to slam the reinforced door closed, leaving the bloodbath on the other side.

‘Go,’ he growled to his brother.

The other warrior, who was forced to stand stooped in the same half-crouch, reached to the central column and pulled the release levers – one,
crunch
; two,
crunch
; three,
crunch
.

The pod lurched in its cradle, and the whine of its propulsion systems became a forlorn roar.

When the escape pod fell, Marlonah felt the floor drop out from under her in the same moment that her stomach tried to find a new home in her throat. She wasn’t sure if she was screaming or laughing as they rattled their way down to safety, but in actuality, she was doing both.

Deltrian had to
admit, he was struggling to make a decision. Talos had demanded a set process of actions from him, but the Apothecary (while grotesquely emotional) made a persuasive case.

And yet it still came down to practicalities and probability. Deltrian knew this better than anyone.

‘To process the odds of this vessel surviving a direct engagement with the enemy fleet requires a calculation few biological minds would be able to comprehend. Suffice to say, in terms you will understand, the odds are not in our favour.’

Had he been able to smile sincerely rather than as a natural by-product of a metallic skull for a face, Deltrian would probably have grinned in that moment. He was extremely proud of his mastery of understatement.

Variel wasn’t moved, nor was he amused. ‘Focus the cogs and gears that rattle behind your eyes,’ he said. ‘If the eldar are so fearful of this prophecy coming to pass, then it means there’s a chance Talos
does
survive the war down there. And
we
are that chance. My brother has a destiny beyond a miserable death in the dust of this worthless world, and I mean to give him the chance to seize it.’

Deltrian’s emotionless facade didn’t even alter. ‘Talos’s final orders are all that remain relevant,’ he stated. ‘This vessel is now the gene-seed repository for over one hundred slain
legionaries
of the Eighth. This genetic material must reach the Great Eye. That is my oath to Talos. My sworn promise.’ Those last words made him acutely uncomfortable.

‘You run, then. I will not.’ Variel turned back to Septimus. ‘You. The Seventh.’

‘Lord?’

‘Ready your gunship. Get me down to Tsagualsa.’

XXIV

CATACOMBS

Ten thousand years
ago, the fortress stood defiant as one of the last great bastions of Legiones Astartes invincibility in the material universe. The coming of the Primogenitors made a lie of that claim. The centuries since had been no kinder. Jagged, eroded battlements thrust up from the lifeless earth, broken by ancient explosives and the bite of a million dust storms.

Little remained of the fortress’s great walls beyond hills of rubble, half-swallowed by the grey soil. Where the battlements still existed, they were toothless and tumbledown things, devoid of grandeur, brought low to the ground with the passing of the years.

Talos stood in the grey ruins, watching the
Echo of Damnation
die. Grit in the wind crackled against his armour as he stood in the open, surrounded by defanged, fallen walls. The warship made an agonisingly slow dive towards the horizon, shedding wreckage as it burned, trailing a thick plume of smoke.

‘How many were still on the ship?’ asked a female voice at his side. Talos didn’t glance down at her; he’d forgotten Marlonah was still there. The fact she’d even considered the question was the starkest difference between them both in that moment.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. The truth was that he didn’t care. His masters had made him into a weapon. He felt no guilt at the loss of his humanity, even when it caught him by surprise in times like these.

The
Echo of Damnation
went down behind the southern mountains. Talos saw the flash of its reactor flare going critical, lighting the sky like a second sunset for a single, painful heartbeat.

‘One,’ he counted. ‘Two. Three. Four. Five.’

A roll of thunder broke above them, fainter than the voice of a true storm, but all the sweeter for it.

‘The
Echo
’s
final cry
,’
Cyrion said from behind.

Talos nodded. ‘Come. The eldar will be on us soon.’

The two warriors walked past their downed escape pod, through the uneven remnants of the landscape left by the erosion. Marlonah kept pace as best she could, watching them hunting through the broken buildings and ruined walls, seeking an uncollapsed tunnel that would lead deeper into the labyrinth.

After several minutes, they came across an empty Legion drop-pod, its paint seared off during descent, and its doors open in full bloom. It had shattered through a weak roof in what had once been a large domed chamber. Little else but two walls and a span of arcing ceiling remained, like the filthy ruins discovered by xeno-archaeologists on long-dead worlds. What was left of their grand fortress looked like nothing more than the remains of a dead civilisation, unearthed millennia after a great extinction.

Marlonah heard the clicking of the two warriors conversing over their helm voxes.

‘Can I come with you?’ she mustered the courage to ask.

‘That is unwise,’ Cyrion told her. ‘If you wish to live, your best chance at survival is making the three-week journey south, towards the city we allowed to survive. If the scream was loud enough, the Imperium will come one night, and save those souls.’

She didn’t know what any of that meant. All she knew was that there was no way she’d survive walking for three weeks with no food and no water, let alone make it through the dust storms.

‘Cy,’ said the other Night Lord. ‘Does it matter if she follows us?’

‘Fine then.’

‘Descend into the catacombs if you wish, human,’ said Talos. ‘Just remember that our own lives are measured in mere hours. Death will come quicker than in the desert of dust, and we cannot afford to linger with you. We have a battle to fight.’

Marlonah tested her aching knee. The bionic was throbbing where it joined to her leg.

‘I can’t stay up here. Will there be places to hide?’

‘Of course,’ Talos replied. ‘But you’ll be blind. There’s no light where we’re going.’

Septimus listened to
the engines whining into life. Nowhere else was as comfortable for him as the very seat he now occupied – the pilot’s throne of the Thunderhawk gunship
Blackened.

Variel sat in the co-pilot’s throne, still unhelmed, staring off into the middle distance. Once in a while, he’d absently reach to run a thumb along his pale lips, lost in thought.

‘Septimus,’ he said, as the engines cycled live.

‘Lord?’

‘What are the chances of us reaching Tsagualsa undetected?’

The serf couldn’t even begin to guess. ‘I… know nothing about the eldar, lord, or their scanning technology.’

Variel was clearly still distracted. ‘
Blackened
is small, and the void is close to infinite in scope and span. Play to those advantages. Stay close to the asteroids.’

Septimus checked the bay doors ahead. Beyond the gunship and several stacks of what Deltrian insisted was essential equipment, there was precious little room in
Epsilon K-41 Sigma Sigma A:2
’s
only landing bay. Even the Thunderhawk was loaded with vital supplies and relic machinery from the Hall of Reflection, denying any room for extra crew. Deltrian was less than thrilled to see it departing.

There’d been no time to speak with Octavia. A short vox message to her private chamber was all he’d been able to arrange, and he’d barely known what to say, anyway. How best to tell her he was probably going to die down there, after all? What would reassure her that Deltrian would protect her once they reached the Great Eye?

In the end, he’d mumbled in his usual awkward tone, in a mixed mess of Gothic and Nostraman. He tried to tell her he loved her, but even in that inspiration deserted him. It was hardly an elegant declaration of emotion.

She’d not replied. He still didn’t even know if she’d received the message at all. Perhaps that was for the best.

Septimus triggered the launch cycle, closing the forward gangramp. It shut beneath the cockpit with a mechanical slam.

‘We’re sealed and ready,’ he said.

Variel still seemed to be paying little attention. ‘Go.’

Septimus gripped the control levers, feeling his skin prickle as the engines shouted harder in sympathy. With a deep breath, he guided the gunship out from the confined hangar bay, and back out into the void.

‘Have you considered the fact you might be wrong?’ he asked the Flayer. ‘Wrong about Talos surviving, I mean.’

The Apothecary nodded. ‘It has crossed my mind, slave. That possibility is something else that interests me.’

Time passed in
darkness, but not silence.

Talos viewed the subterranean world through a red veil, his eye lenses piercing the lightless corridors without strain. Tactical data in tiny white runes scrolled in an endless stream down the edges of his vision. He paid no heed to any of it, beyond the healthy signals of his brothers’ life signs.

Tsagualsa had never been home. Not in truth. Returning to walk its forgotten halls bred a certain uneasy melancholy, but nothing of sorrow, or of rage.

The human serf hadn’t remained with them for long. They’d outpaced her limping stride in a matter of minutes, ghosting through the corridors as they tracked their brethren’s vox-signals. For a time, Talos had heard her shouting and weeping in the dark, far behind them. He saw Cyrion shiver, surely a physical reaction to her fear, and felt the acid tang of corrosive saliva on his tongue. He didn’t like to be reminded of his brother’s corruption, even as subtle and unobtrusive as it was.

‘She’d have been better off on the plains,’ Cyrion voxed.

Talos didn’t reply. He led the way through the tunnels, listening to the vox-net alive with so many voices. His brothers in the other
C
laws were laughing, making ready, swearing oaths to bleed the eldar dry before they finally fell themselves.

He smiled behind his faceplate, amused by all he heard. The remnants of Tenth and Eleventh Companies were on the edge of death, cornered like vermin, yet he’d never heard them sound so alive.

Malcharion reported that he was alone, walking through the tunnels closest to the surface. When the claws protested and argued they should fight alongside him, he’d cursed them for fools and severed his vox-link.

They found Mercutian and Uzas before the first hour fully passed. The former embraced Talos, wrist-to-wrist in greeting. The latter stood in mute inattention, breathing heavily over the vox. They could all hear Uzas licking his teeth.

‘The other
C
laws are getting ready to make their stands in similar chambers.’ Mercutian gestured to the northern and southern doorways – open now that the doors themselves had long
since rotted away to memory. Talos took his brother’s point: the two entrances would make the chamber relatively easy to defend compared to many others of comparable size, while still giving them room to move. He followed Mercutian’s second gesture, indicating a crawlspace high in the western wall that had once been an access point to the maintenance ducts. ‘When they fall back, they’ll move through the service tunnels.’

‘Will we fit?’ Cyrion was checking his bolter with meticulous care. ‘They were built for servitors. When we left this place, half the ducts were too small for us.’

‘I’ve scouted the closest ones,’ said Mercutian. ‘There are several dead ends where we can’t make it through, but there are always alternate routes. Our only other choice is to dig through the countless collapsed tunnels.’

Talos took in the whole chamber. It had once belonged to another company, used as a training hall. Nothing remained of the room’s former decoration. When viewed through the red wash of his eye lenses, Talos saw nothing but bleak, bare stone. The rest of the catacombs looked no different. The entire labyrinth was the same naked, hollow ruin.

‘Our ammunition?’

Mercutian nodded again. ‘Already done. The servitors who came down in the other pods landed close to the claws. As for gunships, it’s less obvious which ones made it down. Our mules are down here, and safe. I’ll take you to them; they’re idling in a chamber half a kilometre to the west. With so many tunnels collapsed between here and there, it’s quicker to take the maintenance ducts.
’

‘They made it, then,’ Cyrion said. ‘A slice of precious luck, at last.’

‘Many didn’t,’ Talos amended, ‘if the vox is anything to go by. But we’ve smuggled enough ammunition down here to give the eldar a thousand new funeral songs.’

‘Is our primary cargo intact?’ Cyrion asked.

For once, it was Uzas who answered. ‘Oh, yes. I’m looking forward to that part.’

As First Claw made their way in ragged, hunched formation, clattering their way down the service ducts, Talos heard the first report of battle over the vox.

‘This is Third Claw,’ came the voice, still coloured by laughter. ‘Brothers, the aliens have found us.’

Septimus hunted for
the right touch. Speed was of the essence, but he had to fly close to every asteroid – hugging them, staying in their shadows wherever possible, before sprinting to the next closest. Beyond that, which was easily enough to worry about already, he was careful not to push the engines too hard in case the eldar vessels now stationed in high orbit above the fortress had the capacity to detect their presence via heat signature.

They’d only been flying for ten minutes when Variel closed his eyes, shaking his head in gentle disbelief.

‘We have been boarded,’ the Flayer said softly, to no one in particular. Bootsteps from behind forced Septimus to crane his neck to look over his shoulder. The gunship slowed in response to his wavering attention.

Three of Octavia’s attendants stood by the doorway leading into the confined cockpit. He recognised Vularai at once; the others were most likely Herac and Folly, though their ragged cloaks and bandaged hands meant they could be almost anyone.

Septimus looked back at the windshield, bringing the gunship in a slow bank around another small rock. Smaller dust particles ceaselessly rattled against the hull.

‘You stowed aboard before we left?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said one of the males.

‘Did she send you?’ Septimus asked.

‘We obey the mistress,’ replied the one who was probably Herac. In fairness, they all sounded similar, too. Voices didn’t always make it any easier to tell them apart.

Variel’s unwholesome blue eyes fixed on Vularai. The attendant was wrapped in a thick cloak, and though she wore her glare-goggles, the bandaging around her face and arms was loose and hanging in places, revealing pale skin beneath.

‘That deception would fool a disinterested Mechanicum menial,’ Variel said, ‘but it is almost tragically comical to attempt the same with me.’

Vularai started to unwrap her bandaging, freeing her hands. Septimus risked another glance over his shoulder.