Deathwatch: Warrior Coven Part 9

The Imperial Fist turned with slow deliberation, finding the eldar warlock standing with Dhrykna at his shoulder. They were both gazing up into the misty red image with confusion written across their faces, as though they could not believe that they were placing their lives in the hands of a species that could not see through the warp mists of the great Eye. aYou know where they have gone?a There is a planet hidden in a cusp of this nebula, shrouded in the mists of time and sheltered in the eye of a tempest of shaaiel. Its presence is clear a it s.h.i.+nes with the brilliant violence of a thousand lost souls. It is Hesperax, human a I have seen it.

Even as the warlockas thoughts eased into Octaviusa head, a signature suddenly blinked into visibility on the terminal. For an instant it was stationary, almost as though it had been waiting to be noticed, and then it accelerated off towards the fringes of the nebula, just where Shariele had indicated.

aThere,a said Octavius, preferring to place his faith in his own eyes rather than in the inexplicable insight of an alien witch. aLet it pull away and then follow at range. aWe do not want to engage before it leads us home. Make sure the gunners are on alert. Sound the range warning.a They know we are here, human. There is no surprising the wyches of Hesperax. They are leading you by the nose like a warp beast.

aThey may think that we are being led, warlock, and you may even agree with them. But we are the Deathwatch, and we will take the Emperoras justice to them whether they are prepared for us or not. It is not our way to hide our duty in the shadows or to sneak around it as though afraid of our destinies. We cannot be led to our prey a we are hunting it. If it is stupid enough to wait for us, that will simply make our job easier. When there is no possibility of surprise, to seek it is merely to waste time,a said Octavius, quoting a line from the Codex Astartes. aAnd time is not something that I am prepared to waste today.a In the back of his mind, he could hear the words of Lord Vargas urging his speed.

The engines of the Lance of Darkness flared with power and the frigate slid heavily into pursuit of the darting corsair once again.

Even from orbit the planet appeared like a ghost. It had none of the qualities that the Lance of Darknessas instruments had come to expect of a planet. Most notably, it was utterly unreflective. Whilst most planets s.h.i.+ne with the reflected light of stars, burning in the heavens like miniature stars themselves, the planet that Shariele had called Hesperax just seemed to drink in the ambient light of its surroundings. It was like a black hole from which no light could escape. Without the benefit of a reflective surface from which to bounce its signal, the Lance of Darknessas approach had slowed to a crawl, and its safety was put entirely in the hands of the control deckas serfs, who had to guide the venerable vessel manually, placing their faith in their own Emperor given reflexes.

Meanwhile, the lightning fast corsair had flicked and flashed around the dark planet, like a moth around a flame, before dipping suddenly and vanis.h.i.+ng into the atmosphere. It was swallowed immediately by the thick, swirling clouds of darkness that roiled unendingly in the upper atmosphere; even the flaming spark caused by the escort s.h.i.+pas pa.s.sage through the atmosphere itself was consumed almost instantly, leaving no clues for the hunters that prowled deliberately in its wake.

There was no hope that the Lance of Darknessas approach would have gone unnoticed on the planet. Despite his indignance, Octavius was gradually beginning to believe that his eldar guests were right that the raiders had let him follow them. Military caution overrode his deep resentment of the aliens on his s.h.i.+p, and he had decided to deploy the kill-team in a manner befitting an antic.i.p.ated ambush. He had no choice but to pursue the corsair down onto the planet, and if there was going to be a welcoming committee waiting for him, he was determined that the Deathwatch would be as ready for their hosts as their hosts were for the Deathwatch. Duty may oblige him to act, but it did not oblige him to be stupid.

In keeping with the guidelines laid out in the Codex Astartes, Octavius had divided his force into two Thunderhawks, splitting the risk and presenting any ground based defences with more than one target. However, in order to maximise the combat capacities of the team, it was important that the two hawks touched down within striking distance of each other. Once on the ground, the Deathwatch were most formidable as a unified team.

The vox unit crackled and hissed, functioning poorly in the tumult of the warp infested s.p.a.ce around Hesperax. They were only on the very edge of the Eye of Terror, but already the conventions of material s.p.a.ce were wobbling and uncertain.

aCaptain,a yelled Kruidan, trying to make himself heard through the static as his own Thunderhawk powered away from the Lance of Darkness in close pursuit of Octaviusa guns.h.i.+p. Although this was Kruidanas first mission with the Deathwatch, and despite the fact that he was the least senior of the Marines in the team, Octavius had given him command of the second Thunderhawk. In fact, the Mantis Warrior had navigated the treacherous tides of the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror more often than any of the others a he carried the ritual markings of a member of the Praying Mantidae, an elite cadre of the Mantis Warriors Chapter that was charged with hunting down the remnants of the renegade Astral Claws. Hence, in the pursuit of his own Chapteras penitence, Kruidan had been hunting in the Eye many times before.

aCaptain,a he tried again, but there was no response.

Your machines will not work here, human.

Octavius had decided to split the two eldar. Shariele, the warlock, was strapped into a harness in the c.o.c.kpit of Kruidanas Thunderhawk, sandwiched between the hulking forms of Pelias and Luthar. Dhrykna accompanied the captain with Atreus and Sulphus.

Kruidan let the alien thoughts into his head as though tolerating torture. As a Mantidae, he was accustomed to enduring ritual and ceremonial hards.h.i.+ps, including a kind of psychic torture that formed part of the initiation ceremony into the elite group. The Praying Mantidae operated much like a kill-team, dipping in and out of the Eye of Terror in small squads, persecuting the heretical Astral Claws wherever they were detected. Hence, the minds of the Mantidae had to resist every kind of violation and temptation, else they would go insane or, worse, they might turn against themselves. The Mantis Warriors lived in perpetual fear of self-betrayal.

aKr landi secure,a crackled the vox. Octaviusa voice was broken and unclear.

Through the forward screen, Kruidan could see the sudden burst of flame as Octaviusa guns.h.i.+p ploughed into the atmosphere and then vanished into the clouds below. He watched the roiling, murky vapours as they whirled and eddied around the planet. For a moment, it seemed that the swirling patterns congealed into the suggestions of faces, dark and indistinct, eyes wide and mouths open as though screaming. Then he angled the nose of his Thunderhawk and fired the main engines, throwing the guns.h.i.+p into a steep dive and blasting through the atmosphere in support of his captain. aFor Redemption, for the Mantis Warriors, for the Emperor!a he muttered as the thunderous sound of a ruptured stratosphere clawed at the hull of the s.h.i.+p.

Intermixed with the roar of resistance, Kruidan thought that he could hear whispers and screams, as though thousands of souls were sc.r.a.ping at the armour of the vessel and desperately striving to break out of the atmosphere from below. Although the a.s.sault Marine had dropped onto the surfaces of many planets within the maelstrom of the Eye of Terror, he had never heard the atmosphere of a world shriek with such agony before. Hesperax was a world unlike any other.

Even though Octaviusa Thunderhawk had dropped down through the mire of clouds in the lead, Kruidanas guns.h.i.+p crunched down onto the cold, cracked rock of Hesperax first. The Mantis Warrior was well experienced in making such drops, and he knew the importance of getting down to the ground quickly; there was more at stake than the simple paranoia of the Adeptus Astartes, who all craved the feel of solid ground beneath their feet. Once he had entered the cover of the thick, swirling clouds, Kruidan had opened up the guns.h.i.+pas engines and roared almost vertically down to the ground, where he had suddenly levelled up and fired the stabilisers to soften the impact. It was the closest mimicry of a drop-pod that a Thunderhawk could manage, but it had the distinct advantage that a Thunderhawk could extract the Marines later on; alone on the surface of a cursed, Emperor-forsaken planet in the Eye of Terror, neither a Mantidae nor a Deathwatch Marine could expect back-up to arrive in a hurry, so drop-pods were usually out of the question.

The instant that the Thunderhawkas hatch blew and its ramp cut into the ground, Kruidan was outside. Pelias and Luthar were close behind him, forming a defensive but aggressive triangle with their weapons primed. Bringing up the rear, striding down the landing ramp as though walking out into his garden, was the eldar warlock, Shariele. Kruidan had noticed with some satisfaction that the already pale-skinned alien had turned even paler during the high-G descent, but the warlock had now hidden his sickly features behind his ornate and sinister, rune encrusted mask. Were his visage not so full of a terrible dignity, his manner would have appeared casual as he disembarked from the Thunderhawk.

The landing site was a black crater, cut into the icy and rocky surface of the planet. Surrounding it, rising around the perimeter like a range of miniature mountains, was a ring of debris and rubble that had been gradually frozen into place over the long years since the crater was blown. As he scanned the scene, Kruidan could see no movement either within or outside the perimeter. He had hoped that the speed of his descent would have made the Thunderhawk difficult for any ground based sensors to detect it, or at least to differentiate between it and a meteor; from the look of the planetas surface, meteor strikes were not an uncommon occurrence on Hesperax.

Once they had dropped into the deep crater, Kruidan thought that the guns.h.i.+p might remain unseen and undetected for a while, at least from line of sight sensor arrays. In any event, it was the best that he could do, although he was concerned that Captain Octavius had dismissed his approach as unnecessarily rash and at variance with the teachings of the Codex: a Thunderhawk was not a drop-pod.

Looking up, Kruidan could see the faint glow of the captainas guns.h.i.+p, still engulfed in the dark, vaporous clouds, as it descended towards the landing site at a more orthodox speed and angle. Its engines flared with power and the roar was faintly audible already. If he could see it, reflected Kruidan as he tracked his bolter around the broken landscape, alert for signs of movement, then so could anyone else who was looking.

We are not alone. Shariele had stopped moving and was looking fixedly over towards a point on the lip of the crater.

Kruidan snapped his bolter over in the same direction and waited for something to emerge. He couldnat see anything, but he knew that the eldaras senses were different from his own, and probably more attuned to the presence of its dark and distant kin.

aTheyare firing,a hissed Pelias, his voice crackling with sibilance through the vox-bead in Kruidanas ear.

aWhat?a snapped Kruidan, glancing back at the solid figure of the Black Consul to see what he was talking about. The sergeantas helmet was angled up into the sky, and Kruidan understood at once.

As Octaviusa Thunderhawk emerged from the cloud line, they could clearly see the rapid flashes of muzzle flares, and the faint report of detonations punched through the howling engine roar. After a couple of seconds, bursts of dark light started to explode across the underside of the guns.h.i.+pas hull as something or someone returned fire from the ground.

A sound like the explosive shattering of gla.s.s made Kruidan spin. He saw a crackling line of warp energy searing out of Sharieleas hands and cras.h.i.+ng into the icy rocks on the lip of the crater. At the same time, Luthar opened up with his bolter, snapping off a succession of sh.e.l.ls into the steaming shower of shrapnel, riddling it with a staccato of explosions.

There was a moment of delay, and then a cloud of dark projectiles whined out of the mist, sizzling through the air towards the warlock and the three Marines. An ear-piercing shriek rose out of the m.u.f.fled cacophony of the sudden violence. It was just a single voice at first, screeching out of the explosion on the edge of the crater, but it was quickly joined by more, until there was a hideous chorus echoing around the entire perimeter.

Kruidan hesitated for a moment, glancing back up at the beleaguered shape of Octaviusa Thunderhawk in time to see its main engines fail as a series of warheads slammed into its rear. The stabilisers fired immediately, but the guns.h.i.+p rocked and dropped suddenly, falling like a ma.s.sive weight of unsupported adamantium. Its weapons were still firing, even as it fell, spraying the ground with a hail of explosive sh.e.l.ls.

There was nothing that could be done to help the captain; Kruidan reluctantly turned his attention back to the matter at hand. Luthar, Pelias and Shariele had retreated until they were back to back in the centre of the crater, just beyond the ramp of the Thunderhawk, which provided them with some cover. The Mantis Warrior took in the scene for a moment, standing just out of formation. He had seen a lot of incredible things in his time: he had watched the great daemon of Fhroxcalin drag itself into reality through a tear in the warp, he had seen entire planets consumed by the Great Devourer, and he had even seen a necron lord whip Stardust into a beautiful and terrible lance of power. But he had never seen an eldar warlock fighting back to back with two s.p.a.ce Marines. His soul rebelled against the sight, but this was no time for moralising.

The splinter projectiles were clattering into his armour from all directions at once. The crater appeared to be completely surrounded by dark eldar warriors. It was as though they had been lying in wait for the Deathwatch to arrive. But, even if the surviving corsair had been able to warn Hesperax of their arrival, Kruidan doubted that they would have been able to organise such a perfect ambush so quickly.

He growled with displeasure and disgust, igniting his jump pack and roaring up into the air. He had equipped himself with two grenade launchers from the armoury of the Lance of Darkness, and he drew them both from their holsters on his legs, discarding his bolter. As his jump pack poured fire out beneath him, he spun slowly on an axis with his arms held straight out to his sides. As he ascended, he could see rows of dark eldar over the lip of the crater, their jagged teeth glinting viciously in the black light, interspersed with vehicles and hideously angled machinery. There must have been hundreds of them.

Roaring over the sound of his jump pack, Kruidan squeezed the triggers on both outstretched grenade launchers, holding them in as the weapons convulsed over and over again, releasing dozens of grenades in two wide, concentric spirals around the perimeter of the crater. The parabolas were shallow and the first grenades impacted in less than a second, divided by 180 degrees around the pit. Explosions strafed around the rim as the rest of the grenades. .h.i.t the ground and detonated, forming a wide ring of fire and icy shrapnel. The dark eldar scattered back away from the crateras edge, leaping and darting out of range of the detonations like metal fragments being repelled by an electro-magnet.

As his grenade launchers whirred and clicked empty, Kruidan continued to spin, turning to the horizon and seeing Octaviusa Thunderhawk crash down into the barren rocks. It crumpled as it impacted against the ground and then exploded, scattering flames and metal fragments into a sphere of destruction and sending up a ma.s.sive mushroom of smoke and debris.

Below him, Pelias, Luthar and Shariele were ablaze with fire, but already the dark eldar were leaping and dancing over the lip of the crater and closing them down; their numbers were thinning under the barrage, but there were simply too many of them.

CHAPTER NINE: GLADIATOR.

It was insulting: their captors hadnat even bothered to remove their power armour. Instead, the dark eldar had simply shackled the ankles and wrists of the Marines, pulling them tight against the wall. There was not a chain or a lock in the Imperium that could restrain a s.p.a.ce Marine in full combat armour, but these shackles were made of a material that they had never seen before a they appeared to be made out of the darkness itself. With all of his arms damped back against the wall, Techmarine Sulphus inspected the restraints with undisguised admiration.

Pelias roared, thras.h.i.+ng against the shackles and smas.h.i.+ng his fists back against the wall. Like the others, he could feel the jagged arcs of agony lancing through his nervous system when he moved. But, unlike the others, he had felt this pain before. The Biel-Tan had used similar nerve-pins to immobilise him when they had taken him captive. Not even the ministrations of Inquisitor Lord Guerilian had managed to remove the physical memory, and every piercing streak of pain brought back flashes of torture from his past. It was as though the pins had been pushed home in exactly the same places, sliding in between the plates of his armour and penetrating critical points in his nerves.

Hanging on the wall next to Pelias, Kruidan was barely conscious. After he had run out of ammunition above the crater, something had hit his jump pack and blown it off his back. He had free fallen to the ground and smacked into the spiked, ice hard rocks. There was a ma.s.sive wound on his back where his armour had been melted by the explosion of fuel, his skin was riddled with shrapnel and a long, jagged, stone spike had been jammed through his shoulder.

Although his Larramanas organ had eventually stemmed the flow, he had already lost so much blood that he hung virtually limp from the shackles around his wrists. His vision was slightly blurred and his ears were full of Peliasa cries.

Had he been able to look around the chamber in which the Marines had been secured after they were captured in the crater, Kruidan would have seen a vision of h.e.l.l. On one side of him was Pelias, writhing in his present pain and in half remembered agonies from his past. On the other side was Luthar, silent and motionless with his arms outstretched and bound to the wall behind him, strung up like a crucified criminal. Next to him was the slender figure of Shariele, with pulsing warp tainted stakes driven through his hands and feet. Sizzling streams of toxic blood hissed into pools on the ground beneath his stigmatic wounds, and his de-masked head was slumped forward onto his stretched chest. Further along the wall there were other bodies, shackled, hanging and in various states of min.

The chamber itself was stifling and hot. Channels were cracked into the floor, bubbling with lava and steaming with sulphurous gases. The light was faint, orange and h.e.l.lish, emanating from the volcanic discharge on the ground. In the centre of the room was a metallic table, on which were strewn the broken remains of what looked like a dark eldar of some kind. Its limbs and head were restrained by hoops of dark material, although they were no longer attached to its intricately scarred abdomen.

It was difficult to tell whether the grotesque piercings and mutilations that covered the creatureas dismembered body had been inflicted as part of a process of ritual torture, or whether they had already been there when the unfortunate alien had been subjected to a barbaric form of execution by dissection.

m.u.f.fled groans rumbled through the fumes, suggesting the presence of other prisoners hanging on walls that were only vaguely visible through the clouds of sulphur. One or two of the noises sounded human, but a number of them certainly were not. The deep guttural sound of a frustrated ork was unmistakable, even to a Marine in Kruidanas devastated condition.

As he struggled to take in the inhumanity of his surroundings, swimming in and out of consciousness, Kruidan saw the ghostly figures of hunched and mutilated dark eldar shuffling around the chamber before him. They pa.s.sed in and out of the clouds of noxious gas, fading in and out of visibility. Occasionally, a scream would cut through the vague, smoky atmosphere, shattering the nauseating lull that had settled over the Marines. A tremendous gargling roar told Kruidan that the ork had finally been liberated from the misery of its existence.

Opening his eyes at the sound of approaching feet, the Mantis Warrior saw the face of his tormenter grinning insanely into his face. The haemonculusa eyes glittered with an intense and maniacal pa.s.sion and its tongue was curled hungrily around one of the incisors that protruded from his upper jaw. It was less than half a metre from Kruidanas exposed face a his helmet having been removed at some point between the battlefield and the prison.

Despite the pain that rushed around his nervous system, Kruidan lifted his slumped head off his chest and met the vile creatureas gaze. He could see the barely suppressed excitement bubbling in those evil eyes; there was a thirst for pain and torture s.h.i.+ning lasciviously over the surface of the black irises. It was a face utterly unfamiliar with mercy, although it was tinged with fear and insanity. For a moment, the Mantis Warrior felt a wave of satisfaction that he could strike a note of fear into this creature, even in this broken and helpless form, but then he realised that the haemonculusa fear was directed elsewhere; it was competing against the creatureas thirst for pain, holding it in check like a leash around the neck of a wild animal.

Without warning except for a slight dilation of its pitch-black pupils, the haemonculus brandished a long syringe, holding it up in front of Kruidan and squirting a thin toxic jet from its tip. It was dark with filth and grime, and the needle was barbed like a flaying knife. After another glint from the creatureas eyes, it punched the syringe into Kruidanas neck, burying the needle all the way up to the reservoir and then emptying its contents into the Marineas bloodstream.

As the dark eldar withdrew the device, it leaned in closer to the Marineas face, as though inspecting his features for signs of change. At that moment, groggy with pain, blood loss and narcosis, Kruidan spat his defiance into the alienas face, activating his Betcheras gland subconsciously. The globule of saliva splattered against the haemonculusa face and sizzled with toxicity, burning a deep pocket into its pale, scarred skin. The alien took a sudden step backwards, its eyes wide with shock as it shrieked with pain. But then it raised its fingers to the open sore on its face and pressed its pointed nails into the wound, drawing a line of blood and hissing toxins out on its fingertips and then licking them clean. A wide grin cracked across its face as though its wildest dreams had just come true.

Gazing through the faint lava light, Octavius could just about make out the shape of other Marines strung up against the far wall. The tentacular shape of Techmarine Sulphus was easy to discern. One of the others was roaring incoherently and thras.h.i.+ng against his restraints. Another was motionless with composure, but the one in the middle appeared slumped and broken. One of the dark eldar prison guards, or whatever they were, had just jammed something into his neck and he appeared to have lost consciousness as a result.

The Imperial Fists captain flexed his shoulders and grimaced against the pain that cut through his nerves. Just like the rest of his team, he was powerless to struggle against the restraints. This was not a situation to which a s.p.a.ce Marine was accustomed. His mind raced through the possibilities: how could their captors have known how to immobilise them so perfectly? The required knowledge of a s.p.a.ce Marineas physiology was beyond many of the s.p.a.ce Marines themselves - perhaps only the Apothecaries would really know all the specific nerve nodes. Yet, somehow, these aliens had mastered the knowledge perfectly.

Deciding to conserve his strength, Octavius let his chin sink down onto his chest. As he did so, his eyes came to rest on a pile of debris below his feet. At first he thought that it was merely a heap of rocks and mined instruments, but as he looked more closely he realised that the remains of a body were mixed into the mound. An eldar skull was balanced on the top of the pile, and there was clearly a hand protruding from the side a a human hand.

Straining his eyes against the heat and noxious fumes that filled the chamber, Octavius could see that the hand was only one of many human body parts that had been strewn over the floor. To his horror and fury he realised that some of those parts still bore the remnants of power armour: intermixed amongst the detritus were the remains of s.p.a.ce Marines, tortured, dismembered and utterly violated by the Emperor-cursed aliens of Hesperax. The captain realised immediately that this was how his captors had learnt about the anatomy of the Adeptus Astartes a they had taken it apart piece by piece until they had found out what they needed to know.

aCaptain?a The voice was little more than a whisper.

aAtreus?a replied Octavius, turning his head painfully to his left. The Blood Ravens librarian was clamped to the wall next to him with some kind of hood covering his face. aAre you damaged?a aNo, but this hood is interfering with my mind, just as these pins are restraining our bodies.a Neither of them could clearly remember how they had been captured. Their memories seemed to stop as their Thunderhawk crashed down onto the surface of Hesperax, throwing them onto the jagged rocks amidst the waiting dark eldar forces. Octavius could vaguely recall seeing Kruidan, his jump pack alive with flames, spinning above the second Thunderhawk, which had already landed, unleas.h.i.+ng a hail of grenades over the alien warriors as they pressed in around their landing site.

After his guns.h.i.+p had crashed, Octavius could remember standing in the wreckage with his chainsword spluttering through xenos flesh. He could remember the pressure of numbers and the feelings of anger and despair as Sulphus and then Atreus were overwhelmed. There was another figure too, darting around the edges of his memory like a firefly through a dark forest a the s.h.i.+mmering white eldar Aspect Warrior had fought at his side. There had been a great explosion in the sky, and Octavius had looked up in time to see the distant Kruidan transfigured into a ball of fire.

The captain strained his neck forward, twisting his face around to look past Atreus, battling against his bodyas reflexive need to avoid the pain that lanced through his shoulders. On the other side of the librarian, Octavius could see the slender, white armoured figure of the eldar warrior, Dhrykna. Despite himself, he was relieved to see her alive a her eyes flashed with undiminished alertness in the darkness, and she nodded an acknowledgement to the captain.

aHow did this happen, Atreus?a aThey were prepared for our arrival, captain. They knew we were coming.a aWe were not trying to surprise them, but I cannot believe that they had time to organise such a perfect reception. The corsair was only moments ahead of us.a aPerhaps there is a breach in the integrity of the team, captain. Perhaps they were warned?a aYou mean the aliens? Why would they betray us when we are doing their bidding? Besides, they would be betraying themselves. Look.a Octavius strained his neck to indicate the immobilised, shackled forms of Dhrykna next to him and Shariele on the far wall.

aIt need not have been the aliens, captain.a Octavius looked through the heat haze towards the source of the new voice on the other side of the chamber. aBrother Chaplain Luthar?a aYes, captain, it is me. Brother Kruidan is badly damaged. I am not sure what they have done to him, but they appear to be ministering to his wounds.a The Reviler was changing the subject.

aYou are implying that Librarian Ashok may have had something to do with this, chaplain?a Octavius felt his ire rise. He was not sure that he trusted the Angels Sanguine librarian himself, but he would not suffer such doubts from other members of his team. aAshok is a fine warrior, Luthar. You will not speak in this way of a brother Marine.a aIt is odd that he is the only one not here, captain.a This time the voice belonged to Sulphus. aMarines are not all the same, Captain Octavius, as you know. The Angels Sanguine are brothers of the flesh and, as such, they are not beyond corruption.a aEnough,a stated Octavius. aThis is not the time for blame. We are all flesh and blood, Iron Father, whether we choose to embrace it or not. It is our humanity for which we fight. Therein lies our duty.a There was silence, broken only by the bubbling of lava and the hiss of steam. The shuffling haemonculi appeared to have left the chamber.

aLuthar a you said that the aliens are repairing Kruidan?a asked Octavius, his mind turning back to the chaplainas earlier words.

aYes, captain. I think so. His wounds are healing rapidly a much faster than I would expect to see on a Marine who has lost so much blood. As you know, the Larramanas organ relies on blood flow to manufacture scar tissue.a aWhy would they repair his flesh?a asked Sulphus, incredulous as much as curious.

aThey want him to fight.a All eyes turned to Atreus as he spoke.

aWhat?a aThat is why we are still alive. The dark eldar want us to fight in their arena. It has been recorded in a number of tomes kept in the great Blood Ravens librarium of the Omnis Arcanum - the aliens take prisoners in order to use them as sport in their games. The greater the warriors taken, the greater the satisfaction of the game.a aRight is he.a Dhryknaas voice was calm and even, despite the jumbled words. aThese prisoners other not enough power have.a She nodded her head, indicating the remains of the eldar artisans and dancers that were still stung up around the walls. aUnderstand I do not why darklings them took. No satisfaction for Satin Throne they give.a Octavius looked around the h.e.l.lish chamber once again and realised that the Aspect Warrior was right. The other prisoners looked weak and effeminate. Most of them were already dead or dying. Their spirits were broken and they would provide no sport for the aliens at all. He recognised a couple of the eldar that were taken from Ulthwe in the last raid.

aWhy would they risk their lives on raids to take these creatures?a he asked, thinking out loud.

aBait,a said Atreus.

Eight hours was a long time in politics, especially in the politics of the Inquisition. Even as Perceptia made her way back towards the Hereticus librarium she noticed the increased activity in the Ramugan station. People were rus.h.i.+ng through the corridors with more than their usual haste, b.u.mping and bustling past each other without the conventional concerns for status and diplomacy. It was as though each and every person on Ramugan had suddenly decided that they had the most important job on the station and that everyone else was simply an obstacle to the execution of their duty. In truth, this was not far from the everyday mentality of many of the officials that called Ramugan their home, but the last few hours had seen a new and sudden urgency in their manner.

As though to confirm her observations, a faint blue warning light started to pulse in the corridor as Perceptia approached the security doors before the librarium. The warning lights were coded on Ramugan: light blue was an alert signal for the staff of the Ordo Malleus. Of course, given the nature of the station, any warning was probably of interest to everyone, so in practice the colour of the light merely indicated who was quickest on the b.u.t.ton.

Perceptia stopped short of the doors and looked about her, pus.h.i.+ng her spectacles higher up the bridge of her nose and peering through the vague strobe lighting at the flickering, stop start motion of the personnel around her. If Lord Aurelius had finally called an alert, that probably meant that he had decided to dispatch a team of Grey Knights to the Circuitrine nebula. At last he was acting like an inquisitor lord of the Ordo Malleus, thought Perceptia. Whatever hold Lords Seishon or Vargas had over him was clearly not enough to prevent him completely from doing his duty. Although Perceptia also realised that the disturbance around the Eye of Terror had now grown to such proportions that it would be impossible for Aurelius to refuse to act, no matter what his arrangement with the Xenos lords. She had seen it herself using the optical enhancers provided by the viewscreen in her own personal chambers. The situation was now sufficiently obvious that it did not require the subtle mind of a Hereticus inquisitor to realise that failure to act now would look like deliberate stalling.

For a moment, Perceptia hesitated at the doors to the librarium, wondering what effect this turn of events would have on her own investigations. She was relatively sure that Caesurian would tell her that there was now no point in pursing the issue: her purpose was, surely, to force some kind of action regarding the potential threat to the Imperium. That being the case, there was no longer any need for her to continue. The Grey Knights would deal with any threats, or would at least be able to investigate their nature.

However, something gnawed at the back of Perceptiaas mind and she realised with mild surprise that her concern in this case had never been about the safety of the Imperium at all, at least not directly. Her concern was with Seishon himself, and she was not prepared to drop the case now, just because the Ordo Malleus had finally decided to do its job. If Seishon was hiding something that went deep into the ranks of the Ordo Xenos on Ramugan, as the testimony of Lord Herod suggested, albeit unconvincingly at this stage, then it was potentially a greater risk to the security of the Imperium than a s.h.i.+fting warp signature in the lashes of the Eye of Terror. Such things happened all the time, which was why the Ordo Malleus kept a detachment of Grey Knights on Ramugan in the first place, but a heresy in the heart of the Ordo Xenos was something else entirely. If she was lucky, the Grey Knights would do her fieldwork for her. They may uncover an unfolding plot even as she investigated its origins and dimensions in the librarium. No, this was not the time to abandon her work; it was the time to redouble her efforts.

She turned back to the unostentatious doors and smiled. She always admired the subtlety of the architects who had designed the entrance to the Hereticus librarium on this station. n.o.body would guess from the small, plain, gunmetal doors that a ma.s.sive, multi-levelled librarium stretched out behind them.

The purpose was not only to dissuade prying eyes from taking too much interest in the forbidden knowledge within, but it was also to understate the existence of the librarium in the first place. For many of the officials of the Ordo Xenos and Malleus, it was bad enough that they had to share Ramugan with the Ordo Hereticus. It would be almost insufferable if they were confronted each day by the ma.s.sive scale of the librarium in which the Hereticus stored all their intricate records and suspicions. Small, una.s.suming doors suggested that there could be nothing worthy of mention on the other side a certainly nothing valuable or plentiful enough to condemn an inquisitor lord for heresy.

Muttering the pa.s.sword into a hidden window, Perceptia slid through the doors as they cracked open. She headed directly for the lowest levels, where she hoped to find Seye Multinus waiting for her with news of Circuitrine. The mutant curator had told her that it would take him eight hours to sift through the relevant files. It was incredible to think how much the world could change in only eight hours. Pus.h.i.+ng her gla.s.ses back up her nose, Perceptia grinned in antic.i.p.ation as she hurried down the long, winding staircase.

The shuffling haemonculi had returned to the sanctorium and cut down the two eldar warriors, bundling them off with a group of wych-guards, and separating them from the mon-keigh. They were led through a maze of pa.s.sageways until they reached a broad and circular chamber, where they were ushered onto a platform in the middle of the floor. Dhrykna stood shoulder to shoulder with Shariele as the circular platform rose slowly up towards the ceiling. A ring of darklings surrounded them, vicious blades jabbing forward to prevent the eldar from stepping off the gradually rising dais. The guards grinned, excitement dripping from their glinting teeth.

As the platform neared the ceiling, Dhrykna wondered for a moment whether the intention was to squash the two of them flat against the stone roof. But at the last second a crack opened up in the ceiling, widening in synchronisation with the rising dais beneath. At the same time, a blast of sound crashed down from above, pouring through the opening as though it were cut into the bottom of an ocean. There were shrieks and screams and cheers. It was like a ma.s.sive wave of hysteria breaking over their heads.

With a resounding clunk, the platform slotted into place in the hole in the ceiling, pus.h.i.+ng the two eldar warriors up into the centre of the arena above. The noise was incredible as Dhrykna looked about her and saw the extent of her predicament. The wide, roughly circular arena was bounded by stands on three sides. Thousands of darkling faces gleamed down at the two eldar from their elevated positions, braying and shrieking with antic.i.p.ation and pleasure. On the fourth side of the auditorium was a sheer wall rising and vanis.h.i.+ng into the heights above.

Cut into the frictionless surface, about half way up, was a shadow strewn platform that appeared to be bedecked in luxurious cloths and decadent furniture. An exquisitely beautiful female lay reclining on a wriggling and pulsating throne. Dhrykna could see her smile sparking across her teeth and from her dark eyes. She was flanked by a number of darkling wyches, but there were also a couple of more familiar figures.

Straining her eyes up to the platform, Dhrykna realised in horror that she recognised two of the figures that stood at the wych queenas shoulder. Shrouded in his sumptuous sapphire robes, edged in a glimmering and phosph.o.r.escent black, Bhurolyn of the Sacred Star gazed down at the beacon of brilliance that was Dhrykna a her pristine white armour s.h.i.+ning like a sacred star in the oppressive darkness of the amphitheatre. Standing just behind the eminent seer was another Ulthwe eldar, her face hidden in the shadows but her eyes glinting visibly They were the two seers that the council had sent the mon-keigh to recover.

Sharielea I have seen them, Dhrykna of the s.h.i.+ning Spear.

The warlockas expression was grim with fury and indignation as he glowered up at the figures on the platform. In that moment, the plans of the Seer Council of Ulthwe suddenly became clear to him. Without pausing to consider his action, Shariele raised his wounded hands and threw a jagged flash of lightning up towards the platform. As the power coursed through his ruptured flesh, he roared in pain, filling his intent with agony and hatred for the darklings and the seers that had betrayed him. He poured his fury through his bleeding hands, feeling them burn and the skin melt as he screamed his rage.

The darklings in the audience brayed and shrieked with excitement at this show of power; they had become so accustomed to seeing weak and pathetic opponents in the arena that even this a.s.sault on their queen thrilled them. Meanwhile, Lelith herself did not even rise to her feet. She merely held up a hand, as though casually signalling that the streaks of shaaiel that were arcing towards her should stop their advance. Spontaneously, the warlockas joust of power ruptured and splintered, shattering into shards that scattered themselves harmlessly against the sheer wall beneath the queenas podium.

In response, Shariele roared with frustration and gazed down at his ruined hands. Whatever the haemonculi had driven through his flesh to hang him on the wall had interfered with his ability to focus energy into his fingertips. Instead his power bled over his own skin, intermingling with the blood that still streamed over his wrists.

On her feet at last, Lelith cast her eyes down on the two eldar warriors and smiled radiantly. There was a hint of mock pity in her gaze and a snarl of l.u.s.t on her lips.

Greetings, eldar warriors of Ulthwe. We have been expecting you.

The audience cheered with appreciation, as though confirming the note of eager antic.i.p.ation sounded by the Wych Queen of Strife.

You should consider yourselves greatly honoured by our attentions, my friends. How many lives are spent in the pursuit of death? We grant you the privilege of dying in our grand arena, from whence your souls will finally be liberated from your misguided, lightling forms. You should die knowing that you bring us great satisfaction. You might also realise that you die to bring hope to your precious Ulthwe a although it is a foolas hope. She grinned but did not turn to face Bhurolyn. Moreover, we owe you a debt of grat.i.tude for bringing us our main event. Her gaze flicked lasciviously over towards the mon-keigh warriors that were bunched together and shackled at the edge of the arena, held in a pen behind thin, black bars, where they had been brought to watch the proceedings. And for this service we are granting you a great boon - you will be the first to do battle in our arena. It is to you that we will grant the honour of an early death.

As her thoughts echoed into silence around the grand amphitheatre, Lelith flicked a signal to an unseen subordinate. Almost instantaneously, a ma.s.sive, heavy door cracked ajar in the arena wall beneath her podium. It ground slowly open, with the heavy deliberation of weight and significance, admitting a dirty red cloud of smoke into the arena. A hideous keening sounded through the opening, and the gnas.h.i.+ng of monstrous jaws was clearly audible, even over the eager cheers of the audience.

Shariele and Dhrykna lowered their gazes from the elevated podium and peered into the red mist that plumed out of the new opening. Vaguely familiar shapes s.h.i.+fted within, and the two eldar separated immediately, spontaneously deciding that they would stand a better chance if they could present more than one target for the creatures that emerged from the h.e.l.lish gloom.

After a few seconds, two quadruped warp beasts lurched out of the mist into the arena, one bounding around the perimeter to the left and the other to the right, as though defining the territory of their killing zone. Before the two eldar could respond to the appearance of the gnas.h.i.+ng beasts, two darkling wyches flipped and somersaulted their way through the dissipating, ruddy mist into the arena, glinting blades spinning in their hands. Sharieleas eyes narrowed a he had encountered these two wyches before.

Finally, as the ma.s.sive doors started to grind shut once again, a third darkling strode out of the settling cloud, a force whip crackling with darkness at her side and her eyes burning with a red hunger. Dhrykna and Shariele did not look at each other, but they could feel their mutual outrage feeding into a desire for combat: abandoned and alone, there was nothing left for them now other than to make their deaths worthy of Ulthwe, even if Ulthwe seemed to find their lives expendable.

aLight flashes, blood falls, death pierces the darkness,a whispered Dhrykna.

The Deathwatch team were pushed roughly into the barred pen at the side of the arena, prodded and jabbed from behind by the elongated blades of their captors. They moved slowly and c.u.mbersomely, as though their own muscles were resisting the motion. Most of the nerve-pins had been removed, but a few remained in strategic points, making movement arduous and reactions slow.

Octavius tried to turn and glower at the dark eldar behind him, but his head swam nauseatingly, as though he had been drugged; it would be a rare thing indeed that could flummox the auto-immune system of a s.p.a.ce Marine. The guards grinned back at the unsteady captain, their eyes slit into eager, burning lines.

The Imperial Fist was the last in the line and he stopped just before the entrance to the cage. He turned his head slowly. All around the vast auditorium he could hear the braying and cheering of the audience. It was an incredible noise, cras.h.i.+ng into his ears like an ocean. The circular s.p.a.ce of the arena must have been three hundred metres in diameter a perhaps more.