‘Something?’ growled Aeschelus. ‘Specifics, brother-sergeant. Direction, speed, threat.’

  ‘Large-scale movement, brother-captain,’ replied the Incursor. ‘Could be several enemies or one larger construct; I cannot determine the details yet.’

  ‘Coming up from a passage at a right angle to the level of our advance,’ added Lato from the other squad. ‘Triangulation efforts hampered by the xenos material.’

  ‘Hold hard position until we arrive.’

  Aeschelus hurried forward through the darkness, signalling to the Judiciar and a squad of Bladeguard Veterans to come with him. These warriors were among those first despatched by the lord pri­march; Primaris Marines like Praxa­medes who had been in the first torchbearer fleets and now returned with experience and skills to match many of the far older Space Marines.

  In the glare of their suit lamps, the Space Marines saw the floor a few yards ahead opening, iris-like, to leave a hole three yards across. Aeschelus stopped and readied his shield, a great cruciform plate almost as tall as he was, forged in the foundries of Macragge itself. Purity seals and ancient oaths of moment were affixed to its edge, and upon its boss were mounted the bones of its first owner, Captain Heraphus of the Fourth Company. Aeschelus had been presented with it on embarking the Ithraca’s Vengeance, a joint symbol of his authority, the protection of the Chapter and the traditions he was to uphold. With it had come a mantra of the forty-one captains that had borne it before him, from the middle of the thirty-sixth millennium to that day.

  Emerald light heralded the arrival of the enemy, glowing from eyeplates and flickering bulbs that protruded from their spines. Like giant arthropods, the creatures did not walk but emerged from the tunnel on glimmering banks of anti-gravitic power, spine-like tails swaying as they rose up into the larger corridor. Not one creature but five, following the lead alien like a serpent follows its head, seeming a single foe that suddenly became a handful. Green beams flared and the Bladeguard pushed to the attack, raised shields deflecting the probing rays. Moving with them, Aeschelus felt the weight of the shield not as a physi­cal thing – his physiology and armour more than compensated for its mass – but a mental burden. Never had an award been given with so much expectation attached. A reminder from heroes past that nothing less was required of him in the future.

  Bolt-fire from ahead announced that the Incursors were under attack too, the flash of their weapons throwing large shadows along the passage, of something floating and arachnid-like. More of the scarabs burst out of smaller entry ports, lashing at feet and legs, grappling at the Space Marines’ greaves as they tried to charge the apparitions before them. Aeschelus was forced to stop and kick away two of the creatures, shots from the Intercessors behind him blowing them apart as they skittered back to their feet. With the bolt detonations of their companions shrieking from the deck around them, the Bladeguard, captain and Judiciar plunged into the new arrivals, the gleaming blue of their powered blades shimmering into the jade gleam of their foes.

  ‘Onwards!’ Aeschelus told his battle-brothers. ‘Every heartbeat of delay cedes the momentum to our foes! Give every instant your greatest effort, for anything less will see opportunity relinquished.’

  Long claws lashed at Aeschelus, trying to rip his shield from his grip. A faceless head on a serpentine neck craned over its top. Slender beams flickered over his helm’s face as the creature scanned him. He drove his forehead into it, hard ceramite cracking the questing appendage even as his sword rose up and sheared off two of the forelimbs clutching his shield.

  ‘Brother-captain, we have found some kind of energy source.’ Incursor Sergeant Lato’s report came with gasps of effort and to a backdrop of bolt-round detonations. ‘Clusters of cabling and glowing orbs.’

  ‘On our way, hold position,’ Aeschelus answered, turning aside another flailing limb with the flat of his blade before plunging the tip into the ribcage-like torso of his attacker. He almost stumbled, his boot finding no purchase as it came down onto a scarab trying to blast at the sole of his foot. He crashed sideways into one of the Bladeguard, who righted him with a shove whilst fending off another necron construct with his shield.

  ‘Cut a path for the Hellblasters,’ the captain called to his battle-brothers, pivoting his shield and hurling himself forward like a ram, slamming a xenos wraith into the wall. Judiciar Admonius swung his executioner relic blade at the trapped creature, the edge of his sword gleaming with a flash of power as it struck. Behind them, the Bladeguard drove forward and then parted, pinning the enemy between them.

  A hail of plasma bolts followed from the Hellblasters, turning the necron apparitions to scattered fragments, molten metal spraying against the forcefields of the veterans’ shields. Another volley followed a few seconds later, pulping the last twitching remnants of the xenos, scattering the scarabs that had started to clamber over the bodies to repair them.

  The intensity of fire from the Incursors ahead drew Aeschelus on until the passage brought them out at the bottom of a large spherical chamber, bisected by a waist-high wall clustered with glowing green spheres. Strange, angular hieroglyphs marked the ribbing of vaults overhead, which gleamed with their own light. Dozens of cables snaked in all directions, pulsing with the flow of energy.

  The Incursors held the other four entrances, firing almost without end at gangling, floating shapes beyond.

  ‘Good find,’ Aeschelus told Lato, banging the sergeant on the backpack with the pommel of his sword. He switched the vox to company address. ‘Holding positions. Intercessors and Hellblasters to the fore. Bladeguard as mobile reserve. Bring up the charges.’

  While the squads arranged themselves, a small coterie of tech-priests entered, flanked by an escort of dull-faced gun-servitors. The contingent brought four large chests with them, each a seismo-melta detonator capable of ripping open a starship’s armoured heart.

  ‘How many do you wish to use, captain?’ asked the senior tech-priest, its face consisting of overlapping metal scales punctured by two expression­less lenses for eyes.

  ‘Captain, detecting a surge in ambient temperature and energy readings off the scale.’ Sergeant Dorium had taken his Intercessors further out to provide a mobile perimeter. ‘Some kind of mass activation. Hundreds of readings about two hundred yards above our position.’

  ‘Acknowledged,’ replied Aeschelus. ‘Fall back to support position and report any movement.’

  It seemed likely that the enemy would respond with unmatchable force very soon. That was always the nature of the hit-and-run attack: get aboard, locate a vital target to destroy and then get out. The speed and surprise of the attack was rapidly dwindling. Even if the counter-assault did not quickly wipe out the Space Marines it would tie them down in combat, meaning Aeschelus would have to detonate with his force aboard, or fight his way out before he did so, risking discovery and the deactivation of the anti-ship charges.

  ‘All of them,’ Aeschelus told the tech-priests.

  If he was not going to get off this ship, nothing else would either.

  ‘Vermin!’ Simut’s anger resounded across the tomb ship command chamber as a metallic screech and shrieked out into the void as a pulse of electromagnetic rage. Having donned his panoply of battle, he now stalked back and forth across the mastaba, directing cortical field glares at his lychguard and Phetos. ‘What are they doing? I can feel them grubbing about in the tomb-levels like parasites in my gut!’

  ‘They have gathered around the third vestibule of the cortifexal array, Sunlit Lord of the Gold Sands,’ said the royal warden. ‘Invasion cascade protocols are activating. Vaults have been woken to stop any further advance.’

  ‘What is taking so long?’ Simut’s phase blade crackled with energy discharge, the halberd-like weapon shimmering with his anger. He wanted to strike out, to take Phetos’ ignorant head from his body. Obviously that would have no permanent effect on his lieutenant but the chastisement would be remembered. However, if he did so, Simut would have to monitor the enemy and the response himself, sullying his cortical field in direct intercourse with the lower ranks. ‘Where is my legion, Phetos?’

  ‘The enemy numbered less than a hundred individuals. A small threat that the canoptek servitude constructs should have thwarted. Analysis shows that these intruders are not normal humans – they wear armour and their bodies have been physically upgraded. I personally ascended the defence protocols with the data, but response times have been slowed by the damage inflicted by their vessel.’

  ‘Yes, where is that accursed ship? Must I fight this battle blinded and with one arm? By the Stones of Areki, Phetos, I swear that if you fail me like this again I shall wipe you from existence!’

  Under the warden’s urging, the sensor display rotated around the tomb ship, focusing on the flare of plasma trail from the enemy starship’s engines. Simut sneered. Such crude physics, the ancient and laborious shackle of relative cause-and-effect of acceleration and deceleration.

  ‘When King Szarekh’s matrix is fully operational and the neversea is stilled forever, these petty races will be stuck in their star systems, ripe for enslavement.’

  ‘Detecting energy build-up in the array vestibule, Lord of the Scarlet Dawn,’ said Phetos.

  Simut ignored him and watched the human vessel powering out of orbit. The escorts had scattered at its approach, unable to fully manoeuvre whilst caught in the gravitic friction of orbit and incapable of matching the raw firepower of its numerous weapons. But having launched its attack craft, which now patrolled around the lower regions of the Barge of the Stormhawk, it seemed as though it had abandoned the warriors left aboard the tomb ship. Did the humans really think a few dozen soldiers, no matter how well armed and physically augmented, could take over a tomb ship of the First Rank? The Barge of the Stormhawk would expunge them soon enough, leaving nothing of their presence.

  ‘The enemy are moving again, my lord.’

  Indeed, they were. Retracing their steps. A quick flickerscan confirmed Simut’s suspicion that the assault boats were returning to the point where they had deposited the attack party.

  ‘They are escaping, you fool! Do not let them get away!’

  ‘Canoptek countermeasures are slaved to the damage control systems, Light of the Thousand Lanterns, as you ordered. It requires your personal override protocol, Voice of Heavenly Grace.’

  Mentally grimacing, Simut extended his cortical field into the lower levels, bypassing several layers of ancient programming to access the core motivator channels of the canoptek servitors. Like dredging through muck, he pushed aside tier maintenance and resurrection imperatives, retracing protocol pathways into attack mode. Pulling back in disgust from their shared cortical framework, Simut felt them swarming together, bound upon their new mission by his singular will.

  While he watched the tide of scarabs, plasmacytes, reanimators and other construct-spawn swelling through the passageways around the human interlopers, he flashed a burst of communication to Plasmancer Ah-hotep.

  ‘Intercept their ship before it reaches the matrix resonator,’ he snarled. ‘Destroy it!’

  ‘What ship, my lord?’ the plasmancer’s reply pulsed back a few moments later.

  ‘The warship, you cretinous commoner! The one that attacked my ship and spat its degenerate boarders into my vaults.’

  ‘My lord, it seems the same cloaking effect that masked our sensors is hampering the sensors of the plasmancer’s vessel,’ suggested Phetos.

  ‘That would seem so,’ said Ah-hotep. ‘I shall move to protect the reso­nator but I cannot see any enemy as yet.’

  Before he could form a suitable rebuke, Simut realised that one of the human attack craft had settled on the surface of his ship and was embarking its living cargo. The canoptek broods poured up through external vents and access filters, but strafing gunfire from the other assault boats was cutting deadly swathes through them, accompanied by fire from the human fighters themselves. They seemed fully capable of operating in the void, their armour sealed against the vacuum.

  A full warrior phalanx was ascending as quickly as possible from the vault levels, but Simut could see that they would be too late to catch up with the swift exit of the attackers. Fearing what he would discover, he focused his internal scanners on the vestibule where they had tarried for a while. There were four distinct heat signatures, building slowly. Urged by his master, Phetos delved into the menial-cortex and ­repurposed a handful of nearby canoptek scarabs to investigate. The boxes left by the humans emanated distinctive radioactive and chemical traces.

  ‘Explosives, Crescent of the Night,’ the royal warden concluded. ‘Powerful enough to destroy the array.’

  ‘That was their purpose?’ Simut watched the last of the assault craft powering away with its reclaimed warriors. He ordered his escorts closer, to burn them from the void, but the enemy attack craft sped planetwards, diving down towards the atmosphere where the barques could not pursue.

  They would find no sanctuary there.

  ‘Launch the reaper fleet. Scour the skies of their pollution.’

  As the order thrummed along the cortical matrix the third vestibule of the cortifexal array exploded.

  The detonation was accompanied by a focused blast of radiation that bore a hole up through the fabric of the tomb ship, cutting through a dozen levels to burst out into the void. Thus channelled, the explosive shockwave from the blast erupted upwards, melting and shattering everything in its path, breaking a crack two-thirds of the length of the tomb ship’s wing. The dimensional grips keeping the tomb ship in place stuttered and then failed.

  Simut howled in disbelief as the gravitic forces of the world below took hold of the crippled vessel, dragging at its mass, pulling it down towards a destructive embrace.

  ‘All systems critical, my lord,’ said Phetos, quite unnecessarily. ‘Orbit rapidly diminishing.’

  ‘Plasmancer!’ Simut roared across the signal waves, the burst accompanied by a huge swell of control protocol. ‘Come to me! Forget the resonator, I need you here!’

  Any objection crushed by the command from Simut, Ah-hotep did not even have the opportunity to respond. Her ship banked away from its current course and accelerated back towards the planet.

  His forces thwarted at the lifting facility, Zozar vented his unfulfilled destiny of carnage at the expense of the humans around the storage buildings. They scattered like vermin from the exterminator, finding nooks and holes to hide themselves while the Destroyers picked over the buildings like carrion eaters on a corpse. Stalking from hall to hall, alert for the slightest tremor of heartbeat or breath, senses honed to the temperature of human life, Zozar led the hunt. Such was his frustration, the Destroyer lord eschewed his beam cannons for a more personal killing method – his phase blade. Parting hated mortality from its physical shell with a sweep of his sword brought a sense of focus that was lacking when he merely disintegrated from afar.

  The eradication of the storehouse defenders was simply the beginning. The blue-armoured warriors that had come to the aid of the lifting station defenders had broken the attack of the Destroyer cult warriors, but it would not be long before the casualties were resurrected. Even now their animus was being restored to new bodies in orbit. The remaining warriors were now instructed to keep the enemy occupied until reinforcements arrived. When he was done with his latest hunt, Zozar would demand that Simut gather the Destroyer forces again and trans­locate them to the position of the interlopers. They would be annihilated like all other life, but Zozar would take a modicum of satisfaction that a more earned retribution had been enacted.

  None would thwart his destiny.

  As he slashed apart another victim, the skorpekh lord felt a disturb­ance in the cortical matrix strong enough to distract him from the slaughter. A massive disruptive wave passed along his communications field and into his awareness. He briefly glimpsed his tomb vault ablaze, wracked with arcs of escaping power. A looped inflection command confirmed that the restoration tomb was not responding, and neither were hundreds of others.

  He felt one of his warriors perish to the detonating ammunition of the armoured warriors and its presence flickered into nothing.

  No recall, no reanimation. Finality.

  It was a sensation Zozar had not experienced for an untold age, in slumber and then in unlife. Mortality. An ending to everything.

  Was this what he had craved all along?

  No! The Destroyer did not fight to be destroyed! Death before other life had been exterminated was failure. He was the bringer of ruin and after his elimination who would continue the great work?

  Magnified visual inspection via one of his subordinate constructs showed the tomb ship aflame in the upper atmosphere, on the verge of total structural collapse. His resurrection protocols were aligned to Simut’s matrix, and now that node had been severed.

  With a roar, Zozar realised that he was trapped here with his cohort. Until new protocols were established there would be no translocation and his forces would dwindle. The battle had changed.

  Now it was no longer about righteous extermination. Zozar was in a fight for life or death.

  ‘Lieutenant, the enemy are breaking away.’ Shipmaster Oloris grinned as he relayed the news, the first sign of humour he had shown in weeks. ‘I think the plan worked.’

  Praxa­medes looked to Lerok at the patched-up augur station. Half the screens were blank and two servitor ports were empty, the corpses of their previous occupants removed by the tech-priests.

  ‘Energy surge in Orestes III’s atmosphere, lieutenant. Could be a ship entering.’

  Next to feel his gaze was Officer Geltas at the vox-terminal. He nodded, one hand clamped to his headpiece.

  ‘Getting confirmation that the gunships extracted the boarding force, lieutenant.’ The officer smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, all attack craft were safely away from the target before it pitched into the gravity well. They are traversing the upper atmosphere to avoid attack.’

 

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