Void Stalker Read online

The Dreadnought whirred on its waist axis, coming about to a new direction and stomping that way when its legs realigned. Sparks briefly lit up the tarnished armour-plating. Their last few run-ins with the masked aliens had left their mark on the war machine’s iron body. Still, he’d slaughtered them all before they could come anywhere near her.

  ‘Are you alive, lord? I mean… You speak of death and resurrection. What are you?’

  The Dreadnought made an awkward gear-grinding sound. ‘I was Captain Malcharion of Tenth Company, called war-sage by my primarch, who found my long treatises on warfare to be pointless, but amusing. He lectured me more than once, you know. Told me to serve with the Thirteenth, where my wit would be more welcome.’

  She nodded slowly, seeing her breath mist in the air. ‘What’s a primarch?’

  Malcharion made the same gear-shifting noise again. ‘Just a myth,’ the vox-speakers boomed. ‘Forget I spoke.’

  For a time, they stood in silence. Malcharion tuned back into the vox, listening in contemplative quiet to the words of Variel, Talos, Lucoryphus and the last surviving members of his company. The arrival of the Flayer was a surprise, as was the presence of the gunship he brought. Beyond that, they all seemed to be dying just as they’d desired: falling only after reaving countless enemy lives, watering the stones of their ancient castle with the blood of their foes one last time.

  Perhaps it wasn’t glorious, but it was right. They weren’t the Imperial Fists, to stand in gold beneath the burning sun and scream the names of their heroes to the uncaring sky. This was how the Eighth Legion fought, and how all sons of the sunless world should finally die – screaming their anger, alone, down in the dark.

  He thought for a moment of the lie he’d told the human by his side; the lie that he relished this last hunt. He was perversely thankful for the chance to witness his former brethren meet their ends as true sons of the Eighth, but he cared nothing for shedding the cursed blood of these foolish xenos heathens. What grudge did he bear against them? None. None at all. Killing them was only a pleasure to teach them the ways of the Eighth, and the flaws of their inhuman arrogance.

  He considered it unlikely they could kill him with their scattered, weakling war parties. Perhaps twenty or thirty of them with better blades might be able to overwhelm him, but even then…

  No.

  He’d meet his end in this cold tomb, already interred within his coffin, finally falling into silence when the Dreadnought shell ran out of power. It could be ten years. It could be ten thousand. He had no way of knowing.

  Malcharion shut off the vox, and once more considered the human by his side. What was her name again? Had he even asked? Did it matter?

  ‘Do you want to die down here, human?’

  She hugged herself against the cold. ‘I don’t want to die at all.’

  ‘I am not a god, to forge miracles from nothingness. Everything dies.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ Again, the silence. ‘I hear more whispers,’ she confessed. ‘The aliens are coming again.’

  The immense cannon on the Dreadnought’s right arm lifted and made the clanking reloading sounds that were already becoming so familiar to her. The whispers were already growing stronger. She could almost feel the warmth of breath stroking the back of her neck.

  ‘My chronicle already ends in glory. Captain Malcharion, reborn in unbreakable iron, slaying Raguel the Suffer of the Ninth Legion for the second time, before at last passing into eternal slumber. That is a fine legend, is it not?’

  Even without understanding the meaning of the words, she felt their significance. ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Who would ruin their legend with one last, untold tale? Who would cast aside the slaughter of an Imperial hero in favour of saving a single human from death in the infinite dark?’

  Malcharion never gave her time to answer. His weapons rose even as he pivoted, and filled the chamber with echoing, deafening gunfire.

  First Claw stood ready, surrounded by inactive servitors and priceless, precious suits of Terminator war plate that would never see sunlight again.

  Talos sheathed his gladius along his shin, locked his empty bolter to his thigh, and drew the Blade of Angels. His skull-painted faceplate – marked with the forehead rune depicting the title he so often hated – regarded his brothers in turn.

  Mercutian’s breathing came in ragged growls, sounding wet over the vox, but he stood straight enough to hold his heavy bolter. He regarded the others through a dispassionate helm, crested by twin curved horns.

  Uzas wore his palm-printed helmet of ancient design, his chainaxe in one hand, his gladius in the other. His cloak of skinned flesh was draped over one shoulder in grim, regal contrast to the skulls hanging from his armour.

  Cyrion readied his chainsword and his bolter, the lightning bolt markings of his faceplate looking like jagged tear trails.

  ‘Let’s end this,’ he said. ‘I was bored of being alive, anyway.’

  Talos smiled, though he’d never felt less amused. Uzas said nothing at all. Mercutian nodded, his words coming after a grunt.

  ‘We’ll get you to the surface, brother. Then when Variel’s had his chatter, we’ll get back to skinning that alien harpy.’

  ‘Simple plans are often the best,’ Cyrion noted.

  Talos led them from the chamber, leaving their abandoned relics and mindless slaves to waste away in the dark.

  XXVIII

  A TRUTH NEVER TOLD

  After an hour, it became a hindrance. After two, a problem. In the third hour, they were barely moving at all.

  ‘Just leave me,’ Mercutian said, supported on Talos’s shoulder. He was dragging them back, slowing them down. Talos knew it. Cyrion and Uzas knew it, and Mercutian knew it better than any of them.

  ‘Leave me,’ he kept saying.

  ‘Leave the cannon,’ Talos replied. ‘It isn’t helping.’

  Mercutian clutched the heavy bolter tighter. ‘Just leave me. I’ll cut down any of the xenos wretches that come here to find me. If they’re behind us, I’ll buy you some time.’

  Cyrion walked alongside Talos and the limping warrior. Over a private link, he took a deep breath. ‘We should leave him, brother.’

  Talos didn’t even glance Cyrion’s way. ‘You should be silent.’

  ‘We’re going to die, Talos. That’s why we’re here. Mercutian is already dying, and the head wound Uzas is wearing doesn’t look like it’s left him all in one piece, either. His skull is bare to the bone, and we left one of his eyes back in the chamber where Third Claw died.’

  Talos didn’t argue. ‘Uzas is worrying me as much as Mercutian. He seems… cold, distant.’

  ‘To say the least. Come, what does it matter if Variel overhead a whisper of alien witchery? We’re dead men. If we don’t die here, we’ll die in orbit.’

  Talos didn’t answer at once. ‘The gunship slipped in. It can slip out. You heard what Variel said about the wraithships. The game has changed.’

  ‘And you believe him? You think you’re destined to live on, and unite the Legion?’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe.’

  ‘Very well. If you’re not supposed to die here, what visions of the future have you seen beyond tonight?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘There’s your answer. You die here. We all do. Don’t let our last hunt fail because we had to limp and flee like wounded dogs. We should find her while she’s wounded, not let her come to us in another ambush. It’s not our way.’

  Talos shook his head as he adjusted Mercutian’s weight on his shoulder. ‘Enough, Cy. I’m not leaving him. And I have to get to Variel.’

  ‘Your trust in the Flayer is your own flaw to fight. Don’t drag our lives into it. If you’re really turning your back on our last hunt, then Mercutian is still right. You want to reach the surface, and he’s slowing us down.’

 
Talos narrowed his eyes as he walked. ‘Sometimes, Cy, you make it easy to see why Xarl hated you.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Cyrion snorted. ‘Don’t hide behind his ghost as if he’d smile and nod and cheer you on for the sentiment. Xarl would be the first to leave him behind. You know that as well as I. It would be one of the few things he and I ever agreed on.’

  Talos had no answer to that.

  ‘Brothers,’ Uzas said, with serene calm. ‘I hear her. She comes, sprinting through the black.’

  First Claw redoubled their efforts. Cyrion took Mercutian’s other side, helping the wounded warrior limp onward.

  ‘Talos,’ Mercutian grunted.

  ‘Shut up. Just move.’

  ‘Talos,’ he snapped. ‘It’s time. Throne in flames, Soul Hunter. It’s time. Leave me. Run.’

  She came from the darkness again, eldritch blades in bone-armoured fists. The throwing star burned black with warp-tempered fire; the spear hissed like fresh iron in a forge trough, spitting-hot to the touch.

  One figure stood in the hallway before her. She smelled the chemical reek of its weapon oils and the dirty blood leaking from its wounds. She’d marked this one. She knew the scent of his life.

  A lone mon-keigh from their unclean warrior caste, abandoned by his kindred to bleed out the last of his life alone. How little these creatures knew of loyalty or nobility.

  As she drew near, she saw him strain to lift his weapon, and heard a single word in one of the human species’ filthy tongues.

  ‘Juthai’lah,’ said the dying soul of the warrior caste.

  Mercutian dragged in cold air through his mouth grille. The target locks on his retinal display struggled to align on the advancing witch-queen, as though reality itself resisted her presence.

  He blinked to clear his vision, braced back against the weight of his bolter cannon, and lifted the muzzle to aim down the hallway.

  She walked closer, and still he couldn’t lock onto her. To the hells with augmented targeting then. Back to simple purity.

  Mercutian breathed the word aloud into the corridor, uncaring whether she knew its meaning or not.

  ‘Preysight.’

  His bolter kicked in his fists a second later, hammering in anger and filling the narrow tunnel with explosive shells.

  The survivors ran.

  Their boots pounded onto the stone as they sprinted, never once looking back. Genetically enhanced muscles bunched and moved within the fibre-bundle cabling that augmented their strength, while three lungs and two hearts worked to capacity inside their heaving chests.

  Talos vaulted a pile of rocks, his boots crashing down on the other side and never missing a stride. His eye lenses flickered runic sigils between eighty-four and eighty-seven kilometres per hour. Those figures sank lower each time he was forced to slide and skid around a corner, or leap up and kick off from an adjacent wall at a junction in order to maintain a semblance of speed.

  They’d been running for a full seven minutes before Talos cursed under his breath. At the edge of his retinal display, the three remaining life signs became two, and a flatline whined its way across the vox.

  Mercutian trembled as he died in her grip. Even through his fading vision, he noted the damage done to her helm and breastplate – the armour was cracked, letting some of her stinkingly ripe alien blood trickle through. He’d only managed to graze her a handful of times with over forty shells from his heavy bolter, but the detonations left her charred and wounded, even if he’d failed to cripple her as he’d hoped.

  ‘Sleep,’ she caressed him with her voice, somehow mocking despite its gentleness.

  Mercutian gripped the spear that impaled his chest, and pulled. He slid half a metre closer to her, feeling the horrendous, squealing scrape of the metal pole grating against his destroyed ribcage and burned flesh.

  ‘Sleep,’ she said again, laughing this time. A full-throated and melodious laugh, that only ground Mercutian’s teeth together even harder. He gripped again, and pulled a second time. He barely moved – strength was fleeing him, along with his blood.

  She whipped the spear back, and the pain of the withdrawal was worse by far than the crack of it going in. With nothing to support him, he crumpled to the ground on dead legs, his armour crash reverberating through the tunnel.

  For a moment, he lay foetal, trying to suck in air that wouldn’t come. He was drowning without being underwater, his vision already greying at the edges.

  She walked past him. The sight of her boots swishing past were a catalyst, shocking him back to his weakening senses. In his preysight, she was little more than a thermal blur, but training allowed him to make out the details he needed.

  With a roar of effort and pain mixed into one screamed song, Mercutian moved as fast as he ever had in his life, and faster than he ever would again. The gladius in his hand rammed through the back of the maiden’s leg, bursting through the front of her shin, and sticking fast. She cried out in kind, spinning to ram her spear down through his chest a second time.

  Mercutian grinned up at her as his last breath left him. He spent it speaking a final sentence, meeting the witch-queen’s eyes.

  ‘Now try running…’

  Lucoryphus landed in a haze of spreading dust. Variel ignored it, breathing the recycled air within his sealed suit as he stood in the rain.

  ‘I see them,’ the Raptor said. ‘They surfaced to the west, on the battlements.’

  Variel immediately started to run. He heard Lucoryphus laughing, and the Raptor’s engines cycling back up to power. The Apothecary had a handful of seconds before Lucoryphus struck him from behind, grabbing his shoulder guards, and lifted him off the ground.

  Variel – who had no love for flying, but even less affection for any of the Bleeding Eyes – clung on in undignified silence as the ruins passed below.

  His first sighting of Variel wasn’t actually when the Apothecary was dropped rather crudely onto the battle-ments from above. It was when his eye lens display acknowledged his Badabian brother’s proximity, and linked a third vital sign feed to join Uzas and Cyrion’s. Xarl’s name rune, along with Mercutian’s, were silent and faded by comparison.

  Lucoryphus touched down with considerably more grace, his claws gripping the ramparts of the crooked, leaning battlement wall.

  Talos approached the Apothecary as Variel was picking himself up. ‘I want answers, Variel, and I want them now.’

  ‘My explanation may take some time. I can call the gunship.’

  ‘Septimus and Octavia are truly here? On this world?’

  ‘That, also, will take time to explain.’

  ‘We are short of many things, brother: ammunition; hope; warriors. You can add time to that list. Where’s Blackened?’

  ‘The battlements, to the north. Perhaps four minutes’ flight.’

  Talos re-tuned his vox to the familiar channel he never thought he’d contact again. ‘Septimus.’

  ‘Lord? It’s good to hear your voi–’

  ‘Get the gunship in the air, and fly over the central ruins. We are proceeding there now. Don’t land until we call you in – it’s too dangerous for you to remain on the ground any longer than you have to. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  ‘And if by chance you catch an eldar maiden in armour of bone in your gunsights, I would appreciate you shooting her into red mist.’

  ‘Uh… as you say, lord.’

  Talos severed the link, and looked back to the others. ‘Scatter into the ruins until the gunship comes in. Don’t let her find you. Now move. Variel, you’re with me. Start explaining.’

  Cyrion sprinted through the rain. Erosion had left this stretch of ruined battlements a mere seven metres above the ground, which Cyrion cleared in a casual drop down to ground level. His boots crunched on the rocky earth, and he broke back into his run
.

  Taking cover in the ruins of the gigantic fortress was hardly difficult; even on the surface, weathering had left an abandoned city of rubble and tilted walls on the grey plains. He ran for several minutes, stopping at last when he reached a slope of rubble that had once served as a barracks wall, next to the battlements.

  The Night Lord started to climb, his gauntlets punching and clawing handholds in the stone where it was too smooth to grip in the rain.

  ‘Cyrion,’ said a voice. Not over the vox. Over the rain. It was that near.

  Cyrion looked up. Uzas crouched at the top of the wide wall, looking down at him. The painted palm-print was smeared over his ancient faceplate, untouched by the cold rainfall.

  ‘Brother,’ Cyrion replied. A pregnant pause reached between them. Cyrion hauled himself the rest of the way up. Uzas rose to his feet, and backed away. His chainaxe and gladius were still in his fists.

  ‘Let us speak,’ Uzas said. The storm heaved harder, lightning splitting the sky above them both.

  ‘Talos told us to split up.’

  Uzas never turned his red eye lenses away. ‘Talos. Yes, let us speak of Talos.’ His voice had never sounded so clear – at least not in the centuries since the Great Heresy. Cyrion couldn’t help but wonder just what the head wound had done.

  ‘What of Talos?’ he asked.

  Uzas gunned the trigger of the chainaxe for a moment. Raindrops sprayed from the whirring teeth.

  ‘Talos has lost his patience with me many times in the decades since we fled Tsagualsa. Yet he has always treated me fairly. Always defended me. Always remembered that I am his brother, and that he is mine.’

  Cyrion rested his hand on his sheathed chainsword. ‘Aye. He has.’

  Uzas tilted his head. ‘But you have not.’

  Cyrion forced a laugh. It sounded as insincere as it was.

  ‘Cyrion, Cyrion, Cyrion. I have been thinking, as I look down at these red hands of mine. I bear the sinner’s red hands because of my many, many rampages through the mortal crew of the Covenant. The void-born’s father was the last, wasn’t it? That foolish, fearful old man, who would sweat and weep and cringe every time we walked near.’