Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

SIXTEEN

Latitat in Umbram

‘They have returned,’ Te Mirah said.

Brothers and sisters, I give you greeting.

Love, and exultation, and baffled anger, all mixed. A mission of both failure and success.

She blessed the ranger team in her mind as she stood upon Steerledge. Callinall was on her way to her, but she knew the tidings the ranger veteran would bring. It was not so different from anything she had expected, but even the emotional gist of it filled her with hope and dismay in the same measure.

‘It is real, Ainoc,’ she breathed. ‘Anandaiah was correct. That blasted waste they now call Ras Hanem – it was Vol-Aimoi once. It was ours.’ She bowed her head.

The tall warlock was radiating anger. ‘And now they squabble across its holy expanse like children fighting over a broken toy.’

Steerledge was as quiet and serene as ever, but now there was a thrumming undercurrent on the great command space of the Brae-Kaithe. An inchoate hope that Te Mirah had not sensed in her people for a long time.

The wraithbone doors opened, and in strode Callinall, still besmirched with the dust and filth of the place she had lately been. She bent and kissed the farseer’s hand. The ranger had thrown back her hood, and the concealment field which she had worn on the surface of Ras Hanem was switched off, the stones on her belt dull. She was a tall, impossibly slim figure in a hooded cloak with a long shuriken rifle slung at her back. Her face was a lean white triangle with brilliant stones for eyes, and a mouth as cruel as the blade of a knife.

‘My lady, it is there, the thing we have dreamed on for a hundred generations. I would wager my life on it.’ Her voice rang around Steerledge.

Te Mirah held up a hand. ‘I must know all, every moment’s detail, Callinall.’

‘My people sensed it even as we landed. It is deep buried, down in the warm dark of that unhappy world, but it still lives. Lady, somewhere in the bowels of the planet an Infinity Circuit of our people is hidden, one of the greatest relics of our race.’

‘You must be sure, Callinall,’ Ainoc said, his face as set and hard as the wraithbone of the Brae-Kaithe. The tall sword at his back quivered with the tension in his taut frame and the warlock’s eyes flashed with cold light.

‘I cannot be mistaken, my lord. It called to us like a song, like music in the bone.’ Callinall’s face was transfigured by joy as she spoke. ‘It was all we could do to tear ourselves away from that music.’

‘The Brae-Kaithe has heard it too,’ Te Mirah said gently. ‘Our ship listens to her lost mother, and keens for her.’

‘With an Infinity Circuit, one could build a new craftworld entire, another beginning for tens of thousands of our people whose souls reside within it,’ Ainoc said. He looked down at his long-fingered hands with the blue nails, and for a moment they came together in prayer. ‘Khaine, red father in our blood, give us strength.’

‘The mon-keigh have driven off their ancient enemy,’ Callinall went on. ‘The warrior fanatics of their elite now hold the capital in force, and are reordering things at their leisure. The fighting has ended.’

‘For now,’ Te Mirah murmured.

‘The Circuit is buried deep in the fabric of the planet – that is how it has remained undetected so long. But the mon-keigh have been mining there for many of their solar cycles, and they have come close to uncovering it – it is for this reason that we hear it calling so clearly.

‘My lady, I believe the way is open – the humans have delved so deep in their greed for ore and alloy that they have come close to the hiding place of the Circuit. This recent war has set back their operations – it could be months, even years by their reckoning of time ere they discover it, but discover it they will, eventually.’

Callinall’s face twisted with disgust. ‘There is a psyker in their ranks, a powerful, well-trained one whose mind touched upon us briefly as we infiltrated the city–’

‘You were discovered?’ Ainoc barked.

‘I believe not, my lord – not directly – but we may have kindled a suspicion in the thing’s mind.’

‘Time runs against us,’ Te Mirah said. She turned, and walked across the white expanse of Steerledge with her sigilled and gem-studded cloak trailing after her, ignoring the eldar crew who stroked the control stones at their stations, whose minds were a murmur at the back of her own.

‘What about the entrance to these mines? How well guarded is it?’ Ainoc demanded.

Callinall’s face fell. ‘It resides in a heavily fortified section of the city where the bulk of their manufactoria reside,’ she said. ‘Aside from their citadel, it is the most frequently patrolled location in their lines. And there is more.

‘The war exterminated most of the population, but many thousands of that rabble were driven underground by the fighting and subsisted in the mines while it lasted. There are still hordes of the things underground, infesting the very shafts and passageways we would have to take in order to reach the Circuit.’

‘As a warrior – as a ranger, Callinall,’ Te Mirah said, ‘how do you assess our chances of infiltrating these mines, and exfiltrating undetected?’

Callinall bent her head, something like a silent snarl crossing her narrow face.

‘I must speak against my heart. The chance is almost non-existent, my lady. I do not believe it can be done.’

‘It does not mean we cannot try,’ Ainoc exploded. ‘Khaine’s wrath, we cannot sit to one side and watch the mon-keigh rape one of the most treasured and valuable remnants of our past, an artefact which is the key to the birth of an entire new world! Te Mirah, let me–’

‘Enough,’ the farseer said sharply, holding up one hand.

There was silence on Steerledge. Te Mirah glided over to the massive shielded viewport. She looked out upon the dark side of a small moon, one of the many in the Kargad system that now lay scourged and lifeless after the legions of the Great Enemy had passed across it. But its bulk shielded her beloved ship from the prying augurs of the Imperium.

It did so now – it could not do so forever.

Time, ticking past her, robbing them all of this glorious discovery, this opportunity beyond price. It could not be borne, the loss of something so precious, when her exiled race had already lost so much.

‘There is something else,’ she said, turning around to Ainoc and Callinall. ‘Something I have not yet shared with you, but which has impressed itself upon my senses ever more clearly in the last few turns of shipday.

‘We are under even greater constraints than you might suppose, my warriors. Callinall, you say the fighting has ended, that the Great Enemy has been driven from the surface of the planet.’

Callinall nodded.

‘You are right. But my mind and that of the Brae-Kaithe looks beyond one planet, one system. It ranges far out into the void, and even unto the dark shadows of the immaterium itself. The warp is still in flux, as restless as a pot on the boil. I see things approaching which are not yet manifest, events to come which are set in space and time as though they were history already written.

‘This war is not over. The Great Enemy retreated from the planet and this system as a deliberate ploy. He was not driven out – he withdrew of his own accord, to suck in the forces of the Imperium and let them believe they had victory in their hands.

‘They are profoundly wrong. It approaches out of the warp, my dearly beloved, like a black star. A vast armada of the night, it is only an eye’s blink away from us, on the other side of the curtain which separates our galaxy from the chaos and evil of the warp. And it will be here soon.

‘The Imperial forces on the planet they name Ras Hanem are doomed. Against that which is coming, even the much-vaunted Adeptus Astartes of their Emperor cannot prevail.’

‘An ambush,’ Ainoc said, and his face twisted with conflicting emotions.

‘Yes.’

‘Then we must move quickly, before it is too late.’

‘It is already too late.’ Te Mirah walked up and down, her cloak catching the light of Steerledge in myriad glitters, as though it were bedecked with stars.

‘We must try another way, more dangerous, requiring more patience – and your forbearance, Ainoc.’

‘I will try anything which redeems the Infinity Circuit from the hands of those animals,’ Ainoc said.

‘Even if it means making an attempt to negotiate with those animals?’

Ainoc was speechless.

‘Farseer, I do not understand,’ Callinall, the ranger, said.

‘We have cooperated with them in the past, when it has suited our purposes. As barbarous as they are, they are not creatures of the warp, and on occasion they can be reasoned with.’

‘They cannot be trusted – they are fanatics who wish to see our kind swept out of the stars,’ Ainoc said hotly.

‘Agreed. But they are not without some intellectual subtlety, when it suits them.’

‘Do you think you can persuade them to simply hand over the Infinity Circuit?’ Ainoc asked.

‘I believe that when they are placed in a dire enough situation, they are more willing to negotiate in the sheer fight for survival. If we can somehow insinuate ourselves into their decision-making process, then we may well have the time and space allowed to reach our goal without fighting a hopeless battle.

‘The hopeless battles, Ainoc, we shall leave to them.’

She smiled. ‘There is one approaching. When they are weak enough, and desperate enough, they will be willing to listen, and our presence will be less of an anathema to them – believe me, I have seen it before. Even the Adeptus Astartes have worked with our people in the past.’

‘They will betray us,’ Ainoc said, shaking his head.

‘Perhaps, but my dearly beloved,’ Te Mirah strode up to Ainoc and took his face in her hands.

‘What other choice do we have?’