Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

NINETEEN

Amicis et Inimicis

In the shattering chaos of the trench lines, Fornix found Jonah Kerne and Elijah Kass under a cameleoline tarp, watching while some of Dietrich’s vox specialists struggled to coax their comms signals through the welter of jamming frequencies that flooded the aether.

The sun was up, but smoke was rolling across the city in such clouds that it seemed closer to dusk than dawn. Now the heavy guns of the citadel were being called in on enemy positions beyond the walls, and the howitzers in the gun caverns were at full elevation, sending earthshaker shells arcing high above the ruins to impact on the plains where the enemy was forming up, some three kilometres outside the western gates.

There were Haradai on the walls, observing the fall of shot and calling in corrections whenever they could get a message through on the vox. Sergeant Laufey was working with Finn March on the most vulnerable gate. With the help of his Scout Marine squad, Primus had beaten off three assaults in the last two hours, but they were hanging on by a thread now, reduced to scavenging the enemy dead for bolter-magazines that fitted their own weapons.

‘What word, first sergeant?’ Kerne asked Fornix as they all three stood under the frail tarp and listened to the frantic efforts of the human signallers to construct some kind of viable vox-net.

‘They’re hitting the gates with everything they’ve got, especially Primus’s position,’ Fornix told him. ‘I give it another hour before they take the gatehouse.’

‘And our other squads?’

‘I’ve ordered them back within the interior trench line. They are consolidating even as we speak, covered by Dietrich’s artillery.’

Kerne said nothing for a long moment. Finally he turned to his Librarian.

‘Elijah, get through to the squads on the walls. Tell them to break out and make their way back to our lines. The walls are to be abandoned – we have not the means or the numbers to defend them any longer. Can you do that, brother?’

Elijah Kass did not answer. His eyes were sightless, bright as blue marbles lit from within. A thin cobalt light pulsed around his psychic hood.

At last, he came back to them, blinking. ‘It is done,’ he said. His eyes were more than bloodshot, and when Kerne looked closely into them, he saw that there was a blackness there, leaking through the iris like dye spreading through fabric.

‘Brother, are you all right?’

Kass smiled thinly. ‘Brother Vennan warned me before I set out on this expedition that the Great Enemy would make me pay for my gift, and he was not wrong. I am fighting off psychic attack day and night now, captain. It takes a toll on the body as well as the mind. But I am equal to it, I assure you.’

‘I hope so, brother. Were it not for your abilities and the instincts of our Reclusiarch, we would be fighting almost blind.’

‘I’ve never known the Great Enemy to utilise such efficient vox-jamming,’ Fornix said, anger taut in his voice.

‘Perhaps it is not the Great Enemy,’ Elijah Kass said.

‘What do you mean, brother?’ Kerne demanded.

‘Only that the third presence which I touched upon from time to time before this assault began is still here, another element which is distinct from the foe we are trading fire with. It may be this other is responsible for the vox difficulties.’

‘Track it down,’ Kerne said grimly. ‘I want to know what in hell has killed our communications, brother. It is costing us in blood.’

‘I will, brother-captain. It will take time–’

‘Time?’ Fornix spat out with a bitter laugh. ‘Well, we’ve plenty of that.’

‘It is time,’ Ainoc said. ‘Their situation is worsening, and they are pulling back from their forward positions, but they still hold the entrance to the mines in strength. That is our only access point, farseer.’

Te Mirah looked down upon the bright turning world that dominated the shielded viewports of Steerledge. Around it now there wheeled a series of objects, long and angular, that caught the light of the Kargad star in bright glitters as they orbited the planet.

‘We are close enough now,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, you are right, Ainoc. We cannot leave it too long. How many teams do we have in readiness?’

‘Callinall’s rangers are planetside, and we have inserted a dozen other covens by falcon stealth ships around the city. They report that our jamming seems to have worked. There will be no communications off-world for as long as the vox-scramblers are undiscovered.’

‘Good. The planet must remain isolated from further Imperial involvement until we have what we came for.’

‘If the mon-keigh are wholly defeated, lady, then the Circuit will be lost to us – one cannot strike bargains with Chaos.’

‘I know it,’ she snapped. ‘We must keep the defence in being, but at a level of desperation which makes them more amenable to our… suggestions.’

‘A fine line.’

‘My life has been the treading of fine lines, Ainoc. Ready another falcon. It is time for me to make planetfall and confront these fanatics with the hopelessness of their position.’

‘Fanatics do not lose hope, Te Mirah – that is what defines them.’

‘They are rational beings nonetheless – not by our standards of course, but they will lend an ear to what I have to say.’

‘You should not go in person,’ Ainoc said, shaking his head.

‘I can read their intent more clearly than anyone else upon the Brae-Kaithe. It is my function, and this is my destiny.’

‘Then I shall come with you, and my guardians shall be at your back.’

They looked at each other, not quite a test of wills – there was too much feeling there, a love not yet burned away by the centuries.

‘Very well, Ainoc. I should have a suitably impressive bodyguard, I suppose, if I am to convince these animals of what I am. Prepare the falcon, and bring along with you whoever you see fit – you are the follower of war after all.

‘And then the Brae-Kaithe must leave us. We are too close to the enemy here, and even the warp-addled minds of these invaders will sense our presence sooner or later.’

Ainoc bowed.

They chose the night, for during the day the fighting in the city reached a level of ferocity that appalled even the cold senses of the eldar.

The gates fell one by one, and were shunted open by the massive armoured hulks the mon-keigh named Dreadnoughts. Behind them came even larger tracked monstrosities: Land Raiders, Predators and Rhinos, all of Imperial design, but twisted, rebuilt and reconfigured to meet the tastes of those who now despised the Emperor of mankind with the same fervour that their far-off ancestors had once brought to his worship.

In the darkness, the bellowing engines rose high and loud under carefully laid smoke-barrages as the vehicles fought their way through the booby-trapped ruins, and Stormbirds made attack runs against the trench lines of the defenders, escorted by ancient Doomfires.

It was as though the enemy aircraft had been resurrected from some forgotten machine-grave, and raised corrupt and blasphemous to defile the very skies with their payloads.

In the midst of this, the Dark Hunters fought on, retreating metre by bloody metre to the secondary defensive lines which Dietrich and his men had held at such cost through the first invasion.

They wreaked havoc on the advancing enemy, cutting them down by the hundred, and hidden heavy-weapons teams would ambush the lumbering armour of the enemy as it lurched through the rubble, before moving to new hideouts.

The cameleoline of the Dark Hunters and these vicious ambush tactics served them well. Soon the main roads leading to the Armaments District and the citadel were clogged with burning vehicles.

But the Hunters paid for their temerity. Fifteen more of them died on that retreat, and only six of these had their gene-seed retrieved. Apothecary Passarion fought through squads of the enemy to harvest the precious genetic material, but sometimes, in the flash of promethium fire or the all-consuming holocaust of heavy ordnance, there was nothing left to bring back.

So it was that these brothers had their legacy taken from the Chapter forever, and the gene-pool of the Hunters was irrevocably diminished.

The cloaked eldar grav-ships were sleek as spearheads, and they made barely a whisper as they dived through the atmosphere, bypassing the lumbering Chaos transports, the Stormbirds and attack-fighters which now clogged the skies above Ras Hanem. When they appeared on augur, they were dismissed as an atmospheric blip, a glitch, and the war went on around them while they glided to rest within the walls of Askai a scant kilometre from the Imperial lines, their landing so soft it barely disturbed the dust.

‘Now, to survive initial contact,’ Ainoc said, and as one, he and his guardians drew their weapons. The wicked edge of his sword gleamed with a light like the sun seen through deep water. It was a Witchblade, a rune-marked relic of the Il Kaithe craftworld, and it had tasted the blood of every race known to the eldar – including that of those they were here to meet.

‘No weapons will be drawn, or they will shoot us out of hand,’ Te Mirah said. ‘You will all walk behind me, and you will be humble, Ainoc. We must don the guise of supplicants with these animals – their pride is immense, and their tempers are famed.’

‘I obey,’ Ainoc said. But he bared his teeth as the words came out of his mouth.

Perhaps fifty eldar had come down in the grav-ship, and these now stood about in the dust, the spirit stones upon their armour alight, shuriken catapults ready in their hands.

‘Stay here under Callinall,’ Te Mirah said to the others. ‘I will call if I am at need.’

‘If they raise a hand against you, they will lose it,’ Ainoc said, his long face alive with murder. But he clicked his sword to his back-harness, and his followers slung their catapults.

‘I will speak – none other,’ Te Mirah warned them, and then led them off through the quivering ruins, the night alive with tracer-fire and artillery exchanges, an orange glow overhead which blotted out the stars.

Brother-Sergeant Orsus, the biggest Space Marine in the Chapter, was forward of the line when he saw the glimmer of white come gliding through the shifting smoke towards them.

His infared augmented the sight, and the slow-walking file of figures became clear. Orsus had a century with Mortai Company, and wore the platinum stud of long service – he knew instantly what he was looking at. He spoke to his squad over the fitful vagaries of the vox.

‘Tertius, look to your front. Hold fire until I give the word.’

The Space Marines were hidden and perfectly camouflaged in the broken remains of one of the outer warehouse districts, close by the wall which encircled the manufactoria.

‘Eldar,’ Brother Feyd hissed. ‘What are they doing here? And walking into our lines as brazen as a bronze snake.’

‘Something is coming on the net, sergeant – do you hear it?’

It was a woman’s voice, speaking in low tones that to a normal human being would have sounded surpassingly lovely in their music. To an Adeptus Astartes, it was alien trash – but the language could be understood. It was Gothic, archaic but intelligible, somewhere between Low and High, and spoken slowly and distinctly as though the hearers were considered halfwits or children.

‘We mean you no harm, and wish only to speak to your commander. We have news of great portent for him, and we must discuss it at once. Your enemy is our enemy also. We mean you no harm. We will touch no trigger or blade. Let us enter your lines in peace.’

The line of eldar was flagged up in Orsus’s targeting resolution. He could have shot down half of them in three beats of his twin hearts, and his finger was tense on the trigger of the bolter, drawing down the necessary pressure gram by gram.

Then he released it in disgust. It would not do. Xenos scum or not, such a development had to be run past the captain; it was potentially too important to wipe away in a flurry of bolter fire, no matter how satisfying that might be.

‘Keep them covered, brothers,’ he rasped. And to the leading xeno, he said:

‘Stand fast where you are.’

The eldar behind their female leader flinched as the giant Space Marine rose up out of the rubble, a curtain of dust falling from him. He had been well hidden, even to them.

There was a red gleam in his eye-lenses and he kept his bolter trained on Te Mira’s face.

‘Captain Kerne, this is Tertius squad.’

Amazingly, the company vox was entirely clear now, but that only made Orsus more suspicious than ever.

‘Orsus, send, over.’

‘We have a development here, brother-captain, that I think you will want to see.’

They met within the blast-walls of the Armaments District, with Brother Laufey’s best snipers lining the heights above them. With Jonah Kerne were most of Mortai’s command squad. Fornix, Elijah Kass and Jord Malchai flanked their captain, and even through the blank lenses of the Space Marine helms, Te Mirah could sense their utter mistrust, deepening to enmity.

They were more powerful than she had expected – all the Adeptus Astartes were formidable foes, but in the captain and his Reclusiarch especially, she sensed wills of absolute unyielding iron.

There would be no easy deception here, and one misstep would be the end of her.

‘Captain Jonah Kerne, of the Dark Hunters Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes – I am honoured,’ she began.

‘You are not,’ the psyker Space Marine, the one they called Elijah Kass, said. ‘You are afraid, and you have a question burning in your mind, a request which you must make, and it frightens you to have to make it of us.’

Te Mirah shielded her own mind, cursing her complacence. This psyker was good: powerful and focused. She chanced a lance of her own inquiry back at him but it was batted away.

‘Speak plain, and you shall have honesty itself in return,’ Jonah Kerne said. ‘Play us false, as is the wont of all your kind, and you shall never leave this place.’

‘They should be killed here and now, before they try to ensnare us in their schemes,’ the Reclusiarch said.

‘I chanced much by coming here,’ Te Mirah told him. ‘I placed my life in your hands. Does not that argue some honesty to my purpose?’

‘It may have escaped your attention, witch,’ the one called Fornix said, ‘but we have rather a lot on our hands at the moment without spinning word games. So you will forgive us if you find our welcome a little cold.’

‘Spit out your falsehoods, faithless xenos, and have done with it,’ Malchai added.

The potential for violence simmered in the air – these creatures radiated it. They were in the middle of a war for their own survival, and one more killing would be nothing to them.

She concentrated on the captain. If she could convince him, then the rest would fall in line. Te Mirah cleared her mind of all fear and apprehension, blocked out the roar of warfare which rose beyond the walls, ignored the spots of laser-sights which were hovering on her and every other member of her entourage.

Honesty, she thought. Perhaps that indeed is all that will work here.

‘I came here to deceive you,’ she said simply.

It took them aback. Fornix actually laughed. ‘An honest eldar at last!’

‘Be quiet,’ Kerne snapped. And to Te Mirah he said. ‘No word games, xeno. Be swift. I have other places to be today.’ He looked up at the smoke-shrouded sky, the tracer skeining across it.

‘Very well,’ the farseer said. She drew in a breath, and then laid her mind open – almost open. At once, she felt the mon-keigh psyker probe it, as hungry as a starved dog. She set aside her layers of protection, but kept one back to shroud those corners of her psyche and her plans that must remain hidden. And the shroud itself she rendered elusive, so that it might be missed. He might just pass over the lies she hid in his eagerness.

‘Deep in the fabric of this world is hidden an artefact of my people, an ancient heirloom, if you will. It is not a weapon, nor can it confer any advantage in war – it is purely a cultural icon of the eldar, a priceless remnant of our past.’ She exhaled slowly.

‘It is an Infinity Circuit, and it is the key to the construction of another craftworld such as my own, a spacefaring home which could accommodate thousands of my people, and keep their extinction at bay a little longer.’

‘She speaks the truth,’ Elijah Kass said in some wonder.

‘What do we care about the artefacts of her decadent species?’ Malchai demanded. ‘Our place in this universe is to cleanse the stars of such vermin, not allow them to multiply.’

‘Quid pro quo,’ Jonah Kerne said slowly, and when Te Mirah looked baffled, he said: ‘What is in it for us?’

Her face cleared.

He is sharp, this one. Now for the lie.

‘Several things, captain. I wish to have access to the deep mines of this world, to search for the Circuit. You guard access to those mines. In exchange for that access, and free passage off-world for the Circuit once it is retrieved, I am willing to offer several things.

‘Your vox is hopelessly compromised by the jamming mechanisms of the enemy, and the warp is in such flux at the moment that even a skilled astropath would have difficulty in relaying any information through to your home world. I can help you with that. I have covens of psykers on board my ship who will relay any despatch you care to send back to your base.

‘Things do not seem to be going well for you here on the ground, captain. If you are to hold this planet, you must call on help. I will enable you to do so. If we come to an agreement, I could have any message you wish relayed to your home world within the day.’

That made them think. Even the black-armoured Reclusiarch with his frightful skull-helm was silent. She decided to flip another small weight on the scales.

‘In addition, while my people are in the mines searching for the Circuit, I will lend the weight of my own forces to the defence. I have squads of cloaked sharpshooters all over the city, waiting for my word. Only let me give it, and you shall have powerful allies to aid you in your struggle to survive. I swear it.’

‘What oath does a xenos swear that we could recognise?’ Brother Malchai grated. But even in him, she could sense the seed of doubt growing. Good, good.

Jonah Kerne stood marble-still. Te Mirah left her own mind open, aside from the shrouded corners, and felt the psyker, Kass, fumble through it. He was not adept at such things, and she could sense his urgency, his need to believe.

‘I sense no deception in her – the offer seems to be genuine, captain,’ he said.

Kerne said nothing for a long time, but stood there as still and calm as a statue in the Reclusiam. The rest of them, Space Marine and xenos, waited, listening to the sound of the war which raged endlessly beyond the high walls of the Armaments District.

Finally, slowly, the Dark Hunters captain reached up and lifted his helm from his head with a hiss of atmospherics, and then looked down on the eldar farseer, eye to eye.

‘Your offer is accepted,’ he said, very quiet, his black eyes searching her face, the ocular implants in them glinting red as blood in the the pupils. ‘I will not hinder you in the search for this thing, or its passage off-world should you find it. I give you my word.’

Jonah Kerne stepped forward, until he was close to the farseer. The eldar woman was tall, but he still towered over her. She mastered the urge to back away from him.

‘Play me false, and you will die. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I know that,’ she said, and there was no falseness in her at that moment. This creature was no psyker, but there was a searching shrewdness in him that could not be fooled, not face to face at any rate.

‘I am hostage for my own word, captain. I will remain with you while my people make the search. If you are betrayed, it will not be by me, and I will pay for any betrayal with my life.’

She turned around. ‘Ainoc, witness me now. You will search for the Infinity Circuit, and you will bring it forth while I remain here on the surface. On your good faith rests my own life. Do you understand?’

The male eldar with the sword at his back bowed slightly. His face was white with a kind of helpless anger.

‘It shall be even as you say, lady. I will go down into the dark for you, and find this thing. It shall be done as you command.’

‘Not quite as she commands,’ Jonah Kerne interrupted him. ‘The mines are a dangerous place – all manner of things might be lurking down there. I will send my first sergeant, Fornix, to accompany you, along with a small escort of the Dark Hunters.’

He turned to Te Mirah again. ‘Just to keep an eye on things.’