Fist of Demetrius

Chapter Five

I stand on the boarding ramp of the Impaler, surrounded by my personal guard. They grin and smile, readying themselves for the hot joy of battle. I keep my face cold and distant as a leader must, but in my heart I know what they are all feeling, for I feel it too.

In my mind I picture the ebb and flow of the ship to ship combat. I see our vessels whirl and spin and feint, a cloud of fire-wasps stinging at a running sabre-tiger. Some aim for the weapons, some for the sensor eyes, others dive and swirl and spin, seeking only to distract the humans, to keep them from guessing where the killing thrust will come. All of this concentrated action exists only to prepare the way for this boarding action, for the swift joyous launch of the Impalers as they race to make contact with the enemy vessel.

I picture our assault craft racing towards the enemy ship, a swift, sleek sliver of crystal, hurtling on a contact trajectory that will lead to inevitable victory.

Divinatory scans have revealed the weak points in the human hull. They have been matched with memory crystal records of other attacks on similar human ships, which have been downloaded into the biosystems of my battle-armour. These will be matched against the actual layout we encounter, providing predictive maps to show us where to go. Half a dozen forces will advance from their separate entry points, spreading terror among the human crew, making surgical strikes against all resistance.

We are aiming for the armouries and the power cores of the vessel, to cripple its defences and its ability to resist, to leave it floating helplessly in space for our ships to destroy at will. I slide my helmet into position. I allow myself to smile. This is what I live for, to prove my superiority once more in the crucible of battle.

A sour feeling settles in my stomach. Of course, these are only humans. There is no glory to be gained in overcoming such, only a certain crude sustenance to be fed on. Still, it is better than nothing.

A faint vibration passes through the ship as the hulls come together. The boarding spikes engage. External cutters swing into place to prepare our route into the human vessel at the airlocks, the weakest point.

I glance around at my followers now, all as armoured as I, all as ready to do battle. Row after row of warriors prepare to leap into the gap. They raise their weapons in salute.

The enemy hull gives way. The massive leech mouth of the forward orifice dilates to reveal the interior of the vessel beyond. I catch the strange scents of alien air, laced with the pheromonal patterns of unfamiliar emotions, tiny exquisite hints of past agonies, products no doubt of old battles and recent accidents.

I dive forwards into the revealed breach. The faint tang of human life and emotion pervading the thick air envelopes me.

Long, tense seconds passed. The ship shook. It felt like an earthquake rumbling through the giant hull.

‘Lord Macharius,’ said the captain. ‘Our hull has been breached. The xenos have boarded us.’

Macharius smiled. ‘We will engage them then.’

The captain did not look up from the tactical screens. ‘By all means, Lord High Commander, please do. I must remain here and supervise this battle. There are emergency suits in those lockers. Please take them. You may find yourself in places where our life support systems have failed.’

Macharius glanced around at us. ‘Let us go and kill some xenos.’

I checked my shotgun and got ready to fight.

We suited up. It was merely a matter of donning the void-hardened armour from the lockers and putting the rebreather helmets in place. It was all done according to the ancient drills. Macharius had patched himself into our own networks. Our troops were ready to engage, but so far he had restrained them. Knowing him, it was all part of some plan.

We made our way out into the corridors beyond the command level and dropped down a grav-shaft into the body of the ship. All the while, Macharius kept murmuring commands into the comm-net, telling our troops to remain steady, to wait, that our time would come.

Whatever he was going to do, I hoped he would do it soon. The xenos appeared to be making their way unopposed into the very heart of the ship. Even as the thought crossed my mind, Macharius spoke with calm authority. ‘Begin the counter-attack now.’

The human ship is crude, sheets of metal riveted together, primitive mechanical systems that reflect their simplistic view of the universe. Lights flicker. Great horns pulse warning howls through the ship, no doubt letting them know that an enemy is aboard.

I race through the grey-metal corridor, following the predictive map, surrounded by my warriors. All are keen to encounter prey, to grab their share of glory beneath the gaze of their commander, to bolster their status in my retinue by outshining their rivals. Of course, all ultimately seek my place, but at this moment in eternity they must vie for my favour and I, like every other leader in eldar history, will use this to my advantage.

Massive metal doors are shutting in place. They are simple enough to override as we make our way into the depths of the ship. Ahead of us, our first group of humans emerges into the corridor. They turn as they see us, doughy features twisted in animal fear. They fumble stupidly for weapons.

I spring forwards, blades whirling – sever a head, expose a spine, remove a limb before ever my feet touch the deck. I roll forwards, putting myself below the line of fire of my bodyguards, whose shooting scythes down the remainder of the humans.

Good. So far my presence has ensured restraint. No one has yet made any attempt to over-gorge on agony. They are doing their best to simply remove the obstacles between us and our objectives, which is just as well, for there will be plenty of time later for nourishment, once this vessel is ours.

We race on, heading towards the core of the vessel, to the place where the ship’s primitive engines lie. More uniformed humans loom ahead of me. I chop them down so that I can admire the pattern of the blood spurts on the wall.

Normally I would not be so spendthrift of slaves, but we have a world behind us and these primitives represent just a few thousand more lives. I can give vent to my contempt and disgust without thought of the cost.

I listen to reports on my helmet channels. Sileria informs me that resistance is light. Bael claims that the humans are too scared to stand and fight. Everywhere across the ship it is the same story. I suppose it could be that the humans were just taken so completely by surprise that they can mount no resistance, but I do not like it. Something feels not quite right here. I inform Manali’s force to remain in reserve and ignore her disappointed grunt. It does not matter to me how much she wants to claim her share of the spoils, she must do as she is told or face the consequences. It would not do to be taken off-guard by these primitives.

As that thought occurs to me, I hear a shout and sounds of fighting behind me. It seems we have opposition here after all.

Uniformed humans begin pouring down the corridors. They are dressed in green tunics with some sort of golden feline’s head embossed on them. They are not like the other humans in simpler uniforms, who I now perceive must be servants or ship’s crew or both. They lay down a curtain of fire with their lasrifles that is dense and difficult to avoid.

I spring into a doorway and consider what is happening. Nearby, Drakin falls in a withering hail of fire, armour cracked, crystal flaring with a greenish chemical glow in the heat.

Reports flood in over the communications channels. All of our forces are now encountering resistance. It cannot be coincidence that this all happened simultaneously. Somewhere on this craft is a mind capable of a primitive form of tactical thought.

Judging by the points from which the reports are coming in from, it has deduced our likely objectives and chosen to allow us to advance deep into the ship before mounting a real defence. That being the case, it is only logical that forces will be moving into place behind us to cut off our retreat. Perhaps I am overestimating the mon-keigh mind of my opponent, but better to do that than walk into a trap from which there is no retreat.

I dispatch squads to the rear to check and clear our exits, and I order the remainder of my force to begin flanking the beasts who oppose us. I shall leave some squads here to create the illusion that we are making a serious attempt to break through while we move around.

There is no way these primitives can match the mobility of eldar. We shall achieve our breakthrough; it is merely a matter of concentrating our firepower where they are weakest. Soon this ship will be ours.

We headed for the hull levels where our forces were already engaged and came to a vast open rampway, strewn with the bodies of the crew, many of them hideously mutilated. Amid them moved lean and sinister alien shapes that looked like spindly humans with enormously elongated heads. It took me a moment to realise that this was merely their armour.

At rest there was something insectile about them. You expected their movements to be swift but jerky with the machine quality you see in mantises. It was not so. In motion, they possessed eye-blurring speed and the grace of dancers.

There was only a comparative few of them below us, and they were confronted by a full company of Macharius’s bodyguard, but they did not pause for an instant. They did not flee. They attacked, springing forwards like predatory beasts. Their weapons made little sound but men died, flesh stripped, bones glittering, throats wrenched into agonised screams. Perhaps the bolts that hit them were poisoned, maybe the weapons were designed to inflict the maximum pain, but I had never seen men suffer so as they expired.

‘Stand your ground!’ Macharius roared. We stood. When the Lord High Commander gave an order, you obeyed, no matter how awful the death you faced.

The eldar raced towards us. We laid down a curtain of fire that drove them scurrying backwards, seeking cover in doorways and corridor mouths. A ragged cheer went up from our ranks. Macharius did not acknowledge it.

‘Squads one and nine, cover our flanks. They will attack us from there next.’

No sooner had he given the order than I heard more shooting start. The eldar had very swiftly regrouped and attacked from other directions with terrifying swiftness and ferocity.

Macharius rapped out more commands, steadying our boys. He dispatched the Undertaker and Anton and another squad to the right flank. I wondered if I would see either of them again. He kept speaking into the comm-net, ordering companies and squads into new positions, talking with the unit commanders, keeping himself abreast of the developing situation on the ship and interjecting words of command and encouragement to the soldiers around him.

I stood next to him, wondering even after all those years at his demeanour. I clutched the shotgun in my grip and kept my eyes peeled in case more of the eldar attempted a frontal assault. To my eyes, there was no pattern to anything, only chaos.

A wave of them surged forwards suddenly, breaking towards us. Individually the xenos were a match for a dozen Guardsmen, and they fought with a fluid, swift-moving ferocity that constantly probed our position for weak points. They would seem to fall back, morale broken, only to come surging ahead again with renewed ferocity. There were feints within feints, bluffs within bluffs.

The eldar died hard. We had the weight of numbers and we had Macharius. That should have been enough, but somehow it did not feel as easy as it ought to have.

As the reports of enemy counterattacks came in, Macharius ordered men forwards to meet the threat and to neutralise it. His commands not only sent reinforcements to our embattled soldiers, they put units in flanking positions. He seemed to understand instinctively what the eldar would do, and know how to deal with it.

As the minutes ticked away, a grim smile played over his lips, and I realised that he was enjoying himself. These blood-soaked corridors were like a game board to him, and he had found a challenge worthy of his talents. The fact that his life and all of our lives were at stake was immaterial to him. He paused for a moment and looked around.

Drake stared at him. ‘How goes it?’

‘The xenos move constantly,’ Macharius said. ‘They use their mobility to probe and strike and search for weak points. They are over-confident. They are not used to being outmanoeuvred. I am building a net with multiple strands, ringing them round with layers of force. Moving our men to where they will need to strike next. I leave some weaknesses in the pattern so that they do not realise what is happening. They have nothing but contempt for us. They think they fight this battle on their own terms. I will beat them before they are aware they have been defeated. By underestimating us, they defeat themselves.’

He said it with his usual confidence, and I believed him. With Macharius war was as much a matter of psychology as it was strategy and tactics. He had looked into the minds of those xenos and understood them, at least the part that related to fighting, which was all he needed to understand. Their assessment of his gifts was unflattering but that meant nothing to him. It was just another factor in the cold equations of combat that ran through his mind, an advantage that would give him victory, or so he believed.

I was correct. The humans cannot match our mobility. What I did not take into account is that they don’t have to. They can rely on their superior numbers. I have moved my forces along alternative routes, but wherever we go they are waiting for us. It seems that the mon-keigh opposing me has deduced the most likely routes of our attack and moved his forces there to meet them.

Were the humans able to move just a little bit faster they would be overwhelming us. As it is, we are holding our own but getting bogged down in the conflict with their superior numbers.

I can see the realisation is starting to filter through into the minds of my underlings. They no longer joke and make confident predictions of the number of slaves they are going to take and devour. They are starting to take this conflict seriously. It is no longer a leisurely amusement to them. They are beginning to respond with increased aggression, to take less time over the small cruelties and indignities they like to heap on their foes, and work at simply killing them. They are very good at this.

I am starting to wonder who is organising this. Could it be that some of these humans are like orks, with an instinctive gift for warfare?

At times we fought silently. At other times screams like damned souls in torment told us that the xenos had claimed another victim. I have fought many foes, human and xenos, in my time. I have even stood against the servants of Chaos, but I don’t think I ever hated anyone the way I hated those eldar. Mostly the Emperor’s enemies are the Emperor’s enemies, and I kill them – sometimes coldly and sometimes driven by the rage and fear that strikes a man in combat. But there was something unutterably loathsome about these xenos.

I listen to incoming reports on the channels. The humans are fighting back hard now, and our warriors are beginning to encounter much fiercer resistance. The other commanders still sound confident, but I am liking this less and less. My forces have yet to reach a single one of their objectives. This whole ship is turning into a gigantic death trap. My own force has been driven far from my original line of attack.

Perhaps it would be best to cut our losses, withdraw and destroy the humans at a distance. Letting the killing lust take possession of me was an error. I can see that now.

Suddenly, nearby, I catch the faint pheromonal spoor of something I have not sensed in a very long time. The tang of something other than a mere human, of beings who were worthy foes, who could endure agony far better. I catch the scent of a Space Marine. Perhaps this explains the difficulty we are having. If that is the case, there is a simple way of dealing with it. We need only find him and kill him.