Death Warrant, page 4
‘I’m going to pry the periapt from your smouldering corpse, Anjelika,’ crackled Moren’s voice over the vox as the flier swung side-on to them.
Dorkin opened fire. Trayn raised her plasma pistol, but something blocked her aim. There was a clang of metal and she realised she was looking up into Kordi’s emotionless black lenses. He was facing her, blocking Dorkin’s aim. He shuddered as he took the multiple impacts.
The gun-cutter’s heavy bolters had opened fire too, filling the clearing with their thudding discharge. Dros was struck and stumbled away from Trayn’s side, a mass-reactive round blowing his arm off in a spray of blood and flesh. He only had time to draw breath before a second shot shattered his skull.
It ended as abruptly as it had begun. Just a few seconds after Berkut opened fire, something tore from the sky, its shriek eclipsing the gun-cutter’s engines even as its great shadow fell across it. There was a crash, and flames blossomed around the armed flier, one stubby wing torn away by a glancing impact. The shooting stopped as the cutter twisted violently, more flames bursting from its turbofans. Berkut impacted with the edge of the jungle treeline in a crash of splitting timber and a screech of twisting metal, black fronds lashing its fire-licked hull.
Trayn’s eyes turned to the aircraft that had downed the gun-cutter. It was blocking out the sun as it came in overhead, a vast gunship that bristled with weapons systems and thick defensive plating the colour of the Space Marines’ power armour. A ramp, embossed with the crest of a white oceanic predator, began to lower as landing prongs dug into the clearing’s soil.
‘On board,’ Kordi ordered her. He was already turning away, moving towards Berkut’s downed remains and unclamping a huge chainsword as he went. She saw his back as he broke into a run – the armour was bent, twisted and bloody, riddled with the shots that would have torn her apart had he not blocked them with his own body.
Inside the gunship, one of the Space Marines pushed Trayn onto a troop bench and locked her into a restraint harness. The other Space Marines were doing likewise, lining the troop hold’s interior. The one with the wounded leg was being administered to by one of his brethren. His vambrace ports opened to allow a series of wicked-looking needles access to his flesh. The other, with the missing arm, appeared to have gone into some sort of self-induced coma, the blood from the ruined stump already clotted.
Trayn closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing, the way her father had taught her during times of stress. She couldn’t panic. Now, more than ever before, her decisions had to be rational. She needed to reach the Saint Justinian over the vox and convince the Adeptus Astartes to transfer her. She tried the comm-bead again, glancing at the unmoving warriors around here. There was nothing but static on the other end. Even if Contin hadn’t abandoned her, it was unlikely the short-range communications device would be able to reach him. After a moment she gave up, leaning back and closing her eyes.
There would be a way out of this. There had to be. Her father would have known.
The thump of heavy boots on the metal decking made her eyes open. The final Space Marine had clambered aboard – Kordi. Blood dripped from every inch of his once-grey armour and thick strings of gore hung from the deactivated chainsword he still gripped in one fist. Without saying anything, the Space Marine sat next to her, dragging a harness down over his slick battleplate. Trayn looked away, out of the armourglass vision port beside her, feeling her stomach churn.
The flier’s prow hatch rose, sealing them inside. With leaden grace, the aircraft began to rise; the pitch of its engines changed as its landing gear levered back inside. Below, the clearing fell away. Trayn caught sight of movement, and realised a figure had crawled from the smoking wreckage of Berkut, dragging itself to the centre of what had once been the encampment.
It was Moren. He’d survived the crash, though clearly not unharmed. Trayn couldn’t make out his expression, but he was clearly looking up at the departing flier as it banked around.
There was more movement, this time from the treeline. The black undergrowth parted as skeletal figures began to emerge from all sides, their weapons flickering with green energies. They closed in on Moren with a slow, shuffling inevitability, the black filth from the swamps oozing from their silver bones. The filthy, deathless horde surrounded him. Finally the banking gunship obscured her view, hiding Moren’s final seconds as the flier carried Trayn away.
‘Our Edicts of Exile mean we cannot offer you passage from this place unless you renounce your current rank.’ The words made her start. She realised Kordi was addressing her. He had removed his helmet, once again revealing his pale, razor-toothed countenance. The blood from his armour had formed a pool on the bench and on the deck underfoot.
‘Why?’ she asked, not looking at him.
‘If you do not relinquish your status you will be killed. You cannot carry knowledge of us to those not permitted to know of our existence.’
‘You can’t leave me at the nearest Imperial augur station or outpost? I won’t say a word about what has happened here, I swear.’
‘Even if that were true, we are not going to Imperial space,’ Kordi replied. ‘You will need to surrender your Warrant of Trade if you wish to remain with us.’
Trayn’s response was interrupted by a flash of white light. She looked out of the vision port once more.
Below, a great fireball was rising out of the black canopy. It flared and spread in all directions, a plume of smoke forming above it, climbing to the heavens. As Trayn stared, another detonation joined it – a flash of brilliance followed by a firestorm that rose up a kilometre further out from the first.
‘Infurnace torpedoes,’ Kordi rasped, following Trayn’s gaze. ‘Launched from our ship, the Void Revenant. They will scour the surface with fire and leave nothing but a husk.’
‘Is that why you really came here?’ Trayn asked, still gazing at the flames as they blossomed and spread through the black jungle, eating up the rotting surface with ravenous, white-hot fury.
‘In part,’ Kordi admitted. ‘We were long ago alerted to the possibility of the periapt’s presence through our links with the Adeptus Mechanicus. The fact that you were unintentionally disturbing the xenos meant we had to act. We came here primarily to return them to their tombs. If they continued to activate they would pose a threat to the wider Imperium. Now the ones we have drawn to the surface with the theft of the periapt will be destroyed, and the more powerful ones still below will return to their slumber. We do not have the time or resources to conduct a more thorough purge.’
‘You’ve done this before?’ Trayn asked, not knowing if she wanted to hear the answer.
‘The primitive humans of this moon started venerating the xenos while they slept, then sought to wake them. We destroyed them.’
Despite the heat of the troop bay, Trayn shivered.
‘You’re not going to release me, are you?’ she asked.
‘No. You will renounce your warrant, or you will die. You were warned.’
‘And if I do join you, what then? Where are you taking me?’
‘To your new home,’ Kordi said, as the cloud cover hid their view of Terix IX’s fiery death, and the star-studded expanse of the heavens opened up above them. ‘To the outer dark.’
About the Author
Robbie MacNiven is a highland-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Carcharodons: Red Tithe and Legacy of Russ as well as the short stories ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’ for Black Library. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.
On a darkness-shrouded prison planet, the Carcharodons battle a foe as vicious and bloodthirsty as themselves – the treacherous Night Lords!
A Black Library Publication
Published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-814-3
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Robbie MacNiven, Death Warrant
