Choose Your Enemies, page 30
An insistent little thought began to scratch at my synapses. If that was true, and Jurgen really wasn’t a threat to her any more, why had she instructed Fulcher to have him killed? There had to be a reason…
‘I would,’ the daemon said, with a degree of preternatural smugness which should have been infuriating, but which the glamour surrounding her somehow rendered strangely endearing. ‘And when I’ve consumed these completely, I’ll be invincible.’ I glanced apprehensively behind her to the pile of spirit stones. All were infested with the creeping darkness, the majority of them more than half engulfed already; a few had gone almost entirely black, with only a few faint flickers of light still clinging on desperately in their deepest recesses. Her voice became low and seductive, caressing my very bones with its cadence. ‘It’s not too late, you know. We can still be friends. Let bygones be bygones, come and play with me. You know you want to.’ And part of me did, I have to admit – lured in by those seductive rhythms.
But most of me didn’t. I’d seen what happened to mortals foolish enough to trust in the promises of daemons before, most recently the ones whose mortal remains she now inhabited.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’m not interested in those kinds of games. If you had a regicide board, on the other hand–’
I took another fruitless swipe at the leg in front of me, with the same disheartening lack of effect as before. A peevish expression appeared on the daemon’s face, and with movements as lithe as the most skilful of dancers she raised her leg and stamped down at where I was standing. The deck plates beneath the metre or so of soil covering them buckled from the impact, creating a small, but somehow elegant, crater. If I hadn’t dived out of the way at the last moment that would have been it for me, reduced to a small stain, but as it was I rolled and came back to my feet, cracking off a couple of shots from my laspistol as I did so. Which, predictably, did nothing beyond annoying her, but if that was the best I could do for the time being I’d just have to settle for that.
‘Avaunt, in the Emperor’s name!’ Vekkman bellowed, giving up on the bolt pistol, and charging in with the crackling staff, swinging it as though it were a blade. At the same time Amberley, now acting in concert with her fellow inquisitor, triggered the jump pack of her power armour, soaring into the air, and emptying the magazine of her storm bolter full in the daemon’s hideously alluring visage.
For a moment I dared to hope that their combined might would somehow be enough. As Vekkman’s sorcerous weapon struck, the flesh of Emeli’s leg grew momentarily insubstantial, evanescing into sweet-smelling vapour, and the barrage of explosive projectiles pureed a couple of eyes and a flawless cheek. Then, with a shriek of rage, she lashed out with one of her tongues, striking Amberley from the air; the impact crazed the ceramite of the armour’s breastplate, and sent its wearer crashing to the ground.
My heart seemed to stop for a moment – but inquisitors are made of sterner stuff than most, and after an eternal second or so Amberley began to stir, the servos of her suit making harsh whining sounds as the damaged joints ground against one other in her efforts to rise.
Vekkman was still shouting, something in High Gothic full of sibilants and glottal stops, laying about him with the null rod, but with Amberley out of the way – and Jurgen and I apparently no threat at all – he became the natural focus of Emeli’s ire. A shapely hoof lashed out, sending him spinning – unconscious or dead – across the clearing, the crackling staff flying from his hand. As he dropped it, the daemon’s physical form solidified again, all trace of the physical damage it had suffered fading from its face.
I glanced upwards, seeing Emeli smiling down at me with all the warmth of a raptor spotting something small and furry in the grass, and found myself beseeching the Emperor for a miracle; not that I expected one, but under the circumstances it certainly couldn’t hurt to ask.
But a miracle was precisely what I got. As I hefted my chainsword, taking up a guard position between the daemon and Amberley, the entire dome shook from a series of impacts which felt to me rather too much like heavy weapons fire to be entirely comforting.
A quick glance towards the armourcrys overhead was enough to tell me that this was precisely what it was. The vast bulk of an eldar battleship[189] was keeping station with the orbital, just outside the dome, and beyond it I thought I could make out several more of the distinctive curving hulls. Before I could discern any more, however, I was dazzled by the discharge from one of the ship’s ventral lance batteries, and, once again, the entire dome shook.
This time, however, the shots had done their work, punching a hole through the thick, transparent material. With a roar like an enraged carnosaur the atmosphere began to vent, becoming visible as a plume of ice crystals, which caught the sunlight in a glittering trail I might have found breathtakingly beautiful if it hadn’t been taking my breath quite literally.
‘We have to get out of here!’ I yelled, running across to Amberley and seizing her arm, tugging at the dead weight of her malfunctioning power armour in a probably futile attempt to help her rise. ‘We’ll suffocate!’ My greatcoat was beginning to flap around me, already caught by the rising gusts of the venting atmosphere.
‘No we won’t,’ Amberley said, grasping the situation with gratifying speed and, to my relief, finally regaining her feet. ‘A space this size will take ages to depressurise through a hole that small.’
It didn’t look all that small to me, I have to say, but she seemed calm enough, and giving way to screaming panic wouldn’t do a lot for my reputation, so I took a deep breath and nodded briskly as though I understood what was going on.
‘Eldar!’ Jurgen said, pointing upwards to where a cluster of dots had appeared, plummeting towards us. He raised the melta, trying to track a target.
‘Stand down,’ Amberley said. ‘They’re with us.’
‘They are?’ I asked, in considerable astonishment.
Emeli, if anything, seemed even more confused, raising her head to look at the swooping jetbikes with an air of manifest puzzlement. They were eldar, right enough – the sorcerers we’d seen in the mines of Drechia, or dressed exactly like them if they weren’t. Las-bolts from their pistols began to detonate against the daemon’s flawless flesh, with the same complete lack of effect as our own weapons were having so far as I could see, and their sorcerous spears whirled and danced about it, slashing at her flesh, opening wounds which faded away almost at once as though they’d never been. The daemon jumped, impossibly high, and snatched at the nearest, who evaded the grasping hand by what, from where I was standing, seemed like millimetres. A moment later she crashed back to earth, shaking the ground beneath us.
‘You asked the eldar for help?’ I expostulated, the conversation I’d overheard between Amberley and the tech-priest finally starting to make sense.
‘Of course,’ Amberley said, with the air of patient exasperation common to women all over the galaxy explaining the obvious to the men in their lives. ‘This thing is feeding off the souls of their people.’ Once again I felt I was on the verge of a crucial realisation, but she went on before I could bring it into focus. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Fair point,’ I conceded, adding a few laspistol bolts of my own to the ongoing eldar barrage, although I didn’t expect it to have any discernible effect, and in this I was far from disappointed. Despite the risk of attracting Emeli’s attention again, I thought I ought to show willing in front of an inquisitor; as it turned out, however, the irked daemon was too busy trying to swat the swooping eldar to take much notice of me, at least for the time being. ‘But they’re going to need a lot more than that to take her down.’
‘And they’ve got it,’ Amberley said, glancing upwards to the breach in the dome. Another dot was falling, growing larger with every passing second. I expected it to swerve, or break its fall like the others, but it just kept plummeting towards us.
‘He’s leaving it a bit–’ I began, then broke off as the thing slammed into the daemon without slowing at all, mashing her into the deck, crushing and bursting flesh and bone as it did so. It seemed Emeli wasn’t quite as invincible as she’d thought she was. ‘What the hell is that?’
Whatever it was, the thing must have stood twice as tall as a man, at the very least. In contrast to the bright colours I generally associated with the eldar, however, it was dull of hue, composed of dark unpolished metal, and even from this distance I could feel the furnace heat radiating from it. My first guess, that it was some kind of Dreadnought, was clearly wide of the mark.
‘It’s complicated,’ Amberley said.
‘Is it alive?’ I asked. The thing was looking at us with a gleam of malign intelligence, but its stillness was preternatural, as though a statue had somehow been imbued with will and intellect.[190]
‘Sort of,’ Amberley said, unhelpfully, but before I could pursue the topic, the flesh of Emeli’s new body began to reconstruct itself, flowing smoothly back into its former configuration. ‘They call it an avatar.’
The avatar took up a guard position, moving lithely through a series of defensive postures, an ancient-looking pole arm encrusted with runes locked in its metal hands.
‘That was mean,’ Emeli said, flexing her newly reconstituted neck, and lashing out at the thing with staggering speed and power. The avatar dodged the blow, its comparatively small stature[191] a distinct advantage in that regard, and lashed out with its archaic-seeming weapon. The blade bit deep into the daemon’s thigh, and Emeli squealed, more in outrage than in pain, lashing out again with a kick which sent the avatar reeling. The wound it had inflicted began to knit together, but a good deal more slowly than the ones my chainsword had made.
‘She’s weakening,’ I said, as the eldar construct returned to the attack, leaping into the air to drive a slashing blow down through the daemon’s torso. Once again the wound began to heal, but even more sluggishly – as did the ones being inflicted by the whirling sorcerous spears, and the las-bolts from the circling warlocks began to leave short-lived pock marks before the skin smoothed over again.
‘The spirit stones must be getting depleted,’ Amberley said. ‘But she can still draw enough power from them to hold her own.’ She tried to sound casual, but I knew her well enough to realise just how worried she was becoming. ‘The avatar should wear her down eventually, though.’
‘We don’t have long enough for eventually,’ I reminded her. ‘The air’s still venting.’
‘Good point,’ she said decisively, with a glance at her prostrate colleague. ‘You and Jurgen carry Vekkman. Once we’re through the airlocks I’ll order the defence batteries to flatten the whole dome.’
Which sounded like a great plan to me, and I lost no time in saying so. Amberley shook her head.
‘It still might not be enough to banish such a powerful daemon,’ she said, ‘and it’ll probably hack off the eldar so much they’ll take out the entire orbital in a hissy fit.’ She shrugged. ‘But it’s the only option I can see. While she’s linked to the stones–’
Sudden realisation burst in my head, the thought I’d had before coming abruptly into focus.
‘Jurgen can block the link,’ I said. ‘Like he did with Rakel.’ I turned to my aide. ‘We need to get to those stones. Now.’
‘Very good, sir,’ he replied, as phlegmatic as ever, and began running straight towards them, heedless of the battling behemoths in between.
‘Stick with him,’ Amberley said, but I was running after my aide even before she’d finished speaking, decades of experience having shown me that in situations like this the closer I was to Jurgen the safer I was liable to be; although in this case, safety was a pretty relative term. I dodged the sweep of the avatar’s pole arm, feeling the blistering heat of the thing’s metal body shrivel the hairs on the nape of my neck as it charged past, then ducked and rolled as Emeli’s tail[192] nearly took my head off. The swooping eldar weren’t exactly helping either, the occasional las-bolt hitting the ground around us as we ran, although the towering daemon was a pretty hard target to miss. As I hit the ground I found the eldritch weapon Vekkman had been waving about close to my hand, and seized it instinctively, dropping my chainsword in order to do so, swinging it experimentally as I regained my feet. It felt curiously light for its size, but it had been able to affect the towering daemon in some way, which my old familiar weapon most definitely hadn’t. I fumbled for an activation rune, failed to find one, and hoped that whatever it did was somehow innate to it.
‘Get away from there!’ Emeli swatted at Jurgen with a hand the size of a Terminator, and he ducked in the nick of time, having the presence of mind to crack off a shot with the melta as he straightened up. This time the cauterised crater it gouged in her arm remained unhealed, seeping some noisome fluid into the wound.
‘It’s working!’ I shouted, flourishing the fallen inquisitor’s staff as though it were a chainsword. I lashed out at Emeli’s leg, and, to my relief, saw a fragment of it vanish back into the warp, if only for a moment.
‘Good,’ Amberley said, shuffling across to Vekkman and hoisting him onto her shoulder. Jurgen clambered up onto the dais, next to the pile of spirit stones. It reached almost to his waist, and for the first time I realised just how many of the things there were; no wonder the daemon had seemed so powerful, with such a vast hoard of energy to leech off.
‘What do you want me to do now, sir?’ Jurgen asked, quite reasonably under the circumstances.
‘Trying not to die would be good,’ I said, only half flippantly. If his gift from the Emperor was going to save us, and Emeli knew it, killing him would be her only chance of saving herself. Of course that would mean going through me, so chances were I wouldn’t be there to find out one way or the other. I backed up to the dais myself.
Emeli yelped, as the avatar arrested a leap in our direction by seizing her tail. Smoke and steam rose around its fist, the flesh charring and blistering beneath its grip. Emeli whirled round and smashed it hard in what should have been its face, and the construct staggered from the impact.
‘Something’s happening,’ Jurgen said, a note of puzzlement entering his voice. I risked a glance behind us, and felt a sudden surge of optimism. The stones were glowing brighter, the light gnawing away at the invading darkness within them, which began to dwindle in response. Slowly but surely even the most badly infected began to regain their lustre.
‘She’s weakening!’ Amberley cried, surprise and relief mingling in her voice. It was true. The avatar’s arcane weapon was glowing brightly now, carving its way through the daemon’s flesh and bone, while the warp spawn flailed and struck out with ever increasing desperation.
‘Stop! Stop!’ she wailed. Then the towering mass of flesh crashed to the ground. A miasma of nothingness, like its first manifestation, seemed to seep out of it, writhing like the scorching air over a desert as the thing’s essence sought to escape the destruction of her physical body.
But the avatar was faster, swinging its arcane weapon through the space the noncorporeal entity occupied, and a wordless wail of agony and despair echoed through the air around us. A nimbus of light erupted from the pole arm, in which a shadow seemed to move, struggling desperately as it was drawn into the very blade itself. Then the light faded, and the avatar froze into watchful immobility.
‘Is that it?’ Jurgen asked, and I exhaled gratefully, only aware as I did so that I’d been holding my breath, offering silent but nonetheless fervent thanks to the Emperor for our deliverance all the while.
‘Throne knows,’ I said, readying my weapons again. The eldar were still circling overhead, although they’d stopped firing now there was nothing left to shoot at, and their spears had returned to their hands.
‘Apart from the tidying up,’ Amberley said, as the leading jetbike grounded, and Sambhatain dismounted, with a faintly disdainful look in our direction. She raised a hand, and greeted the farseer in his own tongue.
‘Your language, please,’ he said. ‘It’s so much simpler, and you won’t have to explain it all again later.’
‘Do we have time for explanations?’ I asked, with a glance at the hole in the roof that I tried to make seem casual rather than panic-stricken. ‘I’ve tried breathing vacuum before, and it’s not an experience I care to repeat.’
Almost as the words left my mouth, however, the wind died down, the flickering nimbus of a force field sealing the breach above our heads.
Sambhatain smiled, in the kind of superior manner everyone associates with eldar, and generally detests. ‘We’ve time enough,’ he said. Then he turned to Amberley. ‘At least to settle the matters we need to discuss.’
Editorial Note:
Since the substance of those discussions, and their aftermath, appears to have been of insufficient interest to Cain for him to bother to recall, I’m forced to let another, less-reliable, source fill in the gaps.
From The Eldar: a History of Their Presence in the Ultima Segmentum, and Some Musings Upon Possible Means of Their Eradication, by Baltazar Thromp, 997 M41
Thus it was that triumph and tragedy were so fatefully to meet. Having determined that the fate of his world hung in the balance, and that his own life was a small price to pay for the deliverance of the billions who looked to him for protection, Governor Fulcher took it upon himself to rid Ironfound of the eldar scourge once and for all. Quite how he managed to contact their leaders and convince them to meet him face-to-face, we’ll never know; but contact them he undoubtedly did. And when the alien pirates marched brazenly into that most holy of sanctums, the gubernatorial mansion itself, no doubt expecting the ignominious surrender of the resources they sought to seize by force, all they received was death itself.
