chest, and a pair of Solon’s crew came running down the stairs towards him, their faces fearful.
“Run,” shouted Solon, and as he heard the hatch behind him slide open he made his decision,
turning and bolting to the right.
The pair of crewmen stood staring behind Solon, firstly in incomprehension, then in dawning
horror. There was a rapid sound like air being expelled, and one of the men collapsed, his left leg
peppered with tiny splinters that tore through his overalls and the flesh beneath. The other man
turned to run, but he was too slow and splinters shredded his legs from under him. His agonised
scream followed Solon as he ran into the engine room, slamming his shoulder against the wall as he
rounded a sharp corner.
The massive twin-engines were silent, and he raced between them, his heavy boots echoing
loudly. Steam billowed up from beneath the walkway grid, where the massive drive shafts and gears
of the crawler lay dormant and motionless. He swung around to the right, and grabbed the metal
rungs of a narrow ladder that climbed one of the inner-hull walls.
“Hold on, boy,” he said, and the child tightened his grip, clinging to Solon like a limpet. With
his arms free, Solon pulled himself up the ladder, expecting at any moment to be cut to shreds by the
enemy.
Half way up, he leant out from the ladder and tried to loosen the access hatch that led out to the
exhaust stacks. The circular wheel-lock wouldn’t budge.
“Come on, damn you,” Solon hissed, casting a quick glance towards the entrance to the engine
room as another strangled cry echoed down the hall. His hands were slipping on the wheel, and he
strained with all his might to turn it. His face was red with exertion, and he had almost given up
hope when he felt the hatch lock give a little. With renewed strength, he yanked the wheel into the
unlocked position, and pushed it outwards.
Snow billowed in through the hatch, blinding him for a second, before Solon urged the boy
through the hole.
“Go, boy. Now! I’ll be right behind you,” he said in a hoarse whisper, casting a quick glance
behind him. A shadow was stalking into the engine room, a bladed pistol of alien design in its hand.
Solon pushed the boy through the hatch, receiving a kick in his face for his troubles, almost
making him lose his grip on the ladder. With a shove, he pushed the boy clear, and scrambled his
73
way through the hatch. His hands slipped on the ice-encased metal exterior of the crawler, and he
could not get any purchase. He kicked his legs awkwardly, half in the hatch and half out, expecting
a hand to grab him at any moment and drag him back inside. The boy tugged at his arm
ineffectually.
Awkwardly, he managed to squirm through the hatch onto the small balcony outside from where
running repairs could be made to the exhausts. He cast a glance back through the open hatch to see a
lithe figure looking up at him. In an instant, it raised its pistol, and Solon threw himself to the side,
dragging the boy with him.
Splinters of rapidly propelled metal hissed through the open hatch and sliced through the steel
exhausts as if they were made of synth-paper. Lifting the boy, Solon threw him over the edge of the
crawler, and vaulted the balcony railing, praying he wouldn’t crush the boy.
He hit the ground hard, and winced as shooting pain lanced up his left leg. He could hear
screams on the wind, and he dragged the boy with him as he ducked beneath the crawler, squeezing
himself between its massive tracked units.
He was already shivering uncontrollably, having discarded his thermal undershirt. There was
little room in the cramped space beneath the crawler, but he managed to struggle his exposure suit
up over his body, and he pulled its hood down low, securing it over his face. The boy too had pulled
his exposure suit hood over his head, and he stared back at Solon through its two circular gogglelenses.
Together, they crawled beneath the massive undercarriage of the tracked hauler. Solon saw the
slumped form of one of the Skyllan Interdiction soldiers and his hopes were raised for a moment
before he saw the blood.
Drawing the boy away from the grisly sight, Solon squirmed further beneath the hulking vehicle,
moving towards the darkest recesses, the boy crawling silently behind him.
They froze as a weight crunched down into the snow nearby, and Solon looked into Cholos’s
terrified face. The crewman had landed on his hands and knees, and his exposure suit hung half off
down his back. Solon gestured swiftly for him to crawl under. Clearly not having seen them in the
darkness beneath the crawler, Cholos scrambled to his feet, and began running blindly into the
storm.
Solon almost shouted out to him, but a pair of slender shapes dropped down into the snow, silent
and deadly. They landed lightly, and took a few unhurried steps towards the fleeing man. Their
glossy black legs were all that was visible, but Solon stared at them in horrified fascination. The
spiked, overlaying plates of armour flexed as easily as synth-fabric, moulding to the contours and
muscles of the figure’s legs.
Cholos continued his mad flight into the storm, but Solon knew that he would not escape, and
his heart wrenched as he heard the cruel laughter of the black-clad raiders as they watched his
plight. They will gun him down any second, Solon thought.
They didn’t.
Instead, a sleek shape hurtled out of the darkness, its form blurred by speed and the howling
gale. A missile, was Solon’s first thought, but then he saw that there was a figure hunched upon the
rapidly moving object, and he realised that it was a bike propelled by anti-grav technology.
The rider leant down and slashed with a blade as the jetbike streaked past.
Cholos was spun by the impact, blood spraying out onto the snow. Still, the wound was not fatal,
and he leapt back to his feet, a hand clutching at his shoulder. His assailant was nowhere to be seen,
lost in the darkness and the storm, and Cholos turned around on the spot, eyes wide. Solon felt sick
as the raiders laughed once more, the sound making his skin crawl with its cruelty.
The bike roared out of the darkness behind Cholos, streaking past him, knocking him down
before being once again swallowed up in the storm.
Cholos was slower to rise this time, and blood gushed from his arm. Solon didn’t want to watch
any more, for the raiders were toying with the man, but he found that he couldn’t look away.
74
Again, the bike came out of nowhere, and Cholos fell with a scream as one of his hamstrings
was slashed. He couldn’t rise from that blow, but still he tried to escape, crawling forward
desperately, leaving a trail of blood in the snow.
Once more, the bike appeared, but this time it slowed as it approached him, dropping its speed
with remarkable swiftness. It hovered in the air alongside Cholos as he tried vainly to stand. The
rider of the anti-grav vehicle was garbed in a skin-tight glossy black suit with bladed plates of
armour over its chest and shoulders, and a long topknot of blood-red hair streamed from the back of
its elongated helmet.
The gleaming, blade-like bike sank towards the ground, and the rider reached out and grabbed
Cholos by the scruff of his undershirt. Then the bike accelerated sharply, and Cholos was dragged
behind it, his legs smacking into the ground every ten metres. He was dropped unceremoniously in
front of the waiting pair of reavers, and the bike zoomed off into the storm once more.
The pair of reavers laughed again, and dragged Cholos away. It was the last time that Solon
would ever see him, and he knew that the image of the terrified man, covered in blood and with both
legs twisted horribly beneath him would be ingrained in his mind until his dying day.
Horrified and sick to his stomach, Solon slunk backwards into the concealing darkness, dragging
the boy Dios with him. They cowered in the darkness behind the shadow of one of the main drivewheels
of the tracked crawler. Solon didn’t know how long they hid there, but for the first time since
he was a child he prayed.
Marduk grunted as a line of splinters struck his left shoulder plate, embedding deep into the
ceramite-plasteel alloy, but not penetrating. He replied with three quick shots of his bolt pistol
before ducking back into cover as more fire was directed towards him. With a practiced flick, he
discarded the spent sickle-clip, and rammed another into place.
“Jetbikes,” warned Kol Badar, and again the rapidly moving vehicles screamed out of the
darkness of the north passage. The heavy weapons of Namar-sin’s Havocs roared, and two of the
accelerating bikes were taken down, one as a gout of hot plasma turned its elongated faring molten,
and another as heavy bolter rounds ripped through its drive mechanics. The bike struck by the heavy
plasma gun struck the floor, nose first, and flipped end over end, sending its rider flying. The other
bike veered sharply to the left, spinning uncontrollably and impacted with the tunnel wall,
disintegrating in a shower of sparks and flame.
Then the other bikes were screaming through the main access tunnel, banking sharply as they
roared overhead. A shower of splinter-fire raced along the floor and peppered one of the Anointed,
but the Terminator-armoured warrior brother stood against the fire pelting him like a man bracing
himself against the wind. His twin-linked bolters roared, ripping head-sized chunks from the front of
one of the bikes, but it did not fall, and continued to slice through the air in tight formation with its
peers.
Marduk and the warrior brothers of the 13th were caught with their backs vulnerable to attack
from the bikes, and they spun around and unleashed the fury of their bolters.
One of Sabtec’s warriors was caught in the fire of two bikes, and though the splinters could not
fully penetrate his thick armour, dozens of the cruel barbs sank through the gaps between the plates
of his Mark IV armour, and he fell without a sound. Splinters had pierced the small gap between his
breastplate and his helmet, filling his throat with slivers of metal, and two other splinters shattered
his left eye lens, driving into his brain.
Another bike was brought crashing down by the combined fire of the 13th, and Marduk blew the
head off another rider with a carefully aimed shot of his bolt pistol. The headless rider was ripped
from the saddle of his bike and hurled backwards, and Marduk threw himself into a roll as the
riderless bike speared towards him, skimming across the surface of the floor like a stone hurled
across still water.
75
The bike smashed into the remnants of the mined Imperial armoured vehicle that Marduk had
been crouching behind, the force of the impact spinning it sideways. The last bike was gone,
screaming away into the distance as its rider accelerated.
A flurry of splinters struck him in the back, and Marduk was knocked forwards as he rose. He
cursed, and pushed himself to his feet, swinging around and firing in one motion. With satisfaction,
he saw the frail chest of one of the advancing black armoured eldar explode as the mass-reactive tip
of the bolt-round detonated.
“Thirteenth, advance on me,” roared Marduk, having had enough of cowering in cover.
Burias hissed in hatred as the last remaining jetbike banked around once more, chased by bolter
rounds that pinged off the debris scattered around the access tunnel. It moved so fast that it was little
more than a shadowy blur, and he narrowed his eyes and allowed the daemon Drak’shal to rear up
within him.
The eldar vehicle speared through the air like a dart, jinking around the burnt-out hulls of
Imperial vehicles, dodging the blanket of incoming fire.
It straightened and gunned its engines, accelerating directly towards Burias-Drak’shal and
Magos Darioq, who stood immobile behind him, apparently unconcerned by the carnage.
The cannons, under-slung beneath the chassis of the jetbike, roared, spitting a stream of splinters
towards the possessed warrior, but he was already moving, springing into the air, the heavy icon of
the Host held in one hand as if it weighed nothing at all.
The fire of the jetbike’s cannons flashed towards Darioq, but a glowing sphere of light
surrounded him, and they rebounded off the energy barrier to leave him unscathed.
Burias-Drak’shal leapt over the elegantly tapering faring of the jetbike, his taloned hand locking
around the eldar rider’s throat and ripping him from his saddle. The riderless bike veered sharply
and flipped, exploding against the tunnel wall as Burias-Drak’shal landed in a crouch, the eldar
warrior helpless in his grasp.
Lifting the eldar as if he was a child, Burias-Drak’shal slammed its head into a corner of scrap
metal, once part of an Imperial vehicle. Its head splattered, the frail skull splintering like porcelain.
“Weakling thing,” commented Burias-Drak’shal, flicking the corpse away from him.
A blade rammed into his back, and Burias-Drak’shal roared in anger and pain. The blade was
wrenched agonisingly against his spine and he twisted, swinging the icon around in a lethal arc.
The blow didn’t hit anything, indeed, there did not seem to be anything behind him. With his
witch-sight, he registered a shadowy shape in the corner of his vision, and then twisted away as a
blade stabbed towards him once again, putting some space between him and his nigh-on invisible
assailant.
His eyes narrowed as they locked on a lean, ghostlike figure. It became visible for a second,
taunting him, and he saw a slim figure, its skin as black as pitch, with arcane sigils cut into its flesh.
Its eyes were milky white, with no pupils, and it snarled at him, exposing a maw filled with tiny,
barbed teeth.
Then the figure was nothing more than a shadow again, a vague ghostly shape that surged
towards him in a blur of motion. Burias-Drak’shal swung his icon like a hammer, the spiked tip
humming as it arced through the air. The shadow-creature ducked beneath the blow and came up
inside his guard, and Burias-Drak’shal hissed in pain as a blade rammed into his side.
Burias-Drak’shal connected with a heavy backhand blow that sent the shadow-creature tumbling
backwards. It came to rest on all fours, and its form once more became visible as it snarled up at him
in hatred. Then it was gone, disappearing into thin air as if a veil had been drawn over it.
