Burias-Drak’shal experienced an unfamiliar emotion: unease.
The creature had seemed at once familiar and alien. He thought he had scented the power of the
warp within its being, but the creature had been no daemon, nor truly one of the possessed.
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His slit eyes flicked from side to side, wary for another sudden attack, but none came. He
slammed the butt of his icon into the floor, cracking the plascrete platform, and roared his defiance.
Marduk heard the roar, but pushed it out of his mind as he drew his chainsword, feeling the ecstatic
bond as the daemon weapon melded with him. Thorns in the hilt burrowed into the flesh of his palm
through the plugs in his gauntlet, and he surged towards the eldar warriors.
The disciplined warriors of the 13th coterie responded instantly to his rallying cry, rising from
cover with bolters thumping. They began to advance on the enemy, bearing down on them, moving
in two unstoppable phalanxes, the zones of their fire-arcs overlapping.
Each of the coteries had been joined by one of the Anointed, and these behemoths of muscle and
metal stomped forwards, shaking off the fire directed against them and snapping off bursts from
their twin-linked bolters.
The closest enemy was less than twenty metres away, and still, foolishly Marduk thought,
advancing towards the Word Bearers.
“Slaughter the unbelievers!” roared Marduk, breaking into a run, his bolt pistol bucking in his
hands as he fired.
The warriors of the 13th moved up in support, snapping off shots as they bore down on the
enemy.
Marduk saw two of the enemy ripped apart by bolt fire. One-bolt round detonated in the
shoulder of one of the eldar figures, ripping its arm clear in a spray of blood, and another was torn in
two as a burst of fire caught it in its slender midsection.
A spray of splinters embedded themselves in Marduk’s chest plate, but he did not slow his
charge, and pumped another burst of shots towards a pair of eldar raiders. Displaying inhuman
speed, they darted to the side and his shots went wide, ripping chunks out of the wall.
He roared his hatred as he closed on one of the eldar, and swung his chainsword in a murderous
arc that would have cleaved the frail warrior in two had it connected. The eldar swayed under the
blow with a speed that, for all his Astartes genetic coding and training, made Marduk feel slow and
awkward, and slashed a groove across Marduk’s thigh with the curving bayonet blade beneath the
barrel of its rifle.
The blade bit into his flesh, and Marduk hissed in anger. He threw a backhanded slash towards
the eldar’s midsection, the hungry teeth of his chainsword whirring madly. The black-armoured
figure dodged backwards, the very tip of the chainsword scant centimetres from its belly, and
stabbed with the tip of its blade towards Marduk’s throat.
The First Acolyte twisted his body as the blade darted towards him, and its length sank into his
shoulder plate. Punching with his right hand, which held his bolt pistol, Marduk snapped the blade
off, leaving the tip embedded in his armour. Dropping his shoulder, he threw himself forward,
slamming into the frail xenos warrior even as it tried to sidestep.
The force of the blow shattered the eldar’s chest, and Marduk bore it to the ground. He smashed
the pommel of his chainsword into the raider’s face, driving it downwards like a blunt dagger,
smashing the faceplate of its helmet into splinters and pulverising its skull.
Rising, his chest heaving, Marduk grunted as a blade stabbed into his side, sliding between his
armour plates and burying itself deep in his flesh. Dropping his bolt pistol, he grabbed the arm of his
attacker, crushing the slender bones of its forearm. It struggled to get away from him, but his grip
was like iron, keeping it pinned in place, and he hacked his chainsword into its neck.
Whirring teeth shredded through black armour and blood began to spray as Marduk forced the
weapon into the alien’s body. It ripped through tightly bound muscle and sinew, and tore apart the
delicate vertebrae of the eldar’s neck. With a heavy kick, Marduk sent the dead eldar flying away
from him, and dropped to one knee to retrieve his bolt pistol.
Hefting the pistol, Marduk found no new target to unleash his wrath upon. The eldar slipped
away into the shadows with ungodly speed, moving like shadows being dispelled by the appearance
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of a lantern. They were gone in an instant, and Marduk stood breathing heavily as he surveyed the
carnage of the frantic battle.
The fight had lasted less than a minute, all told, but the savagery, swiftness and effectiveness of
the attack was staggering.
Three members of the 13th were down, one of them not moving as blood poured from a wound
to his head, too severe for the potent larraman cells of his Astartes make-up to seal. Two members
of Khalaxis’s 17th coterie were dead, two more injured. Nine eldar had been slain, and three more
had been injured and callously abandoned by their brethren.
Marduk strode towards one of the injured lean warriors. Its left leg had been blown off at the
knee, and it was trying to crawl away, leaving a bloody smear on the floor beneath it.
Marduk placed his foot on the lower back of the wounded eldar, pinning it in place as Kol Badar
stalked to his side. The black armour was curiously soft and pliable beneath his foot, but as he
exerted more pressure he felt it strengthen and grow rigid, resisting him. He kicked the eldar over
onto its back, and it stared up at him through elongated eye lenses. Its hatred of him was palpable,
and its hand flashed down to its thigh, reaching for a jagged blade strapped around its lean limb.
Its movement was crisp and precise, and the blade was flashing towards Marduk’s throat. He
caught the eldar’s wrist and gave it a wrench, breaking its slender bones with a snap, and it dropped
the blade to the ground, hissing.
“I’ve never seen their faces,” said Marduk, pinning the eldar’s broken arm beneath his knee and
reaching for its helmet, ignoring the feeble attempts by the xenos humanoid to fight him off as he
tried to work out the best way to remove it. Growing quickly frustrated, he simply hooked the
fingers of both hands under the lip of the helmet around the eldar’s scrawny neck and pulled. With a
wrench, he ripped the helmet in two, almost breaking the alien’s neck in the process.
The First Acolyte tossed the ruptured helmet aside as he stared down at the revealed face.
It was unnaturally long and thin, ethereal and otherworldly. High cheekbones and a pointed chin
gave it a severe, angular shape that was at once delicate and darkly handsome, yet utterly alien. Its
head was bereft of hair, and sharp, jagged runes or glyphs of xenos origin, similar in shape to the
elegant blades of the eldar, were tattooed across the left half of its face. Its lips were thin and
sneering, and its eyes were shaped like almonds, elegant, alien and filled with hate.
“It’s a frail as a woman,” said Marduk. “Reminds me of Fulgrim’s Legionaries.”
Kol Badar snorted.
Although the III Legion, the Emperor’s Children, were mighty warriors and had wisely thrown
their weight in behind the Warmaster and embraced Chaos, there was no love lost between the Word
Bearers and the Emperor’s Children.
Where the Word Bearers were severe, their lives dominated by ritual, prayer and penance, the
Emperor’s Children were renowned for their flamboyant decadence, embracing excess in all its
guises. Where the Word Bearers worshipped Chaos in all its varied manifestations, the Emperor’s
Children dedicated themselves solely to the darkling prince of Chaos: Slaanesh.
The eldar glared up at Marduk hatefully.
“I agree, yet they are a worthy foe,” said Kol Badar.
“Worthy? They are xenos. They deserve nothing more than extermination,” replied Marduk.
“I do not disagree,” said Kol Badar, “but it does my soul good to fight against an enemy that can
at least test us.”
“Their tainted, alien weaponry is potent,” agreed Marduk, reluctantly, gripping the eldar roughly
behind its neck with one hand. He raised his fist.
“And they are certainly quick,” said Marduk. slamming his fist down, punching through the
eldar’s face, “but they break easily enough once you get a hold of them.” Marduk shook blood, brain
matter and shards of skull across the floor.
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CHAPTER NINE
Ikorus Baranov was an optimist. When he first heard of the plight of the worlds being evacuated in
the face of the tyranid menace, he had smiled.
Hundreds of inhabited worlds were being abandoned. Countless millions had already perished,
either consumed to feed the insatiable hunger of the xenos hive fleet, or utterly destroyed by the
zealous policy of Exterminatus employed by the Imperium. Any world not fully evacuated before
the tyranid ground invasion began was stricken from the Imperial records and bombarded from high
orbit. Already a score of colonised planets had been put to the sword, every living thing—tyranid,
human, animal, vegetable—utterly consumed in purifying flame.
Baranov cared nothing for the millions of destroyed lives. He saw the positive flip-side of every
ill turn, and while others regarded this time as one of terror and darkness, he saw it as a time to
make himself filthy rich.
His ship, the Rapture, was docked at landing zone CXVI, a privately-owned docking pad of the
Phorcys starport. Only those wealthy few with the required access privileges were allowed entrance
onto this private dock.
Baranov had heard that the regular docks were overrun with tens of thousands of frantic guild
workers and their families, desperate to secure passage off-world. In contrast to that mayhem,
landing zone CXVI was a veritable Utopia of peace and tranquillity.
The private lounge adjacent to the dock was opulently decorated with extravagant off-world
flora, for it had been designed to mimic a fecund, semi-tropical rainforest. Paths of fine gravel wove
through the undergrowth, and ferns and broad-leafed plants grew up overhead, hiding the strip lights
in the high domed ceiling. A waterfall crashed down over rocks imported from a distant feral world,
creating a mist of warm water vapour in the air, and butterflies, with wingspans as wide as a man’s
forearm is long, bobbed lazily through the air.
Baranov shook his head in amazement and envy. Perdus Skylla was a desolate wasteland of
frozen, wind-swept plains, the crude worker class living beneath the ice, and yet there were those
with enough wealth to create an oasis of life like this in its midst.
The pursuit of wealth had dominated Ikorus Baranov’s life, and he liked to think that he had
achieved much from his humble beginnings, but it was at times like these that he was reminded that
his wealth was not so great. This was the wealth that he desired. He wanted to be able to build a subtropical
rainforest in the middle of an ice-locked ocean world just because he could. Of course he
didn’t literally want to build a rainforest—he found this place with its high humidity and crawling
things quite unsettling—but he wanted the wealth to be able to do so at a whim had he desired it.
These were the people to lift him to that stage of wealth.
There were thirty-two men here, most with young, surgically enhanced women clinging to their
arms like leeches. Some were accompanied by older women, fierce beasts that clearly dominated
their husbands or lovers, but they were few in comparison to the glittering array of nubile young
women, bedecked in fine jewels and headdresses.
Baranov smirked. Clearly many of these high-ranking guild officials had chosen to bring their
courtesans along with them rather than their wives. If he had not been a callous man he might have
been offended by how easily these men cast off their wives, abandoning them to their fate while
they fled for safety. A few had brought both wife and courtesan with them, but that was rare. The
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price that Baranov was charging for a berth on his ship was nothing short of extortionate, even for
this upper echelon of the truly elite.
“Lords and ladies,” began Baranov, his voice silken, “may I please have your attention.”
The group was gathered upon a decked clearing in the middle of the rainforest facade, seated on
cane high-backed chairs. The hum of conversation died as the gathered social elite turned to regard
Baranov. Baranov saw fear in their eyes, which was understandable for their world was being
abandoned in the face of an alien menace that would destroy and kill everything in its path. But even
so, they regarded him with considerable distaste, as if he were common vermin that had somehow
infiltrated into their elite company.
Baranov suppressed a grin. In truth he was vermin, but he was vermin that was about to get
seriously wealthy.
He gave a mock bow, waving his hand in a flourish. He was a short man of middling build, and
he wore a long-tailed coat of regal blue with overly prominent gold buttons. His hair was pulled
back in a ponytail that hung down his back, and his fingers were bedecked with rings. He knew that
to these rich guilders who were born to their wealth, he looked like a rogue or a pirate, an individual
who had some wealth but not the class to know what to do with it, but he didn’t give a damn what
they thought of him. Right now, he was their only ticket off this cursed world, and he fully intended
to milk that for all it was worth.
“Thank you for your patience, my esteemed friends,” said Baranov. “My ship, the Rapture, is
refuelled and provisioned, and is now ready for embarkation.”
“About time,” stated one of the guilders, a scowling, porcine individual pawing at a girl who
looked little more than a child, though she was clearly his mistress. Other men muttered and huffed
impatiently. These people were not used to having to wait for anything.
“I regret to have kept you waiting, noble lords, but I assure you that the Rapture is now ready to
receive your esteemed selves. She is a humble craft, but I trust that you will find her suitable for
your use.”
“Get on with it, man,” snapped another man, an imposingly tall individual with a hooked nose.
“I shall forestall you no longer, my lords,” said Baranov, holding up a hand. “However,” he
added with a rakish grin, “there is just the small matter of my compensation.”
With a snap of his fingers, four of Baranov’s crewmen stepped out of the shadows of the foliage
